An apology to Dr. Alfredo Bengzon

A supposed-to-be feel-good Sunday feature that I wrote (p. 1, Inquirer, Nov. 25) turned out to be feel-bad thing, not just for the persons and institutions concerned but also for me, the writer, as well.

I made a mistake—not deliberate, of course—and I am sorry.

The front page story was on the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health’s (ASMPH) bold move in medical education (“Ateneo graduates in 5 years MDs and MBAs”) which is something unprecedented. The story went well until the last portion where I wrote: “Bengzon, an Atenean who finished medicine at the University of the Philippines, recalls speaking at his alma mater and saying that UP had become a staging area for doctors ‘tailor-made to be exported abroad.’”

Dr. Bengzon, ASMPH dean, denies having said that that “UP had become a staging area for doctors ‘tailor-made to be exported abroad.’”

I must state here that it caused him pain and embarrassment especially. UP is, in fact, helping ASMPH by providing the needed faculty. The Ateneo, UP and La Salle University systems have, among themselves, a memorandum of agreement on sharing of faculty.

UP itself has, in fact, created a medical curriculum that exposes their graduates to health problems in poor communities and the systemic and structural problems in society that affect people’s health.

After Dr. Bengzon and I had gone over what transpired at the three-hour-or-so conversation/interview some months ago where he talked about ASMPH, I agree that I had misquoted him and taken his statements out of context.

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Tempest in Tanon

“The State shall protect and advance the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology in accord with the rhythm and harmony of nature. -Article II, Sec. 16 of the Philippine Constitution

I imagine the Lord of the Sea wading to shore wearing raiment of corals and sea grass and--flotsam surrendered by the sea. Thundering, roaring like the wind in a lost empty city, he seeks the despoilers of his ocean home and the home of gentle sea creatures that inhabit the earth and provide food for its inhabitants.

Where are they. He roars. Who are they, they who laid waste the ocean garden.

This scenario plays like a movie in my mind, it surges in my consciousness like the thoughts and images I had long ago while beholding, somewhere, the sea in its threatening beauty. And I imagine now the threatened Tanon Strait in the Visayan Sea as it waits to be visited by turbulence in the form of exploratory drilling for gas.

The sea is a-boil. A slow, symphonic movement takes a sudden turn and climaxes with a roll of drums and a clash of cymbals. The sea quakes to a crescendo, then hurls itself against the wind. Here before you is a concerto at its most tempestuous peak. Water breaking into a million crystalline pieces. It is pure music and fury. Salt melts in your eyes. Suddenly you are no longer afraid.

A battle royale is set to unfold if Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. (Japex) starts exploring for oil on Tanon Strait without having hearkened to protesting communities, scientists and environmental advocates who are asking that exploration be put on hold while the sea itself is to be explored to find out how much of it will live and how much will die.

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Suicide has no heroes

The media frenzy, the blame game, the breast-beating, the outpouring of sympathy and the if-onlys that followed turned out to be more surreal than the suicide itself.

Everybody and everybody had something to say about 12-year-old Marianette Amper of Davao City, about her diary, her family’s poverty, her dreams and dashed hopes. And how she ended it all with a rope. So young and so despairing.

Someone’s got to take the blame--was the undying refrain, the knee-jerk reaction of many. And why not. Manette’s lot in life was indeed something for the yagit telenovelas and bleeding-heart movies that truly resonate with many Filipinos, both poor and not so poor.

But suicide, as psychotherapists would tell us, is not as simple as cause and effect or this equals that. Not everyone who goes through what Manette had gone through, not everyone whose life is more difficult that hers would want to end his or her life.

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Suicide and the blame game

The media frenzy, the blame game, the breast-beating, the outpouring of sympathy and the if-onlys that followed turned out to be more surreal than the suicide itself.

Everybody and everybody had something to say about 12-year-old Marianette Amper of Davao City, about her diary, her family’s poverty, her dreams and dashed hopes. And how she ended it all with a rope. So young and so despairing.

Someone’s got to take the blame--was the undying refrain, the knee-jerk reaction of many. And why not. Manette’s lot in life was indeed something for the yagit telenovelas and bleeding-heart movies that truly resonate with many Filipinos, both poor and not so poor.

But suicide, as psychotherapists would tell us, is not as simple as cause and effect or this equals that. Not everyone who goes through what Manette had gone through, not everyone whose life is more difficult that hers would want to end his or her life.

But why--is the question most people ask of the most unlikely suicides. While in the case of Manette, the most likely remark most people would say was, but why not. Or, but of course. She was poor, though not the poorest. But it is not as simple as that.

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Rock and refuge: NPC then

It was our rock and refuge. It was our sanctuary during the dying days of martial rule. That was the National Press Club for us in the early 1980s. Many of us were greenhorns in journalism then, upstart freelancers from the so-called mosquito press (okay, alternative, and sometimes underground--and underwater if you were the “Ichthys” type) who made bold forays into the mainstream media and were continually at odds with the Marcos military. Hunted, surveilled, “invited”, manacled and thrown into jail.

Standing tall by the banks of the Pasig River was the NPC which was founded and built by the generation of journalists before ours, a good number of whom bore the brunt of military fury when the reign of terror began in 1972. The founders did not build the NPC in the 1950s for the purpose that served us in the 1980s. It was supposed to be a club, a watering hole for the old boys who wanted to unwind after a day’s work at the editorial office or on the beat. Not long after, the culturati and the literati also made it their haunt.

Vicente Manasala’s mural on lawanit in the dining hall gave it ambience. The mural (gone and sold I don’t know where) withstood the smoke, grime and slime from overbearing journalists who thought the masterpiece was their birthright.

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‘Dies irae, dies illa’

I remember our Benedictine school days when Nov. 1 and 2 were marked as special liturgical days. As college boarders (synonymous with brats), we would listen to the nuns singing the Latin “Dies irae, dies illa” at Mass on All Souls’ Day even when English was already the liturgical language of the day.

It was very neo-monastic and I would picture the square-ish Gregorian notes swimming in space while I tried to keep my thoughts from wandering. The organ roared and the voices soared, shaking the rafters of the neo-Romanesque, Germanic chapel which, I must say, is the only one of its kind in this country.

Yes, Gregorian was part of our music appreciation class (part of our expansive Liberal Arts education!) and we were taught how to read those funny notes on four lines and sing them right with the mouth correctly shaped. There was no beat or time, just rhyme and round-ish strokes in the air from the conductor. One was supposed to go with the swelling and the receding of the waves, the ebb and the flow of the sound of the spirit.

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