where was the President of the Philippines, on a day like today, when a hostage situation began at 9AM, and escalatedto a crisis when it had yet to be resolved by 12NN, and now at 8:05PM, it is a quiet bus, the windows and doors have been rammed through by the police, and the hostages seem to be all but dead.
where were you today Mr. President of the Philippines? where was your government? literally and figuratively, in all honesty.
that is all I want to know.
a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 31 2010.
It is everything and fantastic this CANVAS project that is Looking For Juan. After all, the overwrought discussion of identity seems to be at a dead-end, where insisting on Filipino-ness is adjudged too nativist and always anti-America. This forgets that when we insist on being part our colonizers, there seems to be a refusal to deal with looking at our identities as separate still from these colonizers. Meanwhile it’s easy to see why we’ve arrived at this roadblock.
And yet, this year Looking for Juan (Vargas Museum, U.P. Diliman) is in a bigger, brighter (also hotter) venue (where are those rich UP alumni to air-condition this place when you need them?), and doesn’t seem to want to stop with talking about identity. But maybe too much of a good thing can be bad?
Because with the question of everyday heroes, cliché is the name of this game. It doesn’t help that the way in which the exhibit was curated grouped the works thematically, making the clichés more obviously about sameness. And when I say that there are paintings that are the same, I mean the artistic individual creativities (difference in media, notions of genre) get dissolved in the stark similarities, of imagery, of thought-process, of just basic idea.
Workers as working heroes
Name it, and you’ve got that Filipino worker here. There are no call center agents, or yuppies, or any enslaved white-collar workers thought, instead there are images of the kargador, the fisherman, the farmer, the magtataho, the teacher, the health worker, the basurero (that last one is a sculpture). One wonders at what point it becomes less respectful and more a politically-incorrect romance with these images. After all, these workers aren’t given lives other than the work they do, and in the few paintings that show workers’ conditions, badly-written captions that accompany the work ruin things altogether.
Thank goodness for “Minimum Wage Earner” by Renato Barja, where the construction worker is rightfully the color of the soot that he creates and lives with, where he is given a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a fiery sunrise in the background, where his big eyes are allowed its sadness and its weariness, even more importantly its defeat. Where the last thing you will think of is celebration or romance, or cliché.
Jojo Ballo’s “Tuwing Umaga”, which uses charcoal on canvas, would’ve been more powerful left without its caption cum explanation. Maan de Loloya’s “Kargador” meanwhile, fails at its cleanliness, which doesn’t work as irony for what it is that the main image is doing, i.e., carrying on top of her head a “crime scene” of her oppressive past and present: an MMDA sign, pink stilettos, guns, a balikbayan box, a buwaya. Had this been dirtier it would make sense that the smaller versions of this character look up dumbfounded at, some are apathetic towards, this bigger image’s act of cleaning up.
The cliché of the OFW, and motherhood
Because we know this to be true: that the OFW is the new hero of nation. And so, there are a good number of works here that are all about this heroism, and while some do fail at bringing something new to the OFW stereotype, there are those that just succeed. Yveese Belen’s “In Every Corner” is a canvas divided into 8 x 4 square, with every other square filled with an image of tiny brown workers doing various jobs. What is extraordinary here is the detail where the workers are actually in action, doing their jobs, making it more of a tribute to what they do, versus a romantic notion of just them.
The other OFW paintings don’t quite survive their captions, although Cana Valencia’s “Bagong Bayani” does just because it’s a different image compared to all the others here: much of the canvas is taken up by a Swiss knife made into the Philippine flag, the sun used as the O to the FW. From this center, what the knife’s various tools reveal are Filipinos’ various jobs across the world. It’s everything and refreshing, removing the sadness implicit in the mere fact of OFWs.
And those mother images? All about the clichés of pregnancy and giving life, or holding the child’s hand and protecting her, of motherhood as powerful in itself, period. That might be true, but there are so many other ways in which mothers are heroes, that would’ve been nice to see, too.
Some powerful imagery
Dante Lerma’s “Call Juan-24/7-Heroes” has such a powerful image that’s failed by its title and caption. A woman in a Maria Clara costume stands against a Coca-Cola refrigerator. Her foot is up against the wall, revealing running shoes, and she is holding her phone as if writing a text message. From afar, it was easily a rendering of the notion(s) of womanhood and tradition, the powerful woman vis a vis the meek and tamed. With that title about heroes being on call? It is everything and disappointing.
Cathy Lasam’s “Mommy” is wonderful in its experimentation with texture, folding up paper to create a pattern that renders the quiet – and I daresay cliché – image of the mother more dynamic, more interestingly alive and truthful to the multi-dimensionality of all our mothers in our lives. Janelle Tang’s “May Bago Akong Laruan” layers acrylic on canvas to create the layers of a paper doll. Here, the clothes floating on the canvas create the images of a mother and a child, even when they don’t exist on the page itself. The heroism would lie in the idea of powerfully creating our own images, yes? But that caption is an absolute let-down.
Fernando Sena’s “Tatay, Nanay, Mga Tunay na Bayani” was a refreshing complexity in the midst of these works, where abstraction seemed to be few and far between. Sena’s take on the cliché of parents as heroes is done in cubist abstraction, where two tiny one-dimensional faces represent parents, that create what look like structures that go up higher and higher, evolving into darker, deeper, more serious colors, as it goes up the canvas. It’s a celebration of the default power of parenting to build, to create, regardless of whether it wants to or not; it’s a reminder, maybe even a warning.
The universal Pinoy hero
What becomes infinitely more problematic here though is the idea of every Filipino as hero. It is here that the paintings seem to all work towards the media-created notion that we can all change this world just by voting once. As if things are ever that easy. Here, laughter is celebrated even when it’s really more a negative than a positive in the way that it fails to consider oppression. There is the teacher, the student-journalist, the environmentalist. There are hands! Just too many notions of hands, both in titles and captions, and outright in images that we’ve all seen before, some of them in our grade school art projects.
The ones that survive this part of the exhibit are those works that have different images, even when these titles and/or captions want to kill the work altogether. Dante Aligaen’s “It’s In Our Hands (It Always Was)” is a black and white mixed media work of a skull from which emanates a halo and the rays of a sun, flowers/grass/weeds spewing out from the main image, and bombs ready to fall from the sky. It’s a fascinating take on pride and yabang, the kind that can get us all messed up about what’s good and what’s evil.
Liza Flores’ “You, Me” could’ve done with a more creative title and less of a caption, because it is wonderful in itself, where the notion of reflection works both with and without another, except for oneself, where the dark and cold and the bright and sunny seem to be one and the same, versus being two sides of the same coin, where heroism is ultimately about staying where you are, regardless of how difficult, or how seemingly easy.
The rest of the many works here insist that we can all be heroes, be it through images of Rizal (too many of them, too!) or through the images of the youth as the future. But while this seems wonderful, the idea of our own individual heroisms at this point doesn’t seem all that possible, does it? Maybe it isn’t even truthful, as it is more than anything about romance and false hopes? Buen Calubayan’s “Pinger” seems to be the answer. It’s nothing but a black tarpaulin with an enlarged red digital print of the artist’s dirty finger, accompanied by this line: “Ako ang simula ng pagbabago? O panggagago?”
How’s that for a caption that works.
Satur Ocampo is the one senatoriable who has gotten flack for being guest candidate of NP, which is surprising given how this refuses to believe the truth that he and Liza Maza are running with the party, and not within it. Why is it so hard to understand that?
The better question is would we give Satur and Liza the same problem had they run with LP? It’s obvious that people who use the NP reason against Satur and Liza are silently/unconsciously pushing for Noynoy. So between a rags-to-riches capitalist and a middle-class haciendero, we go with the unapologetic former?
And let’s not even begin with running independently. That would’ve meant votes, yes, but not a nationwide campaign. This is the reason why I miss Mar Roxas for president — at least he was open to real progressive senatoriables. The Aquino siblings have called the left “a noisy minority,” Ninoy must be turning in his grave.
The whole anti-NP, pro-LP, anti-Satur rhetoric? Interesting. But wrong. And unfair to this nation that would gain so much with real progressives in the Senate.
Because Satur is the one senatoriable who has consistently fought for our human rights to our freedoms and has sacrificed life and limb for it. He was journalist and writer before becoming activist, a story that we should all be jealous of, a story that we should all want to have as writers/artists of whatever kind. Satur has lived a life for this nation literally. Can any other senatoriable say that?
And yet, Satur is the one senatoriable who has had to deal with not being forgiven. For a nation that can forgive plunderers and human rights violators, killers and thieves, and a president like GMA, it cannot for the life of it forgive this man. He who has paid for his sins with time in jail more than any other person in government has. He who has missed time with family in the name of nation. As congressman he lived in Congress with Liza and Teddy Casino because GMA was out to get them. All of them lost their pork barrel.
And no, Satur does not carry a gun. In fact Satur is the one who walks among us, and we fail to see him because he isn’t in a fancy car, doesn’t use police escorts, refuses the lifestyle changes public office requires. The same may be said of Liza, who I chanced upon in a karenderya, who talked to me like we were old friends, even when I was someone she didn’t know from eve.
Satur is the one senatoriable who, if you spend time looking at his Congress page has done good to nation, consistently and for the long term. Anyone who questions his stand on the extension of CARP is ill-informed about the state of agrarian reform in this country; anyone who thinks Hontiveros is the one woman to save farmers in this country, IS JUST WRONG. Please read up, please know how CARP has killed farmers and let hacienderos go free. Please read up on GARB and know enough to see that this is what real agrarian reform looks like, the Hacienda Luisitas of this country be damned.
Read up on Satur, on this, the last day before elections, and see yourselves. See how scared you are of real progressives, compared to your fear of men with guns goons gold, yes, there are many of them in government. See how scared you are of real fundamental change in nation, when your own candidate – whoever he is – uses the word change, too. See how real change looks, how a man can move from a life of privacy, to the underground to above ground, to doing more in Congress than many of our representatives combined. See this man for what he is.
He is an activist who has spoken to the masses in the countryside, has lived to walk the streets and in our consciousness, has consistently dealt with nation by listening to the people and understanding what it needs. He is a leftist, because he has always had the interests of the masses in his heart and soul and actions, has always wished for them a life that’s better than all this, has always worked towards making our oppressions pay for the unjust lives we live. The question is: Why do you fear this at all?
Realize that in the end, a vote against Satur is your own vote against nation, because here and now, his kind of progressive and nothing else is what we need. His kind of decency, his sense of justice, his kind of life. He is the kind of man this nation needs in the Senate.
Satur is the one and shading #37 is a vote for real concrete change. It is a vote for a nation that isn’t afraid to fight for its freedoms. It is a vote for a nation that deserves to have Satur as Senator now. Voting for Satur is voting for a future that will infinitely better, because we aren’t afraid anymore. It is one that we, the masses, the greater majority deserve.
All this vote requires is common sense, and maybe one Google search. The partylist system is supposed to “enable Filipino citizens belonging to the marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations and parties, and who lack well-defined political constituencies <to> contribute to the formulation and enactment of appropriate legislation that will benefit the nation as a whole.”
Operative word marginalized. Operative phrase the nation as a whole.
One weekend from election day we should not forget these important facts about the partylist; more importantly we should not think this vote irrelevant. The partylist vote is a national vote after all, one that those in power, i.e., GMA have manipulated to her benefit. The value of the partylist system for GMA and those in power is clearly proven by this: there are 187 organizations listed on your ballots as partylist groups. How many of them are GMA-funded partylists? Take a look at this and this.
Of course even organizations that aren’t in those lists of GMA-planted partylists shouldn’t easily be seen as valid partylist groups. Many of these organizations work on the level of representation by putting the sector in their names, but really, many of them are not organizations at all, i.e., have no members. Google them and you’ll see.
Many others, while with organizations, do not clearly represent the sectors they say they do, i.e., there’s a teachers partylist that’s about protecting private school owners (who are rich therefore not marginalized at all) when the only people they should be protecting from oppression are public school teachers. Obviously, the goal for patylist groups such as this is to protect one’s business interests in Congress, and side with the majority in the process – how’s that for being marginalized?
Even more obvious? Partylist groups that say they represent OFWs, when that is in no way organized as a sector; those that represent cooperatives, when these are organizations within government institutions that do nothing but “help” workers by giving them loans and unilaterally subtracting those loans from monthly salaries, until workers have no other choice but take on another loan; those that are ambiguous about representation but say that they will provide jobs, give free education, allow Filipinos to go abroad and pay later, and even (goodness gracious!) give free cataract treatments.
The partylist system is not about civic duty; this is not to excuse government from the things it should be providing its people.
The partylist system is about representation in lawmaking, its premise is that the real marginalized are not protected by existing laws. Real marginalization is about economic mobility, the ability of a sector to spend, given how much they earn; their ability to improve their lives given their impoverished limitations. The real marginalized are those who suffer every day, given who they are, and the concrete conditions that forget their rights.
And please, those partylist groups that are about the regions? Realize that they are represented to begin with. There is already a Congressman for every city, yes? Then why are people from Bicol or the Warays marginalized sectors still?
The question therefore for anyone who’s voting for a partylist group is: do you know these people you are voting for? did these organizations exist before they joined the partylist election? Most importantly, if you aren’t marginalized, then which organization are you voting for?
I am by no means economically marginalized: I am middle class after all. I was teacher in a private school for five years, but it was my experience in a public university that has changed me fundamentally. As a member of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, I have met/spoken to/worked with public school teachers; as treasurer of ACT Teachers Partylist this experience in the public school would resonate with the truth of marginalization.
It was here, in the halls of the public school that I lived what I once only knew in theory: little pay, barely enough to live decently, unprotected rights for the most part, oppressed in many ways with nowhere to go, and to do but stay. As someone who had the choice to leave, there was no reason for me to feel I was one of them. But it was here, in these spaces of laughter and friendship in the midst of the sadnesses of a public educations system that does, without a doubt, oppress its own teachers, I came to know compassion more than I ever have. More importantly, I came to know the value of change and revolt, and the power of the oppressed and marginalized to see those chains and break free.
And this is why the vote for partylist is as important as any other. It is here that the real marginalized sectors, as represented by real organizations and groups, and real people, actually do gain representation. It is here that bigger and better changes are made possible. Imagine a Congress where the partylist minority is united in representing economic marginalization – that would protect the majority in this nation more than anything else.
This is why the partylist vote is important to me, not so much as a member of the marginalized, but for the many others who I know are. This is why it’s important to me that I know the function of the partylist and why they want to be in Congress. This is why it’s important that I know these organizations and people. This is why it’s important to me to know that when the people who represent the marginalized enter Congress, they do so as members of the marginalized: as farmer and labor leader, as activist and activist lawyer, as teacher, as activist youth. There is no place here for lawyers and educators, doctors and president’s children, and military officers.
This is the rightful place of people and organizations that have proven themselves, outside Congress, and within it. And here are the ones I know, the ones who have the work they do on record, the ones who, even with their pork barrel cut-off by this government, have been able to serve nation and people.
Bayan Muna Partylist represents a broad organization of the working class and the poor; Anakpawis Partylist represents farmers; Gabriela Women’s Party is a broad alliance of women; Kabataan Partylist represents the youth in the many issues of and in education, among others; Katribu demands representation for the indigenous peoples. And then there is ACT Teachers Partylist, #39 on your ballots.
Click here for incumbent partylist organizations and representatives in Congress, to read up on what they’ve done.
my chick-self writes for Female Network, and up today is my election to presidential platforms!
what is missing here? is the question.