In Memory of Lorena Barros

2012-01-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

TWO POEMS

Ipil is harder to bear

without you

A leaf falls beside my hand;

already it is memory

like hours spent together

Grief at parting is like

A tear shed for a leaf,

pain assuaged

by the promise of a new bud

at the tip

but our friendship draws

its sustenance

from the rich soil of people’s war

It will continue to grow

and bear fruit

for the people.

Yesterday I had a talk

with an old man

who had your eyes-

The same laughing squint

hiding a watchfulness

that catches even hints

of rainbows.

He spoke to me of patience

in his voice a whole season...

you have endured

the first minute

of your own dark season-

Ah, I can bear to think of it

only when I can see you smile!-

comrade, dear friend

teach me how not to flinch

through mine.

- Ma. Lorena Barros
Collegian Folio, l975-l976

2011-12-10T13:49:00.000-08:00

SAMPAGUITA

This morning Little Comrade

gave me a flower’s bud

I look at it now

remembering you, Felix,

dear friend and comrade

and all the brave sons and daughters

of our suffering land

whose death

makes our blades sharper

gives our bullets

surer aim.

How like this pure white bud

are our martyrs

fiercely fragrant with love

for our country and people!

With what radiance they should still have unfolded!

But sadness should not be

their monument.

Whipped and lashed desperately

by bombed-raised storms

has not our Asian land

continued to bloom?

Look how bravely our ranks

bloom into each gap.

With the same intense purity and fragrance

we are learning to overcome.

- Ma. Lorena Barros

Summer of 1973

Published in Ulos

SAMPAGITA

Kaninang umaga ang Munting Kasama’y

naghandog ng buko ng bulaklak.

Minamasdan ko iyon ngayong

Ginugunita kita, Felix,

Mahal na kaibigan at kasama

At lahat ng magiting na anak

Ng ating nagdurusang bayan

Na ang mga kamatayan ay

Nagpatalas sa ating mga sundang

At nagbigay sa ating mga punglo

Ng tiyak na puntirya…

Katulad nitong dalisay na talulot

ang ating mga martir

na may bangis at halimuyak sa pagmamahal

sa ating bayan at mamamayan!

anong rikit ng liwanag na dapat pa nilang ibukadkad!

Ngunit hindi lungkot ang dapat

nilang bantayog.

Hinaplit sa kawalang pag-asa

ng sigwa ng mga bomba

Di nga ba’t ang ating Asya

ay patuloy na namumulaklak?

Masdan kung gaano katapang ang ating hanay

na bumukadkad bawat patlang.

Nang may katulad na masidhing kadalisayan at halimuyak

Natututo tayong magwagi.

(Salin ni Joel B. Saracho)

2011-11-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Sulat sa Ina, Hulyo 23, 1973

23 Hulyo 1973

Mahal kong ina at kasama -

Labis kong ikinalulungkot na hindi tayo nakapagpaalam nang harapan. Kay rami pa nating pag-uusapan! Subalit kailangang makasapat ang sulat na ito. Nais kong ipaabot sa iyo ang nilalaman ng ilang pahina mula sa aking notebook.

Ang una ay may petsang Mayo 21. Katatanggap ko pa lang ng isa mong liham:

“Pagkat ikaw lang ang magulang na kinagisnan ko, labis-labis ang pagmamahal ko sa iyo mula pa sa aking pagkabata. Subalit ang lahat ng taong minahal kita bilang magulang ay katumbas lang ng isang taong minahal kita bilang kasama. Kahit iilang pagkakataon lang tayo nagkita sa loob ng taong ito ay kay lapit ng ating kalooban sa isa’t isa. Totoong maraming sandaling nais kong makapiling ka, ihinga sa iyo ang lahat ng kalungkutang di ko maaring ipakita sa mga kasama pagkat dapat ay lagi tayong masigla. Subalit isipin ko lang na mauunawaan mo ako ng lubo ay gumagaan na ang aking loob. Mapalad ako sa pagkakaroon ng isang komunistang ina!

“Lagi kong naaalala ang iyong huling sulat. Nabanggit mo ang inyong paghihirap kung paano halos lamang-tiyan na lang ang kinakain ng aking mga maliliit na kapatid. Subalit wala ni anino ng pagkalunos sa iyong mga salita – parang malamig na tubig sa naghahapding sugat ang iyong sinabi: “ang pagsumikapan nating dalawa ay ang parating manatiling matatag at masigla lalo na sa harap ng ibang kasama”. Kay palad ko sa iyo, ina! Kahit minsan ay di ako nakarinig sa iyo ng panunumbat, gayong kung di ko inilaan ang aking buong buhay sa rebolusyon ay marahil di kayo maghihirap nang ganito. Naghahapdi ang aking kalooban tuwing maiisip kong nagugutom kayo ng aking mga kapatid. Lumalaki sila at kailangan nila ng masustansiyang pagkain. Masakit sa aking isiping wala akong tuwirang maitulong sa inyo. Inip na inip na akong makalabas at sumapi sa ating magiting na hukbo! Isulong ang digmaang bayan upang lalong mapabilis ang pagbagsak ng bulok na lipunan!

“Bago ko matanggap ang iyong sulat, kung anu-anong “multo’t halimaw” ang nasa isipan ko. Lagi akong malungkot, nangingibabaw sa akin ang dalamhati para sa mga kasamang nadakip o nasawi at sa kanilang mga naiwang mahal sa buhay. Ngayon masigla ko na muling nahaharap ang bawat araw. Sino ang makaiisip na ikaw, ang awtoridad na pinaghimagsikan ko nuong aking kabataan, ay siyang magandang halimbawa sa akin ngayon! Anong mga milagro ang di nagagawa ng pakikibakang dakila tulad ng sa atin!”

Ang tulang ito ay may petsang 11 Hulyo 1973

Ina

Ano ang isang ina?

Mayamang hapag ng

gutom na sanggol

Kumot sa gabing maginaw

Matamis na uyayi

Tubig

sa naghahapding sugat

Ngunit ano ang isang

komunistang Ina?

Maapoy na tanglaw

tungo sa liwayway

Sandigang bato

Lupang bukal ng lakas

sa digma.

katabi sa labanan at

alalay sa tagumpay

Ang ina ko

- Cita Tagumpay

Hindi ko na kailangang sabihin pa na umaasa ako sa iyong pagsubaybay sa aming anak. Ibuhos mo sa kanya ang damdaming-ina na di ko maipadama – hanggang sa panahong makukuha ko na siya, na sana’y di hihigit sa isang taon.

Hanggang sa muli. Huwag kang mag-alala sa akin. Ipaaabot ko ang iyong pangungumusta sa ama ni lengleng.

Sa rebolusyon,

ang iyong anak

2011-09-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

YOU ARE LORD

We step to a stately measure

you and I sedately flirt

around each other

you

will not have me ardent: emotion

is unsophisticated.

To speak of love we must

quote; your aesthetic will not

admit of creative stutter.

well

you are lord

and I must wait, but

there are only so many steps to

a dance, and only so many words

to Byron.

Why there is no need for M. Fred

in Modern Society

We all of us are

aluminum pots

crack proof.

dented? easier

replaced than mended.

- Ma. Lorena Barros

Philippine Collegian

May 22, l966

2011-08-07T13:16:00.000-07:00

17 Enero 1976

Mga kasama,

Bagamat medyo huli na, maalab na pagbati sa ika-7 anibersaryo ng ating Partido. Dumating ang inyong mga sulat bago mag-Pasko at tunay na nakapagdagdag ito sa diwa ng pagdiriwang. Kay sayang makarinig mula sa mga napalayong kasama! Hindi kami nakapagpadala ng sagot noong huling lakad ng kom pagkat nagipit sa panahon. Sa panig ko, pawang mga opisyal na sulat at ulat lang ang nakaya kong tapusin. Kaya nga’t para sa ulat na ito’y sinamantala ko ang madaling araw. Totoong napakabigat ng iskedyul namin lalo na ngayon.

Ang sonang gerilya na kinapapalooban ko ay nasa panahon na naman ng pamamasok ng kaaway. Patapos na ang tag-ulan at muli na naman nilang matatawid ang mga ilog at dagat. Napakahalagang maihanda ang Partido, hukbo at masa upang ito’y makapanatili ng sarili at huwag madurog ng kaaway. Malaki ang pagkahawig ng sonang ito sa mga sona sa CL. Relatibong malapit sa malalaking sentro at linya ng komunikasyon, malaki ang taya ng mga naghaharing uri at dayuhang kapitalista, bagamat bulubundukin at may ilang bahaging prontera. Noong nakaraang taon, laban sa ating dadalawang iskuwad gerilya na halos pawang single-shot ang mga baril, nagbuhos ang kaaway ng isang batalyong PC-PA tropa. Ang layunin ng operasyon ay “inisin sa duyan” ang rebolusyonaryong kilusan ditto; alam ng kaaway na maliit at mahina pa ang ating puwersa.

Bagamat 5 kasamang kadre at mandirigma ang napatay sa operasyon at 2 namumunong kadre ang nadakip bukod sa mahigit isandaang masa na dinakip o binugbog bigo ang kaaway, nananatiling buo ang ating hanay at matatag tayong maling nagbangon. Sabi nga, muli tayong tumayo, magpahid ng dugo’s malibing ang mga kasamang nasawi at mahigpit na humawak ng sandata upang muling humarap sa kaaway.

Nitong mga huling buwan, ang organisasyon ng Partido sa sona ay naglagom ng karanasan upang makita ang naging mga kahusayan at kahinaan sa nakaraang pagkilos. Marubdob na nag-aral ang buong kasapian sa mga ginanap na komperensyang pangteorya. Naging malinaw sa mga kasama ang mga katangian ng sona at kung paano sa nakaraang pagkilos ay naging hiwalay sa kongkretong kalagayan ang naitakda at naisagawang programa. Pangunahing tendensya ang bahid ng dogmatismo at “kaliwang paglihis”, naging labis ang pagtaya sa sariling puwersa at lubhang matayog ang mga ambisyon. Sa kaparaanan ng pagwawasto, lalong napalalim ang pag-unawa ng buong kasapian sa digmaang bayan at maraming natutuhan hinggil sa paglapat ng MLMTT (Marksismo-Leninismo-Kaisipang MaoTsetung) sa mga aktwal na kalagayan. Sa ngayon, natapos na ang malaking bahagi ng pagwawasto at panloob na konsolidasyon; nasa yugto na ng pagbigay ng pangunahing diin sa pampulitikang gawain. Makailang ulit na mas handa ang ating subhetibong puwersa sa pagharap sa panibagong pananalakay ng kaaway. Kung maiiwasan ang naging mga kamalian sa nakaraan, di magtatagal at malalagay na tayo sa kalagayang makapaglulunsad ng taktikal na pananalakay sa kaaway.

Sa gitna ng ganitong kalagayan, marahil mauunawaan ninyo kung bakit medyo nadiskaril ako sa ilang mga nakuhang impresyon mula sa inyong mga sulat. Lubog na lubog ako sa kalagayan ng digmaan at medyo nagitla ako sa nakitang kalagayan ng ilang mga kasama – na wala sa digmaan o parang wala sa digmaan. Ngunit sa panahong namagitan mula noong una kong mabasa ang inyong mga sulat at ngayon, napag-isipan ko na ito ng mas malalim at nakikita kong maging ang mga kasamang sa wari’y wala sa digmaan ay nakapaloob ito at di mahihiwalay na bahagi nito. Halimbawa na lang, di ba’t halos pawang nabilanggo na tayo? Naging POWs (Prisoners of War)?

At ngayon ang iba sa atin ay nakabalik sa pangunahing agos samantalang ang iba’y naging DPs (displaced persons o water lilies sa terminolohiya ng lungsod). May ilan ding pansamantalang nahiwalay, hindi dahil sa pagkabilanggo kundi dahil sa ibang pangyayari tulad ng dislokasyon sa organisasyon ng Partido na dulot rin ng digmaan. Lahat tayo ay nasa digmaan pati na ang mga walang kamuwangmuwang tulad ng mga sanggol at taong di mulat. Ito ang ating obhetibong kalagayan. Nagkakaroon lamang ng kaibahan sa antas ng mga may kamalayang kapasiyahan na pumaloob sa digmaan at maging bahagi ng puwersang nagtatakda ng direksyon nito at tagumpay. Maari tayong dalhin na lang ng agos ng rebolusyon. At maari tayong siyang maging motibong puwersa nito, bahagi ng talibang organisasyon. Ngunit ito’y sa kasalukuyang yugto lang ng digmaan. Sa pag-unlad nito, tayong may kamalayan at karanasan na pipilitin at pipilitin ng kalagayang manguna sa rebolusyonaryong agos o sumalungat rito. Ito ang sinasabing “burden of awareness”. Hindi na natin maisasara ang mata ng diwang namulat na. Pansamantala, maaring mahilom ito, mapuwing. Subalit kamatayan na lang ang makapagpipikit. Kayat mulat tayong mananangan ng sandata para sa sambayanan o para sa mga mapagsamantala’t mapang-api, alin lang sa dalawa.

Tulad ng sabi ni Kasamang Virgie, “we believe in you like hell.” Bagamat naipamukha na sa atin ng mga katulad ni Ramon na may ilang magtataksik sa rebolusyon mula sa kaloob-loobang hanay natin, hindi nasira ang tiwala ko sa nakararaming kasama. Buo ang pananalig ko na habang nakikitunggali tayo sa sarili ay magagapi ang anumang multo’t halimaw tulad ng pesimismo at pagpapabaya sa rebolusyonaryong tungkulin. Napakagandang senyales, sa wari ko, ang nasasalaming “self consciousness” sa inyong pagtaya sa sarili, ang kawalang pagkukunwari at walang kurap na pagtingin sa katotohanan. Bagamat nababalot sa madidilim na salita, ito’y may hugis ng pag-asa. Kundi’y hindi na marahil kayon mag-aabalang sumulat sa amin.

Paano ko kaya maipahihiwatig kung paano lalung tumining sa isipan ko at damdamin ang kahulugan ng katagang “kasama” nang mabasa ko ang inyong liham? Tunay na nagkakalayo tayo sa pisikal na distansya at kinapapaloobang kapaligiran – ibang iba ang ating mga kalagayan – subalit naroon at di maipagkakamali ang init ng halik at yakap, ang marubdob na pagmamahalan na isinilang at binubuhay ng rebolusyon. Sabi nga ni Kasamang Cheng, alam na natin ang tibok ng bawat isa – hindi man ito lubusang nagkakasabay.

Sana ay maunawaan niyo kung iisang sulat lang ang magawa ko sa ngayon para sa inyong lahat. May mga partikulat akong karanasan at kaisipan na nais ibahagi sa mga particular na kasama subalit kailangang mamili ako sa isang sulat o wala muna. Ayaw ko namang magpadala ng maraming sulat na pawang telegrama. Huwag niyo naman sana ako gantihan ng isang “joint letter” din! Nais kong maging mas malalim ang pang-unawa sa inyong buhay. Napakarami ring nais kong mabalitaan hinggil sa lungsod, sa mga isyu na mainit ngayon, sa kalagayang pangkultura, sa mga masalimuot na maniobrahan sa hanay ng mga reaksyonaryo, pag-unlad ng pandaigdigang kalagayan atbp atbp atbp. Napakahalaga sa amin rito na bihirang makabasa ng pahayagan o makapakinig ng radio, ng inyong buhay na pagsusuri sa pambansa at pandaigdigang mga pangyayari, kundi’y magiging napakakitid ng aming kamalayan – at ito’y maaring magbunga ng subhetismo o lokalismo. Tiyak na maraming bagay na “taken for granted” na ninyo subalit bago sa amin (at siempre vice, versa). Huwag tayong manghinawa o tamarin na sumulat sa isa’t isa. Mali ang sabi ni Kasamang Ine na di siya maaring maging ka-koresponsal ng mga tulad naming nasa kanayunan. Marami kayong alam na di namin alam. At hindi kami interesado sa mga magagandang balita lamang. Ang lahat, pati kapaitan at kasakitan ng isa’t isa, ay makabuluhan sa ating pag-aaral hinggil sa kabuuan ng buhay ng tao sa daigdig, at sa paglikha natin ng tunay na makataong lipunan.

Kaya, sa madaling salita, SUMULAT KAYO NG MAS MAHABA, hane?

Bukod sa pagsulat, nais sana naming hilingin ang inyong patuloy na pagtulong sa pag-solicit ng mga pangangailangan dito. Maraming maliliit ngunti mahalagang mga bagay na maari niyong ipadala, tulad ng medyas, bonnets, kumot, panlamig, ballpens, notebooks, notepads, scissors, nailcutters, needles and thread, paper clips and fasteners, business envelopes, manila envelopes, large and small plastic bags, flashlights, batteries, jungle knives, medicines, pagkaing naitatabi o naiimbak tulad ng de lata at daing at mga instant foods gaya ng Royco soups, vetsin, pantalon at t-shirt na dark colored at madaling matuyo, mga sako, raincoats, toothbrushes, toothpaste, sabon atbp atbp. Kung magagawa niyong magsolicit kahit small amounts nito at tipunin bago ipadala rito, napakalaking tulong talaga. May particular na pangangailangan rin dito ngayon ng tutulong ng research hinggil sa mga vested interests dito. Maari ba kayong tumulong?

At lalo’t higit, may malaking pangangailangan para sa mga kasamang gaganap sa gawaing liyason. Sino kaya sa inyo ang puwede? Kakailanganing mag-commute sa lalawigan mga dalawang beses sa isang buwan, magsagawa ng alliance work at pumasok sandali sa sona upang makapanayam ng lubos hinggil sa gawain. Ano ang inyong palagay? Sabik naming hihintayin ang application forms.

Lampas 8:00 a.m. na at dumating ngayon lang ang mga kasama sa hukbo. Pawang pagod sila mula sa mahabang lakad at mabigat na pasanin, ngunit masisigla at maraming kuwento. Marami na muling gagawin kung kaya’t kailangang putulin na ito. Ang dalang balita ng mga kasama ay may nakatakdang pulong ngayon sa isang baryo na kalapit dito, pupulungin ng mga PC (Philippine Constabulary) ang masa pagkat sosonahin raw itong lugar. Malamang na sisimulan na muli ang konsentrasyon ng masa sa mga sentro ng baryo bilang paghahanda sa operasyon.

Sige, talagang kailangan nang tumigil.

MAKIBAKA, HUWAG MATAKOT!

Sa tagumpay,

Ka Luz

2011-07-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

AT FOUR O’CLOCK, OR FIVE

At four o’clock, or five,

the neons leave the city to the dawn.

It comes, silent and spare,

swept in by cleaners’ brooms. Taxis

are once more busy; the streets stretch

and lengthen every sound from the warming motors.

White light spreads over the white cement;

beneath the bridges huddled sleepers stir,

turn over, and sleep again.

Growing slowly heavy and opaque the white light

spreads over the commonplace of dogs

inspecting garbage.

Carbined watchmen nodding at warehouse doors,

blind capiz windows.

Footsteps drag on the wooden stairs.

His sanded lids, thick tongue seek

Comfort in a pillow. Soon the reeking breath

has filled the room, and once more darkens it

against the dawn.

- Ma. Lorena Barros

undated; unpublished

2011-06-19T04:50:00.000-07:00

LIBERATED WOMEN II
by Ma. Lorena Barros
Pugadlawin Taon 18 Blg. 3; Enero-Pebrero, l971

The oppression of women in Philippine society cannot be isolated from the oppressive character of the society as a whole. Filipino women comprise what has been described by Juliet Mitchell (in Women: the Longest Revolution) as “half a totality.” Filipino women are fundamental to the Filipino condition; their oppression must reflect a fundamentally oppressive system of social relationships.

And indeed if we look at Philippine society as a whole, we find that it is a society characterized by the oppression and exploitation of the many by the few. More exactly, it is a society where the peasants and workers (90%) of the total population, and to a lesser but no less real extent, the students, professionals, small businessmen and the national bourgeoisie (9%) are systematically deceived and coerced to submit to the greedy domination of the U.S. Imperialists, the comprador bourgeoisie, the landlords and the bureaucrat capitalists (1%) who run the country. (See Amado Guerrero, Philippine Society and Revolution).

Much remains to be done in the field of research in order to locate the exact mechanisms by which the oppression of women contribute integrally to the maintenance of the oppressive status quo. Several writers have given important clues. Margaret Bensten (in the Political Economy of Women’s Liberation) has written about the huge amount of socially necessary labor performed by women in the home which goes uncompensated. She has further pointed out that this peculiar relation to production produces women who are “conservative, fearful, supportive of the status quo.”

Other writers on the subject, such as Juliet Mitchell, (ibid.) and Laurel Limpus, (in Liberation of Women,) have similarly pointed to the family as the central factor in the oppression of women and their inhuman use in preserving and sustaining an unjust social system. F. Engels, as early as l902 wrote that “Monogamy was the first form of the family founded not on natural, but on economic conditions, viz: the victory of private property over primitive and natural collectivism” (The Origin of the Family).

Although by standards of contemporary bourgeois social science (which has developed more instruments of measurements than useful concepts for comprehending social phenomena) the literature on women’s liberation may be said to be impressionistic and inexact, it is clear at any rate that imply because “women are the other half” and are thus an integral part of society, their oppression is integral to the oppressive nature of the society as a whole.

Therefore, as Juliet Mitchell wrote: “Since the problems that face women are related to the structure of the whole society, ultimately our study of our particular situation as women will lead us to the realization that we must attempt to change this whole society.”

Women in the Philippines who have become conscious of their oppression have indeed arrived at this realization. The programme of the Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (MAKIBAKA) states:

To liberate the creative potential of women, it is first of all necessary to liberate the Filipino masses of which they are part. No sector of the population can be free from exploitation of any sort unless the primary exploitative relation, that between U.S. Imperialism and domestic feudalism on the one hand and the broad masses of the Filipino people on the other, is totally destroyed. Moreover, it is in their participation in the national struggle for liberation fro feudal and foreign oppression that women can achieve their own liberation.

This position puts the women’s liberation movement in the Philippines squarely in the context of the national democratic revolution. It defines women’s liberation in terms of participation in the revolutionary struggle now assuming unprecedented heights in the cities and the countryside.

And, as such, it suggests a whole new semantic universe for the word “femininity.”

The new femininity

At one point in the December 4 rally protesting the blacklisting of more than 800 student activists from their schools (in which a high school student, Francis Santillano, was brutally slain by fascist hirelings of the Feati Administration), a male demonstrator succinctly defined the new woman, the new femininity. The protest march had entered the UST campus and the marchers were urging the other students to join them. A male demonstrator shouted to some women students watching the marchers from a safe second floor window: “Maganda sana kayo, mga miss, kung nandito kayo sa baba at nakiki-martsa sa amin!” You would be beautiful if you were down here marching with us).” Although he spoke in terms of beauty, since it is primarily in terms of beauty that women are valued, it is clear that he was referring to anew ideal of femininity.

It is an ideal that is a far cry from the Maria Clara satirically described by Rizal but taken as a model by several generation of Filipinos both men and women, who took him too literally. Maria Clara was a social ornament, a weakling who fainted in times of stress and who ran away to a nunnery to hide her head (while her lower region, just like the ostrich’s stuck out in an extremely vulnerable position for Padre Salve’s delectation), a poor sort of human being who could betray the man she loved for the sake of an abstraction such as her own and her dead mother’s “honor”. Maria Clara’s social conscience manifested itself in impulsively donating her necklace to a beggar, a leper. It was beyond her capacity to conceive of more substantial action. In all things, Maria Clara’s supreme quality was submission, a quiet, unprotesting acceptance of her sad fate.

The new woman, the new Filipino, is first and foremost a militant. It is not enough for her to decorate a school window and smile encouragement at the boys marching in protest against student harassment: she must march with them. And since, in the cities, participation in protest marches means not only marching but often also dodging police truncheons, evading precinct-produced Molotovs and pillboxes and trying to get some over to the pigs’ lines oneself, expertise in hitting the ground when the Metrocom or Task Force Lawin or whatever pig force it is start firing, agility in climbing wall, and other requirements of urban street fighting - the new Filipina is one who has learned not only to march, but also to carry herself in these situations with sufficient ease and aplomb to convince the male comrades that they need not take care of her, please.

The new Filipina is one who can stay whole days and nights with striking workers, learning from them the social realities which her bourgeois education has kept from her. This means that she is also ready to picket for hours under the sun, ready to throw herself in front of a truck bearing scabs or materials for the factory’s machines to prevent it from breaking the picket line. More important, this means that she has convinced her parents of the seriousness of her commitment to the workers’ and peasants’ cause, a commitment which keeps her out of the house at all hours of the day and night, and requires all sorts of behavior previously way beyond the bounds of respectable womanhood.

For the militant in the rapidly developing revolutionary situation in which we find Philippine society today, there is never enough time for all the work that has to be done. There are political tracts and manifestoes to mimeograph, correspondence to type, research files to keep in order and update, revolutionary articles to write or reproduce, press releases and other propaganda materials to distribute - to mention only routine , almost clerical tasks. There are discussion groups to organize and sustain, and always several strikes which need support, speeches to make, teach-ins to attend, first aid and nursing classes, fund-raising projects to finance day-to-day activities, a myriad things which require more than 24 hours each day.

The militant has therefore to spend all of her waking hours at the organization headquarters or wherever her political tasks take her; more conveniently, even her sleeping hours. That is, all her time. For most Filipino families, with their traditional feudal set-up, this means virtually being a stowaway, cut off from one’s family and home.

But today we are witnessing a mutation of the Filipino family, especially where daughters are concerned. When the militant girl comes home after several days’ absence, and recounts to her family how the striker just beside her was hit by bullets from goons or police hired to break the strike; or how the house where they had stayed in the province was shot up by Monkees to scare the barrio folk away from their teach-in; or how she felt when she saw carbines aimed point-blank at students by uniformed murderers in the last demonstration- how can it occur to her parents to question her moral behavior when she is away from home? When she leaves again the next morning, unable to say when she would be back, if ever, how can even her mother ask for assurance that she has protected her virginity in the manner she was brought up to (by holding up a wedding ring)? As Franz Fannon, writing about the Algerian women, said: “The militant girl in adopting new patterns of conduct, could not be judged by traditional standards. Old values, sterile and infantile phobias disappeared.”

The Filipina, through her militant participation in the revolutionary struggle, has thus brought to life a new women, this new woman is no longer either a mindless ornament (which she would be if born to a well-to-do family) or a mindless drudge (if she were the wife or daughter of a peasant or worker). She is a woman who has ‘discovered the exalting realm of responsibility’, a woman fully engaged in the making of history, in the destruction of imperialism and feudalism and the building of a new democratic society. No longer is she simply a woman-for-marriage, but more and more a woman-for-action. A comrade.

Strangely enough, this new definition of femininity in terms of revolutionary militancy has not reduced her desirability as a woman, in the eyes of male comrades and also those of the bourgeois beaux she has had to discard because of her politics. The reason may be that just as there has evolved a new femininity, so also is there today a new masculinity a new man.

The new masculinity

For centuries the women of the Philippines have had to accept as fathers, husbands, brothers, sons poor substitutes for men, who walked their own land, with head bowed to the white conquistador and his mestizo offspring. When it was not the white colonialist whipping the Filipino to servility, it was the brown collaborator who had assumed the dress, the speech, the culture of the white masters. The Filipina, a daily witness to this continuous emasculation of her men, developed a concept of masculinity which rejected what she found in them, and instead assumed the characteristics of the colonial master.

Even today this concept of masculine desirability still finds snug habitation in the dark corners of many Filipino women’s minds, perhaps because the white colonial master is still very much around. The real man, the man whom the captive women dreams of, is fair-complexioned, if possible white. He is tall, much taller than the average Malay male can ever be, and is slim and long boned, not squat or stocky. He is hairy, not smooth-skinned and is beautifully Caucasian.

He doesn’t woo, he rapes a women into submission. He speaks a language she does not understand and acts in a manner utterly foreign to her - the result of which is that their relationship is one-sided both ways. Nor would she wish it different. She does not want to understand him at all, for if she does he would surely fall from his pedestal - just as many a Spanish lover who was a dock-hand in Seville before he became a friar in the Philippines or a G.I., who merely cleaned toilet bowls in the army during the war before he made a killing in surplus equipment fell from their pedestals the moment the women understood just what they only were.

For his part the Filipino male developed an image of himself which sought to make up for this inferior status beside the white colonizer. The true Filipino male, according to this defensive myth, is one who drinks savagely, will die rather than lose face or honor, and has one or two wives and several queridas. The philanderer to the nth degree is virile to the nth degree. Because he could not deserve the total respect of one women, the colonized Filipino male sought to make up for the lack by adding on several more half-hearted fragments.

Thus today one finds the jeepney driver who has just been helpless before the extortionist cop finding comfort in the thought that he has at least the choice of which wife to bawl out in retaliation. Or the army general who has been granted two squeaky cannons by the benevolent American advisers of JUSMAG after he begged for two hours for two tanks to use against peasants in Central Luzon, showing off his medals and recounting his glorious war years to his paid querida. Or even the President of the Philippines, gloating at having all-American blonde comforter to remove the bitter taste of mendicancy and servility in his puppet mouth after his annual beggar’s trip to the White House.

In a country where life is hard, unemployment is high and labor cheap, women are more plentiful than men, it is easy enough for a man, virile or not, to collect women, provided he can feed, clothe and shelter them and their children. Domestic and sexual labor, like other kinds of labor in our semi-feudal semi-colonial country, are at the mercy of the economic lords. It is no accident that the top politicians in the country, who are the top puppets and the top consumers of U.S. Imperialist shit, have the most wives. They have the most shattered male egos and rake in the most profits from their emasculation. Not far behind are such types as sugar barons who have to kiss U.S. Imperialist asses to make sure their sugar gets bought, or comprador bosses who like to call themselves industrial magnates but are actually mere financial and trading agents of US Imperialism. And there are of course those, who, whether they can afford it or not, imitate them.

Obviously this type of pseudo-male can have no attraction for the militant girl, the new Filipina. Nor can she want that of the white colonial master, who is used for target practices (lacking guns, a saliva). What is the new masculinity, the new man, who commands the respect not only of the militant girl but also, perhaps more importantly, his own?

There are many concrete examples, so we need not discuss ideal types. Foremost are the fighters in the New People’s Army, the army which that spectacular defector, Lt. Victor Corpus of the PMA, called “the real army of the people.” Bernabe Buscayno or Commander Dante, as the head of the NPA exemplifies the revolutionary fighter’ clever, courageous, heroic, outwitting the puppet troops at every turn and inflicting casualties way out of proportion to his guerilla unit’s arms and number. There is Corpus himself, young, intelligent, intensely patriotic and partisan to the cause of the Filipino masses, and now part of the NPA. Though among young women in the cities this respect and appreciation for the Red Fighters may smack of romanticism, for the peasant lasses in the feudal countryside the NPA soldier is concretely a liberator - and thus very male.

In the cities, there are the many fiery young men who give voice and concrete expression to the people’s struggle for liberation, men like Nonnie Villanueva of the Kabataang Makabayan, the firebrand professor Ramon Sanchez of the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan, Ruben Guevarra of the fighting USTC Labor Union. There are the youth who died fighting terribly unequal battles against the police and the puppet troops of the AFP in Mendiola. There are the young men who do their unspectacular but no less important jobs quietly and efficiently in the mass organizations, in this way contributing hugely to the total revolutionary effort.

In brief, what defines the new masculinity is revolutionary militance. Not the Caucasian good looks, not the number of women conquered or bought, but the contribution he is making to the national democratic revolution enables the Filipino male to reclaim the manhood which his centuries of oppression took away. This is what has gained for him the total respect of the Filipino woman, and a pride in him that is not founded on his proximity to excellence by Western standards, but a pride built on his rediscovered identity and dignity.

It may be noted that both the new femininity and the new masculinity are defined in terms of revolutionary militance. Those who like to say “Vive le difference!” may inquire: but where then is the difference? What distinguishes the new woman from the new man?

The answer is nothing.

In a future article, I hope to discuss how the differences between men and women have been overplayed in history for the purpose of exploiting both. For now, let me just say quite arbitrarily that there are very few differences between men and women which are not culturally or ideologically defined; that is, the biologically given differences are very few and cannot be the most important reasons for the marked social differences we find today between men and women. Especially in the face of the high level of technology available to contemporary generations, whatever biological inequalities there might be are easily rendered insignificant. All evidence points to the conclusion that men and women belong to a single species and cannot differ to the extend of requring for each of them a whole and separate set of cultural definitions.

2011-05-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

OPERASYON BAHA

by Ma. Lorena Barros

Philippine Collegian
September 11, 1970

The response from the more affluent
was more spontaneous and more generous
the majority of them anonymous.
National disaster
brings out the best in us.
We still have good reason to be proud of ourselves.
- Teodoro Valencia
Over a Cup of Coffee 9/7/90

“Ten mattressed beds in the refugee room (Marikina Youth Center and Welfare Building: unpainted wood wetly dark, new but one can feel the termites gnawing) beside the Metrocom Office.”

Mga sampung pamilya ho kami rito. Hindi namin kasama ang mga iyan, nadatnan na namin sila rito.
Mga Igorot.
Tignan mo ‘yung isa, pati bisig may tattoo.

“The millionaire’s accountant is better off than the millionaire’s driver. The millionaire’s driver is better off than the squatter in the slums across the street. The squatter has four flimsy walls and a patchwork rook; the cart dwelling scavenger has none. But he is better off than the Igorot, he is a Christian and civilized, a mirror in the mud reflecting skyscrapers. Even in the greatest adversity there are always those who are more miserable. Hail pollyanna.”

Sa Melitona kami galing, sa tumana.
Sa tumana, sa may tabing ilog. Doon kami nakatira.
Hindi sa subdibisyon. Sa labas kami, ganito:

“But she is young, the face smooth and brown, the curve of the belly vibrant with new life. So why are her hands an old crone’s hands, large and big-veined and the palms with skin like rubber? She is young...her old hands sketch upon the mattress the diagram of their old lives:”

Nandito ang ilog, eto ang subdibisyon, dito kami sa gitna. May pader dito.
Kaya kami binaha nang ganito, dahil diyan sa pader na iyan.
Ang sabi ng mga datihan sa tumana, noon daw ay bumabaha rin pag apaw ng ilog ngunit ngayon lang tumaas nang ganoon ang tubig. Mangyari’y naglagay ng pader ang may-ari ng subdibisyon, napakataas at mahabang-mahaba. Kaya’t lugar na tuloy-tuloy ang daloy ng tubig papunta sa bukid, nahihinto ng pader at tumataas nang tumataas.

Dati kasi’y bukirin lang ang lugar na iyon. Ngayon’y gagawin nang subdibisyon.
Pinaalis nga kami ng may-ari sa dati naming lugar. Dati’y hindi naman kami ganito kalapit sa ilog nakatira. Medyo paloob. Ngunit pinaalis kami ng may-ari at sabi’y tatayuan daw ng mga bahay na magagara ang lupa.
Inilipat namin ang aming bahay sa tabi ng ilog.
Siguro nama’y walang may-ari ng pampang. At walang magkakagustong magtayo ng bahay doon. Kundi kami.
Kahit kami’y ayaw doon, ngunit anong magagawa mo? Mabuti na kaysa wala.

“She is old, a fine-lined face with incongrously flirtarious red-betel-stained lips. (Why aren’t you dead? I ask you-why aren’t you dead. How did you get that gray hair? How did you manage to survive?”)

Alas dos ng umaga, ineng, nang kami’y lumikas. Napakadilim. Abot na sa baywang ang tubig sa loob ng bahay.
Ang aking iniipong balutan ng Breeze, naiwanan. Inanod na siguro.
Ang kuwintas kong bigay pa ni Inay.
Ang mga bata na lang ang nailabas namin, bukod sa aming katawan.
Napakabilis ng pagtaas ng tubig. Wala kaming nadala ni anumang kasangkapan.
Eto, may nadala akong ilang damit. Basa lahat.

“Don’t breathe. The air is full of the odor of damp decay. Don’t inhale. Don’t decay. Will the sun ever come out and dry these clothes, these muddy floors, these faces?”

Ang sabi ko naman sa kanila’y hindi bale, basta buhay tayong lahat.
Hu, buhay! Buhay nga, walang-wala naman.
Nagsalita na naman ang asawa mo.

Ang sabi nung gagong si Johnny sa radyo, siguro daw ito’y babala sa atin ng Diyos, pagka’t tayo’y makasalanan. Anong makasalanan? Bakit ang mahihirap lang ba ang makasalanan? E bakit kung sino pang may kakaunti lamang ay siya pang binabaha, inaanod ng dala-dalawang pinggan at iisang baso ang iisang banig, ang iilang damit? Yung mga mayayaman sa kanilang mga naglalakihang bahay na bato sa loob ng kanilang mga nagtataasang bakod naanod ba ang kanilang mga kagamitan. Sila ba’y walang kasalanan?
Si Doming naman.
Si Doming naman. Mabait naman sila a. Hindi ba’t pinapasok pa kami sa bakuran?

Oo nga naman. Nang umalis kami sa amin, ineng humingi kami ng silong sa isang bahay ng mayaman doon sa may kalsada. Pinapasok ang mga babae at bata at pinainom pa kami ng kape. Para daw mainitan ang aming sikmura.
Mabait naman sila.

“The men stayed out in the raging rain; it was all right, as long as the women and children were dry. That big rich warm lighted house: they’re afraid we’ll loot it once we get in. (What are a few looted mansions compared with their looted lives?”)

But here’s loot! Old clothes. You don’t have to loot them. Here. Old clothes they give you, rather than throw away.”

Hoy, dalawa na iyang hawak mo, akin naman ito!
Akin, akin-
Akong nauna rito a.
Bakit lalaki ka ba, ba’t hawak mo iyang pantalon.
Mapupunit lang e, bitiwan mo!
Walang-wala kasi kaming damit, ineng. Agawan tuloy.
Para kayong ngayon lang nakakita ng lumang damit.
Si Doming naman.

Ba’t ikaw, hindi ka magsusuot nito? Kay bilis pa naman niyang asawa mong mang-agaw.

“And the children? Fair hopes of their fathers. This little girl’s arms and legs covered with sores (how will she grow up to be Miss International) that boy’s lips, ringed with ulcers: vitamin deficiency (how will he learn to smile) distended bellies. These worms, they can’t wait for death, they begin to feast on child flesh”.

Suot na niya ang isa, o. ‘yung bata sa may pinto.
Lalaki iyan.
Bakit naman pambabae ang isinuot mo?
Wala akong nakuhang panlalaki e.

Ang panganay ko’y bakla. Napakabait. Nagtitinda sa palengke. Kahit anong trabaho papasukan. Ano bang hiya-hiya.

“Where do they come from, the patient people who fill the slums and the sidewalks at night the pickpockets the beggars the prostitutes these transplanted peasants whose wide earthspreading feet can’t fit into the rich man’s slender shoes?

Taga-Leyte kaming lahat.
Ang iba’y matagal na rito-mga anim na taon. Kami’y kaluluwas lamang.
Nandito na ang aking mga anak, ineng. Sumunod na lang ako.
Nagtatanim. Nagtatanim kami sa tumana.
Mais. Mga gulay. Kangkong. Kamote. Petsay. Marami.
May kangkungan ako. Sigruo’y wala na ngayon, naanod na. Paano kaya ngayon?
May anak ka namang nagtratrabaho a.
Kung sabagay. Peon.
Peon, ‘yung nagsisimento ng pader.
Sabihin mo kung aling pader.
Pader ng subdibisyon!

Kakatuwa, ano, ineng? Ang pader na siyang dahilan ng pagbaha sa amin ay tinutulungang itaas ng isa sa amin. Pero anong magagawa mo? Mabuti pa iyon kaysa walang trabaho.
Walang maaring mamili ng trabaho. Kung ayaw magutom. Kaya na nga ba sinasabi ko dito sa asawa ko e tama na ‘yang hiya! Ano bang hiya-hiya, nagugutom na ang mga anak mo. Kung ako’y walang dinadala, kahit taga-linis ng tae’y tatanggapin ko.

Mahirap ang buhay.

“And you, women, when will you cease to be apologists for the status quo? When will you stop scolding and soothing away the anger, the rage, the maimed dignity of your men and instead stoke their fire to greater burning? When will you cease to be dead weights pulling them to the mire, and instead be the vision of a happier time?”

Mahirap ang buhay.
Mas mahirap ang buhay sa probinsiya.
Oo nga.

Bakit kamo, ineng? Oo nga’t kung magtatanim ka lang ay may makakain ka na. Ngunit pagkain lang ba ang kailangan ng tao?
Walang pera. Walang pagawaan. Dito sa Maynila, huwag ka lang maghiya-hiya ay may pagkikitaan ka na.
Tama! Dito’y kay daming nangangailangan ng yayang tagahimod ng puwit ng kanilang mga anak, o ng kanilang mga asawa. Ng mga taga-punas ng upuan para sa mga iksekyutib, taga-bukas ng pintuan, taga-sara ng pintuan, taga-bantay ng pintuan, taga-paypay o taga kumpuni ng air-conditioner. Ng mga tsuper, ng mga taga-linis ng kalye, taga-gawa ng kalye, taga-bakbak ng kalye, taga-pangalaga ng mga harding mas malawak kaysa bahay mo. Ng mga taga-kain ng dumi!
Doming naman.

Kasi’y wala kang pinag-aralan, Doming, kaya tagakain lang ng dumi ang maari mong maging trabaho. Kaya na nga ba kahit hirap na hirap ako’y pinipilit kong mapag-aral ang kahit isa lang sa aking mga anak. Pero paano kaya ngayon, wala na ang aking kangkungan?
Hindi naman pumapasok ang anak mo a.
Naku e hihinto daw muna siya. Wala kasing pera para sa kanyang mga damit. Ayaw pumasok nang hindi disente ang damit. Pagtatawanan lang daw siya ng kanyang mga kaklase. Kaya’t nag-iipon sana ako ngayon, para sa isang taon...

Hu, pinag-aralan! Hindi nyo ba alam na ang mga bellboy sa Hilton ngayon, kailanga’y college student? Sige paghirapan n’yo ang pag-aaral ni Ernie, tignan natin kung anong lalabas. Pag may pinag-aralan ka, mas disente nga ang suweldo mo pero taga-kain ka pa rin ng tira. Taga-tago ng kayamanan ng iba akala mo kung sino nang mga bank teller na ‘yan, nakauniporme pa. Taga-pangasiwa lang ng yaman ng iba, ng kung sinong hindot, kailangan commerce graduate. Iksekyutib, puta!
Ke may pinag-aralan.
ke wala
puta, puta puta puta
taga-kain ng tira
Ako, isang lalaking tinatawag: nasaan ang aking kalalakihan? Ang alipin ba’y may bayag? Araw-araw ay nilululon ko ang aking hiya, humahalik sa lupa pagkat may asawa’t anak na nagugutom. Bakit kailangang mamili sa hiya at pagkain? Bakit kailangang mamili sa pagiging tao at pagiging patay-gutom? Ako ba’y isinilang upang maging busabos?

Putaputaputaputa
mabuti pang mamundok
mamatay ka ma’y lumalaban
at makapatay rin
at malay mo
Marami tayong api
napakarami
mas marami sa nang-aapi.

2011-05-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

PRISON VISIT

The prisoners in MPD Precinct 5 are temporarily detained in a two-storey wooden house beside the unfinished concrete building which will later accommodate them. The house is dingy and its faded green paint is peeling off in ugly spots; it looks like a dirty PC uniform thrust into a corner of the precinct compound.

‘Yun hong nakatingin dito at nakangiti, an old woman in widow’s weeds points to someone behind the chicken wire screen which separates the detention cell from the tiny waiting room. Yun hong aking anak.

The prisoners move about the detention cell, stirring the grass straw on the floor. the old woman’s son presses close to the screen, his fingers hooked about the wire.

O, kayo naman, ano ‘yon?

W e would like to see Mr. Alfonso Sabelano.

The clerk sits up a bit straighter. Clearing his throat, he shuffles the papers in front of him and finally answers. You better ask the sergeant over there. Sarge!

We would like to see Mr. Alfonso Sabelano, Sergeant.

The Sergeant clears his throat. Ahem, are you relatives?

No, we are friends of his.

Well, ahem, he was taken out.

Where?

Uh, ahem, I don’t know. Ah, I know! He went to point out Ruben, the actual gunman.

There is a note of triumph and a sneer in his last words. We keep silent, not knowing what to make of the information.

Ahem, you know, Rubben, that USTC rat! He was the guy who pulled the trigger. Ahem, a double murderer. He killed Dasmarinas and Macalde.

Oh.

Ano ba kayo, KM right?

No, but we would not mind being KM.

Uh, ahem, so!

That’s all right, another man cuts in. He does not have the bleary blood-shot eyes of the sergeant but has a similar paunch. (Why do all officers of the law have big stomachs?)

That’s all right, he says again. The KM is a legal organization.

Exactly. That’s why we can’t understand why the Monkees killed Dasmarinas-unless being legal is no longer sufficient protection from official murder.

The Monkees! says the Sarge. The President says there are no Monkees.

But Senator Aquino says there are, right here in the city.

Between Aguino and the President I would rather believe the President says the other officer.

But the Senator has evidence.

But the Senator is not the President.

Anyway, cuts in the Sarge. Hindi Monkees ang pumatay kay Dasmarinas at Macalde. Mga KM ang pumatay sa kanila.

But Dasmarinas was one of the most effective KM speakers! Why would other KM members kill him?

He was accused of being a CIA agent.

We look at each other and burst out laughing.

Double murder is not a funny thing, you know, the other officer says.

Exactly, sir. And these actions of the State against militant youth nationalists have cast serious doubts on the existence of democracy in our country.

KM ang pumatay sa kanila! The Sarge is losing his temper.

Granted, the other officer says, granted that it was not one of you who killed them, why would the government want to kill them? Dasmarinas was no big leader of the KM. Sure, he was an effective speaker, but he was a small guy in the organization. If the government were really after the KM we would go after the bigwigs!

But sir, you already have no less than the national chairman of the KM, Nilo Tayag.

Aba, ahem, that’s a different matter.

In what way different, sir?

‘Yang si Nilo Tayag ay subversive. He wants to overthrow the government.

What makes you say that, sir?

Aba, ahem, he goes around the country agitating the people at rallies and teach-ins.

Agitating for what?

Revolution!

Why?

Such people have lost faith in peaceful reform. They want a bloody war to change the system.

Sir, what will happen to Alfonso?

The maximum penalty for murder is death. At best he will get a life sentence.

Why death or life imprisonment? Does the State not believe that murderers can be gradually and peacefully reformed, so that they can once more be of service to society?

Ahem, aba, malalim na pilosopiya na ‘ata iyan. Pilosopo ka ba?

The other officer shakes his head sadly. Murder stains the soul irrevocably. A man who has once killed will kill again. Such a man will always be a danger to society.

But Sir, the State has so many murders in its hands already. The Lapiang Malaya massacre, the Jabidah Massacre, the massacre of students on January 30, the murder of Sta. Brigiga, the daily killing of peasants in Central Luzon. Murder, to borrow your words has stained its soul irrevocably. It will always be a danger to society. It is beyond gradual and peaceful reform, to borrow your logic, and must therefore be either done away with - the maximum penalty - or otherwise incapacitated for life.

Ahem, aba!

Therefore to want to do away with this murderous State is only just and right, and not at all subversive. Isn’t that so, sir?

Sabi na sa iyong pilosopo iyan, e. Basta hindi niyo maaaring makita si Sabelano. Kahit naman nandiyan siya’y incomunicado, walang maaaring kausapin kundi mga malapit na kamag-anak.

We turn away to go.

Just a minute. What have girls like you got to do with criminals like Sabelano?

Alfonso is not a criminal unless proven guilty, sir.

You are students? Where do you study?

U.P.

St. Theresa’s.

Ano? Sa mga eskwelang Katoliko ba’y may mga aktibista rin?

There is nothing, or there should be nothing, in a Catholic school which prevents its students from being concerned about country and fellow men.

Hindi kayo KM?

We are members of MAKIBAKA.

` Ahem?

Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan, sir. We just wanted to see Alfonso.

Well, you have to see the CO here to get a permit to see him

Who is the CO?

Major Lazaro! the sergeant says with that familiar note of triumph.

Where is Major Lazaro?

He is not here.

Where is he?

On Mondays he acts as the personal security officer of the Mayor. You may see him here any day except Monday.

Mayor Villegas, sir?

Yes.

Where is Alfonso now?

I told you. He has gone to point out where Ruben is hiding. It takes a rat, ha ha, to catch another rat. Ha ha.

Will he testify against Ruben?

If the court accepts him as state witness, he will testify against Ruben.

But he will also be punished, if he testifies against Ruben?

No, he will go free.

What?

Because he would be on the side of the government. That would wipe out his guilt.

But he would still be a rat in your eyes, sir?

Pilosopo kang talaga ano?

You would have turned him into a more acceptable rat, sir, a government rat?

Ahem!

Come on, let’s go, I’m hungry. Let’s go.

Outside the precinct a light rain is falling. We pass a small group of workers at the new precinct building, squatting around their lunch of rice and dried fish.

Akin kayo, mga miss.

Salamat ho. Nakikita niyo ba si Boy diyan?

‘Yung KM? Oo, ngunit paminsan-minsan lamang. Sa itaas siya itinatago.

Kumusta ho siya?

Dati mataba, pero ngayo’y payat na. Mahigpit ang gwardya sa kanya.

Maari ho niyo kayang ibigay itong magasing Pilipino sa kanya? Basahin na rin ninyo.

Sige. Pag natiyempuhan namin.

Salamat ho.

Walang anuman. Naawa na rin kami sa kanya. Parating nakayuko tuwing dadaan.

I was so afraid they’d arrest us, you know, the way you spoke.

Wasn’t I pompous?

We all laugh.

Yeah, I felt like giggling at your big words.

That Sarge reminds me of the police officer at the PCC raid. You know the story?

Go ahead.

Well, during the PCC raid, the students whom the police found inside the building were all lined up against the wall and questioned. One student, scared to death, said, hindi po ako komunista! Anti-communit pa nga ako sir e. The sergeant slapped him and said, Ah, kahit na anong klaseng komunista ka pa, lahat ng mga iyan ay pare-parehong masama!

Laugher again.

Stupid ass!

Fascist pig!

More laughter.

Big words. Democracy. Freedom. Commitment, Society. But behind them only these little things: that day by day institutionalized violence robs a man of his dignity, turns him into another instrument of violence against yet other victims; that day by day men are taught or forced to survive by doing violence to other men; that day by day men manage to live in spurious peace by constantly denying that they are not free, that no man can be free unless all other men are free.

- Aug. 27, l970

Philippine Collegian

2011-04-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

EGO DE MONA KA TEUDO

The moon is gone
I am wakeful, thinking
of the dried grass
in my brush.
The grass was black
in the moon's light
the moon was palest green
and somewhere in the tall cogon
a birdling sang uncertainly
the moon is gone. I've
always lain alone
Why does it pain me now?

   - Ma. Lorena Barros
   Philippine Collegian
   July 3, 1969

2011-04-18T07:26:00.000-07:00

MAKIBAKA REVISITED: TWO ESSAYS ON MAKIBAKA (by two former members)

ANOTHER LOOK AT THE MAKIBAKA EXPERIENCE

By Rosa C. Mercado; Diliman Review; l986; p. 60-62

Over the past three years or so, feminists of various persuasions have expressed a high degree of interest over MAKIBAKA (Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan). It seemed from their various writings that Makibaka has become a springboard to drive home their ideological and political ideas on the women question. Perhaps it fires their imagination to think that Makibaka has taken the cudgels in this attempt to draw a feminist line despite the odds it encountered. Makibaka has become more of a symbol, so to speak, for women activists to crystallize their crying need for acceptance and recognition.

Whoever coined the word Makibaka would never have known that such an audacious name would go down in history as the forerunner of the women’s liberation movement in the Philippines. It shudders me now to think that such a relatively small band of women could represent an idea far larger than itself, could become more than what it really was, although we did try in our own way to live up to the image of the name.

Credit perhaps should go to the dramatic flair that marked its entry into the national scene. Makibaka was launched during the Bb. Pilipinas Beauty Contest in l970. At that time, beauty contests were enjoying a high degree of popularity and even prestige because Gloria Diaz had just romped off with the Miss Universe crown a year before. From the ideal Maria Clara image of demure beauty and quiet submission, our Filipino women traded off their kimono and saya for the flimsy bathing suit and competed with their legs and faces in a bid to carve a name in a male dominated world. Beauty contests were supposed to be the ideal venue to affirm their womanhood and to rise to national glory and prominence.

Taking cue from the stormy women’s lib in the United States, we picketed the beauty contest and for that novel act, we landed in the front pages of the national dailies not because the press realized the seriousness of our purpose but because we were another form of amusement itself. Here were a bunch of girls taking a potshot at a national pastime, trying to rub the amused crowd the other way. Some members of the press even chafed us saying we were sour graping because we didn’t have the three m’s (maganda, matangkad, mayaman) like the beauty contestants. Nevertheless, we outshouted them with “Down with the commercialization of sex,” “Stop treating women as sex objects.” “Away with the degradation of women” and other jolting slogans.

Joining the picket was for some of us a “thrilling” experience, a kind of “explosion” where all hell broke loose and we felt suddenly transformed. Here we all were, weighed down by years and years of constant drilling from all sources of authority that distorted our perceptions of our real selves. Makibaka unleashed the pent-up energies that were bottled up inside us. It became a rallying point to break away from the traditional cultural mold of a cloying, passive, suffering Filipina and from society-induced crutches like the need to look up to a man or to prepare one’s self mainly in the art of raising a home and family.

After the initial euphoria of self-revelation, we braced ourselves for the enormous tasks ahead. The explosive issues of those times pushed us into frenetic activism that called for solid and real organizing and propaganda work. In a way, we were laboring under the presumptions of too militant a name, MAKIBAKA, an acronym that is synonymous with struggle. Most of us were hardly prepared for the job. We were all so young and somewhat foolish, some were freshly plucked from high school and many were middle-class and convent-bred who didn’t even know how to wash dishes. While it was a greatly accelerated period for learning, knowing, feeling and reading, it was also a stressful time for resolving inner conflicts that squared with our quest for the answers to our growing feminism.

One of the by-products of the political activism in the 70's was that you practically lived and grew together in the headquarters. Living and growing together said more for us and about us than all our theories on the women question put together. By leading a collective life to pursue political work, we discovered in ourselves those parts which we used to deny or didn’t even know existed because they didn’t fit into the usual stereo-typed image of women. We slept on the pavement of strike areas, went to unheard of places to integrate with people, braved gun-wielding policemen in scab-infested factories, dodged pill boxes at violence marred rallies and were hauled off to police stations in the middle of the night while painting slogans on the street walls. The more we exerted ourselves in the struggle, the more we realized how narrowly circumscribed our lives had been. And to think that we were forbidden before to come home at unholy hours! A lot of the girls had to engage in minor skirmishes and crying sessions with distressed mothers who were always close at heels trying to reclaim their stowaway daughters. Stowing away may appear insignificant, but for some of us, it was a breakthrough in declaring self-independence.

Living together 24 hours under one roof also meant that we had to divide house and office chores equally among ourselves. Fine, but it also meant getting into each other’s nerves because the lazy bones in us were hungry for food but nobody wanted to cook. Or who was going to throw the garbage or tidy up the bathroom? The haggling brought us at the brink of quarrels but also made us aware that nobody could be relegated to kitchen work all the time or no job could be so menial as to be perennially assigned to one. It taught us that we were co-equal in everything, from the “drudgery” of dish washing to the “importance” of mimeographing.

Makibaka rode on the crest of student activism where mainstream politics meant exposing the three evils of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism that plague the country. Like other activist groups, we were heatedly engaged in exposing the bases of our national oppression and exploitation. No marches and rallies on big issues spared us, and our organizing work among women in various schools were annexed to building a strong base of women who toed the national democratic line.

However, controversy hounded Makibaka from the day it was born. Women’s liberation was thought of as a western conception that drove a divisive wedge among the activist ranks. Makibaka was besieged by many self-appointed ideologues who outrightly questioned the basis of its existence. They pointed out that women’s issues were not “priorities,” that these were “deflective” and “distractive” and had to be “subsumed,” “sublimated” or made “secondary” to the “official line.” These words were bandied around and were dropped glumly mostly by leading male comrades who were seriously toying with the idea of abolishing Makibaka without even consulting its members.

In a way, all the talk pushed us in the defensive and drove us at our wit’s end. We were definitely not going to hand it to them even if we were groping for our rebuttal statements. The neophytes in us grappled for ready-made answers. We tried to learn fast by wading through a wide array of reading materials that came from foreign sources. Our knowledge of the women question was initially something we had to articulate straight from the books but which we could not as yet connect with our lives and experiences.

The mimeographed materials that circulated around were mostly of two divergent kind. On the one end were the thick maze of feminist literature from the United States. On the other end were the revolutionary Chinese and Vietnamese models. We straddled between a too feminist or a too revolutionary orientation. The feminist excesses of our western counterparts even made its way through our language. We would accuse our male comrades of “male chauvinism” at the slightest provocation while they would bounce back by chiding us of being “anti-male.” We floated automatic slogans for the voice that should have come from the depths of our authentic experience. Also, there was a definite juvenile exuberance in the way we dropped jargons that were the “in” thing as in the way we would hang around sporting the masa look. The masa look is where you tried to appear unkempt and disheveled, wore oversized polo shirts or ran holes in your maong pants or rubber shoes.

There were, of course, Engel’s Origin of the Family and Lenin’s Women Question

which were standard discussion fare. Much as these two interesting pieces of writings gave us a lot of strength and solid theoretical base for formulating our own ideas, they were too far removed from the present context to really make a dent. As for the Chinese and Vietnamese women fighters, their heroism were the stuff our dreams were hitched on but not everyone had the fibers to push their feminism to such extremes. Our most beloved and highly esteemed Lorena Barros (and the likes of her) still remains a shining example of an ideal woman who continues to haunt us and rock the ground from under our feet.

Looking at it another way, our early brand of feminism had banked too much on the premise that there is something wrong when one tries to dichotomize between women’s issues and national issues as if this is the way one must proceed, if at all. As if it were a choice between two extremes of thought and one ought to lay down the line as to which should take precedence over what. People often speak of “issues” when they talk of feminism like prostitution, abortion, the right to vote and the like. No wonder discussions often bogged down or stood still because the distinction should not be posited at all.

Being an all-women’s group was undoubtedly a unique experience that made more dent in our consciousness than everything that were said. The fact that women could make decisions by themselves, could decide on courses of action without male intervention were never driven home to us till then. Here we all were, in the middle of the great issues and we had to sharpen our tools in political analysis if we were to be effective. There was no room for trivial, small talk nor for skirting the issues with petty discussions on peripheral issues because the situation would not warrant such. It was often said that women are too embroiled in their emotions and they lack the faculty for relentless, objective and rigorous analyzing that men possess by virtue of the unbridled freedom that early training and upbringing had instilled in them.

Now you may not agree with that but joining Makibaka had tapped the dormant powers in us. We were reconciled to the analytical, intellectual, and active side of us which would not have surfaced as starkly had there been males to do the thinking and deciding for us. It was indeed the politics of the times that pulled us out of our shells but it was our unique position of being an all-women group that made us profoundly aware of the need to transcend our weaknesses and limitations if we were to apply ourselves to the demands of the struggle.

Being together had bound us in ways that went beyond politicking. We had always felt this visceral unity where you share the same resentments against the impositions on the use of your body and brain, you felt the same growing up pain from awkward adolescence to the verge of womanhood, the same ambivalence towards “emotions” and “needs” and “relationships.” Women’s sensibilities and range of experiences are quite different from men and one could never do away with them under the cloak of political expediency. They are there, imbedded in us, whether we wish to speak about them or not. The layers of cultural subjugation, are a difficult thing to erase, one that needed a constancy of effort, a sustained, consistent everyday self-searching and renewal until you could chip away inch by inch, block by block the feelings of inferiorities and insufficiencies drilled through a lifetime.

Actually, the realization that we were already engaged in a living application of the women question only occurred to us many years later after we had left Makibaka. At that time, because of the many national issues that assailed us and kept us on our toes every minute of the day we were sort of prevented from really confronting our problems as women. Or perhaps we deliberately kept them under wraps, tucked under our HQ beds because we were not supposed to be bothered by them.

Blame it perhaps on our youth and inexperience, but always and always, relationships or to put it bluntly, heart affairs assaulted us and rocked the political equilibrium that we tried so hard to maintain. It gripped the very center of our being and diffused the abundant energy which we tried so hard to harness for others. We were saddled by them because we were always trying to balance relationships, trying to put them in the proper perspective. Emotions, however, had no place in the political scheme of things and one was always reminded that too many people in Tondo or Sapang Palay were dying of hunger so how dare were we to become so narrowly focused in our personal problems.

One leading feminist once said that if emotional lives are shared collectively then they become a cultural experience. If this is true, then perhaps women should not find excuses for their feelings but work at them towards mastery. They are barriers to our liberation and one must confront rather than evade them. To strike hard at them would be to increase the weapons of self-discovery and self-understanding that we need for tackling the larger political issues that should be our foremost concern.

With this note, the Makibaka experience could be vindicated after all.

MAKIBAKA REMEMBERED

by Salome Ronquillo

May-August l984, Diliman Review, pp. 51-53

The emergence of several women’s organizations after the Aquino assassination makes me reminisce proudly, yet sadly, over MAKIBAKA (Malayang Kilusan Ng Bagong Kababaihan). The new organizations of women can learn a few lessons from the experiences of Makibaka, said to be the pioneer in the women’s liberation movement or feminist movement in the Philippines. Makibaka was, indeed, the first Philippine organization to raise the issue of women’s liberation, creating a stir in the media and among the male population of the country. The organization earned a good mileage of publicity because of its novelty, though not all of it was good. Sometimes the organization was derided and chided not only by the Establishment but also by so-called comrades in the national democratic movement where it chose to belong.

Singular honor, however, goes to Makibaka for putting the issue of women’s liberation in the “proper context” - that is, by linking the issue to the people’s struggle against the three “isms.” Makibaka proclaimed that the semi-feudal character of Philippine society subjugated the women to the men, moulded the women into the shy and conservative Maria Clara, and defined her function primarily as child-bearers and housekeepers; while the semi-colonial nature of the society gave rise to the commercialization of sex and made women the playthings of men. Ergo, women can only liberate themselves by joining the struggle for nationalism and democracy. It was a credible though much simple theory which basically answered the question of how to involve women in the people’s struggle and the proper place of a women’s movement in the history that is being made. Further tinkering on the theory led to assertions by ideologues that women are neither a class like the workers, peasants, etc., not a sector like the students or be referred to as a special group like the cultural minorities. With this we did not argue, as long as women oppression and exploitation are recognized as existing . Women cut through classes and sectors so there are women landlords as there are women peasants, women capitalists as there are women workers (note: care should be taken not to base a woman’s class status on the class membership of the husband alone.) But as members of the female sex they have special problems and those belonging to the exploited class suffer double exploitation as members of their class and of their sex.

As the women’s movement became accepted, more studies and discussions were conducted on the Woman Question. Research, mostly informal and undertaken by concerned individuals and not by groups and institutions, tried to dig deeper into the problem. Engels’ works particularly on the origin of the family and state began to be cited as this brought the roots of women exploitation and oppression farther into history, tracing it to the period when private property evolved. One writer-researcher even went farther, tracing the problem to the difference between the male and the female. This thinking was obviously influenced by the western press which propagated the wrong notion that women working for their liberation want to be superior to or be the clones of the male specie. (Albeit there is a small, radical group in the West which rejects all female roles including childbearing.)

These attempts to clarify the women question led to a more beclouded understanding of the issue, although discussions which they triggered were invigorating. For one, they forced the Makibaka members to fortify their stand with concrete examples drawn from their experiences in working with women in different classes. Articles by Makibaka members including those in the magazine the organization published contained these summing up.

Since the women’s movement in the Philippines was still very young and data on earlier women’s groups were wanting in the kind of information needed, attention was turned to the experience of women in the revolutionary struggle in China and Vietnam. But Makibaka did not undertake an organized research on the women’s movement in the two countries, preferring instead to draw inspiration from the bravery of women in those struggles. (This was also good since the Makibaka members developed the attitude that if those women could do it, they also could). Perhaps, after all Makibaka was not the proper organization to conduct such a study since it was deep into organizational and political work.

Makibaka involved its members in militant mass actions and mobilized politicized women students, workers and professionals. Its members were at the forefront of all MDP (Movement for a Democratic Philippines) sponsored activities - rallies everywhere, strikes at every corner, community work, etc. There activities tempered the Makibaka activists and created “models” for Filipino women in the struggle. Makibaka contributed the likes of Maria Lorena Barros who fought for and gave her life to the cause she believed in.

Members of Makibaka believed that they realized their full potential in a purely women organization. They learned to handle jobs traditionally reserved for men like marshaling during demonstrations, nailing placards, painting streamers, operating the mimeograph machine, operation dikit, and many more. They also experienced one time or another, speaking before a rally or symposium, writing a manifesto or managing a chapter. They felt their contribution to the organization and were proud of it.

It was not therefore unexpected that Makibaka members would come to the rescue of their organization whenever it was threatened by not-so-serious male chauvinists who simply loved to taunt them and the more serious chauvinists who wanted to dissolve the organization (their slogan was “there is no need for a separate women’s organization, much more, movement”). The charge of “feminism” (for wanting to have a women’s movement and for raising women issues) was a plague which the members feared. Their leaders walked on a tightrope, forever balancing women issues and national issues, fearful of falling to the ground.

The plague made Makibaka neglect important issues and organizational work. There was not much to differentiate the work of Makibaka from the work of student/youth organizations, causing some observers to think that Makibaka was the women’s arm of a youth organization. For one thing, Makibaka concentrated its mobilization and organizational efforts in schools and communities where the youth organizations moved and as a result drew only young women into the organization. Housewives and mothers, particularly the wives of workers and the women in urban poor communities who comprise the majority of women population in the cities, should have been the targets of Makibaka. They were not attracted to the organization either because they felt that it did not meet their needs or they did not fit it. A Mothers Corps, composed of mothers of Makibaka members and mothers of other activists, was organized within Makibaka but they were not fully integrated into the organization and the corps became mere support group. The value of the help extended by the Mother’s Corps only shows the untapped potential of housewives and mothers.

Makibaka was aware of the obstacles (housework and male authority) preventing housewives and mothers from joining or getting involved in community and national affairs. It attempted to set up day care centers in urban poor communities to ease the constraints and managed to actually set up two. The first one, in Leveriza, was opened in l971 and Makibaka was not prepared for it. (It was sponsored by a Concon candidate whose wife became an honorary member. The opportunity was there so Makibaka grabbed it.) The experience, however, provided many lessons and gave Makibaka the correct orientation for such projects, so that when it opened the second one in Tondo, Makibaka already knew that the community should be involved in the project and in the responsibility of taking care of the children. In Tondo, the parents helped in the construction of the classroom and the maintenance and operation of the center.

Another activity which benefitted mothers in urban poor communities was the mother’s class conducted together with a nurses’ group, the MASANA (Makabayang Samahan ng mga Narses). The mothers’ class taught the mothers modern and scientific child care practices. The class could also have been effective in promoting breast-feeding and the use of acupuncture and herbal medicines.

Among the issues Makibaka raised as a women’s organization were the irrelevance of beauty contests, the commercialization of sex, and the irrelevance of the ten best dressed women’s list. It issued statements on the pill and family planning, prostitution and high prices. But the activity which landed Makibaka in the newspapers’ front page was the picket against the Binibining Pilipinas coronation night at the Araneta Coliseum. It was the first time that event was picketed. The event was again picketed in l972 with formes Miss International Gemma Cruz Araneta leading the picketers. This time, three international beauty queens had joined the activist movement turning their backs on the world of glamor. On the other hand, a photo taken at the picket of the ten best-dressed women proclamation night won the Panorama photographer the photojounalism award for that year.

These were just some of the possible activities that could be undertaken and some of the issues that could be raised by a women’s organizations. Makibaka initiated the moves towards this direction but because of the fear of being criticized as a feminist, the organization relegated such to “more pressing” and broader issues and activities.

The pronouncement that women issues should only be secondary to national issues weakened and eventually killed the growing women’s movement in the Philippines. Makibaka could have expanded the movement through alliance work with other women’s organizations and sectoral groups. It could have propagated women issues more widely. It could have catered to the immediate needs of women to enable them to participate in affairs outside the confines of the home.

In the early ‘70s, Makibaka was the women’s movement and the women’s movement was Makibaka. So that when martial law was declared and Makibaka was disbanded, a vacuum was created. There was no organization that was left to speak for women’s liberation. And although there were women groups created, there was no movement which worked for the liberation of women. Those were critical years and women issues were very low in priorities.

Fortunately, individual women who were personally committed to the cause began to fill in the vacuum Makibaka left. The church workers carried the crusade. After many years of working with women, they have realized the need for a genuine women’s movement that will encompass all progressive classes and sectors.

The task now is to unite existing women’s organizations behind certain principles and on women issues and to rally as many women as possible behind the alliance.

The Makibaka experience can serve as the starting point of the revitalized women’s movement. Let us turn nostalgia into an intelligent assessment of the experience and deepen Makibaka’s contribution to the women’s movement in the Philippines.

2011-04-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

DREAM

And why do we stay to watch

an old man bathing

purpled limbs exposed to

horrified helpless stare

(his peeling cerements will reveal

their stale tobacco stuffing

or perhaps dried bull’s blood stinking

Chorizos of Asturias)

an old man bathing

going through the casual motions

of the living Old man

what will wash away

the smell of dying and what for?

Purpled limbs

shall still be wormed, or

browned in chill formaldehyde-

purpled hawsers sheerly holding on

while the slag heaps wait below.

Why do we stay to watch

as if waiting?

- Ma. Lorena Barros

Sunday Times Magazine

Nov. 26, l967

2011-03-31T14:53:00.000-07:00

DOCUMENTARY OF A WAR

In the name of the

Father

and of the Son

and of the

Etc.

Fire.

Women as women will trying to save

As much as can be saved

of pots and clothing

We cannot leave

Do not make us leave

our ancestors

to a prayerless village

Children

give us this day

a little boy wonderingly watching

a tired sweaty doctor

tie up his stump

Leave him enough for a

crutch!

He will grow up It takes such an awful lot

to kill the human

Tweny eight years of death produced

these twenty year olds dying in the swamps and paddies

our daily bread

alphabet books lie shattered among the dry fields

the battle of toxic chemicals and bee sting

great river leeches on our naked backs

stiff twisted faces

with pieces of paper tied

to an arm

or a leg

or a neck

or whatever there is left

family:

village:

cause of death:

male? female?

single? married?

no matter

non bereaved

one cannot grieve indefinitely

And forgive us

tired GI faces

dogged fear

that jumps at every

whisper of the bush

I just want to get out of here

It’s you or they get killed

remember that, men.

It’s I or they

Our trespasses

a village sweep

armed with rifles and

antiseptic spray

O my dear, O my dear young girl

dirty and covered with lice

and resigned to being raped

But we are civilized

We have R & R.

The Star and Two Colors

Martial music

repository of ideology

One can riot only where

death is not so near

or so immediately vivid

where a plastic bag over the face can save us from crying the senseless tears

the bomb tears

Imperialism shall not win

Hallowed be thy name

Johnson: “American restraint...”

napalm acids anti-personnel bombs B. 52

and the medieval rock

Thy kingdom come

Imperialist evil shall not prevail

Hear, mga papet ng Amerika!

I only want to understand

but thy will be done

Why are dirty bloodied bodies

being tossed into these shallow graves

beardless faces uncomprehendingly in pain

or burning draft cards

or themselves

or turning to flowers and LSD

or running the rat race of the cities

On earth

but why is cynicism idealism unrealized

As it is in heaven

I do not remember the exotic names

of the great encounters

Flash! Allies suffer reverse

Headline: 407 Vietcong killed

In Sicily an earthquake

left Montevago mourning

400 dead

After a while the eternal gunshots

become monotonous

Lord I just want to get out of here

It’s I or they

We must evolve some more

some more

we simply must dont you see

This over a cup of coffee

Excited over her first cigarette

I see no other hope

the two are irreconcilable

War and Peace?

Now dont be smart

Heaven and Earth?

Lord all I want is

Aw let me fornicate in peace

National Liberation Front

I am expendable An old man

But I can still smile for your camera sir

Yes I have many stories

but they are all the same

Like droppings of some

archaic flying reptile

the bombs fell

on the leprosarium

God I sweated infinities

Sewing on skin and muscle

and they were mutely grateful

the noseless and the lipless faces

sweating in the stubble fields

stubble summer autumn winter and spring

it makes no difference now

how the fingers dissappeared

how the body became one mass of wounds

Amen.

- Ma. Lorena Barros
Philippine Collegian, April 3, 1968

2011-03-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

SWAN SONG

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the pain, the solitude, the sea,

The wranglings with one’s muse, the bitter coffee,

Would it have been worth while,

To have sweated on the hardships of a rhyme,

To have cursed the universe, cursed the war,

Again and yet again to ask The question, any question,

To say, ‘I am the prophet, I shall tell you all,

I have come to tell you all’-

Would it have been worth while,

If one, scavenging at a magazine stall,

Should see one’s deathless verse beside a Kotex ad,

And say: ‘That is not what I wrote at all,

That is not it, at all.’

- Lorena Barros

October 26, 1968; Philippine Free Press; p.31

2011-03-14T15:27:00.000-07:00

TO A NEW FOUND FRIEND

today my heart is heavy

as Bulusan mountain

remembering red roses

plucked too soon...

beyond the barred windows

the hills of Sorsogon

call to me yearningly

in my dreams i reach out

to stroke their lovely waves,

dear and dark in the night

like my beloved’s hair

oh stranger! if you should see

my old father

tell him someday for sure

i shall be home again.

- Solita

February 21, 1974

2011-03-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

MAKIBAKA ON WOMEN'S LIBERATION AND INVOLVEMENT
by: Ma. Lorena Barros

In the January 26, l972 issue of the Philippine Collegian, there appeared an article by Ms. Susan G. Ramirez on “Women’s Liberation, MAKIBAKA and Involvement.” The article, which aims to impart greater understanding of women’s liberation and to correct MAKIBAKA’s sectarian nature, certainly shows a highly sectarian prescription of women’s lib and little knowledge of not only MAKIBAKA but radical women in general.

The point of the article is that MAKIBAKA’s rejection of the women’s lib line “really means that the difference in the sexes are to be ignored in the practical organizing of women”; that such rejection stems from “both an unwillingness and inability to recognize the inter-relationship of the concrete aspects of our daily lives with their over-all theory”; and that to solve this problem MAKIBAKA should “reconsider their present hostile position to a women’s liberation group, end the sectarian domination of the Quezon Blvd. males, and create the Filipinas’s Women’s Liberation.

There is no doubt that Ms. Ramirez had nothing but the best intentions in writing her critique of Filipino radical women viz-a-viz women’s lib. She correctly points out that “tactically different approaches to the various exploited groups and sexes” should be used in organizing and practical action. Unfortunately, the critique myopically prescribes women’s lib as a tactical approach to “the masses as women” in general - and thus falls prey to the very errors it seeks to correct.

To place “masses of women” in a concrete context (even as Ms. Ramirez fails to do so, in her whole article)-

For the masses of Filipino women workers (roughly one-third of the working force), would it be correct to raise the tactical slogans, “Fight your male bosses!” or “Company -paid abortions on demand”? No. The correct tactical slogan would be “Fight company unions and form genuine workers’ unions!” With strong genuine workers’ unions, women workers will be able to exert greater pressure for better working conditions, maternity and other medical assistance, safeguards against unfair labor practices such as sex discrimination, etc.

For the masses of Filipino peasant women, would it be correct to raise the tactical slogans “Down with wife-beating husbands!” or even “Maria Clara laos na!”. Correct tactical slogans would be “Reduce rent, abolish usury!” and “organize peasants’ cooperatives!” since the most pressing problems of our sisters in the feudal countryside are excessive rent and usurious practices which leave them with not enough harvest to last till the next crop (would these be what Ms. Ramirez have meant “obstacles to our satisfaction,” the psychical inhibitions of the oppressed female”?)

For the masses of women from the petty bourgeois - and these are apparently Ms. Ramirez “masses of women” - would it be correct to raise the tactical slogans “Down with male chauvinism!” or even “Away with beauty contests”? No. The steeply worsening economic conditions now dictate that the correct tactical slogans for women professionals, students and middle class housewives are “Down with high prices”, “Stop oil price increase!” and “Stop tuition fee hike!”. Only a very small segment of the women of this class can be rallied around women’s lib slogans. MAKIBAKA’s own concrete experience with its first mass actions, the picket against the Bb. Pilipinas contest in l970, showed that petty bourgeois women in the majority are merely amused (the more conservative are faintly shocked) by such slogans. To organize and mobilize them, more imminent (“gutsy” if you prefer) issues must be raised.

At best it might be said that the critique is sectarian. At worst it could be accused of rather irresponsible errors of ignorance. If Ms. Ramirez had taken more time to find out about MAKIBAKA in particular and radical women in general, her article would not have been so fundamentally flawed. Nor would it have been guilty of unnecessary errors such as asserting that “capitalism and imperialism are at the bottom of our exploitation.” Or ignoring the big and ever-increasing number of women activists who, unlike herself, no longer “go home to our very bourgeois personal and family lives” (most having never come from “very bourgeois homes” in the first place) but devote all of their time to the national democratic movement. And posing really quite silly questions like the six “how many’s, allegedly problems” that affect even the most radical women, how they live and think and what their problems are. She could have avoided (pointless!) “statistics” such as “99.9% of the MAKIBAKA members” “did not understand a socialist (sic.) program overnight.” Perhaps she meant a national democratic program. A cursory reading of the MAKIBAKA programme would give her that information. But then the confusion of national democratic with socialism (re “capitalism and imperialism are at the bottom of our exploitation”) is only one of a number of hopeless confusion in the article, so it is rather understandable.

Actually, the answers were there even before she ever thought of asking them. She alleges: “(MAKIBAKA’s attitude) ignores (the fact that) the simple social and personal problems of women have both political as well as economic reasons and ramifications (precisely). Instead they are simply considered as non-political irrelevancies. To quote some excerpts from the MAKIBAKA programme:

MAKIBAKA seeks nationalist industrialization and genuine land reform in order to create a vigorous national economy. Only a vigorous national economy can provide the conditions necessary for the eventual elimination of poverty, unemployment, underemployment, unfair labor practices, inadequate health services and other inequities in our semi-feudal, and semi-colonial economy. Moreover, only in such an economy can there be greater opportunities for Filipino women, who have long been suffering from discriminatory wages and labor practices.

Moreover,

MAKIBAKA is determined to work for the liberation of women from decadent bourgeois and feudal shackles which condemn them to an existence geared only to the bed-kitchen-church-nursery circle, denying them the opportunity to develop into more than domestic machines and sexual objects, to contribute their potential for the huge task of nation-building and socialist construction.

She need not have resorted to completely meaningless terms as “higher politics” (it quite taxes our minds to conceive of a “lower politics!) and “relating”. Perhaps she meant, to again quote from the programme: MAKIBAKA shall work for the integration of women students and professionals with workers and peasants (among other things) through involvement in community and relief work.

With some more research on Cuba and the Cuban revolution, Ms. Ramirez might also have refrained from quoting Castro as if her were an authority on revolution., The Cuban peasant precisely because he did not know “Marxist-Leninist jingles” is today still very much the sugar-growing peasant he was before Fidel Castro’s revolution, and must begin to wage another long, arduous struggle to overthrow his new oppressors and their social-imperialist masters. The Cuban peasant’s present condition is in glaring contrast to that of his Chinese brethren, of whom reactionaries must speak in a grudgingly respectful manner. Not incidentally Cuban women are still subject to the most anti-feminist antics of the Latin American male.

REJOINDER TO “EMBERS OF FEMINISM”

by Ma. Lorena Barros

Philippine Collegian

One. It has always been pointed out by women’s liberation movement in the Philippines that: women comprise a little more than 50% of the population; that no revolutionary movement can succeed without the participation of this 50% plus; and that is why women must fight as well as the men.

More importantly, women are objectively exploited by U.S. imperialism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism as well as men. The struggle is along national and class lines and cannot but involve women.

Women must fight alongside men in a united effort against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism - where else? Neither behind nor, we hope, in front; both would not be fair at all. This is quite different from the concept of unity with men, which is seen as taking place dialectically through struggle.

Two. Such categories as the “mothers corps,” far from being political, are an application of the mass line. They are tactical in nature. As we are not familiar with any other categories and the “puzzled one” failed to mention others, we are at a loss as to what is already a “fait accompli.”

Three. The women’s liberation movement in the Philippines has not romanticized female sufferings; it has always been scrupulous in not isolating the sufferings of women in our country from that of the vast majority of the people. It follows that women’s liberation has not been equated to a “self-contained social sublimation” and so forth.

However, it is a fact that many men, even those who like to call themselves dialectical materialists, fear that the women’s liberation movement will turn women into a troop of aggressively independent, overwhelmingly self-reliant amazons - reflection of a deep uncertainty about their own qualifications for a superior position I society.

Four. The women’s liberation movement in the Philippines starts from an analysis of the basic conditions in our society and the class struggle. Women, in the majority, belong to the oppressed classes in our semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. In this they are oppressed in common with the vast majority of the people. In addition to this principal oppression as members of their class, women are also victims of male oppression.

This theoretical starting point seems to us definite enough.

One of the best plays in the repertory of guerrilla theater in the United States depicts a conversation between two men who are trying to find out what’s wrong with their car, which won’t start. A woman tries to cut in innumerable times to point out that the spark plug needs changing - she checked it that morning. The men argue interminably, paying no attention to the girl. Finally one of them suggests that it might be the spark plug; they check and it is the spark plug that needs changing. The play end with the men congratulating each other on their brilliance.

The moral of the story: there might be less misunderstanding about women’s liberation if only the male critics would read what women have to say on women’s liberation before they make their learned critiques.

2011-03-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

THEY DWELL IN YELLOW QUIET

They dwell in yellow quiet

these houses of the very poor

the homemade gas lamps are

expertly placed – just so

they do not flicker much

though still the shadows cast

are insecure.

The night brings yellow silence to

the houses of the very poor

the many children do not cry, though

it is hellish dark, in the corners

where they are –

except when gathered

round the wooden table

they fight over their shares,

bright tears and eyes in the yellow light.

But the justice of the elders is

God’s own, and silence

reigns over the chewing.

And yet in the quiet houses of the very poor

they drag no heavy feet

over the patchwork floors,

There is no rebellion in

their placid movements

Although the shoulders stoop

and veins stand out on

wrinkled hands and faces old

or not

At night the windows are shut tight

in the houses of the very poor

the next best way to iron grills

To keep the poorer out

- Ma. Lorena Barros

The Weekly Nation

October 2, 1967. p. 28

2011-03-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

POEM TO HAN-SHAN

The place where I must spend my days

Has no cold mountain, no crowded peaks

Or wild vines stirring in the windless air.

Here purpled smog plays on the ashes

Of a thousand futile fires;

Beneath the ashes huddled sleepers stir

And I must watch, lest they awake and

Smother. But I too am under ashes

And cannot breathe, yet may not die.

- Lorena Barros

1968

2011-03-02T13:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Miss Barros,

We have read your poem and regret that we cannot use it.
Thank you for your interest in our magazine.

   Sincerely yours,

   The STM Editors
   by: Gloria G. Goloy

P.S.

indeed you are much too serious

for one so young. Why write of

skulls and excreta and such things

when your world is so beautiful

at your age. Still, thanks for
sending this to us.

A SKULL AMONG THE FLOWERS

A skull among the flowers...,

who had a desk at city hall all to myself

and now a plot of grass grown earth---

I lived in quiet outskirts of the flesh

walked homewards each God’s evening down

not-so-narrow streets, ever homewards.

I did not know---I shunned---the alley-tunnels

of the , throbbing estero veins where

dead embryos simplified in silence. I passed them

quickly by, riding homewards,

and shut off all with a white handkerchief.

Railed on to the route-years I watched

each day go through its paces faithfully,

dull wordless days, and watched

each evening’s moon fulfill the calendar’s predictions.

my nights were brief excursions to family resorts

respectable X’s on a well-known map;

Whatever exotic’s I was aware of, and desired,

waited on some supreme promotion.

Hurrying homewards I dreaded most the city’s

intersections, dark-glassed my eyes against all

but the traffic lights. I saw

not beggar’s hands but dirty nails,

not warmth and softness but enslaving legs.

Grown middle-aged I laughed to see skin cling to skin

in some dark corner of the crowded park

and went home cursing them and pitying.

I did not know my impotence.

Dreaming alone, lulled by the hum of

air-conned suburbia, I’d wake up

mouth gagging with remembered ashes and excreta;

but I thought of death as little as I thought of life

and never understood...I, now

a skull among November’s sudden flowers.

2011-02-24T18:53:00.000-08:00

THE SWINGLES CAME TO TOWN

The guard caught us,

huddled behind the wings

and kindly enough led us out.

We therefore

huddled against the doors

ears pressed

to the polished wood. Kindly

enough it let the music

Out.

And the music

reached us,

straight to our bitterness

and mute helpless anger,

despite

the callous stare of the seller of souvenirs.

Throughout a fugue

she complained

of a backache which had been bothering her.

Her husband got the worst of it, poor soul;

she didn’t know why he put up with her, ho-

nestly. It was really marvelous.

Marvelous,

the beautiful people exclaimed

As their eyes sought evidence

that

they were

being seen

in the gleaming lobby.

(You people are dead...)

Marvelous, they said,

and mentioned this or that piece

while their eyes carefully avoided

carefully avoided

the quiet corner

where we sat.

But the floor was clean enough.

After the intermission the doors shut in

the cool expensive air

again.

What a pity, the souvenirs seller’s eyes

Communicated disgustedly, that the music

wouldn’t

stay in as well.

- Ma. Lorena Barros

undated

2011-02-20T14:42:00.000-08:00

STRIKE

Seventy-seven demands

some trifling, some

deep and huge.

But all inarticulate

the glottals of the dumb

Somewhere back

We had forgotten speech

the correspondence of

sense of utterance. Now

wordless

sightless

numb

We march back and forth

mouths working

We know that the evil is great

but cannot begin to speak it.

“Two picketers climbed up the

monument of the Tao and veiled

it with black cloth to symbolize

the death of academic freedom

in the campus.”

Our still born gods

We bury with dumb gestures.

Oh we are unable to speak it!

We cannot begin to speak it.

Smashed glass

grief

a drop of blood on the asphalt

two drops

ten

the red seeps through our blindness

We have cast,

the first rock.

- Ma. Lorena Barros

Phil. Collegian, July 31, l969

2011-02-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

A PARK IS BORN

Tonight, the cogon fires,

Tomorrow, the heavy tractors

tearing at the roots of ashes

We must destroy in order to create

the lovely and the irrelevant,

the park now a blueprint dream in

some first lady’s drawer (Some years

ago Bobby Kennedy was here. They

covered the shanties with cosmetic palm.)

Yes, we must have a park

a green and beautiful sight

to rest our weary eyes. And

tomorrow the rumble of tractors

not quite drowning the convulsed roll

of evictees’ feet.

- Ma. Lorena Barros
1968

2011-02-11T17:54:00.000-08:00

AWIT PANALUBONG SA TURISTA

NG MGA TAGA-TANAUAN

(himig San Roque)

Dito po sa amin

bayan ng Tanauan

kalye’y areglado

kahit bumagyo

Wala dito ng amor propyo

wala naman kaming gulo

sa katahimikan

una ang Tanauan

Pagkat ang mata ay bulag

Ang tenga ay bingi

Ang bibig ay pipi

Dito sa Tanauan

- Ma. Lorena Barros

Philippine Collegian, Feb. 27, l969

2011-02-05T03:28:00.000-08:00

THERE IS A NEW SCAVENGER

There is a new scavenger

on 15th street

A woman

the garbage piles are not higher

or of a better composition

Yet there is a new scavenger

on my street

I see her in the mornings

poking slowly with a stick

her sack half full, half rotted

What can it mean

I ask

And pass her by

My heart secure behind a handkerchief

- Lorena Barros

1968

2011-02-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

(Inset photo: Nanay Alicia Morelos lighting a candle beside Lorie's mementos during the memorial mass meeting held in honor of her tenth death anniversary at the Gumersindo Garcia Hall, March 24, 1986).

MY DAUGHTER LAURIE

by Alicia Morelos

She was born on March 18, l948 - Thursday at 11:20 pm in a private hospital in Manila - a much awaited and very welcomed baby. She was christened Maria Lorena Barros and nicknamed Laurie after her mother’s favorite character in “Little Women.” She grew up cherished by everybody around her - mother, lolo, uncles and aunts. She never gave anybody much trouble during her infancy aside from the periodic colds which no doubt she would not have caught if her aunts and uncles didn’t kiss her too much. Dr. Spock and his little book were never far away from her crib. The do’s and don’ts were strictly followed to the annoyance of the old folks.

At age three months when most babies just kick and coo, Laurie in her crib had a most unusual stance. Lying there in her crib, she would raise her tiny clenched left fist above her heart which position she would hold for hours on end. It was remarkable and everybody used to wonder and predict all sorts of things but all agreed she would grow up to be fighter. A prediction which was almost unbelievable since she grew up to be as gentle and sweet as nobody else. She was never spanked and the only form of punishment she received was to be made to sit alone -when she was naughty - which was very rare. As a little girl of three, she could not stand to see her playmates cry without her shedding a few tears as well.

The family’s world revolved around her and although all the ingredients for being spoiled were around, she was never one. Her curiosity was endless and some astounding questions used to convulse the whole family like, are the minutes moving too fast and fell over each other that is why the clock stopped or where does night go in the morning. She knew unerringly when one is side stepping her most impossible questions and she would put on her you don’t fool me expression. Can you imagine how a bird would look with four feet she would ask. Or, do you think the birds think they are the real inhabitants of the earth and we are the beast. She was always encouraged to ask questions and answered correctly.

She was often taken on outings, sometimes in the country, usually in the park and there was always pity in her heart for the beggars and why do they have to beg. Although she was loved dearly by the family (being the only child in the house) she was a lonely child. She used to wait up nights (and be scolded for doing so) for her mother who saw the need for employment when she was barely one year old. She was left mostly physically under the care of yayas, of course under the direct supervision of her mother who was very strict with the yayas. Mother-daughter relationship was ideal and there was almost camaraderie between them. Laurie was made to feel that no remark of hers or questions would shock her mother. Anything under the sun was open to discussion. Her mother tried to fill in her loneliness by buying books that fit her age. Thus, she was exposed early to books and reading. Everybody in the family was a voracious reader.

At age four, her mother saw the need for outside contacts and had Laurie enrolled at a private kinder class. She very easily topped the class. Laurie was enrolled for Grade I at the Instituto de Mujeres which at the time was situated at the present site of the University of the East - College of Medicine, on to Grade II remaining consistently an honor student after which she was transferred to St. Joseph’s College where she stayed until Grade VII also an honor student throughout.

By this time, she had reached that awkward age, no more a child, still not a woman. And she was beginning to be aware of boys. And so, again, a need for broader contacts. At about this time, mother and daughter left the family house and moved to an apartment with a new step-father. Although there was a drastic change in their way of life, Laurie didn’t seem to mind. There was one more person to discuss things with - as her Tito Aling (as she called him) was an intellectual - high I.Q., well read, etc. and understanding to boot. Now her mother didn’t need to be tied down to a job and could stay home. No irksome complexes developed even when a brother was born - no sibling complex.

She was very sure of her special niche in her mother’s heart. At about this time too, there were serious discussions about country and nationalism and all the isms. She would ask and ask questions about the Commonwealth, the Japanese occupation, the resistance movement, the Americans and independence. Are we truly free? They would stay up far into the night in discussions. She herself was disengaging herself from her mother’s clasp, striking free and moving independently. She was beginning to have her own circle of friends and a first crush. A neighbor, the only son of a friend of her mother. This boy had a vocation for priesthood but when he met Laurie, for a while there everybody thought one candidate for priesthood would be lost to the profession. Happily for the mother, and unhappily for Laurie, at summer’s end, the boy trotted away to the seminary. Laurie showed a resiliency that belied her protestations of breaking heart. After several days, she was again biking away in glee. Never again, she said. Famous last words.

All thru that summer, before she entered the secondary course, her mother made her walk correctly, carry herself high, etc. Everything that would turn her into a proper young lady.

Laurie and her mother thought St. Joseph’s College was much too encircling and it was decided that she would transfer to Far Eastern University. At home, she helped in the household chores. Except when she was reading, a period which was usually endless and at which time any disturbance annoyed her.

In high school, she got the usual exemptions, scholarships and medals. All her subjects were for her interesting, except home economics and Math. In Math, she said, she found her Waterloo. She profoundly admired and was deeply awed by anybody who could find Math easy and interesting. Math periods were usually a constant battle to fight off yawning (which she was taught was impolite) and the deep urge to “lay me down to sleep” to quote her. Home Economics for her was a cord; taught to tie women down to hearth and home. Slowly, the woman in her was being liberated. There was a constant struggle between embroidery projects and cooking lessons. She was usually in tears and deep frustration on deadline for submissions of projects which her mother usually finished for her. She knew how to make outline stitches and french knots she would say and now will somebody finish this rag for her please.

Her cooking was outrageous. Frying eggs, she would wait for the edges to curl and color until by the time she got eggs separated from pan, fried eggs would be as crispy as bacon. Many a time the family sat down to a meal of slightly burned rice which she cooks while reading a book and promptly forgets until the smell of burning rice permeates the whole house at which time she would jump up and raise the lid, forgetting to use the pot holder and scalding her fingers in the process. She used to fry bangus armed with the largest pot cover she could find while staying miles away from the stove looking for all the world like a Crusader off for the Holy Wars. It used to intrigue her as to why the shooting lard always managed to land on her unprotected face and arms and not on her shield. Any cooking sessions in which she emerged whole and unscathed, i.e., no cuts, no burns, etc. were moments of ecstatic and Freudian delight. To find her with needle and thread in her hand instead of a book would be amazing and disastrous to the peace of mind of her mother.

The comfort room was a battleground between her and other members of the family. She would go in with a whole bundle of reading materials and emerge only when laid under siege by the others due to an instant emergency. Ate, what are you doing there, her little brother would ask meanwhile dancing on one foot after the other. Nag-la-library, ano pa she would answer. In the early mornings it was always a race for the bathroom before she woke up. She had her own room and all the privacy she needed but for her it was not as private as the bathroom from whence she would emerge soaking wet with perspiration as the tiny cubicle had only a high and as tiny a window.

She was starting to seriously write, although she wrote her first poem when she was ten years old or nine. Her mother begun to collect every bit of discarded writing while the budding genius furiously wrote and wrote and wrote.

During her high school days, she was president or vice -president of this and that organization, chairman of this and that. She was always at the core of every activity which left her with very little time to spend at home and made her mother remark from time to time - how you have grown since I saw you last. She outgrew her shyness and started to mingle with others. The parties and one crush after the other were the topics of the day. Coming home from school, she would gush, Nanay, I’ve met the man I’m going to marry. O.K., would be the answer, who is the lucky guy. As easily as a boy would interest her, just as easily and as soon she would be disinterested. It never reached the stage of going steady, as they called it. To questions of whatever happened to so and so, she would answer, oh that, he was such an egoist, always harping about the same subject, himself. Si ako, sometimes is also an interesting subject. Or, this one was mama’s boy. Or that one tells the corniest jokes and expects you to laugh.

Laurie used to call herself Cinderella. Home by midnight was the standing order before departure for any party, at which she would coax and wheedle her mother to extend the time an hour or so usually with help from unexpected quarters, her step-father. Her mother was out of step with the times. Nowadays no curfew was set on the youngsters. Not this youngster, would be the reply and certainly not this mother. And as Laurie was always an obedient child, midnight it always was.

At sixteen, Laurie had grown into a well-poised and not bad-looking young lady. She always drew second glances when she was walking, but her bearing plus her glasses forbade whistles and unsavory remarks. Abruptly the party-going ceased. No more crushes. Men are eternal egoists. She met Proust, Frost, Solzhenitsyn and the whole alphabet of writers and poets and really and truly, she said, she had found her love. It was now deep reading and her mother couldn’t be happier with the turn of events. The party going gave way to browsing in bookstores.

She graduated from high school with honors. The FEU Girls’ High School pinned on her a gold medal for Creative Writing. the only time such a medal was given out.

There were family discussions on what further studies she would take. The most logical courses would be A.B. English, Journalism or such related courses but her mother firmly believed that studying must be rigid to be able to exploit fully the capabilities of the mind and to exercise and discipline it. Taking up the arts wouldn’t really require any effort on her part at all as this was as symphony with her as fish is with water. So she must try to conquer her waterloo and take up Bio-Chem. After two or three semesters, during which time she really tried hard to stir up an interest in Mathematics, her mother noticed the deep frustration building within her (she was beginning to be insomniac, she would complain, as she gets her full quota of sleep during her subjects) and agreed to her switch in course which was Anthropology, a study which her mother always pretended to confuse with Archeology.

The discussions at home became livelier. Studying the ancients, her mother would begin, and the long buried races, when the present race makes a much more interesting, more complex and nearer home base study. But mother, you can’t really take up the present without going back to the past and will somebody please tell me why we always argue in English. Such a switch in the subject usually flabbergasted her opponent who would quickly dare her to talk in the vernacular for just one hour without any use of foreign words, a dare she never took up, blaming her mother instead for her un-mastery of her native tongue. The arguments and discussions made her more mentally alert and ready for more and more importantly, there was a two-way communication. There was never any antagonism in the arguments. It was more like a challenge to her and she knew how to argue, never letting personalities get in the way of arguments.

But Laurie was not a paragon of perfection. She had her faults and weaknesses. One such weakness was this terrible fright of cockroaches. On some silent night, there would suddenly be such a rumpus in her room with the sound of bare feet scampering all over and rushing down the stairs in such haste everybody was almost anticipating her fall. She would put her arms around her mother’s neck and in dramatic whisper - In the still of the night, the sounds of flitting wings, and lo, a flying cockroach, sublime in that it awakened the fear in my heart - or some such nonsensical poetry and anger in her mother’s heart would give way to gale after gale of laughter. The sight of her so big and the thought of the cockroach being so small, she with broom in hand swishing away at the insect was enough to start off another round of laughter. The battle should be short. As it was, she always ended up the vanquished. The thought of all that white nauseating substance oozing out of the body kept her from ever hitting the insect and the better part of valor she always said was running away to keep the insect from landing on her. None but her mother knew what great courage it took to shake off this distaste and fear of the repellent insects found in our jungles. Well, it seems that during her MAKIBAKA days, she laid down the law. The cockroach could fly till doomsday for all she cared and this law she kept.

While the rest of the room was neat and tidy, her study table was always in complete disarray. Thus it would stay for days and weeks on end. The moment anybody (usually her mother) made it look like a study table again, she would be demanding all over the house who has been messing up her table. There was this little piece of paper which she must absolutely have. This little piece of paper had been in this particular place on the table for eons of time and now that it had been neatly filed away, she misses it. Where is this and where is that. She suddenly needed everything that had been gathering dust all the while.

Out of the blue, with a dead pan expression on her face, would issue forth this deadly announcement, I am having a parthenogenic pregnancy. Fine, would come the retort, the moment your parthenogenic labor pains start, just let me know. Mother dear, your equanimity is boring. Would nothing ever shock you? Yes, one, if you were to tell me you’re not hungry. Laurie. Poor Laurie. The family then was living in what she called genteel poverty. She sometimes left for school with only twenty five centavos in her pocket. From the house, she used to walk to Nepa-Q-Mart and from there take a bus to UP which then cost ten centavos. Back and forth would take twenty from her twenty five centavos leaving her only with five centavos for her lunch which would be a stick of banana que consisting of three pieces. No matter that they were having dilis or tuyo for lunch, the placemats must be laid out just the same. Poverty shouldn’t be an excuse for primitivism would be her dictum. Eating sans placemat is being primitive? Watching her pick at the tuyo with spoon and fork one would think she was eating chicken instead. Dainty Laurie. And so fastidious. All these hardships will strengthen your character, she was told. All these hardships shouldn’t be any future crippled excuse for failure. It must be in spite of instead of because.

Soon there were suitors a plenty. People were in and out the house at all times of the day and it annoyed the rest of the family, so much so that her mother was forced to remonstrate. In my days, she would begin and Laurie would interrupt, in your days me was still in limbo. No Laurie, no excitement. Another object of disagreement was the Basement. When she first heart about it from Laurie she made a research on all the dictionaries she could find and it all turned up with the same definition: the lowest storey of a building usually underground. Her mother begun to ask herself in panic, what could these kids be doing underground. She soon exasperated Laurie to the point where she was taken on an inspection tour of all the places in the campus where the students congregate. The Basement looked comparatively harmless. Was it because Laurie chose the time when the place was almost empty just to pacify her mother’s fears? Still, one must realize and accept the fact that procreation could take place even in the most public and crowded places so taken all in all it would depend on one’s moral values and on such philosophy the Basement was laid to rest.

Her crowd took on a literary tinge. Majors in English most of them. Laurie became a member of the U.P. Writer’s Club and was at one time its chairman (or woman). Inevitably came the awakening.

That period of mass demonstrations and rallies found her in the thick of things, while at home her mother remained glued to the radio. Every pill box thrown or shot fired was a calamity for her family until one night she did come home with her left foot in bandages. She was told to be a little bit more careful as her work hasn’t even begun. Her mother was waging a private battle within herself. If such were your selfish feelings why did you instill in Laurie such love for country. Not now, not yet. Why not? Now is when she is needed. A mother’s natural reaction to the risks and occupational hazards dodging her revolutionary daughter’s footsteps.

By the 70's, Laurie was immersed in student activism and slowly becoming aware of the true, sad state of the country. Every revelation was a shock to her. How could she have been so stupid, she used to remark, when the facts were so plain and simple that no explanation was really necessary for anybody with average intelligence. Capitalism and imperialism and the colonial mentality deeply ingrained in the Filipinos by past foreign rulers. And the subservient attitude of the so called present independent government to a foreign power. To her, it was unbelievable that it was some of her countrymen themselves who were practically handing over the country and the future of generations to come to foreign capitalism. The fawning attitude of some of our leaders was for her more nauseating than the cockroaches’ innards. She read the message of our most brilliant writers between the newspaper lines and publications. She brought home books, lots of them, and studied all the political isms. And then one day, she abruptly stopped reading and writing and assumed a deeply pensive attitude around the house. You were right, mother, she said one day. A government whose real power comes from the people and not a chosen few is the only kind that would work for the welfare of the whole country and brighten up the future of the masses and the generations to come. She was quick to realize that not words but only bullets could bring this about, and the whole stinking mess of the bureaucratic government must be shoved back across the oceans from whence it came. It made her sad thinking of all those lives that had to be lost in the process.

After group studies with several democratic movements, with several others, she organized the MAKIBAKA, early realizing the disorganization among the Filipino women and its potentials. Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan. From the very start it perked up the women and swiftly spread, with chapters all over the country. With its success, her freedom of movement was curtailed. The state posted out a reward for her capture with several others student leaders. She started to lead a semi-fugitive life. With the suspension of the habeas corpus, the danger to her life became very real and she bore deeper underground.

Her family was constantly harassed by the military. Through her letters, her mother followed her political awakening. She was an excellent letter writer with the ability to put her ideas and message across with very few words. The letters came sporadically depending on the political climate. There were furtive meetings between mother and daughter and thru one of these the information of a personal attachment with Felix R. One early dawn, she took him home to meet her mother who was so a-dither for their safety that the latter only had a vague impression of the man her daughter was going to marry, only that he seemed nice and soft spoken and so unlike a commander of the revolutionary army that he was. Several months after, he was killed in an encounter and Laurie wrote home that although everything seemed to come tumbling down, she knew that with her heart crying with the tragedy, she had to keep a cheerful facade and not transmit her feelings of grief to others. She would heal the wound herself - alone.

Being an honor student at the State University, she was offered a membership in the international honor society, Phi Kappa Phi which she promptly turned down. Commercializing one’s own intellect and academic pursuits was one step too far. She graduated in B.S. Anthropology without participating in the ceremonies, actually being outside the auditorium with several others protesting against the type of education being dished out by the schools to knowledge-hungry youths.

With her freedom of movement curtailed, she turned over chairmanship of MAKIBAKA to more capable hands and gave herself wholly to the masses. She worked with them tilling the fields, planting, harvesting with them, gathering firewood, cooking and washing with them. She wept with them when they buried their dead and she sometimes starved with them. Their joy (which was infinitesimal) was her joy and their sorrows (which were numerous) were her sorrows. The plight of the masses was her constant companion. She undertook jobs which before were totally unknown to her. From the masses, she learned ingenuity, making do with what is available. She acquired a wisdom which no school could ever impart which came down from generation to generation of our forefathers at the grass root level. She opened their eyes to cause and effect. There is no doubt that her share in building a strong, solid mass base was tremendous.

Inevitably in her letters, there was mention once again of a man’s name - Ramon S. And just as suddenly and stealthily as the first, they came home together one night and announced they were married.

Martial Law was declared and with this, everyone knew the fight was on in earnest. For Laurie, it was moving from one house to another. Many a time she wrote home asking for clothes as most of the time there was barely time to jump from windows to escape the raiders. Out in the rural areas, they had more freedom of movement. The youth of the land, the cream of the crop, sought the safety of the mountains to evade arrest and detention. And to spread the truth.

For Laurie, there were still visits to the urban area, meetings and talking with her mother. During this time, she became pregnant and as her condition hampered the movement of the others, she chose to stay where medical services were readily available and on the appointed time, in a little known private clinic, under an assumed name, she gave birth to a boy.

From then on, it was doubly hard for her. She was always on the run with the baby in her arms. At one time, with the baby in her arms, she had to scale a seven foot fence and jumped down and in the rain with no protection whatsoever she escaped the raiders, hiding with neighbors who took pity on her and the baby. Although it broke her heart, she knew she had to part with her baby.

Up to the mountains once more and in one of her descents, she was caught.. She tried to escape and she would have if her borrowed shoes, which were several sizes too big, didn’t prove a hindrance. On the way to the camp, she jumped from the jeep and ran once more and once again was caught. The exasperated state agent had to handcuff her to himself as he didn’t want to shoot her, so he said. To the camp commander, with arms akimbo, she stamped her feet and demanded the rights of a political prisoner.

She gave a fictitious name and profession to give time for her group to disperse. Her ploy was discovered one month after. She was very happy that after her arrest none other followed. She was taken to Camp Vicente Lim and interrogated heavily. Even here she tried to confuse her interrogators by giving a wide variety of stories from day to day. Her fertile imagination had a free run. Sometimes she was positively enjoying herself she said. In desperation the authorities invited her mother for a talk. They were just trying to straighten up her personal data they said and nothing more. Would she help? As there was nothing political in the questions, she tried as best she could without jeopardizing anybody. That her Arabian Thousand and One Nights, as exhausting for her as for her interrogators was discontinued, was a disappointment. But vigorously she turned herself to other tasks. She was so successful here that the authorities transferred her to Fort Bonifacio. Trouble maker, they called her.

Even there she refused to settle down to the humdrum life of a political prisoner and await her release. Right from the start, she began to plan her escape. Meanwhile, in the south, her husband surrendered. The real cause was still dim, but to Laurie, it was a betrayal both personal and political. She was still willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and tried to make contact unsuccessfully. She felt personally she had to recapture lost ground brought about by the surrender and exceed with victories the damage done. Plans for the escape was pushed through and success! With five others, she did escape.

She joined the revolutionary army. Communication with the family was kept open but rare. Sometimes months passed between letters and in one of these, there was again mention of a man - Eliseo M. - a mathematical genius from UPLB. This man she really admired; Math being still the unconquerable for her. But coming from one of his tasks, he was detected and caught, tortured, then shot. It was one heartbreak after another for Laurie. After recovering from the shock which as usual she tried to hide from her companions, she took stock and inventory and the inevitable conclusion – the cause should be her one and only love and none other. It was extremely jealous and would permit no other rival for her attention and time.

March 24, l976 - Early dawn

There were unusual stealthy sounds and Laurie rushed to the door of the hut and whistled the pre-arranged signal for dispersal and escape and in the process was shot all over the body. All her companions escaped unhurt. Her family tried to claim her body at once, but it being a week-end, all the corresponding offices were closed. The military gave her a decent burial because even they admired her courage. Commander Mila, who had given them so much trouble, was no more.

This is Laurie, the woman, wife, mother and leader. She will live on and on, and there will be more like her, there must be, because only through them will the country be able to stand erect and truly free.

This is Laurie the baby, whose lullaby song was Bayan ko. Laurie, the little girl, who always had compassion in her heart for the beggars and stray waifs in the streets, Laurie the adolescent raised to awareness of her country’s sorry plight, Laurie the sweet girl, so soft-spoken until she raised her voice to shout “Makibaka!” This Laurie - daughter, sister and friend to many.

Laurie the sweetheart, wife, mother and comrade will be resurrected only when there is true freedom in our country.

HABILIN

Aking iniluluha, iyong pagkawala

Tangi kong panimdim

Kay raming gawain

Iyong iniwanan na dapat gampanin.

Sa iyong paglisan, sino

Ang dadampi

Sa luha ng ina,

Ng mga kasamang iyong inulila?

Pagsapit ng dilim, paglubog ng araw,

Iyong ibinubulong

Iyong isinisigaw

Ina, tahan na, ikaw ay kumilos, hayo na’t damputin

Sandatang bumagsak ng ako’y paslangin.

Huwag mong iluha aking pagkawala

Ako’y buhay pa,

Naito’t nagmamaka-awa

Huag mong sikilin, huag mong ilibing, init ng

Damdamin at paghihimagsik sa pagkakagapos ng

Kawawang bansa

At paghihikahos ng kawawang masa.

Oo nga’t tutoo, kay raming gawain

Na dapat tupdin

Kung bawa’t isa’‘y

Kikilos, tutulong, ang lahat ng iyan

Magagampanan, kay daling darating ang ating tagumpay.

Buhay ako, aking ina, aking mga kasama

Nagu-udyok, nagnanasa

Na sa pakikibaka

Pamalagiing nangunguna, masidhing adhika at

Pagmamahal sa ating dakilang bansa.

Naitong bandila, naitong sandata,

Iyong damputin

Iyong gamitin

Ikaw ay bumulong, iyong sambitin at tulad ko’y isigaw

Makibaka, mga kasama, huag matakot, makibaka!

2011-01-31T06:03:00.000-08:00

Bulletin Today March 26, l976

NPA CHIEF SLAIN

Camp Wilhelm, Lucena City, March 25 - A top commander of the NPA operating in the Quezon-Laguna-Bulacan triangle, with a price of P 30,000 on her head, was killed early this morning in Bo. Cagsiay II, Mauban, Quezon. Lt. Col. Wilfredo P. Villanueva, Quezon PC Commander, in his report to Brig. Gen. Alfredo Montoya, identified the slain dissident chief as Maria Lorena Barros, wife of an NPA Commander who surrendered to Pres. Marcos last year. The slain amazon was a UP graduate of Arts and Sciences. The PC said that Barros was married to Ramon Sanchez who surrendered to President Marcos last year. (Under brevities, front page)

Note to the photo:

News writer and film maker Diego Cagahastian gave the photo to this blogger sometime in the 1980's. He was part of a film crew shooting a film in Mauban Quezon with Ramon Revilla and Boots Anson Roa (who were in the photo viewing Lory's body). At the time of the filming, the military were already prowling the mountains of Mauban looking for Lorie. Diego said one of the soldiers told him they were already tipped of the mountain hideout of Lorie and it was just a matter of time for her capture, dead or alive. Tragically her end came. The commanding military officer recounted Lorie was mortally bleeding but still alive when they captured her. He said she managed to say a few parting words.

Many people came to view Lorie's body to pay respects to her. Diego was so moved by what he saw that he set out to do a film project of her life but it did not materialize. The picture is a tiny passport size photo which was enlarged for clarity.

I Remember Lory

2011-01-17T00:50:00.000-08:00

(Eulogy for Lory) by By Jerome Bailen

Written on April 1, 1976

Lory was a complex person and she impressed people who knew her in different ways.

As a new instructor at the Department of Anthropology at the UP, I knew her as a brilliant student and as a very promising colleague. In fact, even before she finished her degree, she was offered a job, that of being my teaching assistant in Social Anthropology which she willingly accepted and took on with great enthusiasm. She belongs to the rare and unfortunately vanishing breed of students who gave more than what was necessary to a task; who would cover a whole blue book instead of only a page or two in answering an examination question and who would invariably submit a 30 paged term paper instead of the 5-10 pages minimally required for a course. She gave more of herself than what was expected in every task she addressed herself to.

One convincing proof of this was a paper on Anthropological theory she prepared while teaching that course, which was of such quality that it was included in a book edited by Doctors Zamora and Salazar.

After slaving through that teaching assistantship, she finally collected her honorarium at the end of the semester. Anthropology majors then as now, did not come from the affluent members of Society and Lory and a lot of us were no exceptions. But the first thing she thought of after getting her pay was to ask me, if there is anything she can buy for me, with the money.

I remember this incident not only because it has touched me (and still continue to touch me) profoundly, but also because I feel it portrays the true nature of Lory and which beautifully explains (and in a sense anticipates) the further course of her life.

These and other related incidents bear witness not only to Lory’s capacity for serious work but of her tendency to think of the needs of others before that of her own. She could have been a definite asset to the UP Department of Anthropology or to any Department elsewhere had she wanted a more prosaic and routinary existence.

But the question she grappled with and the burning issues to which she unhesitatingly flung herself were bigger than the narrow and sometimes meaningless pre-occupations of a great many university departments.

Maria Lorena Barros died March 24, 1976 in the service of the people – these were the poignant words written on an unpretentious piece of faded cartolina on the bulletin board of the UP Dept. of Anthropology. The Sacred Book tells us that “greater love hath no man than this – that he lay down his life for his friends.” But more than that, Lory’s courageous example has affirmed for us man’s essential humanity – which is man’s capacity to transcend his own basic and selfish needs and selflessly offer himself to a cause greater than any of all of us.

Testament of an Unknown Revolutionary

2011-01-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

by Robert Whymant

Published in the Guardian on January 21, 1974

Whether Solita Esternon is her real name, her alias in the revolutionary movement, or an arbitrary invention still remains unknown to the interrogators in the military prison at Sorsogon.

What they have established so far is that the woman they are holding is a 24 year old university student and a cadre in the Maoist guerrilla organization, the New People's Army (NPA) until she was caught in December. They have found too, that she is four months pregnant.

According to her captors, the para-military Philippines Constabulary, she's a "hard-core" case, she was carrying a loaded .3 calibre pistol when arrested, and is believed to have been entrusted with the delicate task of establishing a base in Sorsogon City.

Her rigid espousal of the necessity for armed struggle, her refusal to compromise by disclosing information about her comrades' whereabouts will make her a tough subject to re-educate, they say.

It is seldom that anyone outside the immediate family is given access to a political prisoner especially to one as unrepentant as Solita. Lieutenant-Colonel Villanueva, Philippine Constabulary commander for Sorsogon province, at the southern tip of Luzon apparently decided to allow my visit to prove that charges of martial law brutality, aired by President Marcos's opponents, are ill-founded, at least in Sorsogon.

The commander, a seemingly kind-hearted man, may also have thought to alleviate the loneliness of the one among 30 prisoners in his care whom nobody ever came to see -- though he blamed this on her obstinacy in refusing to disclose her true identity and the place she came from.

In the unsupervised privacy of her cell, Solita confirmed to me that she personally had never been ill-treated, even if as an attractive woman, she was forced to endure the coarse suggestions of her guards.

Consistently egalitarian, the young Maoist complained instead of the contrast between the generally chivalrous treatment accorded her and the soldiers' tough, sometimes brutal behavior towards the men--not only to captured NPA members but also to innocent suspects rounded up for interrogation.

Later, in another cell a male NPA member showed me thick red scars on his chest and back, while another said his ribs had been damaged during a beating by Constabulary soldiers.

There was no evidence of systematic torture, however, nor did I hear complaints of any. "They generally only get rough when they've had too much to drink," I was told.

Solita recalls the clumsy attempt of an interrogating officer to intimidate her into disclosing the whereabouts of comrades in the mountains. "He told me, 'You'll be inside for 30 years and then you'll be an old woman and you won't be able to get married. I was shocked that he thought that such a threat would frighten me. I told him, all right. I said, I’ve been married once already, and that was enough to last until I die."

Her marriage, to an NPA regular lasted less than half a year. The wedding was a simple promise made over a Filipino language version of Mao's red book, witnessed by other members of her cadre group. No bible, no priest, and, Solita says firmly, no double standards.

"Having a second wife or mistress is punished very severely in the NPA. Look at the double standard in this camp. Every constabulary officer has his mistress. Filipinos abuse women, though they treat them chivalrously."

Five months after her marriage her husband was killed in an encounter with Constabulary soldiers.

Solita says she was never a member of any left-wing organization while at the University, where she studied Literature until her money ran out the year before she could graduate. The seeds of her political education, she says, were sown before martial law came into force in September 1972, when there were fierce anti-Government and anti-American demonstrations in Manila.

When martial law was imposed she was not among those activists students, who, fearing arrest went to the mountains to join the only opposition force that could still operate effectively, the NPA.

But some of her friends were there, though Solita refuses to explain how she personally was recruited, for fear of implicating comrades. "One thing though: I was not converted. I objected to the religious, forcible connotation of the word. I was clear about what I was doing."

The New People's Army grew out of the ashes of the Soviet-oriented Huk Army which was strong in the 1950's until it was wiped out by the Government with U.S. help. The NPA, pro-Peking in its ideological line, is thought to comprise only 1,500 armed regulars, supported by two or three times that number of political cadres.

At the grassroots level of the village organizing committee--where Communist ideology sometimes wears quite thin--there are an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 supporters. Outside its stronghold in Isabela province, in Northern Luzon, the NPA support is today concentrated mainly in the Southern provinces of Camarines and Sorsogon (though there are suggestions too, of a common front with the Muslim independence movement in Mindanao).

The fundamental tenet of the NPA is redistribution of land, in order to "free the impoverished rural masses" (who make up some 70 percent of the Philippine population) from the "exploitation and oppressive grip of the landowners."

The description is that of Marcos' Secretary of Agriculture; some of the bite has been taken out of the NPA'S agrarian revolution by the Government's own land reform program. Yet after 16 months' vigorous promotion under martial law, there are signs that land reform may soon grind to a halt.

What would have been clear from the beginning--but for some faulty arithmetic--is at last sinking in: there are simply more tenant farmers than economic-size holding available, and 80 percent of landholdings are smaller than the 17 acre holdings which the Government could not possibly carve up without angering the small bourgeois landowners on whose support it depends.

It appears doubtful that more than 40 percent of tenants will ever attain the promised state of emancipation under the Government's programme.

The NPA's recipe is simple: to redistribute the coconut, sugar and other plantations which are not affected by land reform--which is confined to rice and corn lands. Moreover, emancipation through NPA would absolve peasants from having to repay dispossessed landlords, as they have to under the present system.

It is not difficult for the Communists to enlist support for their proposition that no burden of debt lies with the tiller, who may have to give half of every harvest he reaps to an idle landlord.

Solita found that "the people in the barrios (villages) wanted to know all about "communism". They had strange notions, such as one that in communist societies old people were made into seasonings to use for cooking.

"We tell them that under communism there will be no landlords, that the land will really be theirs, and their families. We teach them about the problem of bringing about communism in feudal society like the Philippines; that the first stage of the struggle would be to industrialize the Philippines, but that this cannot be done as long as we are a semi-colony of U.S. Imperialism."

In groups of six or seven, cadres may stay in one barrio until they have set up barrio organization committees, the mass base of the NPA. In Solita's group there were two other students and four peasants.

They were well received by hut villagers, they slept in their houses, ate their food, and helped in the fields. The task of another of the cadres was to provide food for the NPA regulars, who have no permanent base in Sorsogon but are constantly on the move. NPA military operations, it seems, are confined to ambushes of government forces--the principal method of collecting arms--and the liquidation of informers who betray their presence.

The Government makes much of these killings, and of the alleged extortion of food and money by the NPA. Keen to downgrade the ideological nature of the movement, the military authorities and the controlled media seem to impress that the communists are "bandits," "rebels," "Mao-Maos" (goblins). Female members like Solita are referred to by the same sources as "Amazons."

Solita appears to be undaunted by the prospect of indefinite detention, without much hope of ever seeing a charge sheet or being tried. Soon, when the interrogators at Sorsogon see that they can extract no more information from her, she will be transferred to another prison, to undergo two hours a day of "re-education" until she agrees to accept President Marcos' New Society. She does not know how she will respond, but she believes that there is no difference between the "New Society" and the old, except that in the old one political power was shared by several politicians and now it is concentrated in one man.