By Frenchie Mae Cumpio
You would find her at her usual spot even in detention. A five-by-three-meter parcel of land designated as the garden for political prisoners in the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) in Mandaluyong City, now filled with vegetable transplants and budding camote tops, has become Nanay Tessie’s comfort zone. But the small garden is far from the vast fertile land she tilled in Samar, Eastern Visayas. Watching her do her daily garden routine, one couldn’t help but imagine: “How could a farmer be taken away from the land she nurtured and cultivated?”
The fifty-eight year-old Teresita Abarratigue, commonly known as Mama Tess or Nanay Tessie has been in detention for fourteen years already along with Maita Abadiano, also a farmer from Calbiga, Samar, and four other male farmers who are incarcerated at the New Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa City. Nanay Tessie along with the several others are facing charges of murder. They faced a seven-year trial before the Regional Trial Court Branch 33 in Calbiga, Samar only to be convicted of reclusion perpetua. Her daughter, Grace Abarratigue, and her son-in-law, College Editor’s Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) alumnus and artist JP Versoza, who are still detained in Catbalogan City where Nanay Tessie was incarcerated before being transferred to CIW, are also set for promulgation for the fabricated charges of robbery with homicide.
Teresita Abarratigue: A Mother
Nanay Tessie’s youngest daughter was just seven years old, sound asleep in the embrace of her mother, when members of the police and military barged into their house to serve a Warrant of Arrest against Nanay Tessie. The seven-year-old, who was just starting to learn three-letter English words, is already fourteen years older and a College Varsity student. But even until today, Nanay Tessie could never forget the scream of her daughter when the authorities took her out of their house. It was just 2:30 in the early morning of November 23, 2012 and the dawn, as it seems to Nanay Tessie and her children, did not break. The harsh reality is that while her children are growing up, Nanay Tessie is getting older.
Being detained may deprive you of the privilege to witness your children accomplish their milestones but it doesn’t take away your right to be a mother. From wallets and bags made of beads to long letters, Nanay Tessie constantly sends her love and care to her children despite her incarceration.
A peasant-leader
Growing up in the farmlands of Samar, Nanay Tessie has witnessed economic and military abuse among the peasants. She, herself, tilled the least-irrigated among the farmlands in the country.
In an attempt to ease their situation, Nanay Tessie joined and led campaigns to seek for government intervention in the plight of the farmers in Samar. But dissent is always responded with retaliation. Samar has always been the subject of intensified militarization. Mass evacuations among villages in Calbiga, Samar has been common even in the 1980s due to military encampment. Under the Arroyo administration, Jovito Palparan turned the rice fields in Samar into a bloodbath.
Nanay Tessie has seen it all but her resolve never faltered – at the expense of her becoming the subject of retaliation.
A deeply rooted tree
Nanay Tessie’s Case is now on appeal before the Supreme Court. While awaiting for the result, she spent her seven years in CIW studying vocational technical skills such as dress making, crochet making and weaving. In fact, she would usually outrank her younger classmates in class. Two years short of becoming a senior citizen, Nanay Tessie still has the dedication and unwavering sense of responsibility.
Because the seed grows where it is rooted.
And thousands of miles away from home, she remains the sturdy tree that reaches out for the sunlight.
