Category: books

‘The past is present still’ in Revolutionary Routes

By Sylvia Mayuga

Its “uncharted maps” to “paths of self preservation where there aren’t any,” make Revolutionary Routes the perfect title for Angela Stuart-Santiago’s new book. “No one’s made into a hero” in this story of an old Tayabas clan “finding community in times of revolt and revolution.” Historian Reynaldo Ileto calls it an “alternative history,” with family secrets revealed casting new light on written history.

It began with a curious grandson asking his Lola about her life in bygone eras. Concepcion (a.k.a. Concha) Herrera vda de Umali, 88, first responded with Spanish proverbs, then succumbed to a writing fever. In a year, she filled ten notebooks with the handwritten Fragmentos de mi juventud (Fragments of My Youth).

Only her Spanish-speaking daughters could read it with ease, but with her passing in 1980, they saw what a pity it would be for her English-speaking descendants to miss out on Lola’s life. Her eldest daughter Nena struggled with incipient blindness to do the translation. Blind by the time she finished, she passed on an heirloom of memory to her writer daughter Angela.  Click here for the rest

Revolutionary Routes: Elias wrestling the crocodile

By Elmer Ordonez

IN the center of Tiaong, Quezon, stands a run-down mansion with a sculpture of Elias, the rebel in Rizal’s Noli , wrestling a crocodile. Both house and sculpture were designed by Tomas Mapua for the Herrera-Umali family in 1928 in a period of growing radicalism. The Elias sculpture may well be the “objective correlative” of Angela Stuart Santiago’ s Revolutionary Routes, a family saga dating back to early people’s struggles during the colonial/post-colonial periods.

As Nita Umali-Berthelsen (the author’s aunt) notes: “The crocodile was a symbol of greed. The struggle between Elias and the monster gave rise to many suppositions, some flattering, others not at all.” (Tayabas Chronicles, The Early Years, 1886-1907, 2002). Revolutionary Routes (2011) sheds new light on the context and meaning of the sculpture.

Creative non-fiction is a relatively new term for biography/autobiography, family chronicles, memoirs, and other literary forms that hew closely to fact but may be written in a style akin to fiction, modern or post-modern, with an eye for detail. As family history, Revolutionary Routes focuses on five characters, forebears of the author, starting with Paula, a peasant woman from Bina-ngonan. who marries Julio Herrera of Tiaong. For refusing to pay the exorbitant fee for the church burial of a child cholera victim, and burying instead the remains outside the church, Paula is jailed and then forced to walk with four guardia civiles from Tiaong to Tayabas. This recalls the experience of Rizal’s mother who was accused wrongly and made to walk from Calamba to Sta. Cruz, Laguna to be jailed.

Paula’s husband, Julio Her-rera, is also a peasant who manages to acquire land which produce enables them to send their son, Isidro, to school. He works as personal secretary of the commissioner of religious affairs, escribano, and notary. Through diligence Isidro Her-rera becomes a landowner who actively takes part in the revolution, and is jailed by the Americans.

A rising young politician Manuel Quezon befriends the Herreras and plays a role in the misfortune of Isidro’s son-in-law, Tomas Umali of Lipa, Batangas.

Tomas Umali, lawyer/writer running a school in Manila, meets Conchita Herrera, and doesn’t relent his courtship which leads to their union in marriage. He gives up his school and law practice in the city, and settles with Conchita in Tiaong. Quezon and Tomas are partners in a railroad expropriation case in the province. Later Umali is charged with estafa but Quezon, on his way to become resident commissioner in the US Congress, is not. Tomas flees to Macau where he joins the revolutionary council made up of political exiles Artemio Ricarte, Vicente Sotto, Macario Adriatico, and others. In time no less than US president William Howard Taft intervenes toward Umali’s exoneration in the railroad expropriation case. Who was behind this? The author speculates it was Quezon himself or his fellow masons who had earlier abandoned him.

Tomas’s son-in-law Crisos-tomo Salcedo’s run-in with Vicente Umali in UP law school yet and later over the job of justice of the peace in Tiaong is said to be at the root of his tragedy. Both are members of the PQOG (President Quezon’s Own Guerrillas); their rift ends with the brutal murder of Crisostomo.

Narciso Umali, Tomas’s son, also a guerrilla officer, enters post-war politics marked by electoral fraud in 1949 when Elpidio Quirino won over Jose P. Laurel in what was then said to be the dirtiest election ever. Narciso wins as Nacionalista congressman but is later falsely charged with rebellion complex with murder and arson over the Huk raid and burning of the house of the town mayor and the death of some policemen. This is the most trying ordeal of the Herrera-Umali family who struggle, Sisyphus-like, to win justice for Narciso. In 1958 Narciso is pardoned by President Carlos Garcia, and outlives all his tormentors.

The above summary does not do justice to the rich but somber tapestry that the author weaves from family memoirs, testimonies, letters, newspaper clippings, published historical material, court orders, petitions and interviews. It catalogues the friar abuses, corruption, double dealing in patronage politics, insurrections, and colonial /neocolonial greed as well as the customs, mores and cuisine at the turn of the century. In parts the book reads like a Jacobean play full of intrigue, betrayal, violence, and retribution.

The Narciso Umali case occurred during the height of the anti-communist drive involving President Magsaysay and his CIA adviser Col Lansdale in the early 50s. (My older brother, a scout ranger, was killed in action in 1953. As student and later instructor in UP I saw and became a victim of McCarthyite witch-hunting on campus.)

Revolutionary Routes is not only a social history of Tayabas but of a feudal/colonial country marked by rebellions and oligarchic politics. Historian Reynaldo Ileto says the book could well be an alternative history of the Philippines.

The author admits to an “anti-colonial bias” in writing the book. But aren’t histories written from the “perspective” of victors in the war or those who were vanquished and exploited by colonialism? Who else will express the racial memory and struggles of a people but writers and artists bearing witness.

Revolutionary Routes is indeed creative non-fiction at its best.

Revolutionary Routes @ ManilArt 2011

will be at ManilArt 2011, the 3rd Philippine International Art Fair, today at 4 p.m. onwards (ehem :)

Book signing of “Revolutionary Routes” by Angela Stuart Santiago with guest National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera

August 26, 2011
NBC Tent, Bonifacio Global City
Taguig, Philippines

book’s still at launch price of P300, ManilArt entrance P200.  see you!

the path for Revolutionary Routes

by katrina stuart santiago

it was daunting more than anything else, though at some point all that operated was an amount of yabang: i’ve seen friends do this before, i’ve seen wonderful beautiful local books happen without a big publisher behind it, without press releases coming out in papers. and this book, i knew, deserved the major major effort of blood/sweat/tears because it is about family and history. because it is unconventional in form, an almost refusal to fall within the genres that are familiar, a straddling among creative non-fiction/historical essay/memoir. because it demanded a freedom from the standard limitations of publishing, given its refusal as well to deal with the ways in which things are usually written, how they usually look, what can usually be said.

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