MY MINDANEWS STORY | Between Two Hills: What Mindanao taught me about telling stories

On November 19, 2024, I boarded a van in Cotabato City with 18 other journalists from the Visayas. We came from different newsrooms, different beats, different temperaments — invited to experience Mindanao in three days. What united us was curiosity — and perhaps a quiet admission that we did not know Mindanao well enough.

From November 19 to 22, we traveled more than 500 kilometers across the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) . We visited the Bangsamoro Parliament at the Shariff Kabunsuan Cultural Complex. We stood inside the Grand Mosque, where the silence felt sacred and steady. We listened — truly listened — to conversations about autonomy, history, and the long road to peace.

But nothing stayed with me more than the stop in Ampatuan, Maguindanao del Sur.

On November 21, we lit candles at the massacre site where 58 lives were taken in 2009, 32 of them journalists. I remember the wind that afternoon. It was not dramatic. It did not howl. It simply moved quietly across the field, as if unwilling to disturb the memory of what happened there. I stood holding a candle, thinking about how fragile and stubborn journalism can be at the same time. Fragile because it can be silenced. Stubborn because it refuses to disappear.

^{Journalists from the Visayas, including Ricky J. Bautista, Editor-in-Chief of the Samal Chronicle (right) light candles at the markers of the 32 media persons killed in the Ampatuan Massacre of 2009 ahead of the 15th anniversary commemoration of the carnage. The Visayas journalists’ visit at the site in Barangay Salman, Ampatuan municipality in Maguindanao del Sur on Thursday (21 November 2024) was part of the four-day “Inside BARMM: A Walk Through the Bangsamoro Region” activity of the Mindanao Institute of Journalism (publisher of MindaNews) and the International Media Support (IMS). MindaNews photo by FROILAN GALLARDO}

When my story, “Inside BARMM: A Walk Through Mindanao’s Heart of Resilience and Transformation,” was published at MindaNews on November 26, 2024, I realized I had written it differently from my previous work. It was less hurried. Less eager to conclude. I allowed space for people’s voices to breathe. Mindanao had gently corrected my pace. Seeing my byline on MindaNews, a platform dedicated to telling Mindanao’s stories with care and courage, made me feel both honored and responsible — part of a community committed to truthful, meaningful journalism.

Months later, back in Samar, I found myself looking at our own hills differently. In San Jose de Buan, places once associated with armed struggle were slowly turning into spaces of rebuilding. I had covered conflict stories before, but after Mindanao, I no longer saw them as isolated events. I saw them as chapters in a longer narrative of communities trying — sometimes awkwardly, sometimes bravely — to choose peace.

^{A path to peace — A soldier walks with a former rebel as they enter the Saad nga Balay community—once divided by conflict, now united in rebuilding lives. Photo by RICKY J. BAUTISTA}

When I wrote “From the Hills That Once Hid Fighters, a Future Is Being Built,” also published by MindaNews on August 28, 2025, it felt like a quiet sequel to my BARMM experience. The geography was different, but the heartbeat was familiar. Children running where fear once lingered. Conversations about development where whispers of gunfire once echoed. The same cautious optimism. The same determination to move forward without denying the past.

If my first MindaNews story taught me to listen to Mindanao, the second taught me to listen more carefully to my own backyard.

I am deeply thankful to the men and women behind MindaNews — for their guidance, trust, and tireless work — and to the funders who made the BARMM immersion and subsequent field reporting in Samar possible. Without their support, these stories and lessons would not have been possible.

I sometimes joke that I went to Mindanao to write a story and came back with homework. The homework, it turns out, is lifelong: write with empathy. Question easy assumptions. Stay long enough to understand.

And if there is one thing Mindanao taught me, it is this: stories, when told with care, can outlive fear.

Between the hills of BARMM and the hills of my home province of Samar, I found a clearer sense of why I write. Not to dramatize. Not to sensationalize. But to witness a good story of transition – – from conflict to peace.

To MindaNews: congratulations on your 25 years of fearless, independent journalism!

Thank you for keeping Mindanao’s stories alive, for inspiring storytellers, and for showing that dedication and truth can outlast challenges. Here’s to the next 25 years of stories that matter.

Cheers!

(Ricky J. Bautista is Publisher/Editor of Samar Chronicle. He was a Fellow last year of MindaNews’ Patricio P. Diaz Journalism Program and has contributed stories to MindaNews.)