Free expression, censorship & Manila Ordinance 7780

This is a bit long, but I can't help myself, I'm really pissed off.



HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MANILA ORDINANCE NO. 7780?


Has anyone ever heard of the City of Manila's Ordinance No. 7780--or of its obvious clone, House Bill No. 3305?

Manila Ordinance 7780 is entitled "AN ORDINANCE PROHIBITING AND PENALIZING THE PRINTING, PUBLICATION, SALE, DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION OF OBSCENE AND PORNOGRAPHIC ACTS AND MATERIALS AND THE PRODUCTION, RENTAL, PUBLIC SHOWING AND VIEWING OF INDECENT AND IMMORAL MOVIES, TELEVISION SHOWS, MUSIC RECORDS, VIDEO AND VHS TAPES, LASER DISCS, THEATRICAL OR STAGE AND OTHER LIVE PERFORMANCES, EXCEPT THOSE REVIEWED BY THE MOVIE, TELEVISION REVIEW AND CLASSIFICATION BOARD (MTRCB)."

House Bill 3305 is entitled "AN ACT PROHIBITING AND PENALIZING THE PRODUCTION, PRINTING, PUBLICATION, IMPORTATION, SALE, DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION OF OBSCENE AND PORNOGRAPHIC MATERIALS, AND THE EXHIBITION OF LIVE SEXUAL ACTS, AMENDING FOR THE PURPOSE ARTICLE 201OF THE REVISED PENAL CODE, AS AMENDED."

HB 3305 was, without much fanfare, approved by the House of Representatives only last February 5, 2008. But it remains a bill and does not have the force of law as of today, unless and until it (or a similar bill) is approved by the Senate and signed into law by the President. So, for now, it's not a major problem.

Ordinance 7780, however, was enacted by the City Council of Manila at its regular session on January 28, 1993, and was subsequently approved by Mayor Alfredo S. Lim on February 19, 1993--more than 15 years ago! So the ordinance is in effect, and is therefore a pesky problem, at least in the Noble and Ever Loyal City of Manila.

I will have to confess that I had never heard of this jurassic (make that pre-jurassic) city ordinance, or its more recent congressional clone, until recently. That was sometime after July 7, 2008, the day a group of complainants identifying themselves as "Pastors of and Preachers in different Churches in Metro Manila"--all Baptists, by the way, and only one of whom seems to be a Manila resident--filed a "joint complaint affidavit" against four magazines (Playhouse, Playboy, FHM, and Maxim) and three tabloids (Sagad, Hataw, and Baliktaran Toro) for violating the Revised Penal Code and Ordinance 7780.

Full disclosure: I work for YES! magazine, which is published by Summit Media Publishing, which also publishes FHM. So, yes, I am an interested party in this case--but I am also an interested party because for years and years now I have been railing against comstockery (look it up in the dictionary, or check out Anthony Comstock in the encyclopedia) and taking part in efforts opposing censorship and upholding freedom of expression.

Both Manila Ordinance 7780 and House Bill 3305 purport to be anti-obscenity and anti-pornography measures. I'm no legal expert, but it seems to me that both of these measures are really censorship laws and clearly go against the provision in the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines that states:

"No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press..." (Section 4, Article III, "Bill of Rights").

The censorious Manila Ordinance 7780, for instance, gives this definition of the term "obscene" in Section 2:

"Obscene shall refer to any material or act that is indecent, erotic, lewd or offensive, or contrary to morals, good customs or religious beliefs, principles or doctrines, or to any material or act that tends to corrupt or deprive the human mind, or is calculated to excite impure imagination or arouse prurient interest, or is unfit to be seen or heard, or which violates the proprieties of language or behavior, regardless of the motive of the printer, publisher, seller, distributor, performer or author of such act or material, such as but not limited to:

"1. Printing, showing, depicting or describing sexual acts;
"2. Printing, showing, depicting or describing children in sexual acts;
"3. Printing, showing, depicting or describing completely nude human bodies; and
"4. Printing, showing, depicting or describing the human sexual organs or the female breasts."

Let's take a closer look at that definition or description or whatchamacallit.

Any "act that is ... offensive" is obscene? Offensive to whom? Offensive in what way? Spitting in public, or picking or blowing your nose in public, may be considered offensive by a lot of people I know. Does that make it obscene? Well, maybe--but certainly not in the way that Ordinance 7780 understands the word, and it certainly would not merit, for the offensive offender, "imprisonment of one year or fine of five thousand pesos, or both."

Any "material or act that is ... contrary to ... religious beliefs, principles or doctrines" is obscene? Wait a minute. How did religion get into a secular ordinance? Whatever happened to the separation of church and state? If a modern-day Martin Luther publishes a modern-day 95 Theses contrary to specific religious beliefs, principles, or doctrines, would he be guilty of an obscene act, or would his work be proscribed as obscene material?

Something that "tends to corrupt or deprive the human mind" is obscene? That's right--DEPRIVE! That's the word used in my scanned jpeg copy of Ordinance No. 7780. The lack of a liberal-arts education is likely to "deprive the human mind" of a vast area of knowledge. Does such a lack constitute an obscenity? Well, again, in a way, maybe, as can be gleaned from the workings of the comstockian mind--but again, not in the way intended by 7780. Of course, the word "deprive" may well be a typographical error, and the honorable councilors who enacted the ordinance may have meant "deprave." But that means they allowed this ordinance to get through without doing some careful proofreading. I am assuming, of course, that those honorable councilors are aware of the distinction between "deprive" and "deprave." But I may be assuming too much.

Something that is "unfit to be seen or heard" is obscene? What exactly is unfit to be seen or heard? Who decides what is fit and what is unfit to be seen or heard? In the eyes and ears of pastors and preachers, are the Sexbomb Girls fit to be seen or heard? And in the eyes and ears of Sexbomb fans, are televangelizing pastors and preachers fit to be seen or heard?

Something that "violates the proprieties of language" is obscene? Oh, wow. That means a good deal of 20th- and 21st-century literature, film, and music can no longer be sold, screened, or played in Manila. There is, for instance, an award-winning children's book with the title "Og Uhog," by Christine Bellen, and there's a new CD by the Radioactive Sago Project with the title "Tanginamo Andaming Nagugutom sa Mundo Fashionista Ka Pa Rin." Do those titles violate "the proprieties of language" by using words that would be frowned upon in polite society--not to mention in all of Manila?

I will also have to say, "Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa." I must strongly advise my publishers to immediately pull out my own poetry collections from Manila bookstores, before the comstockians discover the poems where I recklessly tried to democratize the language of poetry by using kanto-boy vulgarisms. I plead guilty to writing and publishing poems such as "Santong Paspasan," about the son of a congressman and his four gangmates who rape a young woman named Maritess," a poem marked by improprieties of language, including the lines "at sinunog ang bulbol / ni Maritess" and "at nagsalsal ang mga pulis."

Note, too, that "the motive of the printer, publisher, seller, distributor, performer or author" of any act or material that Ordinance 7780 deems obscene does not matter. That means we can no longer use "for art's sake" as an excuse. That goes not only for TF, the so-called titillating films, but also for modern classics such as "Schindler's List," which the Vatican cited as one of the ten best films of all time, but which, if you will recall, Philippine film censors tried to cut and nearly banned, because it had a short "pumping scene."

What may well be one of the most alarming features of Ordinance 7780 is that its definition of "obscene" includes "printing, showing, depicting or describing"--yes, including describing--a variety of images, including "completely nude human bodies" and "the human sexual organs or the female breasts."

Such a provision makes it illegal in Manila to sell books or postcards with reproductions of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and Michelangelo's "David," not to mention details from the fresco on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, including that famous one showing God touching the finger of a very muscular Adam with a teenie-weenie wienie (I hesitate to use a term that violates "the proprieties of language").

Since plain and simple description of the female breasts has also been made illegal, the Bible will also have to be banned from Manila bookstores and churches, since it has these lines from the Song of Songs: "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among lilies.... This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.... thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine."

And I wonder what Ordinance 7780 would have to say about the story of Lot. After the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, when there were no more men around to help them populate their portion of the earth, his two daughters came to an agreement. As the elder daughter said to the younger: “Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father.” So the two daughters got their father drunk, had sex with him, and got themselves pregnant.

The “proprieties of language” may have been observed in the telling of this story, but the story itself--a tale of incest instigated by the children, however noble or practical their motives may have been--would seem to fall under Ordinance 7780’s definition of obscene as “any material or act that is indecent, erotic, lewd or offensive, or contrary to morals, good customs or religious beliefs, principles or doctrines.” The story is told in Chapter 18, Verses 31-38, of the Bible. Therefore, the Bible should really be banned from the whole of the city of Manila, on the strength of Manila Ordinance 7780.

But if Manila Ordinance 7780 is alarming, the pastors' complaint affidavit is even more so. The ordinance only proscribes the depiction of "completely nude human bodies," but the complaint affidavit objects to "nude or semi nude bodies."

A number of the attachments to the complaint affidavit show sexy women in itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie bikinis, so I guess the complainants are referring to partially uncovered female human bodies. But the wording of their complaint gave me the initial impression that they also object to "nude or semi nude bodies" of the non-human variety, such as those you see on the Animal Planet channel.

Seriously speaking, however, how can the pastors complain about "semi nude bodies"--and the attachments to their complaint affidavit include photos of women in sexy poses revealing a lot of cleavage, but with bikinis to cover the strategic anatomical parts that might arouse prurient interest in pimply adolescents--when Ordinance 7780 itself, antediluvian as it already is, only refers to "completely nude human bodies" in its definition of what is obscene or pornographic?

I will grant that some of the attachments to the complaint affidavit--in particular, the reproductions from the tabloids--belong to the category that movie censors might label For Adults Only, or X, or even Triple X. Unfortunately, neither the complaint affidavit nor Manila Ordinance 7780 makes distinctions. Material that movie censors might just rate as For Parental Guidance is lumped willy-nilly with material that even the liberal-minded might concede as requiring plain brown wrappers if they are to be sold in public places, to keep them out of reach of children and pimply adolescents.

On more than one occasion, I have fulminated against the Victorian-era provisions of the Marcosian Presidential Decree 1986, which created the current Movie and Television Review and Classification Board. But PD 1986 now seems positively progressive compared with the super-ultra-uber-mega-conservative and pre-jurassic Manila Ordinance 7780, not to mention its equally revolting clone, House Bill 3305.

Here’s a copy of the text of Manila Ordinance No. 7780. You be the judge.



ORDINANCE NO. 7780

AN ORDINANCE PROHIBITING AND PENALIZING THE PRINTING, PUBLICATION, SALE, DISTRIBUTION AND EXHIBITION OF OBSCENE AND PORNOGRAPHIC ACTS AND MATERIALS AND THE PRODUCTION, RENTAL, PUBLIC SHOWING AND VIEWING OF INDECENT AND IMMORAL MOVIES, TELEVISION SHOWS, MUSIC RECORDS, VIDEO AND VHS TAPES, LASER DISCS, THEATRICAL OR STAGE AND OTHER LIVE PERFORMANCES, EXCEPT THOSE REVIEWED BY THE MOVIE, TELEVISION REVIEW AND CLASSIFICATION BOARD (MTRCB).

Be it ordained by the City Council of Manila, THAT:

SECTION 1. Title: This ordinance shall be known as the ANTI-OBSCENITY AND PORNOGRAPHY ordinance of the City of Manila.

SEC. 2. Definition of Terms: As used in this ordinance, the terms:

A. Obscene shall refer to any material or act that is indecent, erotic, lewd or offensive, or contrary to morals, good customs or religious beliefs, principles or doctrines, or to any material or act that tends to corrupt or deprive the human mind, or is calculated to excite impure imagination or arouse prurient interest, or is unfit to be seen or heard, or which violates the proprieties of language or behavior, regardless of the motive of the printer, publisher, seller, distributor, performer or author of such act or material, such as but not limited to:

1. Printing, showing, depicting or describing sexual acts;
2. Printing, showing, depicting or describing children in sexual acts;
3. Printing, showing, depicting or describing completely nude human bodies; and
4. Printing, showing, depicting or describing the human sexual organs or the female breasts.

B. Pornographic or pornography shall refer to such objects or subjects of photography, movies, music records, video and VHS tapes, laser discs, billboards, television, magazines, newspapers, tabloids, comics and live shows calculated to excite or stimulate sexual drive or impure imagination, regardless of motive of the author thereof, such as, but not limited to the following:

1. Performing live sexual acts in whatever form;
2. Those other than live performances showing, depicting or describing sexual acts;
3. Those showing, depicting or describing children in sex acts;
4, Those showing, depicting or describing completely nude human body, or showing, depicting or describing the human sexual organs or the female breasts.

C. Materials shall refer to magazines, newspapers, tabloids, comics, writings, photographs, drawings, paintings, billboards, decals, movies, music records, video and VHS tapes, laser discs, and similar matters.

SEC. 3. Prohibited Acts The printing, publishing, distribution, circulation, sale and exhibition of obscene and pornographic acts and materials and the production, public showing and viewing of video and VHS tapes, laser discs, theatrical or stage and other live performances and private showing for public consumption, whether for free or for a fee, of pornographic pictures as herein defined are hereby prohibited within the City of Manila and accordingly penalized as provided herein.


SEC. 4. Penalty Clause: Any person violating this ordinance shall be punished as follows:

1. For the printing, publishing, distribution or circulation of obscene or pornographic materials; the production or showing of obscene movies, television shows, stage and other live performances; for producing or renting obscene video and VHS tapes, laser discs, for viewing obscene movies, television shows, video and VHS tapes, and laser discs or stage and other live performances; and for performing obscene act on stage and other live performances - imprisonment of one (1) year or fine of five thousand (P5,000.00) pesos, or both, at the discretion of the court.

2. For the selling of obscene or pornographic materials - imprisonment of not less than six (6) months nor more than one (1) year or a fine of not less than one thousand (P1,000.00) pesos, nor more than three thousand (P3,000.00) pesos.

Provided, that in case the offender is a juridical person, the President and the members of the board of directors, shall be held criminally liable; Provided, further, that in case of conviction, all pertinent permits and licenses issued by the City Government to the offender shall automatically be revoked and the obscene or pornographic materials shall be confiscated in favor of the City Government for destruction; Provided, furthermore, that in case the offender is a minor and unemancipated and unable to pay the fine, his parents or guardian shall be liable to pay such fine; Provided finally, that this ordinance shall not apply to materials printed, distributed, exhibited, sold, filmed, rented, viewed or produced by reason of or in connection with or in furtherance of science and scientific research and medical or medically related art, profession, and for educational purposes.

SEC. 5. Repealing Clause: All ordinances, rules and regulations or parts thereof in conflict or inconsistent with the provisions of this ordinance are hereby repealed, amended or modified accordingly.

SEC. 6. Separability Clause: If any provision of this ordinance is declared void, the provisions not affected thereby shall remain in full force and effect.

SEC. 7. Effectivity: This ordinance shall take effect thirty (30) days after publication in a newspaper of general circulation in the City of Manila.

Enacted by the City Council of Manila at its regular session today, January 28, 1993.

Approved by His Honor, the Mayor on February 19, 1993.

APPROVED:

[ SIGNED ] [ SIGNED ]
ALFREDO S. LIM JOSE L. ATIENZA, JR.
Mayor Vice Mayor and Presiding Officer
City of Manila City Council, Manila

ATTESTED:

[ SIGNED ] [ SIGNED ]
RAFAELITO M. GARAYBLAS EMMANUEL R. SISON
Secretary to the Mayor Secretary to the City Council

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Principal Author: Hon. Bienvenido M. Abante, Jr.

Joint Authors: Hon. Bernardito C. Ang, Hon. Leonardo L. Angat, Hon. Humberto B. Basco, Hon. Karlo Q. Butiong, Hon. Ma. Corazon R. Caballes, Hon. Avelino S. Cailian, Hon. Flaviano F. Concepcion, Jr., Hon. Jocelyn B. Dawis, Hon. Felixberto D. Espiritu, Hon. Chika G. Go, Hon. Gonzalo P. Gonzales, Hon. Ma. Paz E. Herrera, Hon. Joey D. Hizon, Hon. Ma. Lourdes M. Isip, Hon. Pedro S. de Jesus, Hon. Jhosep Y. Lopez, Hon. Honorio U. Lopez II, Hon. Ernesto V.P. Maceda, Jr., Hon. Romualdo S. Maranan, Hon. Victoriano A. Melendez, Hon. Rolando P. Nieto, Hon. Ernesto A. Nieva, Hon. Roberto C. Ocampo, Hon. Rogelio B. dela Paz, Hon. Nestor C. Ponce, Jr., Hon. Estrella S. Querubin, Hon. Manuel M. Zarcal, Hon. Manuel L. Quin, Hon. Bernardo D. Ragasa, Hon. Alexander S. Ricafort, Hon. Ernesto F. Rivera, Hon. Romeo G. Rivera, Hon. Danilo V. Roleda, Hon. Casimiro C. Sison, Hon. Gerino A. Tolentino, Jr., Hon. Francisco G. Varona, Jr., including the Vice Mayor and Presiding Officer, Hon. JOSE L. ATlENZA, JR.

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FSB/tav:

Salin: HUNYO ni Shi Tao

Today's Lifestyle Arts & Books section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (August 11, 2008) has an article, "Writers worldwide hold own Olympics 'relay' for freedom," about a "poem relay" on behalf of the imprisoned Chinese poet Shi Tao. "The relay seeks to produce translations of Shi's poem 'June,'" according to the unbylined Inquirer article.

June 4, 1989, was the date of the Tiananmen massacre. Shi Tao is serving 10 years in prison for supposedly "revealing state secrets abroad"--specifically, because he circulated an email that exposed the the Chinese propaganda department's instructions to the Chinese media on how to cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen incident.

I don't know if there's already an existing Tagalog translation of the poem. I haven't surfed the Internet yet. For all it's worth, here's my translation, based on the English translation published by the Inquirer:


HUNYO
ni Shi Tao

Ang buong buhay ko
Ay hindi kailanman lalagpas sa Hunyo.
Hunyo nang mamatay ang aking puso,
Hunyo nang mamatay ang aking poesiya,
Hunyo nang mamatay ang aking iniibig
Nang dumanak sa lupa ang dugo ng pag-ibig.

Hunyo, sinusunog at tinutuklap ng araw ang aking balat,
Inilalantad ang tunay na kalikasan ng aking sugat.
Hunyo, lumalangoy sa dagat na pinapula ng dugo
Ang mga isdang naghahanap ng lugar na matutulugan.
Hunyo, umiikot ang mundo, natatahimik ang mga ilog,
Natatambak ang mga liham na hindi maipadala sa mga patay na.


Salin sa Pilipino ni Jose F. Lacaba
Batay sa saling Ingles ni Chip Rolley


(Ang nagsalin sa Pilipino ay naging bilanggong pulitikal sa Kampo Crame nang halos dalawang taon, 1974-76, noong panahon ng batas militar.)

Salin at halaw: Jose Garcia Villa

Ngayong araw na ito, Agosto 5, ang centennial ng kapanganakan ni Jose Garcia Villa, Pambansang Alagad ng Sining sa Panitikan (National Artist for Literature.) Bilang paggunita sa kanyang centennial, narito ang mga matagal ko nang isinalin at hinalaw na mga tula niya.

(Sa kasamaang palad, ay ginagawang flush left nitong Blogger ang lahat ng linya, inaalis ang additional spaces at indentions, kaya hindi nasusunod ang actual placement ng mga linyang hindi flush left. Hindi ko pa alam kung paano ito aayusin.)


JOSE GARCIA VILLA
3 SALIN, 1 HALAW NI JOSE F. LACABA


------------------------------------------------------------
WIKA NG DIYOS, "GUMAWA AKO NG TAO"
ni Jose Garcia Villa


Wika ng Diyos, "Gumawa ako ng tao
Mula sa putik--
Sa kislap niya sarili’y inikit
sa ningning na nakaliliyo

Hanggang siya’y gintong makinang
At O
Kay rikit niyang pagmasdan!
Pero hawak niya’y isang pana

Nakatutok sa akin na sa kanya’y
Lumikha. At wika ko,
‘Ikaw ba ay papatay
Sa akin na pinagmulan mo?’

At nagsalita siya ang taong ginto:
‘Hindi
Kita papatayin. Sinusukat
Lamang kita. Magtigil

Ka.’ At siya ko ngang ginawa.
Pero ako’y mausisa
Tungkol sa maharlikang ito.
‘Ano ang ngalan mo?’--‘Ginoo! Henyo.’"


------------------------------------------------------------
PAG-ANYAYA NG TIGRE
ni Jose Garcia Villa


Pag-anyaya ng tigre sa bakasyon.
Ito’y di kahambugan kundi disiplina.
Talambuhay mo’y magiging maringal.

Simulan mo nang magningning, Agustin.
Itapon ang mga ibon, lumipat sa tigre.
Simulan mo nang magningning, Agustin.

Anumang tigre ng anumang kulay
Tulad ng hiyas anumang bato’y
Liyab palagi ng umagang tunay.

Panauhin ay makinang, kauri ni Blake.
May-bahay ay maginoo, mata ni Kamatayan.
Kung gagawin mo ito’y iyong babasagin

Ang mga munting relihiyon para sa akin.
Mag-anyaya ka ng tigre sa bakasyon,
Simulan mo nang magningning, Agustin.


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NANG AKO’Y SINLAKI LAMANG NG MALAKING BITUIN
ni Jose Garcia Villa


Nang,ako’y,sinlaki,lamang,ng,isang,malaking,
Bituin,sa,sarili’y,sinimulan,kong,sulatin,ang,
Aking,
Teolohiya,
Ng,rosas,at,

Tigre: hanggang,papagliyabin,ako,ng,kanilang,
Dalisay,at,Poot. Noon,ako,naging,kakila-
Kilabot,
At,lubhang,
Magiliw: lubhang,

Madilim,subalit,lubhang,Maningning: isang,
Mata,ang,sumibol,sa,loob,ko: dala’y,Panagimpan,
Kanyang,
Ginto,at,ang
Kanyang,digma. Noon,

Ko,nalaman,na,hindi,ang,Poon,ang,aking,Manlilikha!
--Hindi,Siya,ang-Di-Isinilang--nakita,kong,
Ang,
Manlilikha,
Ay,ako--at,

Ako’y,nagsimulang,Mamatay,ako’y,nagsimulang,Yumabong.



------------------------------------------------------------
HINDI KO NA MARINIG
Halaw kay Jose Garcia Villa


Hindi ko na marinig
ang tinig ng pag-ibig
Hindi na bumubukas
ang kanyang labi. Salat
sa awitin ang ibon.
Namumutla ang apoy.
Rosas na bagong-pitas
ay naluluoy agad.
Hindi na umiihip
ang hangin. Natahimik
na ang mga kampana.
Ako’y nangungulila.
Puso ko’y lupaypay na.
Diyos ko, ako’y patay na.



TALA:

Ang tatlong salin ay kabilang sa kalipunan kong SA DAIGDIG NG KONTRADIKSIYON: MGA SALING-WIKA (Anvil Publishing, 1991; National Book Award for translation, 1991).

Ang halaw (adaptation, imitation) ay kabilang sa kalipunan kong EDAD MEDYA: MGA TULA SA KATANGHALIANG GULANG (Anvil Publishing, 2000; National Book Award for poetry, 2000).

Why I Stopped Writing Poetry in English

The following essay was published by ASIA: Magazine of Asian Literature (Asia Publishers, Volume 2, Number 3, Autumn 2007), a journal published in the Republic of Korea. It’s part of a special section entitled “Focus: Colonialism, Language and Literature,” which discusses the subject in relation to the Philippines, India, and Africa. The Philippine segment has three essays devoted to the subject of “Rethinking English as a Filipino Official Language.” The two other essays are by National Artist F. Sionil Jose (“Filipino English: The Literature as We Think It”) and Anvil publisher Karina Africa Bolasco (“English, Education and Filipino Identity”).



Why I Stopped Writing Poetry in English


By Jose F. Lacaba


Writing poetry—in whatever language—was farthest from my mind when I was young. Instead, one of my major youthful dreams was to become a writer-illustrator for comic books. At home, I produced several crude comic books on bond paper, drawn entirely in pencil, the plot developing as the illustrations progressed. This was in the 1950s. Each issue of my handmade publication had a circulation of exactly one copy, but I had a pass-on readership of five—my five younger brothers and sisters.

My first illustrated stories were in English. But then my younger brother came out with his own comic book, and it was in Filipino, so I used Filipino for the serial that I contributed to his publication.

For those unfamiliar with the language situation in my home country, I need to point out that Filipino is now the official, constitutionally mandated name for the national language of the Philippines. It used to be known as Pilipino. Both Filipino and Pilipino, however, are primarily based on the language spoken in the capital city of Manila—and that language is Tagalog, one of the dozen major languages in an archipelago of 7,100 islands.

I was born, and I spent the first ten years of my life, in the city of Cagayan de Oro, in the Mindanao island group, in southern Philippines, and my first language was Cebuano, the major Visayan language. My father was from the province of Bohol, in the Visayas island group, in central Philippines, and his language was also Cebuano. My mother, however, came from the town of Pateros, in the Luzon island group, in northern Philippines. Pateros, now part of Metro Manila, is a Tagalog-speaking area, and in her lifelong career as a schoolteacher, my mother taught Filipino, the national language, as a subject in high school and in college.

Thanks to my mother, Filipino was an ineluctable part of my growing up. I was exposed to the textbooks, grammar books, and serious works in Filipino that she taught. At the same time, she did not shield me and my siblings from the popular culture in Filipino. In those days, the popular culture that used Tagalog as medium of communication was generally shunned or looked down upon by college-educated intellectuals, who derided it as the culture of the “bakya crowd”—the mass of peasants and plebeians who still walked around in bakya, or wooden clogs, instead of in shoes.

But my mother the schoolteacher, while she herself did not really patronize bakya culture, did not seem to have any biases against it. At home, we could not afford television, but we had free access to radio programs in Filipino, including serials about Philippine superheroes, low-brow comedies, and the weekly balagtasan, or traditional poetic jousts. On occasion, I got to see Tagalog movies—and these were the only locally produced movies available, since the Visayan movie industry was already dying, if it was not already dead, and at any rate its products were never, ever shown in Manila. I was also a regular customer at corner stores that rented out Tagalog komiks, or comic books.

On the other hand, from the time I started schooling to the time I dropped out of the university, the medium of instruction at all school levels was English. In fact, back in my time, an English-only rule was in force in many schools, and fines were imposed on those who spoke the native tongue on campus.

Also, back then, there was a law that required all students to study Spanish—one year in high school and four years in college. In my case, I even had to take up two years of Latin, because that was then part of the Bachelor of Arts curriculum in the Jesuit university that gave me a scholarship. This same Jesuit university, incidentally, is renowned for its English.

What all this amounts to is that I was fed on a smorgasbord of languages throughout my life. In the end, however, the smorgasbord was stripped down to a two-course meal. After we moved to Manila, and after my father died, we stopped speaking Cebuano at home. I lost all contact with Latin when the Catholic Church abolished the Latin Mass. And as for Spanish, although I can read it and have even translated from it, with lots of help from a Spanish-English dictionary, I can hardly speak the language, and I can’t follow the conversation when I hear it spoken.

So in the end I became basically a bilingual, speaking Filipino at home and in the neighborhood, and reading and writing in English in school and at work.

This brings us back to the subject of poetry, and the writing of poetry.

While the idea of writing poems never entered my mind in my younger days, I was good at reciting them. My teachers noted that I had the voice and the diction for oral delivery, and a good memory to boot, so they entered me in elocution and declamation contests and programs, reciting pieces such as Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” and Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” and Mark Antony’s funeral oration in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

It was in college that I began writing my own poetry. My professor in freshman English once gave our class an assignment to write a couple of haikus. I got a very high grade on the work I submitted, and my professor, himself an award-winning poet in English, encouraged me to write poetry in earnest.

The Jesuit university that had given me a scholarship did not have a fine arts or visual arts college or department, so I had ended up as an English major. I also found myself in the company of many other budding writers, both fictionists and poets. It was therefore not surprising that my first published works, in campus journals, were short stories and poems in English.

But even as I was writing and publishing poetry and prose in English, on the side I was also writing poetry in Filipino. This, despite the fact that among university intellectuals, Filipino was considered a lightweight language for entertainment, not for serious writing.

Perhaps I was trying to impress my mother, the teacher of Filipino. Perhaps Filipino was such a part of my upbringing that I could not help but express myself in it. I may also have been influenced by a Jesuit philosophy professor who was working on finding Filipino equivalents for such existential concepts as being and becoming. I have never forgotten something this professor once told us—that Immanuel Kant, writing at a time when Latin and Greek were the language of philosophy, had declared that he would teach philosophy to “speak in German.”

Whatever the reason, I found myself resolving to teach modern poetry to “speak in Filipino.” Part of the reason for my decision to undertake this quixotic enterprise was my utter ignorance of the modern literature that already existed in Filipino. I was blissfully unaware that an entire generation of writers before me, and my own contemporaries in other universities, had produced and were producing Tagalog novels and short stories and poems that revealed an awareness, and betrayed the influence, of the themes and methods of the literature of modernity being created in more industrially advanced cultures.

In fact, I was already writing poetry in Filipino when I discovered that, right on my own campus, two of my English professors, under whom I was taking up modern poetry and modern drama and the modern novel, were themselves writing poetry in Filipino. But more on this later.

I was familiar with the popular culture—the radio serials, the komiks, the traditional balagtasan. This was a culture that seemed to have been eternally frozen in the era of the medieval romance, or the era of vaudeville, or the era of Fifties soap opera. And this culture produced a literature that my modernistic education (this was, you will note, before postmodernism came into the picture) dismissed as simplistic, superficial, and sickeningly sentimental.

Moreover, the Tagalog poetry that I read in textbooks was written in the ornate, flowery, and seemingly archaic Tagalog of the boondocks. It was not in the vibrant vulgate of Metro Manila, the plain-spoken, conversational, colloquial, slangy, coarse language that someone like me, whose first language was Visayan, now heard daily in the streets and neighborhoods that I walked in and lived in.

My poetry project was, in effect, an effort to reconcile my bakya background and my current urbanized and modern sensibility. In place of the vague generalities and trite metaphors of traditional Tagalog poetry, I brought in the visual discipline I had learned from imagism. In place of malalim na Tagalog, or deep and “poetic” Tagalog, I used ordinary day-to-day Tagalog, including vulgarities and unprintables. But I tried to pour all of this into the mold of existing metrics, using the syllabic count and rhyming schemes of traditional native poetic forms.

As part of my poetic experiments, I translated a lot of world poetry into Filipino, in what was essentially an exercise in the use of Filipino during infertile times, when I didn’t have the inspiration to write poems of my own.

As mentioned earlier, I would later, to my great amazement and delight, find kindred spirits in the university—my own English professors. I showed them my Tagalog poems, and they gave encouraging comments. Together with a few other like-minded campus writers experimenting with Filipino, we started publishing our works in campus journals and in small magazines, and the professors started constructing a theory to explain what kind of poetry we were writing, and perhaps to justify our being lumped together as a group for purposes of publication.

Today, our unstructured grouping is known in Philippine literary history as the Kilusang Bagay, the Thing (or Object) Movement, a literary movement that extolled the primacy of imagery and conversational language (which, incidentally, embraces what is now known as Taglish, a blending of Tagalog and English common among university-educated, city-bred Filipinos). My two English professors have since been raised to the ranks of National Artists of the Philippines, an honorific similar to a knighthood for artists.

The fact that we were writing poetry in Filipino did not stop any of us from continuing to write in English. There were simply certain ideas and emotions that we felt could only be expressed in the language of international discourse, and other ideas and emotions that required a native sensibility and a native tongue.

In my case, after dropping out of college, I found a job as a journalist for an English-language publication. It was simply the first job that came along that didn’t require a college degree, but I guess one reason why I have stayed in English-language journalism, which has been my primary bread and butter (or should I say rice and fish?) for more than forty years now, is that it pays relatively better than Filipino-language journalism, unless you’re a broadcast journalist.

Poetry is another matter. Whether it’s in English or in Filipino, poetry in the Philippines is not and never has been a paying proposition. You can’t hope to make money out of it, except by occasionally winning literary contests, and you don’t get to be famous, like rock stars. So why do I continue to write poetry, although not as often as before? I guess that’s because poetry simply is, as some poet once said, an itch you just have to scratch.

This finally brings us to the question that this long-winded essay seeks to address: What made me stop writing poetry in English? I think I can say without bragging that my English poetry has earned as much critical respect as my Tagalog poetry. Proof of that is the continuing publication of some of the English poems of my youth in anthologies and textbooks. So why did that particular itch stop being itchy?

Paradoxically, it was my work as an English-language journalist that led me to the crucial decision to end my career as an English-language poet.

In college, I was basically apolitical and in many ways antisocial, although being a poor scholar in a school for the very rich elite, who spoke English even to their maids, may have stirred subconscious feelings related to class and linguistic conflicts. When I became a journalist, what may have been subconscious feeling rose to the surface.

The second half of the Sixties, when I worked as a reporter for a weekly newsmagazine, was a time of great social and nationalistic ferment in the Philippines. I have described that period in the title of one of my books, a collection of the reportage that I wrote back then: Days of Disquiet, Nights of Rage. As in the rest of the world, the Filipino youth were protesting the war in Vietnam and marching as advocates of a whole slew of issues, from civil rights to women’s rights to human rights. In the Philippines, the youth were also questioning the continuing control of a former colonial power over our political, economic, and military affairs—and over our cultural life.

One cultural manifestation of this postcolonial domination had in fact become the symbol for the entire colonial experience. As one Filipino writer put it, the pre–World War II history of the Philippines as a colony first of Spain and then of the United States could be summed up as “three hundred years in a convent and fifty years in Hollywood.”

I must confess that I remain a fan of Hollywood movies and American popular song, particularly of the Frank Sinatra variety, but in the late Sixties and early Seventies, as I covered demonstrations and protest rallies and labor strikes, I found myself asking myself the questions being addressed by the youth to “cultural workers”: Why was I writing? Whom was I writing for? What language should I be writing in?

The washerwoman who did our laundry and the ambulant vendor from whom we bought sweetened soya snacks probably had no interest in poetry, but if it was possible to address them through a poem, I knew that the poem could not be in English. In any case, I had also reached a point in my literary as well as sociopolitical life where I felt that, as a poet, I had nothing more to say in English. I am not making a generalization here, I speak only for myself—when I wrote poetry in English, I had the feeling that I was talking to myself, and about myself, about my dandruff and my pimples and my personal angst; but when I wrote in Filipino, I could write about anything, about exploitation and oppression and imperialism and all the big stuff, but also, yes, about my dandruff and my pimples and my personal angst.

In the final analysis, it was primarily a personal decision. At the end of the year 1970—and, it turned out, two years before Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and put a temporary end to my work as a journalist—I wrote my swan song in English, a long rambling poem about the crisis facing the country and the social upheavals that seemed to be on the horizon.

At least, I intended that poem to be my swan song in English. But I would find myself writing another poem in English a few years later, when martial law was already in force and I was a fugitive. Written under a pseudonym, the poem somehow got published in the mainstream media, despite the rigid press censorship. It was entitled “Prometheus Unbound,” and it looked harmless enough, since it sounded Greek to the authorities. But word soon got around that there was something about the poem that was subversive, and the magazine carrying the poem was pulled out of the newsstands by military troops.

When the centurions finally caught me two years after the declaration of martial law, and in the course of the physical torture that I was subjected to, one of my interrogators said: “You’re the one who wrote that poem in that magazine.” I was flattered that a constabulary colonel was literate enough to have heard about my poem, but he was making a statement, not asking a question, so I did not bother to confirm or deny his allegation. It was only after the fall of Marcos, after the people-power uprising of 1986, that I finally publicly admitted to being the perpetrator of the controversial poem.

Today, whatever standing I may have as a poet in the Philippines will probably be based on my Tagalog poems. But I will also probably be remembered, or remain notorious, for my last poem in English.

Still, “Prometheus Unbound” is not entirely in English. It’s an acrostic poem, and the first letters of the lines, if read downwards, spell out a Tagalog slogan popular among demonstrators before martial law: MARCOS HITLER DIKTADOR TUTA (Marcos Hitler, Dictator, Running Dog).




Prometheus Unbound

I shall never exchange my fetters for slavish servility. ’
Tis better to be chained to the rock than be bound to the service of Zeus.

--Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound

Mars shall glow tonight,
Artemis is out of sight.
Rust in the twilight sky
Colors a bloodshot eye,
Or shall I say that dust
Sunders the sleep of the just?

Hold fast to the gift of fire!
I am rage! I am wrath! I am ire!
The vulture sits on my rock,
Licks at the chains that mock
Emancipation’s breath,
Reeks of death, death, death.

Death shall not unclench me.
I am earth, wind, and sea!
Kisses bestow on the brave
That defy the damp of the grave
And strike the chill hand of
Death with the flaming sword of love.

Orion stirs. The vulture
Retreats from the hard, pure
Thrust of the spark that burns,
Unbounds, departs, returns
To pluck out of death’s fist
A god who dared to resist.

Jose F. Lacaba