Dead Season: A Story of Murder and Revenge on the Philippine Island of Negros.

When a work of nonfiction reads like a mystery thriller, it would be legitimate to suspect sensationalism - particularly if its author were a journalist, whose trade sharpens sensitivity to the spectacular. That is not, however, the case here. Alan Berlow, whose journalism has appeared in Harper's and the New Republic, offers a surprisingly subdued treatment of events which in other contexts would make for more dramatic re-portage. It is this remarkable restraint in the exposition of egregious social injustice that invites the reader to cry out even more on behalf of the wronged.

First and foremost, Dead Season is, as its subtitle declares, "a story of murder and revenge on the Philippine island of Negros," of killings that took place in a barrio called Mambagaton, in the town of Himamaylan. At center stage was Reynaldo de los Santos, nicknamed "Moret," a peasant and a church lay leader. Moret, his wife, and three of his six children were ruthlessly slain as they lay sleeping, when Philippine Army scout rangers in knitted head masks strafed their house in the middle of the night in April 1989. Six months earlier, Serafin Gatuslao, a wealthy haciendero (a prominent landlord), was also killed in Mambagaton, along with two bodyguards, when Communist guerrillas of the New Peoples Army (NPA) ambushed their vehicle. Finally, there was Gerardo "Gerry" de los Santos, an Army scout ranger known to have been involved in the slaughter of Moret's family, killed just two weeks after the multiple murder. The official military report claimed he was killed in an NPA ambush, but very few people in Himamaylan believed that.

Berlow sets out to investigate and explain the de los Santos massacre, and to establish definitively what the people of Himamaylan knew: that all these deaths were somehow linked. And he does a terrific job of it - conducting what must have been hundreds of individual interviews in Negros, Manila, and other parts of the Philippines; plowing through local newspapers and military files; and bravely immersing himself in the almost unreal world of rural feudal Philippines. Here is a truly impressive work of investigative journalism. Yet in the end, Berlow can confirm little with absolute assurance, and the mystery of the murders of Mambagaton (which appropriately means the place of the ghosts) remains unsolved. Berlow states: "Indeed, by the time I left, I felt as though I'd just stepped out of Juan Rulfos's surreal novel, Pedro Paramo, in which all of the characters are dead, but that in Mambagaton, the sad and bitter truth is that injustice has been so embedded that even the ghosts are mummed into silence and the truth is kept hidden in the darkness of people's fears."

Given the circumstances, it is not difficult to understand that all that the author could do was gather fragments of the truth and arrange them as best he could, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which he knew would never be completed. The histories of the lives and families of Moret, Gerry, and Don Serafin are retold, and in so doing the story of the people of the island of Negros also comes to life somehow, however sketchily. The goings-on in the anachronistic fiefdom of the sugar hacienda are described in detail, as the poverty of the peasantry is contrasted sharply with the affluence of their masters. Around this inequality, a whole social system has been erected and fortified through the years, ruled not by rational law but by coercion from "a revolving cast of vigilantes, fanatical cultists, Communist revolutionaries, private armies, and the military." In such a situation, the poor could only seek refuge in their local myths and superstitions, in the passion for cockfighting, or the serialized soap operas broadcast over the radio. Even their religious faith is partly an escape from the harshness of their existence, a way to soften its blows and numb its pains, or to make believe that nothing is really wrong.

After reading Dead Season, it also becomes easier to understand that the violence the people of Himamaylan have learned to live with is not just the byproduct of the social structure, but also somehow an escape from it. And in the end, the search for truth and justice on behalf of the dead of Mambagaton simply becomes too difficult - impossible almost - as the culture of violence thrives and learns to protect itself, and plunges the populace further into an extended "dead season," or tiempo muerto, as it is known locally. This refers to that period from May to September, between harvest and the planting of the new crop, when thousands of workers are without work and without income, and their children go without food most of the time; thus, its other name is tiempo tinggulotom or starvation time.

No one has ever been brought to justice for any of the killings in Mambagaton. Sadly indeed, political violence in general has gone unpunished in the Philippines. In Berlow's desperate search for answers, though, he points the accusing finger at then-President Corazon Aquino, more than anyone else, for her inaction, her allergy to criticism, her inability to govern. This is a bit unfortunate because, while Aquino's weaknesses cannot be denied, the more overwhelming reality is that the situation in the Philippines has so deteriorated that the blaming of any single individual cannot but be tainted with injustice as well.

Finally, it is more the very retelling of the stories of Mambagaton that effectively constitutes a powerful indictment of Philippine society and politics: of a national government that continues proudly to declare its adherence to constitutional democracy, economic growth, and social justice, while conveniently brushing aside the problems of its needy majority; of a Communist rebel movement that has also resorted to victimizing the poor in the name of the people; of the media that have helped breed complacency; and of the powerful institutional Catholic church that has stifled the voices of some of its own pastors who have championed greater social equality and justice. And for many others, this is yet another reminder that the concerns of globalization, trade liberalization, and fast-paced technological progress cannot ignore the fact that there are still many parts of the world where more basic life-and-death issues cannot be and are not taken for granted.

Jose Magadia, S.J., is a graduate student in political science at Columbia University. He is presently doing research in his native Philippines.