The struggle waged by the Lapindo mudflow victims has been a long and exhausting one. For more than four years, displaced villagers from Sidoarjo have been pressing PT Lapindo Brantas to deliver on compensation for their sunken assets—a feat made even more challenging by the fact that even Indonesian law, a citizen’s last protector and refuge, has betrayed them. Determined to tell the world about what it’s like to cope with disaster day-by-day, Gus Maksum—a survivor of the now lost village of Jatirejo—has published his memoir Titanic Made by Lapindo.

Gus Maksum is a local Kiyai, a teacher, and a writer. Before the onset of the mud on 29 May 2006, he was responsible for approximately 500 students at the school in Jatirejo he headed. When disaster struck he hastily moved his classes to Krembung, another sub-district in Sidoarjo, but also began using his time to carefully record the experiences that he and other victims had.

Although the media seems to keep us informed about the Lapindo mudflow disaster, stories in the press do not delve nearly as deep as Gus’s memoir. For me, reading the book felt like having a personal and profound dialogue with one of the victims. The author helps the reader to see many things, ranging from problems caused by the loss of the village mosque to the issue of compensation payments never received. He includes stories of life in the refugee camp and what dike construction really meant to the villagers. In his artfully titled chapter “It’s all about the project, buddy!”, Gus Maksum vividly describes how, in the eyes of mudflow victims, efforts at mitigation appeared to be little more than a game attracting politicians and business people ready to exploit chaos for self-interest.

The fact that this book—a first-hand, personal account of the disaster as experienced by its victims—should exist at all is truly remarkable. Many people have written about the Lapindo mudflow disaster, but a vast majority were merely temporary observers. Clearly, an author’s position in relation to a subject will fundamentally and substantially shape the outcome of his or her work. An observer is an observer; that is to say, detached. This book, however, was born from the lived experiences of the disaster’s victims, people who spent each and every day caught in the struggle to physically, emotionally, and financially survive the enormous impact of the Lapindo mudflow.

In 2009, the East Java Regional Police decided to issue a Letter of Order to Stop Investigation (SP3), thereby ending a criminal investigation into PT Lapindo Brantas’s responsibility for the mudflow disaster. From a legal point of view, the pendulum seems to have made a powerful sweep away from justice for the people and towards victory for the gas and oil giant, especially since SP3 implicitly states that PT Lapindo Brantas is not responsible for the mudflow on the grounds that the disaster  was naturally occuring and neither industrial nor man-made. The fact that Regional Police would back an Order like SP3 may come as no surprise to the mudflow victims for, as Gus Maksum himself shared in his book, “The villagers believe that the ultimate goal [has been] to remove the people from their village,” (p.49).

At this point, the East Java Regional Police are clearly more concerned with the interests of PT Lapindo Brantas than they are with those of the victims. Furthermore, the SP3 has lent a new air of credibility to PT Lapindo Brantas’s denials of culpability. The emergence of the SP3 has enabled the Bakrie-owned firm to continually postpone payment of compensation which it is obliged, under Presidential Regulation 14/2007, to provide to mud victims for their losses. Originally, by that same Regulation, the government ordered Lapindo Brantas to pay for damages to villagers’ property by compensating losses in two payments: 20% of the total amount would first be given immediately following the order, and the remaining 80% would be disbursed in a second payment one month before displaced households faced the end of their 2-year rental house contracts in July 2008.

From the disaster’s earliest days, scientific experts have been collecting and reviewing data in an effort to deduce the origins of the mudflow. While it does not seem likely that the global community of geoscientists will reach a singular conclusion anytime soon, the debate itself has become a hot political issue of its own. To one side stands scientists who, much like Lapindo, assert that the mudflow was a natural disaster triggered by tectonic activity at Watukosek fault during the Yogyakarta earthquake of 27 May 2006. Countering their claims, however, is a broader circle of scientific experts who point to growing evidence that drilling pressures caused an underground blowout in Banjar Panji-1 well, triggering the mudflow and therefore making it an industrial disaster.  One of these scientists—Richard Davies, an expert on mud volcanoes at Britain’s Durham University—has led expert investigations into the mudflow and its effects on Sidoarjo since 2006. In June 2008 he went on record saying, “We are more certain than ever that the Lusi mud volcano is an unnatural disaster and was triggered by drilling the Banjar-Panji-1 well”. In February of this year, he and a group of experts made international news again by releasing a report outlining new evidence that an operating error committed by PT Lapindo Brantas was what led to the disaster.

Despite the weight of expert opinion, the East Java Regional Police issued SP3 and, despite new evidence, it has not yet been revoked. We have all become witnesses to the creation of a painful precedent, one in which the law fails to serve the best interests of victims. In other words, the law has betrayed the people. However, at such times literature becomes an even more important and powerful public medium. It brings readers close to the lived experiences of those displaced by the mudflow disaster. Gus Maksum’s warm, conversational tone personally connects readers to more than just a moment in history, but also the truth.

(source: http://annelis.wordpress.com/2010/08/12/titanic-made-by-lapindo-when-the-law-betrays-literature-must-speak/)

This translation of Maksum’s memoir Titanic Made by Lapindo is the first installment in Lafadl’s Sharing Voices, Sharing Lives series. At Lafadl, we believe bringing Maksum’s voice to the attention of the world represents a crucial step towards realizing the inclusion of marginalized voices into global media and movements for change.

About the Book

Gus Maksum, a scholar, teacher, and one of the thousands of people displaced by the Lapindo mud flow has dedicated himself to educating others about the very real human and environmental impact of this tragedy. Originally published in Indonesian in June 2007, Maksum’s touching first-hand account of the first days and months of the mud flow disaster gives voice to the experience of the women and men known throughout Indonesia as “Lapindo’s mud victims.”

It is imperative that each of us understand the history we are now creating.

What People Have Said About the Book

"The author's friends' and relatives' stories, mostly about Javanese villagers' feelings and ideas are touching and well chosen, while the book's translation from Indonesian to English is nearly flawless.  The book shows us how villagers tried to make sense of what is happening to them and this is why you should read this book."
Jim Schiller
Asian Studies, Flinders University, Adelaide

"The Lapindo disaster stands among the worst examples of corporate crimes the world has ever witnessed in recent times. The continuing hardship of victim communities struggling amid wretched environmental conditions serves as a powerful reminder of  the folly of corporate greed and the disturbing lack of political means to hold responsible companies fully accountable for their misadventures. Gus Maksum's moving narrative shows what happens when the power to permit is not matched by the power to protect the people from the tragic miscalculations of the strong and mighty."
Von Hernandez
Executive Director, Greenpeace Southeast Asia

“This book tells us that the suffering of mudflow disaster victims and their mud-swamped village are irreplaceable."
Indra Harsaputra
The Jakarta Post Journalist

About the Author

H.M Maksum Zuber (Gus Maksum), born in Bangkalan, Madura on August 18 1965, Gus Maksum studied at Pondok Pesantren Tebuireng Jombang from 1978 to 1987. He is currently the head of Pondok Pesantren Abil Hasan As Syadzily, an Islamic boarding school founded by Drs Kh Anas Al Ayyubi with the mission of spreading Islamic values.

Publisher: Lafadl Pustaka, Yogyakarta, 2009, xvii + 110 pages.
ISBN: 978-9-0295550-0-4
Format: 150mm x 210mm
Price: $2 + shipping and handling

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“The mudflow has affected every aspect of our lives. And it happened not in a flash but hour by hour, day by day, on and on. Just as people eat, the Lapindo mudflow swallows everything, bit by bit, until nothing is left...”

 -Gus Maksum

On May 29, 2006, Indonesian oil and gas exploration company PT Lapindo Brantas triggered the eruption of an enormous mud volcano when drilling for gas in Sidoarjo, East Java. Ever since, scalding 60ºC mud has been spewing from the earth at a rate of 50,000 to 150,000 cubic meters per day, accompanied by noxious gases and inundating Sidoarjo in an ever-expanding lake of toxic sludge now stretching well over 700 hectares. The mud has swallowed homes, roads, schools, factories, and entire villages, displacing and destroying the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people. It has had a devastating impact on the local environment—including plants, animals, rivers, mangroves, and the sea—as contamination seeps into the ecosystem. The degree to which the mudflow will affect human health is still unknown.