"In the dark times, will there also be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times." - Brecht

i n s t i s

Aklat ng Bayan

Arkibong Bayan

Sinewaya

Pinoy Weekly

Brutal Cowardice

Watching Jovito Palparan on television campaigning – fumbling with words, perspiring as he struggled to make a coherent statement in defense of the utterly indefensible – a realization came to me: the man is a complete coward.

Trading his camouflage uniform for that ridiculous yellow chaleco, The Butcher does not scare anyone. Not the least his seatmate in the show, Dr. Rey Lesaca, head of Bayan Muna and a noted psychiatrist who I expect had his fare share of psychopaths in his chair. Physically, The Butcher looked nothing like his reputation: his face permanently contorted, his eyes constantly looking down, his voice quivering like a kid off to the prom. He looked frail, no trace of the fearsome military man he had been portrayed as.

But beyond his pathetic physical presence, Palparan shows his complete cowardice by running for office via a party-list that, as demostrated by his vain effort to explain what Bantay was, he knows nothing about. He had never been in that kind of line of fire (although some argue he never had much experience in actual battle either), and he must have been scared shitless.

About two weeks ago, after a press conference, Marie Hilao-Enriquez, secretary general of Karapatan (the organization that Palparan loves to hate because it stands against everything about him), shared to me their thoughts on The Butcher’s foray into politics: “Just like (Rolando) Abadilla and (Rodolfo) Aguinaldo [who were to Marcos then what Palparan is to Arroyo now], Palparan is running to escape persecution,” she said. “He knows we are determined to make him legally answerable for his crimes.”

How ironic that the man who Gloria says “fights the enemy, not backing down until he succeeds in bringing down the dreaded night in our communities” would now run as far away from prosecution as possible by running for Congress as a nominee of an alleged partylist (Comelec sources tell of a P3-Million payment from The Butcher to secure a first nomination). In contrast, we see the likes of Satur Ocampo, Crispin Beltran and other militant leaders of sectors Palparan and Arroyo considers to be their enemy, gamely fighting the harassments, physical threats, and all sorts of dirty tricks hauled at them.

It is my belief that bravery is always on the side of righteousness, and that monsters like Palparan must never be feared. As Eduardo Galeano says: "The torturer is a functionary. The dictator is a functionary. Armed bureaucrats, who lose their jobs if they don't do their tasks efficiently. That, and nothing more than that. They are not extraordinary monsters. We won't grant them that grandeur."

A few weeks ago, a friend told me about “Pan’s Labyrinth”, a film that he describes as “tungkol kay Palparan”. Actually, it is about a girl named Ofelia who, with her pregnant mother, came to live in a military camp of Franco’s army. The camp is ruled by a Captain Vidal, an unabashed fascist who had empragnated Ofelia's mother and awaits the birth of his unborn son. Vidal as Palparan is the head of a unit tasked by Generalissimo Franco to crush the remaining rebels in the hills after their defeat in the Spanish Civil War.

Vidal as Palparan is the guerrillas’ executioner and torturer, employing immense brutality on enemies caught or mere civilians suspected of sympathizing with the rebels. Meanwhile, Ofelia is caught in her own world of fauns and fairies, of a mystical kingdom that awaits freedom with her return as “princess”. The film ends in a brutal juncture of imagination and reality where evil is evil and those who abhore it must bravely stand up against it. Ofelia, innocent and therefore unafraid of death, is pittied against the monster Captain Vidal whose brutality is matched only by the latter's cowardice in the face of actual battle.

Posted by: kr.guda at 07:55 | link | comments (2)

'Rock is Cool, But the Struggle is Better ' (Indigo Girls)

I’ve never heard or seen anybody play the guitar like Cynthia Alexander. Except, of course, her brother, Joey Ayala. First time I saw her play – it was UP Fair, ’98 or ’99, I think – my jaw literally dropped. It was magnificent playing, but the best of it is that she seemed to be playing with such ease you thought it was an easy thing to do. I’ve seen guitar virtuosos play before, but nothing like her.

I read somewhere that Cynthia was once awarded the bassist of the year by an Asian musical institution. She was then, as far as I know, an electric bass player for the supergroup Hayp. The only thing I remember about Hayp was the song “I’ll wait for you / for how long it takes / Baby, I’ll wait for you / Believe in me baby…” during the 80s. It was a pretty standard pop song, but even from that you can discern Cynthia’s superior bass playing.

Centuries later, her album “Insomnia and other Lullabies” came out. My friend – let’s hide her under the name “Niña Turtle “ – had bought a tape of that album and would play it over and over in our house. It was the mid-90s and everybody was into Yano and Eraserheads (or Agot and Ariel, take your pick). Niña Turtle hated the E’Heads to death, and she loved Cynthia. Basking in the glory of fellow “iskolars ng bayan” at the top of the charts, I didn’t make much of “Insomnia”. That is, until, Niña Turtle tried playing some of the songs (she was an average guitar player, but better than most) and couldn't. She asked me if I could “kapa” (term for getting the chords of a song by ear) the song “Comfort in your strangeness”. It was relatively easy. That is, until I heard “Malaya”.

“Malaya” is Cynthia Alexander at her guitar-playing best. The intro reminds me of another woman guitar virtuoso, Joni Mitchell. But whereas Joni was more into the softer side, Cythnia’s music had an edge to them. It’s not deafening arena rock, but its edgy.

Best of all, it was about that – it was about freedom. “We are a falling star,” she sings, “A crooked stair / a fragile pair…” We are not perfect, but we are capable of achieving greatness and freedom, of dreaming of “summers yet”. “Flying over nameless skies / and unknown dune together / strong are we seeing truth / beyond illusion fearing nothing / we are free…” Although vague, the lyrics clearly evoke for me a feeling of freedom, a longing for truth, and a sense of limitless possibilities.

Three times I heard her play that song in activist events. First was during the Southern Tagalog Exposure’s Gawad Eden Marcellana two years ago. Second was during the huge demonstration in Makati on Women’s Day last year. Third was a few weeks ago, at the Gabriela office, during an opening of a mask show exhibit. Many of her songs are intensely personal, from “Comfort in your strangeness” to “Knowing there is only now” to "U & I”, but I always am glad when artists, especially great ones like Cynthia, make that transcendence from personal to (slightly) political. I heard somewhere, for instance, that Rickie Lee Jones, a great singer-songwriter with intensely personal music, recently made an album with references to current political issues like Bush’s war in Iraq. I suppose artists like Cynthia and Rickie Lee Jones are sensitive enough not to be insulated by the inequities and tragedies around them.

Posted by: kr.guda at 07:13 | link | comments

Paparazzi

It was around midnight, and I was on my way home when a companion and I stopped by a sarisari store in Pureza Street, Manila, near the PUP extension building. We were sipping (not sniffing, haha) Coke when something came into our view that almost made the Coke come out of our noses. Four soldiers in full battle gear, their M-16 rifles by their side, were walking towards us.

It was surreal, like we were transported to that place in Fernando Meirelles' "City of God" where goons and heavily-armed drug dealers stalk the streets. In this case, however, the goons were government troops, much more better-dressed and -armed.

For a while, I was tempted to bring out my camera to "shoot" the soldiers. Colleagues from Pinoy Weekly were not so successful in trying to capture images of those soldiers in the urban poor communities. When our photographer John Clemente was in Payatas, he had to hide in a bush while the soldiers pranced in the street. He ended up taking shots of the soldiers' heels from around a hundred meters away. Similarly, Ilang Quijano tried to photograph soldiers stationed in Tondo from a third floor of a barangay building, and ended up being chased away by the offended soldiers.

Looks like this is a time to haunt those soldiers, paparazzi-style.

Posted by: kr.guda at 06:56 | link | comments (1)