Category: elmer ordonez

Remembering Class of ’52

By Elmer Ordonez

THE UP Alumni Office has announced that Class of ‘52 is holding its Diamond Jubilee (60th year and up) in June this year. The surviving Class ’52 members are well into their 80s, waiting their turn or still making waves.

Take for instance former Justice Serafin Cuevas, defense counsel in the Corona impeachment trial, said to be running circles around the prosecution panel (except for a few like Farinas). Cuevas belongs to Law Class ’52, an outstanding batch of UP Diliman graduates. Consider also two former prime ministers, Salvador Laurel along with Cesar Virata (whose degrees were in engineering and business administration), one SC Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, four SC associate justices Florentino Feli-ciano, Flerida Ruth Pineda, Serafin Cuevas and Hugo Gutierrez, one Appeals associate justice Ricardo Pronove, three senators Joker Arroyo, Santanina Tillah-Rasul (A.B. history), Salvador Laurel and Mamintal Tamano (arts-law), two Palace executive secretaries Joker Arroyo and Catalino Macaraig, Jr., Bartolome Fer-nandez, Commissoner on Audit, and justice minister Estelito Mendoza whose letter to the Supreme Court caused the tribunal to reverse its decision on the PAL employees union.

Two other Law graduates in public service were Froilan Bacungan (law dean/author of the Labor Code) and Augusto Cesar Espiritu (ambassador).

From Liberal Arts were two summa cum laude graduates, Florentino Feliciano (arts-law) and Shen Lin (B.S. math), and a number of distinguished writers including Virginia Moreno, SV Epistola, Raul R. Ingles, Maro Santaromana, Alejandrino Hu-fana, Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio, Ofelia Limcaoco, and Nimia Arroyo (all majors in English). Serafin Quiason (A.B. history) was the longest serving director of the National Library. Raul de Guzman (B.S. foreign service) became UPLB chancellor, Ale-jandro Fernandez, UP vice-president and president of Tarlac state university while Rufino Hecha-nova was President Macapagal’s finance secretary. Antonio Ari-zabal, Jr. (B.S.chemistry) became DOST secretary.

From Music I remember Ricardo Zamora (musical director of “Sunday, Sweet Sunday”) ; Education, Patria Gregorio (Bicol university president) and Ofelia Angangco (Arts and Sciences dean); Engineering, Ernesto Tabujara (UP Diliman chancellor) and Virata; Business Administration, Cesar Virata, finance minister and prime minister); and Agriculture, Jose Juliano (nuclear scientist) . Other achievers may be named by the Alumni office.

Class ’52 was one of three pioneer classes that joined the 1949 exodus to the barren heaths of sprawling Diliman campus, built before the war with two colonial-style buildings, occupied by the Japanese army and later by the U.S. military which bequathed many fabricated buildings including a gym, a theater, social hall known as Gregory Terrace, swimming pools, long quonset huts for offices and barracks and sawali cottages.. The campus was divided into areas with streets with American names. The cottages were offered at nominal rent to faculty as an inducement for them to stay since the transfer from Padre Faura was not exactly welcome. It was some 14 km from Quiapo where we took the buses to what we thought was the wilderness. The .UP alumni and parents of students were against the transfer. Like many students I was for the transfer. The ruined campus in Manila had makeshift classrooms and laboratories which leaked when it rained. President Bienvenido Gonzalez ultimately prevailed on the constituents that it was for the best.

The UP Newsletter edited by Felixberto Sta. Maria called Diliman “the brave new world.” In two years new buildings began to sprout on campus. Virginia Moreno wrote for ‘52 Philip-pinensian (which I edited):

“Rumour has it that even the raindrops in Diliman come bigger, by the child’s fist-size almost. Here the grass shoots taller, the air is rarer, the other landscape and to the painter’s eye none more color bright except that, let no one dispute this, the mountains whereon the only sun sets and rises makes a skyscape – what else could be more more perfect? So they say. And more: one goes building-hopping here; one reads volumes and not a mere book in a library that is not a room but itself a building; the engineering shop seems a factory, the Philippine Collegian is a metropolitan paper; the girls are Misses Universe, and the campus is a republic!”

Monthly socials were held at the Gregory terrace, with the dorm women residents bused in by Dean Ursula Clemente. The dance ended at eleven with the playing of Glenn Miller’s “At Last.” A few Halili buses on their last trip to Manila waited. Woe to those who missed the buses. No recourse but to beg classmates in dorms to put them up for the night.

At midnight the campus was deathly quiet. Not even the UP security police ventured out for HMB patrols roamed the campus. Former dean Francisco Nemenzo Jr. whose family lived on campus confirmed this at the launching of my book Diliman: Homage to the Fifties early last decade. My wife, then a resident of south dorm for women, remembered that they were herded to the basement when HMBs raided the PC detachment in nearby Balara. The other residents in sawali-built dorms fled to the Law building. Actually we lived in a time of checkpoints and writ suspension because of the Huk rebellion. Classmate William Pome-roy left for the hills just before the capture of the politburo including former Collegian editor Angel Baking. This is part of the context of the late 40s and early 50s when UP Diliman might have been portrayed in the Philippinensian as an idyllic grove of academe in the midst of social unrest.

(To be continued)

No Closure Yet Nor Goodbye To All That

By Elmer Ordonez

The disaster/tragedy in Mindanao struck about two weeks after Rony V. Diaz and other writers sounded the alarums about the apocalyptic effects of climate change at the Philippine PEN national conference early this month.

Many factors contributed to the rampaging floods that engulfed whole communities in Cagayan de Oro, Iligan City, and other parts of Mindanao along Typhoon Sendong’s path– something unheard of in the past. Among these factors are the results of global warming such as unseasonable or unpredictable weather conditions. Man-made factors such as such as burning of fossil fuels increasing carbon emissions that get to the atmosphere, deforestation as a result of logging and mining (legal or illegal) — depletion of natural resources that have disturbed the ecological balance. The wiping out of communities built on sandbars on mouths of rivers, riverbanks, under bridges reflect lack of government control of housing sites either due to corruption or political expediency (informal settlers can vote). Deficient warning systems also contributed in large measure to many dead, injured, and missing. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has urged local governments to follow the geo-hazard map in urban planning. They also need to enforce the total log ban

We like to say that Typhoon Sendong disaster is a wake-up call. Didn’t we say this after Typhoon Ondong hit Marikina Valley/Greater Manila in 2009. There were other wake-up calls like the Bataan and Ormoc landslides and floods years ago. As Pete Seeger would sing, “When will we ever learn?”

Other notable events of 2011:

1) The case of electoral sabotage against the former President and her election commissioner. This should lead to prosecutions of more corrupt poll and military officers involved in the 2004 and 2007 elections as brought out in congressional investigations.

2) The impeachment of a chief justice whose “midnight appointment” by the former president he is close to has left a bad taste in the mouth of the incoming president who decided to take his oath of office with an associate justice instead. His sentiments for impeachment are shared by more than two thirds in the House of Representatives including militant party-list members.

3) The charging of retired general Jovito Palparan (lionized by the GMA Palace but called “berdugo” by many) and several other army officers for the kidnapping of two U.P. female student activists in 2006. Palparan was stopped by immigration in Clark International Airport as he tried to leave for Singapore, and has since disappeared evading arrest under court warrant. Palparan had left a lurid trail of human rights violations such as summary executions, torture. rape, forced disappearances of activists in the regions where he was assigned as military commander. He is now a fugitive belying his promise that he would not resist arrest. His successful escape would frustrate the hopes of victims of human rights violations for justice and for the end of the culture of impunity among violators under past and present administrations. Reports from the countryside are that the supposedly new “Operation Bayanihan” has spawned fresh human rights violations. Palace claims of “zero political prisoners” are contradicted by detainees like Alan Jazmines and Ericson Acosta (both poets); the latter recently went on hunger strike together with more than 300 political prisoners who were all charged with criminal offenses. Under unrescinded Marcos decrees, it is a standard way of denying the existence of political prisoners by simply having the military or police concoct charges of criminal offenses such as illegal possession of firearms or explosives, robbery, or murder against persons who otherwise are just liable for rebellion or sedition.

It is notable that the electoral sabotage and impeachment cases are basically manifestations of the rifts between ruling elite factions. This is not to deny the gravity and significance of the cases. Historically, rival ruling elites have a way of coming to terms. They may fight tooth and nail in the struggle for power but ultimately they do not annihilate each other. This was true during the time of Osmena, Quezon, Laurel and Roxas. Ninoy Aquino’s assassination need not have happened if Marcos, his frat brod, was not incapacitated at the time.(At least this is what their brods think.) Joseph Estrada, convicted of plunder, was pardoned by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

I still hope that the laudable though belated moves of the President and his Justice Secretary Lelia de Lima in pursuing the cases against GMA, Renato Corona, and Jovito Palparan would result in some reforms in government. We do need some relief before another set of self-serving oligarchs take over in 2016.

 ***

I started the “The Other View” in 2004 in the Sunday Times Magazine, writing on culture, education and the arts, but my column was transferred to the editorial page of the Saturday paper. I continued writing on the original topics but extended my views to include politics and governance.

As intimated in the last several columns, I need to take a break to attend to a deeply personal matter. As circumstances permit I will be writing pieces now and then.

Happy New Year!

Reflections on Christmas

By Elmer Ordonez

THE season readily evokes thoughts of family, of being together, sharing food on the table, and most important of all love for each other expressed with gifts, hugs and other ways. Yuletide is indeed meant for the family. Hence, the President declares a truce from fighting (though called a “sham” by the NDF) to enable both soldier and rebel to be with family. During the First World War, guns were silenced on Christmas Eve, and in some instances soldiers sang carols answered by those in the opposite trench with their own versions, or they would meet across no man’s land, greet each other and share drink or food. British and German soldiers even played a game of football during the lull in fighting. Would that our brothers on both sides, if the powers that be will it, reach the stage of a permanent ceasefire and peace agreement.

During Yuletide, thoughts turn to family or loved ones. It was thus on Christmas 1943 that we wondered about Father who had not been heard from since he was arrested by the Kempeitai early that year. To escape capture ourselves, the rest of the family hid in Sisa, Sampaloc, in the home of my mother’s sister —anxiously waiting for any news about Father and an older brother with the guerrillas in Laguna. On Christmas Eve, with a simple noche buena, Aunt Pilar mused that she missed “peacetime” celebrations but somehow she felt it, the spirit of Christmas, under enemy occupation in 1943. We prayed for the missing ones and the safety of both families, ours and Aunt Pilar’s family who sheltered us.

In early 1944 we learned somehow that Father was in Muntinlupa, sentenced to 20 years imprisonment by a Japanese military court for “terrorism.” From a dungeon in Fort Santiago where he spent Christmas 1943, he was moved (before Muntinlupa) to Bilibid in Manila where he shared cells with General Vicente Lim, Fr. (later Cardinal) Rufino Santos, and Raul Manglapus who were also involved in underground activity. My brother in Laguna survived and continued soldiering until he was killed in battle in 1953. He was 29. Father was liberated by ROTC guerrillas in February 1945, mustered in the army as major (retaining is guerrilla rank), and after his discharge, he resumed teaching till he passed away in 1963.

This Christmas, with my own family (complete with the arrival of the youngest son from Montreal), we pray for a painless and serene passage of our beloved who has accepted her fate. Brought up as a theosophist by her father, she has remained firm in her Buddhist beliefs.

***

Christmas is for remembering, of stock-taking before the onset of the New Year, and for looking into the future.

Sunday last began the series of reunions of the expanded family (including many balikbayans), this time marking birthdays of three members of the immediate family. After the potluck lunch, photos and albums were passed around for remembering things past. A photo taken in 1969 showing six pretty sisters in their early prime and hair done as of the period, was retaken with all six, now with grey/white hair, still good-looking after 42 years, posing again for posterity. Courtships and weddings were recalled, with much hilarity and laughter.

At this time, I have realized how much I have to put in order. The children, seeing my chaotic library room, decided they would hire a librarian to classify the books. Thus I am reassured that my literary holdings would not be sold by lot to some heritage or antiquarian bookshop. My wife’s formidable library of art books (separately kept in shelves in the large bedroom) and her visual arts collection are not to leave the house under any circumstances. What to do with things I have accumulated over the years is another matter. I also need to move stuff to the UP library archives.

Early on, my wife and I had thought of leaving a last will and testament, and recently, instructions on what to do on the last day.

This Monday morning, my wife walked by herself to the porch outside the bedroom, and sat on an armchair sunning herself. I joined her bringing with me The Norton Anthology of Poetry. She turned the pages to her two favorites, Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti. She was pensive after rereading their poems, and then commented, smiling, that the poets were obsessed with departure. She knew by heart some of the poems.

Fictionist Greg Brillantes, speaking at the wake years ago of Raven SV Epistola, said in effect that the usual way of expressing departure was to ride into the sunset whereas a religious that he knew said, actually it was riding into the sunrise.

From Elenita and myself, seasons greetings and best wishes to all.

The waiting room

By Elmer Ordonez

IT is also known as the departure lounge for people of “un certain age” as they say in Quebec, although anyone above sixty or one who just survived a heart attack or is diagnosed with a terminal ailment may well be a passenger in waiting.

December 15 I turned 82. No big deal for Frankie Sionil Jose. The last time we met, he asked me to his lair where he types out his fiction or essays, “I have something to give you, “ and handed me a small ornate blue vase. “What’s this for?” I asked. “Well, I am giving my things away,” he said, “I am 87 and may go any time.” We both laughed. And that’s how it usually is in the waiting room. People are ready (or almost ready) to board, sometimes joking about their mortality or affliction.

The signs of getting ready are palpable. The writer reminisces in his column, or finishes a memoir, collects scattered pieces of writing – poems, stories, plays, essays—and inveigles a publisher, to please have his book out before he goes.

The departing one may also have forgiven those who have offended him, or made amends to those he has offended. Literary or ideological feuds that become personal happen among writers as in any group. They include National Artists for Literature. But no names here. Their disputes are reflected in what they write. Writers can get back at persons they dislike through their work. This could be a special area for literary investigation.

It is inevitable that writers of my generation have dwindled. The Ravens (a post-war offshoot of the venerable UP Writers Club founded by Jose Garcia Villa, Fred Mangahas, Salvador P. Lopez, and Jose Lansang in 1927) had originally 16 members (including Adrian Cristobal, Larry Francia, Alex Hufana, SV Epistola, and Pic Aprieto) are now down to 7, not counting Morli Dharam (a.k.a Anthony Morli) who had not been heard from in New York’s theater world where he immersed himself since the late 50s until we ran his obit in The Times last month. Still around are Virgie Moreno, Raul Ingles, Rony Diaz, Armando Bonifacio, Godo Roperos (in Cebu), Maro Santaromana (in Pennsylvania), and myself.

The Veronicans formed by Franz Arcellana, Hernando Ocampo, NVM Gonzalez (all National Artists) and others like Bienvenido Santos, Narciso Reyes, Cornelio Reyes, and Armando Malay before the war had all left the lounge.

The only writers group with a notable link to the 50s is the active Philippine Center of International PEN (Poetry. Essay, Novel). Founded in 1957 by writers, mostly Ravens, led by F. Sionil Jose, Philippine PEN just had a successful national conference on the theme “Archipelagic Feasts, Tropical Disasters” keynoted by Raven Rony V. Diaz, who spoke on the disastrous effects of climate change.

Gilda Cordero Fernando (“Forever 81”) spoke bravely in the panel “Apocalyptic Writing: Disaster and Imagination” which I organized but was unable to attend to my own apocalyptic moment. The conference approved a resolution urging writers to focus their creativity on saving the environment.

PEN continues to work (as it did during martial law) for the release of writers from prison—like the case of Ericson Acosta, poet/visual artist, now confined along with other political prisoners in the Calbayog, Samar jail. Acosta and prison mates were on hunger strike until December 10, Human Rights Day.

A literary/cultural landmark of the 50s is the Solidarity Bookshop on Padre Faura st., Ermita, Manila, run by Frankie and Tessie Jose. Sort of anachronistic in a neighborhood of high rise modern buildings, the two-story wooden building (built after the war) of a bookstore catering largely to the intelligentsia is among the first places visited by foreign writers (including Norman Mailer, Mario Vargas Llosa, Wole Soyinka, James Fallows, and recently Edward Jones) who are greeted by Frankie with “ Welcome to the den of iniquity.” The den is in the second floor where meetings, book launchings and little conspiracies are held. Here before his famous round table, Frankie invariably holds court, trying at one time to get the Lavas, Luis Taruc, and Casto Alejandrino reconciled. Underground literature also managed to be sold in the bookshop during martial law. Satur Ocampo and Bobbie Malay, old media friends of Jose, visited the bookstore when they were still on the run.

The “old world” of my 50s generation has given way to the new. Veronican Bienvenido Santos earlier expressed that much for his 30s generation (NVM and Franz Arcellana were still around) that “new and young actors” had taken over the stage. He had just received a literary award from the National Commission for Culture and Arts, together with Genoveva Matute, in 1995.

Raven Andres Cristobal Cruz once wrote that “to the Asian Filipino consciousness, the raven is a symbol of immortality, “expressed in the Filipino saying “pagputi ng uwak” – when the crow turns white, indeed “an intimation of immortality, which is what the artist/writer is.”

The poets in the waiting room may also be reflecting on William Butler Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium,” the city where one implores the sages to be “the singing masters of my soul” and “gather me into the artifice of eternity.”