New Year’s Day salad

Here’s a salad of a column for New Year’s Day.

With joy and hope, not with fear and trepidation, we must approach the coming year. Doomsday soothsayers have sent people to the edge. We are desperately in search of epiphanies. The crunch has not yet hit in a big, big way, but the way the pessimistic forecasters talk, it’s as if an asteroid is hurtling in the direction of planet Earth.

Hey, it’s New Year’s Day and we must laugh a little, sing a little, hope in a big way. See, despite the so-called economic crunch there was no stopping text messages from crisscrossing space and reaching the farthest corners of the globe. Emailed greetings, animated and with music, funny and serious, one-liners and in so many MBs—they all came as surely as Christmas came all aglow.

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With bold steps we welcome 2009. And because we shouldn’t be too serious and worried on the first day of the year, here is something for the wise and wishful. Write the following on your cell phone:

“Dis s a puzzle sent only 2 wise persons lyk u. After solving it, send the same puzzle to someone who needs to smile. Solve the puzzle on your cell phone: R+CAT+HOSE-RAT+SUN-CHOSE+MOON+I-NOON+GOAL+T-GOAT-U+E.”

Here’s one more to bewilder you. I found this on the Internet. The math wizards among us would know the why of this.

This math test could tell with 100% accuracy who your favorite person is. Please do not look at the list of choices before you’ve done the computation. Here goes:

Pick a favorite number from 1 to 9.
Now multiply that number with 3.
Add 3.
Again multiply with 3.
You will get a two-digit number. Add the two digits. The sum would be the number on the choice list that corresponds to your favorite person.

1. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo

2. Osama Bin Laden

3. Oprah Winfrey

4. Joe de Venecia

5. Barak Obama

6. Joma Sison

7. Nelson Mandela

8. Hillary Clinton

9. Me

10. Your parish priest/pastor/guru/teacher

A smiley for you! Yes, you. You should be your own Person of the Year, not in an egoistic way, but because you alone—with the help of those who matter, God among them—can make the most changes in your life and make things happen.

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But there must be more to all that is shaking up the world, there must be more beyond all that—the economic crisis, the wars, the violence, the hunger, the anger. We shouldn’t be swallowed up in despair. So hold on just a little longer to the afterglow of the Christmas season, savor just a little longer the Christmas sweetness that settled in your soul. We need all the peace inside us to see and be convinced that there is more to all that is happening.

It is light versus dark—literally—even as the new year is just beginning.

It had been bad piece of news after another if that is all we want to see. We cannot allow the bad news to erase the dreamy haze of the Christmas season. It shouldn’t snuff out the blaze that ushers in the New Year.

We must conserve the little peace we have inside us, harness whatever energy we have gained (not lost) during the holidays (not that it could be converted into electricity) for what is ahead. The elections are just a year away. Some look forward to it with hope for deliverance from this vale of tears, others with dread. The exercise could lead us further to the edge....

But what the heck. Let us welcome the new year with great expectation. Let us look for manifestations of hope.

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Jobs—this is what is worrying so many people all over the world. Batches of overseas Filipino workers are beginning to come home even before their work contracts have expired because their employers are closing shop. Finding work, earning from work, finding meaning in work are what occupy most minds these days.

I just pulled out Matthew Fox’s autographed book “The Reinvention of Work”. Written in the 1990s, it should address both those who live to work and those who work to live. If this book were printed during the Industrial Revolution, the world might have proceeded differently.

The book asks: “How many of us can really say that our work life is in balance with our personal life—that our values and desires are reflected in our daily vocation, that our personal life and professional life are integrated, or that we find satisfaction, not a crushing defeat of the spirit, in our workday existence? According to most polls and reports, very few of us do.”

Fox discusses work versus job: “Today close to one billion human beings are out of work…At the same time, in the whole industrial world, a large number of persons are overworked, they are, in the words of 13th-century German mystic Meister Eckhart, ‘worked’ instead of working, giving rise to the new addiction of workaholism.”

I cannot help thinking of many Filipinos in America who are holding down several jobs in order to give their families what they think is the best of America, meaning a nice home and consumer goods galore, a good education for their children.

Fox proposes a kind of work spirituality rooted in the interconnectedness of things created. There’s got to be a model other than the post-industrial one. The universe is a great work in itself, a great symphony, and when we find ourselves attuned to it and working in tune with it are we indeed fulfilled.

I wish you all a fulfilling year ahead. May the divine cosmic symphony permeate your soul.

And heaven and nature sing

Who would care to read the papers on Christmas Day? Still, write we must even while the un-Christmas noise out there threatens to drown out the silence in our souls. We hang on to the silent music deep down and refuse to be overwhelmed by the glitter and the excess.

Somewhere there, is Christmas. (I took some time for me to decide where to place that comma.) Those who wrote to say that my column on Christmas last week resonated with them, ay salamat. Here are some random thoughts that might fill those little spaces in your heart, in your memories, in your thoughts.

One of my favorite Christmas sounds is the sound of trumpets blaring to the tune of “and heaven and nature sing” from the carol “Joy to the World”. It just seems to fling heaven’s gates open and send me off to a cosmic Christmas that is inclusive, all-embracing, creation-centered.



Trumpets can suit all moods and moments. The grandness of Handel’s “Messiah”, the languorous final call of “Taps”, the headiness of Orff’s “Carmina Burana”, the soothing jazz sounds at nightfall—they all happen, thanks partly to the trumpets. But the explosion of trumpets with “and heaven and nature sing” always makes me soar in a different way.

It’s not just the sound. It is also the words. How many of us know all the four stanzas of “Joy to the World”? Too bad the Filipino version is not a translation and there is no mention of heaven and nature singing.

I surfed and learned that the lyrics of “Joy to the World” were written in 1719 by Isaac Watts (1674-1948), an Englishman and an ordained pastor. From Wikipedia: “The tune is the piec¬ing to¬ge¬ther of themes in Han¬del’s (1685-1759) Mes¬si¬ah found in the chor¬us and in the in¬stru¬ment¬al int¬er¬ludes in ‘Lift up your heads’ and the in¬tro¬duct¬ion and in¬ter¬ludes of the re¬ci¬ta¬tive ‘Com¬fort ye.’”

But the inspiration for the lyrics came from Psalm 98. This psalm must be familiar among religious because it is part of the Divine Office (daily prayers). It is also among the responsorial psalms recited at Mass. For those who have no time to peruse the Bible, here it is:

Sing a new song to the Lord, who has done marvelous deeds,
Whose right hand and holy arm have won the victory.
The Lord has made his victory known; has revealed his triumph for the nations to see,
Has remembered faithful love toward the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God.
Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth; break into song, sing praise.
Sing praise to the Lord with the hard, with the harp and melodious song.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn shout with joy to the King, the Lord.
Let the sea and what fills it resound, the world and those who dwell there.
Let the rivers clap their hands, the mountains shout with them for joy,
Before the Lord who comes, who comes to govern the earth,
To govern the world with justice and the people with fairness.

And heaven and nature sing! And nature could even defy nature as the prophet Isaiah said in his all-time favorite Christmas prophecy and ardent wish for our time and generation (Isaiah 11:6-9):

Then the wolf shall be a guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; The calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them. The cow and the bear shall be neighbors, together their young shall rest; the lion shall eat hay like the ox. The baby shall play by the cobra’s den, and the child lay his hand on the adder’s lair.


There shall be no harm, or ruin on all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be filled with knowledge of the Lord, as water covers the sea.

And I cannot help but think of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), a canonized Catholic saint, Benedictine abbess, preacher, writer, musician, mystic, scholar, scientist, environmentalist, healer. She was also a communicator of wisdom and knowledge.

For almost 800 years Hildegard was virtually unknown but in the 1980s her writings and songs began to emerge and interest in and awareness of her significance began to grow.

She coined the phrase “greening power (viriditas) and was first to view the universe as a cosmic egg. She offered a scintillating insight into the cosmos and its symphonic beauty.

Hildegard sings to us even today, and these lines from her are definitely a joy to the world as she sings of her vision of heaven and nature singing. How Christmas indeed.

O life-giving greenness of God’s hand,/ with which he has planted an orchard,/ You rise resplendent into the highest heavens,/ like a towering pillar./ You are glorious in God’s work…”


She hears God speaking to her. “I am the breeze that nurtures all things green./ I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits./ I am the rain coming from the dew/ that causes the grasses to laugh/ with the joy of life.”

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May I ask for your prayers for Margie Quimpo-Espino, fellow journalist and friend who edits a business section in the Inquirer. Margie suffered an aneurysm while on a media-related trip in India early this month.
She recently underwent an aneurysm-coiling procedure in a hospital in New Delhi and is recovering. Her husband Chet is there with her, praying day and night. Theirs is a very close-knit family. Prayers from countless friends and colleagues sustain them both during this difficult journey of faith in this season of joy and togetherness.

Please, Lord, bless Margie with the gift of healing.

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May you be joyful and triumphant in you quests this Christmas and the coming year. May heaven and nature sing in your heart.

Christmas-crossing the poverty line

I know people who are trying to have an “alternative Christmas” by doing away with the excessive external trimmings and carousing that daunt those who can’t keep up, by making quiet efforts to really reach out to those who are in pain or are extremely needy, not just during the Christmas season but beyond it.

But why call it “alternative” when that is what Christmas is supposed to be--a giving season? Not a mindless exchange-gifts season but a giving season. Not just among family, friends, colleagues and pesky gift collectors at the gate but with families and individuals who need a real boost in order to cross the poverty line.

What better gift than an opportunity for one family or one person to step over and cross the poverty line? It may come in the form of a little capital, a scholarship (you need not be the one to pay for it, but you could search for it), a new skill, a new road, a new market. Those with some power and influence can easily make things happen. How about that?

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Christmas Day is a week away and I make alive again the memory of a wondrous Christmas. One of the happiest Christmases I experienced as an adult was spent in a special place with very special people, in an atmosphere of simplicity and prayer. I remember the feel of the mountain air, the soft scent of the pine, and the soothing hum of the universe that wafted into my soul.

The December flowers were in full bloom, the hills were green and throbbing with life. The stars were out the night we gathered around the manger to sing hymns, and the sun rose gently from behind the hills on Christmas morning. The quiet and the peace overwhelmed me in a way I could not explain. I was filled with awe and wonderment.

I had experienced community--and communion. This is indeed Christmas, I thought then, as I pondered the beauty of its simplicity, as I gazed at the people I had come to love and cherish until today.

But that was long ago and far away and there would not be another Christmas like that again. That is, in the same place and circumstance and with the same people. But the memory lives on.

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But Christmases are not always pleasant for many.

If I were an extra-terrestrial, I would wonder why many earthlings seem troubled and harassed during the season they call Christmas, the season when millions all over the world commemorate the birth of the Child Jesus-- considered redeemer, messiah, Son of God, founder of Christianity, etcetera. Why do they celebrate the birth of Jesus in so many un-Jesus ways?

As an E.T. I would wonder why many people become suicidal during this season, why the sad feel saddest, the poor feel poorest, the down and out are tempted to find a bloody way out of this world.

Why do many act like fools, scurrying and hurrying until they drop dead because of exhaustion? Why do many people who call themselves Christians collect, extort, solicit and harass strangers for gifts? It is nowhere near the simplicity that surrounded the birth of the man they call Jesus.

And so it has come to pass...that Christmas is now a most cruel season. It excludes more than it includes. This is the time people feel worse than worst when they are at their worst. Meaning, the season aggravates whatever it is they are already suffering from. The poor feel poorest, the hungry feel hungriest, the lonely feel loneliest, the sad feel saddest, the abandoned feel like abandoning the world. Wounds bleed. Ask the rejected, the betrayed, the bereaved.

And I can’t help thinking now of those whose lives have recently been visited by violence and disasters.

This is because the Christmas season is supposed to be a season of joy and peace and plenty (?) and togetherness and sharing and reaching out. You don’t have one or all of the above during Christmas--you’re out, eat the dust. And so in trying to make it all happen so that Christmas would turn out to be “happy”, people pay the price with their health and sanity. Many suffer from the “Christmas syndrome”, which is something like a heart attack but which is not. It should be called the “Christmas rush syndrome” to differentiate it from the Christmas blues of the depressives and those who suffer from the winter-induced seasonal affective disorder in snow countries.

The media help dictate the ingredients of a happy Christmas. They conjure up images of what it should be--tables groaning with food, good looks, well-lit homes, gifts galore, complete families. If that is what it is, a happy Christmas seems to be beyond the reach of many.

It is partly their fault that they feel morose when they can’t have all the ingredients that they believe should be there for a Christmas to be really joyful.

And so you hear people sigh in the wake of the Christmas season, “Hay, nakaraos din.” Like, by the skin of their teeth, they survived. It is a hurdle for those who think they could hardly measure up. Nakaraos means they survived the shopping rush in the malls and tiangges, the traffic, preparing for the guests and the reunions, making both ends meet and most of all, the emptiness. They even survived the horrendous, distracted crowd in church and the priest’s boring homilies.

TV’s “Survivor” should do a season on Christmas.

Where has the real Christmas gone? Time and again I have always wanted to see a “Christmas Movement” that would encourage people to go back to where Christmas all began, to unlock the simplicity that it stood for and the joy that included all. The churches have been overtaken by the malls, they have not succeeded in drawing people back to the spirit of where it all began and inspiring them to live it. You just have to find the real Christmas yourself.

Claimants 1081's prize: So near, so far

Philippine Daily Inquirer/FEATUREs/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

MANILA, Philippines—They have won but where’s the prize? It is a breath away. So near and yet so far.

Despite victory in the courts, some 10,000 victims of human rights violations during the Ferdinand E. Marcos dictatorship remain empty-handed.

Four administrations after Marcos have not helped in dispensing justice to the victims and have instead stood in the way. For the final hurdle, lawmakers have only to sign the Human Rights Compensation Bill, but why the long delay?

“The Republic of the Philippines has succeeded in blocking the Marcos victims from the partial enforcement of a judgment they had won in US courts,” said former party-list Rep. Loretta Ann Rosales.

Rosales is chair of Claimants 1081, an organization of victims of abuses under the dictatorship. The figure referred to Marcos’ martial law proclamation.

Herself a victim-claimant, she was detained twice during the martial law years, tortured and sexually molested.

Tortured and waiting

Dead, dying, aging, sickly, poor. Many had waited for so long until time overcame them. Many of them are now senior citizens.

Hilda Narciso, 63, was mistakenly arrested and detained, tortured and raped repeatedly by soldiers in Davao City in 1983. Her case was nationally and internationally known.

Inday Olayer, 60, was detained in 1981 along with her husband Joseph Olayer. Soldiers put bullets between her fingers and pressed them hard in order to exact information from her. “For two years I could not use my hands and sign my name in front of authorities,” she recalls. “I was so traumatized.”

Her husband also took the blows. His head was dunked in a toilet bowl, he was made to lie on blocks of ice, electrocuted and was hit in the balls.

Peter Villaseñor, 50, a peasant organizer, was arrested in Bataan in 1982. He remembers: “I was tortured for nine days and nine nights. I was stripped naked and given the water torture. I was made to lie down and a wet cloth was placed over my face. They hung a bucket of water above my face and let the water drip on my face whenever I refused to answer. I would gasp for air, like I was drowning.”

Daisy Valerio, 58, and two sons, are among the families under Claimants 1081. Her husband, former priest Nilo Valerio, was killed by the military in Benguet in 1985. His body was never recovered.

Class action suit

Two months after Marcos fled to Hawaii in 1986, victims of human rights violations filed a class action suit against Marcos.

The move was based on a 200-year-old US Alien Tort Law that provides victims of despotic leaders the right to seek redress against these leaders in US courts as long as these leaders reside in US territory and are found guilty by US courts.

The suit was filed in the Hawaii Federal District Court on behalf of 9,539 victims of martial rule. In 1995, the victims won a final judgment from the court and were awarded $1.9 billion comprising $1.2 billion in exemplary damages and $700 million in compensatory damages.

In 1997, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court ruled to transfer $540 million in Marcos Swiss dummy deposits. These were to be placed in an escrow account in the Philippines and released on two conditions:

• That the Philippine government must obtain a final judgment in its own courts entitling it to the money.

• The government should compensate the victims who obtained the US judgment.

P472-M docket fee

To seek enforcement of the judgment in Philippine courts, the claimants filed a case in a Makati district court in 1997. They were shocked when they were asked to pay an exorbitant docket fee of P472 million.

They asked the Supreme Court to rule against this filing fee. Sadly, the tribunal sat on it for six years. The court moved only when the claimants elevated the matter to the United Nations Committee on Civil and Political Rights.

After six years, the court decided on a mere P410 filing fee instead of the P472 million. It was a long, long wait.

The UN Human Rights Committee issued a decision declaring the long wait “unreasonable, resulting in a violation of the authors’ rights.”

In 2007, the claimants’ counsel wrote the Philippine solicitor general attaching the UN decision and asking how the solicitor general could assist the victims in enforcing their judgment in Philippine courts. Again, a long delay.

Arelma case

Meanwhile, after nine appeals, the Hawaii court conducted a trial of a complaint against Merrill Lynch for allegedly holding Marcos assets in the name of Panamanian corporation Arelma Inc. In 2006, the court awarded the Arelma assets of $35 million to the claimants.

The Hawaii court ruled that while the $35-million Arelma assets would scarcely satisfy the $1.9 billion judgment, it had a symbolic significance.

But in 2006, the court granted the Presidential Commission on Good Government’s (PCGG) motion for a stay of the distribution of the $35 million to the victims.

The Supreme Court would later rule that neither the PCGG nor the Philippine republic could have access to the $35 million in Arelma. The Sandiganbayan must first prove that this is part of the forfeiture of a case which was finally ruled by the Supreme Court as ill-gotten.

The Arelma money, Rosales argues, cannot be considered a part of the Swiss deposits. It could go straight to the claimants, but the Philippine government has put so many blocks along the way.

The last hurdle is the passing of Human Rights Compensation Bill. Part of the Marcos ill-gotten wealth, or $1.9 billion, should go to the claimants.

Not all the recovered ill-gotten wealth should go to agrarian reform and therefore the agrarian reform law has to be amended.

The Philippine Senate has passed the bill. The House of Representatives has stalled and is sitting on it. The long wait is far from over.

‘Droits de l'homme’: World’s best kept secret

Yesterday was Human Rights Day, also the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The fervor for HR should not last for only one day. In the coming days, let us act, commemorate, celebrate. The Inquirer is starting a series today.

If, as an Amnesty International official once said, the UDHR is one of the world's best kept secrets, then human rights defenders are indeed an endangered species. “Best kept secret” because despite the 60-year-old declaration, rights are continuously being violated all over the world by those who either are not in on the “secret” or choose to pretend they know nothing about it.

I was at the 50th anniversary celebration in Paris 10 years ago in 1998. Allow me to wax nostalgic.

There we were, at the grand Palais de Chaillot, together with some 500 people from all over the world, attending the Human Rights Defenders Summit. It was there that the UDHR was unanimously adopted on a chilly December day in 1948.

There we were, at the same historic place, near the banks of the River Seine, across from the Eiffel Tower. Same time, same place, same near-zero degrees weather as it was in 1948. But the mood was far from somber. There was our 1998 generation, a generation that did not see the horrors of a world war but saw horrors of a different kind.

The biggies were there. Nobel Peace Prize winners: Tibet's Dalai Lama, Guatemala's Rigoberta Menchu, Argentina's Adolfo Esquievel, East Timor's Jose Ramos Horta and Bishop Ximenes Belo. Even Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi came out bigger than life on the video screen to deliver her message.

UN secretary general Kofi Annan and France's president Jacques Chirac delivered messages. Annan later received 10 million pledges for human rights collected by summit main convenor Amnesty International (itself a Nobel winner).

On the fun side there were the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman, Alanis Morisette, Axelle Red, Peter Gabriel and other groups rocking for droits de l'homme (human rights) at the huge Bercy stadium. The ever smiling Dalai Lama was the concert's curtain raiser and exhorter of the youthful audience who gave him a thunderous applause.

But most of all, there were the 500 or so not-so-famous human rights defenders who had long been deeply and quietly immersed amongst their people, who had suffered and paid the price for raising their voices to defend the voiceless. Mothers and widows, women's rights advocates, so many lawyers, a few journalists, NGO workers, academicians, social workers, grassroots leaders.

The Palais de Chaillot, venue of the Human Rights Defenders Summit was bursting with people of different colors, nationalities, faiths, professions and painful experiences.

(I have kept Air France's in-flight magazine which had, for its cover, the logo of the 50th anniversary and devoted many pages of its December issue to human rights. It's a collector's item that should be among the exhibits in 2048.)

The 50th anniversary gathering was actually a summit called “The Human Rights Defenders Summit” not “The Human Rights Victims Summit.”

But why were the defenders, and not the victims, the ones coming together? But who is victim, who is defender? Defenders end up as victims too. And many victims have risen up to become defenders themselves. I like the word defender because it projects energy and strength. Continuously projecting victimhood is projecting defeat and weakness.

What is a human rights defender? It is “any person, well-known or not, who acts alone, in a group or in an association to promote, implement, apply and conform with all the fundamental rights guaranteed under the UN Declaration of Human Rights.”

One of the aims of the summit then was “to defend the human rights defenders because, despite the efforts of the UN and governments over the last 50 years, the protection and support for defenders is still weak.” Defend the defenders, because their situation has never been as grave as it is today, draw attention to their isolation and the danger they face every day.

Taken up were six urgent topics, human rights in relation to: impunity, armed conflict, extreme poverty, women's rights, racism, protection and promotion of children's rights and racism, xenophobia and religious intolerance.

Ten years later, I ask, where are we now? I think of the scores of Filipino journalists who’ve been murdered in the past few years.

If you read the account by David Pitts on how the UN Declaration was drafted and signed 60 years ago, you'd be amazed that it saw the light of day. Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the drafting committee that included, among others, Charles Malik of Lebanon, P.C. Chang of China, John Humphrey of Canada and Rene Cassin of France. Chang had wanted something that “incorporate(d) the ideas of Confucius as well as Thomas Aquinas.”

UN member states at that time could not easily form a consensus on the rights of women and racial minorities, religious liberty, the point at which human life began, the extent to which freedom of speech should be protected, the right to dissent and economic and social rights. We're still at it, aren't we?

And the most serious disagreements, Pitts wrote, stemmed from the entirely different concepts of the West and the Soviet bloc of such human rights principles as freedom and democracy.

The Declaration, by the way, has no force of law, but it has inspired so many legally binding international covenants and agreements. It has survived. We must celebrate, and we must worker harder. I hope the next 40 years will be much better than the 60 that have passed.

Filipinos in Obama’s America

On the night of Nov. 4 when Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States, journalist and book author Benjamin “Boying” Pimentel took his eldest son to downtown Oakland where thousands of people were waiting for the officials results. They found people celebrating with cheers and tears. After more than 200 years, Americans had chosen a person of color to lead them forward.

“Pareng Barack: Filipinos in Obama’s America”, (Anvil) Pimentel’s latest book, is about Obama’s amazing rise to the presidency and, more importantly, about how Filipinos responded to his campaign and victory. “Often with excitement, sometimes with fear and dread,” Pimentel writes.

“Pareng Barack” is also about the Filipino journey in America, “how it has intersected, sometimes collided, with those of other communities, and how it has taken a dramatic turn as America enters a new era of anxiety and hope.”



This book came out a few weeks after Obama was elected but it didn’t take just a few weeks for Pimentel to write it. He had been pounding the streets and watching the groundswell. With or without Obama’s win or defeat this book could still stand alone to show those intersections and collisions that Pimentel describes. But Obama’s win provides Pimentel a starting point, and for Filipinos who chose America to be their home, it also offers landmarks on a cultural and historical landscape, that is, from there to here. Also a timeline from then to now.

This gem of a book is easy to read. It is an engaging journalistic read because there are real human faces, voices, names and places in it as only a seasoned journalist knows the importance of if one is to show proof of one’s point or analysis. This book is not the result of a survey but of a journalist’s walking the streets where stories unfold, where lives are lived.

“For Filipinos in America, it is a time of celebration and pride. For others, of concern, even fear.” This is how Pimentel describes the aftermath of the Nov. 4 elections that saw Democrat Obama win and Republican John McCain lose.

“Nevada had become a battleground state and Fran joined other Filipinos in the ground war to rally support for Obana. This meant going from house to house…It was while knocking on doors on one part of Reno that he came across one Pinoy…A Philippine flag was displayed in his garage…The young man was a registered Republican, and had never voted Democrat. But he said he was voting for Obama. ‘He speaks to everyone, and seems that he can reach across the aisle,’ he told Fran. ‘Obama is different from the rest.’

“But then there was a woman in her 30s whom Fran met on a Philippine Airlines flight during a short visit to the Philippines before the election. She had lived in the United States for about eight years, had been married, and had just become an American citizen…The woman had just mailed in her ballot—she voted for John McCain…Now that her daughters were about to join her in the United States, she wanted a ‘strong leader.’ But eventually she also admitted to Fran, she simply could not vote for a black man. ‘I just don’t trust them. Di ba sila yung laging nanggugulo? Aren’t they troublemakers? They’re so violent.’”

In the chapter “American in Living Color” Pimentel writes about how Nobel Prize winner for literature, Toni Morrison, a black woman, noted that many newcomers readily embraced American society’s long-held prejudices against blacks. He also shares what Asian American civil rights attorney Bill Lee told him: “Immigrant communities generally tend not to know the history and to buy into the biases and prejudices of the dominant group. Unfortunately, becoming American often means buying into the prejudices. They want to identify upward. They don’t want to identify with those at the bottom.”

Something like that fable about the fly that alights on a carabao and suddenly thinks he’s a carabao. (It’s better told in Filipino.)

But it’s not that way all the time. Pimentel digs into the “racial wedge” that Asian Americans occupy, that uncomfortable in-between mezzanine position where they are expected to be loyal to their superiors and demanding on those below.

Pimentel’s book also deals with other racial and ethnic groups as well. He writes, “Obama’s victory is significant for another important reason. With the steady growth of Latino and Asian communities, there will no longer be a racial or ethnic majority in the United States in less than 50 years. A biracial leader with a deep personal experience of life in the Third World, Obama, many hope, could prepare the nation for that coming change.”

“Lessons in Patriotism and Forgiveness” is a poignant chapter. Here Pimentel explores his experience as a Filipino whose father endured suffering during the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, and then reflects on his own encounter with Japanese-Americans who suffered ostracism and internment in the U.S.

In “From the I-Hotel to Powell Street” Pimentel revisits the bygone milieu of Carlos Bulosan (“America is in the Heart”) and enters into the world of the aging WW II Filipino veterans. Powell St. in San Francisco is where these veterans spend their winter years. I have been there myself and it’s really a tearjerker.

Toward the end Pimentel writes about his family and waxes sentimental. He muses: “In the end there were more people who were ready to move on, to break ground, to reimagine the United States, to redefine America. It will be Obama’s face and voice that my sons will see and hear on television and on the Internet over the next four years, maybe longer. It will be Pareng Barack who will play a critical role in defining my sons’ future in America.”

Fishers and fish

Nov. 21, Friday last week, was World Fishers Day. How many people in this country, fishers included, knew that? This nation of islands floating between azure skies and azure sea is home to fishers and fish. Yet, among the poorest of the poor among us are the small fishers who subsist on their daily catch that are dwindling by the day.

Those of us who try to live a meatless life or with little meat in our diet extol the greatness of the fish. The gourmets among us know the different flavors and textures in a fish head which non-Asians miss out on because they have a horror for detached body parts.

Fishers and fish were often mentioned and given symbolic meaning in biblical times. Several of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen, Peter among them. Jesus sent them off to the world with the words, “I will make you fishers of men.”

There are more instances when fish, fishers and fishing were in the heart of the bible stories—the multiplication of the loaves and fishes; the coin in a fish’s mouth that Jesus said should be sufficient for tax, and which Peter went to look for as he was told; the resurrected Jesus standing on the shore asking, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”; then the casting of the nets and the drawing in of a huge catch. So many fishing scenes. Peter, the first Pope, was a fisherman.



The fish became the underground sign of the persecuted early Christians. The Greek word ichthys (fish) is still very much on the scene today. You see it on bumper stickers and pendants. I have a bronze pendant with the Greek letters on it to remind me of the weekly underground (or underwater) Church publication “Ichthys” where I was involved. (Okay, I was often driver and courier.) And my elders in the editorial board at that time were all women—brave nuns who never ran out of subversive stuff to publish.

Their names I reveal: Sr. Emelina Villegas ICM, Sr. Teresita Agustines ICM, Sr. Clare Samonte SFIC, Sr. Helen Graham MM, Sr. Pat Startup MM and the late Sr. Christine Tan RGS whose name is now etched on the Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument of Heroes).

So, you see, there is something great about fish and fishing. And there is a lot, aside from climate change and environmental destruction, that plague the fisherfolk today.

Last Friday, World Fishers Day, members of Kilusang Mangingisda (KM) picketed the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Agriculture and the Asian Development Bank to protest against policies promoting fisheries trade liberalization.

Last week’s caravan and protest by the fisherfolk were meant to highlight their disappointed over “the Philippine negotiators’ refusal to sign on to the position of NAMA-11 against mandatory sectoral talks in the World Trade Organization (WTO), even though it is clear that any sectoral talks would likely result in bigger tariff cuts than those prescribed in the NAMA tariff binding formula that developing countries already find unacceptable.”

NAMA stands for non-agricultural market access and NAMA-11 refers to the 11 developing nations, the Philippines included, that are supposed to stand up to the developed nations in the WTO talks.

KM fully agrees with the NAMA-11 statement that eliminating tariffs in a range of sectors would be contrary to the Doha Round’s development mandate which calls for developing countries to have smaller tariff cuts than those of rich nations in accordance with the principles of special and deferential treatment and less than full reciprocity.

KM chair Roland Vibal said that steep tariff cuts under the NAMA-binding formula, as well as further tariff cuts in future sectoral talks on fisheries only validate the position of KM that the fisheries sector should be excluded from the WTO negotiations.

Sadly, the NAMA-11 statement that KM supported was not signed by the Philippines’ negotiators. KM denounced the trade and agriculture departments for their leading roles in the free trade negotiations in the WTO and in the regional and bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) especially with China, Japan and the European Union. Vibal said that these negotiators “are responsible for exposing the fledgling local industries to unfair competition from the heavily subsidized goods of rich countries and for risking the jobs and livelihoods of millions of Filipino workers and small producers.”

KM has stressed that besides the WTO and FTAs, international institutions like the World Bank and ADB have served as instruments of investment liberalization in the fisheries sector. Over the years, KM pointed out, these institutions have promoted investments in intensive shrimp aquaculture for export through massive loans amounting to billions of dollars in the Philippines and other developing countries.

These investments, KM added, have caused the dislocation of artisanal fishers in coastal fishing grounds, and exacted other social and environmental costs, and yet the export profits from shrimp aquaculture have not trickled down to the host coastal communities.

Several weekends ago, I snorkeled in Coron, Palawan and there came face to face with fish of all colors—bright blue, bright yellow, total black, transparent white, name it—and the menacing black sea urchins that guarded the corals. I couldn’t help thinking of the poor subsistence fishers of this country who do not have the luxury to behold such beauty.

KFR in Zambasulta

The kidnapping for ransom (KFR) of veteran development worker Merlie “Milet” Mendoza in Basilan last Sept. 15, and her release on Nov. 14 (after ransom was paid) was the latest in a series of KFR cases in the Zambasulta (Zamboanga, Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-tawi) area.

The kidnappers, believed to be from the Abu Sayyaf Group of bandits, have seized all kinds and any one they fancied. Priests and religious, tourists, media practitioners, businessmen, students, development and humanitarian aid workers. Blood has been shed, lives have been lost. It’s all for the money. Terror and cruelty are their main weapons. Worse, they even gloat about their religious beliefs.

That development workers are not spared, as in the case of Mendoza and her fellow worker Esperancita Hupida, is something not unexpected. The bandits-terrorists spare no one. Now non-government organizations (NGOs) have to think many times about sending their workers to the dangerous places where these evil elements stalk their prey.

These NGOs are focusing on poverty-stricken areas in order to improve people’s lives. Poverty breeds criminality. Addressing the roots is key. But what do well-meaning workers get in return? Mendoza, a veteran development who used to work with Assisi Foundation and Tabang Mindanaw projects, was in Basilan to look into a water project when she and Hupida were seized. Mendoza is a consultant for Mercy Malaysia and the Asian Disaster Relief Network.



And so the time has come for NGOs and POs (people’s organizations) to face their dilemmas and assess the grim landscape.

Even before Mendoza was released, groups and individuals working in Zambasulta had already planned to do something. For starters, they put together data, observations, problems, recommendations and plans of action.

“Kidnap for Ransom: A National Security Issue, Masakit sa Pamilya, Pambansang Problema”, a forum, was planned by families and friends of kidnap victims as well as stakeholders while Mendoza was still in captivity. It was held on the morning after Mendoza was released. (Hupida was released two weeks earlier.) Participants were jubilant Mendoza was free but they were also aware that it was because money changed hands. Who will be the next?

As presented by the stakeholders, kidnapping in Zambasulta has sharply increased in the last few years. This year, 2008, 33 persons were kidnapped. Of these, 29 were freed because ransom was paid. Fr. Rey Roda OMI of the Notre Dame of Tabawan Hish School in Tawi-tawi was tortured and brutally killed when he resisted.

This year, an estimated P50 million in ransom money has been handed over to kidnappers. I believe Brig. Gen Mohammad Nur A. Askalani, chair of the ad hoc joint action group of the Office of the Presidential Assistant on the Peace Process, when he says that all but one of kidnap cases in Zambasulta these many years involved payment of ransom.

Other 2008 KFR victims are a businessman, three media practitioners, five Baselco field employees, two barangay officials, three persons who were on their way to Lamitan, Basilan, nurse Preciosa Feliciano, Hupida, Mendoza and 19-year-old nursing student Joed Pilanga who is still with his captors.

KFR groups have a well-organized network. They prefer to target ordinary civilians to avoid media attention and to get ransom payments fast. But Mendoza’s captors discovered she wasn’t ordinary and upped their demand.

A typical transaction is done through text messages demanding “down payments” and “entrance fee” otherwise the captives would be harmed. Families have no choice but to raise the ransom money.

Some of the ransom calls have been traced to cell cites Metro Manila and some KFR operations have links with local political personalities and could sometimes be related to upcoming elections.

What have families and stakeholders done so far? Victims’ families have organized themselves. They have held dialogues with the military and civil society groups (CSOs). Certain groups have donated high-resolution images of areas where victims might be held. There has been sharing of information among families and the authorities.

But stakeholders have noted “gaps”. Local authorities hesitate to get involved for fear of rido (clan feuds) or retaliation from kidnappers and their relatives. There is lack of coordination among law enforcement agencies in Zambasulta. Rescue operations have become complicated because of the presence of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). KFR groups tend to bait the military and the MILF to engage in a shooting war.
There are recommendations, both immediate and long-term. A “mapping out” of KFR areas needs to be done in order to determine the community, family and political ties of KFR groups. Respected leaders and elders in the critical areas must be identified so that they could help in prevention and negotiations.

On the part of the NGOs and other stakeholders, they are now coming up with a common stand of no ransom (easier said than followed). But prevention is still an important weapon. Warning systems must be put in place. Gathering of information on kidnappers from released victims could add to the database. Local communities where KFRs were spawned must be empowered prevent the growth of the bad seeds.
Families and victims of KFR need all the support to pursue their cases in court. They have a lot to learn from the Chinese-Filipino community that have banded together to fight KFR in the urban areas in and outside the courts.

Without resorting to vigilante-ism, concerned citizens and likely victims of KFR in critical areas, must let KFR practitioners realize that the end of the road is near.

Going organic, better late than later

What a surprise to learn that the government has gotten serious about pushing organic fertilizers and organic food production. This is indeed a major policy shift. I heard bells ringing and farm animals rejoicing and I imagined the citrusy, earthy smell of composting matter. Yes, all that and suddenly feeling the peace of wild things that Wendell Berry, prophet of rural living, spoke about.

The skeptic may view this government move as turning the public attention away from the raging multi-million fertilizer scam which is one of toxic-est this country has ever seen. One journalist was murdered because of this and the brains have yet to be brought to justice.

Whatever its motives, the Department of Agriculture (DA) could be but right to push organic. Can it sustain the campaign? How far will it go on the long and winding road? Agriculture secretary Arthur Yap who projects himself as a non-nonsense agri-crat should better put organic fertilizer where his press pronouncements are. And we better like this guy.



I know many private individuals, non-government organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs) that have long been practicing organic, sustainable agriculture with absolutely no help from the government. They battled the odds and succeeded, and with great results to show. They are heroes in my book. But it meant double efforts on their part, not to mention unsure yields and markets at the start. Still they kept on and took the risk, because they knew it was good for the people and the planet. The easy way would have been to stick to the toxic.

As one forum on productivity I attended recently stressed, one must always bear in mind the three Ps—people, planet and, not to forget, profit. Something good for the people and the planet should be profitable, sustainable, enduring. And why not?

The latest news in the Inquirer (“’Go Organic’ campaign launched with P20M” by Amy R. Remo, 11/6/08) is that the DA is allocating “an initial P20 million to start a program promoting the extensive use of organic fertilizers and encouraging local farmers to produce safe and healthy food crops.”

That could have been front page news but the Barack Obama presidential triumph pushed aside everything else. The story on organics sure was good news but the P20 million made me gasp. What a pittance, I thought. The fertilizer scam was in the vicinity of P728 million which was supposed to be in fertilizer subsidies for farmers. Here was yet another case of the magsasaka turning into magsasako holding empty bags.
This crime against the farmers is for the books. Ask, why are our food producers among the hungriest? Former agriculture undersecretary Joc-joc Bolante must now spill the beans or he would be fodder for Yap’s organic fertilizer program sooner than he thinks. He must—no matter who gets hurt—release the toxic from his system, or else.

The ‘go organic’ news is not only good news for the farmers, it is also good news for the organic fertilizer producers who took the road less travelled by producing something not mainstream. Many years ago I did a long magazine feature on an amazing organic fertilizer factory in Bulacan, where the organic stuff for composting came mainly from homes and markets, not from farm organic waste.

It was amazing to watch the whole process—from the smelly garbage bins to the hauling to the composting, to the packing to the marketing. I should visit that composting facility again. A concerned balikbayan started it almost single-handedly, with his green-friends cheering him on.

For the organic program, the DA, with its agency Bureau of Soils and Water Management, had a signing ceremony and with local governments and civil society groups like the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement and the La Liga Policy Institute. The program is called Organic Fields Support Program. Pilot sites in Luzon have been identified and 600 farmers are supposed to get hands-on training on System of Rice Intensification (SRI), organic and nature fertilizer production. (I wrote about SRI some years ago and it is indeed worth trying.)

One-hectare learning farms—either government- or privately-owned—will be used for the “Tamang Abono” process which uses rice straws and other farm wastes. On these sites, farmers will go through “experiential learning”.

Organically grown food is now finding a niche in regular markets. But I still go out of my way to patronize the small, brave innovative stores where these are sold at competitive prices.

What is organic? Here are some standards as applied to field crops (source: IRRI website): 1. No synthetic or artificial chemical pesticides and fertilizers have been used, 2. Soil fertility is maintained through natural processes such as growing cover crops and/or the application of composted manure and plant wastes, 3. Crops are rotated in fields to avoid growing the same crop year after year in the same field, 4. Alternate (non-chemical forms) of pest control are used to manage insects, diseases and weeds—that is, beneficial insects to prey on pests, mulches to suppress weeds, etc.

There is also a way to grow pigs the natural and healthy way on soft ground (no smell, little water for washing, only farm-made feeds) which several NGO friends of mine are now practicing. Their pigs grow lean but strong. “Herb-baboy”, they call them. (Send email and I will give you the numbers to contact for learning natural farming.)

Sec. Yap should now produce how-to manuals either on-line or as hard copy with illustrations and in several Filipino languages. A nationwide marketing strategy should also be put in place.
What a happier place on earth we would have.

We’re only hungry

No, we’re not starving to death, we’re only hungry.

The Philippines is again prominent on the hunger map. We landed fifth (or among the top 10) in Gallup International’s survey results on the world’s hungriest. Released on World Food Day last month, the results didn’t hit the news until recently.

It is said that very few people die of starvation. According to Bread for the World (Brot fur die Welt or BW), a Church-related development agency that has worldwide reach including in the Philippines, only a small percentage of hunger deaths are caused by starvation. Most hunger-related deaths are the result of chronic undernutrition, which weakens the body's ability to ward off diseases prevalent in poor communities. Most hungry people have some food, but not enough food or enough of the right kinds of food.

And so when people actually starve to death—because no food is available—the cause is primarily political, not environment-related. In North Korea, BW notes, untold millions starved because of the government's unwillingness to give up on failed economic policies. In Sudan, millions are threatened with starvation because of an ongoing military conflict that devastated the country's ability to produce food and because the government restricts the flow of emergency relief.


In its survey, Gallup asked over 58,000 people from 55 countries the question: “Have there been times in the last 12 months when you and/or your family have not had enough to eat?” “Have not had enough to eat” means a person needed more but there was no more. That translates into hunger caused by absence of food because there was no money for food, there was no way to produce food, there wasn’t food available or coming from any source, food supply was being blocked, etc.

Four in 10 Filipinos (40%) told the pollsters that in the past year they “often or sometimes” lacked food. (The survey sample in the Philippines was 1,000.) The “top 10” hungriest are Cameroon (55%), Pakistan (53%), Nigeria (48%), Peru (42%), Philippines (40%), Bolivia (35%), Guatemala (35%), Ghana (32%), Russia (23%) and Mexico (23%).

I looked at the Gallup website for more details and I could see that Africa is clearly the place where food was most lacking. Three countries in Africa, four in Latin America, two in Asia and one from Eastern/Central Europe showed up on top of the hunger poll.

Here are some hunger facts from BW: Of the 6.6 billion people of this world, 923 million are hungry. Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes. According to the most recent Food and Agriculture Organization estimates, the number of hungry people in the world has increased by 75 million. Rising food prices have hit Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia/Pacific the hardest. In these two regions the number of hungry people has increased by 24 million and 41 million respectively. The latest FAO report warned that "meeting the internationally agreed hunger-reduction goals in the few years remaining to 2015 is becoming an enormous challenge."

Hunger is often discussed in statistical terms or seen in the global or national context that we sometimes forget how it really feels on the ground. Only the very poor know what hunger is in the most physical sense—as an intense need for food, as weakening of the body because of the lack of it. In the hierarchy of needs of human beings, food is on top. Physical hunger/thirst is the first need that must be addressed.

When hunger is discussed in relation to poverty, it is often used interchangeably with malnutrition, starvation and famine. But these are four different stages and situations. Surely the Philippines is not experiencing massive starvation and famine but prolonged hunger can eventually take its toll. On the young especially.

Experts could discuss hunger till they get hungry but only the truly needy hungry know what it is like. The non-hungry discuss the politics and economics of hunger. The spiritually inclined speak about prayer as a hunger. The health buff watches out for that pang, that wicked craving.

The hunger of the poor is different. It is accompanied by anxiety. It is not simply feeling something in the stomach that’s gone empty or humihilab ang tiyan. Indeed there is some acidic turbulence in a stomach that’s gone empty for long periods but real hunger is more than hilab.

When the poor are constantly feeling physiological hunger in the absence or lack of food, it is not just the glucose level that is sending distress signals, their bodies are also screaming for the wide array of nutrients they have been deprived of for long periods.

And so today I am attending two roundtable forums/workshops on poverty/hunger-related issues. The one organized by the Asia-Europe People’s Forum will tackle the question “What is to be done to protect the people in the midst of crisis: Firming up of proposals”. It will tackle “what’s wrong and what’s right” about subsidies (rice, cash, agricultural production) and pump-priming through infrastructure spending. It will also tackle “employment on demand” and how it could happen, generating public revenues for social protection program, safeguarding the life savings of Filipinos, etc.

The other gathering is organized by the Philippine Social Enterprise Network (a network of 37 NGOs), Initiative for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services and SharePeople, a Netherlands-based group. The theme “Boosting an Economy Under Pressure”, will deal with how social enterprises could soften the blow on the most vulnerable sectors.

May all this brainstorming bear fruit.

The people’s agenda

The 7th Asian Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) held in Beijing two weeks ago came up with resolutions and recommendations that were sent to the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) of heads of state and policy makers who also held their gathering in Beijing a week later. I was at AEPF—the people’s version—which had for its theme “Social and Ecological Justice” and which preceded ASEM.

The final version of the 2008 AEPF resolutions have been sent to ASEM and I hope the leaders and policy makers who attended ASEM would take heed. After all, AEPF, since its inception 14 years ago, has been issuing warnings against neo-liberalism, globalization and the like. With the Sept. 2008 financial melt-down that changed the world, there is reason for the smart alecks of finance to heed voices from the underside.

AEPF consists of social movements from Europe and Asia with networks in communities, organizations and individuals committed to working for a just and equal world. AEPF’s “people’s agenda” is based on four fundamental principles”: the promotion of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights; the promotion of environmentally, socially and economically sustainable patterns of development; greater economic and social equity and justice (including equality between women and men); and the active participation of civil society organizations (CSO) in democratic life and decision-making process of their countries.

With the current global financial crisis affecting everyone on this planet, AEPF is urging leaders to give special attention to the poorest, the excluded and the marginalized.


The call is to use the opportunity presented by the current financial and political crises to put in place an alternative, repeat, an alternative financial architecture and infrastructure that will promote and enable a “more equitable, carbon neutral and just global economic system, reclaiming national development policy rights and empowering working people. Financial institutions and financial decision-making must become truly accountable and transparent.”

The resolutions are grouped into 1)social and economic rights, 2)finance, 3)taxation, 4)public spending and investment, 5) environment, 6)participatory democracy and human rights, and 7)peace and security.

Given the limited space, I can only highlight a few resolutions.

One of the calls related to social and economic rights is “respect the right to food and healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods that protect biodiversity.” The melamine scare spawned in China’s food industry is indeed a wake-up call.

I was in the well-attended workshop on food security and food sovereignty and I managed to put in my voice on behalf of the fisherfolk (because land-based food production seemed to get all the attention). Given that cue, Pablo Gonzales of Kilusang Mangingisda found his voice and called attention to the plight of the fisherfolk who are among the most neglected sectors in the Philippines.

With that intervention, the word fisherfolk found its way into the resolutions. “Food producers and fisherfok should have access to and control over the means of production (land, seeds, water, appropriate technology). There must be full recognition of the rights and role of women in food production.”

With many women’s CSO present that line on women and food was bound to find its way in. But just as important is the “implementation of agrarian reform programs, strengthening local food production and consumption, diversification, controls on agribusiness and decreasing dependence on international markets, and support small holder agriculture and sustain peasant farmers and indigenous communities.”

And because of the current food crisis, included too is the call for “a moratorium on grain and food-based agro-fuel production.”

Finance and public spending and investment were much discussed topics among participants who stayed up late nights to hear out one another and the experts as well. Here are some resolutions:

“Create people-based banking institutions and strengthen existing popular forms of lending based on mutuality and solidarity; institutionalize full transparency within the financial system through the opening of the books to the public, to be facilitated by citizen and worker organizations; introduce parliamentary and citizens’ oversight of the existing banking system.

“Redirect government spending from bailing out bankers to guaranteeing basic incomes and social security…invest massively in improved energy efficiency, low carbon emitting public transport, renewable energy and environmental repair; introduce incentives for products produced for sale closest to the local market.”

As to the environment, there is a call to: “Develop decentralized, renewable energy sources to combat climate change and contribute to sustainable development. Implement legislation that will support all citizens in reducing their energy consumption. Stop the development of carbon trading and other environmentally counter-productive techno-fixes, such as carbon capture and sequestration, agrofuels, nuclear power and ‘clean coal’ technology.”

There is a lot more on the environment and the other six main issues. Policy makers and legislators could find leads in the AEPF7 document by accessing its website. There is a lot to be done to give those words a human expression.

This All Souls and All Saints weekend is a special time to remember the dead, especially those who gave up their lives for the truth. I remember my fellow journalists who raged against the dying of the light and pushed their pens to the edge so that this benighted country may emerge closer to the light. Their passing may have left as diminished in a way but their courage continues to light our way in the wilderness.

The view from the underside

Beijing — As I said last week, although the theme of the 7th Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) is “Social and Ecological Justice”, there was no escaping the current global financial crisis that began in the posh financial enclaves of the world and in the brains of its overpaid architects in expensive suits.

And so even with 33 workshops on different crucial topics, the AEPF Asian and European participants spent night hours outside of the workshops deciphering this financial meltdown.

We called it “Beijing Nights”. Anyway, there was no escaping for a night in town because the venue—sprawling Dragon Spring Hotel with its lovely willow trees and lagoons—was outside the city. Beijing Nights meant there was work to be done in the session rooms and bottomless tea.

AEPF, held every two years, is like an overture to the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) of heads of state. It’s the people’s version, and resolutions arrived at here are sent to ASEM for state leaders to consider when they meet a week later. Will they seriously listen now?

In Helsinki in 2006, the AEPF thinkers-doers and worried civil society delegates already warned about unbridled neo-liberalism. The Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 was not to be forgotten. There was a lot of discussion about free trade agreements and globalization. A Filipino professor gives this layman’s definition of the much discussed fount of evil called neo-liberalism: “A night watchman’s concept of the state, it means privatization, deregulation, liberalization, with minimal state intervention in the economy.”



AEPF seeks to defend the weakest Asian economies and to seek alternatives to the Asian-Europe free trade. But in Beijing there were other issues to tackle as well—peace, alternative energies, climate change, food security and food sovereignty, water, foreign debt…

The handwriting had been on the wall. Suddenly the world changed in September 2008. The financial behemoths crumbled to the ground.

As one AEPF organizer said, quoting an old Chinese saying, “The sky is high and the emperor is far.” But the sky has its limits, she added, and the emperor is gone. And one Chinese speaker said that crisis in Chinese means both danger and opportunity. Now we must find our way out together. Regional formations is one solution, it was suggested. It is now clear that the people must not leave everything to the state and that civil society must play a central role.

One of the awaited speakers, the Philippines’ Dr. Walden Bello of the Focus on the Global South and Freedom from Debt Coalition asked rhetorically, “Is it greed?” The answer is yes. It is also because of lack of regulation. He also hinted at overproduction.

Now we will be forced to look into agriculture and reinvigorating it, Bello said, and the industrialist, anti-agriculture paradigm must be reversed.

Malaysian Dr. Charles Santiago, an AEPF stalwart who heads the Monitoring Sustainability of Globalization and now a member of parliament, gave a sweeping view of the financial crisis from the underside. (I could email it to those who want the whole thing.) Excerpts:

“The high priest of free market ideology Alan Greenspan, the former Chair of the US Federal Reserve for 18 years, in his book ‘Age of Turbulence’ heaped praise on the magic of financial markets and criticized as foolish those who called for greater regulation…In fact he asked ‘Why do we wish to inhibit the pollinating bees of Wall Street?’

“One year into the publication of the book, world financial markets have been gripped with panic…Global stock markets have hit rock bottom and are in a free fall. Wall Street lost its top five investment banks. The US Congress passed a $700-billion rescue package fearing that the US financial system might collapse and it constitutes the biggest US government intervention in history…

“The Chairmen of the failed Lehman Brothers is reported to have received about $484 million in various kinds of compensation even when the company was in trouble. In fact the captains of industry continue to cheat and plunder because they do not pay for the crisis. The victims are workers who might be out of job and who might have lost all savings. This is your classic socialism for the rich and free market poverty for the poor.
“What is peculiar about the 2008 financial crisis is that it is taking place alongside a food, energy and an ecological crisis. (I)t humbled the world’s economic powers. They are asking developing countries like China to help solve the credit crisis through coordinated interest rate cuts…

“But if we are to seriously combat the current system, if we are to offer comprehensive and not piecemeal alternatives, then it is also vital to look below the surface—beyond even today’s pressing financial, food and ecological crisis—and understand the deeper processes that are at work… (Here he goes into detail.)

“It should be clear to all of us that the very developments that are supposed to reinvigorate capital are actually the sources of catastrophic crises. And it is at the very moment of crisis that the artificial separation of economics and politics collapses before our eyes… Governments, regional organizations, international institutions like the IMF and World Bank this past weekend—all scramble in unseemly haste to bail out their benefactors through subsidies for the rich. How ironic that the ‘free markets’ are today totally dependent on state intervention…

“Meanwhile, it is clear that the social costs of stabilization are being borne largely by working people…it seems to me that the scale of the crisis and the popular outrage today provide an historic opening for the renewal of the kind of radical politics that advances a genuine alternative to capitalism….”

Asia and Europe meet in Beijing

Beijing--Here we are together again, this time in Beijing, for the Asia-Europe Peoples’ Forum 7 (AEPF7). This is a follow-up of AEPF6 in Helsinki in 2006.

The last time I was in Beijing was 24 years ago. (I was in Nanjing last year.) In 1984 our group was hosted by the Chinese government and we were toured around several major cities for two weeks. Most Chinese people were still wearing the standard green or blue Mao suits and Mao caps with the red star then. I still have those but I didn’t bring them with me for wearing here in chilly Beijing or I’d look stupid or mistaken for a leftist “G&D” in a time warp.

Non-government and civil society organizations (CVOs) that are non-state and non-corporate from Asia and Europe are gathered here for this year’s forum theme: “For Social and Ecological Justice”. AEPF is dedicated to increasing understanding and solidarity between the peoples of Asia and Europe and to promoting harmony, peace and development of the two regions.



AEPF usually precedes by a few days the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) of heads of state. AEPF aims to bring the people’s voices from the ground, so to speak, to the rulers of Asia and Europe. ASEM would be to Asia and Europe as APEC is to Asia-Pacific and the US. One of AEPF’s aims is to create alternatives to ASEM’s “neo-liberalist agenda”.

Created in 1996, AEPF has had forums every two years that paralleled the ASEM summit. The last two were in Vietnam and Finland. The forums are meant to give a venue for CVOs in Asia and Europe to discuss issues that affect their respective regions. (Not to confuse this with AEBF or Asia-Europe Business Forum.)

Asian and European CVOs have called for more civil society participation in ASEM but this is not happening. These groups have had to make their own parallel gathering in order to call attention to issues on the ground. Coming out together in a big way calls the attention of world leaders and decision-makers. The Philippines has a good representation in AEPF, they are the non-communist left mostly, and why not, the Philippines is the NGO/civil society hub of Asia.

As a bi-regional network, AEPF has indeed opened a new chapter in people-to-people relations and among CVOs in Asia and Europe. Socio-economic and political experts from both regions have recognized the significance of intergovernmental relations and concerted responses to issues.

Besides strengthening linkages in these two regions, AEPF had made lobby visits to ASEM member countries to bring up the Asian financial crisis and call for an Asia Monetary Fund, European development cooperation and the EU-Latin American regulation.

AEPF had also done research on the impact of economic instruments such as the Investment Promotion Action Plan and the Trade Facilitation Action Plan developed by ASEM.

There had been exchanges on privatization of water utilities in Asian cities and the involvement of European companies. The reconciliation process in the Korean peninsula and security issues had also been discussed in the past.

The AEPF network has been expanded with the inclusion of Vietnamese groups and requests from Chinese groups for inclusion. Well, we’re in Beijing now.

AEPF bewails the “narrow economic focus” of the ASEM process that results in the “severe marginalization” of key concerns such as human rights, equitable development, democratization and environmental protection. Government-civil society dialogue has yet to be concretized.

AEPF sees EU-Asia relations to be in an interesting stage. Both are seeking positions in the global trade and the geo-political state of affairs. For EU, it is the inclusion of new countries, deepening integration and major constitutional issues.

In Asia, things continue to unfold. There is the restructuring of the labor market, migration, deregulation and privatization of public services. Asia also hopes to be a fully integrated region with the establishment of East Asian Community modeled after the EU.

The question: How united could East Asia be with its “patchwork of political discord, territorial conflict and economic equality”? Asia has much to learn from the EU experience.

AEPF’s long-term goal is to establish itself as a leading forum for advancing a critical understanding of Asia-Europe relations through research excellence, policy formulation and campaigning. “Critical mass” is important if it is to sustain its interregional connectivity, expertise and collaboration. It hopes “to develop into a hub of networks with genuine national and international significance leading to multilateralism from below.”

AEPF’s target groups from below are trade unions, peasant and farmers organizations, food sovereignty networks, environmental movements, human rights and development groups, women’s movements, indigenous peoples’ movements, peace movements, debt and trade justice campaigns, academics and students. Throw in the media, parliamentarians, policy makers in government, and ASEM-related institutions. It’s a very potent brew.

Among the topics being discussed in this year’s forum are migrant labor, anti-terrorism policies, alternative energy policies, religious fundamentalism, climate change, arms trade, local governance, HIV-AIDS, the disabled, millennium development goals, intercultural dialogue so many more. I have a difficult time choosing where I should be.

Deliberations, discussions and debates are still going on among the stakeholders. I am waiting for the resolutions and the action plans.

‘Isang bagsak’ for Oca

My heart broke that I couldn’t be present at the Oct. 3 fund-raising evening for Oscar D. Francisco (Oca to his friends) but I told myself that I will do my part to help him. The affair was held at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani (Monument of Heroes).

Oca’s name is not about to be etched on the black granite wall at Bantayog where the names of martial law heroes and martyrs are etched. Oh no. Oca is alive is not about to go into the night. With the prayers and help of his friends, he will get well and again serve communities in the Oca style of bursting energy, intensity and, most of all, laughter.

Oca, hang in there.



Pilgrim of change, social reformer, development activist. Oca is all those and more. With his verve, vigor, vision, intelligence and gift for communication, Oca could have made it to the big league of the so-called financially successful. But Oca, although not poor, chose to work among the poor and wretched of this earth.

Oca is seriously ill with diabetes and other related ailments. More than a month ago, Oca developed a serious infection that almost cost him his legs. Repeated medication to address his declining health led to kidney failure. Dialysis was the only option to remove the unwanted substances in his body and cleanse his blood.

Oca is now undergoing dialysis twice a week which costs his family a whopping P100,000 a month. His wife Edna and children, one of them a doctor of medicine, know how heavy this is for the family.

Oca’s condition has curbed his mobility and made him vulnerable to other threatening ailments. This means limiting his crucial interventions in projects and movements that benefit the “PDO”. For babes in the woods, PDO was part of activists’ jargon. It means poor, deprived and oppressed. I don’t hear that often anymore.

For years Oca worked sans salary or with little material compensation. He was always busy out there. He could be tapped at moment’s notice gratis et amore. He was great at mobilizing people, facilitating conferences and workshops and bringing life to boring meetings.

With his great speaking voice and Spanish features, Oca could easily blend with the well-heeled, but no, he chose the downtrodden to be his companions in the journey. Oh, but he knew how to have fun and could easily get people involved in merrymaking such as karaoke singing and ballroom dancing in his new base in the Visayas. Although Oca travelled to many remote places in the country he was based in Luzon most of his life.

Whenever Oca was in town and joined the regular potluck dinners (at Maring Feria’s, where else) of former Nassa (National Secretariat of Social Action) church workers, we would always ask Oca for a “nat-sit”.

The letter of appeal written by my “ex-Nassa” friends Mano and Tess describes Oca as “a critical instrument in the building of alliances between the included and the excluded in our society, a crucial hand in coalition building, and a determined reformer and bridge builder between civil society and the state. His service can be traced to his Student Catholic Action days, his role as Justice and Peace coordinator of Nassa (of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines), his stewardship of various foundations and NGOs and his clear and participatory leadership within the National Anti-Poverty Commission.”

Oca is stubbornly committed to this country and its people. Those of us who have known him for decades know his inner strength. Oca’s case is not hopeless. He just crossed over the threshold of 60. As soon as he is strong enough, Oca will undergo life-saving surgery. He might just get convinced and say yes to a kidney transplant.
All ye comrades of different stripes, ideologues of different colors, subversives and non-subversives, activists underground, above ground and in exile, ye mitered and sceptered men in robes, women religious, social action workers, political beings of vision, academics, please hear the pleas of Oca’s friends in the “Isang Bagsak for Oca Committee”.

You may send email to isangbagsak_oca@yahoo.com. For those who were born yesterday, isang bagsak is the cue for one, just one, loud clap and stomping of one foot which is a sign of approval and appreciation. Isang bagsak could make tyrants shudder. When Oca yelled “Isang bagsak!” the room thundered.

Those who wish to help may deposit their donation at the Oscar D. Francisco savings account 1756-1032-13 at the Bank of the Philippine Islands, in Better Living, Paranaque. Isang Bagsak for Oca hopes to raise P1 million for Oca’s surgery/transplant. That’s less than the price of one SUV.

My fellow countrymen and countrywomen, here is a man who deserves our help and gratitude.

My good friend Daphne Ceniza-Kuok, now based in Hong Kong, blew into town last week to once again give International Care Ministries (ICM), a church-based organization, a boost. ICM has many development projects in the Philippines. A friend of Oca’s, this former activist (she still is) did not simply settle in her Kuok comfort zone, she is always on the move to reach out to her fellow Filipinos here and in HK. Last year she entrusted me with a sum for 10 poor women’s livelihood in a typhoon-devastated province.

Last week I wrote about the “A-Book-Saya” book donation project started by Christian-Muslim couple Armand (a former Inquirer reporter) and Annora Nocum (PDI, Oct. 1, page 1). The books are for the children of war in Mindanao. If you want to donate books, old or new, contact 9323609, 3393732, 09228169510, zamboyo66@yahoo.com or satisfaction.blogspot.com.

Filipino mandarin

It was a big but not a glitzy, showy affair. Definitely not for the loud society pages but more for the art critics maybe. From the invitation to the event, the book, the food and drinks to the renderings in sculpture and painting, and most of all, the music—they all suggested muted elegance. Perhaps one could call that class.

Music lovers were treated to a musical feast at the Meralco Theater last Saturday evening for the celebration of the 85th birth year of the late Robert Coyiuto, a trailblazer in the insurance industry. It was an event so well planned by his descendants who chose fine classical music to honor their patriarch and set the tone of the celebration. More on the music later.



Here’s an abstract from the biography “Filipino Mandarin” written by award-winning writer Charlson Ong.

“When Robert Coyiuto passed away at the relatively young age of 58 in 1982, he was a giant of the Philippine insurance industry. He had led various companies to the pinnacle of the industry and founded Prudential Guarantee and Assurance Inc. which his heirs, led by Robert Coyiuto Jr., would eventually transform into one of the nation’s top corporations. Before the term taipan came in vogue to describe successful entrepreneurs and industrialists of Chinese descent, Coyiuto led corporations that boasted hundreds of millions of pesos in resources.

“Born of humble origins in Fujian, China in 1923, Coyiuto settled in Manila shortly before the outbreak of WWII to help his elder brothers run the family trading business... The youngest surviving male children in a brood of 10—born to goldsmith Co Di Jian, and a bound-feet village woman, Tan O Kuan—Coyiuto was a quiet, self-possessed boy who loved to read and study. In Manila, he taught himself English and learned the culture of his adopted land.

“(Coyiuto) was also among the earliest to venture into petroleum exploration in the country. In 1975, (he) was among the first foreign industrialists to explore business in China at a time when the country was emerging from decades of isolation. In 1977 (he) became the first Filpino member of Lloyd’s—an insurance market of a kind based in London.

“For all his admiration of modernity, Coyiuto was a gentleman of the old school. He was steeped in Confucian tradition and valued family above all. Like those from his generation, he cherished propriety, filial piety, righteousness and compassion.”

Coyiuto married Rosalyn Go with whom he had nine children: (not in chronological order) Emeline, Samuel, James, Elisa, Robert Jr., Peter, Jane, Carolyn and Miguel. I do not know any one of them personally.

The evening’s program host was TV’s David Celdran who happens to be our new board chair at the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Rafael del Casal’s bust of Coyiuto and a portrait by Romulo Galicano (with his trademark vertical lines) were unveiled.

But it was the music that was the centerpiece of the night. The Philippine Philharmonic orchestra under the baton of international conductor Helen Quach opened the concert with Wagner’s “Prelude to Act 1 of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg”. Quach knew it by heart.

Juilliard-trained Cristine Coyiuto (married to James), one of the country’s leading pianists, played “Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor” with, ah, confidence and grace on an award-winning Bosendorfer piano shipped from Vienna for the occasion. I had primed myself by listening over and over to Schumann’s opus before the concert.

And fresh from her flute lessons in France, 14-year-old daughter Caitlin gave everyone a wow moment with her seamless, silken rendering of Poulenc’s Flute Sonata (orchestrated by Sir Lennox Berkeley). And more wow moments with the jazzy Bolling encore piece with Caitlin’s mom on the piano.

The musical evening was capped with Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4. I have reason to pine for either the 6th or the 5th symphony (which Quach conducted last year) but with the Dragon Lady of the Podium bringing the 4th to a blazing end, who can complain? You bet, Tchaikovsky—to borrow a line from rock—was in the building.

A plug… This weekend Quach descends to the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ darkened orchestra pit (this time with a battery-illuminated baton) to conduct Puccini’s “La Boheme”. Dubbed the “greatest love story every sung”, the somewhat Philippinized opera is produced by the Philippine Opera Company. There ain’t no fat lady singing, just penny-pinching indie artists on a Manila landscape singing in Italian. (Oct.3 and 4 at 8 pm, Oct. 5 at 3 pm. For tickets call POC 8928786, Ticketworld 8919999 or CCP 8321125.)

Gary del Rosario, one of the three tenors singing Rodolfo, came all the way from Seattle Opera. I wrote about him more than 15 years ago, when he was a choir boy from Pasig, newly discovered by Tony Hila.

Unlike the Coyiuto concert which was free, “La Boheme” begs for your support. Didn’t you notice that despite hard times, big venues still pack it in for foreign pop artists? We should be more supportive of our own, especially those who keep classical music alive.

I had watched “La Boheme” at the CCP in 1992 and I still have my ticket stub as bookmark in a book on opera. This collector’s item won’t get me a free seat at tomorrow’s gala but in solidarity with the Mimis and Rodolfos of this world, I bought a ticket for the vertigo section. (As the editor bitingly answered a letter writer on a ticket issue yesterday, Inquirer editors--and writers, too--could afford to pay for bleacher tickets.)

I wish our struggling artists and patrons of the arts a great musical weekend. Hunger is not just for food for the body but also for food for the mind and spirit. A quote from The Bard as I remember from my college “Twelfth Night” days: “If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it…”

‘Surgeons do not cry’

“My knife is my wife,” Dr. Jose “Ting” Tiongco told me 12 years ago. “My fascination with surgery has been total I have forgotten to get married.”

Ting is a brilliant surgeon, one of the passionate doctors who blazed a trail in health care cooperatives in Davao and later in the rest of the Philippines. Twelve years ago I did a feature-review (“Ting Tiongco and the dream”) of his book “Child of the Sun Returning”. On his book he had scribbled, “You once asked me if I was writing a book. I did. In my heart. Aniana.” Aniana is Visayan for “here it is.” A more dramatic translation would be “It is here.”

Earlier, I did a long cover story on him for the Sunday Inquirer Magazine. I went to Mindanao just for that. I got to watch him perform a Caesarian operation and interview his fellow doctor-visionaries. These doctors were once called “doctors who refuse to say die”.

Twelve years after “Child of the Sun Returning” I received from Ting another book titled “Surgeons Do Not Cry”, a compilation of his column pieces for a Mindanao news agency. On it he scrawled: “Twelve years later and the anger and bewilderment is still there. Thank God there is still hope!”



I was in Davao recently but I didn’t have the time to track Ting down. I hope he gets in touch. He must have a lot of stories crying out to be told. So Ting, let’s hear them, minus the wine.

If “Child of the Sun Returning” is the amazing story of the Medical Mission Group Hospitals and Health Services Cooperative Philippines (MMGHHSCP) as told by Ting who was one of its founders, “Surgeons Do Not Cry” (published by the UP Press) is about his earlier life, that is, as a medical student of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine (UPCM). The book was launched at UPCM yesterday.

It would be worth mentioning that before UPCM, Ting was a dyed-in-the-wool, true-blue Atenean from up the hill. And no wonder, UPCM presented itself as a new frontier, a wilderness to be conquered, and later, loved and be forever a part of his vision in life.

Published recently, the book is a fitting tribute to UP which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It is also a good read for everyone, and most especially for aspiring doctors and health workers with blurred vision or whose sights are set on, ugh, serving on foreign shores. Ting’s idealism might just rub off on them. And Ting has a great writing style-wry, acerbic, cynical, raging, tongue-in-cheek. He does not write from the clouds. He writes from ground level.

Ting’s stories are neither pedantic nor platitudinous. They are everyday stories of a medical student, intern and resident at the UP-Philipine General Hospital. Here was a doctor-to-be on fire, so intense and so focused and yet having a great time. He was also in a hurry.

The reminiscences about those experiences of yesteryears were obviously written just recently or on hindsight, so one could sense the warmth and the fondness that come with distance and the passing of the years. One could also sense the confidence of a man who has poured out much.

Here is the story about the woman who yawned and locked her jaw (intern Ting had to “unlock” it twice); about Aling Bening, a patient’s mother who regularly stole food from the patients’ food cart “baka maubusan” (because there might be none left for her son); about blood donations or gota de sangre (a drop of blood) from medical interns; cheating at UPCM; “death on the table”—these could make a whole season of “E.R.” Philippine-version.

Instead of talking about what’s in the book, I might as well offer some excerpts.

From “Lanceta”: “A surgeon’s worst nightmare is to lose a patient on his operating table. So if and when this happens, it becomes a part of his life that is not to be forgotten forever—a DOT as we called it in UP-PGH. Death on the table.

“I had mine early. And to a certain extent, as my team captain would tell me later, I was spoiling for it…Arnulfo B. was in his late 40s, married and working as a welder during the daytime and as a part-time jeepney driver at night. At three in the morning, while he was plying the Malabon-Manila route, four men held him at knifepoint and demanded his money. He refused, thinking of his 10 children…So they stabbed him.

“There was a stunned silence in the OR as I closed Arnulfo B. as carefully as I usually closed all my operations. I wished aloud that God would not have to teach humility to doctors, especially surgeons, by using other people’s lives…Weary and red-eyed, I plodded out of the operating suites at five in the morning, just as the eastern sky was breaking into dawn. I desperately wanted to take a deep breath but I couldn’t do it without breaking into tears…

“Lani, my scrub nurse, had followed me out. And as she put her arm around the wife and began the ritual played outside so many operating rooms…I turned back to the operating suites and walked briskly away.

“Surgeons don’t cry.”

That’s where the title came from.

From “Stories”: “I packed all my baggage and collected my last experiences from UP-PGH on my last day of duty. I took a lone, last tour around the UP-PGH campus like a runner who, having run his last race, would take a ceremonial lap around the stadium….”

In the book is the voice of the boy who started out as “a screaming mess of contradictions and full of agonizing questions.” Ting dedicates the book to “a little girl, whose name rings bells in heaven.”

Ting, 61, once told me: “Becoming a doctor was the next best thing to priesthood. Total dedication. You give your whole mind, your soul.” Before taking that piece of cold steel in his gloved hand, he would whisper before the first incision: “Introibo ad altare dei…” (I will go unto the altar of God).

Do you have any questions?

A day at a factory

I invited myself to the factory. The company does not need media exposure or publicity. They don’t sell their products here. In fact the owner requested that there would be no mention of his name (let’s call him Mr. K), the company’s name, the brand names, etc. It was I who was interested to know more about what was going on in the factory, how production was, the workers, the size, the product. I had never been to something like this before.

I met Mr. K and his wife, through a friend, during the breath-stopping Cloud Gate Dance Theater performance at the Cultural Center of the Philippines some weeks ago. The show was part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. The Cloud Gate’s founder Lin Hwai Min of Taiwan is an RM awardee (1999).

One day last week, I visited this Taiwanese-owned luggage factory (let’s call it the K company) just outside of Metro Manila. This factory produces some of the most expensive, if not some of the most durable luggage in the world, more expensive and more durable than the enduring popular brands that we know. That is what Mr. K, the Taiwanese owner, an electronics engineer, told me and he showed me why and how much the products cost abroad.



The K company produces 150,000 to 200,000 pieces of luggage every year. It has been operating in the Philippines for 13 years and employs some 700 workers. It used to employ 1,500 workers. All other luggage companies have left and moved to China (and are now not necessarily happy they did), except the K company.

The factory sits on 10,000 square meters of land. It is not inside an export processing zone. The production area occupies about 80 percent of the location and the rest is for offices, the cooperative-run canteen, the clinic, water purification (for drinking water which the workers could take home) and loading and unloading of goods. The huge production area is under one roof. If you are standing on the balcony of the second-floor office you would be overlooking the entire production area.

The place is spacious, clean, bright and airy. The ceiling is high. And from the balcony I could see hundreds of computerized machines and a sea of heads and hands at work.

Some 700 workers work on their machines or at their tables cutting, sewing, screwing, inspecting, assembling, labeling. The production and molding of the highly durable patented honeycomb plastic spine is custom-made in a separate section. The polycarbonate pellets (melted to make the honeycomb component) come from Singapore.

Most of the components are made-to-order and sourced abroad—the non-breakable patented zipper ear, the metal handles, the nylon thread as well as the fabric that is used inside and outside. The smooth leather for the really high-end items is from the Philippines.

Luggage of all sizes and dimensions adhere to airline requirements. The latest product is the checkpoint-friendly carry-on luggage that has a special section for a laptop. On it is attached a yellow label of approval which means the laptop need not be taken out for inspection because the X-ray machine could locate it easily and scan. The “TSA” label stands for travel security-authorization approved.

Zig-zag and double-stitching are some of the secrets of the luggage’s durability, Mr. K tells me, which you would see if you examine the product closely. Even the labels and tiny metal brand IDs are so well attached they are not going to get ripped and fall off during travel. Materiales fuertes, in other words. But you pay a fortune for these travel must-haves.

And then there are the imaginative practical details like the zips, secret compartments, instant expansion, easy grip and rolling. I thought to myself, you could travel to outer space with one of these. These products’ marketing catchword is “details make the bag”.

And why can’t we buy them here? Mr. K says everything they buy from abroad is duty free and this means all the products go abroad and aren’t meant to compete with local products.

And what about the workers? Some of the workers, like Jenny who is married and with two kids, have been with the factory for 10 or more years. Many came from other factories. There is no shortage of workers, Mr. K tells me. All these years the company has adhered to the law as regards wages, Mr. K says.

And why has he stayed? Mr. K says he wants to contribute something to this country. But he promptly adds that the Philippines must change many of its protectionist policies.

Taiwanese-owned factories have proliferated in China and Mr. K is not afraid to be quoted as saying that if Taiwanese companies would pull out of China, China’s industry would fall. The unofficial estimate of Taiwanese investment in China is about $100B, Mr. K says. Think of 100,000 factories employing 10 million Chinese.

Many Taiwanese investors are now choosing to go to Vietnam, India, Indonesia and the Chinese mainland’s interior, Mr. K points out. But not the Philippines.

I quote Mr. K verbatim: “The Philippines has to open up. Unions could be a problem. There are too many regulations. We cannot buy land and are subject to rent increases. We cannot go into retail.”

But, ah, the unions. Aren’t these the workers’ only protection? (I am a proud member of the Inquirer employees’ union.) In this age of globalization, unions are also starting to be globalized or join multinational trade unions. From the point of view of workers in the developing world this is an exciting development. More on this some other time.

Thanks, Mr. K, for the factory tour.