Crispin Beltran

I woke up yesterday morning and thought that Crispin Beltran was still alive twenty-four hours before. For many, again, the worst feeling: regret. Had he been indisposed to fix his daughter’s house’s roof, he wouldn’t have suffered from heart arrest and fallen. He would still be enjoying the domestication of the rainy season with his family, taking rest for the coming parliamentary fights for a higher worker’s wage. My dad, who used to resist my activist advocacy, admires the old man. He called me upon watching television news of the labor leader’s death.

Some commented that he shouldn’t have climbed up that roof. Many wondered why a congressman had to work on house repair himself. TV viewers saw his daughter’s house; we too had watched his poor house in Batasan, Quezon City whenever features of his simple living are catapulted for mass media consumption. Pinakita lamang ng pangyayari ang payak na katotohanang hindi nagpayaman si Ka Bel. Still others were disappointed that he didn’t die facing the bullets of this fascist government. Ka Bel himself idealized that he wanted to die in the heat of the struggle. It is not how one died that is the crucible of biographical judgment. It is how one lived fighting for the rights of the oppressed that is ultimately important. The last moment of our ‘heroes’ – Rizal and Ninoy, Bonifacio and Rolando Olalia – that turned them into ‘martyrs’ is just the icing on the cake, that flash of visual-aural drama which will soon be monumentalized in plentiful narratives of nation-building, identity-formation, community-creation…the never-ending revolution.

With a touch of starstruck hysteria, I remembered the time when I had a close encounter with him. I went to the Batasang Pambansa for a youth and student protest on education issues linked to workers’ rights. I rode a tricycle and there was Ka Bel who ‘tripped’ with me at the back of the driver’s seat toward the dirty House (of Representatives). He was not yet a congressman then. This was the man I had read as one of the progressive movement’s leaders who were imprisoned by Marcos, escaped from prison and joined the armed revolution of the peasants in the countryside. Veterans of the labor movement also intimated the painful moment when the Kilusang Mayo Uno formally and publicly divided itself. The 1993 Labor Day mobilization saw the ranks of KMU depleted with the overwhelming majority rejecting its rectification of economistic campaigns attached to political prostitution and military adventurism. This I learned years ago, in integration programs with urban poor communities and workers' picket lines. Ka Bel was among the many who persevered in realigning the worker’s movement with the general people’s campaign for justice, freedom, independence and democracy. He did not sell the workers' wage and benefits campaign. He was a genuine labor leader, not a labor dealer. Slowly and surely many rejoined the national democratic movement and earned victories for the people’s rights and welfare. One after another, brutal regimes are being toppled with the seeds of fundamental change planted for the future. Crispin Beltran linked our struggle here in the Philippines with the anti-imperialist struggles of people the world over. He firmly cemented the basic alliance of his ranks—the workers—with the peasants in the people’s democratic revolution. It is his abiding belief that this country will never progress without feudalism being ended definitively. He fiercely campaigned, inside the parliament and on the streets, against bureaucrat capitalism. We now observe with caution, akin to Walter Benjamin’s admonition of the historic-theological battle against Evil that “even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.” Ka Bel lived ‘til the end leading and fighting for the coming times when there will be no more exploitation and oppression.

Patay na si Kasamang Crispin Beltran. Mabuhay si Ka Bel! Mabuhay ang kilusang paggawa! Mabuhay ang sambayanang Pilipino! Mabuhay ang pambansa demokratikong pakikibaka!

Image from http://www.arkibongbayan.org/2006-03March17-KaBelProfile/pix2
/cb_PIC_copy.jpg


10:53 pm
thursday, 22 may 2008

hurriedly wrote and submitted an updated curriculum vitae this afternoon. our college in the university of the philippines, manila is calling for promotion. i rummaged through my memory and emails to pick things that would help in that government peon's wish of getting promoted...for what?...for a few hundred pesos i think! what have i done in the three years since i started teaching? now dude, remember even the little things that you do will be pondered on as points for an individual teacher's assessment. so i wrote: that i headed the poster-making contest in one department week celebration when we were enslaved to produce some cultural activity to match our deparment's name; that i served as one of the judges in a student short filmmaking contest; that i participated in a college orientation and semester planning in puerto galera; that i uttered a poem in a poetry-reading program; that i served as a reactor to a peasant youth group's forum on cuba and the philippines. i was tempted to include that i danced (yeah!!!) in the "not compulsary but damn you newcomers if you don't join and are not embarassed onstage" contests held every semester. not that i belittle these efforts but it seems that these are the only matters majority of the faculty can officially claim as creditable toil in the university. we are overworked and underpaid! how can we write so-called intellectual stuff when we are burdened by too many subject preparations to make, too many students to discuss with, instruct/educate, too many papers too check and too many grudges to mention! from insipid administrators to neurotic colleagues to grimy padre faura-taft-ermita. to top it all...we get salaries that compete with our rich students' snack and gimik allowance! modesty aside, i had written essays and in fact was able to get that refereed publication well before finishing my master's thesis but definitely we could do more if...--->>> we are paid like at least 20,000 pesos man! and teach 9 units with just 25 students at the most. you know, the objective condition of scholarship is free time. pierre bourdieu points this out with the meaning of schole, leisure or free time; meaning that we can only read a lot, think a lot more and write a little when we have the freedom from economic necessity; the usual wise is to finish the necessary work, find some 'raket' especially for those who have kids to feed and humanize.

3:49 am
friday, 16 may 2008

Saw CNN's recent report on disaster relief in China. The Red Army sings songs saying there's no hardship they can't overcome before distributing provisions for the residents of earthquake-torn areas. Inheritors of Mao's army are taunted by the global media for the ritual and the poor view the practice with derision as, clearly, their chance of overcoming the catastrophe is delayed by the poor soldiers' singing. This is what the people's liberation army had turned into: mere singers of the poor's despair, chanting pretend hopes for the people. But not absolutely true for in many places observers see and the villagers feel the army taking sincere efforts to work it all out. In one area the local communist party secretary's weeping was interrupted by an emergency call. He fled to the scene of relief operations. He lost his wife, kids and relatives in the calamity and is now intent to save as many lives as possible. A poignant occasion. Until when can we see such debris of 'revolutionary attitude' in today's China?
***
GMA's now offering rewards to defeat the New People's Army - PDI, 14 may. Bounty for the greedy military officials who would counterfeit results of the counter-insurgency campaign. More military violations to come for rebel soldiers, their families and friends, me, they, and you who oppose this government. It's the capitalist competitive trick: laborers and subalterns excel and do everything to claim that prize.

1:49 am
thursday, 15 may 2008

!

So excited to see the third season of House. A friend had just returned my copies of the third and fourth seasons so I'm just about to watch it. I bought Manix Abrera's fantastic Kikomachine 3 and Kikomachine 4. From teasing students on the pages of the Philippine Collegian the comic strip has now gone on to become a national bestseller, entertaining mostly angsty fans. I will read this together with Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, the American journalist's account of workers living the life of poverty in the world's richest country.

3:56 am
saturday, 10 may 2008

Gelacio Guillermo on Eugene Gloria

Hi people! I have read this at bulatlat.com a few days ago. The article is nationalist writer Gelacio Guillermo's reaction to a poem about him written by Eugene Gloria close to a decade ago.

Reply to Eugene Gloria

In this open letter, noted poet and literary scholar Gelacio Guillermo responds to a poem addressed to him by a U.S-based writer and professor named Eugene Gloria. Their “exchange,” among other things, tackles issues related to Philippine society and culture. Below his open letter is Gloria’s poem.

BY GELACIO GUILLERMO
CULTURE
Posted by Bulatlat
Vol. VIII, No. 13, May 4-10, 2008

Dear Eugene,

I came to read your poem “To Gellacio Guillermo in Iowa City.” (Literary Review, 22 March 2000) only this month when a poet-friend e-mailed me a copy. Despite the mis-spelling proceeding from mispronunciation of foreign names so typical among North Americans, I thought I was being referred to in the poem and would like to take issue with you on the question of the poet’s responsibility when he takes on the life history of a dead or living person as subject for creative work.

The trajectory of the poem runs along this line: ‘Gellacio’ goes to the “mountains” >> ‘Gellacio’ “renounce[s] the revolution” >> ‘Gellacio’ sweats it out under the “Iowa sun” (as a field hand?) >> ‘Gellacio’ as manservant to a devout wealthy matron.

For a poem this short, the time span is indeed long, extending down to the present (note the change in tenses). Only two facts about Gelacio need concern us here: first, he was a UP (University of the Philippines) working student from 1957 to 1964, for an AB degree in English; and second, he was handed a fellowship (he did not apply) at the International Writing Program in Iowa University from October 1970 to April 1971 and returned to the Philippines to resume teaching at the U.P. He kept to his post up to Sept. 21, 1972, when he decided to quit upon the declaration of martial law by Marcos.

Given these lackluster facts, the speaking persona insinuates that as a student I went to the “mountains,” meaning that I had joined the CPP-NPA (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army) forces in the guerrilla fronts. Now, in the early sixties, this idea did not yet exist, and when it did during the late sixties onward, there was enough movement work to keep me in Manila, at the same time trying to help my family survive the most difficult years of martial rule. In short, I was not our dear Eman Lacaba.

As to renouncing the revolution, nothing could be more preposterous, although for some former revolutionaries who did/do renounce it, this betrayal can be rewarding (they are given government posts, for one) or dangerous especially to those who engage in counter-insurgency activities. Gelacio during his activist years may not have been an efficient movement worker or may have caused problems to his collectives, but he had never, nor will he ever, renounce something which he holds to be the best that is happening in our country today. Without this revolution the Filipino people have nothing to live, work and fight for to transform society. This is the dream (as Lenin uses the word) for a new people’s history.

No, Gelacio did not dream “of corn and the language of Iowa.” My country has enough corn (have you tried Cornix from Vigan?) and enough of the English language (or a species of the world’s scores of Englishes) for bureaucrats to pen anti-people executive orders and for OFWs, the regime’s main export of warm bodies and source of revenue to keep the economy afloat, to follow orders from their bosses. If I had dreamt of a foreign country or city, it was Paris for too much reading (in English!) of the Symbolist poets of the 19th century in the poetry class of Virgie Moreno who turned us all into poseurs this side of the Pasig River. Yes, I’d been to the Louvre. Did you know that Arthur Rimbaud was a propagandist of the Paris Commune?

The reference to the indigenous groups herded like cattle at the 1904 St. Louis Exhibition betrays the continuing fascination of Americans for the exotic, and worse, their nonchalance regarding the fate of peoples subjected to imperialist policies of their government. Gelacio is clear enough about his anti-imperialist stand in his poetry to have evoked such a romanticized image of an early injustice against our fellow country women and men and children. By the way, there were no Manobos, much less a breechclout-wearing Manobo prince, in that menagerie concocted by American hubris. The “brindled skin” has a far earlier provenance: the black slaves during those centuries of slave trading were assessed, like livestock in the market, according to their animal strength and the gloss of their hide. “Brindled” originates from the late ME “brended,” a variety of “branded.” Vestiges of racist arrogance of the West die hard.

The speaking persona says she reads ‘Gellacio’ “in English.” If she were indeed ‘Gellacio’s’ classmate and that was a long time ago, she can now try reading Gelacio in Filipino because that is the true language of a Filipino poet.

‘Gellacio’/Gelacio can never be her or anybody’s manservant.

And, yes, there is no truth to what this illegitimate President Gloria here said last month in Hong Kong, that the Filipino people are “the most pro-American people, more pro-American than the Americans themselves.” That’s what she is, a Bush bitch.

You’re American. Speak for us in a true way.

The point in all this belaboring is, what drove you to write a poem like this, a direct address/statemental verse that’s neither fish nor fowl? That speaking persona (I am named; why isn’t she?) turns an actually existing person (see Poezie Centrum) into a creature of her sacerdotal, manorial, white supremacist fancies. You and I hardly know each other although it’s now so easy to Google/Yahoo! through the Internet to find out how we are faring in our respective literary endeavors. I did ask my son to access entries under your name from his computer since I don’t have one myself, nor do I maintain an e-mail address. I occasionally use any of the computers in the house like a typewriter mainly for encoding purposes. If you care to reply, you may use aliceguillermo@yahoo.com.

My best wishes to you and Karen.

Gelacio Guillermo

------o0o------

To Gellacio Guillermo in Iowa City.

Source: The Literary Review
Publication Date: 22-MAR-00

My window is serenaded by crickets.
I try to sleep through the sawing
of their cellos’ sad music.
Forgive me, I want none of it.

You were in the mountains when my father’s soldiers
strolled into our classroom to escort me out
of the campus. The army had infiltrated
our cause to pluck from our ranks their own.

You left before my father retired as a full colonel,
before the nuns knelt in front of the dictator’s tanks
before the Maneros and the Alsa Masa
scooped out and ate the brains of the dissident priest.

And when you renounced the revolution
and dreamed of corn and the language of Iowa,
I came back to the Church, and then left again.
Found true rebellion in marrying

a man who spoke Hebrew and wanted to take me
to Tel Aviv. Gellacio,
I am reading you in English.
Your brindled skin is sweating Iowa sun,

your hair in a tight chignon,
you, barefoot and G-stringed like a Manobo
prince in St. Louis one hundred years ago.
I want the Church to beg me back,

long for the faint tinkle of the hand bell
before the Elevation,
the monstrance gold as unhusked grain
drying on the asphalt road.

I want to believe that sentences
can hold bread in baskets, and multiply.
Let the salvaged, naked as drowned cattle,
find their way to my house.

Ring the bell and call them in, Gelacio.
Anything but this music,
all silence and this nothing music.

-- Eugene Gloria

2:17 am
friday, 9 may 2008

Approved!

The University of the Philippines' new charter is now approved. Fellow teachers and students have been thinking of what kind of new UP we will now have and serve. Teachers feel that with the exemption from the salary standardization law, we'll at least have a decent wage soon, with the possibility of a hefty pay later. Problem is that the university and the national government is not dealing with the issue of a just and living wage for its 'educators'. By circumventing the rule of standardized pay that it itself set out for public employees, UP and the Arroyo administration cut off the university employees from the rest of the poorly paid workers, effecting: (1) a kind of a labor aristocracy - the professors from the now national university are a cut above the rest (this is savored by those who want to separate themselves from the 'mediocre' and 'unintelligent' teachers from other state-funded institutions; consider this: oblation not humbly, nakedly serving the people but simply looking up, up and away from the people; this is elitist, (2) the admission that government pay is a pittance and the way out is to be exempted, struggle you must to free yourself from their chains! and (3) the maximization of earning money so that a fraction would be apportioned to your workers - this paves way for commercialization that shouldn't be the business of a public office. Dapat makisama ang mga guro ng bayan sa pagkamit ng tamang sahod kasama ng mga empleyado ng pamahalaan at mga manggagawa ng pribadong sektor. Ang ginhawa ng iilan (kumpara sa kalakhan) ay kalugian ng nakararami.

We are now entering a new stage in the history of the university and education in this country. Pundits say that if we have to compete globally, we have to follow the standards set by those who excel. Looking at various university rankings (Times Higher Education Supplement, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's academic ranking, Newsweek, etc.) one sees that the common denominator is the size of the university's endowment, the richest are the 'best'. Certainly, more money that is used well (apportioned equally in the democratic sense, invested profitably in the market sense) translates to better facilities and the hiring of excellent professors. Painful truth is that public universities that do not offer themselves up to the free market lose in this game. Observe how the good European public universities of old lose out. America's private universities are tops because they can: buy out 'star' teachers to the detriment of the rest who struggle to teach, study and research but are in the margins of the academic field; acquire huge lands and build more facilities; attract international students that they want and; invest a part of their endowment in business ventures. It's cyclical! Wealth and prestige translate to more wealth and prestige and the synonymous tag of being best.

This is the reason why public universities must increase their tuition. The state cannot sustain the education that its own people need. What more, state/public/government institutions are being paired against private ones because they are in a level playing field. Public funding may now also go to private schools for research and development, as is the norm in highly-industrialized countries. So you see, government play a serious role here. They are not soft and weak and irrelevant; on the contrary, they decide whether public and general good will be determined by the public themselves. They pave way for the development of the private sector, and also privatize public institutions. For the government to be pro-people and democratic, it must subsidize its social service well and enough.

UP, and soon PUP and the rest of the state colleges and universities must now utilize profitably its assets - its land, its facilities, its teachers, its students and its research output. Those who are all out for earning money and those who still have that social democratic and or welfare advocacy oppose the stand of the many progressive organizations and groups opposing commercialization. Truth is: we can only commercizalize, sell, gain profit, trade our resources and creative and intellectual output only with a pre-determined bargain: this is that our labor will only be exploited to produce capital that will in the end be appropriated (expropriated) out of the public good. Why is it that the products of human ingenuity, and in this case, time, intellect and labor-intensive research are not available to many? Think of medicine, health operation, inventions that will solve perennial agricultural troubles, prevent environmental disaster, solve hunger. Because they have a huge price! And they are out of reach of those who need them most. I may sound rhetorical here but I believe that before we get deluded by calls for wealth creation, we must answer the fundamental question of equality: for whom?

3:55 am
thursday, 1 may 2008