Stories by Mike Comerford
Photographs by Mark Welsh
Daily Herald Staff
Third of five parts

Hoffman Estates resident Jose "Joey" Mendez shows a picture of himself with his girlfriend, Jemmie Pullon, who still lives on their home island, the southern Philippine island of Mindanao. He thinks heightened terrorism concerns on Mindanao could make immigration tougher for her.

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines — It took Jose "Joey" Mendez almost 10 years to get to America. It will be years more before his American dream can come true.

When he arrived in Hoffman Estates last year, he brought with him a sense of Philippine hopefulness but also heartache.

He was 26 and living on Mindanao, an island in the south Philippines, when he first applied to immigrate, but he was 35 when he finally received his papers.

Yet his girlfriend, Jemmie Pullon, still lives on Mindanao. Mendez thinks it will be at least five years before the State Department will allow her into America.

"I want to marry her," Mendez says. "I believe families should be together. I believe in loving relationships."

Mindanao is an exotic but troubled place.

In Zamboanga City, young boys, some nude and others in their underwear, play in the harbor surf as shoppers stroll past roadside shops filled with woodwork and weaving.

Late night vendors wander about with steel pails filled with balut, the traditional Filipino snack of partially developed duck embryos.

At Fiesta Pilar last year, the celebration ends on a serene note but with troops and police lining the streets.

The Catholic holiday occurs on the eve of the Muslim holy days of Ramadan, and the festival had been a target of terrorist bombings by the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf in the past.

Mindanao and the islands to the south are hotbeds of terrorism, Islamist rebellion and kidnappings for ransom.

As a local man hired to portray a terrorist rests in a hammock behind him, Green Beret Staff Sgt. Cecil Manuel surveys the jungle around a secret mock-terrorist camp near Zamboanga City, Philippines. Local men simulate terrorist tactics while being hunted by U.S.- trained Philippine soldiers. Such exercises continue to be key to the U.S. government’s global war on terror.

Consequently, in this coastal city with grand mountain vistas and exquisite seafood, American tourists are rare.

Links to international terrorism make the region a key focus of the United States' Global War on Terror, commonly referred to in the military as G.W.O.T.

U.S. Green Berets teach the Armed Forces of the Philippines search-and-destroy field maneuvers at nearby jungle camps.

"There's a lot going on in the war against terror that is not as visible as Iraq and Afghanistan," says Capt. Mike Lipsner, of Santa Rosa, Calif.

Mindanao's reputation causes anxiety among its expatriates living in the Chicago suburbs — and not just for the safety of loved ones and friends.

Cherry Rose Nerge, 33, of Hoffman Estates worries it will take her two brothers years to join her in the United States.

Born in Zamboanga, she believes her brothers will undergo overzealous scrutiny when they attempt to immigrate.

"I think (U.S. customs) will check their DNA," she says, laughing.

Meanwhile, Mendez tries to use text messaging and the Internet to make the 8,000-mile gap between him and his girlfriend seem smaller.

Both Nerge and Mendez are Catholics but Mendez believes his immigration probably was delayed because of the Islamist terrorism in the region where he lived.

Long-distance links

Back on Mindanao, Mendez remembers teaching a high school computer class two years ago when a loud explosion rocked the room.

Davao International Airport, about half a mile away, had been bombed.

Parents of three of his students and his girlfriend's uncle died in the blast. In all, terrorists killed 21 people and injured 148.

Still, Davao, about 220 miles northeast of Zamboanga, has a reputation as being one of the Philippines' safer cities.

"I don't think there was a scare in the city," Mendez says. "People say, ‘If you die, you die. If it's not your time to die, you won't.' "

Classic bahala na, Mendez's reaction represents a kind of hopeful fatalism that roughly translated means "God will provide" in Tagalog, the predominant language of the Philippines.

Sometimes called "the national philosophy," bahala na can be helpful in a disaster-prone land regularly recovering from typhoons, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

And for the most part, daily life on Mindanao is not mired in organized violence. Malls crowd with shoppers. Children go to schools. People go to work expecting a normal day and getting what they expect.

Jose “Joey” Mendez of Hoffman Estates shows an image of himself and his girlfriend, Jemmie Pullon, on a laptop. With her still living on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, considered by U.S. officials as a breeding ground for terrorists, they stay connected via the Internet and cell phone text messages.

Mendez's two sisters and parents successfully petitioned the U.S. government to let him into the country as a family member along with his brother.

Since he arrived, he has completed a nurses' aide course in Schaumburg and passed the state certification exam, but he has yet to find full-time nurse aide work.

He dreams of working in the United States and retiring in the Philippines, but for now, he struggles to find his footing.

"When you have it more or less good in the Philippines as a teacher and you come to a country where you have nothing, it is a big adjustment," he says.

The American dream brought him here, he says, but he didn't count on the heartbreak.

Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Manila deny they discriminate against Mindanao applicants. Nevertheless, Mendez suspects terrorism spooks U.S. immigration officials.

Sitting in his parents' Hoffman Estates home, he maintains his relationship with girlfriend Pullon through his laptop computer.

"Look, she downloaded a picture of her and her puppies," Mendez says with a sweet degree of schmaltz. "I try to pray to God. I don't know where he will put us, but I pray for guidance."

Green Beret training

Part of an elite subculture of anti-terrorist operatives around the world, Lt. Col. Ken Comer is at risk in Zamboanga.

The New Peoples Army, a Philippines-based communist and terrorist group, assassinated one of his predecessors.

Comer, a Persian Gulf veteran, works in civilian clothes but carries a handgun and travels with one or two Philippine army bodyguards inside an armored civilian vehicle.

Post-Sept. 11, the U.S. strategy is to seek out terrorism where it starts. The policy, called "force multiplication," uses a few Green Berets to train many local troops to fight indigenous terrorists.

Similar special operations training has been given to government troops in Columbia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

"We put the ‘G' in G.W.O.T.," Comer says. "This (fight) is global."

The number of armed rebels and terrorists in the Philippines is estimated to be in the tens of thousands by the U.S. State Department.

Philippine soldiers laugh as they practice carrying wounded comrades to safety at Camp Malagutay, near Zamboanga City. Their Green Beret trainers marvel at their ability to laugh even during stressful situations like this one.

Muslim-dominated islands to the south and semi-autonomous Muslim territories to the north surround the predominantly Catholic Zamboanga. The island of Mindanao and the Sulu islands to the south are home to a majority of the estimated 4.3 million Muslims in the country.

Driving on a bumpy road to a training base outside Zamboanga City, Comer points to where he says a terrorist paid an unsuspecting local boy to bicycle up to a special forces officer with a bomb that killed both, as well as a bystander. A sari-sari shop, or Mom and Pop store, stands there now.

A short distance from where the explosion occurred, concrete road barriers make vehicles zigzag to the gate of Camp Malagutay, a camp in a clearing surrounded by heavy underbrush and palm trees.

On these training grounds, the humidity smothers. Yet the Philippine soldiers, many of them veterans of mountain tracking and fighting, appear hardened to the conditions.

Philippine army 1st Lt. Rowel Gavilanes took part in a raid two years ago of Camp Abubakar, the main training camp of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim insurgent group currently in peace talks with the Philippine government.

"We don't hate these persons but (hate) the work they've done to our countrymen," said Gavilanes. "We are military men. We have to build our nation."

The training here will go on for six weeks, instructing 240 Philippine soldiers at a time. It amounts to American-style basic training ending with field maneuvers, which includes tracking and wiping out a nearby mock-terrorist camp.

An American Green Beret inspects a line of camouflaged Philippine soldiers learning the basics at a U.S. boot camp training exercise at Camp Malagutay, near Zamboanga City.

The Green Berets at Camp Malagutay don't engage enemy combatants. The U.S. government has military operations in the Philippines but it technically has no bases and does not actively patrol for terrorists.

The number of U.S. troops in the Philippines ranges from 150 to 3,000 soldiers, reaching its peak during annual joint training with the Philippine army.

On this day, the Filipinos train at eight stations in an area about two-football-fields long. The soldiers learn how to fix a machine gun and other basics.

In one exercise, they carry a "wounded" comrade and race across the training field.

This should be a basic exercise made more difficult by the heat of the day. But the Filipinos have their own style.

Both the so-called casualties and their rescuers laugh as they cross the yard.

"I've seen this done a lot of times back in the states but I've never seen it done laughing," Lipsner said, referring to Filipinos' penchant for laughing even in difficult situations.

Down time in this simulated terrorist camp means hammocks and cigarettes, but later the "mock terrorists" will go on supply runs and ambush patrols before being hunted down by U.S.-trained Philippine soldiers.

The training may seem basic but trainers say the Philippine army readiness atrophied when the U.S. military pulled out its major bases in 1992 at the request of the Philippine government.

After the American military involvement lessened, everything from standards to equipment in the Philippine army began to slip while insurgents and terrorists gained ground.

It has long been alleged that pervasive corruption causes soldiers to come to this camp with malfunctioning rifles and scant confidence.

Each of these trainees expects to see active engagement soon.

Philippine army 2nd Lt. Vicente Mabborang Jr. already has seen action, including an all-day firefight with the Abu Sayyaf in the mountains of south central Mindanao.

"Because of the training, I observe the change in the attitude of our troops," Mabborang says. "I think they'll be more aggressive."

Arms to farms

At the U.S. embassy along Roxas Boulevard in Manila, strategists etch out a triangle to describe the U.S. strategy for the Philippines. The triangulation scheme includes programs for people, government and insurgents.

The single-largest chunk of that strategy is military spending — and most of that goes to Mindanao.

The development strategy aims to allay poverty and bring infrastructure to remote communities.

Mindanao's economy revolves around agricultural products, with huge banana, citrus, coconut, corn and pineapple plantations coexisting with cattle ranches. Mining and fishing round out the economy.

However, the agricultural sector pays workers the least. About 60 percent of the people on Mindanao consider themselves poor. The average household income hovers around $648 a year, or about $1.78 a day.

Most of the estimated 150,000 refugees in the country live on Mindanao or on the surrounding Sulu Archipelago, displaced by bandits, rebels or terrorists.

But there are signs that joint U.S.-Philippine economic incentives work. Thousands of combatants from several insurgent groups have come out of the mountains to take part in the programs.

Still, it will be a difficult cycle of lawlessness to break when even simple security for families cannot be assured.

Last fall, about 60 families abandoned their south central Mindanao village because armed men believed to be a breakaway group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front raided and seized the village. The refugees complained the local governor did not provide help.

Winning the people

Eight children, each under seven years old, crowd inside a single crib for a mid-day feeding. Rice is served from a single bowl and fork.

With their small heads upturned toward the caregiver, they look like chicks being fed by their mother hen.

Orphan Kerby Ginbon, 3, whose face features a large birthmark, lunches on rice with seven fellow orphans all in one crib in Zamboanga City. U.S. military personnel conducting anti-terrorism training donate to the orphanage anonymously.

This 53-child orphanage exists as the only such facility in the province of Zamboanga but it doesn't have a single psychiatrist, doctor or dependable jeepney (an elongated Jeep-like vehicle with seating).

The Foundation for the Development of Children encompasses a group of one-story buildings in Talon-Talon barangay, or community. Talon-Talon means "jump-jump" in Tagalog. Locals say it got its name because its pothole-filled roads make vehicles jump.

The orphanage struggles for supplies and resources, but it has found one unexpected source of assistance, hinted at in pictures on the wall.

Most of the pictures show beaming children at parties but some sit on laps or interact with men in American army camouflage fatigues.

And in the joint bedroom for caregivers, the bunks and mattresses look suspiciously like U.S. military surplus.

This day, the orphanage receives a care package of diapers, formula bottles, vitamins and food in large bags bought by individual servicemen.

The need seems unquenchable. Kerby Ginbon, 3, has a hairy patch growing on the left side of his face. Another child lays in a crib with cerebral palsy. Eleven infants share a common room. When one gets ill, the virus spreads quickly.

Foundation head Josefina Reyes knows the small group of American soldiers supporting the center with unsolicited acts of kindness, but they want to remain anonymous.

One American soldier says the military benefactors want to show the locals, even if only these orphans, that the American influence can be "about more than shooting people."

Talon-Talon to U.S.A.

Nerge describes her own childhood as nearly idyllic, growing up in the Talon-Talon barangay near the local orphanage,

There were days of playing in the surf and going downtown with friends to hang out at a restaurant. A Catholic, her best friend was a Muslim but the topic of religion, she says, rarely came up in conversation.

"We just liked each other and did everything together," Nerge says.

Even then though, Zamboanga had a feeling of being far away from Western mainstream culture.

When her mother traveled to Manila, she would ask her daughter what she wanted from the big city.

"I would say, ‘Get me a Big Mac,' " she says. "Now, I think, ‘How pathetic?' But that is how influential Western things were to us … I did feel a bit isolated."

Later, when she went through nursing school, she got engaged to a young doctor. Her life as a middle-class doctor's wife seemed to be laid out.

But she saw little opportunity for advancement as a nurse. And she had dreamed of going to America since her teens.

A nurse placement firm got her a job in a Westmont nursing home, and, over the protestations of her fiance, the 23-year-old boarded a plane headed for O'Hare International Airport.

"He tried to stop me but nothing was going to stop me," she says. "When I flew into O'Hare, my heart had palpitations. I said, ‘I can't believe it. My dream has come true.'"

She got a two-bedroom apartment with three other Philippine nurses near the nursing home. And she went about attempting to lose her Filipino accent, while learning American slang and customs.

"One week I was at a Burger King … the person at the counter said, ‘For here or to go,'" she says. "I just stood there. I didn't know what he meant. He kept saying it. I was so embarrassed. I swore that would never happen again."

She has since gotten a job working for the Department of Health and Human Services as an occupational health nurse, checking vision and blood pressure for government agents.

By 2003, she was married to a new man. And she and her husband decided to take their one-year-old to see her grandparents in Zamboanga.

"It was a terrible vacation," she says. "I grew up never feeling threatened going downtown. Now, you even have to go to church on the outskirts because it is safer."

She spent the entire vacation fearing kidnappers, she said.

"Because my husband is a Caucasian, he was sticking out like a sore thumb. I held onto him like a Secret Service agent."

Nerge says she's saddened by what has happened to her hometown but she still loves it.

In her Hoffman Estates home, Philippine seashells decorate the tables along with a toy jeepney. A four-foot-long hand fan hangs on the wall, the main living room art. It depicts a mountain village like Zamboanga, with homes on stilts.

At times, when talking to her daughter, she lapses into her native Chavacano, a Spanish-Creole language of the people around Zamboanga.

She sees friends from Zamboanga about once a month for barbecues or parties. All the women work as nurses.

Zamboanga may be dangerous these days, she says, but an immigrant needs her wits to make it in America too.

"Deep inside me, I know I'm a Filipino," she says. "But I'm an American on the outside. I have to be to survive here."

IN PART 3:
• More photos from part 3