Ateneo’s 11

That is what we are about…It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning…We are prophets of a future that is not our own. –Martyred El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917-1980)

In reverse alphabetical order: Manny Yap (1951-1976), Nick Solana, Jr. (1949-75), Lazzie Silva (1952-75), Ditto Sarmiento (1950-77), Dante Perez (1951-72), Eman Lacaba (1948-78), Edgar Jopson (1948-82), Sonny Hizon (1952-74), Jun Celestial (1950-74), Billy Begg (1959-75), Ferdie Arceo (1952-73).

All so young and so committed. Will there be another generation like theirs? (Yes, like ours, if I may interrupt and interject.) Will there be another call such as they had heard, will there be a another harvest such as this special crop?

The book “Living and Dying: In Memory of 11 Ateneo de Manila Martial Law Activists” by Cristina Jayme Montiel tells the story of these young men’s individual lives and deaths. It is about the process of their becoming, their journey into the wilderness and the final shedding and pouring out of their substance—so that others may live abundantly. Their dying was not only a physical one, it was, and more importantly, a dying to self even while they were alive.



Yap who disappeared in 1976 remains missing to this day. Sarmiento, a campus journalist and activist, died at home after suffering in military detention. The nine others died from bullet wounds and torture wounds in the hands of their military pursuers or captors, separately and at different times, far from home, in remote places the faint of heart would fear to tread.

As the poet Lacaba had written:

The road less traveled by we’ve taken--/And that has made all the difference:/The barefoot army of the wilderness/We should be in time. Awakened, the masses are Messiah,/Here among the workers and peasants our lost/Generation has found its true, its only home.

Captured alive, Lacaba was shot twice—in the mouth and the chest—and tied by the ankles then dragged to a mass grave. Arceo was shot on a seaside in Iloilo. Begg, born an American but chose Filipino citizenship, met a brutal death in Isabela.

Writes Montiel: “Bill was captured alive. Before killing him, however, the soldiers mercilessly tortured him, leaving him with 17 stab wounds, eleven gunshot wounds, a broken rib cage and smashed hands. The day Bill died marked his third month in the Isabela area, a short five months after he joined the struggle in the countryside. He was 24.”

But it has to be stressed that while the moment of death may look dramatic and climactic, it was the trajectory of their lives that provided the substance. This was reflected by the choices they made early on. This was distilled in their thoughts, ideas and ideals (as gleaned from their letters, poems, journals and from the recollection of family, friends and comrades) and, most of all, in the way they lived.

All 11 stories move in almost parallel ways, chronologically, that is, from birth to death. But as a story progresses, one gets tempted to jump pages to get to the heart of things and on to the climax. The uniform, predictable progression makes the stories easy to follow and allows the reader to compare the stories. This must have been deliberate on the part of the writer.

Still I wish the writer had provided some surprise beginnings, rapturous peaks or throat-grabbing denouements at the most unexpected places. Well, simply because the subjects’ lives must have been full of cinematic if not dramatic twists and turns. The setting was the worst of times, remember.

But this is not to say that the life stories are bland. They are not. And credit must indeed go to Montiel, professor of Peace/Political Psychology, who bravely embarked on the project. Montiel is coordinator of the doctoral program in Social Organizational Psychology at the Ateneo.

I use the word “bravely” because for Montiel, a known activist during the martial law years, writing the stories meant wading into a difficult past. “I cannot separate myself from this book,” Montiel says, “not only because of past personal friendships shared with two of the featured activists, Edjop and Dante, but also because of landmines in my heart that come alive whenever I remember martial law days.” At the time she wrote the book Montiel was just recovering from a long string of both painful and healing experiences. Yes, she bravely enumerates them.

“I was afraid that old psychological and political scripts in the shadows of my heart still battered by martial law would take on life again. Hence I could not go too near the fire, afraid of ignition. I apologize if these 11 stories may lack the personal or political intensity so befitting martial law lives and deaths.”
Yes, Tina, I understand and appreciate.

“Living and Dying” is the second in a series of “truth-telling” book projects of the Ateneo. (The first is “Down from the Hill”.) And so Montiel so rightly “truth-tells” and takes on this Jesuit institution by pointing out in the stories how several of the Ateneo 11 had been sanctioned, even unceremoniously dismissed, because of their ideological causes.

Well, that is why the book launching was also called a “coming-home ritual”, with families of the martyred alumni coming home on behalf of their departed sons, praying and lighting candles with kindred spirits, singing songs and sharing precious memorabilia.

All 10 names, except that of Solana Jr. (data still lacking), are inscribed on the memorial wall of Bantayog ng Mga Bayani. But somewhere on Sacred Heart Hill, near the Church of the Iesu in the Ateneo campus, is a marker shaped like an eternal flame. It is in memory of these special young men who gave all. Ad majorem Dei gloriam.

Abbé Pierre

France is mourning the passing of one of it’s most well loved, if not sometimes controversial, figures. L’Abbé Pierre est mort… Abbé Pierre, a Catholic priest who devoted much of his life to the care of the homeless poor, died on Monday, Jan. 22. He was 94.

France is probably neck and neck with Italy in the saints department. Despite France’s secularized society it has continued to produce saintly icon to this day. The much-loved Brother Roger of Taize, also in his 90s, died last year in the hands of a knife-wielding deranged devotee. These modern-day saintly Frenchmen died really old while some of France’s popular saintly women died very young, like Therese of Lisieux and Joan of Arc.

French President Jacques Chirac himself announced Abbé Pierre’s death and called him “an immense figure, a conscience, a man who personified goodness.” What a tribute. Abbé Pierre, Chirac said, “represented the spirit of rebellion against misery, suffering, injustice and the strength of solidarity.” Abbé Pierre raged against the dying of the light in the hearts of men and women.

In popular polls over the years, Abbé Pierre topped the list more than 17 times as France’s favorite personality. At one time, he even edged out football superstar Zinedine Zidane. Would such “an immense figure” make it to the bottom of a list in perpetually star-struck Philippines? France, producer of great classic films and movie and fashion icons, just had to give way to a non-star. Sure, Abbé Pierre was an icon in his own right, a star in a way, but in a different firmament.



Born in 1912, Abbé Pierre was christened Henri-Antoine Groues. As a young man he gave up his inherited wealth and joined the Franciscan Order (the Capuchins). Because of lung problems, he left the order but he was ordained a priest in 1938 when the dark clouds of war were threatening Europe.

“Abbé Pierre” was a pseudonym, a nom de guerre that he used in the French resistance in World War II. The priest saved thousands of lives, mainly Jews as well as the politically persecuted, and helped them escape to Switzerland or Algeria.

After the war, Abbé Pierre, upon the persuasion of Charles de Gaulle, became a member of parliament. He was elected to the Constituent Assembly as an independent candidate. He used his position to help the cause of the dispossessed of his constituency and of the whole country.

In 1949, Abbé Pierre founded the Emmaus movement. His encounter with a despairing man who wanted to end his own life started it all. Other men in various states of despair and seeking shelter continued to come to him.

The first Emmaus communities were in Paris. Emmaus aimed to help the homeless, including refugees many of whom were rag pickers. Abbé Pierre provided not only homes but financial assistance as well so that the poor could begin to use their skills to make a living. The rag pickers earned income by recycling peoples garbage. They soon earned the name Les Chiffoneirs d’Emmaus or the rag pickers of Emmaus.

In 1951, Abbé Pierre resigned from parliament in order to fully concentrate on helping the poor, the refugees especially, who where flocking to Paris. The priest saw the power of the media, particularly TV to campaign on behalf of the poor and raising public consciousness. Not long after, a film on his life was produced, thus spreading the cause he espoused.

I don’t know if that film is the same as the film “Hiver ’54: L’abbé Pierre” (Winter of ’54: Abbe Pierre).

Emmaus is now an international organization with 327 member groups that convene every four years. An executive committee runs the operations. Emmaus maintains homes in different parts of the world. The movement got its name from Emmaus, a place in Palestine where the resurrected Jesus appeared to his apostles, broke bread with them and, uh, caused burning in their hearts.

In spite of his popularity Abbé Pierre had his share of controversy. He maintained friendship with philosopher and convicted “Holocaust denier” Roger Garaudy as well the ultra-progressive French Bishop Jacques Gaillot.

In his own memoirs, Abbé Pierre admitted to have had casual sex with women when he was a young priest, something that he regretted because, he said “it made me feel untrue.”

Okay, the curious would surely want to know more. So here are some entries from his memoirs, his thoughts on what the experience taught him.

“I understand that sexual desire, in order to be completely fulfilled has to be expressed in a living relationship, tender and trustful. I had chosen a life that could not allow such a relationship. I could have only made a woman unhappy and I would find myself being divided between two irreconcilable choices of life.

“Truth can only exist in simplicity, not duplicity. We (priests) have to reject any hypocrisy so omnipresent (in our church). Sex is a powerful vital force; it is possible for anyone to yield to sexual temptation. But it is completely different for a priest or religious to be sexually active. He can cause his victim decades of suffering.

“As for me, if had married or become involved in a love relationship, I could never have accomplished what I have. My vocation required unlimited flexibility. But I am convinced that in the church there is need for both married priests and those who practice celibacy who can dedicate themselves totally to prayer and the service of others.”

Having revealed so much in his memoirs, Abbé Pierre may not make it to the pantheon of the canonized but so what. In 2005 he made it to third in a TV poll for “The Greatest Frenchman”. Of all time, I suppose. He had given hope.

An inconvenient truth

All the Asean heads of state and their ministers who came for the recent Asean summit in Cebu were all gathered in one dark room for 100 minutes, listening to former US Vice President Al Gore in the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. Each one had a bucket of popcorn. And when it was over they all stood up, their faces flushed because they all felt a sudden energy surge. They all went out the door, walking briskly, ready to take on the world with great resolve.

Wishful thinking. That was a what-if scenario that was running like a sidebar frame in my mind while I was watching the movie-docu the other day. (They did sign something on promoting non-polluting sources of energy.)

Documentaries are going mainstream—“The March of the Penguins” among the latest—and are relatively well received. Is this a shift? There have been too many big-budget fantasies in the last few years and their success could mean more are coming. They portray the good-versus-evil themes of real life but because they’re fantasy, we know for sure that good will triumph over evil after we’ve sat it out for three sensurround hours or after three years of waiting for a trilogy to run its course. And then we say that everything will be all right.

Not if you watch “An Inconvenient Truth” (directed by Davis Guggenheim). Everything will not be all right if we do not do something to reverse global warming. The movie is a global warning. It’s not doomsday reel fiction like “Soylent Green”, it’s real life on Planet Earth right now. And we, its inhabitants, are to blame for what’s happening.

But do enjoy your popcorn.



When Greenpeace-Philippines sponsored a premiere showing, the free tickets came with a warning: “If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves—all beyond anything we have ever experienced.”

This inconvenient truth is showing now but only at SM Megamall’s Cinema 7. I hope today is not its last day. If you fail to catch it, get hold of a DVD. Someone told me you could watch it in YouTube. The producers are not after big bucks and would like you to spread the bad news—and also tell others about the good that each one of us could do.

Gore’s role as the presentor was tailor-made for him. He was not picked because of his looks or for being an almost-President. Global warming is a problem he’s been studying and speaking about every chance he’s got for many years.

“We have everything we need to know,” Gore starts off. Don’t be turned off by the beginning scene that shows him on a platform lecturing before an audience in a darkened hall. (It looked elegant, in fact.) He shows on screen the familiar “Earthrise” photo taken from space by astronauts more than 30 years ago. It is breathtaking.
The next photographs are alarming. Behold snow caps vanishing, shorelines retreating, oceans widening, lakes shrinking. These are recent images from outer space.

Zoom in to terra firma. The awesome glaciers are melting, wildlife are moving to new habitats, species are disappearing. Hurricanes are getting fiercer, seas warmer, rainfall heavier. The footage of a distressed polar bear trying to hang on to a melting ice floe will break your heart.

Just as alarming are the scientific data, the jagged line charts that go up and down and up and up. The 10 warmest years ever recorded in history were in the last 14 years with India experiencing 50 degree Celsius. Global warming is no longer “a debate”. It is real.

Gore is not always on that platform to lecture. He is on the road, in the field, aboard helicopters, witnessing for himself what is ailing the planet. But because he holds the film together, he also tackles personal circumstances that have driven him to embrace this cause. His sister’s death, his son’s close encounter with death, even his losing in the presidential elections—all these had something to do with his becoming.

As proofs of the planet’s destruction continue to pile up, you tend to forget it is “professor” Gore speaking. It is Earth speaking. No the-sky-is-falling hysterics, no hyperbolic pronouncements, just plain scientific facts and images.

Carbon dioxide emissions, which come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, are the main cause of global warming. Deforestation, slash-and-burn farming, soil degradation and loss, urbanization—these, too, contribute to the so-called greenhouse effect. According to Conservation International some 35.1 million acres of tropical forests are destroyed each year, releasing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Through graphics, Gore explains away how increased CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat. That part is simple enough to understand. What is not simple is how the global situation got so bad over the last few years and why the planet seems to be inexorably going to a point of no return.

Years ago, I wrote a feature story in the Sunday Inquirer on a Filipino scientist who did research in Antarctica and studied the effects of global warming. She sure had the goods.

There is hope, and the movie shows why. But only if we act now. There is something for every one to do--small things, big things. From managing your garbage to searching for alternative energy sources. (The Mac-toting Gore also suggests you visit www.climatecrisis.net.) So even while he speaks to Everycitizen of Planet Earth, Gore does not forget to stress that his country is the biggest culprit of all.

He quotes a wise person of yore who said: “When you pray, move your feet.”

Oprah’s $40-million school for girls

I made a mistake last week. Instead of writing $40 million, I wrote $40,000. That’s minus three zeroes or a staggering difference of $39,960,000. I wanted to show how big $40 million was so I wrote the numbers—zeroes and all—(instead of the word million) but was short of three zeroes.

So how does $40,000,000 look now? That was how much US TV giant Oprah Winfrey spent to build a school for poor girls in South Africa. The Opra Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls opened last Jan. 2 with the first 75 students whom Opra herself had handpicked.

I promised Edna Zapanta Manlapaz, one of those who pointed out the error and who sent me the Jan. 2007 issue of the Oprah magazine, that I would write a longer piece on the “academy”. The latest issue has the story about now the school came to be, what it is like and the process of choosing the first students. The story, “Building a Dream” is by Pamela Gien and the photographs by Graham Abbott.

Five years and $40 million were not all that it took to build, for the building of this dream had begun much earlier. That is, in the heart of a woman who had known what it was to be poor, black and sexually abused—and who rose to become one of the world’s richest, most popular and loved media giant.



The article’s main blurb says: “ It started as a wish—for a first-class school that would nurture, educate and turn gifted South African girls from impoverished backgrounds into the country’s future leaders…”

The academy sits on a 22-hectare site one hour south of Johannesburg, the Department of Education’s suggested site. And it is first-class in amenities, landscape, building construction, artistic details, name it. A dream world indeed for girls who have not been in anything like it. And sure, this must have raised some eyebrows, including mine.

But here, from the Oprah magazine article, is its whys and whynots.

“Creating this school has not been easy, logistically or socially. From the beginning, (Oprah) struggled to explain her vision, a school that could ‘contain the emotional, spiritual selves of the girls.’ Because these girls come from poverty, she was first given designs she felt looked like a chicken coop, then a barracks. Planners advised that these African children were not accustomed to much: no water, no electricity, some share a bed with relatives.

“Oprah was told that the simplest environment would be a luxury to them that they would need only basics. She sent the plans back. ‘I said from the start, I am creating everything in this school that I would have wanted for myself—so the girls will have the absolute best that my imagination can offer…’

“Now it’s a full campus with 26 buildings…At first glance, the effect is an unusual combination of functionality and elegance. The architecture has African roots, quiet, earthy, beautiful. The bricks, chosen by Oprah, echo the soft gold of the sand on which the school is built, making it seem as if it sprang up organically from the earth…”

That is the physical. Now Oprah makes her pitch. “When I became successful as a journalist, I knew that it was a part of me to give back to girls who are like myself… My own success has come from a strong background in reading and learning, the greatest gift you can give is the gift of learning…I want somebody who already knows that education is empowerment, and who wouldn’t have had the chance to fulfill the great possibilities of her life had this not happened. I want to change the trajectory of a child’s life.”

Oprah’s deep love for South Africa’s hero and former President Nelson Mandela was a great driving force in making her dream of a school come true. In a country where violence against females is epidemic, wrote Gien, where many girls under the age of 10 have already been raped, where the estimate for HIV infection in children and adults is one in eight, and more than 36 percent of black women are unemployed, often illiterate, and subsisting in tin shanties, a chance like this for a young African girl is akin to suddenly finding yourself on a rocket to the moon.

The girls, mostly on the threshold of adolescence, will have a lot marvel at. They will become big in the eyes of their communities. They will become the “new elite”.

The phrase rankles. But only if it means becoming a breed apart and alienated from their roots. Might these girls become that? Or could “new elite” mean the future compassionate, benevolent leaders that will help others rise to heights they had never known and be the best?

Questions always rise when the best and brightest of the poor are plucked, either to mix with their rich counterparts, or to be plunked into a privileged environment. What will they become? What will this do to their character? What happens to their families? Will they be able to find the road back?

I know of special schools for students coming from indigenous communities. Are they better off among themselves or should they go mainstream?

Should it always be the brightest? Oprah herself didn’t start off as a promising kid. She grew up poor with her grandma in rural Mississippi. Raped at nine, sexually abused until she was 14, pregnant at a young age. (The baby died.) Her father told her: “This is your second chance. Make good on it.”

Would the Oprah now have handpicked the young troubled Oprah? Oftentimes, it is the average, overlooked kid (not those in the honors list) that later excels in her/his field (like Einstein). It is the poor, oppressed and abused who grows the biggest heart, and who, with just a little help, becomes an Oprah.

‘Babaylan’ crossings

You have tampered with the women/ You have struck a rock/ You have dislodged a boulder/ You will be crushed. – from an Afrikaan freedom song

That is a line from an Afrikaan freedom song sung at the historic women’s freedom march in 1956 in South Africa. The minister of education recalled those lines during the 2002 ground breaking of the Opra Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in Soweto. The academy opened as 2007 was being ushered in and was ready to take in its first batch of girls.

That school was Oprah’s promise to the revered former South African Pres. Nelson Mandela when she visited in 2002. Her initial promise of $10,000 became $40,000. Oprah’s choice of place was Soweto. Her choice of students were girls from underprivileged background whom she herself had interviewed and handpicked.

Now the academy has opened. Many girl children who will go there will be trained to be future leaders and achievers in their chosen fields, compassionate, strong, giving. And beautiful, of course, inside and out.

In an article, a girl who was interviewed recounted the “phenomenal few minutes” with Oprah: “(She) asked me three questions. What I want to become. Why? And what good advice I’ve given anyone.”

Oprah has shown a great example to the rich, famous and influential. This bright and influential woman of US television and one of the world’s richest came from a difficult childhood (she was black, poor and abused) has moved on to great heights and expanded her embrace.



I hope I’d be able to see something like the Oprah school rising in these islands. But we are not wanting in schools for girls, only most if not all of them are “exclusive” for girls who are mostly already privileged. Many of them do not really have big, urgent dreams to be something for humanity.

Yes, I know there are schools for girls that have made big strides in educating their students to be strong women of character but so many other concerns—financial, among them—get in the way.

Oprah is indeed a priestess, a modern babaylan.

The book “Centennial Crossings: Readings on Babaylan Feminism in the Philippines” may be a year late—one year after the centennial of the feminist movement in the Philippines—but it sure came out at a time when women’s issues were (and are) very much in the forefront. There was the recent conviction of a Filipina woman’s rapist, a US serviceman, and the consequent debate over the latter’s custody pending the decision of a higher court. Then there was his “midnight crossing” or transfer to the custody of the US embassy, the Philippine government’s way of acquiescing to the US, or else…

Before feminism there was the so-called babaylanism, the book says. This was a form of women’s collective consciousness indigenous to the Philippines. A babaylan is a woman priest, healer and visionary. Alas, little is said of her in history books. This is not because there are few historical data on her. This is because women, in historical accounts by men, were almost always portrayed as and reduced to being mere passive spectators, not active participants in the unfolding of history.

The babaylan spirit did not die because it was kept alive by cultural traditions and practices, it stayed on despite being marginalized because of foreign colonization and neglect in the pages of history.

Now women are not only making it come alive again, they are making sure that it is kept alive not just in practice but also in the written word.

“Centennial Crossings” (edited by Fe B. Mangahas and Jenny R. Llaguno) is a collection of women’s writings that show that the babaylan spirit has not died. The modern babaylans are making sure the spirit does not ever die, that more women find and identify that spirit in them.

The book features both personal reflections and academic analyses. The spiritual and cerebral intertwine. Women from different disciplines and background discover the babaylan in them and in their creative process. A dancer, a writer, an academic, a religious, an activist. Each one has discovered the name of the in-dwelt babaylan. She has a name, a face, a voice.

Mangahas puts the babaylan in historico-cultural context. Agnes Miclat Cacayan discovers the babaylan dancing in wholeness. Arche L. Ligo searched for her among women on a mystical mountain. Sr. Rosario Battung, RGS found her among the women healers of the north.

And then there are those who have found the babaylan alive in themselves, making them dance, sing, create, pray, teach, reach out.

Mangahas writes: “Even among feminists in the Philippines today few realize that feminism as it refers to women’s political consciousness is a borrowed concept. The word feminism was first used in this country by Concepcion Felix et al., with the founding of Asociacion Feminista Filipina (in 1905). Antedating this usage, the word feminista and even the earlier Spanish word femenina, there was the word babaylanismo—a form of women’s consciousness indigenous to the Philippines.”

Mangahas adds that although babaylanism was long and evolution and yet rooted in Philippine culture, it remains an esoteric topic, if not a dead relic of the past.
“Centennial Crossings” proves that babaylanism is not a thing of the past. It is a great read, I promise you. And I discovered something about myself too. I think there is a babaylan in me. You’ll find her there too, if you look closer, deeper.