RENDERING THE NATION: The Uses of Poetry in Building the Modern Filipino Nation, 1966 – 1986
by Lilia Quindoza Santiago
ABSTRACT
Poetry can function as catalyst for change in a politically repressive regime such as what happened during the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. From 1966 to 1986, poetic production in three languages – Ilokano, Tagalog and English committed to the goals of achieving democracy, social justice and freedom from dictatorial rule. Tagalog writers produced poems of verbal bravado, some of the pieces were like placards and slogans. Writers in English went so far as to insist they have “colonized” the English language for purposes of free expression and resistance to fascist rule. Ilokano poets defied Marcos, a fellow Ilokano in protest against imperialism and dictatorship. Poets rendered the Filipino nation and spelled a democratic space toward modernity. A few poets died in the resistance movement, some became political prisoners and victims of human rights abuses. Their voices join a tradition of patriotic nationalist resistance literature began by no less than Filipino heroes Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio.
RENDERING THE NATION
The Uses of Poetry in building the modern Filipino nation
Introduction
In his last poem, Ultimo Adios ( Last Farewell), Jose Rizal, the most famous Philippine national hero writes of the motherland as “la patria adorada’ (beloved country) that is the “perla del mar de oriente” (pearl of the orient seas) and yet a “nuestro perdido eden.” (our eden lost).This is one of the most poignant rendering of the Philippines that resonates over time. The Philippines is rendered both at once a precious pearl of the orient and a paradise plundered. In such a poetic rendering, Rizal, left a legacy of poetic resistance to colonialism and defined a militant poetics that takes action to end tyranny and suffering.
In a similar vein, Andres Bonifacio in his famous poem on patriotism, “Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Bayan” (Love for the Land of Birth) asserts there is no love nobler and greater than love for one’s land of birth, an assertion of birthright and how one’s life should be dedicated to loving and defending the motherland, evan sacrificing one’s life for its redemption.
These two themes of a beautiful country plundered, and of love and sacrifice for native land defined and dominated poetic practices in the Philippines during martial law.
Students of world history and geography know certain facts about the Philippines. The country is an archipelago of 7,107 islands that is usually divided into three island groups Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The islands were colonized by Spain, the United States of America, and Japan. But there are very few and random reflections on what the Philippines is like as a nation. What distinguishes the Filipino nation? How has the Filipino nation tackled issues of development and modernity towards the 21st century?
What makes the Filipino nation a modern nation? What, first of all, is a nation? In the classic definition of Ernest Renan,3 it is not race, nor political governance, nor language, nor territory, nor religion that defines a nation. Rather, a nation is “soul, a “spiritual principle”.4; its people agree in consensus to elect as in a plebiscite to undergo pain and sacrifice and to remember what must be remembered, forget what must be forgotten5. Renan’s definition is also a take-off point of Benedict Anderson’s theory of nation. as an “imagined community”6 where individuals may not really know one another, may never meet each other in their lifetimes. Yet because of their imagined kinship they act and unite as community to further their interests.
So guided by Renan and Anderson’s concepts of nation, it is possible now to begin reading the quest for the modern Filipino nation in this poem by Alfredo Navarro Salanga:
THEY DON’T THINK MUCH ABOUT US IN AMERICA
Alfredo Navarro Salanga
Q. Do you feel you are free to express your ideas adequately?
A. Of course yes, I live in America
– From an interview with an exile
The only problem is
they don’t think much
about us
in America.
That’s where Manila’s
Just as small as Guam is
dots
on a map, points east
China
looming up ahead
Vietnam
more popular
(because of that war)…
….
The poem draws a map of significance and importance for the U.S. insofar as countries in the Pacific region are concerned. China looms much larger, Vietnam is more popular because of the war. The bonding between the Philippines and America is weak, there is no genuine friendship to speak of. This is a sentiment that runs through writings on Philippine American relations in the 20th century. In fact, an earlier poem “Filipinas ken Amerika”8 (The Philippines and America) (1970) by Ilokano poet and former editor of the Ilokano maganize, Bannawag (Dawn) Jose A. Bragado even tells of the breaking of the friendship forged on July 4, 1946 because of US imperialism and its effects on the Philippines. Salanga’s sentimentis are bitter and resentful and one that comes from a disenchanted voice. In Tagalog parlance – Filipinos are ksp acronym for kulang sa pansin (lacking in attention). America does not care much about the citizens of the islands. Yet in a way this poem also spells a desire for disconnection.
This disconnection from America, is one thought that underlies 20th century discourse on the building of the modern Filipino nation. It is a desistance, that is at once bitter yet engaging. This feeling of being ignored by its colonizer, 40 years after political independence was granted on July 4, 1946, this sense of non-importance is a quaint rebellion. This can be construed as a structure of feeling that is a response to Paul Laxalt’s admonition to Marcos when America finally withdrew support for the Marcos government – “ to cut, and cut cleanly. ” The people also had a turn around to collectively “cut and cut cleanly” from the U.S. and rendered the nation through an uprising in the now famous people power revolution of 1986.
From February 22 – 25, 1986, the whole world watched as over a million people gathered at the main highway of the main metropolis in the country. It was the one kind of a revolution in late 20th century that resonated all over the world. There were no shots fired even as state soldiers with high powered firearms and tanks and machine guns, helicopters, and warplanes surrounded and hovered over the multitude. There were only leis of sampaguita, flowers and food given to soldiers as rosaries, and religious images were paraded, prayers, slogans and songs chanted. The people held on to each other, marched and danced in the streets. Some labeled the event a miracle, others thought it was just a simple military mutiny but many believed it was a people power revolution and it is this phrase that would catch the imagination and become the consensual name for the events that led to the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship.
Events of this magnitude can be considered poetic moments that compel an examination of a kind of poetics that is a product of an historical period and a social movement.
Jacques Derrida in his study of the poet, Paul Celan calls attention to a kind of “poetics and politics of witnessing.” With a poetics of witnessing, there is as well, and I argue for a “poetics and politics of remembering.” There is a wealth of metaphor, images and verses that are testamentary, testimonials and remembrances and this is particularly true of martial law in the Philippines. Here is a poem of vivid remembrance for example:
Concerning the Death by Assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr., August 21, 1983.
Cirilo F. Bautista
The sound was dead before it was uttered
Under the noon heat, having flown a sky
Of short fear and long desire: six syllables
twitched, bloodied, cut down by a secret spy
What message did they whisper in the earth
when silence shocked the bullet in the brain
the ‘end of empire? The text for violence?
Concord and clemency blooming in pain?
For one word, the ritual rose in heights
fewer at first, then death disguised in blue
till the world fell down, unspoken, unheard
misunderstood, misjudged declared untrue
rushed to the grave without knowing why, while
a nation mourned because it knew.
Poems like this inscribe an event that is to be remembered. The date, August 21,1983, is the date of the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr., a day of mourning by the nation. But it is also a day of “knowing”, and of enlightenment.
The nation that “mourns but knew” is what the persona in the sonnet bears witness to, a sonnet of remembering that conveys a thought and a feeling and persuades its readers to believe that there is on this particular date, “a nation that mourned because it knew.” What that nation knows is not easily unraveled and can go in many which ways but what is important is believing having faith in the re-enactment of the event to store in memory this feeling that engulfs a people.. The uncertainty, the whys and the wherefores of the assassination and the certainty of knowing as a nation becomes an individual as well as a collective experience. .
In the next poem bearing witness assumes another aspect of remembrance through circumvention. Poetry can be direct in subject and reflection as in the poem just read, but is also an effective medium when it circumvents and uses dense words and metaphor that will have to be closely deciphered for meaning.. The impact of this poem by Ruben Cuevas sinks in only after meticulous and careful examination.
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND:
Ruben Cuevas
I shall not exchange my fetters
for slavish servility.. T’is better
to be chained to the rock than bound
to the service of Zeus.
-Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Mars shall glow tonight
Artemis is out of sight
Rust in the twilight sky
Colors the bloodshot eye
Or shall I say that dust
Sunders the sleep of the just?
Hold fast to the gift of fire!
I am rage! I am wrath! I am ire!
The vultures sit on my rock
Licks at the chains that mock
Emancipation’s breath.
Reeks of death, death, death.
Death shall not unclench me
I am earth, wind and sea!
Kisses bestow on the brave
That defy the damp of the grave
And strike the chill hand of
Death with the flaming sword of love.
Orion stirs. The vulture
Retreats from the hard, pure
Thrust of the spark that burns
Unbounds, departs, returns
To pluck out of death’s fist
A god who dared to resist.
Can poems therefore be vested with powers to bring down a dictator?
In the Philippines during the Marcos years, it is undeniable that poems and poetry were used to expose, oppose and dismantle the fascist state.
The Greek philosopher Plato wanted to exile the poet from the Republic. He contended that poetry and poems are “only appearances and are a third removed from reality” and that art and poetry are produced without any knowledge of the truth ”..
But the validity of these assertions by Plato – that poets and artists cannot be trusted as stewards of the state has been forcefully challenged in the 20th century. When Lu Xun, a medical doctor from China began what he termed was a movement for “new humanism.” he narrates how he came to witness one film that portrayed his Chinese compatriots bound and tortured as many others stood witness to their persecution. The bound compatriots were suspected of being spies for the Russians and after seeing this film, Lu Xun declared
……The people of a weak and backward country however strong and healthy they may be can only serve to be made examples of or witness to such futile spectacles and it doesn’t really matter how many of them die of illness. The most important thing therefore was to change their spirit and since at that time I felt that literature was the best means to this end, I determined to promote a literary movement.
In promoting a literary movement Lu Xun aimed to change the spirit of the people, Lu Xun signalled the use of art and literature as tools for social change, a. development that would be advocated in many parts of the world and continues through this day.
Mao Ze Dong’s Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature
For China and countries that waged struggles and wars for national and social liberation from colonialism, an influential text and doctrine about politics and art and literature is Mao Ze Dong’s Talks at the Yenan Forum and Art and Literature.. Mao Ze Dong claims that “in the world today, all culture and all art belongs to definite classes and are geared towards definite political ends.. There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached and independent from politics.”
The rejection of art pursued for its own sake and “art that stands above classes” is accompanied by a clarification about the nature of writing for political causes, thus Mao Ze Dong elaborates
Politics cannot be equated with art nor can a general world outlook be equated with a method of artistic creation and criticism. …Therefore, we oppose both the tendency to produce works of art with a wrong political viewpoint and the tendency towards the “poster and slogan style” which is correct in political viewpoint but lacking in artistic power. On questions of literature and art, we must carry on a struggle on two fronts.
Being correct in both politics and art is a difficult balance few writers are able to accomplish if only because political correctness is always being challenged, just as artistic merit, and artistic correctness are both subject to a a complex of factors. Many times, artistic merit even runs counter to political correctness and this is due to varying contexts, subject positions and other subjectivities. Nonetheless, the Mao Ze Dong doctrine on art and literature still has a number of adherents in China and other parts of the developing world including the Philippines.
Jean Paul Sartre: What is Literature?
Jean Paul Sartre put forward his theory of literature as social engagement.. In What is Literature19 he discusses the value of writers and writing and asserts that writing is an undertaking that reveals the –exis-(life or existence) in order to do –praxis (change, action).. Eventually, he argues that the “act of writing is an undertaking that leads to the making of history.20
Sartre contends that to write is already to choose. as he defines literature as a social act – an act of communication. He poses the question: “Why does one write?” And his answer is that one writes because s/he wishes to communicate with others and the wish to communicate is an expression of a desire for change. The desire for change encourages new insights and perceptions on the human condition .
“For whom does one write?” is the next question Sartre poses in the second part of his book. His answer is philosophical and not concrete. Sartre’s categorical answer is that one writes for “liberty” which he clarifies as writing that is aligned with all the forces desiring human liberation. For Sartre, then a writer who writes for freedom writes for a broad range of human forces struggling to be free, i.e., the people of color who continue to be discriminated because of race, the women in view of gender oppression, the Jews, the working class and all who are involved in the struggle to be free from oppression and exploitation. A writer commits to the emancipation of oppressed peoples through writings and thus writes for liberty.
Max Adereth argues that the idea of an engaged or socially committed literature like that of Sartre is a 20th century phenomenon and arises out of two basic conditions of modern civilization, namely a reality that is moving so fast that it is difficult to understand it even partly without being involved in it. He criticizes Sartre idea of literature, believing that Sartre argues from the “ideal essence of literature”.
Although Sartre’s starting point is the social character of literature, he tends to deduce the literary project not from the writer’s concrete social situation but from the “ideal essence of literature.” The danger of such an approach is firstly, that it weakens the value of commitment by implying that the writer does not have to change his whole life since the main thing for him is to handle words successfully; that it can easily lead to the opposite extreme of thinking that literature has no value at all as soon as its limitations are discovered in practice.
Philippine Literature and the state
In 1940 before the second world war, Salvador P. Lopez wrote his book of essays, Literature and Society , which won an award in the Commonwealth Literary contest of same year. . In this book, Lopez claims that “literature which is the imaginative and credible interpretation of life cannot be disjointed from life itself” which is the source of its material. He advocates and defines a “proletarian literature that is dedicated to the struggles of the working class and becomes, a literature of hope and growth, revolutionary and an instrument of social influence.
Petronilo Daroy argues that Lopez’ literary aesthetics are abstract and fails to come to terms with the concrete realities of Philippine literary and historical experience: Daroy further examines the specific flaws and weaknesses of Lopez and his ideas of literature and its relation to society:
…Lopez aesthetics reflected the limitations of the dogma of American social critics. An evidence of the abstractness of Literature and Society is that while it urged the writer to commit himself to the proletarian struggle against capitalism, it took no notice of Lope K. Santos and 19th century Filipino writers. It affirmed Teodoro Kalaw and his involvement in El Renacimiento but otherwise the critical canons of Lopez lack the concrete evidence of really committed writings.
Lope K. Santos which Daroy mentions as one of the writers ignored by Lopez may be a good example of a writer of proletarian literature. He wrote in Tagalog and his best known novel, Banaag at Sikat ( Glimmer and Light) is a work in fiction rich in advocacy of socialist ideas through the speeches of the main characters. The whole novel itself is criticism of American colonialism and imperialist capitalism that has come to the islands.. Santos was also a key figure in the struggle to promote a ‘national language’ based on Tagalog. Yet it cannot be said that to write in the native language already presupposes a commitment to engage literature in social issues aimed at reform and social change.
Luis Teodoro warns about the apolitical and uncommitted stance of writers and distinguishes between the “purely literary revolution” and the more relevant literary revolution that is grounded in its social and political contexts.28. He argues that, “in a period of crisis, and Philippine society has always been in crisis, the writer armed only with his ignorance inevitably makes the wrong and fatal choice when confronted with the necessity of deciding which of the contending forces he must ally himself. There is at such times no escaping the need for making a choice, and few of the “non-partisan” and apolitical writers have managed to escape” scrutiny for their choices.”
The choice to be partisan or non-partisan inevitably came in the gasping days of the Marcos dictatorship. In the run-up to the snap elections for President in 1986, a writer’s coalition was hastily organized to promote the candidacy of Ferdinand Marcos and declared Corazon Cojuangco Aquino an inferior candidate in the elections. In an advertisement published in February 1986, the group of writers that called itself Coalition of Writers for the Restoration of Democracy and which included high profile progressive writers and artists appended their names and signatures in a manifesto appealing for sobriety, and calm in the elections. The coalition asserted that the people needed to exercise discretion in their choice of candidate while contending that it was only with the continuation of Marcos rule that democratic reforms can be realized.
Part of the manifesto of the coalition read:
when artists and writers are joined in the life of a people and life and death choices present themselves in political terms, the writers and artists must make a stand and must not seek refuge and comfort in total political anonymity. …
as such this coalition seeks to preserve what has already been achieved in our cultural advancement and to proceed further under an enlightened and transformed national leadership….. We believe that the leadership of President Ferdinand Marcos is our only guarantee for survival at this point.”
The signatories to the statement were influential writers and journalists who at one time or another held progressive views on writers and writing. They included, for example, Adrian Cristobal, who became the spokesperson of Marcos, Virgilio S. Almario, who was founding adviser of Galian sa Arte at Tula (GAT) and now national artist and well known Ilokano writers, Juan S. P. Hidalgo and Benjamin Pascual. The group was branded as COWARD which was formed as an acronym in mockery of their group and manifesto’s title.
Critics of the Marcos regime pointed to the writer’s fatal choice of supporting a dictator.
The debate between social relevance in poetry is made concrete in the images produced by these poems of Armando Ravanzo and Mila Aquilar .which is a repartee published in the pages of the magazine in English, the Weekly Graphic:
TRAVELLA
Armando Ravanso
so what if I speak of roses?
I can hear and feel
See clearly too, if you care to know
But I am not stomach
Not all intestines
I too am
A penis, a happiness
(Love is a voice and a bed).
The poem which is clearly a protest against protest poetry met its rejoinder in the following verses by Mila D. Aguilar.
T0 A FELLOW TRAVELER
WHO SPEAKS OF ROSES
Mila D. Aguilar
Speak of roses
“fellow traveller.”
While you can
Drought has come
And even now
Don Andres demands
Our dues.
My old father
sharpens his bolo
to the rhythm
of the grinding of his stomach
my wife lies
groaning with pain,
my children cry for her.
For a while,
parched whispers
will soothe them
Yes, “fellow traveller”
Love is a voice
But what bed?
The Literature of Protest
Marcos time saw the intensification of the Vietnam War and the defeat of America in Southeast Asia, the rise and fall of dictators in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean. and the debacle on human development with the capitalist categorizations of the world into First, Second and Third Worlds. . With the development debacle as context, Professor Dolores Feria, an American expatriate activist imprisoned by Marcos advocated for a kind of “literature of refusal.”. the refusal to take seriously, the aesthetics of the privileged where poems and novels are for people who read them with full stomachs and who dismiss Third Word writers confrontation with the hard facts of this world as propaganda, and above all, the refusal to accept the freaked out cynicism of the over-developed world.”
Delfin Tolentino Jr. locates the origins of Philippine protest literature in the long history of colonial and feudal oppression of the country and believes that protest poets write on the idea that “there are things in society that need to be checked and changed because they are detrimental to the development of individuals and peoples as a whole. He distinguishes between three types of protest poems
Ang unang kategoriya ay sumasaklaw sa mga tulang naglalarawan sa mabalasik na katotohanan ng buhay. Ang mga ito’y nagpapakita ng katiwaliang nangyayari sa ngayon at sa paglalarawan
Ang unang kategoriya sumasaklaw sa mga tulang naglalarawan sa mabalasik na katotohanan ng buhay. Ang mga ito’y nagpapakita ng katiwaliang nangyayari sa ngayon at sa paglalarawan ay ipinahihiwatig ang pagtutol sa kasalukuyang sitwasyon. (The first category are those poems that portray the brutal realities of life. These poems illustrate the prevailing corruption and through these descriptions signify protest against the political dispensation).
Ang ikalawang kategoriya ay matatagpuan sa mga tulang hindi lamang naglalarawan ng kabalintuanaan at katiwalian ng kasalukuyang lagay kundi nagbubunsod sa mambabasa na mag-isip at magsimulang gumawa ng aksiyon upang ituwid ang baluktot na takbo ng kasaysayan ( The second category can be found in those poems that do not only picture the corruption and wrongdoing but also urges readers to reflect on these and think of specific modes of action to rectify history)
Ang iktalong uri na siyang kasukdulan ng tula ng pagtutol ay tinatawag na makarebolusyonaryong tula. Ito ay katatagpuan ng matinding pagtuligsa sa mga kabuktutang nangyayari sa paligid at ng isang tiyak na linya at aksiyong nararapat sundin. (A third category is the apex of protest poetry, the so-called “ revolutionary poetry”. These poems embody a specific political line and mode of action to follow).
These categories of definitions reveal how poetry has been harnessed for political reflection, meditation negotiation and action. What the poem says, what it conveys egardless of form, are socio-political commentaries that express the poet’s disenchantment and rejection of the existing order of things and suggests and demands changes in the social and political set-up.
National artist Bienvenido Lumbera also tags three qualities and characteristics of this type of poetry:
May tatlong katangian ang panulaang ito sa wari ko. Una, ang pagsusuri sa obhetibong kalagayan ng bayan at ang pagsisiwalat ng mga katiwalian at kairalan (status quo). Ikalawa, ang hayagang pagkapoot at maapoy na pagtuligsa sa mga katiwaliang isinisiwalat sa tula. At ikatlo, ang tahasang paglabag sa kagandahang asal na isinabatas ng burgis na sensibilidad sa pamamaraan ng pagsasalita. ( I think there are three main qualities of this kind of poetry. One, analysis of the objective conditions prevailing in the country and exposing all the corruption in the status quo. Two, clear expression of contempt and criticism of the corruption that is being exposed in the poem. And three, a violation of etiquetee and good manners prescribed by a bourgeois sensibility and manner of speech.)
For Lumbera, impolite, sacrilegious and even indecent language is a form of social and literary protest that serve to shock sensibilities and gives added vitality to the language of protest.
Jose F. Lacaba and Rolando Tinio both of whom studied and taught at the Jesuit run Ateneo de Manila University would produce poems with themes that are sacrilegious and even obscene . Jose F. Lacaba for example questions the idea of the mystery of the immaculate conception of the virgin Mary in this poem:
PASYONG MAHAL NI SAN JOSE37
(St. Joseph’s Heavenly Passion)
Jose F. Lacaba
Tagalog original
Matay na niyan isipin
Ang kabuntisan ng birhen
Anopa’t babaling-baling
Walang matutuhang gawin
Ang loob niya’t panimdim
Pait, katam at martilyo
Ibubulong ko sa inyo
Ang masaklap kong sikreto
Hindi ko pa inaano
Ay buntis na ang nobya ko
Ang sabi ng anghel, wala
Akong dapat ikahiya
Walang dahilang lumuha
Dapat pa nga raw matuwa
Pagkat Diyos ang gumahasa
Martiyo, katam at pait
Makukuha bang magalit
Ng karpintero. Magtiis.
Ang mahina’t maliit
Wala yatang laban sa langit.
( my English translation)
(He could not figure out
how the virgin got pregnant
he faced here and there
He seems unable to do anything
Unable to grasp his loneliness
Chisel, plane, and hammer
To you I will whisper
My unfortunate secret
I have not yet touched her
Yet my sweetheart is all ready pregnant
the angel said, no worries
I should not be ashamed
There is no reason to cry
I should even be glad
Because it is a God that raped her.
Hammer, plane, and chisel
Have I a right to anger?
A mere carpenter? Patinece
Because the weak and small
Cannot really go against the heavens..
Rolando S.Tinio resorts to the use of cuss words and obscene language to berate the miseducation of the Filipino intellectual. In a poetic jibe against those Filipino “pensionados” or scholars who are sent to study in the United States and pursue higher education in American universities, his persona speaks in Taglish , mocks his own self as he bids farewell to America. In parts of the poem he denounces a “scholarship” a higher education that is irrelevant and renders intellentuals, useless, “out of “touch” citizens as he castigates them inclusing himself for their utter uselessness:
POSTSCRIPT
Rolando S. Tinio
(Taglish)
Adios
Amerika
w/all
your star-spangled ideas
CRAZY MAN
CRAZY, CRAZY
America with all
I get so furious
Every time I think
Kaming me pinag-aralan
Ang lumalabas ngayong hangal
Because we’re out of touch (chua chua)
Because we’re out of touch (chua chua)….
……
Ano bang iskoraship daw na putangna?
Buti pang magkamot ng bayag,/Baka nilabsan pa.
(my English translation)
Goodbye
America
with all
your star spangled ideas
CRAZY MAN
CRAZY, CRAZY
I get so furious
Every time I think
We who have education
Have turned out to be fools
Because we’re out of touch (chua chua)
Because we’re out of touch (chua chua)
What fucking scholarship is this
Better to masturbate and be
relieved in orgasm
……..
Yet, polite or impolite, decent or indecent, the poet who writes and rages against a fascist state, writes with a conviction that s/he has to reach a mass audience and give the masses weapons not only for survival but endurance in the struggle. Because the general aim is to goad people to action, there is need for a language that is compelling, and more importantly, communicates an urgent message for reform and revolution.. If a poem must be a potent weapon towards liberation, then it should use the language of the everyday, images and symbols that are taken from the ordinary lives of people in their struggles for social justice, human rights, peace and freedom.. Poems like Tinio’s and Lacaba use the shock effect to convey the need to end class discrimination and social injustice.
The Marcos years saw the founding of many writers groups and organizations aiming to promote a “national literature”movement that will uphold the common good, realize social change and become a tool for progress. On September 26, 1970, PAKSA Panulat sa Kaunlaran ng Sambayanan- or Writings for the Country’s Progress was founded, its first main activity was on April 2, 1971, PAKSA with a writer’s marched at Plaza Lawton and culminating in a rally in front of the National Library.. In this rally, prominent poets burned some their works in protest against the results of the Talaang Ginto (sponsored by the Surian ng Wikang Pambansa (National Language Institute) because of what they claimed was the Institute’s role at promoting “irrelevant literature.”
PAKSA’s manifesto declared:
…Nahuli ang panitikan sa mabilis na pagsulong ng kontradiksiyon sa lipunan.
Ang katotohanang ito at ang pagkaunawa ng mga manunulat na dapat maging bahagi ang panitikan para sa isang pambansang demokratikong kilusang mapagpalaya sa bayan ang bumigkis sa kanila sa pagkakaisa.
Ang panibagong pananaw na magpanibagong simula maging sa pamamaraan ng pagsulat.
( Literature lags behind as contradictions in society intensify..
This reality and the understanding by writers that literature should be a part of a national democratic liberation movement has brought them to a new vision that they change and give birth to new forms of writing) (my translation)
PAKSA encouraged writers writing in the many languages of the country to veer away from decadent modes of thinking and to craft and create a new literature that is politically conscious and socially iuseful. . PAKSA further defined the quality of this new literature as one that recognizes the existence of class antagonisms in Philippine society.. PAKSA then expressed a desire to align itself with the oppressed classes (“kilalanin ang mga uri sa Pilipinas at pumanig sa mga inaaping uri” (know the different classes in Philippine society and align with the oppressed classes).
PAKSA envisioned the formation of a literature capable of assessing the balance of social forces not only in the country but also in the world and advocated literature along the doctrines of Mao Ze Dong, a literature that is produced and or is needed by the working and oppressed peoples of the world who are struggling for freedom.
In August 1973, a group of writers in Tagalog, most of whom were poets, put up the GAT (Galian sa Arte at Tula- Ceremony for art and poem) Galian, the derivation of the group’s name means ceremony, and in the spirit of ceremony, the group met regularly met on Sundays to discuss each other’s literary work.
The GAT started with the objective of creating a new kind of poetry, one that is for and about the people, “tungkol sa kanila at ukol sa kanila.” (of and about them and for them) The new poetry aimed to bring back poetry to the hearts and fold of the people (“Ibalik ang panulaan sa puso at tangkilik ng sambayanan”).
A similar writer’s organization born after the declaration of martial law in 1975 was the KALIPI (Kalipunan ng mga Literatura sa Pilipinas), The KALIPI ‘s aim was to unite all the writers in the country, in any language in all forms including the essay,. The organization however did not last because of internal wrangling among its constituents.
The Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) was organized during the period and its members were writers who wrote in English a number of whom would be tagged later as the “yellow poets”. They were callled yellow poets in view of their partisanship in the elections of 1986 when they campaigned for Cory Aquino as she symbolically took on the color yellow in her bid for the Presidency. Krip Yuson, an active member of PLAC writes the poem, “Song for Cory” as testimonial affirmation of her leadership in the 1986 people power revolution. This song affirms her leadership of the people power revolution. In the last stanza of his poem, Yuson enumenrates names of heroines of the Philippine revolution, and the long suffering mother symbol Sisa. He aligns Cory Aquino with their heroism and situates her symbolically as icon of the nation.
Song For Cory
Alfred Yuson
……
Gabriela, Melchora, Gregoria, Sisa
In the mornings after the pain
Dew gathers on the lines and the sparkle
Has a center, where you are not alone.
Grabriela is Gabriela Silang, wife of Diego Silang who led revolutionaries against the Spaniards in Vigan when her husband Diego Silang was assassinated. Melchara is Melchora Aquino, who opened her home to feed the revolutionary Katipuneros during the revolution of 1896, and then continued to support the resistance against American occupation of the islands for which reason, she was exiled in Guam. Gregoria is the widow of Andres Bonifacio, the leader of the Katipunan who led the armed struggle against Spain and Sisa is Jose Rizal’s martyred mother in his novel, Noli Me Tangere. The blending of historical and fictional characters leads to a “center” and that center is where there can be no aloneness because it may just be, as lines imply, a center of communion and redemption.
In justifying their use of English as medium for writing and resistance, Gemino Abad one of the founders of the Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) argues that English in the latter part of the 20th century in the Philippines has been ingrained, integrated into the consciousness of Filipino it is a mistake to still regard English as colonial heritage:
“It is wrongheaded to take our continuing use of English as proof of our colonial heritage as though we have no power of introspection and critical reflection. What drives its continuing use in Philippine letters is not simply a mastery of its vocabulary and syntax but above all, a mastery of ourselves, of our consciousness and life of feeling. Any language can express anything, it most effective use depends only on such mastery., The mastery of syntax and language is mastery of the way of looking and thinking that inheres in laguage.
We’ve been romancing the English language long enough so that now, it is ours, assimilated into our languages and consciousness, we’ve re-colonized it.”.
At the close of a turbulent decade of the seventies, in 1979, Adrian Cristobal, who became Marcos spokesperson tackled the question of the “survival” of the Filipino writer in the seventies. Cristobal analyzes the situation of the writer during the decade of the seventies by glossing over the major preoccupations of writers, established and new, emerging young and old. Cristobal ends up with the following conclusion:
“No writer complains that the times are bad; times are always bad for the writer whether one is Shakespeare, Pasternak or Mella. The question is not how writers could survive; it is what they do with survival.”
These statements by Cristobal met a rejoinder from Mauro Avena who asserted that what Cristobal meant by “survival of the writer” in the seventies was actually “surrender.”Avena further claimed that there are generally two ways by which a writer survives; one is by surrendering himself to martial law and the other is by fighting the fascist regime and joining the resistance movement.. For Avena, it is the latter kind of survival that is more meaningful.
The task of writers writing in the different languages of the country and who were committed to its liberation therefore was not simply to write but also to fight.,to get involved and feel the pulse of the movement for change. The problem was not really what language should be used to express the rage and discontent, and to convey the urgency of social reform and change. The larger problem was how to harness all existing modes of communication in all languages accessible to the people in order to consolidate and solidify forces for revolution. Ultimately, that task became more significant in scope. In interrogating the social order and in seeking to dismantle the fascist state, poetic production morphed into imaging a free and liberated nation. Defining and redefining the dilemma of the present was a way of probing the contours and the trajectory of the nation. We hear this echoed in a rendering of the poem, Perlita Lagrismas, by Ilokano poet, Peter La Julian.
PERLITA LAGRIMAS
Peter La Julian
(Ilokano)
Lipatemon dagiti kaayan-ayat mo
Ta nataer a nagkuentas ti krus
Nagsublin iti natikag a daga
Dinto aglayagen ta addan initna.
Ti didiosen a nangisuro kenka
Iti panagpapada ngem tinallikudanna
Ti karina, nautoyen ti bangana
Sursuranna nga idian dadduma
A mangib-ibus ti pigsana
Ti nangdangkok a kaaruba a pagbiit
Ti yaayna, nakaro a saem ti imbatina
Punasemon dagiti lua, Perlita
Bay-am a dumapo ti lagip
Tapno agungarda kadagiti aringgawis
Adtoyen ti bigat, sangaribu nga init
Dagiti linnaaw iti karuotan
Adda aniniawan iti kabakiran
Ngem saanen a makaalilaw dagiti pukkaw
A, nagsam-iten a denggen ti panagdissuor
Ti agnanayon nga ubbog ken tartaraudi Nga uni dagit billit agpalangit
(my English translation)
Forget all your lovers
The one who gifted you a necklace of cross
He has returned to his land
Won’t ever come again, as he shines now
That other god who taught you
Equality and freedom but broke
His promise, he’s gone teaching
Those others who are
Wasting away his strength
The neighbor who came for a short while
With his coming, he caused so much pain
wipe away your tears, Perlita
Let all memories, rest
And be resurrected in dreams
Morning is here, a thousand suns
Morning dew is on the plains
There maybe shadows in forests
But their cries won’t trouble us now
A, tis so sweet to hear the last songs
Of birds like waterfalls cresting,
springing, flying up the skies
Ilokano poet Peter La Julian resurrects in Perlita Lagrimas, the “pearl” as icon of the nation.. She is now in tears. . This symbol of a beautiful land plundered harks back to ‘perla del mar de oriente” of Jose Rizal, yet, this time, she is enjoined to wipe her tears away as morning and redemption is inevitable. She is encouraged to forget all previous lovers, the one who came with a neclace of cross (Spain), the one who promised equality yet broke his promises (America) and the neighbor whose coming was so ruthless, left her so much in pain (Japan) They are to be forgotten now.
Poet as stewards of the state
Poems like the one’s I have discussed taunt Plato’s thesis on the benefits and uses of poetry in consolidating a state and building a nation. The poets could not be exiled from the Republic because they are the bards, , the poet-stewards of the state..
The martial law Philippine poets were folklorists versed in legends and myths of the race, historians and/ chroniclers, political analysts and social critics who needed to woo the people in the resistance movement. They became advocates of human rights, healers and magicians, environmentalists, revolutionary strategists, singers composers of songs, journalists and a warriors.. All these they had to perform apart from writing good and compelling poetry.
The poet as chronicler/historian
Every historical period is a contested terrain for interpretation. The Marcos years from 1966 through 1986 are open to interpretation and contestation. When poets
inscribe their interpretations of an era in verses that resonate through the years, then their reflections become remarkably significant.. . While historical accounts are entirely different from poetic narratives, it would be difficult to simply dismiss these poems as mere poet’s musings or figments of their imagination or, to use Plato’s terms, inferior modes of thought.. These poems will be unfolded again and again for their insightful and cutting edge visions and re-visions of a social order and of individual lives in a particular historical conjuncture..
Take Cirilo Bautista’s sonnet, “Concerning the Death by Assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr., August 21, 1983 for example. Without going to great lengths in describing the event and what followed thereafter, the poem paints in broad strokes, what transpired documents history as the making of a nation in grief that “mourned” but knew and then won sovereignty for itself. “Perlita Lagrimas” of Peter La Julian is an Ilokano rendition “folksy” and light, yet treats of the eras of colonization in the country and the nature of relationships between subjects and masters, the colonized against colonizer.
Poetry when rendering a political entity like a nation-state enters the intimidating arena of politics and power relations. This also is an assertion of a long held belief that politics is too important in the life of a society and it is too dangerous to just leave it to
politicians and political scientists. . Philippine poets have realized this for ages which is why from folk poetry to Rizal and Bonifacio and the poets of the Philippine revolution, the Marcos years, poets figured prominently, gotten involved, fought, meddled with the political affairs of the state.
A most famous poet of the resistance movement against martial law is Emmanuel A. F. Lacaba whose poem, “Open Letters to Filipino Artists” 47begins with an epigram from Ho Chi Minh, political leader and icon of the Vietnamese revolution who says that “ a poet must also learn how to lead an attack.” The poem introspects on how a bourgeiois poet is transformed in the revolution, learns the languages of the people and ends with how a poet immersed with the masses struggling for change is humbled by the justness of the cause the magnanimity and magnitude of service to the people:
…..
OPEN LETTERS TO FILIPINO ARTISTS
Emmanuel A. F. Lacaba
(excerpt)
III.
We are tribeless and all tribes are ours
We are homeless and all homes are ours
To the fascists, we are the faceless enemy
Who come like thieves in the night , angels of death
The ever moving, shining, secret eye of the storm
The road less traveled we’ve taken
And that has made the difference
The barefoot army of the wilderness
We all should be in time, the masses are
Messiah
Here among workers and peasants our lost
Generation has found its true, its only home.
Among indigenous tribes, the poet is cultural leader. S/he is babaylan, catalonan/ manga-anito, baglan etc. who is consulted for important affairs in the community. S/he could be the “pantas” or the wise old person in the village whom everyone respects. Among the mangyans of Mindoro, s/he is the best one who can decipher the meaning of an ambahan or native poem in the native form of writing of the Mangyans. The ambahan is laden with figurative language that only the wisest and most brilliant of the tribe can read and understand..
Socially committed and engaged literature is trademark of the country’s national heroes, Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio. They were both poets… Rizal was executed for his involvement in the Philippine revolution of 1896 even as his participation was mainly through his writings. He is a poet and his political analysis of Philippine society was sharp enough to earn the ire of Spanish colonialists and he had to be silenced and executed. But the people took up his words and learned revolution. Andres Bonifacio was executed by his fellow revolutionaries but only after he had left a clear poetic legacy in two poems, “Katapusang Hibik ng Pilipinas” (The Last Cry of the Philippines) and Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Bayan (Love for Ones Land of Birth).
In similar fashion, the socially engaged and committed poets of martial law synthesized many aspects of Philippine life during the Marcos years. Political terrorism and political dynasties, the oligarchy, elitism, bureaucrat capitalism and corruption, the inequitable distribution of wealth, modernity, technological change, the onrush of commercialization and globalization detrimental to national well being are issues that came under their scrutiny and they wrote verses and sang about all these issues.
The poet as healer/magician
Like Jose Rizal, poets of the age were invoking the social muse of poetry in earnest.. They generally conceded that there is this one society and one painful social reality which is a disease, that has wounded the nation… The attempts of the writers and poets of the period to heal this wound can be compared to tincture drops which made the pain even more excruciating. The wounds were real and fatal for some poets.
Emmanuel A F. . Lacaba is one of those poets who perished in the resistance. His brother, Jose F. Lacaba was a political prisoner of the Marcos regime. The healing was a painful process of awakening to the reality of a nation that needed change.
Poetry in the Marcos years helped outline a platform for change. In order to make sense of events of the everyday that turned out to be so absurd, people had to vent their desires and frustrations in words that could be seen and heard. Poets were not only expressing themselves, they were out expressing themselves to be read, heard, seen, listened to and emulated for their social commitment and action..
Opposition to the reigning political dispensation, the examination and re- examination of values, norms, customs and traditions were premised on one alternative: that there would be a better state of things attainable if a greater critical mass of citizens were untied in dismantling the centuries-old -colonial, feudal and fascistic government..
Rendering a nation fostering a national spirit.
The Filipino nation was therefore “rendered” in the Marcos years by a kind of poetry that was sourced from the experience of the diverse peoples of the islands from the ordinary country folk, the common tao, to the deprived and the hunted, the savaged and marginalized, the disgruntled middle class and Filipino intellectuals.
The term “rendering” is used in its manifold sense as reflection, performance, articulation, embodiment and act of remembering. . Rendering in poetry echoes the aspirations of a community,. However, rendering goes a step further by embodiment and performance. There is a performance involved as the poetry is not meant only to be written and recollected but listened to and acted upon. This is living and re- living the imaginary,, capturing in song and verse, what is reflected upon. There is a “touch”, there is vision, there is action. The nation, in this sense, lives in the voice and the body and thus, acquires a more human face, a face that aspires and dreams and lives on.
Rendering the poetry is spelling the nation, projecting it to nations of the world that yes, there is, in this space, a voice, an aspiration, and action.
It is this act of rendering that defined and continues to define the many actions of Filipino citizens in the today’s world. It can be said, that the Filipino:nation” that mourrs yet knows ” is still being rendered and contrinues to aspire, to rise from the ruins and disappointments of its past, including fending off disasters, natural and manmade, and holding its own destiny to become a modern nation of the world.:
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Last Quarter Storm 