Calauan in 1993 (2)

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

 

[This column and last week’s are only one-fourth the length of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine cover story that I wrote in 1993. We end with this.]

 

Calauan has been a very Sanchez-centered town, and with meyor behind bars, his devotees feel orphaned. Sanchez’s followers’ devotion to him and his to them is not unlike the relationship between the late deposed President Ferdinand Marcos and the Ilocanos of the North. The 45-year-old Sanchez, who is with the Marcos-founded KBL party, must have learned a few things from the dictator, including his fascination with the number 7.

In Calauan, the three white-washed structures that stand out are the munisipyo, the Sanchez home and the church. The church and the land on which it stands were donated by the Roxas-Soriano family in 1925. (The parish, which used to be part of the Lipa diocese, was established in 1860.) When San Pablo became a diocese in 1961, Bishop Pedro Bantigue established residence in Calauan. In 1991, Sanchez embarked on a complete renovation and embellishment program of the church and its surroundings.

 

Naturally, the church has the mayor’s color motif — frothy white with touches of green. Here, it is said — and the mayor himself admits this — he walks on his knees from door to altar. When he first became a suspect in the UP students’ deaths and rape, he showed his calloused knees as proof of his piety and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Over at the CIS jail in Camp Crame where Sanchez is billeted, Edith Sanchez, the mayor’s 40-year-old wife, plays hostess to her husband’s well-wishers from Calauan, simple folk wearing clothes in variations of white and green. Edith is in an all-white getup and green slippers. At first she refuses to be interviewed, but she starts to open up when convinced that her husband’s innocence or guilt is not the subject of the interview (conducted in the CIS jail parking lot).

 

“Ask these people,” Edith huffs, “what the mayor is like.” A woman comes forward, lamenting the mayor’s fate. “Sana naoperahan na itong bukol ko sa kilikili,” she says.

The missus is adamant. “When this is over,” she warns, “I will deal with those who have lied about us. May karma.” She refuses to allow anyone to interview her husband as per his lawyer’s orders. From his cell window, the statue of Our Lady of Divine Grace is visible. The mayor has been doing a lot of praying and Bible reading, his wife says.

Her husband couldn’t be a rapist, Edith protests. “Kaya naman daw niya magbayad.” Her stories about his goodness and piety are endless — he always pauses to pray the Angelus, and he is generous to a fault. “Lumuluhod pa sa bilao ng asin.”

 

Concerned Calauanos who do not wish to be named say in Barangay Imok alone, 13 dead bodies were found from 1985 to 1989. The boundary of Sitio Dayap and Curba in Santo Tomas is also “tapunan ng mga patay.” Even the Sanchez loyalists admit, in the presence of Edith Sanchez, that their town is really a tapunan.

 

And if it is at all significant, people note that since the handcuffing of Sanchez, jueteng operations in Calauan have ground to a halt.

 

Questions remain. Where are all the bodies coming from?

Is Sanchez really the incarnation of evil that he is pictured to be? Or is he goodness personified, as attested to by the little people whom he has held in thrall with the bounty from his hands? Does his right hand know what his left hand has been doing? How much of him is Dr. Jekyll, how much is Mr. Hyde?

 

                                                        * * *

Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) chief Nicanor Faeldon has been seen in photos (e.g., PDI 9/2/2019) wearing four stars on his shoulders, which means he holds the highest rank in military service. Faeldon was among those involved in the 2003 Oakwood mutiny and left military service as a marine captain. As BuCor chief, he is undergoing intense questioning at the Senate for the thousands of prison inmates on the list for release through the good conduct time allowance, among them Sanchez, who is serving more than 200 years behind bars.

 

In his post on Facebook, retired Air Force chief Loven Abadia asks why Faeldon is wearing those stars reserved for the highest-ranking military officers. (Only the Commander in Chief has five stars.) Someone said that the heads of BuCor, the Philippine National Police and Bureau of Fire Protection can be conferred four-star status (but, I suppose, should have the rank of a one-star general to begin with). Which means that Faeldon did not pass through the ranks, and was simply conferred the highest military status? And will retire with that rank? #

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Calauan in 1993 (1)

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

 

“That characters deteriorate in time of need possibly did not occur to Henchard.” —from Thomas Hardy’s “The Mayor of Casterbridge”

“We are all cowards,” sighs a woman. “Cowards,” she repeats. Mea culpa, mea culpa. She is beside herself with regret, beats her breast now that Calauan, the quiet town where she blossomed into a woman, is in the headlines as the “killing fields” of Laguna, its deep, dark secrets being exhumed and brought out in the open air. She believes that something evil is abroad in Calauan.

Why has no one spoken out before?, she asks. Why did we keep silent, why did we wait until two young lives — the latest of so many this killing season — were snuffed out and dumped on the wet grass like fallen banana stalks? Mea maxima culpa.

 

Not all is well in Calauan. Not even after suspects have been put behind bars by bickering government agencies, not even after media has pounded the crime beat relentlessly in pursuit of the beasts and the brutes who authored the murders that once more rocked a perennially outraged nation.

Not all is well in Calauan. People there are still incredulous, similarly outraged, that their town has been tagged as a can of worms or a whitened sepulchre, and their Lord Mayor pointed to as one of the suspects in the June 28 gang rape-murder of Eileen Sarmenta and the murder of Allan Gomez, students of UP Los Baños.

 

The reverse of the biblical question begs asking. Could anything bad come out of Calauan’s Mayor Sanchez? Hailed by his loyal subalterns as the epitome of generosity, and from whom oozes the milk of human kindness? He who attends to the sick and the needy, and gives free burials to the poor? He who gives large sums to the Church, adorns religious images with glitter and walks on his calloused knees to the altar?

Rapist, murderer, “jueteng” lord, tax evader, womanizer. He’s been accused of graft and corruption, amassing illegal wealth, and other crimes in the book. Is Sanchez all these and more? Where was everybody all this time?

 

“He is like Jesus Christ,” a small woman bristles to defend her benighted, beleaguered hero. “His sufferings will redeem us all.”

 

“Media is lying,” says an angry Calauan resident. “How could they say all those about our mayor? We don’t believe anything the press says.” The loyalty is unnerving.

 

The way to Calauan is smooth and breezy. It is 75 kilometers from Manila, only an hour’s drive from where Metro Manila ends. Going toward that direction is an uplifting experience. One zooms through the south expressway, drives past Jose Rizal’s Calamba, now a bustling town, and then, it is Los Baños with its myths, mists and mystical buko pie. Bay town is a short strip to be crossed in a wink. The last few miles are a stretch of concrete that rips the wet rice fields and connects to Calauan. From a distance one can see the church — white like a birthday cake — waiting for the traveler at the end of the road.

 

Suddenly, it is Calauan.

Yet another story goes back to the early Spanish colonial days. In a village, so the story goes, an old man came upon a stone cross. The townspeople, who had just been introduced to Christianity at that time, considered the find an auspicious sign. They venerated the cross and held Mass and celebrations on the spot where it was found. To the people’s astonishment, water with a rusty color flowed from the holy spot. To commemorate the wondrous happening, the people built a church and named their town Kalawang, later hispanized to Calauan.

 

A huge portion of the town used to be a large agricultural estate owned by the Sorianos. Before the war, senior citizens recall, part of the Soriano property was planted to flowers, mostly gladioli. Manila got a regular supply of cut flowers from there.

 

When the bodies of Mary Eileen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez were found separately in Calauan, people didn’t realize that this would signal the digging up of graves long covered with grass, and the unearthing of dark secrets long kept under the ground.#

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Tempest in a toilet

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

 

The case of trans woman Gretchen Diez is now the subject of discussions in social media, among lawmakers and gender equality advocates. And homophobes, too.

 

Diez was berated and dragged by a janitress at Farmer’s Plaza in Araneta Commercial Center in Quezon City when Diez tried to use the women’s rest room or toilet. That is, despite the fact Quezon City has an ordinance protecting the LGBTQIA+ against discrimination. She was later handcuffed on the way to the police precinct.

Diez was able to record the happening and she now has proof of the inhumane treatment. She was in the news and also at the Senate where Sen. Risa Hontiveros delivered a privilege speech on trans people being maltreated, humiliated, discriminated against.

Diez’s aggressor, whom I should not call a janitress from hell, certainly outdid herself but has since apologized, and the mall management is now finding ways to address the issue of rest rooms.

Questions remain. Is it safety? Is it security? Is it privacy? Is it hygiene and sanitation?

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The discussions on what toilets or rest rooms the trans people should use range from the absurd to the offensive to the funny to the reasonable. Someone I know proposed on social media that rest rooms should no longer be labeled Male-Female or Men-Women but by the anatomical parts of their intended users—penis and vagina. And for those who cannot read English or Filipino, what icons to use on the signages? (I cannot help thinking of a noted sculptor’s iconic sculpture of a vagina.)

Does that mean that trans women who haven’t had surgery to remove their male parts but have already fully adopted other female attributes should still stick to the men’s rest room?

 

A mother asked on social media what mothers think of trans women (men who have transitioned into women) using the rest room where their young daughters go. As in, would their daughters be safe? The issue of safety.

 

This is insinuating that there may be male sex predators disguised as trans women. But sex predators could be anywhere.

 

Where should trans men (different from lesbians) like show-biz celebrity and former National Youth Commission head Ice (formerly Aiza) Seguerra and singer Jake Zyrus (formerly Charice Pempengco) go to relieve themselves? What rest room does Ellen Degeneres use? Seguerra was reported as saying that while abroad, he would avoid drinking liquids so that he wouldn’t have to use public rest rooms and risk humiliation.

What about congresswoman from Bataan and trans woman Geraldine Roman? What about actor BB Gandanghari (formerly Rustom Padilla)?

In restaurants where there are only two rest rooms (one for males and one for females) and, rarely, another one for persons with disabilities, where does a trans woman or trans man go? In establishments where there is only a “unisex” rest room, there is no choice to be made.

 

A senator has suggested that rest rooms for persons with disabilities (PWD) could also serve the trans people. Will the PWD mind? Will the trans people be offended because they are not in any way disabled?

 

The problem arises in huge rest rooms with many cubicles, and where those who enter are seen by many who are waiting in line or washing their hands. The trans man or trans woman could be shamed.

 

I gather that straight men are uncomfortable even with gay men urinating beside them. The privacy issue.

 

A trans man who looks every inch a man cannot urinate on a urinal while standing. He will have to go inside a cubicle that has a toilet bowl. A trans woman who looks every inch a woman (with or without reconstructive surgery) — where should she go?

 

On a couple of occasions (a provincial bus stopping in gas stations in remote places), when the line to the women’s rest room was so long and the men’s rest room was empty, I dashed to the latter and was done in two minutes. Other women followed suit.

 

There are suggestions that in rest rooms with many cubicles, one cubicle should be reserved for trans people. Well, the women’s rest room is the likely one. That is where mothers take their young sons who cannot go to the men’s rest room by themselves. This means there would be more users of the women’s rest rooms. Because safer, more inclusive?

 

The debate on the Sogie Equality bill continues. #

 

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Sabtang's secret

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

 

While we mourn the loss of human lives and age-old structures during the recent earthquake that rocked Itbayat Island in Batanes, my mind and pen go back to Sabtang, a neighboring island that was spared.)

 

1992. Savage beauty. Tucked at the foot of storm-swept hills, there where ocean meets cliff, where the brightness of blue meets the softness of black, is a place, a secret place. Here, the marriage of water and rock. Here, the fire of the sea embraces the coldness of stone.

Here, somewhere on the edges of Sabtang Island in Batanes, is a place seldom seen by human eyes. You must set sail on a bright day and go around the island for a couple of hours to find it and then to behold its terrifying beauty.

 

You know you are a lighthouse away when the small round-bottomed “falowa,” the Ivatan’s contribution to seafaring, starts tossing itself to the sky. Here, even on a clear, windless day, is a sea-a-boil. Here, the waters of the West Philippine Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet, hug and pull at each other, creating a turbulence so heart-pounding and so awesome.

From the hapless bobbing falowa, the stouthearted explorer gets a privileged view of that secret place. Craggy cliffs dripping bridal veils. Waters surging, frothing, dancing, rolling. Yea, this one is made in heaven. This one is original, untouched since the day God bade it to unfold. As the psalmist had gushed: “How lovely is your dwelling place.”

 

A slow, symphonic movement makes 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 cliffs and the rocks. Whaaam! Here before your eyes is a concerto at its most tempestuous peak. Water breaking into a million crystalline pieces. It is pure music. Salt melts in your eyes. Suddenly, you are no longer afraid.

You can hardly wait for the next one.

 

Finding the secret place is not for the faint of heart. And when at last you find it, you realize you can gaze at the scene for only so long, not a minute more. The blue bids you go. And you leave the place to the creatures of the sea, for them to forever guard it.

You have seen the secret of Sabtang. (A photographer has captured this secret in black and white.)

 

Sabtang, which is 45 minutes of tumultuous ride from Batan, the main island of the Batanes group, has “a feel of a different place,” as a foreigner once mused. Rows of lime-and-stone houses, cows meditating on soft pastureland, people so polite (every other person on the street says “Good morning” to the stranger) and hospitable (they’d let the stranger in to give “pabaon” of kilos of their garlic harvest) and religious (almost every barangay has an 18th-century style Dominican-built church; the town has produced several nuns and priests.)

 

Quiet, clean, peaceful. Sleep under the stars with soft grass for a bed and wake up with dew on your eyelids. Population: 1,737. Everybody is a Catholic. Almost all the dogs are lime-white. No crime. If gin is a popular drink among males, it’s because of the stormy weather (typhoon winds can relocate cows). There is electricity. The fish is good, the beef plenty.

How to get to this northernmost group of Philippine islands? You should first fly Manila-Tuguegarao (or Laoag)-Basco. (There are straight flights now.) If you start hearing Chinese from your pocket radio, it’s because you are nearer Taiwan than you are to Manila. From Basco, the capital of the Batanes Group of Islands, you take a 30-minute ride to the town of Ivana, where the falowa waits to ferry you to Sabtang. From the front of the church of Ivana (where the boats dock), you can see the peak of Sabtang island. Very near, except the boat ride is something else.

 

Sabtang has its share of secret places waiting to be discovered. But nothing as awesome as the one that — seafarers had warned — can be seen only from the rough sea, and only if you have a strong heart. That hallowed place where sea and mountain wed in one turbulent embrace, where there is only the sound of the cathedral waves eternally folding and unfolding. #

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