New Messages Received

October 26

• gud pm bad news po, pnatay ngaun lng c KA PEDY DE LEON un BCODA at ANAK PAWIS chair s bulakan, ngaun lng po s malolos, e2 npo yung ka2lad nangyari s iba prov - 26-Oct-2005, 17:32:39

• Francisco Rivera BAYAN-BAYAN Muna Pamp w friends Dr. Angel David, a dentist, and Jon Sabas was sprayed with bullets while jogging dis am, oct 26. All of them dead. 26-Oct-2005. 12:22:28

• Upd8: Ponciano Silva, 54 yrs old, 7 anak, dentist, kgwd ng brgy Almacen ang asawa. Pngyarihan brgy Kalilayan ibaba Unisan. Tym btwn 12-1 pm,nkmotor ang pumatay. 12-Oct 2005- 08:51:53

The messages keep flooding my inbox, like bad dreams.

Ka Ric

October 25

The killings persist. Today, they killed Ricardo Ramos of Barangay Mapalacsiao, Hacienda Luisita.

Ka Ric is the President of CATLU, the sugar mill workers union at the Central Azucarera de Tarlac (CAT). Along with Rene “Ka Boyet” Ramos of the United Luisita Workers Union (ULWU), which represents thousands of farm workers inside the hacienda.

The symbolism of Ka Ric's death stuns me up to now. In the course of the two unions’ struggles, Ramos stood by the principle of the worker-peasant alliance. He steadfastly refused to be coopted by the management into accepting settlements that would only tilt the stakes in favour of the Cojuangcos and a few scabs. Ramos and CATLU resolutely upheld their side in the joint strike with the thousands-strong ULWU employed under the Hacienda Luisita Incorporated (HLI). They did so because they were aware that the struggle of the HLI’s farm workers for humane wages and land reform through the revocation of the Stock Distribution Option (SDO) were not divorced from the struggles of the CAT's sugar mill workers for just salaries and benefits.

CATLU’s involvement in the strike was crucial to its success. Without the militant unity of the sugar mill workers who paralyzed the mill’s processing operations, forced the plant to grind into a halt by virtue of their work boycott, and correctly refused to get into a management-proposed settlement that would give them their benefits and wage increases provided that that CATLU sever the alliance with ULWU-the strike would probably have not persisted as strongly and as resolutely as it does up to now.

Ka Ric's unwavering faith in militant action and the collective strength of the people to resolve the land and labor dispute was seen in how he stood by his decisions. He was unfazed by the threats of death. He was unmoved by the bribe offers of millions of pesos from the hacienda. "Kahit kailan, hindi tayo matatalo sa laban. Bakit? Pagkat nagkakaisa tayo at kasama natin ang mamamayan ng Hacienda Luisita," he once said.

There were many things that Ka Ric stood against. As CATLU President, he opposed management and local elite oppression of workers and peasants. As chairperson of Brgy. Mapalacsiao, the community a few hundred meters away from the sugar mill, Ramos strongly opposed the deployment of more military troops in the hacienda after the November 16 massacre. He led many residents into rejecting false development schemes such as the gigantic inter-provincial expressway project.

Ramos know what it felt like to pay for standing up for what was right. A day before the Hacienda Luisita massacre, during the historic face-off where thousands of unarmed strikers and their families routed hundreds of police from dispersing the picket lines, Ka Ric was himself hit squarely in the head by a precisely-aimed stone while leading in the front lines. After the massacre, he appeared at the presscon with Boyet Galang of ULWU with a huge gauze bandage resting on top of his head.

This time, his enemies made sure their next hit was fatal.

On the evening of October 25, at around 9 pm, snipers armed with an M-14 armalite crouched in the darkness and aimed two, three shots at Ka Ric's head, while he and his companions were resting in a hut in the middle of the barangay. Ka Ric was sitting on a monoblock chair, preparing to listen to the opinions of some guests, when a bullet tore through the evening silence and the thin bamboo slats, instantly shattering his skull.

Stunned, Ka Ric's companions, including several bodyguards standing sentry outside and his brother, laid his body on the bench as the entire neighborhood rushed to the scene. It took the police forever to get there. But in less than 30 minutes, an armed personnel carrier (APC) and a helicopter arrived from the nearby military detachment, engulfing the whole hut and the startled residents with lights.

The next afternoon, human rights workers and party list organizations visited the scene of the crime. The cramped hut was still in a state of bloody disarray, with monoblock chairs and pirated karaoke CDs stacked everywhere. Scarlet spatters and flies all over the confines of the space spoke of how brutal the murder was.

It was a well-planned assassination that bore tell-tale signs of who the perpetrators were.
The nearest military detachment was located a few hundred meters away from the scene of the crime, accessible through numerous and secluded side paths. For the past few weeks, soldiers suspiciously bugged residents around the site of the murder to sell their pet dogs and puppies, those who barked loudly and incessantly in the night at unfamiliar faces. Soldiers were constantly roaming around the barangay at different times of the day and night, and were looking for him a few hours before his murder.

Yet, if we are to believe denials at face value, nobody is guilty for the killing. Ka Ric may as well have shot himself in a suicide.

The military under Maj. Gen. Jovito S. Palparan instantly denied any involvement in Ka Boyet's killing, in the same way that they did with the 4,000+ human rights violations against activists and civilians recorded since 2001.

The Cojuangcos, who have been doing their all to bribe, kill, and harass the unions for years, denied any involvement.

Gloria Arroyo, did not even bother to hypocritically feign condolence, as if the blatant killings of union leaders by the army to which she is Commander-in-Chief equated to something not worth dignifying. She uttered no word as to whether this was part of her calibrated political repression against “destabilizers”. No confirmation of this. But no denial, either.

All this is not surprising. A government founded on lies only persists through the practice of falsehood and cover-ups.

Lakbayan: A Lexicon of Underrated Terms

October 23 and 24, 2005.

I. Lakbayan

Because, strangely and sadly, news about landlessness and hunger travels so slowly in this archipelago, peasants, fisherfolk, and tribes have taken it upon themselves to bring their stories to us, first-hand.

Today, they are setting out on a journey to Manila from different points throughout Luzon. Their small pouches and ragged pockets are filled with memories of how they tilled and irrigated the land with sweat and blood. The few pots they lug along contain the fruits of their labor, riddled with soldiers' bullets. They bring indictments against the government’s big-time projects in the regions, with compelling testimonies of why progress and development, in its most tangible terms, should not come in the form of golf courses, mining operations, billion-dollar rail projects or build-operate-transfer technology parks.

There are accounts that can not be instantly sent through fax or email, because they are rooted in places where these devices do not even exist, where they do not have access to these staples of globalized information transfer. It takes a nanosecond to send gigabytes of data from one virtual site to another across the globe; but slow and painful decades for the anguished cries for genuine land reform and justice to reach the Palace door.

The cities are already full to the brim with grim tales of deprivation. Will they overflow once the testimonies from the provinces start pouring in?

II. Mass Transportation

I hurriedly entered the Ayala MRT Station. It was 6:30 in the evening, rush hour, and the entire madding Makati crowd was raring to get home. Everywhere along the stuffy station platform smelling of sweat, cheap cologne and fumes, people were rudely shoving, pushing, and slyly nudging each other in the hopes of being the first to get into the train and to their respective destinations. Nobody bothered to fall in line, in the weary way they require us to while buying those magnetic tickets stamped with the faces of a smirking, un-photogenic President. Nearly everybody seemed to outdo each other. The entire throng of commuters inched dangerously close to the edge of the platform, like a swarm of lemmings on the brink of a fatal precipice.

When the sleek train arrived and opened its doors, the entire mob barged in. The doorway was a bottleneck: clogged full of commuters pushing to get in, and commuters pushing to get out, with none wanting to give way to the other side. We were swept inside through a thick wave of yelps, pleas, glares, and snide remarks. Inside the MRT, commuters looked weary, numb, blank, anonymous. The train sped off, leaving another chaotic crowd jostling for space outside. It gathered speed. In just around 20 minutes, we traversed four cities, countless malls, dozens of giant billboards, and thousands of blinking lights. I extricated myself from the MRT as soon as it alighted at the Quezon Avenue Station, and tried to find the nearest route to the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), where a solidarity night for the Lakbayan was being held.

A few hours earlier, thousands of farmers passed through the same route underneath, traversing the entire highway on foot before reaching the DAR.

Unlike the thousands of MRT passengers, they didn’t have the luxury of convenience nor speed. No paper-thin magnetic tickets. No sickening chill of stale air-conditioning. In contrast to the MRT’s sleek, silver contours, the buses were dusty, archaic-looking containers, filled to the brim. Faded flags and streamers on poles jutted out from the vehicles. Names of unfamiliar and far-away towns and routes were painted on the jeepneys, crowded with people.

Everyone smelled of sweat, sun and fumes. None of them had money for bus or MRT fare, but that didn’t stop them from reaching Manila, whatever the costs were. They had feet and hearts.
The journey was protracted, each kilometre painstakingly won by sheer will, strength, and guts. Throughout the march, peasants, workers, and many other people marched in unison, looking out for each other and taking their time to unfold in undulating rows and columns. It took them days to traverse highways, entire cities, toll booths at the provincial boundaries, and traffic-jammed avenues all over Manila. Police and military blocked and flanked the indomitable moving mass of people during checkpoints, but bystanders cheered them on and handed out small foodstuffs and water for them to consume along the way.

The protestors were weary, but this wasn’t evident in the way they smiled at friends along the streets and how their eyes told of their determination to reach the destination. Their faces were different, but all familiar: facets of a disenfranchised people united and fighting under one cause.

On the night of October 22, the protesting peasants finally converged in front of the DAR using the best means of mass transportation ever conceived since the Spanish colonial era: a convoy of collective will that would steadily continue to advance, no matter how many mountains, road blocks and checkpoints along the way.

III. Bananacue

The sweet poor man's snack can make you weep.

It was easy to underestimate its worth before, when it was a treat prepared at home as merienda for languid afternoons, or seen along sidewalk stalls. When it was a humble foodstuff peddled by ambulant vendors along the University, its market value on the low end compared to the food sold in canteens, private concessionaires, and pricier establishments along Katipunan Avenue. A trifle, at a time when you weren't really aware that the aluminum tray filled with caramelized rootcrops and lumpia often also cradled the fortunes of a vendor's entire family. Or that boiled, unsweetened bananas were the only things that peasants and Mangyans subsisted on in interior villages, because there was not always enough rice to go around, because even the coarsest rice was a luxury for the same people who tilled it.

When TV stations today aired footage of a bystander-a woman street vendor in threadbare clothes-- crossing a busy street to donate five sticks full of her bananacues to a truck full of peasants who journeyed for miles, eyes brimmed with tears. She could have chosen not to do anything at all, to just watch from afar and earn a few more precious pesos for her kids. The march's leader gratefully acknowledged this small act of selflessness over the microphone, saying that this would be a big help to the fight.

Five bananacues, a big contribution to a thousands-strong, miles-long march? Yes, because this simple gesture humbles us in a way that no number of homilies or speeches can. Yes, because it attests to how the poorest among us are fervently capable of giving, without asking for anything in return except to see the entire struggle prevail.

A book tells of how, many years back, a bright, young woman named Lorena Barros often had nothing else but bananacue to eat for the whole day as a working student. But now, what people are more likely to remember about Barros was how the frail poet-scholar founded MAKIBAKA, the organization of revolutionary women, and died valiantly in the mountains during Martial Law.

III. Saboteurs

There are no murderous provocateurs among the 7,000 peasants and workers here today at Morayta, contrary to what the Palace propagandists and the police like to say. The real terrorists are from elsewhere.

They’re the ones with the camouflaged cameras and guns. They’re the ones milling in the rallies without having any legitimate cause to fight for.

Specimen # 1: a retired military officer caught at the Lakbayan’s Cultural Night in front of the DAR, milling around and armed with a .45 pistol. The alert peasants swiftly disarmed him, and turned him and the gun over to the police that same hour.

Specimen # 2, also from the military, was nabbed by wide-awake marshals this morning, just before leaving for the rally. The best excuse he could drum up for being caught with a gun in a rally he wasn’t obviously part of: he just happened to pass by, while trying to find some 24/7 load for his cell phone in the vicinity. That would have been vaguely believable, except for three things. One, there wasn’t any loading center within a 100-meter radius of the place. Two, the media quoted his colleagues at Crame, saying that he was on an undercover mission. And three, the Lakbayan marshals have seen him from as near as…the nearby province just a few days back.

What wit, that man. That’s the idiotic equivalent of secretly eloping for a couple of months, only to trudge back home to your momma saying that you went to the sari-sari store next door to buy suka.

Specimen # 3, suspiciously armed with a video cam, disrupted the peaceful program along Recto corner Morayta. Half of the 7,000-plus rallyists were already quietly sitting on the streets, intently listening to the speeches and watching the cultural presentations, when marshals suddenly caught hold of him, causing mayhem to ensue.

None of the protestors carried fire arms. As one farmer interviewed on TV pointed out, “Kahit pambili ng tubig at pagkain, wala. Papaano kaya kung armas pa?”

IV. Police Brutality

The rally is in full force. Tensions are high because police and fire trucks have barricaded Recto Avenue, barring the protestors from even catching a glimpse at Mendiola. I want to shout to those fully-equipped “law enforcers” other side of the barricade: Hindi ba kayo naaasiwa sa sarili ninyo?

The pulis, who are known for having caused a considerable number of human rights violations in this country, are also among the ones most deprived of human rights. There's something fundamentally dishonourable and dehumanizing when you become deprived of the right-by virtue of your occupation- to conceive change, instead of blindly replicating the status quo that GMA represents.

Something’s fundamentally wrong when you are forced to follow orders from a President who shamelessly invokes the rule of law and God to justify the state of disorder and hell she created. When you HAVE to follow her orders to maintain this “rule of law” or whatever animal this is, despite being grossly underpaid and mired in poverty like the protestors you have to disperse at any cost. It’s a human rights violation and an insult of the highest degree. Inaapi at niloloko ka na, ipinagtatanggol mo pa.

Every hurt they inflict on a rallyist is an unwitting and pitiful act of self-flagellation. The police can bar, maim, hit, slap, or even kill all the activists they want, but that does not lessen the protestors’ humanity or honor by even an iota.

The police are brutal to the protestors, true. But ultimately, they are most brutal to themselves, their children, and their sense of justice.

V. Hypocrisy

I will say this straightfowardly, in all undisguised spite and without literary pretense: There is nothing as sickeningly and irredeemably FAKE as seeing Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pretending to be in deep pain, as she contorts her face while visiting a dozen police with minor injuries in Mendiola and proclaims them as “heroes”. She really gives the word ‘hypocrisy’ a whole new dimension!!!

Iyon din kaya ang kanyang sasambitin kung marsanasan ni GMA kung papaano ang ma-disperse ng kanyang mga pinupuri bilang ‘bayani’? Ma-deny ng ‘permit to rally’. Ma-bomba ng water cannon. Masugatan sa barbed wire na nakapalibot sa Mendiola. Mahagisan ng tear gas. Mapukpok ng truncheon at batuta sa ulo. Makaladkad sa kahabaan ng Recto na parang baboy na kakatayin. Masampal, itulak, at mahipo sa dibdib at puwet. I-detain sa kulungan kahit walang warrant, upang kasuhan ng robbery. Habang tuloy-tuloy na tumututog sa tabi ang brass band ng Philippine National Police ng “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”, katulad ng ginawa nila ngayong araw na ito.

VI. Bigo

Target: Mendiola.

The TV station came up with that sound byte at the start of the Lakbayan. On the morning of the 22nd of October, radio reporters would note how the protestors from Southern Tagalog had water and lugaw for breakfast, before preparing for the long and determined march to reclaim Mendiola. That same evening, after an entire tense day of inching towards Morayta, headlines and news reports blared:

Bigo ang mga raliyista dahil hindi nakarating ng Mendiola.

Phalanxes of riot police, SWAT, barbed wire and fire trucks barricaded the avenue that day, betraying the Palace’s rabid, salivating paranoia despite its press pronouncements that it was a usual working day for GMA.

They may have denied peasants-the poorest of the poor in this pauperized archipelago-who marched for miles even the symbolic victory of setting a single foot or flag upon Mendiola. But they failed to discredit the peoples’ march: failed to dampen the resolve of a movement united. They failed to silence the rising chants, the compelling speeches, and the songs. Failed to sow fear in the hundreds of communities who watched the farmers lay their lives on the line to assert their rights. The protesters lost on the ground today, but won the battle for the hearts and minds of the people instead.

We didn't lose. We'll come back again and again and finally reclaim Mendiola. We'll return for the big bulls' eye.

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.