The Difference between Real Atis and "Make-believe Atis"

Like I mentioned earlier, "Ati Atihan" literally translates to "make-believe Atis." People dress up like indigenous people as a way of honoring their heritage. This year, in Boracay, “real Atis” joined the Ati Atihan parade, dressing in their own traditional clothing and marching with the more modern Boracan community.

But last year, the adults in the Ati community didn’t go out at all, said Sister Victoria Ostan, who leads the trio of Catholic nuns that look after the Atis throughout the year.

I decided to visit the compound in Boracay where 65 families of “real Atis” are forced to live. When I got there, Ati children were playing in the dirt. Their toy was a plastic bag tied to the end of a stick. Like a kite, kind of.

The sisters and I were in the kitchen talking, when an Ati woman came in to prepare lunch. She was dark skinned with yellow hair that stuck out in all directions. She was wearing a oversized t-shirt. It was dirty and had a hole in one shoulder.

She froze when she saw me, her expression was wide-eyed and wooden. Hard to read. Maybe skepticism, with some fear.

I smiled at the baby on her hip. The baby smiled back. I smiled at the woman again, but her expression never changed. I couldn’t help but acknowledge my outsider-ness.

“Atis are ashamed to go out,” Sister Victoria said, "because they are desperately poor."

And they are poor, she said because “they are uneducated. If you are uneducated, automatically, you are poor materially.”

The Ati men make meager sums by carrying heavy loads, or washing coconut trees. The women try to get jobs washing laundry, “but there are too many people doing laundry already,” said Sister Vic, as she is called.

Sometimes they fish. They no longer have any land to farm, having lost it to private developers or to the government for “preservation” (echoing Virgie Sarapia’s thoughts about EO 1064, below).

They live now on this tightly packed compound in the interior of one block in Boracay, in the center of everything but practically invisible, on land owned by the Catholic Church.

The sisters work to send the Ati children to school, to get the group’s basic health care needs met, to help them claim their ancestral land, and to provide them livelihoods projects and new livelihoods skills.

Sister Victoria showed me the rosaries made of tiny white shells and clear plastic beads that the Atis have been making. The cross was carved out of seashell. The rosaries are being sold for 20 pesos or about 40 cents a piece.

Does anyone help these three sisters? Sometimes school groups or church groups will come in and do projects with the Atis, “but it’s not enough,” said Sister Vic. “After one training, the project will stop. But it takes time for them to learn.”

The Atis, she said, are being influenced by the “bad side” of development.

“Development is pushing them away,” she explained. “They do not want to live displaced. They are only asking a place to stay.”

I asked about the lobbying strength of the Boracay Foundation. Could they help get the Atis some land to live on?

“Sorry to say,” said Sister Victoria, “but most of the people in the Boracay Foundation want the Atis to be relocated to Malay.”

“They say they are eyesores, but I tell them, they are only eyesores because we do nothing to help them,” Sister Victoria said. “If they develop, they will be the attractions of Boracay.”

She mentioned that there was one woman with the Boracay Foundation who was always trying to convince the others to help the Atis. That person is Virgie Sarapia.

“But trying to convince them to help is not enough,” Sister Victoria said. “We need them to actually do it.”