Word: davao
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Aquino immediately set about personally surveying her domain. Amid threats of imminent coups and assassinations, she visited Davao City on the strife- torn island of Mindanao. By week's end the police were tearing down strike barricades. The moves are proving to be popular, so much so that even Aquino's disaffected Vice President, Salvador Laurel, has begun to soften his criticism of her leadership. Earlier, Laurel admitted there was a tactical alliance between some of his supporters and those of Aquino's archrival, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. After the President's speech, Laurel said his differences with...
...vigilantes have proved an effective tool for counterinsurgency alongside the still ill-equipped and poorly paid Philippine armed forces. Nowhere is that clearer than in Davao City, the sprawling city-state in southeastern Mindanao. A year ago Davao City and its 1.4 million people were so firmly in the control of the insurgents that Manila officials called the city a Communist "urban laboratory." But in the past eight months the N.P.A. has fled into the hills, and the city has been transformed into a government stronghold. The main agent of change: the vigilante group Alsa Masa, or Uprising...
...late as last summer, when Lieut. Colonel Franco Calida took over as military commander and police superintendent in Davao City, Alsa Masa had only seven members. "I told this group to go forth and multiply," recalls the colorful Calida, whose office is a veritable arsenal of guns and grenades. "In a week there were 22, then 40, then 70, then 100 . . ." Alsa Masa, now several thousand strong, imposed a system of checkpoints, armed patrols, covert neighborhood surveillance, "tax donations" and more than a little intimidation. N.P.A. members who have failed to present identification quickly at Alsa Masa checkpoints have been...
...parade snaked through the streets of Davao City last week, but the occasion was hardly festive. As thousands of residents on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao watched, the marchers carried 105 white wooden coffins containing the remains of civilians said to have been murdered by the Communist-led New People's Army. Headed by Army Lieut. Colonel Franco Calida, the procession included 3,000 members of the Alsa Masa, one of more than a score of private paramilitary groups that are waging war against the N.P.A. Every so often, pallbearers opened a coffin and showed the remains to onlookers...
Aquino undertook the trip, her second outside Manila since assuming power in February, to prove that there is popular support for her conciliatory efforts toward the Communist rebels. As she rode through Davao, thousands waved the yellow ribbons that have come to symbolize her People Power campaign. It was an impressive reception. Even so, some could not help being reminded of similar events staged by her predecessor...