(Un)resting in Pieces: The Unheard Stories of Exhumed Bones
Arkin Yeshua Aznar and Shaunte Felicity Ong
“Kung hindi kayo tumigil, huhukayin ko ‘yang tatay ninyo, itatapon ko siya sa West Philippine Sea.”
These were the exact words Vice President Sara Duterte used to warn Senator Imee Marcos to stop the “political attacks” brought by the administration against her, which drew both positive and negative opinions from the Filipinos. Some questioned the vice president for “desecrating” the dead, while some treated it as a joke.
Funny as it may seem for others, but exhuming the body of your dead loved one is truly a nightmare. It is disturbing – not only to the families but also to the dead who should be “resting in peace.” However, as distressing as it may be, the exhumation of bodies from so-called “final resting places” still happens in the country for various reasons.
From being exhumed for rental reasons to being disturbed for investigations, these laid bodies have unheard stories everyone should hear loudly.
The Debt to Pay
Dead men could not talk, and for surely, could not pay.
Some may think that once a dead body is laid in its resting place, one can consider this as their “final destination.” In the Philippines, some families resort to putting their deceased in rented “apartment-style” spaces due to financial constraints. These rentals were placed on lease, and bodies were exhumed once their families could not afford to pay the price to maintain their stay in the spaces.
Rodzon Enriquez, a victim of former president Duterte’s bloody war on drugs, is an example of this case. It is said that the apartment tombs were priced at PHP 5,000 for a five-year lease. After five years, Enriquez’s body was exhumed in 2021 from a cemetery in Manila due to the expiration of the lease. The scene of his bones being exhumed from his grave was a true horror for his mother, Corazon Enriquez who did not want his remains to be thrown away.
Families renting spaces in a cemetery in North Caloocan experienced the same. A documentary by Maki Pulido revealed the situations some families face after the five-year lease ended. A 20-year-old daughter who failed to renew the rent for her mother’s apartment space in the cemetery opted to exhume her mother’s bones and transfer them to a smaller resting area in the cemetery called the “skeleton vault.” An emotional experience for her, she decided to transfer her mother to the vault since the lease was expiring and they still had a remaining balance.
It should also be noted that it was much more affordable with a rental price of PHP 100 per year than the five-year lease. For those whose bones were somehow forgotten by their families, they were placed on top of what they call the “mass vault” for three years, before being thrown into the mass pit and lay in pieces, for eternity.
As it is expensive to live in the status quo, bodies being exhumed due to financial constraints of the living speak that dying also has a costly price to pay – from getting a death certificate, having final viewing days, to being laid to rest, one surely need thousands of Pesos just to rest in peace…or else, they would rest in pieces.
The Drive to Kill
Patricia Evangelista quotes in her 2023 memoir a line from one of the killers, “I’m not all bad. Some people need killing.”
There are two ways for a person to perish: you either die naturally or be killed. For the unfortunate, it is the latter – and that is the story of over 30,000 extra-judicial killing victims, including infants, husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and users and pushers, of former president Rodrigo Duterte, now undergoing the Senate Probe.
Rest in Peace is found on the tombstone in every cemetery, but how many of the deceased are actually resting in peace, and how many have rested in pieces?
“Bang!”
…and another “Bang…”
…and another till the magazine is empty.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
As if a gunshot to the head and chest does not assure silence and eternal rest, perpetrators of the war on drugs killings brutally ended the lives of those found in the tokhang list while those who are omitted are in the guise of nanlaban. Today, the only hope for eternal rest and peace is the achievement of justice after the human rights violations and traumas embedded in those who have witnessed a fleeting moment that felt like an eternity.
To rest in peace for eternity may come at a cost for many. For some, there is a number of unfinished business or unsaid last words and unstated confessions, but there are instances that it is in the very hands of the law and justice which may take decades and is even unachieved in the worst-case scenario.
The final hit that reaches the very depths of the soul is the absence of remorse and apologies from those who are supposed to be held accountable. How, then, will the unfortunate victims of untimely, bloody, and cruel deaths be in peace when monetary means may not achieve it? Perhaps, today, it is only time that will tell us when they achieve the justice they deserve.
Dead men could not talk; surely, they were not capable of speaking for themselves and reliving the final moments of their lives. Letting the dead rest is what we hope to do, but in a setting and society where even death requires mounds of Pesos and decades of trials and investigations, then perhaps it is those who work for it that will follow the deceased.
The very element of respect, despite it being so divine when speaking of the dead, is forgotten by many, especially those who find themselves in the middle of chaos. A shame it truly is to be dead during such situations, and even more to be alive witnessing every moment of it.
The season of Undas, supposedly to mourn and remember those who have departed, is met with several problems for those who will mourn and remember, and even more for the deceased who have no power left over this physical world but could only watch and digest from afar.