GALLEON QUEST

The Galeon Andalucia at Pier 13, Manila.
Cellphone photo by Marra PL. Lanot.

October 8, 2010, was celebrated as the Día del Galeón, or Day of the Galleon. It was the very first celebration of the Unesco-declared Día del Galeón, and the celebration was held in the Philippines, which was supposed to be the host of something called the “International Día del Galeón Festival 2010: Connecting Continents.”

I learned about the event only the day before from a Philippine Daily Inquirer report, which came out the day after the Galeón Andalucia, a replica of a 17th-century Spanish galleon, sailed into Philippine waters and docked at Pier 13 of Manila’s South Harbor. The ship was supposed to be open to the public for boarding and viewing on October 8 and 9, but due to circumstances beyond my control, I could not join my wife, Marra PL. Lanot, when she decided to take a look at the Galeón Andalucia and take a few pictures with her Nokia cellphone.

So I decided instead to dig up an article I wrote 20 years ago, when a travel magazine assigned me to check out a report that a life-size replica of a Spanish galleon was being built somewhere in Cebu, and to use that galleon as the peg for a travel feature on Cebu. I wonder whatever happened to that envisioned Galeón Cebu, which was to be named the Infanta Filipina. I read somewhere, not too long ago, that it was the project of a group headed by or including Inquirer lifestyle columnist Cory Quirino, but the only information I could get about that, from a cursory googling, comes from “Then & Now,” Norma Japitana’s entertainment column in the Philippine Star.

In her column posted on philstar.com on September 19, 2010, Norma J reprinted something she had originally written in 1990, the same year I wrote my travel article. “Andy Williams came and got a standing ovation because he made us remember The Shadow of Your Smile, Our Love is Here to Stay and Days of Wine and Roses,” Norma J wrote on June 26, 1990. “The fact that he came to help build the Spanish Galleon of Cory Quirino’s group made it more worthwhile.”

Anyway, for all it’s worth, and in belated commemoration of Día del Galeón, here’s slightly revised version of the piece I wrote back in 1990. It first appeared in Continental Airlines’ Pacific Travelogue 1990, published in Honolulu by EastWest Magazine Co. Ltd.

Marra at the helm of the Galeon Andalucia.

Photo by a volunteer tour guide, using Marra's cellphone.

GALLEON QUEST

On the road in Cebu, “an island in the Pacific.”

By JOSE F. LACABA

ON THE LATE-AFTERNOON flight from Manila to Cebu, I found myself seated beside a young white Anglo-Saxon blonde, whom I naturally took to be a scuba-diving backpacker out to explore the island’s fabled coral reefs. But when I asked where she was from, she said, “Cebu,” and started speaking in Cebuano to prove it. She turned out to be the Cebu-born daughter of British nationals; her father was an official in the copper mines. Cebu springs such surprises on the unwary visitor.

I was on my way to Cebu, a Philippine province 587 kilometers south of Manila, to take a look at a galleon in the making. There, I was told, a project had been launched to build a life-size replica of Spain’s ancient sailing ship. Originally made for war and subsequently used for commerce, the galleon in its planned reincarnation was to be equipped with state-of-the-art technology and modern-day conveniences for the benefit of the ocean-cruising tourist trade: the Love Boat in 16th-century raiment.

My seatmate on the plane had heard of the project but didn’t know exactly where in Cebu the galleon was being built. She was not the only one in the dark. I asked around almost as soon as I hit the ground, and nobody could direct me to the proper shipyard or to a city office. The local tourism unit provided handouts with a lot of useful information (for instance: the Japanese accounted for the most number of foreign tourists to Cebu, with 37,538 in 1988, followed by the Hongkong Chinese, 17,173, and the Americans, 13,947), but there was no mention of a galleon. It was still a drawing-board concept; it was not yet a tourist draw.

Killing time and following up some leads, I went around Cebu City, the provincial capital. I had earlier enjoyed a panoramic view of the Queen City of the South (as it bills itself) from the Cebu Plaza, the plush mountainside hotel in which I was billeted courtesy of the Department of Tourism. A closeup showed a feverish construction boom, which in a few years will radically alter the face of the metropolis. For the moment, however, it still retained a good deal of its Old World charm. This was particularly noticeable in Fort San Pedro, the country’s oldest and smallest Spanish-built stone fort, which houses the tourism office, and in Casa Gorordo, one of the few Spanish houses in Cebu to have survived the bombing of the last world war. Both places have been converted into museums where the elegant relics of a bygone era are on permanent display.

While having a sandwich at a place called Balls Burger, I watched the passing parade. No longer much in evidence were the leisurely tartanillas, Cebu’s unique horse-drawn rigs, and once the chief form of public transport for prole and gentry alike. In their place were other aspirants for the title of King of the Road: the motorized tricycle, basically a motorcycle with a sidecar that can carry up to 15 passengers, to the astonishment of the motorcyles’ Japanese makers; the trisikad, a bicycle with a sidecar, its name being a bilingual pun combining tricyle and sikad (Cebuano for “kick”); the jeepney, a national symbol; and the meterless taxicab. With taxis you stated your destination, the driver named a price, you haggled if you could, and only when the two of you had agreed on the fare were you allowed to get in. Since I didn’t know my way around and didn’t speak Cebuano, taxis proved more convenient than Rent-a-Car, and the drivers, eager to show off their fluency in Manila Tagalog, were a rich source of local lore about the sexual habits of Cebu’s politicians. But they knew nothing about the galleon.

By this time I was about to give up on the galleon and had decided to look into the better-known attractions of Cebu, a place advertised in travel posters in Europe as “an island in the Pacific.” (The catchphrase prompted at least one official of the central government to criticize this apparent effort to dissociate gentle Cebu from the rest of the rowdy country.) Luckily I visited an old friend in Liloan, a small town about an hour’s ride from Cebu City, famed for its flaky otap and crunchy rosquillo biscuits, and for having produced nationally known beauty queens and movie stars. My friend introduced me to a guy who shall hereinafter be referred to as Pardy.

Pardy is the kind of colorful character every travel writer should try bumping into. A man darkened by sun and sea, with an overflowing belly reminiscent of the Chinese Buddha’s, he was given to atrocious puns like: “The police, they are up to some police-ness again.” He gave me a calling card on which he is described as having “no phone, no address, no money, no job, no prospects,” with the added information that he “specializes in underwater demolition, revolution, gunrunning, bootlegging, civil wars, smuggling, orgies, prayer meetings and church socials.” And he said he could take me to the shipyard where the galleon was being built. We shook hands on that.

BRIGHT AND EARLY the next morning Pardy came to pick me up at my hotel in a battered Toyota driven by his sidekick, improbably named Marlon. Actually, he should have been named Evel Knievel. He had no qualms about overtaking cars which were in the process of overtaking other cars, even if we happened to be negotiating hairpin turns on heartbreak hills. My balls, as the Tagalog saying goes, climbed up to my throat.

I had told Pardy the galleon wasn’t my only goal; I was also interested in getting a sampling of what Cebu had to offer to tourists. He now informed me we would first visit Moalboal and stay there overnight. From one of the handouts I had picked up at the tourist office, I would later learn that Moalboal is a town on the southwest coast, 89 kilometers from Cebu City. Pardy told me it was a place frequented by scuba divers and snorkelers who go for off-the-beaten-path vacations.

On the east coast the ride was a smooth one. Somewhere along the way I espied a signboard above the door of a nipa hut saying, “Welcome to Hare Krishna Paradise,” and in town after town, billboards announced “cock derbies” sponsored by “cockers’ clubs.” I was reminded of a story told of the Cebuano as gambler. It seems that churchgoing cockfighters often went to communion just so they could pocket the eucharistic hosts, which they would later feed to their fighting cocks. With the kind of faith that moves mountains, they believed bread that had been transformed into the body of Christ had the miraculous power of making cocks strong and victorious in battle.

We got off the beaten path as soon we started to cross over to the western side, by way of a gravelly mountain road with no railings to obstruct our view of heart-pounding ravines. We roared through a market area, all bustle and excitement, pungent with the myriad smells of peasant commodities being sold or exchanged: goats, pigs, cows, carabaos, salt, corn grits, firewood. After what felt like an eternity, we came down to a breathtaking view of the sea, so clear and shallow you could see the white sand shining underneath. It was this wading-depth coastline that gave the island its original native name, Sugbo, meaning, “to walk in the water.”

We bumped on, noting that long stretches of the west-coast road were being cemented, which means smoother sailing in the future for accidental tourists. Three hours after we left Cebu City, we were on the dirt road leading to Moalboal’s beach. We passed an empty, solitary structure bearing the sign “Moalboal Tourist Sports Complex”--actually a cockpit--and then suddenly we were at the end of the road, an oasis of cottages and bamboo pavilions with names like Paradise Inn and Eve’s Kiosk. A number of one-room “schools” offered to teach scuba diving in eight easy lessons, and rented out the necessary outfits and equipment. It wasn’t tourist season, but there must have been more than two dozen white men and women in the place, in swimwear, scuba gear, or regulation tees and shorts.

After a sumptuous lunch of steamed crabs and grilled fish, fresh out of the sea, and washed down with San Miguel beer, we took a siesta. I thought I would wake up with aching muscles and joints, but didn’t. We had another beer at Eve’s Kiosk, and got a briefing from Eve herself. She showed us an old brochure, with faded colored pictures, describing a “mysterious underwater cave” in the “quaint little diving island of Moalboal, beautiful and unexplored.” The brochure called on the reader to “discover the secrets of the Philippine seas” by making a “descent to darkening depths,” with its “kaleidoscope of colors” and “structured cave-like coral walls [that] pulsate with tropical marine life.”

Fired by the promotional prose, we hied ourselves to a diving school. There was a speedboat scheduled to take scuba-diving students and enthusiasts to a nearby island where, the shop attendant assured me, the deep blue offered fabulous sights. But my landlubber instincts--which have instilled in my bones a deathly fear of any body of water that goes deeper than my neck--had taken over. I settled for snorkel and flippers, which together could be rented for 15 pesos per hour.

I stayed close to shore, avoiding the sudden drop in the sandbank. But even here there was enough “pulsating tropical marine life” to dazzle this first-time snorkeler. The Jackson Pollock permutations of coral, the multifarious species of tropical fish, dappled, candy-striped, of various shapes and sizes--I had seen these in aquaria before, but there was nothing like seeing them underwater, being surrounded by them, floating with them. For the first time in my life I saw a live starfish of lapis-lazuli blue. The haze of aquamarine before my goggled eyes and the sound of my own breathing contributed to the eerie beauty of it all. It gave me an inkling of what made scuba divers rave about Cebu, and made me rue my own fear of the deep.

THE NEXT DAY we left Moalboal, but not before getting a full tank from a hut that sold gasoline stored in liter-sized Coke bottles. The gasoline seller wore a T-shirt that said: “Don’t shoot journalists.”

We were back in Cebu City at noon, but had lunch in the next town, Mandaue, in an improvised outdoor restaurant that served succulent barbecued chicken with puso, rice served in little triangular packs of coconut leaves, in which they had been steamed. Afterwards we proceeded to the island of Mactan.

Connected to the main island by a bridge almost a kilometer long, Mactan is the first and last place that the plane-borne visitor to Cebu sees, because it is the site of the international airport. It is also famous for many other things: its world-class beach resorts, its distinctive limestone (known in the Philippines as Mactan stone), its guitars, and the historical fact that Ferdinand Magellan’s 16th-century dream of circumnavigating the globe ended here, when he was killed on the beach by the warriors of the native chieftain Lapulapu.

We looked around for guitar-makers and learned they were all to be found in two barrios, Maribago and Abuno. No one seemed to know the reason for this concentration of skills. Perhaps there was a forest in these barrios once, but now all the wood used for the making of the guitar, such as Philippine mahogany and pinewood, come from Mindanao. We found our way to Lilang’s, reputedly the largest guitar and handicrafts factory in Abuno. In one of the workshops, export-quality classical guitars were being made by an assembly line of twelve men, specialists in various aspects of the craft, from the cutting of the wood to the varnishing of the finished guitar. In an adjoining showroom, a Japanese couple examined samples of the native 14-string mandolin called banduria, and shelves full of ukuleles decorated with painted palm trees flanking the word Hawaii.

Less than a kilometer from Lilang’s was the backyard workshop of a 67-year-old artisan named Angel, who said he had been making guitars since he was 10 years old. His three brothers also made guitars, and their two the sisters sold them. They had learned the craft from their parents, but now none of Angel’s children seemed interested in carrying on the family tradition, and his apprentices were the children of his neighbors. A couple of assistants helped him, but he did all the major tasks himself, seated on a log outside the door of his workshed, his bare feet touching ground, while stray dogs drifted in and out, and tethered fighting cocks crowed ceaselessly. At the time of our visit he was at work on a bajo de arco, a double bass, commissioned by the priest of a nearby parish.

A visit to Mactan, Pardy said, would not be complete without paying homage to Lapulapu, revered as the first Philippine hero to oppose foreign invasion. Off we went to his seaside monument, in what is now Lapulapu City. It was a sign of native ambivalence toward the conquistador that right behind the impressive Lapulapu statue was an obelisk in honor of Magellan and of glorias españolas, Spanish glories. Lapulapu’s heroic proportions, moreover, prompted Pardy’s comment that Mactan’s pride looked more like an American Indian brave than a Malayan warrior.

On the beach nearby was a boat-building community. Some workmen were putting the finishing touches to a catamaran, commissioned by European tourists; others were carving a banca, the Philippine canoe, out of a large log. That reminded me of the galleon I had come to Cebu to look for.

CEBU is well-equipped for the 90-million-dollar galleon project. It has modern shipyards and a shipbuilding tradition, and Cebu-based companies currently control 90 percent of the country’s inter-island shipping. Historically, it was among the first of the Philippines’ 7,000 islands to witness the coming of Magellan’s three surviving ships in 1521, although its role in the later galleon trade is not particularly clear.

At least once a year for 250 years, from 1565 to 1815, the Manila Galleon plied the seas between the Philippines and Mexico, carrying silk and spices to the West and bringing back silver coins and soldiers of fortune. Cebu does not seem to have had a share in the profit and the glory. The definitive book on the subject, William Lytle Schurz’s The Manila Galleon (E.P. Dutton, 1939), does not include Cebu in its list of places where galleons were constructed; but the Encyclopedia Britannica (1981) notes that the island suffered “extensive timber cutting for the building of Spanish galleons on the historic Manila-Acapulco route.”

Pardy, who when I first met him seemed absolutely sure where the galleon was being built, now spoke with less certainty. He had heard it was in one of the shipyards in Consolacion, the town between Mandaue and Liloan, but he didn’t really know which. Fortunately, his first guess was the correct one. The impassable road, made for Land Rovers and 10-wheeler trucks, shook our nerves and rattled our bones, but after several detours and endless questioning of pedestrians, we reached Santiago Shipyard--named, appropriately enough, after Spain’s patron saint.

Still hanging outside a temporary prefab in the shipyard were streamers put up during the launching ceremonies. One welcomed national and provincial dignitaries. Another proclaimed: “La Infanta Filipina Keel-Laying Project, date July 29, 1989. Voyage of discovery, 1992. Seville World’s Fair, the Barcelona Olympic Games and the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the New World. The Philippines’ official representative in these historic world events.”

At that moment the Infanta Filipina, the Philippine Princess, was nothing more than four massive pieces of planed hardwood which had been towed from the province of Surigao, in Mindanao, and were now joined together end to end for a total length of 200 feet: the keel. Attached to it was an actual-size model of the prow. Inside the prefab, tacked to one wall, were the blueprints prepared by naval architects and marine engineers, providing a graphic preview of the shape of things to come.

At that moment the 20th-century galleon was still a dream, but not an inglorious one. On the way back to the city, I thought of Magellan’s guide and slave, christened Enrique. Described in the chronicles of the voyage as Malay, Enrique was most probably Cebuano, since he could speak the language of Sugbo and was able to act as interpreter; and if indeed he was Cebuano, then he was most certainly the first person to circumnavigate the globe, since he had come full circle when Magellan’s ships brought him back to his native land.

Despite the rough ride, I fell asleep and had a dream, and in my dream I saw Enrique on the deck of the Infanta Filipina, Pardy and Marlon and Eve and Angel beside him, with a white Anglo-Saxon blonde as guide, all setting out on a voyage to discover the Old World, to find what lay beyond the dazzling shadows of Cebu.

Tula: DALAW SA HIROSHIMA

Noong taong 2000, buwan ng Pebrero, kami ng kabiyak kong si Marra PL. Lanot ay nagpunta sa Japan bilang lecturers sa ika-9 na Takeshi Kaiko Memorial Asian Writers’ Lecture Series. Ang lecture series ay ipinangalan kay Takeshi Kaiko (1930-1989), isang kilalang nobelistang Hapones. Ang aming lecture series, na pinamagatang “Writers as Citizens: The Perspectives of Marra PL. Lanot and Jose F. Lacaba,” ay inisponsor ng Japan Foundation Asia Center.

Actually, poetry reading tour ang ginawa namin, at ang lectures ay pumasok na lang sa open forum pagkatapos naming magbasa ng mga tula namin sa Pilipino, na isinalin sa Hapon.

Ang mga siyudad na bahagi ng poetry reading tour ay Tokyo, Osaka, at Hiroshima. Dito sa huli, sa siyudad na hinulugan ng bomba atomika noong Ikalawang Digmaang Pandaigdig, ipinasyal kami sa Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, at isa sa hindi ko malimutang display sa museo ay ang hagdang bato na may nakatatak na anino. Sa website ng museo, ito ang nakasulat na paliwanag tungkol sa aninong iyon:

http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/outline/index.php?l=E&id=31

Damage by the Heat Rays

Human shadow etched in stone

“These stone steps led up to the entrance to the Sumitomo Bank Hiroshima Branch, 260 meters from the hypocenter. The intense atomic heat rays turned the surface of the stone white, except for a part in the middle where someone was sitting. The person sitting on the steps waiting for the bank to open received the full force of the heat rays directly from the front and undoubtedly died on the spot.”

Mula sa

http://www.culture24.org.uk/history+%26+heritage/war+%26+conflict/world+war+two/art14898

Pag-uwi namin sa Pilipinas ay nasulat ko ang tulang ito, na dapat ay ipinost ko noon pang Agosto 6, ika-65 na anibersaryo ng pagbomba sa Hiroshima.

Dalaw sa Hiroshima

Ang gunita ay isang aninong

nakatatak sa hagdang bato

sa lunsod ng Hiroshima.

Ang lalaking pinagmulan ng anino’y

agad na naging alabok sa kinauupuan

nang bumagsak ang bomba sa Hiroshima.

Pero naiwan ang kanyang anino, nakadikit

sa inupuang bahagi ng namuting hagdang bato

sa guho ng Hiroshima.

Ang gunita ay isang digmaang

nagwakas na nang ako’y ipanganak

tatlong buwan pagkaraan ng Hiroshima.

Pero hanggang ngayo’y nakatatak ang digmaan

sa utak ng bayan ko, kalahating siglo pagkaraan

ng malupit, mahabang gabi na mistulang Hiroshima.

Sa loob ng Museo sa Alaala ng Kapayapaan

sa bagong lunsod ng Hiroshima,

nagkiskis ang dalawang batong-buháy na gunita

at nagliyab sa lalamunan ko ang poot at awa.

Sa labas ng museo, nag-alay kami ng aking kabiyak

ng tahimik na dalangin at bulaklak.

Sa aming ulunan, palutang-lutang ang mga uwak.

--Jose F. Lacaba

SECOND MANDATE

This article was first published in the January 10, 1970, issue of the Philippines Free Press. After Noynoy Aquino’s inauguration, it was reprinted in the July 10, 2010, issue of the same magazine.

Once again, I have Free Press associate editor Ricky S. Torre to thank for digging up this archaeological piece. The reprint carries this introduction:

Right before the First Quarter Storm (40th anniversary this year) and Pete Lacaba’s now-lapidary chronicle of that episode in the Philippines’ modern history, there was this prologue. Ferdinand Marcos had just won in an unprecedented reelection that should have been welcomed with national euphoria. Yet even during the presidential campaign of 1969, there was already a prevailing exhaustion over the political system as wielded by their leaders and the electorate—compounded by the recurrent unrest, alongside the antiestablishment protest movement worldwide.

Although not as much in circulation as “Notes on Bakya,” “The Clash of ’69,” the reportage on FQS and “Prometheus Unbound,” among other highlights of the Lacaba catalogue, “Second Mandate” was and still remains just as significant for (besides its humor) its keen poetic sense of the flavor and spirit of an era: the late Sixties-early Seventies, as it happened primarily in the storyville that is the city of Manila. We reprint this piece, not in any strained and baseless attempt to draw parallels with today’s scene, but simply to present a fine example of journalism as one-take literature. Our gratitude to Pete Lacaba for his permission to reprint this article.—Ed.



SECOND MANDATE

Or, can Spiro Agnew forget the Marcos inauguration and find his way back to The Affluent Society?

By Jose F. Lacaba
(Philippines Free Press, January 10, 1970)


AUSTERITY was the order of the day, but assassination was the talk of the town.

The advance ballyhoo promised that, for once, the program for Inauguration Day would be “brief and austere.” The parade would be a worm compared with the snakes of previous inaugurations; civic participation had been scrapped and military display, normally lasting a full two hours, had been cut down to 40 minutes. Even words and saliva were affected by the general parsimony: reelected President Ferdinand Marcos would deliver “possibly the shortest inaugural address in the Republic’s history.” Afterwards, there would be the traditional dinner for the guests from across the seas, headed by no less than Spiro T. Agnew, household word and Vice-President of the United States of America; but there was to be no expense for Spiro in a waste of shame, the dinner would be not as before—lavish, extravagant, ostentatious—but simple and frugal. Probably limited to two courses: salabat for soup and pinakbet for viand. After the most expensive elections in Philippine history, the Ilocano in Marcos had come out.

Though austerity dictated the veto on custom and ceremony, the fear of assassination demanded that there be no skimping on security. Astrologers and soothsayers are said to have warned the President that he would be killed during his second term, and there was a great deal of talk about Oswalds and Sirhans before Inauguration Day, talk that Malacañang encouraged with its disclosure that a Huk liquidation squad was out to get Marcos. No expense was spared, therefore, to secure the President from suicidal assassins. A helicopter hovered over the Luneta to the end, the navy patrolled the bay, machine guns were perched atop the Independence Grandstand (what were they there for? would they have fired at the crowd if one crackpot had drawn a pistol?), walkie-talkies were everywhere, and the fuzz was as thick as flies in mango season. Uniformed policemen of Manila and suburbs lined the streets, Malacañang guards in barong Tagalog were deployed on the grandstand, constabulary troopers lolled behind it, Special Forces men crouched on the roof, NBI agents skulked around, motorcycle cops raced up and down the boulevard, Metrocom cars were parked at street corners, helmeted members of riot squads gripped their rattan sticks, four or five rows of soldiers in civvies manned the front lines of the sparse crowd, “a modest crowd of unenthusiastic spectators” (Chronicle), “smaller than the usual crowd that packs the park during national holidays” (Times), “perhaps the smallest crowd since the Philippines became independent” (Bulletin)—everybody was there, including, of course, Spiro’s Secret Service complement, on the lookout for an effete corps of impudent snobs brandishing Molotov cocktails.

Only a “fanatical fool” would have dared “penetrate the security cordon,” Brigadier General Vicente Raval of the Philippine Constabulary was quoted as saying, and he explained why: “He would never get past the security line; he would nevertheless emerge alive.” (Figure that out, if you can, and if you can’t, put it down as one of the best and most cryptic non sequiturs of the past decade.)

It was cold on the morning of Inauguration Day, hot towards noon, and uncertain weather all the way. Sun alternated with clouds and shadows, and even while the sun shone, brief showers fell, brief and austere. Umuulan, umaaraw, nanganganak ang bakulaw. Umaaraw, umuulan, nanganganak ang tikbalang. Out in the park the little children played, called by their parents when they wandered too far afield, calling after the balloonman, far and whee; and were utterly oblivious of the occasion, unmindful of Rizal, whose day it was, and even more unaware that at that very moment another hero, the country’s most decorated war hero, was on his way to his second inauguration.

There was earlier a question about the proper way for Ferdinand Marcos to go to his inauguration. No postwar Philippine president had ever been reelected, as the press daily reminded us, and so a thing like this had never happened before. Usually, there was an incoming president to go to Malacañang and there was an outgoing president to receive him and then accompany him to the Independence Grandstand, like a father giving away a bride. When the bride is without a father, what must be done? Ferdinand Marcos came accompanied by his son.

And, of course, by his senior aide, Brigadier General Hans Menzi, resplendent in a white uniform with all braids, badges, and accoutrements in place. Ferdinand Marcos, his hair slick-and-span as usual, was in a barong Tagalog, and so was Ferdinand Marcos Jr., better known as Bongbong, who had gotten rid of his crewcut and now sported a mod hairstyle, hair down low over his forehead, à la early-Beatles. Together, the father, the son, and Hans Menzi set forth from Malacañang, surrounded by scads of security men, to receive, in formal ceremony, what had been bestowed in November: a second mandate.

When they arrived at the grandstand, everybody else was there. Vice-President Fernando Lopez was there, grinning happily and now slouching towards the President to be the first to shake hands; he had himself, when he arrived, shaken hands with all the foreign and local dignitaries within reach, except Rufino Cardinal Santos, whose hand he kissed. Spiro Agnew, whose seat was right behind the President’s, was there, looking like a slim, squint-eyed panda. American astronaut Eugene Cernan was inconspicuous, but the dailies swear he was there. (When you come to think of it, do you have a distinct picture in your mind of the face of any astronaut, cosmonaut, or space explorer besides Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Even John Glenn is difficult to visualize; astronauts all look alike, and they are the faceless heroes of the age.) Gil J. Puyat, Senate President as of this writing, was there, and so was Jose B. Laurel Jr., Speaker as of this writing, his white hair absent from the dome but becomingly long at the nape. Chief Justice Roberto Concepcion wore the black robes of his office, Secretary-General Carlos P. Romulo acted as master of ceremonies, Executive Secretary Ernesto Maceda beamed in the background, Congressman Floro Crisologo was in a white (ramie?) suit, the kind our austerity-conscious grandfathers used to wear when they had their pictures taken. A host of lesser VIPs was there, too, and there was even a small group of whites in top hat and tails, looking like fugitives from a Broadway musical.

Never forget the women. Mrs. Imelda Marcos was there, and the Misses Imee and Irene, dressed in what, from a distance, looked like identical ternos. (“Signs of austere times?” went a society page item “…Mrs. Marcos wore a strikingly simple terno and single pearl earring. No jewelry.” The terno “had a wide front panel of rich hand embroidery reportedly taken from a gown she had worn at the first inauguration of the President in 1965.”) Mrs. Mariquit Lopez was only a little less austere. (She “also picked a jusi terno, slightly embroidered more than that of the First Lady. She also wore a gold bracelet, a single pearl pendant and a pearl ring in addition to pearl earrings.”) And the Blue Ladies were conspicuously in attendance—the bakya crowd among them down on the ground, in a corner behind the platform crammed with TV cameras and technicians, and therefore unable to see a thing; and the bluebloods among them up on the grandstand, occupying the space reserved for, but disdained as too distant by, the press. You could tell they were the blueblooded Blue Meanies by the lift of their eyebrows, the color of their skins and the austerity of their hairdos. The bakya crowd Blues, meanwhile, had to be resourceful; every now and then a couple of them would slip past the snarling policemen and get closer to the action, mingling with the press photographers, all the while giggling and chattering like schoolgirls on a holiday.

“Ang ganda talaga ni Imelda, ano?”

“Naku, si Ramil O, ’ando’n pala si Ramil Rodriguez!”

“Alin ba d’yan ’yung astor… ’yung nagpunta sa buwan?”

“Si Agno, hindi ko makita si Agno.”

“Sabi ko na sa ’yo mag-high heels ka, ayaw mong makinig.”

After the solemn preliminaries—21-gun salute, national anthem, invocation—came the small parade. No need to bore you with the gaudy details. Suffice it to say that the parade boldly gave the lie to the charge that the country has fallen victim to a creeping militarism. Militarism isn’t creeping in this country, it’s marching proudly, head held high, chest out, stomach in, and a finger on the trigger. The Special Forces and the Philcag contingent weren’t cringing nor hiding their heads in shame because of the controversy that swirled about them; they even got more applause than the PMA cadets, and it is reported that when the Philcag passed by, Agnew stood up as a gesture of respect. Note also that whoever prepared the program, when they decided that austerity called for a shortened parade, kept the soldiers and kicked out the civilians. Civic participations would have been a bore, of course, but the choice of what to exhibit on Inauguration Day sent tiny chills down the spine as one watched the parade of men and armaments unreel. Garrison state, anyone?

Throughout the parade, Ferdinand Marcos and Fernando Lopez stood on the proscenium (or whatever they call it) of the grandstand stage, each in his fashion. Marcos was ramrod straight, a true military man, saluting smartly when the colors passed by. Lopez had the sick look of a man who has been forced to forego his morning ablutions, if you know what I mean, and when the colors passed by he had his hand over his heart as if his heart was itchy. Obviously, the Vice-President was bored by the whole affair. While Marcos struck a heroic pose from the beginning and stuck to it to the end, squinting into the sun like Clint Eastwood without the slim cigar, a premature monument if ever there was one, Lopez couldn’t keep still. He scratched his nape, scratched his crotch, scratched his ears, picked his nose, rubbed his fingernails, folded his arms, dropped them to his sides, held his hands together before him, dropped them to his sides, held his hands together behind him, dropped them to his sides, stared morosely around, scowled, tried to hide his scowl by puckering his lips, and probably wished he were splashing around in his swimming pool. He was at least very human, which made him rather endearing. Besides, this was his third time to review a parade as Vice-President; he expected no surprises.

Happily for Mr. Lopez, it was all over in about the time it would have taken Barbra Streisand to finish “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and “When the Parade Passes By.” As a matter of fact, it was over so soon that the program committee found itself with time on its hands. Things had gone so smoothly the program had rushed ahead of schedule. A little time had to be killed before the Vice-President could take his oath of office at 11:55 a.m. This—not para magpalapad ng papel, as it seemed at the time—was the reason why the mixed choir and the Manila Symphony Orchestra that had already sung “Lupang Hinirang” and the “Marcos March” or something, now burst into an unscheduled singing of “Dahil sa Iyo.” Naturally the First Lady, delighted, joined in the singing.

When the singing stopped, it was time for the swearing in. The oaths of office, administered by the Chief Justice, were in Pilipino. Lopez and his Ilonggo accent struggled manfully, but charmingly, through his oath. The President, as if to reinforce his heroic image, recited his from memory. Ako, si Ferdinand Marcos, ay nanunumpa, etc., etc. Patnubayan nawa ako ng Panginoon. Historical footnote: it was the first time the two highest officials in the land said their oaths of office in Pilipino.

Like the bright grade-school kid who knows the capital of every province in the country and can recite “Psalm of Life” at the drop of a hint, Ferdinand Marcos is something of a showoff, and he showed off superbly in his inaugural address, which again he delivered from memory. His memory is terrific but, as even so loyal a partisan as J.V. Cruz noted, “the President looked far more concerned with making sure that his memory did not fail him than with the substance of what he was saying.” I used to be a school orator myself and I know that, after the rigorous rehearsals, once you get on the stage you’re no longer aware of what you’re saying, and you won’t even care, so long as you enunciate the practiced syllables clearly and remember when to raise your voice, when to lower it, when to pause, when to make a gesture, when to take a few steps forward, and when to give the audience a long piercing look (when you can’t remember the next word that will cue you on the next sentence and the rest of the speech). Marcos delivering his inaugural address reminded me of my high-school days; he looked like an earnest Voice of Democracy contestant in the elimination rounds taking great care not to muff his lines. In fact, he ended his speech like a VOD contestant: “The wave of the future is not totalitarianism but democracy.”

The inaugural address itself sounded like a high-school declamation piece. It was entitled “To Transform the Nation—Transform Ourselves” (even granting that titles need not be complete sentences, isn’t there something grammatically fishy here? We Must Transform Ourselves? Let Us Transform Ourselves?), and it contained such gems of sophomoric oratory as “…in the inexorable march of history no tears are shed for the fallen, no sympathies wasted on the weak….” Besides being studded with high-sounding clichés (“billowing fields of green,” “faint of heart,” “in this spot of the universe, a people strong and free”) and pious platitudes (“we labored to transform this nation into the very finest among God’s nations”), it sounded like a parody of the John F. Kennedy speeches, especially in passages such as: “…cross the frontier of the new decade…”, “Now in all humility we inform all Asia that we know the nature and quality of our tenuous peace; and that it is also a demanding peace…”, “I ask not sacrifice from the self-sacrificing…”, “Let not this generation pass without seeking to learn anew that in this great meeting place of eastern wisdom and western advance…”, “…seek not from government what you cannot find in yourself….”

Rumor has it that Mr. Marcos discarded all the drafts submitted by his speechwriters and labored over a draft of his own. It is not hard to believe the rumor.

The speech begins with the kind of high-flown literary Tagalog even the serialized novels and the movie tearjerkers are beginning to abandon: “Ang aking dinatnan ay isang pamahalaang nasa bingit ng kapahamakan at pagkariwara, isang pamahalaang nag-udyok ng takot bago ito nagbigay ng pag-asa; sakbibi ng pag-aatubili, hinamak ng kawalang-tiwala sa sarili, lugami ang kanyang kabuhayan, hungkag ang kanyang kaban,” etc., etc. That isn’t even constructed the way a Tagalog sentence should be constructed, and the reason is that it is a transliteration of what follows next in English: “We found a government on the brink of disaster and collapse, a government that prompted fear before it inspired hope; plagued by indecision, scorned by self-doubt, its economy despoiled, its treasury plundered,” etc., etc. If the same thing was going to be said in English all over again, what was the point of saying it in Pilipino? To impress Spiro Agnew?

He may have been impressed by what Mr. Marcos said next.

The President demanded “sacrifice” and “self-discipline” from the powerful and the privileged, demanded of society that it “chastise the profligate rich who waste the nation’s substance—including its foreign exchange reserves—in personal comforts and luxuries,” and made it clear that under his administration, “wealth, position or power will not purchase privilege; wealth and power shall not outrage the conscience of our people.”

The beginning of a new decade, said the President, called for a lot of new things: “new national habits, nothing less than a new social and official morality”; “a new ethic” with which “we will surmount most of the grave problems we are confronting now”; “a new heart, a new spirit that springs out of the belief that while our dangers are many, and our resources few, there is no problem that cannot be surmounted given but the will and courage.” Under this new morality, “any act of extravagance in government will be considered not only as an offense to good morals but an act punishable with dismissal from office.”

The President promised to set the example.

“I pledge a leadership of the severest quality in integrity, morality and discipline.”

(The day after his inauguration, “moved,” he said, “by the strongest desire and the purest will to set the example of self-denial and self-sacrifice for all our people,” the President decided to give away “all my worldly possessions so that they may serve the greater needs of the greater number of our people.” All his properties, “by a general instrument of transfer,” were to go “to the Filipino people through a foundation to be organized and to be known as the Ferdinand E. Marcos Foundation,” the purpose of which was to advance “the cause of education, science, technology and the arts.” As Gene Magsaysay would say, no comment—not yet.)

After the inaugural address, the President and his family went back home to Malacañang, where they signed the registry book again, as they had done the first time they moved into the place.

“Glad to be back,” Ferdinand Marcos reportedly wrote.

And Bongbong: “Me next, I hope.”

Nobody got assassinated, but Metrocom men, according to a news report, “arrested two men they said were loitering near the grandstand on suspicion they were on an assassination mission.” One man was said to have a tear-gas gun; the other wore a PC lieutenant-colonel’s uniform and brown civilian shoes. They were taken to Camp Crame.

LIFE AS ERPAT

Yesterday being Father’s Day, I am bringing back an old article I wrote when my now-39-year-old son was only three months old.

LIFE AS ERPAT

In times like these, to paraphrase Brecht, a conversation about trees is almost a crime—because it includes a silence about so many misdeeds.

So here I am again, back on the beat after a year at the desk, back with a vengeance, or is it off on another ego trip, at any rate eager to prove to one and all that neither domestic bliss nor the kiss of cooptation has blunted the sense of rage—and what is the first thing I do? Something tantamount to starting a conversation about trees. It’s better than talking about the many varieties of wine, or sunset on Manila Bay, or Image and Archetype in the Poetry of Rolando Carbonell; but fatherhood is still an unlikely topic, however you look at it, for anyone who wants to announce a new lease on his writing life, I mean, in this day and age, when the wit and urbanity of the so-called familiar essay are a drag, an anachronism, if not the equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns, can any reader be bowled over by a light piece, written off the top of one’s head, on the subject of fatherhood?

If I weren’t the author of this article, I probably wouldn’t even bother to proofread it.

But this is, in case you haven’t noticed, our Valentine’s Day issue and an occasional (“belonging or suitable to some special occasion”—Funk & Wagnalls) article was called for, something connected, however remotely, with love. I chose fatherhood.

I chose fatherhood for the plain and simple reason that I became the father of a six-pound, twenty-and-a-half-inch baby boy last November, and I feel I can at least fill up a page or two of this issue with the bits and pieces of nonsense and common sense that I have picked up since then.

The very first thing I learned was to disabuse my mind of the many comic-book notions of fatherhood that the petty-bourgeois mind has absorbed in all the years of cultural conditioning by Hollywood and Reader’s Digest. We all have this picture of the worried father restlessly pacing a waiting-room floor littered with cigarette butts. I never did get around to that. Like Macduff, my boy was not of woman born but was from his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d, and so there simply was no time for this father to make like a smoke-belching PUB. In the time it took me to finish a stick of regular-sized Marlboro Red, a new Lacaba came howling into this wicked world , another helpless creature to be sapped with Original Sin by the Almighty.

The next frame in our comic-book consciousness shows the doctor coming out of the delivery room, peeling off his surgical gloves, while over his head hovers a balloon on which is written: “Congratulations! It’s a baby.” In my case, when the nurse wheeled out a kind of pram from which arose tremendous howls of protest, the doctors (there were two) remained in the delivery room to calibrate the Mrs. with fourteen stitches. I didn’t see where the pram was wheeled into, I couldn’t see the bundle of flesh and bone responsible for all the caterwauling, and none of my anguished importunings could make the nurse reveal the secrets of the delivery room. Was it boy, girl, or what, was all I wanted to know; and all she would say was, “Wait for the doctors.” It made me wonder if my baby’s gender was classified information (had my baby perhaps disclosed who blasted Plaza Miranda with fragmentation grenades?) or whether the heart between the nurse’s ribs was a transplant from a United Fruit banana. I mean, there oughta be a law against keeping first-time fathers in suspense.

Well, it turned out to be a boy, which is supposed to be a rarity in these days of Women’s Lib. Seems that nine out of ten babies being born today is a potential Makibaka activist, and only one is a potential male chauvinist, so that the arrival of a boy has the same effect on earth that the return of a lost sheep has in heaven.

Happiest of all were half the relatives who had won their bets. When the baby was still a fetus in the sinapupunan, everybody had turned Delphic oracle. Some predicted it would be a boy because the mother’s features had grown sharp, others were certain it would be a girl because the mother hadn’t lost her looks; boy because it kicked like vodka, girl because it leaned to the right of the womb; boy because the mother always stepped with left feet first, girl because she stepped any which way; boy because the mother’s neck and armpits had grown slightly darker, girl because the mother was paler than usual. Nobody bothered to see if the father had lost a tooth or grown prey to constipation. The only thing the father was sure of was that his child wouldn’t be a tuta.

So we got a boy, and suddenly a whole new world opened up. Yesterday, I was just padre de familia to a brood of younger brothers and sisters and a widowed mother. Now, I was an honest-to-goodness erpat myself. It was a thought to give one pause, and mythopoeic visions ran through my mind—you know, all that business about Oedipus and the slaying of the father.

But more mundane matters soon banished all fancied terrors from my mind. The Delphic oracles had metamorphosed into Dr. Spocks and were liberal with advice on baby and child care. You don’t want to spoil him, said an aunt, so unless it’s feeding time don’t pick him up, however pitifully he cries. You don’t want him to get gas pains, said another aunt, so be sure to pacify him the moment he cries. If you want a baby girl next time around, said still another aunt, you might try changing places in bed when you go to sleep: ikaw naman ngayon sa kanan…

Sleep, however, among other things, was a luxury we would have very little of in the days to come. Two years ago, I was vice-president of a labor union which counted among its demands a paternity leave of a week or two, if I remember right. The demand was laughed to scorn by Management, and since most of the Union officers were then bachelors, there was nothing we could do but blush in the face of derision. I know now that the demand was not only reasonable but absolutely necessary, and it can be mocked and made fun of only by the rich, by those few who can afford to have their babies cared for day and night by governess, nursemaid, amah, or yaya.

I am by no means destitute, and there is a maid to wash bottles and diapers, a refrigerator to store prepared formula in. I don’t even keep office hours. And yet I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the baby came. I can just imagine how difficult things are for the typical working-class father who has to put in eight hours of backbreaking physical labor a day, and then goes home at night to a baby who wakes up and wails once or twice in three hours, complaining of a wet diaper or asking to be fed. He’s lucky if the mother has ample milk in her breasts at all times. If not, he must, with superhuman effort, shake off the grogginess in his head, pick up his tired body, and prepare the baby’s formula or change its diapers. Sure, the wife usually has a major share in this task, but in the first few months after birth, and especially if she has had a cesarian, he cannot expect her to do everything all by herself. And the day after each night when he can only sleep in snatches, he has to go back to work, back to the infernal factory, to the emotionless machines, to the foreman who bawls him out for being sleepy on the job. “If conditions make the human being,” it has been said, “we ought to make the conditions human”—and the paternity leave, no less than the maternity leave, is one of those things that make the conditions human, though of course it’s bound to affect profits.

Not only has fatherhood aroused one’s social conscience, it has pricked one’s national pride. This article has taken an unexpected turn, but one might as well pursue the topic to its logical conclusion. All roads, after all, lead to economics: “mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.” Man may not live by bread alone, but he cannot live without something to put into his stomach.

So, once you get to be a father, you cannot help but reflect on, if not accept, the truth of the activist charge that the national economy is in foreign hands. The higher up on the social scale you go, the more you are likely to realize just how great imperialist control of the economy is. I look around at all the “necessities” that I, like any good burgis father, provide my child with, and I see nothing but foreign, mostly American, labels. On the recommendation of doctors, relatives, and friends, all of whom have been brought up within a colonial social structure, the baby subsists on Mead-Johnson’s Enfamil (“closest to mother’s milk”), obtains his vitamins from Mead-Johnsons Poly-Vi-Sol and United American Tiki-Tiki, is helped out in his bowel movements by Glycerin suppositories, wears Curity Diapers, is bathed with Ivory soap, and smells of Johnson’s Baby Powder, Johnson’s Baby Oil, Johnson’s Baby Lotion, and Johnson’s Baby Cologne, which are supplemented by Fissan Baby Powder, a German product. He used to take his formula from Freflo bottles, British-made and of transparent plastic, which cracked after a month of use, and so we shifted to Sanifeed, also of transparent plastic and apparently of local manufacture; these last have the advantage of wide mouths which make formula-preparing a bit easier, but they leak and the nipples that go with them either have no holes or have holes so big the formula flows like tap water, choking the baby; friends who have had babies of their own are therefore suggesting another shift, this time to Evenflo, which they say enjoys the recommendation of Good Housekeeping or something.

Erpat, fancying himself a nationalist of sorts, ends up in a quandary: the imported is definitely better than the local, so where does that put his nationalism? How is one to have pride in things Filipino when things Filipino are so shoddy? The same realization has led many others to despair of the nationalist alternative altogether, and has given rise to the reactionary conviction that it is silly to protest against all those abstract isms, since the fault begins with the Filipino, who is his own worst enemy. Before blaming others, so the argument goes, let us first blame ourselves. If we are enslaved, it is because we have allowed ourselves to be enslaved.

It’s an argument that negates our own history, which is a history of resistance, of uprisings, insurrections, revolts, all brutally and ruthlessly suppressed. It is an argument, moreover, that confuses effect for cause, that sees the weaknesses of the Filipino as the cause of all his misfortunes, without bothering to inquire into the historical circumstances that have given rise to those weaknesses. Rizal has already demolished, for good, a similar argument in the essay, “The Indolence of the Filipino,” the point of which is that we do not blame ourselves first, because what we are has been shaped by others, by our conquerors.

The thing is to understand why the imported is better than the local, why there is a general lack of national and social progress. The imported is better than the local because the imported will never allow the local to improve and develop; to allow that would be to lose a profitable market for the imported. In other words, the colonizer will never allow the colonized to achieve progress, because such progress can only be to the detriment of the colonizer, just as the progress of the many will unavoidably, inevitably cut into, and if not entirely abolish, the wealth of the few. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.

Once you grasp this truth—unless you are so hopelessly mired in cynicism that you see no solution to anything, or have privileges to protect and therefore instinctively reject any solution that will sweep away those privileges—then it is possible to advance. Once you see that the misery of so many Filipinos is not foreordained but a result of backwardness of the national economy, and once you understand the reason for this backwardness, the conclusion is inescapable: it is not enough to feel a sense of outrage at the sight of so much misery; it is necessary to join in the fight against the abuses of such misery. And you must be prepared to share in the misery, the better to eradicate it.

To get back to our point of departure, you must be prepared—and be willing—to do away with the imported even if the only alternative is to put up with the local, because only by rejecting the imported is it possible for the local to improve and cease to be shoddy. You must be prepared—and be willing—to accept inferior locally made substitutes to come into existence. In the same way, you must be prepared to assume the condition of a peasant if you want to help in the betterment of the peasant’s lot. The idea is to be ready to sacrifice personal (including familial) comfort and ease for the sake of the greater good, now and in the future.

I can almost hear the cynics sneering: here’s another one of those propagandists for paradise, in love with abstractions more than with life itself, championing humanity to the neglect of the human. Some other time, I will narrate the stories of some workers I know, members of our union, men and women of flesh and blood, whose sufferings and aspirations are abstractions only to those who are not even aware that these men and women exist. For the moment, I must be content with generalities.

All too often, those who prate about the quality of human life, those who proclaim their devotion to what is true, human, and abiding, mistake the pimples of their sensitive petty-burgeois souls for the more mundane concerns of the great mass of their fellowmen, whose “anguish” is usually tied up with painfully concrete realities – how to stretch eight pesos a day in order to feed a family of six three times a day, and have enough to spare for the rent, the light, the water, and a new pair of shoes for the school-age kid. I think particularly of Camus, that exquisite existentialist, the humane observer who was so caught up in the contemplation of the eternal verities that when his countrymen in Algeria rose up in revolt, on the very concrete issues of “bread and the land” (in the words of Frantz Fanon), he was taken by surprise, and ended up rejecting, repudiating, virtually condemning his people’s struggle, which didn’t fit his definition of what was true, human, and abiding. “Neither victim nor executioner” was his personal slogan; but he failed to realize that, by refusing to be a victim, or even simply to speak up for the victim, he had aligned himself with the executioner.

I have gone off on quite a tangent, I am afraid, and now I must get back to my son. All I can offer him now, besides his daily dose of imperialist milk, are a few words of advice. Let him always remember that there is “plenty to protest against but nothing to despair about.” For despair, which is the other face of cynicism, “is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.”

Asia-Philippines Leader

February 11, 1972