Tren

Last week, amidst the post-election noise and proclamation ado, my two-part special feature on death along the riles came out on the front page. I thought the warning train whistle was all but drowned out but on the same day we started the feature, Inquirer TV took up the same issue on its first one-hour weekly show. And it did something more—it asked viewers to text in their views on who they thought was at fault (``sino ang may sala’’) in the endless tragedies on the tracks. The best view won the texter a 21-inch TV.

The winner was Ramil Jimenez of Bulacan who SMSed: ``Pnganib man ay di alntana, buhay riles sa knilay gloria, madurog dto y krngalan pa khit ang gobyerno y iwas pusoy sa kainutilan nila!’’ Straight out of Huseng Batute country.

InqTV producer John Nery said they received hundreds. For both the txt addicts and the txtually-challenged, here are a few more. Have fun deciphering them. ``Mga politikong mpgsmntala bgmt mapiligro mgtayo ng bhy s tbi ng riles pngttangol pa nla ang mga e2, pra boto lng nla ay mkuha.’’



``i2 pagdting ng eleksyon ay prng cla rin ang komokonsinte s mga tao n manrihn s riles ng tren.’’

``Tao matigas ang ulo at pamahalaan walang pakialam basta may sueldo sila.’’

``A matter of choice n discipline on d part of d riles pipol n 4 d govt a matter of doing their responsibilities.’’

``Kasalanan ng namtay lalu n kung lasing, pag bata magulang me sala ang riles para lng sa tren. Off limits kahit n sino doon.’’

``We should not blame anyone, our safety relies on ourselves. Accidents don’t happen if right precautions are taken.’’

``Pag marinig ko ang cerbato ng tren na yan dinadasal ko sa panginoon ang mga kaluluwa ng pinatay nila.’’

``Kahirapan! Dahil sa khirapan d naip2pad ng pamhalaan ang kinakailangang pgbbgo s sistema ng perokaril d mailagay s ayos ang lhat.’’

``Gobyerno di nagkulang. Kayong nasa gilid ng riles ang nabibingi-bingihan. Sisihin nyo sarili nyo hindi ang gobyerno.’’

`It s my fault it s my apathy it is my refusal 2 c d ppl and their hardships it s my refusal 2 lift a finger.’’ Wow to that one.

While I am writing this, this Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is making her inaugural address in Manila. She is saying something about getting tougher on those who have more, and easier on those who have been toughing it out. Or had it tough. I presume, she means the poor.

The riles dwellers are among the poorest and most endangered, literally and figuratively.

Who is to blame for the deaths along the riles? We’re referring here, not to motorists who cross the tracks despite the warning or because of not enough warning, but to those who live along the tracks. As the InqTV viewers said, it’s both the riles residents and the government.

I take up this issue again, in this column, while the President is up there on the podium, because the rehabilitation of the railways, particularly those in Metro Manila that will link up with portions of south and north Luzon, is among her flagship projects. This is the land-based counterpart of the Ro-Ro (``roll on, roll off’’) transport system that is supposed to link islands through land and sea vessels. Mindanao and Visayas will have their share of railways too, but it is Metro Manila that has hundreds of thousands of riles dwellers who are waiting to be displaced.

Where will these people go? As it is, there is a love-hate relationship between the riles dwellers and the trains. Hate relationship is more like it if you ask train officials and passengers who have had to bear the brunt of the riles denizens’ dislike for trains.

A friend of mine called to say, after she read the series, that a friend of hers lost one eye after he was hit by a flying projectile that came from the side of the tracks. Stones, garbage, human excrete--name it—have been hurled at passing trains. The Metro trains now have window screens to protect the passengers and the train roofs have been made pointed to prevent garbage bags from landing there.

From Tayuman to Alabang, which is a 20-kilometer stretch, the riles population is about 75,000. The number of households is about 16,000. What does the government plan to do with them?

Metro Manilans have now gotten used to railway commuting, but that is via the overhead MRT and the LRT. The old so-called commuter trains on the ground are decrepit and rusty they are described as nakakatetano (tetanus-bearing).

The Philippines is perhaps one of the most behind in the trains department and it is high time those old railway lines are rehabilitated. It’s been 117 years since the first railroad tracks were laid out by the British-owned Manila Railroad Company in 1887. In 1892, the first ferrocaril, stretching from Manila to Pangasinan, was opened.

Shortly before the May 10 elections, Pres. Arroyo announced plans for the modern railway system for Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao ``to serve our people, move cargo, link and fuse economies, create new human settlements, and help unite the nation.’’ It will be called Strong Republic Transit System (SRT).

For Metro Manila, the proposed showcase is the South manila Commuter Rail Project, a 32-km. stretch from Caloocan City to Alabang. It will cost US$65 million. It is a join project with Korea and with financial assistance from Korean banks.

But wait. While an interagency plans is being drawn up by the Philippine National Railways and housing officials, many groups from communities that will be affected wonder if they will be invited to be consulted. Or will they go the way of the obsolete trains—eventually dumped and disregarded?

I can hear the whistle blowing.

Home is a distant place

I remembered Sharbat Gula last Sunday. She with the beautiful face framed by a veil, she with the stunning sea-green eyes with flecks of brown, pupils constricted, gazing out from the National Geographic brochure that circulated around the world for several years. Sharbat Gula was a 1985 NG cover girl with no name. But she gave a face to the plight of war refugees the world over.

She was simply called ``Afghan refugee.’’ No one knew, not even photographer Steve McCurry, what her name was until 17 years later. I did write about her two years ago when this NG poster girl, after a long search, was tracked down somewhere in Afghanistan. With the use of scientific methods, she was identified through the pools of her eyes.

I remembered Sharbat Gula last Sunday, World Refugee Day. This year’s theme is ``A Place Called Home.’’ Note that I didn’t say that it was celebrated. Observed, is more appropriate. For what is there to celebrate? Photos and television footage showed, not people in celebration, but human beings with longing in their eyes.

Commemorated is an appropriate word too, if the courage of those who left home, crossed borders and lost their lives in the process are to be taken into consideration. The quest for freedom--from want, from fear--and to leave home to find a new one in a strange place requires much courage. Brave are those who made the step, even braver are those who chose to lead and serve, putting their own interests aside so that others may live free, or simply survive.

Several brave individual women and men who have dedicated their lives in this way have been honored in the recent years by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) and have been written about. It is good that the young get to read about their great deeds.



There is one special person who was honored in 1964, whose life and struggle unravels like a movie. I know this because RMAF is preparing a book for the young generation, on the lives of the special people who have been honored in the past 50 years.

Father Augustine Nguyen Lac Hoa was one of them. He was a lifesaver, refugee, soldier, priest. World Refugee Day is for people like him and for the 17 million refugees worldwide for whom, right now, home is a distant place.

Fr. Hoa’s life and work would make a dramatic suspense movie. War and strife, escape and death-defying stunts, hunger and disease, faith and politics. His story is about a journey across several countries and the search for freedom and a place to call home. It is a story about human endurance in the face of oppression and a people’s continuing struggle to break free.

Fr. Hoa had seen it all. Said he: ``You may say that it is easy for me as a priest to think of love above war, but facts have proved that love is the only way for us to win. It is the only way for us to survive.’’(Note: This par. could be deleted.)

Fr. Hoa was born in China in 1908. He trained to be a Catholic priest. While serving as a pastor, he was conscripted into the military and led a band of guerrillas to fight the invading Japanese. The war over, he thought he could go back to his priestly duties. But the new communist government wanted Catholics to give up allegiance to Rome. To make a long story short, Fr. Hoa resisted. He left the country but upon his return, he was arrested.

After his release, Fr. Hoa escaped to North Vietnam. He helped more than 2,000 people who wanted to escape persecution to cross over. But their stay in North Vietnam was short. Ho Chi Minh’s communist forces had control of the area and constantly harassed them.

Fr. Hoa’s search for a new home for the band of refugees led him to Laos and Thailand. Finally, they decided on Cambodia. With the help of the French authorities, many of them were airlifted to Cambodia. They settled in Kratie Province, 40 miles from the Combodian-Vietnamese border.

Well, what do you know, Cambodia recognized communist China in 1958 and the refugees again feared for their lives. The refugees were again on the run. Their destination: South Vietnam.

The weary stateless band settled in a place that was hardly habitable. They buckled down to work to transform the place so it would feel like home. Fr. Hoa named their new home Binh Hung, meaning to flatten and clear. Brackish water, mosquitoes and dense forests did not daunt them. With help from the government, the refugees were able to buy farm animals and till their little farms.

Then the communist Viet Cong started to make their presence felt. With his combat experience, Fr. Hoa was able to train the refugees to fight back. Their village was turned into self-defense barracks with Fr. Hoa in command. Villagers returned fire when attacked. Their obsolete firearms and ammunition were no match to their attackers’ firepower but the refugees stood their ground.

In 1960, their village was always under siege the whole year round. They were practically marooned. Help came via helicopter drops of supplies from the government, the Catholic Relief services and other groups.

Because of their bravery, Fr. Hoa’s fighters became a regular unit of the Armed Forces. They called themselves Sea Swallows. Fr. Hoa’s religious superiors tolerated his soldier-priest role and recognized the villagers’ dependence on him.

Meanwhile, the Viet Cong continued to make life difficult, destroying crops and making hit-and-run raids on the village. But by 1963 the Sea Swallows was able to secure some 200 square kilometers populated by 18,000 inhabitants and defended by some 400 guerillas. But the fight was far from over…

There’s more but we’re running out of space.

Remember, we have our own internal refugees who have been displaced by the wars in many fronts. They, too, yearn for home.

Gawad for Bishop Labayen

Kagitingan summarizes the best in a human being--nobility, courage, integrity, strength of character, greatness of spirit. It derives from the word magiting.

What does it mean to be magiting? Filipino hero Emilio Jacinto defined it in the cartilla for wanna-be Katipuneros: ``…may magandang asal, may isang pangungusap, may dangal at puri, di nangaapi at di nagpapaapi, marunong magdamdam at ginugugol ang buhay, pagod at talino sa pagiging mabuting anak ng bayan at ng Diyos.’’ (…of good character, has word of honor, integrity and purity, does not oppress and does not allow oppression, sensitive to others and dedicates his/her life, energy and talent toward being a good citizen and child of God.)

Last June 12, 106th anniversary of Philippine Independence, Bishop Julio X. Labayen, retired bishop of the Prelature of Infanta in Quezon received the Gawad Kagitingan Award. The venue couldn’t have been more appropriate—the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City where the names of those who served and died for freedom are etched.

Behind the award was Management and Organization Development for Empowerment, an NGO working for the emancipation of farmers.

This year’s honoree is certainly most deserving. He has served the cause of the poor of Infanta and various sectors in the field of social action. In his response speech at the Gawad rites, the bishop, now in his late 70s, retraced his steps in the battlefields.



Who is Bishop Labayen? Many years ago, I wrote: ``Bishop Julio Xavier Labayen, a member of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites, is viewed by many as `controversial’, having figured in clashes with the Marcos dictatorship. In a sea of conservatives in the Philippine Church hierarchy, the bishop is considered a voice in the wilderness.’’ I had mixed the metaphors there but the bishop seems to have been pleased with it because he used it as a blurb in his book.

If you want to get to know the bishop more, read his book, ``Revolution and the Church of the Poor’’. This is about what the bishop thinks is an all-important ingredient for a revolution to work--spirituality. The other day I pulled out the book from the shelf to refresh my memory.

I stress the bishop’s being a Carmelite--steeped in the spirituality of Carmelite mystics John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila--to contrast with his being perceived as a ``leftie’’ by right-wing military elements and even by his mitered colleagues.

In his treatise, Labayen does not make an apologia or defense of church people romancing Marxism and so-called liberation movements. Far from it. What Labayen wants to see is ``a letting go of what has become irrelevant and obstructive, a going beyond…a dying to what has ceased to serve life.’’ He points out the failure of revolutionary movements to deliver. Some things just didn’t work. Or don’t work anymore. Or were bound to fail. So, hear ye.

Labayen speaks, drawing from his almost four decades of pastoral experience as bishop prelate of Infanta, interwoven ``with the dark strands of trials, crisis, harassment, persecution and marginalization, and also with the bright strands of pastoral breakthroughs, deep insights, qualitative turning points, reassuring faith-experiences of the living God of history.’’

Labayen presents two models of the Church: the ``imperialist’’ Christendom model and the Church of the Poor. He points out that ``while the Church may be historically shaped and conditioned by history, the same Church was founded by Jesus Christ to shape history.’’

And so where did revolutions go wrong? He cites Europe and China and lingers in Latin America, Nicaragua especially, where the Church played a vital role in the revolution. The outcomes, he says, either fall short of the initial noble intentions or, sometime after victory, short-changed the masses.

At home, he scores the Christians for National Liberation for failing ``to influence the revolutionary process to make it more humane, compassionate and less rigid.’’ He notes that cultural and psychological perspectives are often not taken into consideration in revolutionary affairs.

It cannot all be politics and economics, Labayen points out. The human heart and the human spirit, he argues, also seek to be liberated.

And so he does not tire of presenting another paradigm--Christ. Not the Christ conveniently portrayed as a radical to polarize social classes, but the Christ who preaches an interior revolution in the human heart and spirit.

He dares suggest that activists ``understand the contribution of the mystics and psychologists…It may well be that here we encounter a yet untapped inner resource that we have not harnessed for revolution. Could it be that herein lies the ingredient that is lacking for the satisfactory and fulfilling outcome?’’

I was stumped by that. For I had long waited for someone to say that.

Dig into your inner well, the bishop exhorts and offers words from John of the Cross’ Spiritual Canticle: ``An then we will go on/to the high caverns on the rock/Which are so well concealed;/ There we shall enter/ And taste the fresh juice of the pomegranates.’’ Ah, the pomegranates.

If, as they say, John of the Cross, if peeled and stripped of the Christian layers, is really a Buddhist monk, I think, Bishop Labayen, if stripped of his activist label, is truly a contemplative, a monk at prayer, on his knees in the bloody fields of battle.

****

A few days from now, for the first time ever in the Philippines, more than 3,000 priests and 100 bishops will gather for five days in intense prayer and reflection on their life and mission, as brothers in communion, responding to the call to discipleship under ``the one, true Shepherd.’’

The longest day

Qu’il n’est pas d’avenir sans mémoire. There can be no future without memory. French President Jacques Chirac said this at the D-day 60th anniversary celebration in Normandy a few days ago. The TV camera panned the crowd and focused on a group of aging soldiers from different countries that formed the Allied Forces during World War II. Mostly in their 80s, these men now surely have to live with blurring eyesight, weakened knees and fading memories. One of them tried to suppress a sob but failed. My heart was in pieces.

They were, Chirac said, the enfants du monde jetés si jeunes dans le feu de la guerre, the children of the world thrown so young into the fire of war. Today they are young no more, but the memories, I am sure, continue to burn and blister the core of their beings. What was in the minds of these brave survivors as they sat there, this brilliant morning of June 6, 60 years after they stormed the beaches of Normandy to pave the way for the liberation of Western Europe from the clutches of Hitler?

And what was it like then when, as US Pres. Bush waxed, they set out ``in the half light of a Tuesday morning long ago’’? (Arrgh, I grabbed pen and paper to jot that down.)

Those in my generation weren’t human beings yet at that time. We were born in the half light of the post-war era. Many of the war scenes came to us through the war movies that I watched as a kid--``To Hell and Back’’, ``Tobruk’’. ``Guadalcanal Diary’’, ``Heaven Knows Mr. Allison’’, ``Sink the Bismarck!’’ ``Target Zero’’, ``Back to Bataan’’ to name a few. And, of course, ``The Longest Day’’ (1962) based on the best-selling book of war historian Cornelius Ryan.

To get into the D-Day mood I watched ``The Longest Day’’ the other day. It was a 50th anniversary commemorative VCD version (not pirated ha, P199 at the supermarket near the Inquirer) and it said on the jacket that it was in the original brilliant black and white. Well, no thanks to technology, the film has been turned into technicolor.

``The Longest Day’’ which had three directors could be a crash course on D-Day history. Some critics compare it with Spielberg’s ``Saving Private Ryan’’ (2002) which also starts out bloody on the beaches of Normandy. In the former the soldiers got shot and died while in the latter, you’d see intestines being shoved back and the badly wounded crying out for their mothers. They knew what hit them and that was the terrible part.

Many personal accounts have seen print over the years but words cannot totally capture the pain and the terror and the courage inside those who were there. And now, what is it like, in the half light of the survivors’ memory?

I looked at the black and white photographs of the beach landing by famous war photographer Robert Capa, he who shot that famous Spanish Civil War photo of a soldier being hit by a bullet. Capa’s Normandy B&Ws were the real stuff, I thought. Helmeted heads bobbing on the waters, crawlers on the sand. Soldiers—some 156,000 of them—were making their way to the shore to face Nazi fire and Capa himself had to make his own beach head. His watery shots showed his own struggle.

D-Day is considered the largest and most ambitious amphibious landing in history. That single day, more than 156,000 American, British, Canadian, French and other Allied troops arrived on board 5,000 ships. About 11,000 planes rained fire on Normandy to pave the way. The combined force was meant to stun Hitler’s Nazi forces then occupying France and to liberate the rest of Europe. More soldiers in the ensuing months would come to finish the campaign.

The one-day invasion was code-named Operation Overlord and was under US. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. The Normandy beaches were code-named Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno. Casualties were high at Omaha beach where Allied soldiers faced unrelenting fire as soon as they stepped out of the barges. In Pointe du Huc, soldiers clambered up craggy cliffs. They were like so many ants falling to the ground.

By August Paris would be liberated but the loss in men was heavy—about 10 percent of two million troops.

Elsewhere—in the Philippines and the rest of Asia--war was also being waged at that time. The world was in shambles.

****

The Rescission Act of 1946 says that the service of Filipinos who fought alongside the Americans during WWII ``shall not be deemed to be or to have been service in the military or national forces of the United States or any component thereof or any law of the United States conferring rights, privileges, or benefits.’’

That is being repealed now in the U.S. Congress. But let me share a letter posted in the Plaridel e-group that has reference to this and to Filipino veterans getting a little something at last. Many in the e-group surely know the writer and the addressee personally.

Dear Melissa,

I have lost all faith in America. They will just wait for our veterans to die. I have uncles that joined the Death March and fought in that war. They have said on a number of occasions that they never fought for pay. They fought for their country.

It is true that many of the veterans are poor and that a few dollars would help ease their situation. I don't believe we ever had to be part of that war. We were just used.

The sooner we come to terms with the true nature of our relationship with America, the better for us. It’s hard to talk with members of the Filipino Community in America. Second-generation Filipinos in the States may never comprehend how unjust America is to small countries.

But America has been good to many of you. That's okay. It lessens my resentment.

Love,
Cynthia

The Noy-pi redux

I was with some friends last Saturday, leisurely driving toward C-5. A car with government plates was ahead of us. When traffic slowed down, the car’s driver tossed an empty plastic cup outside the window. We took note of the car’s plate number and model and the time and place. (SEK214, black Excel Hyundai, Katipunan corner Santolan Road, around 11:15 a.m.)

So why do many Filipinos think the road is their trash can? Why do many Filipino males urinate wherever they please? Why is it that where precisely it says, ``Bawal Omehi Deto’’ (sic), it stinks? (Think of the many versions and spellings of that warning.) And where ``Huwag Tapon Basura Dito, Fine P50, By Order’’ is scrawled, a garbage mound arises?

Are Filipino drivers color blind that while the traffic light remains red, many zoom past it? Why do commuters wait for their ride in the middle of the road and not on the sidewalk? Is it coincidental that many employees in some government offices come from the same family tree, town or barrio?

And why is it that despite the extent of poverty in the Philippines, the suicide rate is low compared to that of economic giants? How could a tragic event, such as Ninoy Aquino’s assassination, unleash so many jokes and so much laughter--directed at his killers, of course--from grieving millions? Why do we spend so much for fiestas then fast the rest of the year? How do we make do with so little? Why do Filipinos generally do well in foreign countries?

Why are we always smiling? And gosh, what are we smiling about?

And what’s wrong with us? Is it cultural, structural, moral, spiritual? What is the problem? Is it the home, the church, the school, the state, the weather, the food and water? Is it our genes?



Much is being made of the Presidential Commission on Values Formation that was recently set up. Is it the answer? Will this work in prodding us to economic progress and, uh, eternal happiness? Will this increase our Filipino pride and self-respect? Already, not everybody agrees on the same thing concerning this new commission.

Remember the government’s Moral Recovery Program more than 10 years ago? Two senate committees--on Social Justice, Welfare and Development and on Education, Arts and Culture--commissioned a study of the strengths and weaknesses of the Filipino character ``with a view to solving the social ills and strengthening the nation’s moral fiber.’’

I dug up the magazine piece I wrote on this years ago, with Jess Abrera’s cartoons spicing up the article (``What’s Wrong/ What’s Right about the Noy-Pi?’’ Sunday Inquirer Magazine, Oct. 2, 1988). I had a good laugh. Reading it again, I thought, we have been at this (the values thing) for more than a decade. If the disgusting comportment of our lawmakers in the canvassing of votes that is going on right now is any indication, then we have not moved forward in the values department, we have regressed. It also says a lot about those who elected them.

To remind, the 1988 study tapped experts in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, sociology and other social sciences, that is, the shrinks and the behavior modifiers, to figure out the Pinoy. Social psychologist Dr. Patricia Licuanan, then Ateneo vice president, headed the project. Nine task forces, composed of big names from different disciplines buckled down to work. The result of the study were based on interviews and a nationwide survey. This involved some 2,000 respondents.

According to the study (``A Moral Recovery Program: Building a People, Building a Nation’’) the strengths of the Filipino could be classified under these categories: Pakikipagkapwa-tao, family orientation, joy and humor, flexibility, adaptability and creativity, hard work and industry, faith and religiosity, ability to survive.

The Filipino’s weaknesses are a drama in themselves: Extreme personalism, extreme family centeredness, lack of discipline, passivity and lack of initiative, colonial mentality, kanya-kanya syndrome, lack of self-analysis and self-reflection.

Project director Licuanan said then that her group shifted through a lot of data and had to fight their academic instincts when they put the results together. They wanted to come across as simply as possible. They could have come up with an endless list of traits with fancy and technical names, but they chose to limit themselves to a few major ones under which other traits could be classified.

Critics could have reason to harp that the study dwelt mainly on the cultural factors rather than on the structural. Licuanan explained that they were not denying the structural factors. In fact, they started with the premise that we have structural defects, that we cannot wait for that comprehensive revolution to happen before we do anything about ourselves. We have to start somewhere.

The roots of the Filipino character as identified and classified may trigger not only much debate but also reflection. These roots, as identified by the study, are: family and environment, social environment, culture and language, colonial history, the educational system, religion, the economic environment, the political environment, mass media, leadership and role models.

There had been proposals of strategies for change, among them, the development of ``a national ideology that can summon all our resources into the task of lifting national pride and productivity.’’
Licuanan and her group had proposed teaching modules for the long term. She said then that she would rather not entrust the task of moral recovery and its implementation to a single institution. Well, yes, otherwise it would look like brainwashing.