May Day, Mayday evermore

MABUHAY ANG uring manggagawa!

Sahod itaas! Presyo ibaba!

Cries as old as capitalism itself reverberates across the country every May 1, May Day. But for the total absence of violence once intrinsic in the celebration of the day – heads bashed, limbs cracked, and backs smacked at each strike of the truncheon during police dispersal of rallyists; molotov bombings, etc. – the current celebrations make like any other of the previous ones.

The government still long in promises and short in deliveries of the “packages” to ameliorate the state of the workingman.

The labor sector demanding inherent rights to live in dignity, that is to work in order to live, rather than the other way ‘round.

The capitalists smug with their ever-spiraling profits.

Stasis. Raising to life anew the twice-dead Marx – in 1883, mortally; in 1991, ideologically with the demise of the Soviet Union. Thus: “Capital is dead labor, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking blood from living labor.”
That line in Das Kapital finding manifestation in the poetic protest of Shelly’s Song to the Men of England, fittingly the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and therefore the polluted fountainhead of labor:
“Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
Sow seed – but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth – let no impostor heap;
Weave robes – let not the idle wear;
Forge guns – in your defense to bear.”

This, finding close parallel – hence, affirming the universality of the sufferings of workingmen – in the poignancy of the lines of poet-patriot Ka Amado Hernandez in his Bayang Malaya:
“Bisig na nagsaka’y siyang walang palay;
Nagtayo ng templo’y siyang walang bahay;
Dumungkal ng mina ng bakal at ginto ay baon sa utang;
Lingkod sa pabrika ng damit ay hubad ang mahal sa buhay.”
Lest, it be still misconstrued – as indeed it has long been – that the workingman’s struggle is pure communist thingy, the Church has had its own take on uplifting the laboring mass. As indeed, Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum of 1891. Thus:

“The following duties . . . concern rich men and employers: Workers are not to be treated as slaves; justice demands that the dignity of human personality be respected in them, … gainful occupations are not a mark of shame to man, but rather of respect, as they provide him with an honorable means of supporting life.
It is shameful and inhuman, however, to use men as things for gain and to put no more value on them than what they are worth in muscle and energy. (#31)”

Further back into history, St. Ambrose, the fourth century bishop of Milan, took the Parable of the Dives with this censorious swing at the rich:

“The earth was established to be in common for all, rich and poor; why do ye rich alone arrogate it to yourselves as your rightful property?   
You crave possession not so much for their utility to yourself, as because you want to exclude others from them. You are more concerned with despoiling the poor than with your own advantage. You think yourself injured if a poor man possesses anything which you consider a suitable belonging for a rich man; wherever belongs to others you look upon something of which you are deprived.”
Deprivation is the eternal state of the worker. That is fated in capitalist societies, engrossed as they are in “…production not merely the production of commodities … (but) essentially the production of surplus value.”
As Marx furthered: “All surplus value, whatever particular (profits, interests, rent) it may crystallize into, is in substance the materialization of unpaid labor.”
As it was, so it is: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!”

May Day, mayday, Marx evermore!

 

 

That canard of a canine bloodline

 

“WITH THIS historical marker from the Philippine national government, the truth can now be told: Macabebes did it to avenge all kinds of persecution committed against them by their fellow Filipinos, culminating in the burning of the town and the massacre of 300 townspeople inside the church. No, it wasn’t dugong aso after all that made them do it—it was vengeance. It was never an act of treachery, but an act of revenge.”

Thus, Center for Kapampangan Studies director Robby Tantingco succinctly exacted, indeed impacted, the truth to the long-held canard of a canine bloodline in the Kapampangan right at the commemoration of the 125^th anniversary of “The Burning of Macabebe” on April 27. 2024.  

Tantingco could have spoken with the voice of an angel: Soon as the marker from the National Historical Commission of the Philippines was unveiled, a mongrel  strayed in front of the assembled guests, moving Robby to enthuse: “As this dog leaves the scene, may the tag dugong aso also stop hounding Kapampangans once and for all.”

No other contemporary Kapampangan of note has done as much as Tantingco in expunging that blot in the Kapampangan character, advancing his advocacy at every opportunity, given or not.

Like in November 2018, on his Facebook page: “Have you noticed? There is hardly any Filipino anymore who calls Kapampangans dugong aso. We have successfully asserted ourselves and changed the conversation to the other narratives of the multi-layered story of our amazing people. So, once and for all, and to put the last nail on the coffin of this subject matter, let us stop blaming the Macabebe Scouts alone…for the capture of Aguinaldo in Palanan in 1901…”

That last nail, the historical marker hammered last Saturday. 

Least a Kapampangan bias, all of historical fact whence Tantingco speaks, complete with mug shots and briefs of the dastardly deeds of the actual Aguinaldo betrayers, identified as Spanish Capt. Lazaro Segovia, Ilocano Cecilio Seguismundo, and Tagalog Maj. Hilario Talplacido.

“And yet it was the foot soldiers, the Macabebes, who bore the brunt of the nation's anger which resulted in the unfair racial profiling of all Kapampangans as traydor and dugong aso." So lamented Tantingco.

Rightly, and reasonably, Robby: “How could the Macabebes, who never served in Aguinaldo's army and therefore could not have betrayed him, be branded as traitors, and not these three defectors? They were merely doing their job as hired soldiers of the American military, and were actually exacting vengeance on a man they hated with all their heart and soul (for killing Andres Bonifacio whose roots were in Macabebe, and for ordering the burning of the Macabebe church).”

Commented I to Robby’s post: From another perspective, the Macabebe scouts should even be hailed as heroes. Aguinaldo's messianic delusions deprived the revolution of its father, Bonifacio and its only real military brains, Luna.

Of this shameful sobriquet slapped on the Kapampangan, I have also written a handful. Indulge me now with this one from way, way back.

…DOGS ARE clichéd as man’s best friend, yet they tend to get the choicest cuts in the worst insults. “Gone to the dogs,” for instance.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago riled the usually cat-cool Sen. Panfilo Lacson not so much for calling him “Pinky” as for branding him as Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s “attack dog.” Warranting a reply in kind from the former top cop. A case of “dog-eat-dog” there?

“Tuta ng Kano.” So, the militant Left derided Ferdinand E. Marcos, Cory Aquino and all those who followed them to Malacanang down to Cory’s son BS.

Even the venerable Carlos P. Romulo, who served eight Philippine presidents – from Quezon to Marcos – and who himself sat as president – of the Fourth Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1949-1950, was not spared of a similar epithet. No idle urban legend but a revealed truth to student activists of the First Quarter Storm was Chou En-Lai’s dismissal of Romulo as “America’s running dog” at the Bandung Conference of Asian and African nations in 1955 that helped crystallized the Non-Aligned Movement.

At the time of Cory too, I remember the Malacanang Press Corps raising a howl over a presidential factotum’s obvert reference to them as mongrels when he directed his staff to “feed the kennel” whenever his office issued press releases.

For too long a time, a collective insult, indeed, a curse, to the whole Kapampangan race is the branding dugong aso.

In 1981, the political leadership of Pampanga – from Gov. Estelito P. Mendoza, Vice Gov. Cicero J. Punzalan, down to the mayors led by the “Big 5” of San Fernando’s Armando Biliwang, Arayat’s Benigno Espino, Magalang’s Daniel Lacson, Sta. Ana’s Magno Maniago, and Sta. Rita’s Frank Ocampo, along with Angeles City’s Francisco G. Nepomuceno, raged and ranted rabidly at then Olongapo City Mayor Richard J. Gordon for citing the Kapampangans as dugong aso in the context of regionalism’s ill-effects to nationalism in his nomination speech for Ferdinand E. Marcos in the KBL party convention at the Manila Hotel.

Actual physical threats were even thrown Gordon’s way in addition to some persona non grata resolutions. (Gordon’s topping Pampanga in the senatorial contest of May 2013 is some vindication of the forgiving-and-forgetting nature of this race.)   

Lapid

Even as dugong aso stuck to the Kapampangan, the insult accruing thereat has largely dissipated. This is owed to an extent to then Gov. Lito Lapid, as we wrote here sometime ago:      

“Ikinagagalit nating mga Kapampangan ang pagtawag sa atin ng ‘dugong aso.’ Subali’t ito ay ipinagmamalaki’t ikinararangal ko. Sa katapatan, wala nang mauuna pa sa aso: sa kanya iniiwan ng amo ang tahanan nito, pati na magkaminsan ang pagtatanggol sa kanyang pamilya. Subukin mong saktan ang amo, at tiyak, dadambain ka ng kanyang aso. Ang katapatang ito ang iniaalay ko sa inyo.” 

Before a beaming President Ramos at the Mawaque Resettlement Project site in 1997, Lapid pledged his loyalty in gratitude for the new lease on human decency, on human life itself that El Tabaco bestowed upon those the Mount Pinatubo eruptions devastated, displaced and dispossessed.
Thence, the Bida embraced FVR’s Lakas-NUCD with a fidelity his wife could only wish he committed to his marital vows with as much devotion, if not intensity.
Lapid there made a rarity: loyalty being an uncommon commodity in politics. So, what is it that makes politicians and adulterers one and the same as a dysfunctional radio? Low fidelity on a high frequency, dummy…

There too was Lapid giving a novel and noble meaning to the derogatory dugong aso impacted in the Kapampangan psyche, extolling it as the virtue of katapatan, of dogged loyalty to an elder, to a superior, to a friend. No mean feat for the uncolleged Lapid.

But for the title “Of dogs and men,” there is very little I remember of a column I wrote in The Voice in the late ‘70s. It would have made a most relevant read in the subject I am discussing here. The ending of that column though is something I cannot possibly just easily forget, having consigned it as much to the mind as to the heart and put out at every opportunity that calls for it, like now.

A lesson in loyalty – of dogs, as well as of men – perfectly captured in that blurb of an award-winning Lino Brocka movie: “Sa bawa’t latay, kahit aso’y nag-iiba. Sa unang latay, siya’y magtatanda; Sa ikalawa, siya’y mag-iisip; Sa ikatlo, siya’y magtataka; Sa ika-apat, humanda ka!” 

Caveat canis. Yes, there is more to what the Latins of old put up at their gates than its literal meaning.  

 

Electoral migration

POLITICIANS CAN and do switch parties as a matter of course. Shift voting domiciles as well. It is not disallowed by law. Motives, moral or otherwise? Freedom of will is well guaranteed not only in the fundamental law but even in the Good Book. Unless it impinges on another’s, of course.

Hence, the public surprise that greeted the transfer of voter registrations of BM Mylyn Pineda-Cayabyab and her father “Tatay” Bong Pineda from Lubao town to the City of San Fernando last week caught me by surprise. Aye, the surprise surprised me. There ought to be no surprise about something so mundane, so normal.

Why am I not surprised?

For one, Tatay’s active engagement in the last barangay elections in the city – specifically in the home village of the sitting mayor where her husband was a candidate – was an all-too obvious indication. Especially when he personally delivered bounties to the barrio folk after the triumph of his chosen, and vowed more, much more from his philanthropic cornucopia.

Two, the reported construction of a Pineda residence in one of the city’s barangays is public knowledge, even sans any foto or social media post.

Then too, it is not the first time that an incumbent official – from Lubao, at that – transferred voting rights to the city. Still remember then third-termer town councilor John Susi making a failed bid for the city council in 2022?

Doing his own Susi also last week was Angeles City councilor Dr. Alfie Bonifacio who switched voter registration to Barangay Calulut. After the dentist finished his first three terms, he ran but lost for the vice mayoralty. Maybe, he learned so much from there that with the impending end of his second three terms, he decamped to San Fernando.

There is indeed nothing surprising about politicians transferring their voter registration. It is a fairly common practice. Call me a sucker but I will not disapprove of anyone who, after serving well and fair one constituency, would wish to serve a new one? Service, after all, knows no bounds.  

Former BM Dinan Labung who had had his precinct in Bacolor town from his days as capitan del barrio through his triumphant runs for the provincial board and failed tries for the third district congressional seat and partylist representation cast his vote in Sta. Ana town in the last barangay elections. His express end-in-view – the mayoralty in 2025.  

Then, there is the ultimate electoral migrant – Lito Lapid. Domiciled in Porac in all his terms as Pampanga governor and first term as senator, Lapid ran for Makati mayor in 2007 against then-last termer Jejomar Binay on the platform “Baka naman gustong makatikim ang tiga-Makati ng lutong Kapampangan.” Binay’s winning margin over the Bida was considered the largest ever in an election in the city. In 2016, Lapid ran against incumbent Angeles City Mayor Ed Pamintuan – and lost, also by a huge margin. He has since reverted voting in his beloved quarryland.

Come to think of it, the first electoral migration I came across hereabouts involved a working journalist – the dear lamented Rizal Policarpio of the national vernacular daily Balita. I cannot remember now if it was in a pre- or post-EDSA 1 election, that the one we fondly referred to as “The Other Rizal” ran for the mayoralty of Mabalacat against the legendary Fred Halili.

What I cannot forget was Rizal joining the rest of us in Halili’s regular press conferences during the campaign; the mayor indulging him in his tirades against his administration; and even providing Rizal with a showboat for his campaign. The elder mediamen later prevailed upon Rizal’s intent to file an election protest over a hundred or so – some insisted only 30 – votes he garnered.

From Mabalacat, Rizal moved to Angeles City and made a losing run for the city council; his campaign distinguished by the oversized Philippine two-peso bill with his picture juxtaposed over that of the national hero used as leaflet.

Whoa! Is there some kind of jinx attached to electoral migration? No, not in the case of Rizal which was a losing proposition ab initio. But the unbeatable Susi in three runs for the Lubao council, subsequently disqualified from running in the City of San Fernando where – in the public view – he never had a chance.

The hex appears more real with the ultra-popular Lapid landsliding all pretenders to the Pampanga governorship and landing top half in his first try at the Senate, only to be avalanched himself by the man readily ridiculed as “Nognog” and later bested by EdPam.

Certainly, oddsmaker will make a good deal out of this come election time in the City of San Fernando. In Sta. Ana as well. But degla or not, the outcome still remains in the hands of the electorate. 

Wanna bet?