Etta's valedictory: Farewell to a dark night

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

There we were, several dozens of us, wearing white T-shirts just handed to us, the back emblazoned with the words in bold font: “MARTIAL LAW SURVIVOR.” There could have been more of us, but not all survivors invited to the 27th anniversary of the Edsa People Power uprising could make it.

This was not going to be just any anniversary. President Noynoy Aquino was going to sign the Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act at the morning celebration. It had not been publicly announced and was not even stated in the program. It was going to be a surprise.

I could have gone there as a media person, but I chose to sit with fellow martial law survivors. We wore the “survivor” T-shirts over the shirts we came in, but just before the signing many of us turned the T-shirts around so that the printed part at the back would be in front. For the President to see, and for the cameras, too.

Like the rest of the seated guests, we were given laminated tags that said “VIP.” Someone remarked, “Very Important Prisoner,” as many of the survivors present were during the dark years of martial rule. The remark brought forth a tsunami of memories.

Because of the blocked roads to the People Power monument, Commission on Human Rights (CHR) Chair Etta Rosales had invited me to ride to the celebration with her. I drove to her home so early in the morning. Over a hurried breakfast of pandesal and coffee, I reminded her that I had been to her home many years ago, to interview her when she was a high-profile teacher-activist who fought the Marcos regime and who would later be imprisoned and tortured.

In the van with several other survivors, Etta rehearsed her speech while I timed her. She was to speak before the President’s signing of the law.


Here is Etta’s valedictory, a farewell to a dark night. She spoke for the tens of thousands who survived martial rule and for those who fell in the night.

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Women Writers in Media Now in Aliww exhibit

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

We, the Women Writers in Media Now (Women), upon the prodding of the Ateneo Library of Women’s Writings (Aliww), are “exhibiting ourselves” as writers starting today until April 30. The 4:30 p.m. exhibit opening is preceded by a 3 p.m. forum where three of us—Marites D. Vitug, Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon and I—will speak.

See details of the 18th Paz Marquez Benitez Memorial Lecture-Exhibit at: http://womenwritersinmedianow.blogspot.ca/.

“Procure, preserve, promote” writings by and about Filipino women. These three Ps sum up Aliww’s mandate, which has led to the creation of archival “rooms” for women where print items are preserved, items that “allow entry into the world of a woman who has distinguished herself in a particular field.” By providing researchers access to such primary sources, Aliww facilitates the writing of a national history that includes and acknowledges the contribution of Filipino women. I did write about Aliww a couple of years ago in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine (“More than a library of her own,” March 26, 2011). Now on its 18th year, Aliww holds at least two exhibits a year, says director Rica Bolipata Santos.

Here’s Women’s history:

Women writers on edge, gathered on the edge…

In 1981, nine years into the martial law era, a handful of women journalists and literary writers, appalled by the suppression of freedom of expression by the dictatorial regime, gathered, planned, plotted.

The first meetings were tame. The women wanted to hone their writing skills, critique one another’s works and invite veterans to share writing tips and secrets. Their favorite venue was the Heritage Art Gallery where Odette Alcantara welcomed groups and individuals who needed a place to meet, create and express. The women’s meetings soon evolved into regular forums on issues such as press freedom. The mood would shift from serious to irreverent, from heady to intense, from silly to downright subversive.

From and through all these, things began to emerge and converge.
 

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Reporting on the papacy

 

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

With Pope Benedict XVI’s stunning announcement of his resignation from the papacy—the first in almost 600 years—the Catholic world is again praying, speculating, evaluating. The Pope cited reasons of age and health. Who will fill the Shoes of the Fisherman?

A most sought-after Vatican journalist nowadays is John L. Allen Jr., a prize-winning Vatican correspondent for the US publication National Catholic Reporter (NCR). After news on the Pope’s resignation broke, an international television news network had Allen on camera right away. But it was an Italian journalist—a woman in the male-dominated Vatican—who broke the news first. I didn’t quite catch her explanation on how she had scooped everyone, but she sounded rather humble and matter-of-fact about it.

Allen may be considered the “dean” of Vatican journalists. He is described as “the journalist other reporters—and not a few cardinals—look to for the inside story on how all the pope’s men direct the world’s largest church.”

When the charismatic Pope John Paul II died in 2005, Allen’s revised and updated book “Conclave: the Politics, Personalities and Process of the Next Papal Election” (Doubleday, 2004) became a favorite reference. I got my copy from the Jesuit theologian Fr. Catalino Arevalo, and it served me well when I was assigned to write pieces before and after the conclave.

 Arevalo also gave me a primer, “Papal Transition,” a good guide for journalists, by Rev. Thomas J. Reese, SJ (editor in chief of the Catholic weekly America). It answers 27 questions, including what happens when a pope dies, is in a coma or resigns, what happens at the conclave and after it, etc. And for incorrigible gamblers-bettors, Reese provides a one-liner on what website to visit.

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Ninoy's family entitled to compensation

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

I think of Purificacion Viernes whom I interviewed and photographed in the early 1980s. She was in a hospital bed, her feet raised by strings and pulleys, the burned soles of her feet showing proof of torture. She recounted how soldiers strafed her home and killed members of her family. Wounded, Purificacion played dead. A soldier burned the soles of her feet with a lighter to find out if she was alive or dead….

I had said it then and I say it again now: The close to 10,000 martial law victims who filed the class suit against the Marcos estate did not do so for the prospect of wealth. That was not what pushed them to make a claim on the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth. It was justice.

With the signing by the bicameral committee of the compensation bill for human rights abuse victims two days ago—after more than two decades of waiting—hope for a more just recompense springs once more. The pittance received two years ago by thousands of members of the 1986 class suit filed against the Marcos estate hardly symbolized the kind of justice that they have been waiting for. But it was a good beginning. Even for historical purposes only.

In 2011 the claimants, I among them, each received $1,000—the result of Honolulu Judge Manuel Real’s approval of the distribution of $7.5 million to settle a class action suit filed in 1986 by human rights abuse victims of the Marcos regime. The $1,000 was a trickle compared to the amount that the federal grand jury in Honolulu had decided should be awarded the rights abuse victims. In 1995, the grand jury found the Marcos regime liable for the torture, summary execution and disappearance of about 10,000 victims and awarded them $2 billion in damages.

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Finding Nemo in Tubbataha

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

One of the characters that I thought of after the minesweeper USS Guardian ran aground in and destroyed parts of Tubbataha Reef on Jan. 17 was Nemo, the clownfish who is the object of a transocean search in the blockbuster Walt Disney animated film “Finding Nemo.”

My childlike, cinematic thoughts turned to the countless Nemos who lost their lives and their womb-like dwellings because of careless naval navigation, disregard of warnings, and other reasons that have not been disclosed or explained. A superpower’s minesweeper turned into a destroyer when it plowed into Tubbataha Reef. This amazing marine sanctuary, the Philippines’ pride that has tantalized the world, has been scarred.

I also thought of Captain Nemo, that character in Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” that I read as a child. The clownfish Nemo must have gotten its name from this seafarer who captured children’s imagination, or borrowed Greek adventurer Odysseus’ pseudonym.

Yes, all these stories, ancient and new, had a way of opening little-known and unexplored worlds under and beyond the sea, and we grew up carrying with us the wonderment and wondering whether it could all be true. As it turned out, reality is even more wondrous than fiction, as Tubbataha—known to the world only starting in the 1970s—would prove.

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Don't ride with armed groups and marked prey

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

Here are some recollections and caveats that came to mind after the Jan. 6 encounter/shootout/rubout (?) at a police checkpoint in Atimonan, Quezon, that claimed the lives of 13 people, among them policemen and soldiers, who were traveling together in a convoy. Of the police officers and men, plus the backup members of the Armed Forces that lay in wait at the checkpoint that fateful night, only their leader sustained gunshot wounds.

Even after the smoke has cleared, some questions have not been fully answered. Among them, why were civilians with the armed men? For a more impartial probe the National Bureau of Investigation has been tasked to do a “CSI” (crime scene investigation), not necessarily Miami-style a la Horatio Caine and company. And the media have been on the case 24/7. The Inquirer’s headline two days ago was: “It was an overkill—NBI.”

One of the don’ts we tried to observe as journalists of the alternative press during the dark days of martial rule—and this applies even today—was: Don’t ride with an armed group, the military, para-military or police especially, if you can help it, and with marked and hunted prey, too.

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The Nazarene's nightmare

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

“This restless multitude, confused or orderly, the immensity of which terrifies us: this ocean of humanity whose slow, monotonous wave-flows trouble the hearts even of those whose faith is most firm…” A line from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s “Hymn of the Universe.”

When I read this again in the first week of the New Year, it was as if I was reading it for the first time. Chardin might have been referring to something else but I could not help thinking of the Jan. 9 feast of the Black Nazarene which was expected to draw eight million devotees. And for this, thousands of policemen were to be fielded, many of them pulled out from their regular duties.

I am writing this piece while the so-called ocean of humanity is moving and groaning toward its destination, the Quiapo Church. There is no word yet on how many hours it might take for the andas carrying the Black Nazarene to navigate the winding six kilometers. Last year it took almost 24 hours.

Year after year analysts, researchers and academics try to explain from their high horse this one-of-a-kind expression of faith while true believers describe the miracles in their own lives in simple words. I have written—with awe, sometimes—about this phenomenon a number of times. This time, I am sorry to say, I am not in the mood for a cosmic-anthropological, socio-cultural or psycho-spiritual treatise. Not after the tragedies that have happened to crowds and communities here and elsewhere. Some warnings are in order.

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Conversation with Fr. James Reuter SJ

 

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

Countless students from several generations have had unforgettable times with Fr. James Reuter SJ who passed on last Dec. 31 at the age of 96. I had mine. I was part of the production crew of the huge stage play “The Island” which Father Reuter wrote and directed for St. Scholastica’s College. I still have the souvenir program with lots of pictures in it.

I was among those who operated the music and sounds. With our head phones on, we could hear Father Reuter barking orders and cussing sometimes. One of my tasks was to make sure the sound of water splashing was right on cue when Butz Aquino (among the imported male theater veterans we ogled) jumped into the dark waters.

Fast forward to 1989. I was assigned to do a quick Q and A with Father Reuter because he was going to receive the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award. Here are excerpts from that interview that came out in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

He was a dead ringer for Paul Newman in his youth. But that was not what attracted the young boys and girls to him. There was something else about Fr. James Reuter SJ that drew the young to him. He had charisma, much of which could be spelled out as energy.

Being the head of the Catholic Church’s National Office of Mass Media is only one of the many jobs of Father Reuter. But this office is the hub and heart of what the Jesuit padre is into. He writes, he directs plays, gives retreats and spiritual guidance. He is also an organizer, a mover. The youth is his forte. Here are excerpts from the interview which came out in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

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Who's afraid of NFP?

Philippine Daily Inqirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo

I HAVE issues with both the pros and antis on reproductive health, who have been in fierce debates until recently when the pros in the House of Representatives and the Senate prevailed and married their respective versions now littered with the term “non-abortifacient.” But my issues aren’t anything that cannot be addressed by whichever side prevailed, if only there will be, to borrow a Church official’s words, “attentive listening.”

Alas, there still are more incendiary remarks from some antis that are unbecoming of their statures. A Catholic prelate was reported as saying that the passing of the RH bill and the Aquino administration’s support of it could be likened to the recent massacre of 20 young children and six adults in Connecticut. Or something to that effect. What hole-y hyperbole.

And because tomorrow is Holy Innocents’ Day, it won’t be unlikely for the likes of him to liken the RH bill to Herod’s order to slaughter the innocents.

But I have heard and seen worse. Last Sunday morning, in a church in Quezon City, the new parish priest, for shock effect, complemented his homily with a video clip showing mutilated fetuses, tissues being dissected, an eyeball falling out of a socket, severed limbs, innards spilling out. If you had tocino for breakfast and retched, your vomit might have looked similar to what was on the altar screen.

I have watched some true-to-life gut-churning scenes, among them a couple of autopsies and a convict being exterminated by lethal injection—part of a journalist’s day—and I can say that my guts are steel-hard. But images of mutilated fetuses being shown near the altar at Sunday Mass?

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An RH bill (board) I'd like to see

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

Billboards from hell have been this column’s objects of ire for the longest time. But as they say, if you can’t lick them, you might as well join them. Anti-billboard advocates might as well put up their own to replace some of the unsightly and distracting ads that obstruct our view of the sky.

What’s this got to do with the RH (reproductive health) bill? More on this later.

Many thoughts have been running through my mind these past months that the RH bill was being debated in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and by the pros and the antis who have vigorously, relentlessly and heroically defended their respective positions according to the dictates of their consciences and hopefully not because of the urgings of their party, religious or industry affiliations.

Kudos to both sides. In the end only one side wins, though it is not necessarily winner-takes-all. There have been and will be more give and take, as exemplified by the last-minute amendments that a principal author, Sen. Pia Cayetano, accepted magnanimously. But not Sen. Tito Sotto’s proposal to strike out the word “satisfying” in the phrase “safe and satisfying sex” (that women are entitled to). Cayetano held her ground, with RH bill coauthor Sen. Miriam Santiago declaring that any man married to her must give her safe and satisfying sex. Knowing Santiago, I thought she would add that “satisfying” was an understatement.

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Bottomline: Were they consulted?

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

When the 120 farmers and members of the indigenous groups Dumagat and Agta marched 340 kilometers for three weeks from Casiguran, Aurora, to Manila to amplify their opposition to the Aurora Pacific Economic Zone and Freeport Authority (Apeco), they were not wearing headbands and carrying placards that said: “We are open to negotiations” or “We have open minds.”
When you oppose, you do not say, “Let’s meet halfway,” and hope for crumbs. You give it your mighty all until the other side and the leaders-that-be sit down to talk and settle—reasonably and justly.

When the marchers reached Metro Manila and met the press, supporters and, later, President Aquino and some members of his Cabinet, all they wanted was to air their fears of displacement from their ancestral domain, loss of livelihood, as well as their disappointment at the lack, if not absence, of consultation. And their total opposition to Apeco. That is from their point of view, because of where they are coming from.

Apeco is a 12,923-hectare “megaproject” touted to usher in a new era of economic progress in the province of Aurora. Apeco came into being through an Angara-father-and-son-sponsored law. Sen. Edgardo Angara, his son Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara (a senatorial wannabe), and the senator’s sister Gov. Bellaflor Angara-Castillo were behind Apeco’s creation. But the advocacy group Task Force Anti-Apeco says Apeco has been accused of “transgressing a series of asset reform laws, such as the Indigenous People’s Rights Act, the Carper law and the Fisheries Code.”

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Today's 'singing nuns'

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

The 1960s movie “The Singing Nun” starring Debbie Reynolds was inspired by a real singing nun named Sr. Janine Deckers. The Dominican nun from Belgium popularized the French song “Dominique” and many other compositions. I had a book of her songs that came with piano scores, guitar chords and ink drawings. The semibiographical movie, with Reynolds playing Sister Ann, became a hit. It’s on YouTube.

(Let me just mention here that the real singing nun’s life would later take a downward spin and end in tragedy in 1981. I read this in Wikipedia.)

The movie’s timing was ideal. Vatican II had just ended and religious orders were headed for renewal, examining their original charisms and breaking doors open to let fresh air in. Real-life nuns toting guitars, proclaiming God’s love by singing in public and even in “The Ed Sullivan Show,” were no longer taboo. Atrocious religious habits were being shucked and simpler lifestyles were becoming the ideal. Things began going farther from there. It was also the era of anti-Vietnam War protests.

A little later, in other parts of the world like the Philippines, nuns would join protest movements against repression and wade into uncharted waters. Many were frontliners in the freedom movement, if not grassroots agents of change who left the comforts of the cloisters to heed the call of the marginalized.

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