Kumander Bucay: Living the ghost of his past

By: Edwin Espejo

GENERAL SANTOS CITY Circa 1975. Norberto Manero was leading a force of more than 250
fully armed civilians trekking the mountains of Davao del Sur and the then undivided South
Cotabato.

For five long months, they scoured the perilous jungles and crossed the treacherous rivers in
search for Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) rebels who had opened up several war fronts
as Mindanao came almost on the brink of civil war.
Inside his backpack were reams of amnesty papers signed by no less Juan Ponce Enrile, then
defense secretary under the martial law regime of President Ferdinand Marcos.

Manero, a.k.a. Kumander Bucay, was barely out of his 20s. By then, he was already cultivating
an image that would become one of the most feared if not hated figures in the history of the
Mindanao conflict.

From the accounts of his armed forays in the mountains of Mindanao hunting down the MNLF
and NPA rebels, Manero could have become a good military commander had he joined the
Armed Forces.

Norberto Manero was then emerging from the shadows of the late Feliciano Luces alyas
Kumander Toothpick, the man who he said was the founder of the dreaded and infamous Ilaga
group.

Yet, two years earlier, Manero literally faced the firing squad of the Marcos regime for multiple
murder, massacre and arson.

He was being un-cuffed and was already facing a squad from the defunct Philippine
Constabulary when a radio message from then Central Mindanao Command chief Maj. Gen.
Fortunato Abat arrived, which spared him from execution.
It was his closest brush with death.

For that, Manero would be forever grateful to the late lawyer Cornelio Falgui, former mayor of
Kiamba town which is now part of Sarangani province.

It was Falgui who pulled some strings to let Manero off the hook. That harrowing experience
would soon be transformed into storied brutality which culminated in the murder of Italian
missionary Fr. Tulio Favali in Tulunan, North Cotabato a decade after.

To protect himself from the clutches of a Davao del Sur mayor who filed the murder charges
against him, Manero joined the group of Lost Command chief Lt. Col. Laudemer Lademora and
a certain Sgt. Valdez. Lademoras group sowed fear and terror throughout Mindanao and even
as far as Samar. Manero said he was once sent to Samar to go after the NPA rebels.

When Manero was exonerated, the mayor of Magsaysay town who filed the murder and
massacre raps against Kumander Bucay, sold all his properties and migrated to the US. So too
was the officer of the would-be PC firing squad, Filipino Amoguis, who likewise settled in the US
upon retiring as a general in the Philippine National Police.

Documentation for The Lost Command
Feb. 26, 1982
The New York Times
Around Davao, there is much talk of the ''lost command'' a mysterious paramilitary unit that
has been accused of extreme brutality

March 15, 1982
Newsweek
He presides over an outfit nicknamed the Lost Command: a clandestine army of275 to 400
irregulars whose ostensible mission is to search out and destroy the enemies of President
Ferdinand Marcos on the Philippine island of Mindanao. The colonel is very good at the job.
"I'm not a mad killer," he says mOver the past 31 years xxhas killed countless communist Huks,
nonpartisan bandits and Muslim insurgents. Technically he is a coloneI in the Armed Forces of
the Philippines....
His group earned its nickname after surviving a hopeless last stand against a band of Muslim
rebels in 1973. Since then xxxhas filled out his ranks with deserters and other desperadoes
willing to "go where others would not go and do what others would not do."
..Last September six men from the Lost Command got into a scrape and gunned down three
policemen and a government militiaman in Luzon. Confronted with the facts, Lademora
dispatched a hit team to track down the killers. Within 24 hours all six were dead.




March 15, 1982
Newsweek
The Lost Command, they point out, spends a good deal of its energy protecting large logging
and plantation interests in areas where the poor are desperate for land. In towns through five
eastern Mindanao provinces, gunmen identifying themselves with the Lost Command have
been extorting from small traders and businessmen. Some of the charges are worse: that xx's
men may have terror-bombed a church Easter service, and that they massacred men, women
and children in one village while looking for communists on the island of Samar last fall. The
accusations infuriate xx; he blames the bombing and the massacre on Muslim and communist
insurgents and attributes the rest to communist propaganda or to "bad elements" ...


Ravaging Samar island during martial law years
Historical data showed that continuous and rapid and systematic destruction of Samar island's
rain forests occurred in the last four decades. The primary cause of this deforestation was
commercial logging. During the whole decade of the seventies, when the whole country was
under martial law, the entire forests of Samar island were licensed to commercial logging
companies for exploitation.
Timber Licensing Agreements or TLAs were the main instrument used to exploit the forests. In
the "Politics of Plunder", author Marites Vitug says that "forest concessions used to be handed
out by the different administrations at a frenzied rate. President Ferdinand Marcos, used the
TLA to reward supporters, enrich friends and family and keep politicians under his patronage."
Under Marcos, the number of timber licenses in the country leaped from 58 in 1969 to 230 in
1977, the highest recorded figure.
Samar island was a "pie" President Marcos carved into logging concessions for his cronies and
friends. The largest of these concessions (95,770 hectares) was granted to then Defense
Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile who owned the San Jose Timber. His license to cut timber extends
up to the year 2007. Second largest concession was granted to Great Pacific Industries, Inc.
owned by family of once Philippine Ambassador to Japan, the Yuchengco Family. Its license,
however, was suspended in 1985 due to violations of its terms and conditions.
Senator Enrile's logging operations in Samar was reportedly protected by the
"Lost Command" headed by Renegade PC Col. Carlos Lademora, also known as Commander
Brown. His group figured in the massacre of 45 men, women and children in Brgy. Sag-od, Las
Navas town of Northern Samar in September 1981. They were "commissioned to enforce order
in Sag-od where the operations of a logging company were reportedly being disrupted by the
strong presence of the New People's Army. The timber firm's logging concession used to border
Sag-od.." (Petilla, Phil. Daily Inquirer, Sept. 15, 1989).
Replicating the pattern in the country, the number of timber licensees in Samar island leaped
from one TLA in 1967 to 15 by 1978. The concessionaries who were not from Samar. Even the
precious Mancono forests (Philippine ironwood) in Homonhon Island were not spared. The
total logging concessions added up to 599,000 hectares, equivalent to 47% of the total land
area of Samar. The total allowable cut per year was 373,277 hectares cubic meters (Cramer).
But we all knew that the loggers cut more that they were allowed. In fact, in 1986, six of TLAs
were suspended due to non-compliance with its terms and conditions. One concession,
Western Palawan, was cancelled in 1989 due to its overcutting. (Bautista, The Logging
Moratorium Policy in Nueva Ecija, Nueva Viscaya and Samar). Deforestation legally and steadily
increased over the years and Samar and its people did benefit from the plunder of its forest
resources.
























Kumander Bucay: Living the ghost of his past
By: Edwin Espejo

GENERAL SANTOS CITY Circa 1975. Norberto Manero was leading a force of more than 250
fully armed civilians trekking the mountains of Davao del Sur and the then undivided South
Cotabato.

For five long months, they scoured the perilous jungles and crossed the treacherous rivers in
search for Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) rebels who had opened up several war fronts
as Mindanao came almost on the brink of civil war.
Inside his backpack were reams of amnesty papers signed by no less Juan Ponce Enrile, then
defense secretary under the martial law regime of President Ferdinand Marcos.

Manero, a.k.a. Kumander Bucay, was barely out of his 20s. By then, he was already cultivating
an image that would become one of the most feared if not hated figures in the history of the
Mindanao conflict.

From the accounts of his armed forays in the mountains of Mindanao hunting down the MNLF
and NPA rebels, Manero could have become a good military commander had he joined the
Armed Forces.

Norberto Manero was then emerging from the shadows of the late Feliciano Luces alyas
Kumander Toothpick, the man who he said was the founder of the dreaded and infamous Ilaga
group.

Yet, two years earlier, Manero literally faced the firing squad of the Marcos regime for multiple
murder, massacre and arson.

He was being un-cuffed and was already facing a squad from the defunct Philippine
Constabulary when a radio message from then Central Mindanao Command chief Maj. Gen.
Fortunato Abat arrived, which spared him from execution.
It was his closest brush with death.

For that, Manero would be forever grateful to the late lawyer Cornelio Falgui, former mayor of
Kiamba town which is now part of Sarangani province.

It was Falgui who pulled some strings to let Manero off the hook. That harrowing experience
would soon be transformed into storied brutality which culminated in the murder of Italian
missionary Fr. Tulio Favali in Tulunan, North Cotabato a decade after.

To protect himself from the clutches of a Davao del Sur mayor who filed the murder charges
against him, Manero joined the group of Lost Command chief Lt. Col. Laudemer Lademora and
a certain Sgt. Valdez. Lademoras group sowed fear and terror throughout Mindanao and even
as far as Samar. Manero said he was once sent to Samar to go after the NPA rebels.

When Manero was exonerated, the mayor of Magsaysay town who filed the murder and
massacre raps against Kumander Bucay, sold all his properties and migrated to the US. So too
was the officer of the would-be PC firing squad, Filipino Amoguis, who likewise settled in the US
upon retiring as a general in the Philippine National Police.

Documentation for The Lost Command
Feb. 26, 1982
The New York Times
Around Davao, there is much talk of the ''lost command'' a mysterious paramilitary unit that
has been accused of extreme brutality

March 15, 1982
Newsweek
He presides over an outfit nicknamed the Lost Command: a clandestine army of275 to 400
irregulars whose ostensible mission is to search out and destroy the enemies of President
Ferdinand Marcos on the Philippine island of Mindanao. The colonel is very good at the job.
"I'm not a mad killer," he says mOver the past 31 years xxhas killed countless communist Huks,
nonpartisan bandits and Muslim insurgents. Technically he is a coloneI in the Armed Forces of
the Philippines....
His group earned its nickname after surviving a hopeless last stand against a band of Muslim
rebels in 1973. Since then xxxhas filled out his ranks with deserters and other desperadoes
willing to "go where others would not go and do what others would not do."
..Last September six men from the Lost Command got into a scrape and gunned down three
policemen and a government militiaman in Luzon. Confronted with the facts, Lademora
dispatched a hit team to track down the killers. Within 24 hours all six were dead.




March 15, 1982
Newsweek
The Lost Command, they point out, spends a good deal of its energy protecting large logging
and plantation interests in areas where the poor are desperate for land. In towns through five
eastern Mindanao provinces, gunmen identifying themselves with the Lost Command have
been extorting from small traders and businessmen. Some of the charges are worse: that xx's
men may have terror-bombed a church Easter service, and that they massacred men, women
and children in one village while looking for communists on the island of Samar last fall. The
accusations infuriate xx; he blames the bombing and the massacre on Muslim and communist
insurgents and attributes the rest to communist propaganda or to "bad elements" ...


Ravaging Samar island during martial law years
Historical data showed that continuous and rapid and systematic destruction of Samar island's
rain forests occurred in the last four decades. The primary cause of this deforestation was
commercial logging. During the whole decade of the seventies, when the whole country was
under martial law, the entire forests of Samar island were licensed to commercial logging
companies for exploitation.
Timber Licensing Agreements or TLAs were the main instrument used to exploit the forests. In
the "Politics of Plunder", author Marites Vitug says that "forest concessions used to be handed
out by the different administrations at a frenzied rate. President Ferdinand Marcos, used the
TLA to reward supporters, enrich friends and family and keep politicians under his patronage."
Under Marcos, the number of timber licenses in the country leaped from 58 in 1969 to 230 in
1977, the highest recorded figure.
Samar island was a "pie" President Marcos carved into logging concessions for his cronies and
friends. The largest of these concessions (95,770 hectares) was granted to then Defense
Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile who owned the San Jose Timber. His license to cut timber extends
up to the year 2007. Second largest concession was granted to Great Pacific Industries, Inc.
owned by family of once Philippine Ambassador to Japan, the Yuchengco Family. Its license,
however, was suspended in 1985 due to violations of its terms and conditions.
Senator Enrile's logging operations in Samar was reportedly protected by the
"Lost Command" headed by Renegade PC Col. Carlos Lademora, also known as Commander
Brown. His group figured in the massacre of 45 men, women and children in Brgy. Sag-od, Las
Navas town of Northern Samar in September 1981. They were "commissioned to enforce order
in Sag-od where the operations of a logging company were reportedly being disrupted by the
strong presence of the New People's Army. The timber firm's logging concession used to border
Sag-od.." (Petilla, Phil. Daily Inquirer, Sept. 15, 1989).
Replicating the pattern in the country, the number of timber licensees in Samar island leaped
from one TLA in 1967 to 15 by 1978. The concessionaries who were not from Samar. Even the
precious Mancono forests (Philippine ironwood) in Homonhon Island were not spared. The
total logging concessions added up to 599,000 hectares, equivalent to 47% of the total land
area of Samar. The total allowable cut per year was 373,277 hectares cubic meters (Cramer).
But we all knew that the loggers cut more that they were allowed. In fact, in 1986, six of TLAs
were suspended due to non-compliance with its terms and conditions. One concession,
Western Palawan, was cancelled in 1989 due to its overcutting. (Bautista, The Logging
Moratorium Policy in Nueva Ecija, Nueva Viscaya and Samar). Deforestation legally and steadily
increased over the years and Samar and its people did benefit from the plunder of its forest
resources.