Heroes on my mind

Like the Tina Turner screamed, “We don’t need another heee-ro.” Not another dead one anyway.

But this month is for heroes, both the dead and the undead. And so we, the undead, had another round of the so-called “holiday economics” weekend. The newly dead are having their day, they are coming at us, hogging the headlines. Their message—“It is the soldier…” Their flag-draped coffins are continuously being marched before our eyes in very cinematic ways.

I play “Taps” on my mind and salute you all.

Strangely photogenic indeed are scenes of the heroic dead being brought to their resting places. Mourning becomes electric, as they say. The movies have unforgettable images of these. But even more awesome are the real-life scenes—choreographed procession, funeral dirge, riderless horse and all. But in the past millennium only one was Ghandi-an and only one was Ninoy-esque in scale and grandeur.

Terrifying are the funeral marches that cry to the heavens for vengeance, with protestors flailing the corpses of their heroes in a sea of grieving, raging humanity.

And heart-breaking are the ones held almost in secrecy or attended only by a few. Like Jesus’. Like the one of our lively guide in the wilderness where we spoke and broke bread with rebels and slept with armed women in a hut bristling with hand grenades and other deadly weapons. (That was many years ago, okay?) Soldiers caught up with his band, one day, and he took in the bullets so his comrades could slip away. A little candle in a darkened room was all he had, and a sister weeping, pointing to the rope marks on her brother’s neck.



Such scenes are indeed awesome to behold, and the documentary and film makers have a way of turning the actual footage into cinematic moments that are hard to forget. How does one portray them later in images, in words and with music—so that the rest of the world may share in the immensity of the loss and taste the rawness of the grief?

I remember watching the trailer of the documentary “Batas Militar” (directed by Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala). While it depicted the intensity of the military crackdown on those who opposed martial rule, it also showed the hapless foot soldiers who were killed in battle with the insurgents.

There was this scene of perforated bodies of soldiers being loaded onto trucks—in slow-mo—with Mozart’s choral music “Ave Verum Corpus” swelling in the background. “Cujus latus perforatum…” It was awesome, but almost like a lullaby. Music and images drove home the devastating senselessness of Filipinos killing Filipinos and I almost burst into tears.

Who the heroes, who the villains? Ask the Greek philosopher who asked the question.
That long-ago scene kept coming back these past bloody weeks that saw soldiers getting felled by the dozen in the battlefields of Basilan and Sulu, some of them beheaded by the enemies.

And speaking of another breed of heroes, albeit reluctant, the overseas Filipino workers (OFW), much-maligned by a sosi lifestyle writer of a glossy mag and a newspaper, didn’t have to come home to exact their pound of flesh. The outrage created by that condescending and mocking article (“From Boracay to Greece”) was tar and feather enough for the insensitive writer who has resigned.

Elementary good manners and right conduct as well as good values should have prevented anyone from expressing in public such condescending thoughts or from not thinking that way at all, even to oneself, of OFWs who are slaving away in foreign lands so that those they left behind could live a little better.

Tomorrow, Aug. 31, Father Ruben “Erps” Villote, founder of the Center for Migrant Youth, will be conferred the Mother Teresa Awards by the JCI. Here is a man of quiet heroism whose prayerful life continues to bear fruit in the lives of the least, the last and the lost.

Tomorrow, too, the 100th birth anniversary of the late President Ramon Magsaysay, seven Asians will join the roster of Asia’s greats as RM Awardees in different categories.

We are not wanting in heroes. It’s just that the media limelight chooses to linger longer on the garish lifestyle of the rich, famous and physically endowed. The quiet heroism of many remains unknown for a long time until it is discovered.

The RM Awards Foundation (RMAF) has made such heroism known these past 50 years by honoring selfless women and men who have contributed much in making this planet a great place to be. There are now eight volumes of “Great Men and Women of Asia” (say GMWA) published yearly by RMAF since four years ago and I am happy to say I have written a good number of the stories in the books. RMAF launched the 8th volume yesterday, with this year’s awardees present.

The award-winning essays of students on their chosen Asian greats have also been published.

For an even much younger group is the 20-book series for children (illustrated, of course). It is “a gift of partnership” with RMAF from Bookmark and former Ambassador Bienvenido Tan Jr. who was RMAF chair twice.

Bantayog ng Mga Bayani also recently launched the book on the contemporary heroes and martyrs who poured out their lives during the dark years of martial rule. I personally knew a good number of them. And by the way, today is International Day of the Disappeared.

There is something about August—guns upheavals, disasters, fires, eclipses, tides, deaths, martyrdom, the distant drums. And the birth and beginning of things sublime and amazing. We, the August-born Leos of this planet, ablaze with passion and prayer and infused with the music of the universe, revel in these.

MDG mid-term review: Missing the target

The Philippines is “off the track”, it’s too soon to celebrate and there is a lot of work that needs to be done to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

2007 is midway the 15-year-long process of achieving the so-called MDGs targeted by the United Nations but the Philippines is still way off the expected results.

Social Watch Philippines gathered civil society groups last Aug. 15 and 16 to do a mid-term review of the MDGs and came up with conclusions and suggestions.

Among them: Government is “missing and messing up the MDG targets” and citizens should therefore help monitor government performance and push for an alternative budget for the MDGs.

The Philippines is one of 189 countries that signed in 2000 the Millennium Declaration and covenant to attain the MDGs by 2015. The MDGs refer to the eight goals and 18 targets that the international community committed to attain in 15 years.

The eight goals are 1)eradicate extreme poverty and hunger 2)achieve universal primary education, 3) promote gender equality, 4) reduce child mortality, 5) improve maternal health, 6) combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, 7) ensure environmental sustainability, and 8) develop a global partnership for development.



After presentations by civil society groups working in different regions, Social Watch challenged government pronouncements that the Philippines is on track with majority of the MDGs. The government, Social Watch said, had admitted that the goals with low probability of being achieved are in universal primary education for both participation and survival, maternal mortality ratio (MMR) and access to reproductive health. The government had also admitted problems in financing, regional disparities, advocacy, localization and monitoring.

Social Watch concluded that with the way things are, and judging from MDG performance in the last seven years, most of the goals will not be fully met

It cited the 2006 report of UN-ESCAP, UNDP and ADB that showed that the Philippines was “failing further behind” in relation to countries in Asia and the Pacific.

Social Watch International ranks the Philippines as “very low” in the Basic Capabilities Index (BCI) on a global scale. BCI is based on three indicators, namely, percent of children reaching Grade 5, under-5 mortality, and percentage of birth attended by health personnel.

Minar Pimple, deputy director of the UN’s Asia Millennium Campaign, said that globally poverty has been reduced. The number of very poor which used to be 1.25 billion has been reduced to 980 million. Pimple came to attend the Social Watch convention where civil society groups from different regions shared how the MDGs are faring on the ground.

Social Watch convenor and professor Leonor Briones raised questions on the reliability of data presented by the government. Briones, who once headed the Bureau of Treasury, pointed out that national data do not reflect the situation in the regions. “There is disparity between national data and regional data,” she said. “Averages are a poor measure.”

She cited the example of Makati City which could pull up the averages even while the ethnic minorities remain very poor.

Citing key indicators in education such as “participation rate and cohort survival rate”, Social Watch noted that these are going down in the elementary and secondary levels. Drop-out rates are rising and the number of out-of-school youth is among the highest in Asia, higher than Indonesia and Vietnam. The Philippines, Social Watch added, rates very poorly in performance scores in Math when compared with other countries.
Inequality is more serious than mere poverty, Social Watch pointed out. The claims that poverty has been reduced in the Philippines, Briones said, is only in terms of national totals which do not reflect reality. National totals are pulled up by the few relatively rich regions.

The Gini Coefficient which is used to measure inequality shows that inequality in the Philippines remains high. Social Watch cited the 2003 Family Income and Expenditure Survey that showed that only two percent of the total number of families earn more than P500,000 a year, and only 10 families control 52.5 percent of the total market capitalization.

While the Philippines is supposed to have a sound environmental policy, translating these policies into actual programs and allocating the needed resources have been problematic. Social Watch noted inconsistencies in governance characterized by a high turnover of environment secretaries.

Briones said that among the MDG goals, environmental sustainability remained the least funded at less than one percent of the total budget.

Social Watch criticized the government’s overemphasis on the so-called “super regions”, which was evident in Pres. Gloria Arroyo’s recent State of the Nation Address (Sona).

“For the past seven years,” Social Watch said, “the Sonas which are the bases for budget priorities, hardly noticed the MDGs. Attention has been focused on the super regions these past two years while the poor are lagging behind in the ‘un-super’ regions.”

Seven years to go and there is still hope for the Philippines to get near the targets. There is need for more civil society groups (forget the incorrigible politicians) to get involved on the ground. There are NGOs that spend so much time, effort and money on political protests and propaganda while the poor they claim to defend continue to languish.

This I need to say out loud: Time also for some of these civil society groups to look into themselves and how they spend the funds entrusted to them by their funders.

‘Getting Home’ and going the extra mile

As a gesture of support for the film industry of this world, I told myself I will watch at least one film shown at the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival (still going on, by the way) which has the presence of no less than US director Quentin Tarantino. The guy’s name is splashed on big banners at the Gateway Mall in Araneta Center, the festival’s venue.

I watched the Chinese film “Getting Home”, a “gently philosophical road comedy”, directed by Zhang Yang because the synopsis promised something so out of the ordinary. Also because I had watched a couple of really good Chinese ones in the past, among them, the award-winning “Not One Less” (starring rural school children as themselves) and the heart-breaking “Xiu-Xiu, The Sent-Down Girl”. These are minimalist films, if I may call them that, and do not belong to the “Crouching Tiger” genre that has elaborate sets, movements and plots.

I was not disappointed. When it was over I walked out of the theater with a smile on my face and a little tear in my eye. And “Getting Home” was supposed to be a comedy. You know, like “Ang Tatay Kong Nanay” (Dolphy and Nino Muhlach) is comedy but brings on the tears in the end. Because it is about human relationships.

Who’d ever think of making a film about a wandering corpse? Hold your horror, “Getting Home” isn’t a horror movie. It is about friendship and loyalty beyond death. Like, “How do I love thee, let me count the ways”. Countless indeed are the ways a friend would think of to prove his loyalty to a friend who died far away from home and in not so honorable a manner.



This is also about Good Samaritans on the highways as well as highwaymen with evil intent, about strangers going the extra mile for strangers, the little lives they lead, their joys, their dreams, their pain. It also gives you a glimpse of the changing landscape of semi-rural, semi-urban places in China and the values and traditions that endure and remain.

While watching the film I couldn’t help thinking about a Filipino version, perhaps starring Johnny Delgado as the loyal friend. And since Rene Requiestas and Yoyoy Villame are dead, I couldn’t think of someone who would be the corpse.

When his drinking buddy and long-time co-worker Liu Quanyou (Hong Qiwen) drops dead during a drinking spree, his friend Zhao (Zhao), a 50-ish migrant worker, vows to bring home his friend’s corpse to his family so he could be given a proper burial. Zhao plans to transport Liu’s corpse through the countryside via the local bus route. He carries his dead friend on his back and seats him on a passenger bus. The bus is waylaid by a gang of holdup men but Zhao is able to talk the bad guys into giving up their evil deed. They give Zhao the loot and leave, something the passengers should be grateful for. But not when Zhao reveals that Liu is a corpse. He assures the irate women Liu is dead when they accuse Liu of watching them while they were urinating on the wayside.

Ingrates. In the middle of nowhere Zhao has to get off the bus with his dead friend on his back. His journey continues on the winding road that seems endless. A truck driver stops and picks them up. Zhao sings a love song to entertain the driver. Painful memories of a lost love come crashing down and the driver suffers an impromptu emotional breakdown. It is a cathartic moment and Zhao must take charge in order to prevent the truck from careening into the abyss.

Zhao gets off with his dead friend at the fork of the road. From hereon he will have to use unconventional methods of transporting the body—by putting the corpse inside a huge tire and rolling it down a hill, by hiding it inside a huge concrete pipe that gets loaded on a cargo truck. Several times Zhao wants to call it quits and join his friend in the afterlife. He is tired, he is hungry and his shoes are worn out. When he takes off the corpse’s shoes he finds a wad of bills hidden inside. A good meal at last! Alas, the money turns out to be fake and Zhao almost gets lynched at the roadside restaurant.

But the people he meets on the long road to home give Zhao reason not to give up. Like the rich, eccentric recluse who stages his own funeral complete with paid mourners and all, Zhao among them. Zhao turns out to be the most convincing mourner. When the “dead” man later “rises” from the dead, he seeks out the stunned Zhao who promptly admits it was his hunger and the free meal that made him join the funeral rites. The rich man tells him, “Indeed, hunger can make a man honest” or something like that. He also teaches Zhao some secrets on cadaver preservation and how to make Liu’s corpse last a little longer.

There still are several remarkable characters down the road—a young family of beekeepers that has opted for a simple life on the farm, a cyclist on his way to Tibet who shows Zhao the beauty around him and on the horizon beyond.

It is a kind police officer that finally picks up the near-dead Zhao (because of exhaustion) and the corpse. Liu’s corpse is cremated and the officer helps Zhao (who is not carrying Liu’s ashes) find his way to the Three Gorges where Liu’s family is supposed to be. There they find ruins of homes that have been demolished. And where Liu’s home used to be, they find a broken door with a message for Liu from his family that has relocated. The village will soon go under water. (When finished, the Three Gorges dam will be the biggest dam in the world.)

This is not the end of Zhao’s journey.

How often do you go out of your way and walk a mile for a friend, and more importantly, for a stranger? To help, or for no other reason except to make a stranger happy?

Rainy day thoughts

The falling of rain was front page news two days ago. For too long the parched metropolis and the rain-starved countryside had waited for the sky to open and wash clean the grime and slime of the oppressive (election) summer and renew life in faraway towns and farms.

While some parts of Asia were swirling in mud and excess rain water that caused thousands to perish, we in the Philippines had to resort to cloud-seeding, oratio imperata and threats of water rationing in order to avert a water crisis.

And then the rain poured.

Though farmers had to suffer losses because of the rain’s delay, there is still a lot to be thankful for, among them, lessons, lessons, lessons. And plans to address similar crises in the future.

But weren’t such plans made years ago when the El Nino-La Nina crises were playing out in our lives? What happened to those pond-like rain reservoirs and other water preservation methods for farmers to put in place?



There is something mystical about rain and its coming in torrents after a long wait. It is celebrated in psalms, poetry, pop songs and folk tales. And films. To name two--”Singing in the Rain”, and the mushy “The Miracle” starring Robert Redford and Carol Baker in their prime?

I love the look, on a late evening, of an empty rain-soaked street or alley reflecting light from the moon or lamp posts. Or an early afternoon shower in the rural countryside, with a rainbow emerging from the mist. Or dawn breaking with the chorus of frogs competing with the patter of rain. Coffee and warm bread, wine and Frank Sinatra with every breath you take.

And if you have not frolicked in the rain as a little child or walked recklessly into a thunderstorm as an adult in order to do some good to someone, then you still have a lot to go on the long and winding road.

But as they say, into each life some rain must fall. Rain has its harsh side, like the deadly landslides that brought death and destruction in vulnerable places. Sure the heavy rains had something to do with these disasters but so had people who wantonly destroyed the environment and rendered it vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. There were, indeed, tragedies waiting to happen because of our neglect. And let’s not blame these entirely on the rain.

Climate change is upon us. With global warming is the warning that it’s not going to be all warm. It’s also going to be watery because of the ancient glaciers and snowcaps melting and the atmosphere going haywire.

Ancient cultures had ways of dealing with the long wait for rain. Rain dances and other rain-making rituals live on to this day. Call them pagan or whatever but these must have a way of altering the forces in the universe, the same way that the flutter of a butterfly’s wings could affect climactic conditions. Same with the force of prayer or power of thought. We are all interconnected.

Sir James G. Frazer, in his ground-breaking book “The Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore”, devotes pages and pages on rain-making, staying the sun and making wind. (The first edition appeared in 1890 and has since made an enormous impact on culture and literature, far beyond its field of anthropology.)

Frazer wrote: “Of all natural phenomena there are perhaps none which civilized man feels himself more powerless to influence than the rain, the sun and the wind. Yet all these are commonly supposed by savages to be in some degree under their control.”

In a village in Russia, when rain-making became the last resort, three men would go up the fir trees in an old sacred grove. One of them drummed with a hammer on a kettle to make the sound of thunder. Another knocked two fire-brands to make sparks fly to imitate lightning. The third man, the rain-maker, sprinkled water on a bunch of twigs.

In an island in New Guinea, a wizard induced rain by dipping a branch from a particular tree and sprinkled the ground with it. In another place the rain-maker wrapped some leaves of a creeper in a banana leaf, moistened the bundle and buried it in the ground. Then, with his mouth, he imitated the sound of rain.

When the corn began to wither because of lack of rain, the Omaha Indians of North America would fill a vessel with water and dance around it. One of the dancers put water into his mouth and spurt it into the air to make a drizzle, then he upset the vessel and spilled the water into the ground. The dancers would fall down on the ground and drink up the water and get muddy all over.

The Australian Wotjobaluk rain-maker dipped a bunch of his own hair in water, sucked out the water from it and squirted it westward. Squirting water from the mouth is also a practice in West Africa.

In Samoa, a stone that represented the rain-making god was housed in a structure. In time of drought, priests carried the stone in procession and dipped it in a stream.

In Navarre in Spain, the image of Saint Peter was taken to a river where people asked for his intercession so that rain may fall. Some would call out that the image be dunked in the water.

In New Caledonia the rainmakers blackened themselves all over, dug up a dead body and took the bones to a cave and joined them together. They then hung the skeleton over some taro leaves. They believed that the soul of the departed drew up the water and made it fall down as rain.

There are so many ways of making rain that Frazer had documented. Alas, despite my forays into indigenous communities, I know nothing about their rain-making practices (creation stories, yes.) If there are any, I am sure Filipino anthropologists know about them.

Time to try them out, to help raise our water(conservation consciousness) level.

Chinese RM awardees unlike China’s me-generation

One of this year’s seven Ramon Magsaysay awardees, China’s Chen Guangcheng who is blind, will not be able to come. He is in prison. Three of the seven RM awardees are from China.

This week’s Time magazine’s cover story is about China’s burgeoning young adults (under age 30) numbering about 300 million. Unflatteringly called the “me-generation”, they are post-Mao, post-cultural revolution babies born in the era of Deng and his successors. They woke up to the hum of a rapidly growing economy, made their first steps inside a bubble that radiated a sheen their parents never knew when they were that age.

Now these 20-sometings are taking over and living it up. Although their lives are still within the confines of a communist state, this so-called me-generation couldn’t care less. They have what they want, they enjoy the myriad pleasures and satisfaction the economy they work for could offer, so why rock the boat?

The hunger for democracy, the lack of it in China—that the world frowns on—is not going to hamper their lifestyle. The rural countryside and the poverty that still stalk millions who toil under deplorable conditions—these are not in their list of priorities.

That’s what the Time cover story tried to portray. As a 27-year-old advertising company owner said: “We are more self-centered. We live for ourselves, and that’s good. We contribute to the economy. That’s our power.”



It’s the good life for another 27-year-old fashion writer who loves spas, facials, massages and gym work-outs. They work hard and they play even harder. Another 27-year-old account executive in a global advertising company says, “There’s nothing we can do about politics. So there’s no point in talking about it or getting involved.”

Wow. Tell that to the Filipinos in the same age group, or older, who still swear by the name of Mao and who continue to wage a guerrilla war against the government in the hope of seeing their Maoist dream come true. The Maoist insurgency in the Philippines is the oldest in Southeast Asia.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, now on its 50th year, announced yesterday batch of awardees for 2007. Among the awardees are three Chinese nationals. Two of them—Cheng Guangcheng and Chung To—will receive the award for Emergent Leadership (for those under 40). Tang Xiyang will receive the award for Peace and International Understanding.

The Philippines’ own Jovito Salonga is this year’s awardee for Government Service, India’s Palagummi Sainath is the awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, Nepal’s Mahabir Pun for Community Leadership and Korea’s Kim Sun-Tae for Public Service.

As I said earlier, Chen who is blind will not be able to come. He is in prison. The RM Awards Foundation has picked Chen for “his irrepressible passion for justice in leading ordinary Chinese citizens to assert their legitimate rights under the law.”

Blinded as an infant, Chen learned early how to confront life’s limitations. Denied formal schooling for most of his youth, he amassed knowledge by listening to the radio. By age 30 he had completed a university course in massage and acupuncture therapy.

Chen also immersed himself in the study of law and became a “barefoot lawyer”. He helped people file complaints and civil cases in local courts. He defended the rights of the disabled and accessed funds to provide safe water for villages near factories that polluted rivers. He filed a first-ever class-action suit against local officials for abusive violation of population policies.

Chen’s activism didn’t go unnoticed. He angered local officials who soon went after him. Chen was harassed, beaten and later convicted and jailed on spurious charges. He remains in jail to this day.

Chung To was born in Hong Kong and was already a successful banker when he decided to do something for those at risk from HIV-AIDS in China. In 1995, he set up the Chi Heng Foundation in order to reach millions of gay Chinese men and inform them about the disease. Chung waged his battle through workshops, counseling, legal advice and by linking up with doctors.

Confronted with an AIDS epidemic caused by sale of contaminated blood and moved by the plight of AIDS orphans, Chung left his banking career to work fulltime with AIDS Orphans Project. Starting with 127 students in one village, Chung has now helped 4,000 AIDS-impacted children in four provinces through vocational training and university schooling.

I hope Chung would be able to come. Some years ago, awardee Gao Yaojie, a doctor who discovered the wanton distribution of AIDS-contaminated blood and who worked to contain the anomalous practice was prevented by her government from coming. I ended up interviewing her representative.

Tang Xiyang, the awardee for Peace and International Understanding, comes from a different era. Sent to do forced labor in the countryside during China’s Cultural Revolution, Tang could have turned out a bitter and broken man. Instead he drew from his experience of nature and embarked on a conservation process in order to reverse environmental damage wrought by years of violence and indifference.

A prolific writer and lecturer, Tang advocated for environmental reform and democracy. He established “green camps” for the young so that they would learn about nature’s laws and respect them.

I hope the pleasure-loving me-generation of China would learn lessons from these special individuals. China is not wanting in heroes who are not in the Mao-mold.