Nationalist writers

By Elmer Ordonez

EDUCATED in English from grade to graduate school, I belong to the generation(s) of what Renato Constantino called “the miseducated Filipino.” My exposure to Tagalog literature was limited to a high school subject using Diwang Kayumanggi as text. At home, my parents spoke Spanish to each other and English or “garil” (fractured) Tagalog to their children, who in turn spoke Manila street Tagalog to each other. Ilokano and Bikol were also heard at home whenever my father’s relatives or my mother’s kin visited us.

As an academician, I moved around in an English milieu such that when the First Quarter Storm (FQS) broke out in the early 1970s, we senior professors in the English department at UP Diliman felt beleaguered by nationalists (including English major students and young instructors in English) who mocked us and our English discipline or specialization. The newly created Department of Filipino and Philippine Literature (founded ironically by Leopoldo Y. Yabes, a professor of English whose forte was Ilocano literature, and staffed by former instructors or English majors like Petronilo Daroy, Ernesto Constantino, Patricia Melendres and Romeo Dizon and new graduates majoring in Filipino like Rosario Torres) became the “premier” department as far as the nationalists were concerned. Teaching in Pilipino/Filipino was the “in” thing then.

Bienvenido Lumbera, the former head of the English department and founding chairman of the Filipino department at Ateneo de Manila University whom I invited to lecture on Philippine literature in English, was lured from my department to teach Tagalog poetry in the Filipino department. Lumbera was an instant hit among UP students and young writers. During the FQS, he was to head the organization Paksa (Panitikan para sa Kaunlaran ng Sambayanan) with a national democratic orientation. Martial law forced Paksa underground; Lumbera was arrested and detained for more than a year. Ateneo refused to take him back but he was welcomed in UP.

Lumbera, now a National Artist for Literature, was one of the writers in Filipino discussed in Alinagnag: Sanaysay ng mga Panlipunang Panunuri sa Panitikan (UST Publishing House) by Rosario Torres-Yu, who became dean of the UP College of Arts and Letters. Lumbera majored in English literature at the University of Santo Tomas and comparative literature at Indiana University in the United States. He wanted to write his dissertation on Indian literature in English, but his dorm mate, top English-language fictionist Rony Diaz, convinced Lumbera—who wrote poetry both in Tagalog and English—to write on Tagalog poetry instead. This was the beginning of Lumbera’s veering away from a Western to a Filipino orientation.

Torres-Yu sees the conversion of Lumbera when he picked up the challenge posed by Amado Hernandez to write in Filipino. At that time the challenge was made—the 1960s—writers in Filipino like Rogelio Ordoñez, Efren Abueg, Norma Miraflor and Rogelio Sikat were making waves with their social realist fiction as embodied in their anthology Agos sa Disyerto. Undoubtedly an influence on the younger writers, Hernandez himself was to become the first Tagalog National Artist for Literature on the basis of his nationalist poetry and plays written in prison and his novel Mga Ibong Mandaragit. Hernandez was chairman of the Congress of Labor Organizations (CLO) when the Politburo of the PKP (Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas) was rounded up by the military in 1950. This was the beginning of the McCarthy-like witchhunt in the city, in labor groups, and in government offices and universities. Hernandez was arrested on the charge that the CLO was a PKP front. Jailed along with the Politburo members, Hernandez spent his time writing even in the bartolina. He wrote lines of poetry in slips of newsprint smuggled out by his wife Atang de la Rama, who pieced them together and had the poems published under the title Isang Dipang Langit.

Torres-Yu devoted her studies on Hernandez and became an authority on the Filipino nationalist writer. She has several books on his works, as well as on the labor movement that Hernandez once led. After he was released in the early 1960s, Hernandez published Mga Ibong Mandaragit in installments in Liwayway. His re-entry into the literary scene during the 1960s was marked by his getting the Republic Heritage Award. During the FQS, he was always invited to speak at activists gatherings. In a necrological rite for the slain activist Enrique Brigada of the Lyceum of the Philippines, his oration ended with the slogan “Makibaka! Huwag Matakot!” which became a battle cry at FQS demonstrations. Hernandez died in March 1970. Kabataang Makabayan members carried his bier to rest in the Manila North Cemetery. When he posthumously received the National Artist award in 1973, Salvador P. Lopez noted that the Marcos regime gave the award when Hernandez was “safely dead.”

Torres-Yu also wrote about feminist literature in her book, devoting essays on Genoveva Matute and Lope K. Santos, as well as on underground literature during martial law, Valerio Nofuente and other martyred writers, and the history of the workers movement. Alinagnag seeks to provide illumination on social issues through nationalist literature. It is Marxist literary criticism that runs against the grain of the prevalent formalist/neo-formalist critical practice of the literary establishment.

mo & RHian

i didn’t even “know” rhian ramos before the sh*t hit the fan; these showbiz girls all look the same to me.  but mo twister i couldn’t help noticing from the first because he speaks perfect english and is simpatiko naman, reminded me of martin nievera in MAD days.

that they were a couple pala i only found out when a few facebook friends posted mo-rhian related statuses.  in fairness, no one posted the video, or link, unless i missed it lang, which still means it wasn’t being posted all over the place.  which led curious me to pep.ph to get the gist and find out the latest — to wit, the video was recorded by mo while in singapore, crying over his girlfriend’s abortion against his wishes, which video was released on the internet by unidentified ones, which has led to apologies from mo, but no denials from rhian, only complaints of what-sounds-like emotional battering.

meanwhile, elizabeth angsiaco was tweeting like mad from the senate as filibustering on the RH bill proceeded and senator tito sotto had the floor again and was again discoursing on RH as in-aid-of-abortion or something as disputable.  which led me to post this status:

the mo & rhian story, in the context of RH debates in congress, is HOT.  interesting that nothing much is being said in social media in defense (or offense) of either mo or rhian.  one would think that the pro-life would be taking mo’s side, and the pro-choice, rhian’s.  but it’s more complicated than that, ‘no? … yung pro-RH naman natin ay hindi all-out pro-choice

commented orlando roncesvalles, a virtual friend and fellow blogger:

this is a difficult issue.  “choice” in “pro-choice” is a crime in PH so long as the courts define a conceived fetus as a natural person.  if i remember, roe v. wade turned in part on texas common law that a non-viable fetus was not yet a human being.

and yet abortion, a mortal sin acc to the church, a crime acc to ph law, happens everyday around here.  we all know someone who has resorted to it for one reason or another at one time or another.

the silence, including the legislators’, on this particular allegation of abortion, though not unexpected, is intriguing.  is it to spare the girl, whom it would seem we don’t want to condemn because the guy has punished her enough?  or are we giving her the benefit of the doubt since she has yet to confirm or deny?  (ako, i’m eagerly awaiting her lawyer lorna kapunan’s defense strategy: admit or deny or dedma.)

but more than anything, the silence reflects on the RH bill:  it seeks to address the needs only of poor women who have no access to info re birth control and/or contraceptive methods and devices, and who therefore, in many cases, resort to abortion.  this is really also to say that women who are educated and well-to-do need no help and don’t resort to abortion.

in fact the only difference between poor and rich women in this country of macho moralists who have no respect for women’s rights is that poor women have only hilots and sleazy clinics to run to where methods are crude and painful and life-threatening, while rich women have access to expensive facilities and safe and painless procedures, here and abroad.

says philstar‘s cito beltran:

…lets face the facts, ABORTIONS have been happening in this country, in schools, colleges and universities from the fifties, all up to today. Some women were forced to do it by their partner or by social pressure, or fear. But I also know of young women who had abortions because pregnancy would ruin their careers or their life. Men have been party to them or have been opposed to them but could not stop them.

We are a nation that has lived with this generational lie, we are a society that has opted to live in denial and ignorance rather than do something educated, civilized and Godly about pre-marital sex, about sex education and most especially about unwanted pregnancy. And while factions were fighting as they do today, the killing of unwanted babies continued.

yes, it’s time to face facts.

amazing approval ratings

MANILA, Philippines – President Benigno Aquino III has maintained his high trust and approval ratings amid issues that hounded his administration.

In its latest poll, Pulse Asia said Aquino enjoyed the 72 percent approval rating in his performance in office as chief executive, while a huge 74 percent of Filipinos trust his government.

The survey also revealed that the President has “big approval and trust ratings” in various geographical areas and socio-economic classes in the country.

The poll was conducted on Nov. 10-23 in face-to-face interviews with 1,200 adult respondents.

of course i wish it were a larger sample.  just the same nakakagulat ito, given phnoy’s performance in the last year and a half, with little really to show for it except, well, gma’s arrest, but a whole lot more negative stuff to answer for — from his whereabouts during the aug23 luneta bloodbath to his current landlord stance, demanding just compensation for hacienda luisita’s owners, never mind that they overstayed 44 years.

the only explanation i can think of is that the people who voted for him are not about to admit that cory’s and ninoy’s son has feet of clay.  rather, they are set on approving of him through the six years of his term, come hell or high water.  this is so not-good for the country.  gives him an excuse to shrug off / ignore legitimate questions and criticism as sour-graping from a noisy minority.  for sure, we will not be better off when his time is up.

An Economic Report from the Republic of Noy’s Brain

 By Ben Kritz

In the country which exists inside the mind of Dear Leader Aquino the economic situation is actually pretty good, as he explained in an interview reported by the Philstar yesterday:

The Philippine economy is now focused on “investment-led growth” and is no longer heavily dependent on the remittances of overseas Filipino workers, President Aquino said yesterday.

Say what? Up until now I’ve been saying Peenoy’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor mainly in jest, but I had no idea it might actually be true.

Read the rest here