In the southern Philippines, “vaya con Dios” and “hasta la vista” are not Spanish expressions. Although you say "buenas" to greet and hear "good" to answer when you ask how you are, those who pronounce these words do not speak Spanish, but Chabacano, the Creole language born from the contact of the sailors of New Spain with the indigenous people. In Zamboanga, a city that spills for miles down the eastern coast of the island of Mindanao, it is spoken by 800,000 people. Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and indigenous animists mix in this town facing the Celebes sea. They share that portion of the Pacific with Malaysia, Indonesia and, much closer, with the small island of Basilan, headquarters of the Islamic terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, an ancient hotbed of bandits and pirates. From the Paseo del Mar in Zamboanga, however, a paradise of mangroves and palm trees sagging over gentle indigo waves appears.

Barely 200,000 people inhabited the city in the early 1970s. Today, they are close to a million. Political insecurity in other parts of the country pushed hundreds of thousands of families to the southern tip of the Philippines. They settled where they could. Almost always, uncultivated lands belonging to landowners who did not prevent —perhaps out of charity, surely out of overwhelmingness— the occupation of the people. The Philippines is the Asian country with the most squats.

The houses are transmitted from parents to children without any title. But speculation is also raging in these payments, which see their population grow at a dizzying 3% per year. The children of those landowners now want to take advantage of the lands de facto ceded to those who fled. They seek the services of lawyers, offer them 15 or 20% of the value of the land and manage to expel their unwanted tenants to the outskirts, wild and rugged areas.

Under a blond sun, Ángel Calvo greets with a “buenas” in perfect Spanish —he was born in Valladolid in 1944— or impeccable tacky —he has lived in the Philippines for more than 40 years. The list of social and mediation projects between the religious communities of this Claretian priest is endless, but the one that has caused him "more than one ulcer" has been to build a city from scratch to accommodate a part of the evicted families. 60% of the inhabitants who are distributed along the seven kilometers of La Población, the center of Zamboanga, do not own the property or legally reside on the land they occupy.

“Mano po, padre”, a girl asks him, grabbing his hand and raising it to his forehead as a sign of blessing. She has approached him from a shack planted in the middle of one of the tracks. She is one of 170,000 displaced after the Philippine army's siege of the Muslim neighborhoods of Rio Hondo, Mampang and Mariki two years ago. The military permeate the daily life of this conflict zone. In Basilan, across the street, there are as many weapons as inhabitants, more than 400,000. This is one of the hot spots in the unsolvable puzzle of the Philippines: Zamboanga is home to the largest military base in Mindanao, the island claimed as a nation by the Moro Front. The base houses 500 American soldiers who come as military advisers who train Filipinos in counterterrorism. Beyond lies "the first golf course in all of Asia", built by the Americans when they founded Zamboanga, in colonial times, the capital of their Mora Province.

Farther still, is a leprosarium and the beach. Jaime Gil de Biedma, before arriving for the first time in Manila, says this about his stopover in Colombo, the capital of Ceylon: "It is a paradisiacal place and that is why it produces anguish." “Who played golf here in the seventies?” Ángel Calvo's words burst into thought: “I proposed turning this into a refugee shelter and they laughed at me. Now I have proposed it to the local government again, and they laugh again. Really, how many people play golf and how many people are there with shelter needs?” he asks vehemently, but without losing his humor for a moment.

Rocked by some small hills, the road has left La Población behind, with its barangays, some neighborhoods that fray towards the outskirts of the city with their fried chicken stalls lining the road and small mosques touched with a few tiny minarets. After a few minutes you will reach Katilimban, a community in the Visayan language, the ethnic origin of many of those who have arrived here after their umpteenth exile.

Katilimban was born seven years ago where before there was nothing but palm trees and a land that looks like ground coffee. He receives locals and foreigners alike with a sculpture of a Filipino woman. She has been cast in concrete and holds a basket full of flowers. The woman does not wear golden crowns or embroidered cloaks, she does not show bleeding sores or a mournful gesture. She is barefoot and smiles. “She is our lady of hope”, explains Ángel Calvo as he places a hand on her shoulder. She is made in the image and likeness of the secretary of a peace activist in the region. It is just “a simple Filipino woman” in front of the palm grove, which marks the center of a community with 306 evicted families from Zamboanga. Father Calvo and the NGO that gives shape to the project, Katilingban, have hired three lawyers who delay the evictions as much as possible, but cannot cope. This failure is compensated by the welcome that this new place offers to the lucky ones, always too few, who enjoy living conditions here denied by the courts.

Ángel Calvo explains how it is possible to build a city like this: “They are taught to build, they are given the models and the materials. Then, little by little, they improve the house according to the possibilities of each family”. 20% have a more or less fixed salary and that alone places them in the segment of the privileged. “Some, with luck, have been able to teach their children. Others end up managing to go to work in Saudi Arabia or have married a Japanese woman”, explains the religious. The next 60% “are up to what comes out. In tacky they say: 'if it has, it has; if there isn't, there isn't. They are drivers, occasional carpenters, temporary workers living on one-day contracts.” The last 20% is the weakest. These are families barely supported by women, who earn a small wage washing clothes or frying plantains to sell them on the streets. These families, and especially their wives, receive help from a program that Father Calvo and his NGO Zabida also promote, so they can set up micro-enterprises. "The important thing here is that they have done everything with their own hands," he recalls.

The situation of many women is one of terrible vulnerability. Little or no friend of microcredits (“we don't believe in it, our experience has been bad”), Zabida believes in microenterprises and in teaching the rudiments of accounting. From there they have emerged to sew school uniforms, weave the habaca, a fiber similar to that of the banana tree, and manage a canteen. Zabida also oversees a center for girls who are victims of child trafficking, most of whom are sold by their own families. “Every time a group is arrested, I always think that many more have gotten through.” Zabida makes up for the shortcomings of the Philippine Administration, which does not have a center for minors, also with a farm where they raise chickens. They have created it with the intention of financing their projects for the protection of street children. "At the moment, we still haven't been able to pay all the expenses, but we will," Ángel Calvo confides.

Until when

Let's think about the illusion of some people expelled several times from their settlements when they are offered the possibility of taking over a piece of land. “Imagine what it is like to live with four or five children in tow, fearing that they will throw you out at any moment. I have seen families dancing, crying, when they have been lucky enough to have a piece of land that, as they say, will be 'until when' ('forever')”. But land is expensive, even if it's as steep and slippery as the streets of Katilimban.

(Ukulele youtube intro) "whats up guys.." (drops lens cap, camera falls over, cat walks in frame) "I'm such a mess… https://t.co/FXolCjMHJz

— Competent Problem Solver Mon Jul 26 22:18:44 +0000 2021

Together with Manos Unidas, with help from the Spanish Cooperation, and lacking any other option, Father Calvo insisted on buying the land. “Ideally, the local government would have given us the land, electricity and water. With that, Manos Unidas would have been able to build 400 houses, but they left us abandoned, so we said to ourselves: we are going to try to build even 200, but we will”. Land is very expensive even here, far from the center of Zamboanga. Two hectares, the last ones they have bought, have cost nine million Philippine pesos (172,000 euros), about eight euros per square meter, "but they can ask you for 1,000, 2,000, even 3,000 pesos per square meter," the equivalent of 19, 38.57 euro. That's a lot: a teacher, almost a potentate compared to the inhabitants of Katilimban, earns 190 euros a month. Families pay for their homes, they are asked to provide a down payment of less than ten euros and they pay the cost of their homes in monthly installments, at 20 years and without interest.

The orography of this area has not helped. An entire hectare had to be dedicated to cutting the forest to overcome the slope. Even with that effort, the earth is soft and humid, and it gave problems to build. "It's not only that they have to build strong foundations, because it's on a slope, but we suffered a lot of mishaps, the ground slipped." It can be seen in the streets, terraced on the slope of the mountain, which are accessed by slopes. They have twenty-odd houses each. Josephine Faustino is at her door with her daughters, including a one-year-old girl she is holding in her arms. They came fleeing from Basilan, the island of Abu Sayyaf. He addresses Father Calvo as soon as he sees him.

—Oh, sir.

—Are you afraid?

—No. Everyone here with me. Five. Peaceful.

—Really, peaceful? What's up man?

—Good.

It is also well how Josephine sleeps since she is in her house, identical in its structure to the others, all paired with their stark facades showing the gray vaults, although this one has been improved with the effort of her family. Josephine has "peace of mind" (tranquility) because her children "go to school", but not everything is perfect: the city has water supply problems. They have installed three pumps to get it out of the wells, but they do not fully compensate for the fact that it barely rains. He tells Father Calvo, who takes note. "Vaya con Dios", they say goodbye.

Josephine Street, everything you can see from the community center of Katilimban is immaculate. “Well, everything you see, everything here, is self-managed”, answers Ángel Calvo without needing to ask. “They carry it all on their own. We don't build houses, we build communities, and the election of their representatives is more important than the national ones. We are mere observers. They have committees for absolutely everything: security, youth, human rights, sports activities… Each street even has its own representative.”

“The place is ideal, next to the coast, to the sea, it is not very far from the town, and thus it is easy to transport”, concludes Ángel Calvo. Katilimban is the third of three communities raised by his efforts. Added to it are Kalinao ('peace') and Kalambuan ('progress'), which boast health centers, community centers that are summoned with a butane cylinder bell, “Alegría”, “Amistad” streets and houses endowed with "boxes" (be careful with the false friends of the tacky: the word here means 'toilet').

Now it's time for a fourth. The language of the Visayas, Cebuano, likes words that begin with the syllable ka and several people have joked with the missionary about the name of the fourth: "Kalvo", it could be called. “No, no”, replies Ángel Calvo laughing: “It will be called Kinayahan village, and it will be ecological”. In this case, the construction model changes: “Before, the houses were made only by them. It had the advantage of involvement, but it took much longer. Now we have hired a company that agrees to build the houses, but the future owners have to put in 400 hours of work”. In a year, the first families will arrive, until completing the 80 planned.

The NGO Katilingban identifies the candidate families and chooses them among the two or three communities that are most at risk, closest to eviction: the most vulnerable. There are those who have suffered the burning of their substandard homes or those who have survived the onslaught of a flood on their homes (on October 5, 2013 torrential rains swept away entire neighborhoods of Zamboanga and Basilan, and 128,000 people were affected). "We also highly value involvement and interest," underlines Ángel Calvo, because "some families are not interested in entering the community selection process." Other factors are the number of children. Katilingban is the one who makes the last selection: to see the values ​​of the families, to what extent they accept others, respect people with another religion or customs. In short, who knows how to live together and build community.

“The only thing I ask for in my old age is to sit down and watch this sunset in front of the sea”, confesses Father Calvo, leaving behind the small cities of ex-dispossessed people. Zamboanga's balcony over the sea has seen the Yakanes pass by, skilled weavers; the Tausug warriors —or Moors, a word that most take to gala—, the bajaus or sea gypsies, nomadic people or barely stationed in the mangroves; the Cebuano-speaking Visayans from the central Philippine islands; the Tagalogs of Luzon, the island of Manila...

“In Zamboanga society is very complex, one of the most multicultural that can be found”. Father Calvo has been called "the Muslim priest", in the terrible years of the Martial Law of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship he was even considered a "communist", they have even considered him an "Islamist" for trying to mediate with the most radical groups .

Zabida celebrates Peace Week, the culmination of a series of activities designed for faiths to meet. It is shocking that a priest concelebrates with Muslims the break of Ramadan, but here, with him, it has become commonplace. “Interreligious dialogue does not work with 'professionals of religion'. What we do is look for the common ground [the common denominator], where the meeting points are. Religion has been based a lot on theological formulas, on dogmas. The argument was very clear: 'if my God is true, yours cannot be'. We clashed a lot there, but there is another level of understanding religion: soteriology, knowing who is saved and who is not, and that has changed everything. The Church used to say that there was no salvation outside of it: 'Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus', but the Second Vatican Council said that this could not be, that there is also salvation outside of the Church and the dogmas”.