Joma" (Today, 20 August) and L. Teodoro's response to
Buencamino's satirical piece (Today, 21 August).
Open Letter to Joma
BY MANUEL BUENCAMINO
Buencamino does political affairs analysis for Action
for Economic Reforms (AER).
“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar
doctrine that age brings wisdom.” –H. L. Mencken
Dear Joma,
I’m writing you this letter because I read your
statement titled, “BUSH REGIME IS SABOTAGING THE
GRP-NDFP PEACE NEGOTIATIONS AND ESCALATING US MILITARY
INTERVENTION IN PHILIPPINES.”
There, you accused President Bush of sabotaging the
peace negotiations because neither you nor your
organizations were de-listed from the terrorist list
of the US State
Department and the Office of Foreign Assets Control
(OFAC) of the Treasury Department. You deduced that
“The Bush regime is thereby stirring up the civil war
between the GRP and the people's democratic government
(PDG) represented by the NDFP.”
So you issued a call to arms. “It is their duty [the
Filipino people and revolutionary forces] to fight
back and liberate themselves from US imperialism and
its die-hard puppets.”
Forgive me for asking but if you already knew that
Bush listed you as a terrorist in order to “stir up
the civil war,” why then did you do exactly what Bush
wanted you to do, declare war on “US imperialism and
its die-hard puppets” and “stir up the civil war?”
‘Di ba parang nagpa- uto ka?
Or maybe you’re just blind with fury because the US
Treasury Department froze the advance royalty payment
for your book. You argued, “This royalty payment has
absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. It is paid in
accordance with a pre-2002 contract which is perfectly
legal.”
And you devoted more than 200 words right in the
middle of your communiqué just to show how persecuted
you are. However, a better approach might have been
to remind the State Department that you traded your
M16 for a suit a long time ago and your main concern
these days is cross-town traffic—not cross-fires.
I understand you have to “let it all hang out,” but it
doesn’t look good when you go into a lengthy discourse
about your personal problems and then say “Back to
the question of GRP-NDFP peace negotiations,” followed
by a brief 80-word summary of why the peace talks
should be postponed until the GRP meets its
obligations under the Oslo I and Oslo II Statements.
In the paragraphs leading up to the frozen royalty
story, you delivered an appeal that reveals more than
it should. You said, “I fight by exposing the
injustices done to me and calling on the people to
support my cause,” thus making casus belli out of your
personal problems.
Frankly, you reminded me of Bush who exclaimed, “He
tried to kill my dad,” in the middle of a serious
speech outlining his reasons for toppling Saddam.
Once upon a time you called yourself Amado Guerrero,
the Beloved Warrior, and led your troops in a battle
royale against the GRP. Now, you hire American lawyers
to wage royalty battles against the US Treasury.
Joma, revolutionaries and rock stars don’t age well.
Those who live too long end up bloated like Elvis or
depraved like Mao. Those who die young become heroes.
It’s too late for you to die a young hero and it would
be unseemly, though tempting, for you to follow Mao’s
example and trade your “Little Red Book” for a private
little red house. And so your only option is a total
“make-over.”
In this regard, you should stop using laborious
phrases like “US imperialism and its die-hard
puppets.” They date you because no one talks that
way anymore. If you were to appear in a televised
interview, subtitles would be needed.
Joma, you are a revolutionary. Fire your lawyers, wear
the terrorist listing as a badge of honor and a
reminder that at least someone still takes you
seriously. At your age, you have to learn to be more
appreciative of life’s blessings
Sincerely yours,
Manuel Buencamino
Former “guerilla,” now Chief Image Consultant to Aging
Rebs
P.S. The GRP has a reputation for caving in to
“terrorist demands,” so you might actually be
negotiating from a “position of strength” if you wear
the terrorist badge to you next round of negotiations.
To whom it may concern
VANTAGE POINT By LUIS TEODORO
Academics favor indirection, subtlety, obscure
phrases. Unfortunately for them, Sison doesn’t write
for academics but for the many who actually make
history.
Although a few years his junior, I met Jose Ma. Sison
in the University of the Philippines years ago, in the
Philippine Collegian, of which he was research editor
during the editorship of Leonardo Quisumbing, then a
law student, and who’s currently a Supreme Court
justice. A liberal through and through with dreams of
a law career, I nevertheless ended up editing Sison’s
second book, Struggle for National Democracy (his
first book was a book of poems).
The editing task was itself a struggle. Although an
English literature major (he was then an MA student
and an instructor in the Department of English), Joe,
as he was then plainly known among friends, wrote in a
prose style we in the esoteric circles of the UP
Writers’ Club thought peculiar.
His syntax was unconventional, although his writing
was grammatically error-free. But he had this shocking
practice of actually naming things as they really
were, which among UP’s aesthetes was simply
unacceptable. Don’t say “everyday world,” say “the
quotidian universe.” Today we’re told not to say
“puppet,” say “dependency.” Don’t say “imperialist,”
say “hegemon.”
In Philippine Society and Revolution, which he wrote
under the nom de guerre Amado Guerrero, every
government this country has ever had is described as
“The Puppet _____ Regime,” etc. Why this repetition
despite its obvious demerits? That’s because that’s
what they were, puppet regimes all, and to call them
something else would have blunted its reality. As the
late critic Petronilo Bn. Daroy would say later, when
speaking of Sison’s poetry, Sison “is inspired, not by
the conventions of literature, but by the need to
relate to facts in Philippine social life.”
It’s a characteristic his prose hasn’t lost. In this
supposedly postmodern age, he still uses phrases like
“US imperialism and its die-hard puppets.” It’s true
no one talks like that anymore -- at least not in the
respectable, albeit “radical” circles of Philippine
NGOs. In fact, no one talked like that even when I was
a UP undergraduate, when we favored the obscure prose
of Lionel Trilling over the bare-bone clarity of Mao
Zedong’s “Talks at the Yennan Forum on Literature and
Art.”
Sison was on his part never “fashionable.” His books
were disdained as “simple” by PhDs who expected him to
produce treatises rather than manuals for the poor.
Some of his poems are derided for being direct rather
than metaphorical. But that was the price he paid for
choosing meaning above form.
The brutal, sometimes awkward directness of Sison’s
prose is one reason why, as respected as his name is
in those areas of the Philippine countryside where the
National Democratic Front has established its own
governments, among the press and academia he’s too
easy a target -- a reverse example of the icons adored
in respectable circles, the very mention of whose
names invites paeans. Academics favor indirection,
subtlety, obscure phrases. Unfortunately, again as
Daroy noted, Sison doesn’t write for academics but for
the many who actually make history.
But only years later did I discover why Sison wrote
and talked in a way so unlike what academia favored.
It wasn’t only because he liked naming things for what
they really were; he’s actually interested in
communicating to the legions of the poor, which makes
him a rare bird indeed. Thus did he also take the
greatest pains to learn the Filipino language, a task
difficult enough for a non-Tagalog, but even worse for
an English literature major.
There is a name for what the United States has been
doing for the last one hundred years. It is
imperialism -- and it does have “die-hard puppets” who
are, well, die-hard puppets. Putting it thus is
certainly far from the current fashion. But isn’t
what’s happening in Iraq imperialism, and doesn’t the
US’ listing of Sison as a terrorist, a form of
meddling in this country’s affairs?
The same aesthetics of “relating to facts,” rather
than that of “[waging] royalty battles against the US
treasury,” it seems to me, moved Sison to mention the
personal difficulties he has suffered as a result of
the “terrorist” listing. In the past Sison has
mentioned not only that he is no longer chairman of
the Communist Party, but is still blamed for
“ordering” everything from ambushing government
patrols to executing military agents and torturers --
acts which incidentally may not even be terrorism, if
one went by the meaning of the word as consisting of
indiscriminate acts of violence for political ends.
He has also pointed out that as a passport-less exile
in the Netherlands (and please don’t say “self-exiled”
because there’s no such thing), he has been denied the
right to medical care among the consequences of his
being so listed. How else convey to others a sense of
the injustice, which would be an abstraction
otherwise, except by relating what it has meant to
one’s own life, about which one has the most direct
knowledge?
Few people do age gracefully, and one need not even
mention Mao Zedong’s alleged senior depravity --
mostly according to his doctor, by the way, who made a
zillion dollars by writing that book. But here’s even
worse news: even fewer people were ever really perfect
even in their youth, except in their own minds.
Sison had -- still has, I understand -- an eye for the
ladies, a fact many feminists point out whenever his
name is mentioned. Rizal had a girl in every port.
Antonio Luna had a temper that cost him dearly.
Bonifacio had an authoritarian streak. Ninoy Aquino
played up to the gallery even during martial law when
he was on trial for his life.
No, I’m not saying that Sison’s in the same league as
any one of these men, who are rightly regarded as
heroes. But he does command the attention and respect
-- though no longer officially, but in the manner of
an elder statesman -- of a social movement. Like them
he’s also, and he’s never been, perfect. But who is
and who’s ever been?
The important thing is what one has contributed to
this country. As armchair a revolutionary as I have
always been, I am, as many others are, grateful for
the 45 years of his life Sison has given to the making
of the movement that at the very least has forced
governments to look into the causes of poverty and
discontent.
But I agree that their looking into them doesn’t mean
their addressing them -- which is why, I suppose,
there’s a logic to Sison’s thesis that the only way
that will happen is for the poor themselves to take
power.
Personally, I don’t find that a prospect as awful as
much of the intelligentsia does. The world has never
been as dangerous, the United States never more
arrogant and more eager to lay it waste than today. At
home in the country of our despair, no one really
believes that the ruling system can ever do anything
-- nor does it really want to do anything -- to make
things any better for the many. On the contrary, they
will do everything to keep things the way they are,
for their sakes as well as those of their patrons at
home and abroad.
It’s not the poor who are responsible for this state
of affairs, but their supposed betters, a category in
which, I suppose, people like me and the stalwarts of
“civil society” are included. But we haven’t been any
better, and have instead helped make such a mess of
things we’re actually killing people daily without
knowing it. Maybe the poor can do better, because no
one else can.
It won’t do to “advise” those who have actually done
something to -- ho, ho, ho -- undergo a make-over in
the same way that US journalists have “advised” North
Korea’s Kim Jong Il to change his hairdo and
jumpsuits. It trivializes things despite the horrors
of the present, as if hair and suit -- and prose style
-- were what really mattered.
The “advice” that Sison accept the “terrorist” label
as “a badge of honor,” I can only presume, was given
in the same spirit, which is why it can’t be taken
seriously. There are terrorists indeed in this country
and in the world, and can you imagine what wearing
that tag as a “badge of honor” would do? It would make
the military dance with glee to the tune of “I told
you so,” for one thing. But even more fundamentally,
that tag just doesn’t apply.
I’m not alone in saying this. Dozens of other people
say so, and they include lawyers, judges, bishops, a
governor and former senator, and at least one
(current) UP president.
And that’s what really counts, doesn’t it, the truth
-- rather than being perceived to have aged
gracefully, or to have developed a way of talking and
writing a professor of English would approve of? And
isn’t one of the things that’s wrong with this world
and this country the fact that even without our adding
to it, words are debased and used not so much to
enlighten as to prevent understanding, and meaning
sacrificed for the sake of appearance and form?