Shared Perspectives

Published this week in www.bulatlat.com

Up in arms over the assassinations of activists and civilians under the Arroyo administration, visual and performance artists have joined hands to organize Tutok Karapatan, an art project aiming to initiate dialogue and intervention among the visual arts community on issues pertaining to political, ecological, social, and human rights.

Tutok Karapatan’s first university-based exhibition, Perspektiba, is currently on view at the University of Santo Tomas Fra Angelico Gallery on España Avenue, Manila until Dec. 2. The show opened last Nov. 21.

Perspektiba is comprised of works that reflect on the overtures of state violence: literal and metaphorical dislocations, disappearances, and demises associated with the rising wave of political repression in the Philippines. It was initially conceptualized as a show which would chronicle the making of martyrs and heroes vis a vis struggles against reigns of terror. However, in the course of the artists’ exposure and interactions with victims or survivors of human rights violations, the show evolved into a general remonstration against the cases of political repression besieging the nation.

In particular, Perspektiba addresses the continuous political assassinations of members of the legal opposition and progressive people’s organizations under the Arroyo administration. From 2001 to date, over 791 activists and civilians all over the country have been murdered inside their homes or in transit to work, usually by masked, motorcycle-riding gunmen. Others have been killed and considered as “collateral damage” in the course of the government's military campaigns in the provinces: strafed or intentionally shot at by soldiers, tortured or summarily executed.

While local and international organizations, non-government entities, parliamentarians and personalities are sounding the alarm over President Gloria Arroyo's refusal to stop the six-year killing spree, artists have added their voices to the growing clamor for truth and justice by producing works addressing the murders.

Plaster casts of bullets

Lyra Garcellano sets up an installation entitled No Letup from ink on paper riddled with plaster casts of bullets, alluding to the shower of steel mercilessly unleashed by the state machinery against hundreds of fallen human targets. White Lies, an installation by the multi-media artist collective UGAT-Lahi, delivers a symbolic indictment against the whitewash perpetuated by the state machinery in response to the killings. Pale dummies are piled on a bed, one covered up by the others, enveloping the gravity of the murders in a blanket of lies.

Anak ng Tinapay, an installation piece by Mark Ramsel Salvatus III, utilizes food art and video documentation to gather public reactions to the killings. Salvatus enjoins the audience to partake of bread shaped into human figures and guns, displayed on a glass cupboard. The artist documents the entire selection and feeding process among gallery visitors in this premeditated “taste test”, delivering a tongue-in-cheek message against the carnage and militarization that the public is forced to consume daily. Neither Left nor Right by Claro Ramirez makes use of counters to parody the propensity to treat the killings as mere statistics, as figures that mechanically rise or ebb with the political tide.

Satiric commentary against the military’s involvement as a perpetrator or accomplice to the killings is reinforced in the work Sir Yes Sir (a common phrase used in military-style drills to signify subservience to one’s superiors) by Jef Carnay. This interactive installation is comprised of a mechanized, hand-made dog (or tuta, a popular symbol for lackeys) which bows at the viewer’s patting and dips its head into a feed bowl filled with miniature human figurines.

While these works were produced by young artists who were perhaps only toddlers at the onset of the dictatorship in 1972, an oil-on-canvas work entitled Daet Massacre by Social Realist painter Gene de Loyola attests to the chilling similarities between incidents during Martial Law and today. De Loyola depicts a scene from a massacre of unarmed protesters in Daet, Camarines Norte in 1981, shortly after the “paper lifting” of Martial Law that same year. Shot at by police forces during the dispersal, the protesters, with the dead and injured in their ranks, are depicted against a blood-red backdrop, with one bearing a placard calling for the boycott of an impending election believed to be fraudulent. Nearly 25 years later, this scene would be reenacted in the bloody dispersals of activists calling for President Arroyo's ouster in Bicol and in the massacre of striking sugar mill and farm workers in Hacienda Luisita on Nov. 16, 2004.

The current assaults on press freedom are also addressed in the work by multi-media artist Ed Manalo. A typewriter – a common symbol for writers and journalists-- is tightly-wrapped in a straitjacket of cellophane sheets, alluding to the muzzling of the press under the Arroyo administration. Acupuncture needles piercing through the cellophane may represent both anguish and healing in response to the iniquities that the muzzling of expressive freedom has brought about.

Not possible to ignore

The ferocity and frequency of such atrocities has reached the point where it is no longer possible to ignore the gravity of the entire situation. Buen Calubayan demonstrates this through a sound installation on an armchair. “Hindi naman talaga kailangan ang mata upang makita ang realidad” (You don’t need eyes to see reality), the artist asserts. One only needs to listen to the cues pointing to an entire epic of injustice.

On the other hand, many nevertheless remain blind and deaf to social iniquities. The Parable of Those Who Refuse to See, an installation piece made out of wood cut-outs and video animation by Don Salubayba, sets up a parade of shadowy figures on the venue’s glass façade as metaphors for repressive societal structures whose influence pervades up to the present: the fraile of the Church, the ubiquitous figure of Uncle Sam, a bloated government functionary, and three blind mice led by the recognizable Mickey Mouse. The ultimate victim here remains the figure of Juan dela Cruz, bent and hobbling in the foreground.

The works in Perspektiba also depict the victims of such rights violations. Pyeta by Emmanuel Garibay utilizes the undertones of Catholic iconography in the Madonna and Child image in his work, where a woman, mouthless and clad in a black mourning shroud, holds up a portrait of a man (her son? Husband? Father?) crowned with thorns. Viewed in the context of the Philippine human rights situation, the absence of a mouth, symbolic of the right to expression, raises questions: Is the woman a metaphor for Inang Bayan (Mother Land), denied of the right to speak or to be heard, with the death of her sons? Or are words insufficient to express the pathos and anguish of losing a loved one? Garibay’s depiction of the victim of persecution as Christ crowned with thorns likewise elevates him/her to the status of a martyr, a hero/ine worthy of honor and emulation.

Fascism

Perspektiba testifies to how the propensity for fascism is systematically embedded not only in policy but also in consciousness. These histories and narratives of rights violations are contextualized in light of ongoing peoples’ struggles for national liberation and self-determination, as seen in the installation work Rebo (Series 2) by Social Realist veteran Antipas “Biboy” Delotavo, Jr. In the work, Delotavo wraps the letters ‘R-E-B-O-L’ in bloodied gauze bandages, military camouflage, and flags of the United States and the Philippines.

The letters, still to be completed, may comprise the word rebo, slang for the word rebolusyon or revolution, or conversely, the word eboluyson, the entire historical process of development implied by the clash of societies and classes. This historical—and repeated—emergence of fascist repression, born out of the material exigencies of imperial expansion and its ideological justifications, is addressed in Jose Tence Ruiz’s Supa series, where figures of Mussolini and a Nazi dominate the picture plane solidly filled with red.

Nevertheless, many continue to believe that another world without exploitation and repression is possible, and work to achieve it. The aspirations behind this driving force is reflected in works such as Boy Dominguez’ Salladan (Ancestral Domain). The artist, himself a member of a national minority, represents the aspirations of Filipino indigenous peoples to a society where development is based on the peoples’ needs and welfare. The work also underscores the interdependence of human, cultural, environmental rights in building a more secure world for the majority of the population.


Taken as a whole, the works in Perspektiba attest to the growing discontent and clamor among the visual arts community against the assaults on human rights under the Arroyo administration. Hopefully, this continuing process of “dialogue, exploration and intervention” that Tutok Karapatan hopes to initiate will also prompt a younger generation of Filipino and Filipina artists to question the roots of political repression. Bulatlat

Hungry and Idle, Pathetically

You Are a Boston Creme Donut

You have a tough exterior. No one wants to mess with you. But on the inside, you're a total pushover and completely soft. You're a traditionalist, and you don't change easily. You're likely to eat the same doughnut every morning, and pout if it's sold out.

What Donut Are You?

You Are Flan Pocky

Your attitude: modern and offbeat East meets west... sweet meets salty. You're a pro at bringing unusual combos together!

What Flavor Pocky Are You?

What is the 202th IB doing in Pandacan

The text below was forwarded earlier this morning through email, sounding the alarm over the reported presence of military troops in Pandacan, Manila.

The AFP will surely have a lot of explaining to do if the report turns out to be true. What the hell is the 202^th IB—composed of combat-ready soldiers-- doing there? Protecting the oil depot from an imaginary “terrorist” attack? Maybe they just wanted to hold counter-insurgency operations a little closer to Aguinaldo instead of some far-flung barrio, just for the heck of a change? Maybe they were just darn bored with their lives and decided to go on a tour of the city? Maybe the national government is secretly embarking on a cost-cutting program and is using idle AFP troops as extra MMDA personnel?

The answer may be literally nearer to the name Pandacan. No one but the Pandac in the nearby Palace, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, will benefit from these military maneuvers in such populated areas. Is GMA's camp so spooked out of President Bush's post-Halloween mid-term electoral fallout that they are using troops to create a net of intimidation against the legal opposition in the cities, before the 2007 elections come around? Is something more vicious being cooked up?

What is reportedly happening in Pandacan, I'm sure, is no different from what has been happening in Mindoro, Tarlac, Pampanga, Batangas, Bulacan, Bicol, Sulu, Samar, and many other places where the killings of activists have multiplied over the past few months. The military in my province have already set up a sona. They called a meeting in the elementary school to be attended by all males above 16 years old. They set up checkpoints at the entry and exit points of the barangay and held base near the highway. They said that they would be staying indefinitely and would be leaving two or three troops per sitio when they finally leave--as if anyone in her right mind was begging for them to remain.

Tanga lang ang magtataka o natutuwa sa paglipana ng militar sa ating mga komunidad. Dapat lamang na managawan ang taumbayan para sa pagpapalayas ng pesteng ahente ng pasismo sa ating mga tahanan. At hindi dapat pumayag ang mga matitinong sundalo na gamitin sila sa ganitong paraan ng gobyerno ni GMA.

Small-time connivers, big-time consequences

The breadth and extent of AFP interference in our communities is bad enough. It also doesn't help that there are absolutely spineless local officials who consent to the militarization of their areas of jurisdiction. Barangay captains, mayors, University officials, congressmen, who have not even dared utter a watery whimper of protest against this back-to-the-1970s state of political repression, irregardless of whether the consequences of their actions may spell out the difference between life or death for targets of military surveillance.

I have no absolutely respect whatsoever for such wimps! Nakakasuklam sila, they only serve as unwitting or intentional accomplices to the state of impunity and political repression that the Arroyo government is forcing down our throats. Their names should be jotted down and barred from holding any public office in the future, not even as a tanod.

Those “public servants” could very well have exercised their responsibilities as supposed “representatives” of their constituents and refused to let the military get away with what they do, with such impunity and brazenness. My brother-in-law recalled that there were other places in their province which the military couldn't infiltrate, precisely because their barangay officials rightly refused to give in to such pressure. Yung isang barangay captain nakipaghamunan ng barilan na lang kung papasok ang AFP sa kanyang teritoryo. Unfortunately, many others do not have the same kind of guts and sense. Others who do, such as Naujan Vice-Mayor Atty. Juvy Magsino or Tarlac city councilor Abel Ladera, are treacherously killed by the same assassins they have protested against.

Walang ipinagkaiba ang mga mga nagbibingi-bingihan at nagbubulag-bulagang opisyales na ito sa walang kwentang Melo Commission at Task Force Usig. Pagkatapos, kapag may pinaslang na naman na miyembro ng ANAKPAWIS o ng BAYAN Muna ng mga armadong naka-motor, kapag may mga dinakip ng mga naka-fatigue, kapag may pinatay na aktibista tulad nina Isaias, Choy, at marami pang iba, iilang lang sila ng ulo at sasabihing wala silang kinalaman sa mga pangyayari, na walang koneksyon ang mga pagpaslang sa paglipana ng militar at ng mga intel sa ating mga komunidad?

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Forwarded through email:

May MARTIAL LAW na ba sa Maynila?

Ano ang dahilan ng pagtigil ng 202th IB ng AFP sa Pandacan?

May apat na araw ng nakatigl ang 2 platoon ng 202th IB ng AFP sa 8 baragay sa Pandacan Manila. Nakafull uniform at nakapangcombat, dala ang mahahaba at matataas na kalibre ng baril ang bitbit ng mga sundalo ng AFP. Ang 8 barangay sa Pandacan na nakadeploy ang mga nasabing sundalo ay sa Brgy 870, 871, 872, 868,866,867 at sa Baranagy Pandacan. Nagmistulang barracks at Headquarters nila ang mga barangay hall? Bakit sila nasa pandacan? Bakit sa pandacan?

Ayon sa mga residente, hindi maipaliwanag ng mga sundalo ang kanilang tungkulin sa pagtigil sa Pandacan. Ayon sa kanila nais daw nilang alamin ang opinion ng mga tao sa pamamalakad ng gobyerno? At tutulong daw sila sa peace and order. Ngunit sa kanilang pagroronda at pagbahay bahay sa umaga at gabi ay itinatanong nila sa mga residente kung meron daw bang mga membro ng Partylist sa nasabing lugar.? Meron day bang mga sumasama sa rally? Meron daw mga aktibista?

Ayon pa sa mga sundalo, Sila daw ay hindi sasangkot sa gulo sa komunidad, dahil police matters daw ito, pero kung kakailanganin ay mapipilitan daw silang makealam? Ano kayang gulo ang sinsabi ng mga sundalo? Sila na ang tanod sa gabi, sila pa ang magpapatupad ng mga serbisyong kinakailangan sa komunidad.

Hinahanap nila ang mga kasapi ng BAYAN MUNA, ANAKPAWIS, GABRIELA at ANAKBAYAN, “ayon sa mga sundalo. Dahil daw ang mga nasabing partylist ay madaling malapitan sa mga problema ng bayan at tumutulong daw sila”. Sa isang ordinaryong tao, madaling maunawaan na ang mga nasabing dahilan {paghahanap sa mga aktibista} ang tunay na pakay ng pagtigil ng mga sundalo sa komunidad.

Pinangunahan ni Major Cabas at Lt. Col Feliciano ang mga sundalo. Sa kanilang mission order sila daw ay mananatili ng dalawang lingo sa komunidad. Matapos daw ay may papalit na sa kanila at maaari daw na manatili hanggang enero ng isang taon? Sadarating na linggo, Nobyembre 12, nagpapatawag sila ng pagpupulong sa mga residente, sa ganap na 8 ng umaga sa bawat nasabing Barangay.

Inaanyayahan namin ang mga kapatid sa MEDIA at mga tagapagtaguyod ng
karapatang pantao na puntahan ang nasabing mga Barangay sa Pandacan anumang oras mula ngayon.

Iyon Pala Ang Ibig Sabihin ng TAG

My very good friend Iris left a comment with the word "TAG" on it. Took some time for a social ignoramus like me to figure out what that actually meant, but now that I've been "tagged" to do so, here's my share of answers to that weird pass-on survey/questionnaire:

Seven things I want to do before I die

1. Write 30 to all the research and book projects I've conceptualized in the bathroom.
2. Know Japan and all of the 7,100 islands of the Philippines like the back of my hand.
3. Do my share in driving really eeevil people outta this planet!
4. Honor thy father and mother.
5. Understand why the world is what it is today.
6. Raise a kid with Gans, and teach him/her all we know.
7. Make art instead of writing about it.

Seven things I cannot do

1. Carry a tune successfully before a massive crowd (but how I wish I could. Oh well).
2. Wear ruffles. NOT in this lifetime!
3. Endure sycophants and know-it-alls. Freaks I can tolerate, pretenders not.
4. Kiss a frog (why should anyone?)
5. Be nice to the nasty denizens of this earth (head-butt and bitch back if ye must!)
6. Kiss ass as a career move, whether literally or figuratively.
7. Go beyond 1^st year college math.

Seven things that attract me to both a boy and a girl

1. Brains and sense. Why we can't have more of these types still beats me.
2. That beautiful but elusive human quality called kindness.
3. Frank, honest, and witty banter.
4. Commitment to work (A bit ho-hum but very crucial in the long run)
5. A keen sense of social justice.
6. Shared quirks (like a fondness for cats, booksales, disarray, and puns)
7. An honest, straightforward gaze (sounds funny, but there are indeed people who exhibit this quality, chinky-eyed people included)

Seven things that I say most often

1. Shne!
2. %^*$&$*(%£)%)%*&ng (insert name of government official here) , sana kunin na siya ni Lord.
3. Pa-edit nga!
4. Kelan ang deadline nyan? (Sabay kakamot sa ulo)
5. First thing in the morning: £$%*! (Insert time) na!
6. Hayup ka talaga! (to our dachshund, Pitoy)
7. Ayan, buhay pa naman (in response to the question, kamusta ka na?)

Seven books I love to read (for the nth time)

1. The Book of Embraces, by Eduardo Galeano
2. Venceremos, by Ernesto Guevarra (my copy illegally confiscated by some shitty post office official. May he be afflicted with egg-sized boils for the rest of his corrupt and hopefully short life!)
3. Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
4. Art and Lies by Jeanette Winterson
5. Snow Country, by Yasunari Kawabata
6. The Painted Word, by Tom Wolfe (ya, the guy makes more sense than most art writers)
7. Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott (first full-length book my mom gave me as a kid, made a real impression ever since)

Seven movies I could watch over and over again
(not necessarily favorites, but only those I won’t tire of watching)

1. Orapronobis (the thin line between art and reality)
2. The Never-Ending Story (20 years after first watching it I can still hear its theme song in my head and dream about having Falcor for a pet, hehe)
3. Hotel Rwanda (a tribute to unexpected heroes and how shitty the UN and the US can get)
4. Azumi (will not lead you to the meaning of life but can keep you fully-awake on 8-hour bus trips, I guarantee)
5. Amelie (until it loses its novelty)
6. Life is Beautiful (it really is)
7. (Anything from Studio Ghibli!)

Seven people I'm tagging to do this survey

None. The darned chain ends with me!

Bagong post, lumang sulatin

After losing most of my back files to (now) non-functional floppy disks and house-hopping, I tried 'googling' (aba! verb na pala ito!), hoping to locate previous articles and art reviews I couldn't find copies of (archiving has recently become a pastime).

Some offhand results: old reviews of shows by Pete Jimenez, Rock Drilon, Briccio Santos, and Pete Daroy in the PDI, circa 2003. Art for Oust's Sake, an article for Bulatlat which I thoroughly enjoyed doing. And a review of Displaying Filipinos way back in 1998.

Also found the text of a tribute to Anakpawis Mindoro Oriental Secretary-General Isaias Manano Jr., who was murdered by assassins on April 28, 2004. Isaias, a dear friend, was among the first Anakpawis leaders to have been killed under the Arroyo administration during the 2004 elections. Th statistics have risen to atrocious highs since then; rarely does it sink in that the victims were real people with hopes, dreams and stories to tell.

Of Dissidents, Déjà vu and the DOJ

There was a forum on the ‘Cuban Five’ held a few days ago at UP Manila sponsored by Amistad, the Philippine-Cuban Friendship society. After rushing around QC the entire morning and afternoon, we figured that we could make it to the activity and went to attend.

I don’t know why, but entering the CAS Building in UP Manila for the first time suddenly filled me with saccharine distaste and dread. Maybe because of its startling nearness to the Department of Justice (both in terms of proximity, architectural structure and design motifs), which certain odious, ethically-unstable and morally-bankrupt mammals are known to inhabit on weekdays, office hours mostly (yuch!).

Maybe all had to do with the architectural history of the Padre Faura compound, where UP Manila, the PGH and the DOJ all are. But it was an eerie perception nonetheless: stepping into the cramped CAS Building and feeling as if I had been transported into the bowels of the Justice Secretary’s fiefdom just a stone’s throw or a bakod away. A few months back, after a picket in front of the DOJ to protest the political harassment against Ka Bel, I spent a few minutes inside the DOJ building to look for an acquaintance, secretly hoping that I wouldn’t come across my favorite character, a certain antiquated loony, there.

Anyway, we managed to make it in time for the forum, catching the first few minutes of a documentary on the five Cuban nationals arrested in Florida in 1998 and convicted by the US federal court in Miami on more than 20 counts, facing life sentences. For monitoring the movements of exiled groups suspected of carrying out US-sponsored terrorist activities which have killed around three thousand Cubans, the Cuban Five were subjected to a year and a half in solitary confinement while the trial was ongoing and are now jailed in total isolation from the world. But in Cuba and in other countries, thousands of people are clamoring for their release and hailing the five men as heroes for their motherland.

The appalling judicial spectacles in the case of the Cuban Five in the US were all too familiar, hit too close to home: after an Appeals Court in Georgia unanimously overturned the Miami court’s ruling convicting the Five, its plenary inexplicably and suddenly issued a reconsideration of its finding August last year. This indefinitely extends the Five’s unjust detention—definitely an unwelcome development since they have already spent around eight years alone in jail to date.

Suddenly, the US court’s flipflop painfully reminded me of Ka Crispin Beltran’s legal quest for liberty under the Arroyo dictatorship, the prospects of gaining a just and prompt resolution seem to be equivalent to winning the Sweepstakes jackpot thrice in a row (in short: asa ka pa!).

Take this: a day after the declaration of a ‘State of Emergency’, Ka Bel is accosted by fully-armed police and ‘invited for questioning’ to the Camp Crame. There, he is arrested and detained using an antiquated and void 21-year old warrant (normally you’d think that such a document would have more historical than utilitarian value). Absolutely absurd! His lawyers prepare to haul him out of jail. Then, in the middle of the night, Ka Bel is brought to a QC court where charges of sedition are to be filed against him. His lawyers patiently point out that Ka Bel as a congressman has immunity from arrest in such cases, so please quit the pathetic charade and set him free. The police don’t, and keep him in solitary detention instead. Then, Ka Bel is ‘invited for a medical check-up at the PNP Hospital’ but is brought to the CIDG instead where this time and against his will, (tadaa!!!) DOJ prosecutors hold another “inquest” where rebellion charges concocted out of thin air are used to further justify his arrest and detention. Given a chance, maybe the DOJ would have also accused Ka Bel of killing Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio.

Mga loko talaga. Kung ako lang ang tatanungin, hindi na dapat sineryoso yang DOJ at ang PNP. If it were only that easy to just snub their existence and simply consign them to the dumping grounds and garbage impactors of history for being such freaks! But the sad reality is that the state is in a position to use coercive force. It’s not a simple case of deciding to ‘make patol’ or not (as GMA would say in her colegiala Tagalog), or saying ‘deeeal’ or ‘no deeeeeal!’ (complete with Kris Aquino’s hand gestures) and walking out of the studio, chin held up high. Ka Bel’s in jail for eight months and counting, his captors from the PNP, DOJ and the Palace aren’t.

If it were only that easy to say that Ka Bel’s illegal arrest and arbitrary detention will eventually be vindicated by the courts. The legal battle for Ka Bel’s freedom, unfortunately, only showcases how dysfunctional the Philippine justice system can get under the Arroyo (or any other anti-people) administration. Some notes during the past eight months of Ka Bel’s continuing ordeal: The first judge junks the rebellion charge against the Batasan 5 and allows Ka Bel’s much-needed transfer to a hospital, and is suspiciously asked by the DOJ to inhibit herself from the case. The case is raffled off to a second judge who, in a three-sentence order and in undue haste, affirms that there is probable cause in Ka Bel’s case and issues the equivalent of a retroactive warrant of arrest—then suddenly inhibits from the case when Ka Bel’s lawyers indignantly protest the ruling. The third judge reverses first judge’s decision and consolidates Ka Bel’s case with that of the Batasan 6. The fourth judge only adds another rubber stamp to Ka Bel’s detention by denying the Motion for Reconsideration on second judge’s decision on probable cause.

Ka Bel’s lawyers are now planning to bring the case up to the Supreme Court. Ka Bel also recently filed a case at the Ombudsman against his captors, but I’m not getting my hopes high in the aftermath of the Ombudswoman’s lutong macao ruling on the controversial Mega-Pacific deal.

All throughout these developments, the DOJ and its prosecutors have done absolutely nothing to ensure the dispensation of due process, or even humanitarian consideration. It has adjudged Ka Bel guilty even in the presence of incontrovertible evidence proving otherwise. It has filed charge after charge, no matter how fabricated, just to ensure that Ka Bel stays in jail. It has called for a “speedy trial”, at a time when the Batasan 6 have appealed to suspend the hearings, as the Supreme Court said. It has even coldly opposed Ka Bel’s appeal to be transferred to a REAL hospital (the PNP Hospital being nothing but a glorified first aid kit) for urgent medical treatment.

The details of their detention and their legal struggles for liberty are sordid and appalling enough, but this has not, in any way, broken the morale or the fighting spirits of political prisoners such as the Cuban Five and of Ka Bel. They may be on different sides of the globe, but they share the same dream that another world is possible: a world where imperialist domination shall cease to be, where resources and services may be more equitably distributed among the people and among countries, where people will be able to live out their full potential as human beings and not be tied down to problems as basic as hunger and survival. They have a clear perspective of what they are struggling for, and will not easily bow to the repressive mechanisms of the colluding powers-that-be.

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Speaking of Cuba, Granma International recently published a short article by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (yes, of the One Hundred Years of Solitude fame) entitled The Fidel Castro Whom I Know. By all means, log on now to Granma’s site and do read the work, it’s an extraordinary, awe-inspiring and intimate profile of the Fidel Castro whom you and I on this side of the impoverished world do not know.

Some excerpts:

“HIS devotion to the word. His power of seduction. He goes to seek out problems where they are. The impetus of inspiration is very much part of his style. Books reflect the breadth of his tastes very well. He stopped smoking to have the moral authority to combat tobacco addiction. He likes to prepare food recipes with a kind of scientific fervor. He keeps himself in excellent physical condition with various hours of gymnastics daily and frequent swimming. Invincible patience. Ironclad discipline. The force of his imagination stretches him to the unforeseen. As important as learning to work is to learn how to rest…”

“…He has the habit of firing rapid questions….[that] he makes in instantaneous bursts until discovering the whys and wherefores of the whys and wherefores of the final whys and wherefores. When a visitor from Latin America gave him a hasty figure on the rice consumption of his compatriots, he made his mental calculations and said: “How odd, each person eats four pounds of rice per day.” His masterly tactic is to ask about things that he knows, to confirm his information. And in certain cases to measure the caliber of his interlocutor, and deal with him/her accordingly…”

“…When he talks with people in the street, his conversation regains the expressiveness and crude frankness of genuine affection. They call him: Fidel. They surround him without risks, they address him informally, they argue with him, they contradict him, they claim him, with a channel of immediate transmission from which the truth gushes forth. It is then that one discovers the unusual human being that the reflection of his own image does not let us see. This is the Fidel Castro that I believe I know. A man of austere habits and insatiable illusions, with an old-fashioned formal education of cautious words and subdued tones and incapable of conceiving any idea that is not colossal…

“…He dreams that his scientists will find the final cure for cancer and has created a foreign policy of world reach in an island that is 84 times smaller than that of his principal enemy. He has the conviction that the greatest achievement of human beings is the solid training of their conscience and that moral incentives, more than material ones, are capable of changing the world and driving history.”

Collegian Under Assault

I spent a substantial portion of my college life writing and editing for the Philippine Collegian. If only for sentimental reasons, being in Kule yielded experiences that I wouldn’t have traded for anything else in the world: having late-night meaning-of-life conversations, interviewing all sorts of people, documenting events in Diliman and beyond, negotiating a libel case, and engaging in confrontations of all types and intensities. Colleagues who I worked with until the crack of dawn became my closest friends or comrades—Mykel, Raffy, Boom, Iris, Faj, Jordan, Charlie, and all. And it was in the course of doing research for articles and finding speakers for the Kule’s weekly EDs (educational discussions) where I met my husband.

I had my share of political awakenings through Kule. It was here, in Solidaridad and in CEGP where we worked with other student papers struggling against repression, harassment, technical deficiencies, and financial difficulties. Through Kule, we met activists such as Donato Continente, now free after being unjustly jailed on false charges for over fifteen years.

For all the locking of horns that being committed entails, being in Kule eventually made me realize how sweet and precious it was to be able to freely fight for the right principles. And how imperative it was to protect that freedom at all costs.

Which is why I was flabbergasted, if only for a few seconds, to hear from a staffer during the September 21 rally how that the UP administration has blocked Kule from printing its issues for over a month already. Unbelievable. Never in recent history has the Kule been ever subjected to such outright and actual financial hostaging by the administration.The fact that the Kule’s funds are now being witheld against the will of this year’s editorial board only speaks of the blunt and blatant coercion being employed by University officials.

Up to this writing, the administration reportedly refuses to disburse the Kule’s printing funds. From being among the three weekly student papers circulated throughout the Philippines, this year’s Kule has been confined to merely uploading updates on its website and e-group. A few days back, its writers began reading aloud their articles in the AS Lobby, in the absence of an actual printed issue. I’m not sure if Kule has resorted to DIY publishing as a peryodikit, but wouldn’t be surprised if it does so soon. For all the trouble they’ve been through for the past few weeks, it’s admirable for the present Kule staff to be fighting for their right to remain free.

Never would I consent to the Collegian being manacled like a slave. And, I hope, neither do you. Fight for freedom and autonomy, support the campaign at www.philippinecollegian.net.