Mount Pinatubo eruption: the wrath of Apo Namalyari

Dateline:June 7, 1991, after more than four centuries of slumber, Pinatubo Volcano in the Philippines erupted so violently that more than 5 billion cubic meters of ash and pyroclastic debris were ejected from its fiery bowels reaching as far as Russia and North America. This phenomenon caused the world’s temperature to fall by an average of 1 degree Celsius. Clearly, Pinatubo’s eruption signals the world’s most violent and destructive volcanic event of the 20th century leaving more than 1 millon people displaced and private properties and infrastructure lay in ruins.

i just finished my B.S. Econ degree from UP Diliman  but I decided not to  enter law school that time instead i decided to volunteer first to NGOs on Indiegnous peoples and i had close contacts with pinatubo aeta victims.

 To the Aetas, the country’s semi-nomadic Negrito tribes, Pinatubo was no ordinary mountain. The 1,745 meter peak straddling the provinces of Pampanga, Zambales, and Tarlac in the central part of Luzon Island in the Philippines is home to this ethnic people. Considered an inheritance from their ancestors, Pinatubo is the place where the Aetas believe they can freely commune with departed spirits of their forefathers whom they believe inhabit the animals, trees and mounds of earth that abound there. Traditionally animists, the Aetas have considered Pinatubo as sanctuary as they struggle to survive through game hunting and crop-gathering while holding fast to their pagan practice of animal and tree worship. More than a home and a sanctuary of worship, however, Pinatubo is the Aetas’ ‘Holy of Holies’, the inner sanctum where their supreme God, the Apo na Mallari, dwells.