Capampangan, A to Z

 

FRIDAY, December 11, marks the 449^th year of Pampanga’s founding as a province, the first in the entire island of Luzon, by the Spanish conquistadores.

With the coronavirus disease pandemic constraining all official observance of the day to virtual, reflective (un)realities of the FB page, I dug up my archives of celebratory pieces of Aldo ning Kapampangan past. If only to have that feel, that pride the day invariably stirs.  

Here’s a rehash of top-of-mind randomness on everything and anything Capampangan with the letters of the alphabet as only guide for some semblance of order.

Arayat, naturally comes first. The mountain that lords over the plains of Central Luzon impacts the majesty, if not the primacy, of the province over the rest of the region. Abe, dear friend, doubled to oneness in abe-abe, so central in the vocabulary as in our character as a distinct race, as we have long elevated ourselves to be. Augustinians, the harbingers of the Faith enshrined as much in the hearts and souls of the native Capampangans as in their magnificent churches.

Betis, arguably the church with the most Sistine Chapel-like ceiling in all the Philippines. Bacolor, once serving as the capital of Las Islas Filipinas at the time of the British Occupation off Manila in the early 1760s. Buru –fermented rice with fish or shrimps – pungent but ambrosiac, no true Capampangan can do without.

Clark. Once the bastion of American imperialism in the Asia-Pacific as host to the largest US military installation outside continental USA, now a bustling freeport with the long-promised modern airport terminal soon to open.

Dugong aso. Long (mis)impressed as backbiting treachery, in actuality referencing to dogged devotion, okay, canine loyalty. Don Perico. Traitor to his landowning class, he fathered socialism in the Philippines, and – to me – equals in greatness the martyrdom of his brother, Chief Justice Jose Abad Santos.

Ebun, principal agro-product that formed one half of Candaba town’s iconic festival, cause of the province’s economic woes whenever avian flu comes a-calling. Everybody’s Café, unarguably serving the best in home-cooked Capampangan dishes, major contributor to Pampanga being hailed the Culinary Capital of the Philippines.

Furniture and furnishings, from the antique to the “antiqued” that gave the world “Betis Baroque” to exotic rattan, metal and cast-iron, all crafted exquisitely by the country’s best artisans.

GMA. Love her. Hate her. But there’s no denying the economic fundamentals instituted during her watch did the nation good. And she still won elections, despite her incarceration, er, hospital arrest, with or without her neck brace. Senator, vice president, president, congresswoman, House speaker – no other human has trod and triumphed through that all.

Hot air balloon. Once the only thing Clark was good at. Now, much better off in Lubao. Go, ask the balloonists themselves. H – in the Capampangan tongue – silent where present, stressed where absent. As in hay ev ha aws hin onolulu, awaii.
Ilustrado, the social class to which every Capampangan assumes himself/herself as belonging to, no matter his/her socio-economic condition. With outward manifestation in his/her being –
Japorms, showy but chic in style and fashion, ever dressed to the nines even when the pocket holds but a dime.

Kamaru, mole cricket, invariably cooked deep-fried adobo. Reputedly an aphrodisiac for the Capampangan macho.

Leguan – a living, walking celebration of beauty is the Capampangan woman, as the local ditty puts it aptly, aro catimyas na nitang dalaga…

Mequeni – a most welcoming invitation as much to the home as to the heart of the Capampangan.

Nanay. Motherhood becoming the best practice of provincial governance. Nang, a multifaceted word in Capampangan, best exemplified in Nang nanangnang ng ‘Nang? Straight translation: What is being grilled by mom?

O’t. What other dialect, or language for that matter, possesses a word comprising two letters conjoined by an apostrophe? O’t macanyan ca? O’t balamu matudtud ya mu ing meangu bie.

Parul¸ the Christmas lantern that is both shibboleth of our faith as Catholics and our culture and craftsmanship as Capampangan taken to gigantic proportions with the City of San Fernando’s signature festival. Pinatubo, from which devastating eruption triumphed, excelled, soared the Capampangan spirit to greater heights of development and glory. Presidents, three of whom the Capampangan race contributed to the Republic – GMA, her father Apung Dadong, and the widow in yellow, Cory Cojuangco-Aquino.

Qng, queca, queni, quibal, quiao-quiao, calaquian, tuquil… the Q in Capampangan words losing to the Tagalog’s K. What gives?

Religious, the first Filipino priest and nun were Capampangans. So was the first Filipino cardinal. And yes, the self-proclaimed “Appointed son of God” who claimed he stopped the earthquake is Capampangan too. Rebellious, the first major, major revolt against the Spaniards was by the Capampangan Francisco Maniago. Yeah, the province birthed and bred rebel armed groups from the Huks to the New People’s Army.

Sinukwan, the deity-king of the ancient Capampangans celebrated in December’s other festival in the capital city. Sisig, hailed as the best pork dish in the world.

Tarik Soliman, the young boy from Macabebe. Wikipedia says was “the first warrior-hero who died for our freedom.”

Universities, at least seven in Pampanga, plus scores of colleges and other higher institutions of learning, making the province a center of education in the whole region.
Virgen de los Remedios, the beloved patroness of Pampanga, whose image, with the Santo Cristo del Perdon, is taken from town to town in a crusade of penitence and charity.

Wetlands, particularly the Candaba Swamp, where the annual migration of birds from temperate countries has put the province in the world wildlife map.

X, not for the cinematic rating but for the expletives easily rolling out of the Capampangan mouth. As in bolang, buguk, tigtig, luse, murit, turak, sira buntuc just for crazy.

Yabang, the single characteristic that defines the Capampangan most, among other ethnicities, er, tribes, er, other Filipinos.

Zest for life. Joie de vivre best expressed in Oyni’ng bie!

Luid ya ing Capampangan!

 

 

McDo and me

A RECORD of the Guinness sort was achieved this Monday with the biggest McDonald’s store in the country opening at Megaworld’s Capital Town in the City of San Fernando. As in nothing bigger, everything smaller, anywhere else in PHL.

No simple record though but history did I consciously make with my mere attendance to the event. As in only me, not anyone else there present. No conceit there as that privilege made possible simply by my senior citizenship and my media ID.

I very much doubt if anyone else at McDo-Capital Town’s launch was also at the opening of the first ever McDo store outside Metro Manila a nigh short of 40 years ago.

The exact date I cannot now recall, but it was in the pre-EDSA Uno 1980s – Ferdinand E. Marcos was still president, Estelito P. Mendoza was governor of Pampanga, and Fred Halili was mayor of a Mabalacat municipality that was still far from Boking Morales and farther from a city – that McDo set shop in Dau. Primarily for the American market of US servicemen and their families at nearby Clark Air Base, then still the bastion of American imperialism in the Asia-Pacific.

Indeed, as feasibility-studied, McDo-Dau drew the American clientele, but along with them those ideologically vowed to oust them from P.I. shores. By any means, less fair than foul, as it turned out.

Murder most foul

Exact date now, Oct. 27, 1987, USAF Staff Sgt. Randy Davis “had just crossed MacArthur Highway after an early breakfast at McDonald’s in Dau when he was shot dead.”
My banner story in People’s Tonight and dispatch to the Associated Press reported that Davis was one of three US servicemen and one American-looking Filipino gunned down in simultaneous attacks around Clark by urban partisans of the New People’s Army that day.

Scourge of the environment

Nearly three years after, it was McDo that was “attacked” – no, not by the NPA but by the press – for being “a scourge of the environment.”

So was McDo denounced in Pampanga Press Club Resolution 3-02 dated Sept. 30, 1990 after “three fully grown acacia trees were felled and a few others ‘pruned to the trunk’ to make way for the parking lot of the food chain” at the Dolores-MacArthur Highway junction in San Fernando.

“Senator Heherson Alvarez, chair of the natural resources committee, and DENR Secretary Fulgencio Factoran Jr., to whom the PPC resolution was addressed immediately took action and McDo was made to plant 10 seedlings for every tree it cut at a DENR-designated area and also helped sponsor a number of environmental campaigns.” So, we recalled in our book Of the Press (1999).    

It was I, as PPC president, that stood as the complaining party during the confrontation at the DENR office.

In an ironic twist of fate, the McDo representative was none other than my college journalism professor Nancy Harel nee Ladringan who recruited me to write for The Regina, the student publication of the then-Assumption College which editorship I later held. Nancy was head of Harel & Associates, McDo’s ad agency.

Contactors

McDo-Dolores junction made its mark as the place to be in Pampanga’s post-Pinatubo 90s.

Contractors, constructors and their retinue of contactors, and public works engineers made the place their veritable boardroom. I remember the late Ed Aguilar, alias Dan U. Pan but famously known as Macky Pangan, who made a virtual home of McDo-Dolores exclaiming only God, or the devil in this wise, knew what crooked means and corrupted schemes were crafted over Big Macs in the implementation of Pinatubo-mitigation projects.

Macky, it was too, that chaired and moderated the informal media forum at the place regularly attended by incumbent local officials, political wannabes, as well as has-beens and never-would-bes.

It was in one of these fora that I first met Macky, engaging me in a heated discussion on who would win the 1995 Pampanga governorship: he, bloviating on the “sure win” of  his cabalen Don Pepito Mercado; I, quarterbacking for Lito Lapid, japing on the reduction of the don to a pipit after the polls.

Senior-unfriendly

And who else but Macky, along with this paper’s resident poeta laureado Felix Garcia, that would revive my adversarial stance vis-à-vis McDo-Dolores in 2014.

On two different occasions I made a scene at the place for its unfair treatment of us senior citizens.

One, I snatched the “Priority Lane for SCs and PWDs” sign from its perch at the cash register and slammed it on the counter after a queue of giggly college girls and a gaggle of workers were served ahead of seniors.   

Two, I took an SC lady to the head of the long line of non-seniors, again, at the priority lane, and demanded that she be served first, lecturing everyone on the rights of the elderly.

Both environmental and social issues obtaining from McDo-Dolores came top of mind, as I joined other pressmen in the impromptu mediacon after the rites opening McDo-The Biggest.

Impact to community

Alien to the usual goodwill-hunting questions of why in the City of San Fernando – Because of its strategic location and its people; how many will you employ – 300(?); how big is it – 2,200-square meter lot, 1,000 square meters of floor area; what are the other amenities – modern McCafe, a no-touch drive-thru facility, alfresco dining, self-ordering kiosks, a meeting room, and a dedicated party area, I asked – this is not to rain on your parade, I prefaced – the environmental impact of the site raised so many meters above the surrounding flood-prone community.

I stand 5 feet 10 inches, at street level the ground of McDo-The Biggest is way over my head.

One of the execs promptly answered: They were given the approval to raise their ground with the city government and DPWH assuring them that the street level would also be raised in the future.

That’s for the future, I said, what’s for the present?

A lagoon to collect rain water to mitigate flooding.

Yeah, it would really be most unkind of me to rain, moreso to storm, on their parade. So, I stopped asking.    

The Chicken McDo with rice was not as bad. The brew at McCafe was even better.

 

 

 

 

  

Ampatuan Massacre: 11 years after, the quest for justice continues

 

NOVEMBER 23, 2009. It will most certainly live in infamy as the day of “the single worst case of journalist killings in the world, in all of history” that is the Ampatuan Massacre.

The worst political mass killing in the Philippines too – 58 fatalities, 32 of them media workers.

In December last year, five members of the Ampatuan clan were convicted of 57 counts of murder, including former Datu Unsay mayor Andal Jr. and his brothers former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao governor Zaldy and former Shariff Aguak mayor Anwar Sr. and sentenced to life in prison.

Their father, clan patriarch and former Maguindanao governor Andal Sr., died in 2015 while in detention.

A total of 43 suspects were convicted while 56 were acquitted.

"This is momentous verdict should help provide justice to the families of the victims, and build towards greater accountability for rights abuses in the country," hailed Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

"Advocates should use this verdict to spur further political and judicial reforms to ultimately end the impunity that has plagued the country for far too long. More broadly, this verdict should prompt the country's political leaders to finally act to end state support for 'private armies' and militias that promotes the political warlordism that gave rise to the Ampatuans," he enthused.

The landmark convictions notwithstanding, the quest for justice over the 2009 Ampatuan Massacre is far from over.

For one, appeals remain pending nearly a year after the decision rendered by Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes.

Two, scores of suspects have remained at large, 15 of whom per court records, are surnamed Ampatuan. There lies the sum of all fears of families of the victims, moreso, the witnesses.

In September, Presidential Communications Operations Office Undersecretary Joel Egco who sits as executive director of Presidential Task Force on Media Security was reported in media to have “touted” the decision of UNESCO to classify the Ampatuan Massacre case as “resolved” in its Observatory of Killed Journalists and Director General’s Report on the Safety of Journalists.

This prompted 18 groups and over 100 individuals, mostly human rights advocates and journalists, to write an appeal on the designation of the case, noting that one court decision “while a triumph of justice does not mean that the case is resolved,” citing the appeals and the remaining suspects who have yet to be arrested.

“This is the reason why the families of the 32 journalists who perished, as well as the witnesses who testified for the prosecution, continue to fear for their safety,” read the appeal letter. “As many are not enrolled in the Department of Justice’s witness protection program, and continue to live in their known communities, they remain exposed to possible retaliation and attacks.”

In response, UNESCO deputy director general Xing Qu said they have maintained that the case will remain classified as “ongoing/unresolved” after they learned that appeals have been launched.

Qu said the classification will remain “until such moment when a final verdict is reached by the Philippine judicial system.”

Impunity

Meanwhile, a Pangasinan-based radio commentator and columnist was gunned down by motorcycle-riding assailants only last Nov. 10, four years after surviving a similar attempt on his life.

Virgilio Maganes, a commentator for radio station dwPR, was shot several times while walking near his house at Sitio Licsab, Barangay San Blas, Villasis town at around 6:45 a.m. and was pronounced dead-on-the-spot.

Maganes was also wounded by gunmen in a motorcycle on Nov. 8, 2016.

The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said Maganes was the 18th journalist to be killed under the Duterte administration, and the 190th since 1986.

No end to impunity. The search for justice continues.

So, we recall anew what we wrote here on the second anniversary of the massacre…

But there shall be no forgetting.
The mourning continues.
The struggle for justice remains unceasing.
The fight to end the culture of impunity that caused and effected the massacre unwavering.
Heed us then the call to arms: “Do not go quietly into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
To us the living is reposited that sacred duty until justice is done and the victims of the Ampatuan massacre, as well as all the martyrs in the cause of press freedom shall truly rest in peace…
Patuloy ang panaghoy, kaakibat ang pagpapaigting sa pakikibaka. Hanggang ang katarungan ay ganap na makamtan.
Ang paglimot sa adhikaing ito, ang paglihis sa tungkuling ito ay paglapastangan sa kadakilaan ng pagbuwis ng buhay ng mga martir ng Maguindanao.
…wala pa rin katapusan ang pagluluksa.

 

 

 

Rusted Rudy

 

Rusted Rudy

"IN THE plaintiffs' counties, they were denied the opportunity to have an unobstructed observation and ensure opacity," Mr. Giuliani said. "I'm not quite sure I know what opacity means. It probably means you can see, right?"

"It means you can't," said U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann.

So blundered Rudy Giuliani in a Pennsylvania court as he tried to make the case that President Donald Trump was robbed of re-election.

“Over the next few hours [Giuliani] fiddled with his Twitter account, forgot which judge he was talking to and threw around wild, unsupported accusations about a nationwide conspiracy by Democrats to steal the election,” reported the UK’s Evening Standard on Nov. 18.

“Rusty” the paper called Rudy, the “hard-nosed federal prosecutor who made a name for himself going after New York mobsters in the 1980s” absent from court as an attorney since 1992.

Rusted is more like it, from where I sit, given that steely determination, of that solid character that Mayor Giuliani impacted the whole world with in resurrecting his New York City from the utter devastation of the 9/11 attacks.

That solid leadership in the worst of crises made of Giuliani a presidential timber. As he, indeed, made his bid for the Republican nomination: starting off with a “significant lead” in the national polls but cutting his run short in Jan. 2008 when he finished third in the Florida primary to eventual nominee John McCain.

Still, the adulation of Giuliani remained high worldwide. Here’s something I wrote here in Aug. 2008 of that high-priced speaking engagement he did in Manila.

Leadership crisis

“WHY PAY P22,000 per seat when we have plenty of heroes here, leaders that are tried and tested in crisis?” asked Senator Richard Gordon, finding incredulous the high cost of hearing former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani speak in person.
Giuliani was speaker in a forum dubbed “Leadership in Times of Crisis” at the Makati Shangri-la Tuesday where a table for 12 cost P242,000, a “priority table” near the stage, P300,000 and the last two rows the P22,000-seat.
The erudite Gordon has a point. We have a surfeit of tried and tested leaders like himself, like City of San Fernando Mayor Oscar Rodriguez – to name just two – whose characters were forged through the crucible of crises, not the least of which was the Mount Pinatubo catastrophe.
A nation in perpetual crisis, both natural and man-made, the Philippines is the perfect laboratory for “Leadership in Times of Crisis.”
So, why the need for Rudy the Rock – the moniker he got for presiding over the rise of New York City from the devastation of 9/11 – to tell us what it’s all about?
Blame the persistence in our collective memory of the superiority of the White Big Brother in knowing what is best for us little brown ‘uns. Ah, the indelibility of our colonial mentality. After all these years of our proclaimed independence, the 300 years of Spanish colonialism and more than 50 years of American imperialism are still well ensconced in the Filipino psyche.
Especially among our ilustrados who find P22,000 a seat – take-home pay for the day of some 50 wage earners – loose change vis-à-vis the great opportunity offered only to the chosen few to rub elbows with Giuliani. It was all image, not message that they paid for.
What Giuliani spoke about was the least that mattered to these ilustrados. Leadership manuals from the Harvard Business School, and those culled from the experiences of business and political leaders have certainly more substance than Giuliani’s talk.
Even if one wanted pure Giuliani leadership, he need not fork over P22,000 just to get something from him.
Saturday before Giuliani’s expensive peroration, I was rummaging through the stacks of books at Booksale in Robinsons Starmills. Guess what I found – Leadership by Rudolph W. Giuliani, talk miramax books, published 2002 by Hyperion, New York.
Giuliani’s talk at the Makati forum centered on his “Six Pillars” of leadership. The book had not only six but 14 great columns that provide the base of support to leadership, which comprised the very titles of the chapters.
So self-explanatory, a simple scan of the table of contents would make the reader readily understand what the book was all about.
In my case, there was automatic cross-checking of Giuliani’s precepts with some similar, as well as dissimilar ones, from other books on leadership, including The Art of War, Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun, The 48 Steps to Power, Certain Trumpets, and The Heart of a Leader to name but a few.
And some introspection too: I put the faces of local leaders either as the theses or antitheses to Giuliani’s chapter titles.
Like Mabalacat Mayor Boking Morales as a testament to Weddings Discretionary, Funerals Mandatory. No, this has nothing to do with the five-term mayor’s marital state but everything with his self-imposed obligation to attend the wakes and funerals of his constituents.
Vice Gov. Yeng Guiao makes a paladin for First Things First and Prepare Relentlessly be it in his coaching job in the PBA or in going about his work at the capitol, especially when at odds with the Governor.
Ah, the Governor. Notwithstanding the accolades from the ilustrados’ Ateneo de Manila and the inquisitorial Inquirer, Eddie Panlilio makes the antithetical representation for the chapters, to wit:
Surround Yourself With Great People, he being surrounded by only one, and not even near-great, at that.
Everyone Accountable, All of the Time, exempting himself as he lays the blame on others for any failure of his administration.
Reflect, Then Decide, kneejerk urges and surges were those insipid memos of “caretaker administration,” “blanket authority,” and the non-confirmation, to name just three.
Be Your Own Man, so, ain’t the Governor unbecomed by a woman?
Loyalty: The Vital Virtue, so why are his campaign supporters Madame Lolita Hizon and family, Rene Romero and fellow businessmen now saying those nasty things about his (mal)administration? So what do you make of the constant comings and goings of staff at the Governor’s Office?
Underpromise and Overdeliver, he promised to take the concerns of the poor to the Capitol, he delivered the desperate charity-seekers to the fund-challenged provincial board.
For the rest of the chapters – Develop and Communicate Strong Beliefs; Stand Up to Bullies; Study. Read. Learn Independently; Organize Around a Purpose; Bribe Only Those Who Will Stay Bribed – make your own opinion.
This much, and more, I got from Giuliani without having to attend that Makati forum and scrape my knees for P22,000. The cover price of his book? US$25.95. I got it for a measly P120.00, jacketed and hardcover.
As an aside now, maybe I may have been hasty in dismissing Giuliani’s talk about “Leadership in Times of Crisis,” believing that Filipinos can do a lot better.
I guess the subject I had in mind was “Times of Crisis in Leadership.”

COME TO THINK of it now. With the pandemic of crises devastating the land, is it just me seeing Rusted Rudy all-too-easily segueing to Randy Rody?

 

 

Prescient Gina

 “WHO SUFFERS if you kill the environment? It’s the poor. And whose duty is it to protect our people? It’s the government. And when you make decisions based on business interests, you have shirked your responsibility. You have lost the moral ascendancy to rule the government because, to you, business and money are more important than the welfare of our people.”

The valedictory of Gina Lopez, at her March 3, 2017 rejection by the Commission on Appointments as secretary of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources has come to haunt the nation in the wake of successive typhoons Pepito, Quinta, super-strong Rolly, Siony, and ultra-devastating Ulysses.

Now everybody weeps, hailing the prescience, if not the prophetic vision, of the dearly lamented Gina.

Even more precise was Lopez when she warned in Sept. 2017: “It is important that we rehabilitate this watershed because it is the first line of defense of Marikina, Quezon City, Antipolo, Pasig, Cainta, San Mateo, etc., against rainwater surging from the uplands of Luzon.”  

Furthering: “As long as there is quarrying there and the Marikina Watershed is denuded, the Pasig River water will be brown and it will become more and more shallow, and it will cause flooding in Metro Manila. It is imperative that the Marikina Watershed is reforested.” 

In remembering Lopez, let us not forget the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines which vehemently opposed Lopez’s appointment, thanking profusely the CA for rejecting her, hailing it as “the "beginning of a new chapter for the mining industry."

"We reiterate our commitment to work with the DENR and the next Secretary to protect the environment and promote the responsible use of our natural resources," the group of miners declared at that time.

New chapter indeed, ushering the Apocalypse.

So, who were the legislators that voted for the rejection of Lopez?

If only to appease the Furies, someone or some people have got to be lynched.

 

Finding St. Charles Borromeo in pandemic times

TODAY, Nov. 4 is the feast day of St. Charles Borromeo, cardinal-archbishop of Milan, who stayed put in place even as the secular authorities abandoned the principality upon the outbreak of the plague of 1576.

Charles organized the care of those stricken and ministered to the dying. It is said that he fed from 60,000 to 70,000 people daily using up his own funds, so much so that he went into debt.

We reflect on the response of the saint to the plague, in his own words:

To the faithful: A long time ago I resolved never to leave undone anything which might be for my people’s good. I beg you, above all, not to lose heart. Do not be affected by the example of those born and bred in the city who hurriedly abandoned it by flight at the very moment when it needed help…

The dreadful state of these wretched creatures, everything lacking both for soul and body. These unhappy children seem to look on me as the cause of all their ills. Their silence reproaches me for my idleness. I put off holding out a helping hand when by my example I should have moved others to pity. I will delay no longer. By the grace of God, I will do my duty to the utmost…

We have only one life and we should spend it for Jesus Christ and souls, not as we wish, but at the time and in the way God wishes. It would show presumption and neglect of our duty and God’s service to fail to do this.

To his priests: Do not be so forgetful of your priesthood as to prefer a late death to a holy one…

Take the plague of the soul in consideration more than the contagion of the body which, for many reasons, is less pernicious.

Do not neglect human means, such as preventatives, remedies, doctors, everything that you can use to keep off infection, for such means are in no way opposed to our doing our duty.

In God’s mercy: God can replace us…

From the beginning I resolved to place myself entirely in God’s hands, without however despising ordinary remedies…

Not by our prudence, which was caught asleep. Not by science of the doctors who could not discover the sources of the contagion, much less a cure. Not by the care of those in authority who abandoned the city. No, my dear children, but only by the mercy of God.

A testimonial

A Capuchin brother named James, who worked in the leper house where St. Charles went to almost daily to give the Sacraments to the suffering and the last rites to the dying, witnessed: “He often goes to the lazer [leper] house to console the sick… into huts and private houses to speak to the sick and comfort them, as well as providing for all their needs. He fears nothing. It is useless to try to frighten him. It is true that he exposes himself much to danger but so far he has been preserved by the special grace of God, he says he cannot do otherwise. Indeed, the city has no other help and consolation.”

(Culled from articles in the web)

 

The Che mystique persists

IT HAS BEEN 53 years – well over half a century – after his death, but Ernesto Guevara de la Serna still lives. No incorruptible saint – in fact the so called “Butcher of La Cabana” for signing the death warrants of hundreds of “war criminals,” read: military officers of the ousted Batista regime as well as informants, and counter revolutionaries – Guevara has gained cult status around the world.

Notwithstanding too, the late – and still continuing – discoveries of his proven failures and alleged atrocities.

It was on the occasion of his 44th death anniversary in Oct. 2011 that I essayed to touch the Che mystique, thus:

“COMANDANTE STAR on a black beret capping a frowning, pensive handsome face; left eyebrow slightly raised; black, long hair waving in the breeze.”

Beyond the image of Che Guevara pop cultured in millions of T-shirts, posters and decals around the globe, what do the young and not-so-young know about the man already long dead – executed on October 9, 1967 – even before they were born?

Essentially, nothing.

So, what fascinates them to wear that icon, in virtual veneration of the man they don’t even know?

Irreligious blind faith?

The aura of enchantment around that image of Che known in the whole of Latin America as El guerrillero heroico is – to Paco Ignacio Tabio Jr., author of the definitive Guevara: tambien conocido como el Che (Guevara: also known as Che) – wrought by “the manifestation of a transparency and supernatural honesty.”

There, arguably, lies the Guevara mystique.

The photograph was taken by Albert Korda for the Cuban newspaper Revolucion at the public funeral of the 81 fatalities in the explosion of La Coubre, a French ship laden with Belgian arms at the Havana harbour on March 4, 1960. Unpublished, the photo remained in the newspaper morgue. In 1968, the Italian publisher Giacomo Feltinelli, researching on the life of Che, found the photo in Korda’s house, took it back to Italy and made a poster from it. The rest, as clichéd, is history. The irony not lost in the capitalist success rising out of a communist “artifact.”

The Che brief may well read: Argentine by birth, doctor of medicine by education; adventurer and motorcycle enthusiast, poet, photographer, writer; by revolution defined and deified.

The essence of Che may well be in his word: “The only passion that guides me is for the truth…I look at everything from this point of view.”

By his truth he lived. By his truth he was executed. Life and death make a universality that finds relevance to and resonance in the world to this day.

An unshakeable belief in the people that makes the core value of the true revolutionary: “There is no effort made towards the people that is not repaid with the people’s trust.”

Vanity

A damnation of the vacuous vanity of self-ordained champions of the masses: “The people’s heroes cannot be separated from the people, cannot be elevated onto a pedestal, into something alien to the lives of that people.”

The masses eke an existence out of hovels, even as they look up to their heroes luxuriating in their high-walled mansions. So un-Che, so unheroic, so undemocratic, so prevalent. And so very Filipino.

Che holds the purity of the democratic ideal before its corruption by the politics of patronage: “How easy it is to govern when one follows a system of consulting the will of the people and one holds as the only norm all the actions which contribute to the well-being of the people.”

Compare with the Filipino norm of governance: Off with the people, buy the people, fool the people. Thus, the first call of the revolution: “People – forward with the Revolution! Workers – to the struggle! Peasants – organize!”

Romanticism – damned by Mao as a bourgeois diversion to be expunged from the Chinese Revolution, and for that matter, from all revolutions – finds a refining, humanist aspect in Che’s own: “If it were said of us that we’re almost romantics, that we are incorrigible idealists, that we think the impossible: then, a thousand and one times, we have to answer that yes, we are.”

The Latino attributes of intense passion, sentimentalism, and romanticism do not diminish any, but in fact even enhance, nay, inflame revolutionary zeal. Che makes the perfect argument: “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”

(In college, barely versed in Che’s life and works, I wrote an essay on Che titled The Romantic Revolutionary. Modesty be damned, I got a flat 1 on that. More importantly, bragging rights for having already grasped Che’s essence even then. Though my enchantment with Che started in high school, in – of all places – the Mater Boni Consilii Seminary.)

Humanism

Che takes the humanist facet of the revolution further: “Revolutions, accelerated radical social changes, are made of circumstances; not always, almost never, or perhaps never can science predict their mature form in all its detail. They are made of passions, of man’s fight for social vindication, and never perfect.”

Yet another taboo in the revolutionary movement – adventurism – was taken to the positive plane by Che: “Many will call me an adventurer, and I am, but of a different type: of those who put their lives on the line to demonstrate their truths.”

So, Che demonstrated his truth with his death, something the romantic adventurer in him put thus: “Wherever death may surprise us, it is most welcome. Our funeral dirge will be the staccato sound of machineguns and the cries of battle and victory.”

Some object lessons there for the RAM, the Magdalo, the YOU and what-have-you in the Philippine military wanting a coup. Moreso, for the current cadres of the longest-running insurgency in all of Asia.  

Che’s thesis on revolutionary praxis makes one of the most succinct on the subject: “And it must be said quite sincerely that in a true revolution, to which everything is given, from which no material returns are expected, the task of revolutionary vanguard is both magnificent and anxious…In these conditions, a great dose of humanity is needed, a sense of justice and truth, if we are not to fall in the trap of extreme dogmatism, of cold scholasticism, of isolation from the masses. Every day we have to fight so that love for humanity can be transformed into concrete deeds, into acts that set an example, that mobilize.”

There lie lessons in revolutions Che had fought, had seen, and in those he did not see: the Stalinist dogmatism that pervaded the Soviet Union and its satellites, the excesses of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Mao’s cult of personality, the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields. And, in the current of events, Xi Jinping taking China to the imperialist road to perdition.   

Failure

Before his fatal failure in Bolivia, Che bombed out in the Congo in the 1965 attempt to start the conflagration of the African continent that, to him, represented “one of, if not the most, important battlefields against every form of exploitation that exists in the world.”

“We cannot liberate by ourselves a country that does not wish to fight,” Che conceded defeat six months after. A pointed lesson that it is as hard to start as to stop revolution from without. Lessons for Che himself in Bolivia, for the USA in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Lessons still unheeded today in Iraq, in Chechnya, and again, in Afghanistan. Hasta la victoria siempre – ever onward to victory – usually captions the Che icon. It was the exhortation that closed Che’s letter to Fidel Castro before he left for the Congo. It has become the rallying cry for revolutionaries around the world.

But Che had a more stirring call for revolutionary solidarity: “If you can tremble with indignation every time an injustice is committed in the world, we are comrades.”

Hasta siempre, Comandante Che Guevara!

 

Cabalantian in memoriam

 

OCTOBER 1, 1995. 8 A.M. Stampeding elephants were coming again. Their thump was even fiercer than before. A second wave of lahar was avalanching.

“Dios co, Dios co po…” someone exclaimed not so much in prayer as in horror. The sounds heard four hours past became a nightmarish vision: parents and children flailing arms, shouting for help on their roofs being carried away like paper boats by cascading lahar, people stretching out their hands in their last struggle before being pulled under by violent currents to suffer death by quicksand, an entire neighborhood in fast forward mode toward muddy, sudden oblivion... 

The Oct. 1, 1995 event later became known as the Cabalantian Tragedy.

Bacolor Mayor Jun Canlas cites official count placing the dead at 550. But Lucia Gutierrez, provincial social welfare officer, insists there were more.

“So many died there. I think the biggest number of lahar fatalities in Bacolor was during the Cabalantain incident,” she said.

The probability is that no one has made a serious effort to count the dead.  Relatives of those who died, it would seem, just want the past buried. They remember their dead, for sure, but it pains them to think of how they died.

Phivolcs volcanologist Jaime Sincioco, who was among those who had forecast what happened to Cabalantian, says that from 10 million to 20 million cubic meters of lahar debris avalanched on the barangay that day. He cites estimates that the entire community was buried under 10 to 20 feet of lahar materials.  

(From the book Pinatubo: Triumph of the Kapampangan Spirit (2008) edited by Bong Z. Lacson)

No mere construct is Marcos' martial law

 “THE PRESENT generation that is loud in its condemnation of Marcos never experienced Marcos. So that rant is directed at their construct of Marcos. Shouldn’t they be studying Derrida and Lyotard more?”

San Beda Law Graduate School Dean Ranhilio Aquino falls flat on his snooty nose at this vain attempt at intellectual snobbery timed for the dead dictator’s birthdate.

No scale of Derrida’s Deconstruction, no scope of Lyotard’s “postmodern incredulity towards metanarratives” can disprove – as they can only hopelessly dispute – that Marcos, and all that evil that outlived him, happened. What with   thousands upon thousands of Filipinos as living testimonials.

Generations of disconnect to the actual events are easily bridged by generations of those who were there. So, what stirred Aquino’s ­pa-intellectual idiocy?

Or did he just show what really lies beneath the veneer of his burnished law graduate school dean construct?     

No mere construct though is my own story of martial law. Here reiterated for the nth time is its beginning:

A SATURDAY. Up early for a “DG” – discussion group – at the Assumption College in San Fernando.

Something uncanny, there is nothing but pure static on the radio. The usual though – light banter, small-town gossip among passengers – at the jeepney from somnolent Poblacion, Sto. Tomas to the capital.

Something uncanny, there are no newspapers at the news stands. Only komiks are being hawked by ambulant newsboys.

At the Assumption bus, some sense of gloom, a foreboding of doom, guarded whispers among us students of something terrifying…

On campus, a disturbing quietude. Still, some two-dozen hardcore KM-SDK activists go on with the DG originally to finalize the agenda of the demo at the gates of Camp Olivas planned for Tuesday.

Marcos has declared Martial Law. First heard from a kasama with a brother in the military. The PC – Philippine Constabulary – has been rounding known activists since last night. Not even pipsqueak of Makibaka, Huwag Matakot! heard.

Just then, a platoon of uniformed constables enters the campus. Enough for all of us to find any and all means out of Assumption except the main gate where, we presumed more PCs are posted, maybe even with machineguns.

Downtown San Fernando, in front of the town hall are 6X6 PC trucks, military fatigues are everywhere. Long hair is sheared not by scissors but mostly by bayonets and hunting knives.

Jumped on a passing jeepney, just in time. My long tresses – down to my shoulders and back – saved for the day.

Proclamation 1081 – declaring Martial Law in the Philippines though dated September 21, 1972 came into the open in September 23.       

Martial Law! The news is out – even in barriotic Sto. Tomas. Arriving home, in time to see my mom stoking the last flames flickering on a mound of ash that used to be my beloved Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Lenin’s thoughts in volumes of pamphlets, Mao’s The Five Golden Rays and the Little Red Book, Amado Guerrero’s Lipunan at Rebolusyong Pilipino, posters of Che Guevarra, Marx, Lenin, and Mao.

In between tears, a jumble of Marx-Lenin-Mao thoughts – The history of all hitherto existing society is a history of class struggle… Capital is dead labor, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks…The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation…Trust the masses, rely on the masses, learn from the masses…The people, and the people alone, are the motive forces of history…

And Che’s mind too: What do the danger and sacrifices of a man or a nation matter, when the destiny of humanity is at stake?

All gone in a holocaust!
An early morning date with the neighbourhood barber the next day. After a long while, the sun burns my ears and nape again.

Lie low, really low. Take refuge in the rice paddies. In morbid fear of what tomorrow may bring.  

So, what hath Martial Law immediately wrought?

Resumption of classes. By the main gate of Assumption College, the dreaded Black List is posted – names of activists who will not be re-admitted unless with clearance from the PC commander.

A piece of advice from my political science professor: “Don’t go to the PC alone, they will just arrest and detain you, as they did to a number of your comrades. Bring somebody influential with you.”

Apu Ceto

So, whom am I to seek but my spiritual director and rector at the Mother of Good Counsel Seminary – the Rev. Fr. Paciano B. Aniceto. (I was not even a year out “on probation” from San Jose Seminary then.)

At the Pampanga PC Command beside the Capitol, Apu Ceto vouched for me as a character witness before a panel of interrogators, and then took my case to the provincial commander himself – the dreaded Col. Isidoro de Guzman who would later earn infamy in the Escalante Massacre in Negros.

Alone at the interrogation room, I was subjected to romanza militar at my every answer the berdugos did not take to their liking.

“KM o SDK?”

Wala po – A smack on the head.

“Name? Alias?”

Caesar Lacson y Zapata. Nickname: Bong. No alias – A slap on the face.

“Ikaw si Carlos. Di ba ikaw itong nasa mga letrato (shoving to my face a number of photographs of marches, rallies and demos)”

Kamukha ko po – the table suddenly kisses my face.

Then off to the detention center at the side of the command. At each single cell, the sergeant – Pascua or Pascual? – shoves my face between the iron bars and asks the detainee: “Kasama mo ito?” and then turns to me: “Kilala mo yan?”

Of course, we knew one another but no one ratted out. Conscientization most manifest there.

Contusions and all, I managed to be remanded to the custody of Apu Ceto. I have written this and I write it again: The good father, in what could only be deemed as a leap of faith – in his God unquestionably, in me too, maybe – signed a document that said in part, “…in the event that subject activist-provocateur renew his connection with the Communist Party of the Philippines and its various fronts in the pursuit of rebellion; or undertake acts inimical to peace and order, or in gross violation of the provisions of Proclamation 1081 and other pertinent decrees, the signatory-custodian shall be held responsible and as liable…” with a proviso that in my stead, he would be placed in the PC stockade.
Did he tell me to change my ways? Did he impale in my conscience the gravity of my case, his implication in any instance of carelessness or recidivism on my part thereon?
No. From the Constabulary command, his mere request was for me to please accompany him to church.
Before the Blessed Sacrament, he knelt and silently prayed. He did not even ask me to pray with him. He just motioned me to sit near him.
By the side of the good father, in that darkened corner of the Metropolitan Cathedral, I wept. Washed by a torrent of tears was my rebirth, the renewal of my faith.
No spectacular drama presaged my epiphany, no blinding light, so to speak, shone on my own Damascus Gate. There were but flickering votives. And Apu Ceto.     

My return to faith. That’s principally what Martial Law wrought.

NO DECONSTRUCTION can alter, much less wreck, my martial law narrative. Not simply fact-based, but faith-grounded as it is.

 

Libel-free

“WHEREFORE, THIS court hereby (a) provisionally dismisses the case; (b) orders the release of the cash bond…”

So ordered the Honorable Judge Jonel S. Mercado, RTC Branch 52 in Guagua town, of Criminal Case No. G-16-11638 – People of the Phil. vs. Diosdado “Ding” Cervantes Jr. y Cabrera, Caesar “Bong” Lacson y Zapata, and Eduardo Manugue y Guiao – on Aug. 12, 2020. Copies of which were released Aug. 25.

This dismissal arrived at after the complainant SPO3 Jimmy Santos failed to be present in the hearings scheduled July 29, Aug. 5, and Aug. 12, 2020, with Public Prosecutor Marlyds L. Estardo-Teodoro manifesting she was amenable to the provisional dismissal.

The brevity of the order totally belies the length of time the libel case took in court.

It was in Oct. 2015 that Santos filed a libel complaint with the Pampanga Prosecutors Office over the news story “2 Guagua cops under fire for hiding shabu evidence, acts of lasciviousness” inconspicuously published in page 2 of Punto’s Aug. 10-11, 2015 issue.

Written by Ding, it cited Manugue, identified as  provincial head of the Anti-Poverty Commission, as having accused Santos of keeping from the court one of three plastic sachets of shabu as evidence seized from a suspected drug dealer in a buy-bust operation and putting to personal use a vehicle impounded in the raid for use as evidence.

The complaint was brought to court in August 2016, at the RTC Branch 50 in Guagua town. There it remained virtually on “pre-trial” until Feb. 20, 2020 when the Honorable Judge Amor M.  Dimatactac-Romero inhibited herself from the case “to provide a clean slate for the parties to start with” citing the certiorari filed a year or so ago by the accused but dismissed by the Court of Appeals, whereby it was raffled off and landed at the RTC Branch 52.

What did not move – for a variety of reasons – for four years under one judge, was decided in three weeks by another judge. Quirks of justice, I just have to say. Especially given that the complainant, in all those four years, presented himself in court not more than three times.  

Long in coming, but the dismissal is finally here. And I cannot be any happier, consoled with the thought that it did not take another 20 years for this case to be resolved as the one previous to this had.

20 years ‘warranted’

Aye, I remember precisely praying for that with the dismissal of the first case coming immediately after I posted bail on the second. Writing here under the headline 20 years ‘warranted’ thus: Uh-oh, could have been speaking too soon. Yes, I have yet to be arraigned in one more libel case. Though I have already posted bail – P10,000 this time – to pre-empt the issuance of any warrant of arrest. Hopefully, this one won’t last another 20 years.

Criminal Case No. 97-149 for libel may be one for the books, if only for the 20 years it took for its resolution.

The case was filed in 1996 by one Rowena Domingo of the Mabalacat Water District over a Sun-Star Clark news story which exposed alleged cases of nepotism and abuse of authority in the managerial succession in the agency. Accused were publisher Joe Pavia, managing editor Ody Fabian, associate editor Bong Lacson, and of course the writer whose name I can’t immediately recall.

Immediate to the filing, veteran newsman Toy Soto brokered a meeting between us and the complainant where she said she would withdraw the case soonest. Taking her word, we did not present any counter-affidavits anymore and forgot all about the case.

In the course of time, Sun-Star Clark re-birthed itself as Sun-Star Pampanga in 2001. Ody died in February 2005, and Joe in 2011. Toy died in 2007, or thereabouts.

In November 2015, I was at the NBI applying for clearance pursuant to the renewal of my gun licenses when CC No. 97-149 surfaced in the agency’s records   with a corresponding alias warrant.

I had to rush to RTC 62 where my case was lodged, and posted the required cash bond of P2,000 for my provisional liberty. With RTC 62 designated a “drug court,” and me having not been arraigned yet, the records of my case were turned over to the Office of the Clerk of Court for re-raffle.

Atty. Rico

Initially assigned to RTC 60, CC No. 97-149 was – upon motion of my counsel Enrico P. Quiambao – re-raffled and landed at RTC 56 in April 2016. (Reminds me I haven’t thank Atty. Rico for being our counsel too in the case just dismissed).   

Right at the arraignment in June 2016, Rico made manifest the absence of the complainant and highlighted the number of years the complaint remained archived without any word from the complainant or her counsels. And moved for its dismissal.

WHEREFORE, this case is ordered DISMISSED against accused Caesar Lacson y Zapata for lack of interest to prosecute…

SO ORDERED. Given in open Court this 18^th day of August, 2016 in Angeles City.

Thus, the Honorable Irin Zenaida S. Buan, presiding judge of RTC Branch 56, in a single-page decision, thoroughly expunged any iota of guilt and definitively “unwarranted” an alias arrest order on my person.

The case that dragged on – absent my knowledge – for all of 20 years took but two hearings to be scratched off the court archives.

Two decades for one case. Four years and ten months for another. Why am I keeping my strong faith in our justice system?

Because the cases have been dismissed and I am exonerated. Duh!

Beyond that is my core belief that a libel case is par for the course in the journalism field.

It is the only legal recourse of the citizen who felt maligned in print, broadcast, or personal utterance, to seek redress for her/his grievance. Indeed, the exercise of a civil right in our democratic state.

It is precisely owing to this that I never begrudged all those people who took me to court for libel. Seven or eight, I have lost count.

I respected their right to seek my comeuppance for whatever perceived and felt wrong I did them. I respected them for their civility – of going the judicial course instead of taking the extra-judicial route with extreme prejudice… 

Ay, I think I have read that in one of my previous writings. Maybe, I can just look it up and reprint it here as supplementary to this piece.

In the meantime, let me savor that “libel-free” vibe after 24 long years. For who knows how short this will last.