Last of two parts
QUICK-MOVING events have overtaken some of the details in my original column so I revised them. The tragic drowning of the two young basketball players of Ateneo raises many questions. But these questions have answers. The investigation by the police, by the Philippine Sports Commission’s multi-stakeholder body, by the Commission on Higher Education if it steps in, and by Ateneo itself must answer them publicly.
The Ateneo alumni are particularly vexed. Taught to be men and women for others, to be more and to give more (magis), they did not see these qualities from their university in the past week and a half.
One of them, Dean Tony la Viña, wrote: “I say this with sorrow rather than anger: right now, Ateneo is losing the narrative battle. It is losing because what the public sees looks like corporate damage control rather than Ignatian accountability. The statements have been polished and prayerful, and the university president — my classmate Fr. Bobby Yap SJ — met the family at the funeral chapel. These gestures matter.
“Let me be clear that I do not question the sincerity of the leaders and administrators of Ateneo de Manila, many of whom I know personally as good and kind people, but I hope they understand that these questions have to be asked. This is why many of us Ateneans, whose love for the school we chose cannot be doubted, are speaking out. I hope we are not ostracized and marginalized because of this.
“The same Jesuit tradition gave us cura personalis, care for the whole person, and it applies here with painful precision. Cura personalis means that Rene and Divine were never merely recruits or assets of a basketball program; they were whole persons entrusted to the university, with bodies to be kept safe, fears to be listened to and families behind them who were part of who they were.
“Let me add one more recommendation: at the right time, the families of Rene and Divine should be substantially compensated, and Ateneo should offer this on its own initiative. They should not be made to wait for civil cases to be filed, for years of litigation, for lawyers’ demands and counteroffers, before they receive what justice and decency require.
“To force a fish vendor’s family from Talacogon and a family in Nigeria into our slow and expensive courts, against an institution with every legal resource at its disposal, would be so unjust that it shames the very idea of justice. It would be the opposite of magis and the opposite of cura personalis. Compensation can never replace a son, but offered freely, generously and without being compelled, it becomes an act of accountability and care rather than a settlement extracted by force.”
La Viña comes from Cagayan de Oro, and his comments about his roots as context for this tragedy is spot-on.
Rene Baterbonia’s path is one that thousands of families in Mindanao will recognize instantly. He was a boy from Talacogon, a small town along the Agusan River, far from everything the capital takes for granted. His was a family of modest means that poured what little it had into a son’s gift, because in this country a boy who stands 6’4” and can play is carrying not just a ball but a household’s future.
He starred for Ateneo de Davao and became the best high school player in the land. He won a national title for his region. Then he did what Mindanao’s brightest have always had to do: He got on a plane to Manila, because the opportunities, the league, the exposure, the scholarship and the pathway to the professional ranks are all there, never here.
“Rene’s mother said it plainly, in words that should haunt every official in Philippine sports and education. We are poor, she said, and if I had known about that kind of training, I would never have allowed it. Later, in her grief, she spoke an even sharper truth: that being poor means you cannot simply travel to wherever the answers are, and you do not even know whose door to knock on.
“That is the inequality at the heart of this tragedy. It is not only that wealth is concentrated in the capital. It is that our children must be sent there, young and alone, into institutions and systems where their families have no presence, no information and no power. The contract is implicit but absolute: we give you our son and you keep him safe.
“Rene was supposed to be a different kind of Mindanao story, the good kind, the kind we tell our young people. Work hard, stay humble and the country will make room for you. Instead, four days into that promise, he was dead in the sea off a coast he had never seen, and his mother flew to Manila not for a championship but for a wake.
“Let me end with three words that all Mindanawons use, words that carry what no legal analysis can. They are panaghoy, amping and puhon. Together they trace the journey we are now on as a people: from grief, to care for one another, to hope.
“Panaghoy is lamentation, the cry that rises when loss is too heavy for ordinary speech. We heard it in the wailing of Rovelyn Baterbonia at the airport and at her son’s wake, asking the one question that matters: why?
“We will hear it again when Rene is buried in his hometown of Talacogon, when the Agusan River receives back one of its own. Panaghoy is not weakness, and it is not noise. It is the truth of the heart demanding the truth of the facts, and it must not be silenced or managed.
“Amping is what we say when we send someone off: take care. It is care for one another made into a daily word, and in that sense it is solidarity. Amping is what was owed to Rene and Divine in the waters of Dipaculao, and it is what is owed now to everyone they left behind.
“Puhon is the most Mindanawon word of all, an expression of hope that means someday, God willing. Puhon, we trust that Rene is in heaven, welcomed by the God he prayed to before every game. Puhon, good people and my beloved Ateneo de Manila, will make sure Rene’s family is lifted from poverty, as he was hoping to do with his own hands and his own gift.
“Puhon, our society will be better because of this, with real safeguards for student athletes, real accountability for institutions, and real respect for the families of the poor. Puhon, this will never happen again.”
And as I said in the first part of this series, let justice be done though the heavens fall.