Questions From Autopsies

I.

The accounts are all the same: how bonnet-clad
men with pistols and motorcycles
pump a pellet in the nape
or, missing this, aim straight for the heart.

Their bullets do not choose between
tillers or toilers, those who wield
guns or placards, or pens.

The warning is not lost to those
who view the bodies:

How do blindfolds, hogtied wrists
and ankles testify to the crime
of opening eyes, waving fists,
marching on weary streets?

II.

It only takes a second to kill a man:
death comes quickly
as sculpted steel ricochets
through labyrinths of flesh.

The assassins vanish
in dim crevices.

Do they ever wonder why hundreds
of their spiralling shards fail
to stall the exodus
of hearts, halt heads
from birthing revolts, silence
the tireless tongues?

III.

When all of the bodies
have been accounted for,
when all the pale hearts
are laid in in a long queue,

shall we parade them along
avenues and ricefields
to rouse the dead from their stupor?

IV.

It only takes a single bullet
to kill one of us.
How much more of us will it take
to halt the gale of bullets?


October 21, 2004

Of Clarinet Players, Plush Carpets and Calibrated Political Repression

Whenever looking for a way to describe Marcosian architectural projects such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines, I usually come across either pretentious pronouncements or formalist phrases (like 'showcase of national pride', 'a mecca for arts and culture in Asia', 'imposing facade', 'closed forms', 'structural intensity') or profound observations (like 'why no Boysen paint on the walls?' and 'nice front-lawn fountain!'). But nothing ever beats this vivid metaphor from an acquaintance painter, who once wisecracked that the Imeldific edifice looked like a giant inodoro.

So there it was, the image of a massive toilet loomed before us as we crossed Roxas Boulevard to watch a recital of a young clarinet player at the CCP.

I went to the recital because it was free. But no amount of complimentary tickets or familiar faces at the event could dispel the uneasy sensation of ambling along plush carpets at a time when most of us feel dirt poor. Or listening to violins, pianos, and clarinets when, just a few minutes back, we were hearing heated radio reports of how anti-riot police dispersed doused the likes of Jamby, Ka Satur, the bishops, and Mr. Guingona with water cannons, like they were rats or stray cats. Or when you know how ugly the sounds of police clanging on their iron shields or truncheons crunching on bones are.

This same feeling of unease returned while we were walking out of the Little Theater after the performance. Never mind that the recital was one point filled with bloopers that are probably common to all young and novice musicians on their first recitals. Never mind there were around less than a hundred people watching. Never mind that the featured violinist was indeed a good and passionate performer. The entire experience—the juxtaposition of vastly differing realities--was unsettling.

I glanced at the ticket and blanched. It cost P500. I flipped through the brochure with the schedules and ticket costs of other concerts. Some of the cheapest rates cost P300. That's equivalent to four movies or so at SM (at a time when watching a movie can be classified as a luxury). And definitely more than what the average worker or farmer earns in a day.

For one who enjoys a good art exhibit or show, such realizations always hark back to the reality that such cultural products have been conceptually and literally inaccessible for the masses. The entrance rates to such institutions usually doesn’t even pretend to be for the masa, unless under the very problematic framework of cultural charity. And the problem of prevailing ideological configurations among cultural workers always crops up: the peoples' culture is filled with vivid images and vibrant vocabularies, but are enough artists using these as materials for their works? Etcetera. At iba pa. Under such conditions, none of this nation’s majority will willingly and consistently patronize places such as the CCP in the same fervent way that millions of Pinoys have patronized SM.

On the other hand, posing the question of whether the CCP should be made accessible to the masses suddenly seemed inconsequential in the light of the economic and political crisis faced by this archipelago. How can one hope to have more people going to the exhibits, plays, and concerts when we have not even gone one step to solving problems that are so basic and fundamental to human sanity. Problems like feeding the hungry and healing the sick populace. Or having enough jobs, houses, and land. Or ensuring Filipino kids get into school, and actually learn--and stay there. Or giving all the masterminds and killers of slain activists and civilians since 2001 their day in court--in short, incarcerating a significant number of military men and government officials, particularly the petite one in Malacanang.

Until we consciously democratize popular access to our cultural institutions, all the energy and self-proclaimed artistic vision of the CCP and similar institutions to forge a 'Filipino aesthetics' will go nowhere but down the drain. But you've got to have some real, deep-down social, economic, and political change going before you can even conceive of that.

Personally, the CCP visit also only underscored the unofficial state of DICTATORSHIP being enforced by the state. Wandering inside an institution that still adheres to the Imeldific and Martial-Law era tenet of upholding “the true, the good, and the beautiful” makes me shudder in the light of the political harassment and the grisly and alarming killings going around.

In the cities where rallies happen, police and military invoke vague terms like the Calibrated Preemptive Response and blatantly anti-democratic declarations like the 'no permit, no rally' as an excuse to kill the rallies.

The progression of murders, meanwhile, has risen in Central Luzon since September 1, the area of responsibility of the murderer, este, Major Gen. Jovito S. Palparan. In Tarlac and Nueva Ecija, at least six activists from Anakpawis and Bayan Muna have been murdered in the past three weeks. At least seven have been abducted throughout the regions and remain missing up to now. Wala pa doon ang undocumented cases at harassments.

The accounts described in the fact sheets are unnerving, and infuriating. Some of the victims were watching TV or resting in the comfort of their humble homes with their families when armed men suddenly barge in and pepper them with bullets. Some were forcibly abducted in front of their kids. One was tending to his sari-sari store when shot to death. None of them were armed. None of them had tehbenefit of a fair fight. And the military has the gall to idiotically dismiss those killed as being perceived as communists, ergo, deserving to die?

All of these disturbing occurrences seem to have been plucked out of the past, from the days under Martial Law, when institutions and showcases like the CCP, the Film Center, the Coconut Palace were being constructed while the overt era of suppression reigned while covert killings and abductions continued behind the scenes. State support for the arts was indeed relatively strong compared to now, BUT so was massive state support for grisly human rights violations and media suppression.

As I was writing this, I received a text message reporting that a PISTON officer was murdered last night. A motorcycle-riding, bonnet-clad assassin pumped two magazines from a .9 mm gun into his body. Assassins that are chillingly similar to the death squads that killed dozens of activists in Mindoro and Samar just a few months ago, when Palparan was stationed there. Put two and two together. Only morons and Arroyo sycophants will dare describe all these as mere coincidence.

It is morbid, but in my mind I can still hear the sound of clarinets and violins playing as the killings go on. I might find them true, good, and beautiful in another distant place and time, but for now, their melodies make me sick to the bone.
October 16, 2005

Images of Strife and Struggle: Photographs as History and Critique

The power of photojournalism lies in its ability to capture the struggles of its milieu: the narrative of tragedies and triumphs of a people, the chronicles of martyrdom and real newsmakers – all stark reminders of moving social realities.

Photography may glamorize and market people or products for profit, to beautify the ugly or to isolate what is common. But the medium has the potential to document social realism that today’s media technocrats and patrons of culture would rather forget, conceal, or completely ignore.

The latter is exactly what two ongoing photography exhibitions at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City do. The first exhibition, Mga Larawang Pilak: Pagdiriwang sa ika-25 na Anibersaryo ng Kilusang Mayo Uno (Images in Silver: Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the May 1st Movement), runs from Oct. 2 to Nov. 27 at The Edge Gallery, Vargas Museum. The second, entitled Sharper than the Sword, an exhibition by young photojournalists Jes Aznar and Rafael Lerma, has been on exhibit at the College of Mass Communication in cooperation with the UP Journalism Club this month.

Photographs as history

Mga Larawang Pilak is offered in celebration of the KMU’s silver anniversary as one of the largest labor centers of the working class in Philippine history. Images of the movement and its struggles are sourced from photo archives of the KMU and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan or New Patriotic Alliance), Rene Dilan of Manila Times, Leo Esclanda of Pinoy Weekly, and freelance photographers Jun Resureccion and Peter Alvarez.

Departing from the usual historical timeline used in most photo exhibits, the photographs in Mga Larawang Pilak are shown according to themes and concepts that capture the KMU’s historical struggle, as illustrated in Protesta (Protest), Sulong (Advance or Onward). Bayani (Hero/ine). Martir (Martyr), Kristo (Christ), Pagtatag (Founding, or Strengthening, depending on its use), Welga (Strike) and Mayo Uno (May 1).

This device draws the viewer's attention not on the photographs as objects to reflect on per se but on the themes represented and the messages behind the images. Somehow, despite limitations of space and resources, the photographs embody the dynamism, pains and complexities that have characterized the workers’ movement for a quarter of a century now.

The photographers are anonymous - perhaps to underscore the fact that they are after all part of a larger movement. On the other hand, a more detailed historical time line may be useful for context-building among audiences, particularly for the youths who were not yet even born when the KMU was founded and who were probably still in elementary school when EDSA 2 came around.

While the KMU traces its historical roots to the revolutionary Katipunan in 1892 and the anti-imperialist Union Obrera Democratica in 1902, its formal origins are chronicled in the exhibition. The photograph Pagtatag ng KMU depicts a front-seat scene at its founding ceremonies on May 1, 1980, before an audience of 30,000 at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City. Another photograph documents a scene shown in the ceremonies where Ka Amado Hernandez, Ka Bert Olalia, and Jose Maria Sison share space in the picture plane.

In the exhibition, the semiotic significance of the theme Pagtatag takes on a double meaning. Pagtatag denotes not only the founding of the KMU but its historical “strengthening” as well amid the dictatorial repression and the rift in the Philippine workers movement that the KMU faced at that time.

This advancement in each decade of struggle is also displayed in the theme Sulong with vivid photographs exemplifying how the KMU weathered every obstacle and trial through militancy and solidarity. This spirit breathes life into the struggle and keeps the fire burning - a metaphor captured in one image where urban poor woman leader and Anakpawis (toiling masses) Party List Vice-President Carmen “Nanay Mameng” Deunida bends over to lit a candle, while a placard with the slogan “Imperyalismo, Ibagsak!” (Down with Imperialism) is strategically positioned behind her.

The collective strength and resistance of the Filipino working class against their exploiters is dramatized in the traditional Mayo Uno (May 1) rallies. The efforts of cultural workers - artists, writers, actors, singers, photographers - to pay tribute to the working class are documented in the images of the May 1, 2005 rally at the Liwasang Bonifacio (or Bonifacio Freedom Park). This is particularly illustrated in the Mayo Uno 2005 Cultural Presentation, where the painted tableau of the workers united against the enemy (a two-dimensional street mural serving as the backdrop of the entire program) merges with an actual performance. This representation of the action onstage becomes a site where the painted image and live performance intersect.

In the context of continuing local elite and foreign domination, Protesta (Protest) has generally characterized the KMU’s mass actions for societal change. The exhibit features several historical issues and campaigns for which the workers have taken to the barricades and front lines: Sahod Itaas, the protracted struggle for a P125 across-the-board nationwide wage increase since 1999, the opposition to deregulation-borne oil price increases, and the struggle for the removal of the Marcos dictatorship and EDSA 2 protests against former President Joseph Estrada.

The welga (workers’ strike), as the exhibition implies, historically remains the workers’ most potent defense against capitalist exploitation. This collective resistance that is encapsulated in a 1902 photo is carried up to the present in the kilusang welga (strike movement) that highlights contemporary Philippine politics. One photograph testifies how in 1982 army tanks were used to block columns of 13,000 workers marching from the Bataan Export Processing Zone (BEPZ) to Samal in Bataan.

Photographs as critique

The long struggle for labor rights has also yielded its own breed of Bayani (Hero/ine). The photograph captioned Si Ka Bert at Ka Bel, Katabi ang Opisyal ng militar na umaresto sa kanila (Comrades Bert and Bel, beside military official who arrested them) is a grim reminder of how, on the eve of the Marcos state visit to the U.S., successive raids on offices of progressive organizations ended in the arrest of labor union leaders, including Felixberto Olalia and former KMU Chairperson Crispin Beltran.

Hanggang sa Huling Hantungan ni Ka Lando Olalia, reminds us of how Ka Bert Olalia’s son and his companion Leonor Ay-ay were abducted by military agents in November 1986, then tortured before they were brutally killed. Olalia’s and Leonor’s death did not diminish the valour that they showed while alive, as attested to by the tears and rage of more than half a million mourners at their funeral march.

As martial law-like political suppression of progressive workers continues up to the present, Martir (martyr) has become common word in the movement's vocabulary. The photograph taken at the Hacienda Luisita on Nov. 16, 2004 shows people carrying the blood-soaked and barely-conscious farmworker and Hacienda Luisita Incorporated “stockholder” Jesus Laza, one of the seven strikers killed that day.

For a country where Catholicism remains a dominant cultural influence, the sufferings of Christ are often transposed as metaphors for the oppression and hardship borne by workers. Kristo represents photographs of a worker during the Artex Strike in 1984 in the image of Christ's Calvary. Shod of his slippers and shirt in the dispersal, he struggles on the ground while being whacked by truncheon-wielding police with shields and helmets. The photographs are also composed in the shape of a cross, perhaps signifying the “Cross” that the worker-Christs have to bear in order to eventually liberate the masses from their chains.

Finally, Mga Larawang Pilak pays tribute to Diosdado “Ka Fort” Fortuna, Nestle union President and Anakpawis Southern Tagalog Chairperson, who was murdered while on his way home last Sept. 22, a day after the Ayala rally in protest against the creeping martial law. Bayani Ka Pangulong Fort features twin images of Ka Fort in a single photograph while still alive; one image shows him carrying a huge streamer demanding a stop to the political killings.

Sharper than the Sword

Meanwhile, more contemporary images of dissent can be found at the other end of the university’s Academic Oval at the College of Mass Communication, in the two-person exhibition entitled Sharper than the Sword, by Aznar and Lerma. The exhibit was previously hung at the Oarhouse along Adriatico Street in Malate last month.

As with the photographs in Mga Larawang Pilak, the images in Sharper are the products of Aznar and Lerma's immersions and excursions to the picket lines of the General Milling Corporation (GMC) and the Hacienda Luisita, Incorporated (HLI) in Tarlac, respectively. The images juxtapose scenes from two harsh dispersals in separate sites, happening within a month or so of each other (the HLI photos were taken in November 2004, the GMC photos in October 2004).

Aznar ventures into the picket lines of Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac, the largest sugar mill in Luzon, and records visual vignettes from day-to-day scenes of thousands of striking farmworkers at the picket lines. While the Luisita massacre brought the lens of TV cameras to the site of the strike for a time, Aznar goes one step further by documenting the strike from the intimate point of view of one interacting with the workers, one who they will gladly let in their ranks and share their stories of hope amidst hardship and death threats.

On the other hand, Lerma's images maximize the impact of black-and-white photography; stark contrasts between black and white tend to capture the raw tension and air of confrontation with more drama and depth.

The images are also provocative in their ability to capture the violence unleashed by state and capitalist forces at the picket lines. In such instances, the camera becomes a potent weapon in documenting truth amidst deception, attesting to the rising fascism against workers that rears its head every now and then.

“Incomplete”

As with all visual histories, the images documented in Mga Larawang Pilak and Sharper than the Sword are moving and significant but incomplete. “Incomplete” because no amount of hours spent contemplating these representations - moving and excellent as they are - can ever fully approximate the sights, sounds, smells, and sentiments of being immersed in the struggle of society's basic sectors.

The paradox of the photographs' silence is that they may draw the viewer farther from the reality even as they document the scene – the rancid smell of blood and gunpowder, the crunch of truncheons on bone and the thousands-strong chants and slogans, the dust, heat, and fatigue. The viewer however cannot resist the challenge to go beyond the images that the cameras capture and to experience them in real life.

When photojournalists transcend their occupation of using the lens just to observe or break the news and dare step into the workers’ front lines, their images can rouse the viewer out of detached contemplation.

(www.bulatlat.com, oct. 16-22 issue).
--photograph above courtesy of raffy lerma

Huwag Na Tayo Mag-Coffee, Dear

( letting off steam after a disturbing day in the sickbed. Sept. 11.)

Never mind that their overall advertising concept of this certain transnational food and beverage's TV coffee commercial was amusingly incoherent to begin with. Its sound byte, Lupit Ever, struck me with an irony more potent and bitter than kapeng barako.

'Lupit ever. Their ad agency certainly got that one right.

Lupit ever, coincidentally, is the exact phrase to describe how striking Nestle workers have been systematically deprived of ample wages, benefits, and job security over the years by the management. Lupit ever best describes how their picket lines have been violently harassed by the police and military for years. Lupit ever is the most perfect way to describe how workers and union leaders such as Diosdado “Ka Fort' Fortuna were treacherously murdered by unknown assailants without a fair fight.

Like the irony of the phrase lupit ever, Ka Fort was felled by assassins' bullets while on his way home last September 22, a day after joining the rally held in commemoration of Martial Law's declaration. This was a tragedy that is alarming, but not surprising, considering the exponential rate at which activists are being killed, abducted, and harassed under GMA's calibrated political repression.

I never had the chance to personally meet Ka Fort, Nestle union President and Anakpawis Southern Tagalog Chairperson. But whenever I realize how heavy his loss is for my colleagues in Anakpawis, who shared political discussions, jokes, and songs with him, I recall how it is to lose friends who have been mercilessly killed for their principles, and try to contribute my paltry share by writing and raging against injustice.

We seek retribution in its most concrete terms. I think the unions are justified in asserting that Nestle certainly deserves the blow of an all-out consumers boycott, if only to show them that workers represented by Ka Fort should never be treated with impunity. And I look forward to the day when the killers and the cold-blooded masterminds, most probably from the military, are jailed or strapped one by one (in alphabetical or chronological order, or preferably by height) to a fully-functional electric chair.

But no amount of mega-profits lost nor prison sentences meted can really replace the loss of brave people such as Ka Fort. It only takes a single bullet to kill a man, but an entire lifetime of struggle to mold one into leaders like him who will dare to truly serve the people.

If I only knew the cellphone numbers of those scum behind the killing, I'd shout over the line: you blasted low-lives, you can smirk, raise your coffee cups in triumph, and shout 'Perfection!' (like in the ad), but you won't have the last laugh. Nobody will flock to your funerals in the same way that people flooded Ka Fort's wake and even spilled out on the street. Nobody will remember you whenever they rage against oppression, anytime and anywhere in the world. Nobody will ever affirm your humanity, not even in death.

In my weaker moments, I try to cope with the numbing senselessness of it all with sedated, insane sarcasm. Sometimes I try to delude myself into theorizing that maybe, just maybe, the commercials irony was an intentional critique after all. A sneaky slap back by some sympathetic artist or ad exec working backstage. What more innocuous way to instill the message that this entire state of crisis and sham democracy is really 'lupit 'ever' in the minds of Filipino consumers, than through the subconscious conditioning and repetitiveness of big-time advertising? It must have been a clever strategy to subtly subvert and unmask the hegemony of empire, to have the phrase televissed to millions of viewers for every ten minutes or so: lupit ever, lupit ever, oh indeed, LUPIT EVER!

Hah! Yeah, right. And I'm the Queen of Encantadia. Or the sugo, for that matter.

If only the news reports on Ka Fort's murder and the workers struggles for justice and their rights were just as prominent and sustained as those darned commercials. If only TV stations would air adsr those who wonder (or don't even know) why TNC workers and activists like Ka Fort are killed. If only newspapers issued warnings to all young, clueless rebels who like to write careless things like “if i like the packaging, i like the product”. If only commercials told truths, not inanities. I'd like to see the day when something like this is given big-time air-time:

Have a break, there's blood in your cappuccino and chocolate wafer bars. There's blood in your fresh full-cream milk and pretty-pink strawberry ice cream. Taste each product: there's blood, shame, and guilt dripping out of every drop. Bite into them. Snack on bullets and bones of dead workers. Indulge in the melting flesh of their hungry children. Feed this to your loved ones every day. Let them savor and be nourished by the bitterness of tears, bile, and sweat.

I don't think people should find this repulsive or morbid, when so much real-life odiousness lies behind the pretty packaging of products, when so many ugly realities are obscured by the onslaught of commercials. Such systematic violence is senseless and incomprehensible only to the naïve: the bloodshed and oppression is very, very rational, according to the rapacious logic of Capital and fascism. Which is why I still can't help but very consistently and very, very bitterly mutter back, whenever I chance upon that absurd TV commercial filled with coffee-drinking wackos: 'Lupit 'ever talaga!

BOYCOTT NESTLE PRODUCTS. PLEASE.