We often applaud the resilience of calamity victims for their ability to pick themselves up and rebuild their lives.
That, they say, is the strength of the Filipino. The ability to rise above the loss and destruction and, with the help of family and community, restart their lives.
That is all bull. Most victims of disasters are not able to go back to their homes and their former lives. Some spend months in evacuation centers awaiting the government’s promise of relocation sites. Others end up crammed in a room in a relative’s house. Few have some level of normalcy, although they suffer like the others from anxiety and depression.
The problem with hyping on their resilience is that the burden falls on the victim and not on systems and institutions that failed them because of corruption and greed.
“Di na ta anang resilience-resilience ha. Dapat masuko na gyud ta ug pa tubagon kana sila,” said a friend after I told her I lost my car and almost all my belongings in the floods caused by Typhoon Tino on Nov. 4, 2025. (No more of that resilience thing. We have to get mad this time and to let those responsible answer for their failures.)
“Resilience” is a word that almost automatically surfaces after every calamity.
We praise the people who have lost their homes, their savings, sometimes their loved ones, for their ability to start again. But why did they need to be resilient in the first place?
Cebuanos have weathered storms, even strong typhoons, but Tino’s devastation was caused by approvals given to upland developments and land conversions where they should not have been, regulations ignored, and warnings disregarded in favor of money.
We cannot celebrate survival if we cannot demand answers from our leaders.
The Cebu City Government’s announcement that it will investigate several development projects after Typhoon Tino is a necessary acknowledgment that something went wrong beyond the weather. But identifying developers alone is not enough. The real question is whether this investigation will expose the decisions and people who approved those developments beside creeks and rivers or were issued environmental compliance certificates despite the known risks.
These people should be identified, charged in court, and ordered to pay for the loss and damage.
When victims dig through the mud and debris, it is not resilience. It is the price the victims are paying for the greed of others.
Cebu does not need to become more resilient. It needs to become more just.
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I’ll see you at the Walk for Integrity and Good Governance next Sunday, November 30. It opens with a mass at the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño de Cebu at 2:30 p.m., followed by a walk to Fuente Osmeña, where a short program will be held. The walk will be led by Cebu Archbishop Alberto Uy. He invited the faithful to a prayerful and peaceful assembly, “an expression of our collective dismay, righteous anger, and deep desire for a renewed nation founded on integrity, honesty, and good governance.”