Word: falintil
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...living timorese would know the country's rugged cordillera better than Manuel Mendon?a, 38. Known as kokorek (young fowl), he was a teenage member of the clandestine anti-Indonesian resistance movement and then a sub-district commander of the Falintil guerillas, maintaining supply lines and mobilizing support in the mountains outside the capital. The wiry father of six is recuperating at his half-built concrete-block home on Dili's fringe. A decade of camping out in the bush, not to mention torture and imprisonment, has prematurely aged Mendon?a, leaving him with tropical diseases, a damaged spine, and bones that...
...body or mind, or, like Zacarias de Fatima, considered too old. Average life expectancy in East Timor is just 57, so at 51, De Fatima should be a grandfather. Instead he is a first-time father, belatedly resuming the life he abruptly gave up in 1975, when he joined Falintil at 25. It wasn't until 2001 that he had the chance to marry. Life has been hard since independence, says De Fatima. He and his wife have no job, and they and their 18-month-old child survive on handouts from relatives. Sometimes De Fatima wonders if things weren...
...Former Falintil commander Taur Matan Ruak acknowledges the frustration. Now the F.D.T.L.'s commander in chief, he meets regularly with ex-combatants, listening as they accuse their leaders of forgetting them. "During the war we had such large expectations of the future, that we would solve all of our problems immediately," says Ruak. "But the dream is one thing, the reality another...
...Even those with jobs struggle. Mario Baptista joined Falintil at age 13 along with his father. He killed an Indonesian soldier for the first time at 15, and prayed every day for the "miracle of independence." Now an F.D.T.L. officer, the 31-year-old tries to pay for the education of five young relatives out of a salary of $130 a month. Another soldier, who still uses his code name Mausae Lary, came home in 1999 after 24 years in the bush to find that his wife, assuming he was dead, had remarried. His relatives are disappointed in him: "They...
...Idleness can breed mischief, and the authorities worry that deep disappointment among former Falintil fighters could lead to unrest. In the remote Hatolia area in the mist-filled forests south of Dili, villagers accuse the shadowy group Colimau 2000, composed of ex-guerrillas and disaffected East Timorese villagers, of extorting money from them. In Hatolia town, locals tell of being robbed at night by a gang led by a disgruntled Falintil veteran. Australian peacekeepers now patrol the area. "We are scared," says Antonio Salsinha, a resident from the nearby town of Ermera, "because we hear (Colimau 2000) rejects the authority...