Dennis Villegas

2012 Year of the Dragon Scenes at the Manila Chinatown

2012-01-24T04:37:00.000-08:00

Mga Kaluluwang Ligaw

2011-11-01T07:59:00.001-07:00

This is one of the old traditions among us Filipinos on the night of Araw ng Mga Patay (All Souls day): we light a few candles in front of our homes for the so-called "mga kaluluwang ligaw", roughly translated as "lost elementals" or souls of dead people who have not yet ascended to heaven.

According to ancient Filipino belief, the kaluluwang ligaw still inhabit the Earth and make their presence felt by making mysterious manifestations like vague sounds, shadows, and strange lights which cannot come from natural sources. It is believed that their manifestations are part of their desire to still contact the world and make their presence felt. The Tagalogs call them "multo" (ghosts).

This night I lighted a few candles and offered some food outside our door for the "kaluluwang ligaw", whoever they may be. It is also my one way of acknowledging their ethereal presence so that they need not manifest their presence to me If ever I needed to wake up at 2 in the morning to go the bathroom.

Escolta After Dark

2011-10-01T11:40:00.000-07:00

Escolta, that old ephemeral street of Manila, has been one of my favorite hang-outs since I was a young Manila student in the early 1980s. Back then, I used to frequent this little boulevard to buy my long-playing discs in Syvel's (now closed), or to have my shoes cleaned by one of those ubiquitous shoeshine boys who lined the street sidewalks. Or perhaps just to hang-around in one of its old little cafés. I still visit the Escolta almost everyday, and every time, that wonderful and a little painful feeling of nostalgia is evoked in me.

I took the following photographs while on a solitary late-night walk along the old Escolta. I took these pictures just as souvenirs or perhaps to just record the scenes I have seen at a given time.

Evening newspapers. You can decide if they bear good news or bad.

Plaza Moraga

Night students

The old La Estrella del Norte building

Antique money seller

Pedestrians

Gone was the tranvia but the calesa still plies the Escolta

Posters and cables

Sidewalk-dwellers

Ilang Pang-hatinggabing Larawan sa Abenida Rizal

2011-09-11T14:48:00.003-07:00

Eskinitang madidilim. Mga paskil sa pader. Mga kaluluwang puyat. Mga aninong hapo. Mga pulubing ginawang tahanan ang bangketa. Niyuping karton upang maging higaan. Mga basura ng nagdaang maghapon. Mga ilaw na patay-sindi. Iyan ay ilan lamang sa mga tagpong maaring matunghayan sa isang hatinggabing paglalakad sa Abenida Rizal. Mga larawang nakakapukaw ng damdamin. Ang ila'y nakapagpapahungkag sa ating kamalayan. Ang iba nama'y nagbibigay ng panibagong pananaw o dili kaya'y may hatid na mensahe na maaaring mapagnilay-nilay sa mga gabing pagod at puyat sapagkat bihirang matunghayan. Kaya't minsa'y ating inililihis ang tingin o dili kaya'y nagkukunwaring walang nakita upang kahit paano'y hindi maantig ang mga gulantang na damdamin.

Gulugod ni Dr. Jose Rizal

2011-08-29T17:50:00.000-07:00

Ito ay isang buto sa gulugod (vertebrae) ng ating Pambansang Bayani na si Dr. Jose Rizal. Noong 1898, dalawang taon matapos na mailibing sa lumang sementeryo ng Paco si Rizal, ay hinukay ng kanyang mga kamag-anakan ang kanyang labi. Nilinis ang kalansay ni Rizal sa loob ng bahay ni Dona Narcisa Rizal (nakatatandang kapatid na babae ni Rizal). Nanatili ang kalansay ni Rizal sa kanilang bahay hanggang 1912, noong inilagay na ang kalansay sa ilalim ng monumento sa Luneta. Isang buto sa gulugod ni Rizal ang hindi isinama at ginawang subenir sapagkat ito ang bahaging tinamaan ng bala noong barilin si Rizal sa Bagumbayan. Hanggang ngayon ay makikita itong naka-exhibit sa Museo ng Fort Santiago.

On leave

2011-07-06T17:37:00.000-07:00

Thank you for the visit. I will be on leave from blogging for three weeks to concentrate on a writing assignment. See you again in a few weeks time.

The Best of Siquijor, Philippines

2011-07-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

A Video Tour of my 2010 Trip to Siquijor

Jose Rizal: First Filipino Saint?

2011-06-26T17:44:00.001-07:00

For the past few years, I have been studying some of the Rizalista sects in Mount Makiling, Mount Banahaw , and Mount Arayat . These Rizalista sects worship Jose Rizal as God. They call Rizal in a variety of names: the Tagalog Christ, the Jove Rex Al, the Son of God, Amang Doktor, Amang Rizal, and so on.

One time, while on discussion about Rizal’s various mystical powers, one ageing Rizalista seriously told me that Rizal could also be considered the Filipino Buddha because he was the first Filipino to attain enlightenment. You could imagine my amusement thinking about Rizal sitting in Buddha-like position trying to achieve Nirvana!

It amused me because some years back, I was asked by a young smart-aleck student if Rizal could be considered for sainthood since he died a martyr’s death. I remember answering that Rizal will never be canonized by the Catholic Church since during his life, Rizal attacked the Catholic Church. But then again in more enlightened retrospect, I knew I made a mistake, because Rizal never attacked the Catholic Church itself, but rather the bad practices in it.

Nevertheless, the thought of Jose Rizal becoming a saint was a rather cool idea. I wanted to find out if there were some people in the past who may have lobbied for Rizal’s sainthood. My research led me to some dusty shelves in the Filipiniana section of the National Library where I asked a bespectacled librarian if there was ever a book or a monograph about a move to beatify Jose Rizal.

The bewildered librarian looked at me as if I had just come from outer space, and perhaps considered me as one of those rabid Rizalistas who invade the library every now and then to research on the divinity of God Rizal. Then she told me that there was no such a thing. As consolation for my weird research, she handed me Rudy Astronomo’s Kristong Kayumanggi (Tagalog Christ), which of course, I already read many times before, the book being freely given in many Rizalista churches.

I went home and totally forgot about St. Jose Rizal. Then one evening, while browsing some old newspapers in my collection, I came across an old Renacimiento newspaper from 1903. It contained news of Jose Rizal canonization in the Philippine Independent Catholic Church or more widely known as the Aglipayan Church . Indeed, unknown to most of us, Jose Rizal was canonized as a saint on September 24, 1903 by the Aglipayan Church .

This canonization of Rizal was not, of course, recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, since the Aglipayan Church was a breakaway Catholic group. Nevertheless, this was the very first known act of any organized religion in the Philippines to venerate Rizal as a saint, making him as the first Filipino saint! Consequently, after Rizal’s canonization, hymns and prayers were composed in his honor, and his birth and death anniversaries became important feast days. Rizal’s pictures and statuettes were placed in the altars of Aglipayan churches.

It is important to note, however, that at present, the Aglipayan Church has already ceased to recognize Rizal as saint. According to present Aglipayan Bishop Rev. Fr. Efraim Fajutagana, Rizal’s sainthood was revoked in the 1950s, since it was only done during the nationalistic phase of their church—that is, during the early years of their separation from the Catholic Church. So at present, the church no longer celebrates the feast days of Saint Jose Rizal, although they still recognize Rizal as the foremost Philippine hero.

The question now is: in the light of Rizal’s unjust execution (like Joan de Arc who became St. Joan of Arc), if it’s now possible for the Roman Catholic Church to beatify Rizal and elevate him to the official roster of Catholic saints. Since the Catholic Church claimed that Rizal retracted his “errors in faith” shortly before his death, then it can be argued that it is already high time for the Catholic Church to retract its own condemnation of Rizal as enemy of the church. This would be complicated, as anti-retractionists would argue that Rizal did not retract because he had nothing to retract.

Nevertheless, immaterial to whether Rizal retracted or not, the issue is clear: Rizal was unjustly executed partly because of the role played by the Catholic Church. So the first thing the Catholic Church should consider is to issue a long-due apology for its role in the martyrdom of Rizal. As a Catholic and Rizalist, I feel that this is a just demand because our greatest hero was wrongly executed. For the record, Spain already issued an official apology for executing Rizal. Now, a Rizal monument similar to the one we have in the Luneta stands in the heart of Madrid.

Rizal’s retraction would no longer be the issue here but the Church’s retraction. But I guess it would be very unlikely since the Church as an institution has not admitted errors, just as in the Middle Ages--during the Inquisition—it committed serious errors in executing so many innocent people.

Hence, I believe that Jose Rizal joining the ranks of the Catholic saints would be a remote possibility at present. Nonetheless, for the Rizalistas, it does not matter: God Rizal always sounded better than St. Jose Rizal.

*This article originally published here at the Philippine Online Chronicles.

The Story of the Rizal Monument

2011-06-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

Of all the historical landmarks in the Philippines, the Rizal monument in Luneta easily stands out as the most recognizable and most photographed. It is thus an irony that very few Filipinos know the story behind the building of this important national memorial, and how, more than a century ago, some of the world’s leading sculptors participated in an international contest to design and build it.

Built by virtue of the United States Philippine Commission Act No. 243, dated September 28, 1901, the Rizal monument was approved by no less than United States President Theodore Roosevelt. The act stipulated the allocation of land in the Luneta to build the memorial, near where Rizal fell when he was executed by the Spaniards on December 30, 1896. It also specified that the monument bear the statue of Rizal, as well as serve as the final resting place of his remains. To fund the project, a Rizal committee was set up to raise funds from public solicitations. The committee—whose members included Paciano Rizal (Rizal’s brother), and Tagalog novelist Pascual Poblete–was also tasked to hold a design contest for the future monument.

In 1905, when the committee gathered enough funds, it announced the art competition. Local and foreign sculptors were invited to participate, with the year 1907 as the deadline of submission. It was a reasonable period of time to conceptualize and design a scale model for the future Rizal national monument. The grand prize winner would be awarded a cash prize of P5,000, as well as the P100,000-contract to build the monument. It was a huge sum during that time and thus many sculptors, including some of the best in Europe, participated.

Forty artists submitted their bozetos (scale models) in 1907. From these forty, ten bozetos made it to the finals. Some of the bozetos were titled “Noli Me Tangere” (Rizal’s first novel), “Motto Stella” (Guiding Star), “1906”, “Al Martir de Bagumbayan”, “Eripitur Persona Manet Res”, “F.F”, “Victoria”, and “Maria Clara.” The bozetos were exhibited in the Marble Hall of the Ayuntamiento in Intramuros. The judges, all non-artists, were headed by then American Governor of the Philippines Frank Smith.

Bozeto finalists

Extant photographs of the exhibit revealed the superior qualities of the finalists. Most were meticulously made in the Art Nouveau style that was very popular at that time. After thorough deliberation, the jury reached a decision. They awarded the P5,000-grand prize to bozeto No. 21 entitled “Al Martir de Bagumbayan” designed by the famous Italian sculptor Carlo Nicoli of Carrara, Italy. The jury gave the second prize to bozeto No. 9 entitled “Motto Stella” by the Swiss sculptor Richard Kissling. Kissling received a P2,000 cash prize.

Al Martir de Bagumbayan by Carlo Nicoli. Grand Prize Winner

Motto Stella by Richard Kissling, Second-place Winner

As the first prize winner, Carlo Nicoli was supposed to have been awarded the contract to build the monument in the Luneta. However, for some reason the contract went instead to second-prize winner Richard Kissling, for his bozeto.

Some speculated that Nicoli’s intricate design would cost so much more than the P100,000 budget to build the monument. Indeed, Nicoli’s bozeto required installations of intricate parts that were lacking in the Philippines and needed to be imported from Italy. Nicoli also specified that in order to construct the bozeto faithfully, Carara marble (the famed marble that was favored by Italian sculptors like Michaelangelo and Bernini), must be used. Of course, the contract stipulated that all materials would be from local sources.

There was also a theory that Nicoli backed out of the contract because he failed to put up the P20,000-peso bond as guarantee to finish the monument. Or that Nicoli was not able to come to the signing of the contract. Whatever the case, Richard Kissling was eventually awarded the contract, and his “Motto Stella” bozeto was the one upon which construction was started in 1908.

In comparison with Nicoli’s grand prize-winning bozeto, Kissling’s model was more streamlined, and almost lacks the grandeur that befits the greatest hero of the land. Indeed, when news of the change of model spread, some of the local press criticized Kissling’s model. A newspaper caricature poked fun at its design. Some unscrupulous people even put forward the ridiculous suggestion that the famous Filipino painter Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo should inspect and modify the design. In fairness to Hidalgo, he might not even have known of the suggestion and even if he did, would most likely have rejected the idea. Indeed the suggestion was quickly rejected by the jury. Meanwhile the work on the monument was already in progress in Switzerland. The figure of Rizal was cast in bronze while the obelisk and the base were sculpted from unpolished Gotthard granite.

In retrospect, looking at the extant photographs of the two bozetos now, the change in the design was, in my opinion, highly propitious. Nicoli’s design was, of course, aesthetically speaking, more beautiful to look at. No one will ever doubt that it was designed by a master, as indeed Nicoli was. But it also looked very European with all its elaborate designs. It would have been perfect in a city such as Rome or Vienna. But in Manila’s Luneta—with its then grassy fields– it would have looked totally out of place.

The strength of Kissling’s design—which was perhaps well appreciated by the jury who adjudged it second prize—was its stark simplicity. Rizal’s posture in the bozeto was subtle but heroic. The hero, attired in his usual overcoat and holding a book in his hand, was depicted as if looking towards the breaking of dawn after the long troubled night. The figures beside him are very strong symbols of a struggling nation’s hope for a better future through progress and education—a mother rearing her beloved child, and the evocative figures of two young Filipino boys ardently reading. Of all the entries, it was the only one that approached the embodiment of the very ideals of Rizal: family, education, and enlightenment.

Every time I visit the Rizal monument, I always feel proud and fortunate to be a Filipino, having been born a free man because of Rizal’s martyrdom. Our forefathers—our beloved Rizal among them– were not so fortunate to see the light of dawn emerge from the darkness.

On the sixteenth death anniversary of Dr. Jose Rizal on December 30, 1912, as the monument was nearing completion, the remains of the national hero was transferred through a solemn procession from the Ayuntamiento to the Rizal monument. A year later, on December 30, 1913, the monument was unveiled to the public.

The Rizal Monument today

This article originally appeared in the websites Thepoc.net and MyRizal@150 website that you can visit here.

Jose Rizal: Komikero

2011-06-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

Jose Rizal (1861-1896)

In 1884, Dr. Reinhold Rost, editor of Trubner’s Record, a magazine devoted to Eastern literature, asked Jose Rizal to contribute some Asian fables. Rizal was more than delighted to comply and he submitted to Dr. Rost “Two Eastern Fables." One of the fables was titled “Matsing at Pagong”, which Dr. Rost published in Trubner’s Record issue No. 245 in 1885.

To complement his article, Rizal created the “Matsing at Pagong” in comic form, using the back of Paz Pardo de Tavera’s notebook to draw the originals. The original drawings still exist to this day, owned by the descendants of Paz Pardo de Tavera. If you must know, Paz was the wife of Juan Luna, and Rizal used to “tambay” in Luna’s atelier in Paris.

To my knowledge, this “Matsing at Pagong” comic strip was the very first known comic strip created by a Filipino—prompting the historian Ambeth Ocampo to regard Rizal as the Father of Philippine Comics.

I recently browsed my library and pulled out a 1913 book called Lineage, Life and Labors of Jose Rizal, authored by the American historian Austin Craig. Considered the first English biography of the National Hero, the book is illustrated throughout with many drawings and sketches by Rizal. Towards the very end of the book is found the complete “Matsing at Pagong” comic strip as reprinted directly from the originals, and with the original letterings of Rizal.

In this comic strip, Rizal did not use talk balloons for the dialogues of Matsing and Pagong. He instead wrote their “talks” below each of the panels, which was standard practice among comic artists during the 19th century. It seemed that the early cartoonists avoided talk balloons because they too often clutter in the panel and get in the way of the drawings. Although invented as early as 17th century, talk balloons came into general use only in the 20th century.

Interestingly, very much later, Rizal adopted talk balloons in his “Mangkukulam” cartoon strip, although this remained unpublished during his lifetime. It was finally put out by the Jose Rizal Centennial Commission in the 2-volume Facsimiles delos Escritos de Rizal in 1961.

Undoubtedly, Rizal was a genius. He was a poet, novelist, a humorist, songwriter, linguist, sculptor, inventor, an illustrator, and maybe more than a hundred more things that we even do not know of. He was a polymath, a curious man who was into trying everything. Inactivity and complacency bored him and he used his tremendous talent to satisfy his desire to understand the world he lived in.

Drawing was a favorite past time of our national hero. He wanted to keep a visual record of the things he saw or the people he met. There were no portable cameras during the 19th century, so Rizal just drew scenes and views while standing on ships’ decks or while idly waiting for trains’ arrivals.

One could only imagine how lonely our hero had been during his travels to Europe and America. To escape boredom and homesickness, he carried notebooks which he filled with drawings and sketches: a view of the Manila coastline as it receded from view, a picture of a funny man, Voltaire’s head, a Chinese man, or just about anything that caught his attention and piqued his interest. Rizal would spend days and nights drawing humorous panels we now called comics. Fortunately for us, many of these drawings still exist and can give us a view of what Rizal may have seen at a given time.

In Germany, Rizal illustrated a hilarious panel in which he showed a gentleman curtsying to a lovely woman. While doing so, the gentleman accidentally emitted a fart resulting in chaos all around him!

While Rizal was staying with the Ullmer family in Wilhelmsfeld, he created a comic strip called “The Two Brothers,”which he gave Friedrich "Fritz" Ullmer as a gift. Fritz was the young son of his friend and host Pastor Ullmer. These comic strips, along with several other drawings and sketches done by Rizal during his stay with the Ullmers, are intact to this day. The Ullmer descendants kept these precious mementoes and were eventually discovered by Mrs. Paz Mendez (of the Jose Rizal National Centennial Commission), while she was traveling to Germany to retrace Rizal’s footsteps.

By a stroke of good fortune, the great-grandsons of Pastor Ullmer—Fritz and Hans Hack—generously donated the drawings to the Filipino people during their visit to the Philippines in March 1960 (upon invitation of the Philippine government), a year prior to Rizal’s centenary in 1961. These drawings are now part of the precious Rizaliana collection in the National Library.

While living as an exile in Dapitan in 1892, Rizal was asked by his friend Benito Francia to write something about Visayan witchcraft. In compliance, Rizal wrote an excellent article entitled “Notes on Witchcraft in the Philippines,” and even created a four-paneled comic strip to accompany the article. When looking at the originals, I noticed some bluish tint on the drawings. Rizal may have used a blue pen to make his work more attractive—making it the first comics in thePhilippines with color (so what if it is only one color?).

Now, I am not sure if this comic strip is to be read horizontally or vertically, since Rizal did not provide a number guide on the panels. I believe though that the panels do not conform to a continuing story. They are more of vignettes that have relation to witchcraft.

What is fascinating about this comic strip is that it was the only one written by Rizal in Tagalog. Rizal knew at least 22 languages, and he was fluent in some twelve of them, including, of course, Tagalog. Not only was Rizal the first Filipino to create a comic strip, he was also the very first one to create a Tagalog komiks!

I had the rare chance to examine many Rizal original drawings kept in the National Library. Seeing them close was such a thrilling experience that I when I went to sleep that night, I dreamed Rizal was drawing for Aliwan Komiks!

Meanwhile let us see what we can understand from these panels. Notes within parentheses are my translations as well as some of my own comments:

FIRST PANEL: -Ay inang mamatay aco! (Oh, mother!, I’m dying!) -Huag po cayo matacot at aco man ay bata, ay isang bantog na hilot (Be not afraid, I maybe a child but I am a good healer)

SECOND PANEL: -Itong cuto na ipinunla sa aquin toong malago ang pagdame (The lice planted on my hair are rapidly multiplying) -Tag-anas namang pirit(?) pati mga cuto mo a (Your lice are all like birds!)

THIRD PANEL: -Caeng, at cayo calvo!! (Caeng, you are bald!!) -Aa aa! Puga, puga ca! (the Tagalog word Puga means escape. The bald man may be saying to the boy to get lost for teasing him as bald!)

FOURTH PANEL: -Jesus! Aco’y nanglalata. Cung ano po ang naroroon sa loob, aswang yata (Jesus, I’m very weak. Whatever thing is that inside, maybe a vampire.)

In retrospect, Rizal’s drawings may be amateurish by today’s standards (although I found them cute). But one should remember that Rizal was not a professional illustrator. Also, he drew cartoons more as a hobby and distraction, in between doing several things of national importance such as writing his immortal novels and defending our country against the Spanish oppressors. The important thing was that he was the very first known Filipino to have drawn comic strips.

These drawings, sketches and comic strips are all proof of Rizal’s universal talent, which led the historian Ambeth Ocampo to marvel: "No wonder Rizal is the Father of this or the father of that. Rizal was into everything”. Yes indeed, except that Rizal was not the father of Hitler.

Rizal's self-portrait circa early 1880s

**This article was originally published by the author Dennis Villegas in the website MyRizal150.com. Please visit our web tribute to our national Hero here.

The Rizalistas of Rongot

2011-05-17T18:13:00.001-07:00

The town of Calamba, in the province of Laguna--by virtue of having been the birthplace of Dr. Jose Rizal--has become a pilgrimage site not only for those wanting to pay homage to the Philippine National Hero, but more importantly for the Rizalistas who worship Rizal as God.

Calamba is said to be the new "promised land" where God Rizal shall establish His kingdom after the old world has been destroyed in the apocalypse. At the very center of this kingdom will be the barrio of Rongot, presently Calamba's poorest community, but which will eventually be the New Jerusalem.

This is the belief of the religious sect called Iglesia Sagrada Familia, a small but intensely dedicated group of Rizalistas found in Sitio Rongot, Calamba, Laguna. Led by a vibrant old lady named Gloria Bibat, 84, the Iglesia Sagrada Familia worships Dr. Jose Rizal as God. They call Rizal not as Dr. Rizal but as Amang Rizal (Father Rizal) or simply Amang Doctor (Father Doctor).

I first met Nanay Gloria during the street parade of Rizalistas in Calamba on the occasion of Rizal's 149^th birth anniversary last June 19, 2010. In her characteristic vim, Nanay Gloria was leading the procession amidst the hot mid-day sun along the streets of Calamba, the birthplace of the National Hero. She was holding aloft the Philippine flag and a banner imprinted with a picture of Rizal.

After the parade, Nanay Gloria and her members sought refuge in the shade in front of Rizal's house, and ate their packed lunch. Nanay Gloria invited me to partake of their food which consisted mainly of rice, small dried sardines, and steamed vegetables. I declined their kind offer, but Nanay Gloria insisted, giving me a plate and a plastic spoon. "Kumain ka na anak," she said to me. While we were eating, she told me that I should visit the Holy Land someday. I found that the Holy Land she was talking about was actually the barrio where her church is located, Sitio Rongot, only five kilometers from Calamba's town proper.

Secluded Sitio Rongot

Sitio Rongot is located in the remotest portion of Calamba, and is hardly accessible by vehicles. Isolated from the rest of Calamba by a narrow five-kilometer dirt road, only one vehicle can pass through it at a given time. In the unfortunate case when two vehicles meet head-on, one has to give way, retreat, and find the part of the road wide enough for both to pass through. The road is rough and dusty during the dry season, and wet and muddy during the rainy season. It is therefore understandable that even the local tricycles have to charge P150 to anyone coming in or out of the barrio. Most of the Rongot residents are poor, so they prefer to walk rather than pay the exorbitant amount.

The sitio, however, receives a few visitors every Sunday, mostly students from the Manila universities who are taking Rizal courses and are assigned to interview the Rizalistas. Aside from these students, very few tourists ever care to visit Rongot. In fact, there is really nothing much to see, save for the mystical Mount Makiling beyond the horizon, and the Laguna de Bay just at the edge of the barrio.

Despite its promise of becoming a Holy Land someday, Rongot is at present an impoverished community. Most residents eke out a living by fishing, farming, raising ducks, or gatheringkangkong and talbos ng kamote from the marshes. In fact, Calamba townspeople sometimes call the Rongot people as "magka-kangkong" (people who gather kangkong)

Like most rural towns in the Philippines, Rongot exhibits an ambience of quietness and stillness. The only sounds one can hear are the soft winds from Laguna de Bay, the muffled noise of little children playing near the lake, and from time to time, the occasional barking of neighborhood dogs from a distance.

People go about their daily lives in a relaxed and unhurried manner: the men gathering vegetables from the marshes, women tending to their little babies, young lads playing board games on benches, and old folks relaxing under the shade of trees -- whiling time away. Around the village one can see numerous small wooden houses, old empty boats docked along the bay and, on the bay itself, green water lilies that grow abundantly.

The Church of the Iglesia Sagrada Familia

At the edge of the barrio, very close to the bay, lies the modest temple of the Iglesia Sagrada Familia — a small rectangular white edifice built on multiple concrete stilts, two of which go down into the lake so that part of the church "stands" on water. The Iglesia meets here every Sunday at seven in the morning. The church members are mostly women in their octogenarian years, led by Nanay Gloria Bibat. There are some young male members — all grandsons of Nanay Gloria. Nanay Gloria claims that the Iglesia has, at present, more than 100 members. But on the several Sundays that I went there to observe their group, I noticed no more than 20 in attendance.

The interior of the church is simple in appearance. Save for a few wooden chairs reserved for visitors, there are no pews of the kind usually seen in Catholic churches. In fact, the Iglesia has no need for benches: all the members kneel throughout the worship rituals.

The center of attention is the elevated altar in the shape of a triangle which displays a motley array of pictures, posters, and statues, all depicting Rizal or his other “personalities.” I learned that in the past, Rizal — according to Nanay Gloria — appeared to them as an old white-bearded man (whom they call Apo Asyong), and as an aged woman (whom they call Inang Adarna). But one should not be confused. They are all Dr. Jose Rizal!

Hanging on the walls of the church are numerous posters listing the many teachings of Amang Rizal. Some of them contain quotations from Rizal's great body of writings, the stanzas of Rizal's "Last Farewell", and curiously, a poster with Rizal's "Ten Commandments.”

At the start of their Sunday service, the congregation offers a prayer while genuflecting in front of the altar. Then with their right hand upon their bosoms, they sing the Philippine National Anthem in two versions: the original version and another with different lyrics praising Rizal and other Philippine heroes. A series of chants follows, led again by Nanay Gloria. Most of what they sing are about love of country and fellowmen, as well as love for Apo Asyong, Inang Adarna, and Amang Rizal.

Meanwhile, I observe their rituals at the far end of the pew, jotting down notes and taking pictures. After an hour of prayers and chants, Nanay Gloria suddenly stands up, faces the group and begins a long monologue exhorting the members to keep the faith, to worship Amang Rizal, and never to be influenced by other religions. She calls her flock "mga anak" (my children) even though most of them are ladies of her age. "Mga anak, huwag na huwag ninyong kalilimutan ang mga aral ko! Ang inyong mga pagtitiis ay nakikita ko," (My children, do not ever forget my teachings! I see all your sufferings").

All the while, the Iglesia members are on their knees, listening attentively with their eyes closed. They all look as though they've been turned to stone by the mighty rhetoric of Nanay Gloria. Then all of a sudden, Nanay Gloria shifts her gaze to me, pointing her finger in my direction.

She utters in a fierce tone: “Why are you here?”

Surprised by Nanay Gloria's question, I meekly reply that I am interested in learning about the indigenous religions of the Philippines. And being an admirer of Rizal, I am fascinated that their Iglesia worships Dr. Jose Rizal.

Nanay Gloria is visibly pleased by my answer. “What do you think of our group?” she asks. I say they are a very religious and nationalistic people because of their reverence of Philippine heroes like Rizal, Bonifacio, and Mabini.

“You are correct,” she says. She then approaches me and raises her right hand to bless me. She touches my head, telling me I am fortunate to have traveled to this remote barrio because it pleases Amang Rizal, and that I am now blessed. Then she turns to her flock once more and delivers another long and rambling speech -- somewhat disconnected but with only one important message -- that they should forever love God in their hearts, and to follow the 10 commandments. At one time she tells them they should be thankful I visited them, coming from a place as far away as Manila.

Nanay Gloria as Rizal's medium

It is only after the sermon that I learn it was no longer Nanay Gloria who was talking. The Iglesia members revealed to me that the spirit of Amang Rizal possesses Nanay Gloria every time she delivers her sermons. It was not Nanay Gloria who touched my head and blessed me. It was Amang Rizal. I have been blessed by Amang Rizal himself. Indeed, after the sermon, Nanay Gloria appeared more like her usual self: gay, smiling, and humble. She no longer had the fierce voice and penetrating gaze of God the Father.

After their rituals, they all stand up, bow to the altar and rest on the wooden chairs. They all smile at me, bowing, their hands on their chests as as sign of respect. Meanwhile I focus my attention on the numerous Rizal statuettes and photographs on the altar. At the center is the bust of an old man. For me, the figure doesn't resemble Dr. Rizal in any way, even if I mentally added years to my personal image of the hero. The old man has a shawl on his head and sports a long white beard. One cannot mistake his identity because written below the statue is his name: Apo Asyong. His full name, according to Nanay Gloria, is Senor Don Ignacio Coronado.

Fascinated, I ask Nanay Gloria who Apo Asyong is. She answers that Apo Asyong is God the Father. I complain to her I get confused over who God is: Rizal or Apo Asyong?. She taps my forehead as if to teach a young kid: “Don’t be confused!” she says. “Amang Rizal and Apo Asyong are one person! Sometimes Rizal appears as Apo Asyong, sometimes Apo Asyong appears as Amang Rizal. Amang Rizal is the Diyos Anak, Apo Asyong is the Diyos Ama! But they are one!”

And then I ask the inevitable question: “Then who is the Diyos Ina?”

Nanay Gloria, now visibly exasperated by my ignorance, taps my forehead again: “Inang Adarna is the Diyos Ina!” She giggles through her revelation as though it were the most important thing she has ever said to anyone.

Forgive me, my dear Nanay Gloria, I say. “So Inang Adarna is also Amang Rizal who is also Apo Asyong, am I right?”

“Yes!” she said. “They are the Holy Family! Three persons in one God!”

I close my eyes to ponder on what she is saying. I realize that this is the reason they call themselves the Iglesia Sagrada Familia or The Church of the Holy Family, because in their belief, God consists of a family: God the Father, God the Mother and God the Son. The Most Holy Trinity.

“Have you seen Apo Asyong?” I ask Nanay Gloria.

“Yes. I lived in his house when I was still a young woman” she says proudly.

The story of Apo Asyong

Don Ignacio "Apo Asyong" Coronado, I later found in my research, lived in Sitio Aplaya, some three kilometers away from Calamba town proper (about seven kilometers from Rongot). Apo Asyong's house, though old and very dilapidated, continues to stand to this day, now inhabited by his numerous grandchildren and great grandchildren.The house also doubles as Apo Asyong's temple, where many Rizalistas still come to worship. In Sitio Aplaya, many old residents still remember Apo Asyong as a good and helpful man. Many also believed that he was a man with mysterious powers.

Born on February 2, 1890 (?), Apo Asyong preached in the 1940s that he was the real Dr. Jose Rizal -- and that the man killed by the Spaniards in 1896 was a fake, a Rizal double. Apparently, many people believed him, and he was thus worshipped by followers (including Nanay Gloria and the entire Sagrada Famila sect) as the true living Jose Rizal. Interestingly, Nanay Gloria and Apo Asyong's grandsons never use the term "death" when referring to Apo Asyong's demise. Instead they prefer to call his death as "paglisan" (leaving), which of course denotes that he would be coming back in the near future. "Apo Asyong will never die, just as Amang Rizal did not die in Bagumbayan," she told me.

Apo Asyong's core teachings are basically the same as those preached by Rizal -- love of God, love of fellowmen, and love of country. Apo Asyong -- if we are to believe the testimonies of his followers -- has the power of teleportation and can be in several places at the same time. Like Rizal, he is also said to be a linguist -- fluent in all the major languages of the world, even though there is no record he had had formal studies in schools. When Apo Asyong and his followers would go to Calamba town proper, they would visit the old Rizal house (the reconstructed house, actually) and he would point out his bedroom, his sisters' bedrooms, as if he was indeed the young Rizal who lived there in the 1860s.

Apo Asyong suddenly fell ill in the morning of 21 December 1957, and died at midnight. His remains were interred at the public cemetery in Lecheria Hill, the place where Rizal was believed by Rizalistas to have spent his childhood and youth. His grandchildren still faithfully keep his old things -- his clothes, his pillow and bed (still arranged in the same way as when he died), his pipes (he smoked tobacco), and his old tumba-tumba chair. They regard him as God the Father.

There is one extant photograph of Apo Asyong, and it is always prominently displayed in many Rizalista temples that worship the kindly old man.

One rainy Sunday afternoon (after attending the worship rituals for Apo Asyong), Joseph, one of Apo Asyong's grandsons, asked me if I wanted to visit his lolo's mausoleum in Lecheria. Although it was raining hard, I agreed to go to the cemetery to visit the tomb of this mysterious man. The grandson assured me it was still existing and that the family visited it annually every November 1. Because of the heavy rains, we slushed through mud, clambering atop old tombs to individually search the tombs and mausoleums, but alas, we couldn't locate Apo Asyong's final resting place. "It was just here," Joseph told me, pointing to an empty plot in the cemetery. "He already took his bodily remains to heaven," Joseph concluded.

Fascinated with this mysterious man, I asked Nanay Gloria how they first came to know Apo Asyong. In reply, Nanay Gloria told me a fantastic story of how Apo Asyong built their church. It was not easy. They lived a very difficult life. Many people accused them of being lunatics. But the people just didn’t know what Nanay Gloria and her group had gone through - their travails and hardships just to build this church. They persevered because they knew Amang Rizal/Apo Asyong would reward them in the near future.

The Beginnings of the Iglesia Sagrada Famila

It all began many years ago in a place not so far away….

There was a war; the Second World War. The exact date was October 1942. Mr. Danny Bibat, a U.S. Navy skipper, and the elder brother of Nanay Gloria, was a commander of an American vessel in the Pacific Ocean. His vessel was torpedoed by a Japanese battleship. Fortunately, Danny and some of his men were able to jump out into the sea before the ship floundered. After a few days of floating, when Danny and his men were so exhausted they were ready to give up and sink in the water, something mystical happened. A low-lying cloud appeared before them. Perched on top of the cloud was a half-body figure of a mysterious bearded old man. The old man rescued them and pulled them all to shore. Soon after, the old man, without saying a word, vanished.

After the war, Danny retired from the Navy and lived a quiet life in Tatalon, Quezon City. In 1951, an old woman came knocking on his door, looking for him. After introducing himself, Danny was told by the woman that an old man wanted him to go to Sitio Aplaya in Calamba, Laguna.

Without hesitating, Danny went with the old woman to Sitio Aplaya, Calamba, where he came face to face with an old man -- the same one who rescued him from the sea mishap during the war. But this time, the old man was no longer in the clouds. He no longer looked like a sacrosanct apparition, but a man of flesh and blood. And, to Danny’s amazement, he looked like Dr. Jose Rizal!

The old man showed Danny a picture of all the Philippine national heroes and asked Danny if he could identify the one that resembled the old man. Danny pointed to the photo of Dr. Jose Rizal. The old man affirmed he was indeed the patriot presumed executed in Bagumbayan many years ago. "I am not a ghost, Danny. I am real," he said.

Danny prostrated himself before the old man, who was none other than Apo Asyong, crying: “My Lord, I have been looking for you for a long time! Why is it only now that you called me?”

Apo Asyong replied: “The time has come. I called you because you will now prepare the New Jerusalem in Sitio Rongot. You will pave the way to start the new Holy Land. Bring your family and live there."

Danny thanked Apo Asyong and immediately went to all his relatives in San Nicolas, Pangasinan. He told them they were going to live in the new Holy Land in Calamba, that it was a beautiful place, and that it will be the new paradise. Danny succeeded in convincing his family and relatives. Altogether, 13 families, including friends and their families, joined Danny in the exodus to Rongot. They sold their houses and farms in San Nicolas. Then they hired a truck and headed to the sitio. Everyone was excited and looked forward to settling in the Promised Land.

But they soon found out the journey would be no picnic. On a stop to San Luis, Pampanga, they were robbed and lost all their money and possessions. With no money to buy food, they remained for an indefinite time in San Luis, until six of the families, penniless and without food, decided to go back to Pangasinan, hitchhiking and walking (the truck abandoned them). Seven families decided to stick with Danny and continue their exodus to Sitio Rongot. Nanay Gloria was a young woman then, but she remembers the hardship they endured.

“We neither have money nor food. But we thought it was God testing us to persevere. We knocked on every door begging for food, and very few people helped us. We only ate lugaw (porridge) everyday. We sold many of our personal belongings to buy food.”

After several months of walking and begging, they finally reached Sitio Rongot. What they saw devastated them. Sitio Rongot was not the paradise they thought it would be. Instead, it was total wilderness, with tall weeds growing about everywhere in the place.

“We thought we could not live here,” remembers Nanay Gloria. “It was all weeds and tall grasses here. No one lived here then, except maybe snakes and field rats. But still we persevered. Apo Asyong told us that Sitio Rongot will become the New Jerusalem and the new Holy land. So we decided to stay. We cleared the area and turned this place into our home. And look, this is now a community!”

They decided to build their church, the Iglesia Sagrada Familia, on the very banks of the Laguna de Bay. Most of the materials they used to build the church were either donated to them by the more affluent members of the Iglesia, or by local politicians asking for votes during elections. Even the posters, pictures, and statues of Amang Rizal were donated to them by various people. They really could not afford them.

"We are poor,” says Nanay Gloria, "but there are many people being used by God to help us and this church.” Meanwhile Amang Rizal was appearing to them frequently. Sometimes he is just like what is seen in his numerous pictures — wearing the double-breasted coat and carrying the Noli me Tangere in his left hand; other times as an old man or Amang Rizal appears; or even as Apo Asyong, or an old woman, Inang Adarna.

To earn a living, they harvested kangkong and kamote and sold them in town, walking the five-kilometer road and carrying the crops on top of their heads. The men built small bancas so they can fish at the Laguna de Bay.

Soon, their living conditions improved, but not much. Nevertheless, they consider themselves blessed to have been chosen as the first residents of the Holy Land.

Nanay Gloria as the New Spiritual Leader

In 1972, Danny Bibat passed away and Gloria Bibat became the head of the Iglesia Sagrada Familia. To prepare herself for her new role as spiritual leader, Nanay Gloria fasted for 40 days, subsisting daily on small bread and a cup of tea. It was what she termed as "sacrificio”, to cleanse her body for her new spiritual life.

"I became very thin," she said. "But I survived because of God's will." She then assumed her role as the leader of the church. From then on, she was called Nanay Gloria (she was called Ate Gloria before).

Although she is now 84, Nanay Gloria still looks strong. She attributes her long life to the blessings of Apo Asyong. She never cuts her hair although it is now very thin because of her age. She still walks the five-kilometer distance road from Rongot to town proper. In her chest she keeps an anting-anting medallion which she says was given to her by Apo Asyong.

“This is the medallion of the Impinito Dios," she says while showing it to me. “Impinito Dios is the highest God. He went down to Earth to save us. He became Jesus, Apo Asyong, Inang Adarna, and Amang Rizal”

“Do you all keep an anting-anting?” I asked.

“Yes. Look at us; we are still strong despite our age.”

By now, though, many of the original members of the Iglesia have died from old age. There are now only about 20 original Iglesia members still living--all belonging to the original seven families who first came to Rongot. All the ladies are in their 80s and 90s now--widows who have outlived their husbands. Some, like Lola Aria, 87, are spinsters. They all wear long white dresses that reach their ankle. Like Nanay Gloria, they never cut their hair. Every one of them still diligently attends the Sunday worship service for Amang Rizal. Sometimes, they bring along their apo to the worship rituals. They teach their grandchildren to worship Apo Asyong and Amang Rizal. Aside from these youngsters, there are no new recruits to the Iglesia.

“We don’t attract new members,” Nanay Gloria tells me “It is better we are few. We are few but we are true to our faith and that’s the most important thing. But if someone wants to become one of us, he or she is most welcome.”

While the Iglesia is not keen on recruiting new members, Sitio Rongot, meanwhile, is attracting new settlers. The sitio is a public land, and the growth of Calamba's population forced some locals to migrate to Rongot. With more people now living in Rongot, there are also more religious groups now preaching their respective religions such as the Iglesia ni Cristo, the Baptists, the Mormons, Ang Dating Daan, and the Born Again Christians.

Now, the Iglesia Sagrada Familia has become a minority religious group in Rongot. Sometimes people--even those from the new religious groups--malign and accuse them of practicing "cult" or kulto worship.

“They call us kulto,” resents Nanay Gloria. “Don’t they know the meaning of kulto? It means worshipping a human. But we do not worship a human. We only worship God. We worship Jesus. We worship Apo Asyong. We worship Amang Rizal. Amang Rizal is not a man. Ang Amang Rizal ay Diyos na totoo."

Many people also accuse Nanay Gloria and her group as lunatics. They simply ignore the insolent remarks, shrugs Nanay Gloria. "We always remember the lesson Apo Asyong imparted to us: 'Kung ika'y sinampal sa kanan ay ibigay mo pa ang kaliwa."(If someone slaps you on your right cheek, then turn the other cheek).

Indeed, throughout my frequent visits to them, I became an admirer of their simplicity, kindness, and humility. Their lives, basically unchanged since they first arrived here some 60 years ago, have been uninfluenced by the outside world. Their faith in God enabled them to reach the level of piousness that few of us can ever claim to achieve. Their kindness and hospitality are genuine--reflecting the old mores of the ancient Tagalogs. They may be superstitious and mystical in their beliefs, but I could never accept that they are lunatics or akulto.

During the street parade in Calamba on 19 June 2010 to celebrate the 149th birth anniversary of Dr. Rizal, Nanay Gloria and her members joined the parade--together with most other Rizalistas in Laguna. But none of them were invited to the grand dinner that afternoon organized by the provincial government.

For me, it reflected the general attitude of people towards the true Rizalistas. While local and provincial politicians--who instantly became "Rizalistas" on the birth anniversary of Rizal to further their political careers--were served in the grandiose dinner, the genuine Rizalistas were on the side streets seeking shade from the heat of the afternoon sun--eating their own packed lunch or sandwiches and drinking softdrinks from a sari-sari store.

How come the Rizalistas are never ever given importance during the anniversaries of Rizal? Instead they are treated with indifference or mockery because of their obsessive love for the national hero. But in my heart of hearts, I feel compassion for them. The true Rizalistas--like Nanay Gloria and her group--are forever ignored by the Filipino people.

I have often associated myself with the Rizalistas because I felt that they are true to their beliefs. Though I myself may find it bizarre that they worship the hero, I nevertheless respect their beliefs. And I find that they are closer to my heart than other worshippers, including those from my own Catholic religion. I always, ALWAYS want to understand them.

And so with some trepidation, I ask Nanay Gloria the question that really brought me to Rongot: ‘Why do you worship Amang Rizal?”

“Because He is God,” she replies. "Amang Rizal is the Savior of the Filipino people. He saved us from the Spanish oppressors.”

"So where is Amang Rizal now?” I ask.

“He’s living somewhere in the forests and caves of Mount Makiling . But he will come back soon. He will make this place--Sitio Rongot-- the center of his kingdom!”

Meanwhile it is already getting late and I know that Nanay Gloria also needs to rest. I thank her for her kindness and hospitality. Then I take from my backpack my secret gift for her: A small statue of Amang Rizal I purchased from an antique shop many years ago. I thought it would be the best gift that I could give to the Suprema and her members.

“Here,” I offer, “is my gift to you for your kindness to me,” handing to her the small bronze statue.

Nanay Gloria beams when she sees the little statue of Amang Rizal. Her eyes well with tears. Then she motions to her members to look at it, all women in their octogenarian years.

“It’s beautiful!” they say in unison. Some of them also cry upon seeing the miniature figure of Amang Rizal. They caress the statue like a little baby. Then holding the statue together with their hands up in the air, the old ladies chant:

Amang Rizal! Amang Rizal! Amang Rizal! Aming Diyos! Aming Diyos! Aming Diyos! Ikaw ang simula at ang wakas, ika’y aming pinupuri!!! Amang Rizal!!”

I, too, am moved by the spectacle. Then I approach and hold the statue with them, chanting with them.

Good Morning, Pan de sal!

2011-04-26T17:58:00.002-07:00

One early morning in Palo, Leyte, last week, me and my friend Sidney Snoeck went to look out for a Pan de Sal, that famous Pinoy bread that we Filipinos have used to eat for breakfast. We didn't know anyone in Palo, so we were complete strangers here. But I tell you, it was the very first time I saw a tall Belgian look for a pan de sal one very early in the morning in a remote village in Leyte! However, a bakery was nowhere to be found anywhere near.

By a stroke of good chance, we found a man on the road holding a small plastic bag of pan de sal. So Sidney--who neither speak Tagalog nor Visayan-- said "Good Morning!", and then asked the man in English where he bought his pan de sal.

The man smiled and said "Good Morning!"

Sidney smiled too, and realizing that the man must have misunderstood him, asked again--this time pointing to the bag of pan de sal-- "Your pan de sal...where did you buy it?"

The man again replied: "Good Morning!"

Exasperated because of the communication gap, Sidney turned to me and said "He doesn't understand me! Dennis, can you ask him where he bought the pan de sal?"

So I asked the poor guy in Visayan: "Haen nimo pila ang imo nga pan de sal?"

"Good Morning!", said the man again.

Sidney smiled, rolled his eyes, and shrugged his shoulders... but now I get the idea...

The man indeed, actually bought his pan de sal in....Good Morning Bakery, just a few hundred meters from where Sidney and I were standing.

Billboard

2011-04-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

I was driving sleepily along heavy-traffic in EDSA when I saw this billboard...click the picture to see the bigger version.

I don't know if this was intended to be a joke or something so EDSA drivers don't get to sleep behind the wheels. Photoshop or surgery?

Manila in Miniature 1

2011-03-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

This film clip you are currently watching is a "miniature effect" video of Carriedo pedestrian market and Plaza Lacson in the downtown Quiapo/Sta.Cruz area. This "miniature effect" is achieved by using my Canon Powershot s95's fake tilt-shift or miniature effect feature. I find it fascinating to look at Manila in this unique tiny "dream-like" perspective.

Please watch out for more of these miniature videos in my Youtube channel soon. Thanks!

Philippine Love Motels

2011-02-13T17:55:00.001-08:00

Cheap motels abound in Metro Manila, and they are thriving in popularity. I remember once entering one of those cheap motels in downtown Manila on the night of the Quiapo Fiesta in 2009. Virtually exhausted after following the procession of the Senyor Nazareno from morning through evening, I decided to try my luck and "check-in" for the night in one of the small-time motels in downtown.

This motel was located in the second floor of a decrepit old building along Quezon Boulevard. From the sidewalk, a double swinging doors opened to a flight of stairs, on top of which was a small receiving area. A thin middle-aged Chinese man in a white sando was in the counter, and behind him was a collection of keys with room numbers printed on them. In a smattering of Tagalog, he asked me if I was going to stay “short time or overnight.” For the uninitiated, “short time” means one to three hours of stay. I answered "overnight". He told me the cost would be P200. I paid in cash and was ushered into my room by a teenage boy who also gave me a towel and a small piece of soap.

Entering this motel was a decision I would later regret with much shame. The room was grimy, and the bathroom stank. Scribbled on the walls were phone numbers of people offering sex. "Just call this number," one said, "and I’ll be knocking on your door in a few minutes." Here and there were scribbled lewd drawings of sex organs and sexual positions. During the night, I had difficulty getting to sleep. I could hear passionate moans from the adjoining rooms, and even some banging on the walls. I hurriedly dressed and took a taxi back home. I never entered a cheap motel since then.

Some of you may think that entering the motel all alone is very unusual, since a motel, in the Philippine context, is a place where people usually spend very private moments with the opposite sex. To say it bluntly, it meant satisfying one's earthly urges. Indeed, by checking in, I risked censure of my friends and colleagues if they found out. Yet I have always maintained that there are no sinful places, only sinful people. Motels cannot be sinners, in the same way that a prison cannot become a criminal.

Postwar travelers' lodgings

The very first Philippine motels(short for "motor hotel"), however, were not originally designed as places to have illicit sexual affairs. The first motels in the Philippines sprang up to meet the postwar shortage of lodgings for travelers. Immediately after the Second World War, ruined Manila had no hotels but a lot of lodgers, especially the American soldiers who traveled regularly from their camps to different destinations.

To cope with the demand for lodgings, the first rooming houses were established in downtown Manila in 1945. Then, in 1946, the first authentic motel was established in Apelo St., in Pasay. This motel was a six-garage bungalow with air-conditioned units that came complete with toilets and bathrooms and hot and cold showers. The motel also served food for the G.I.s weary after a long journey from their camps. At P30 a day, the motel's rooms were cheap and always filled to capacity. Of course no G.I.s short of cash would have thought of staying in expensive Manila Hotel with only a few bucks in their pockets!

Then in the 1950s regular hotels began to be built in Manila. Offering better conveniences and services, these hotels were considered classier than motels. By this time, most of the G.I.s had already returned to the United States, and thus in the 1950s and 1960s, motels became superfluous. No longer were they as popular as before and their usefulness in the city had dwindled. The changing culture in Manila, however, saved the motels from oblivion. In the early 1950s, night clubs and bars began to be built in Manila, and many motels began offering cheap "short-time" rates, which were for one- to three-hour stays--to male clients who found instant sexual partners from the red light establishments.

Back then, it was considered highly improper if a man was seen entering a motel with a female companion. Thus, many couples entered motels a few minutes apart. Patrons also didn't want their identities known -- men pretended to read newspapers while entering motels and women wore dark shades and used abanicos to hide their faces from public view.

'Tira-han ng mag-syota'

The transformation of motels from simple lodging houses to private venues to conduct illicit sexual affairs became complete in the 1960s. A popular joke back then was a question of the difference between a hotel and a motel. The answer was "Ang hotel ay tirahan ng mag-asawa, samantalang ang motel ay tira-han ng mag-syota (Hotels are where married couples live, while motels are where boyfriends and girlfriends stay)."

The so-called "love hotels" were considered anathema by women civic groups in the 1960s. In particular, the Catholic Women’s League of Manila (CWL) filed a petition to then- Manila Mayor Antonio Villegas to close the motels because, they argued, the motels were increasingly becoming venues for illicit sexual affairs (Mayor Antonio Villegas was the author's late grandfather). The motel owners, primarily thought to be rich Chinese businessmen, fought back. They argued that closing the motels fringe on their right to operate legal business. There were no laws banning motels and especially banning people from entering motels!

Pressured from both sides (CWL and motel owners), Mayor Villegas reached a compromise. Although he did not order the closure of the motels, he nevertheless levied heavy taxes on the motel operators. In short, while he gave the motels a new lease for life, he made their existence difficult. Then at about this time came one of the most serious blows to the image of the motel: the rape in a motel of Antonieta Cabahug by Cesar Guy, a Chinese lumber magnate. It was perhaps one of the most sensational crimes of the decade, and Cabahug died as a result of the rape. Eventually Guy was sentenced to life imprisonment (he has since been released and is now a Christian preacher). From this time on, however, motels became associated not only with illicit affairs but with crimes, too.

Removing the tarnish

It was only in the late 1970s and the 1980s when motels began a serious effort to rebuild their tarnished image. Some of the high-end motels even began changing their names into vogue-sounding names like "Ritz and Waldorf," "Bermuda," "Victoria Court," "Town and Country" and "Capri". They also remodeled their interiors to provide a hotel-like ambiance -- spacious and wholesome lobbies, and themed rooms, offering patrons choices of Disneyland-painted rooms or, for the more adventurous lovers, jungle-themed suites . Some of the high-end rooms also offered private jacuzzi, water beds, and sound-proof walls, all of which, of course, cater to the more affluent clients.

At present, love motels in Metro Manila are as ubiquitous as the shopping malls -- you can find them everywhere. In the university belt alone, one could count more love hotels than there are universities, so the area could also have been termed the "Motel Belt" with none the wiser. In Quiapo’s Quezon Boulevard stretch for instance, I recently counted a dozen motels, not including the numerous cheaper, more dubious, no-signage motels that operate like boarding houses, located in the smaller inside streets.

The cheapest of motels sometimes masquerade as lodgings for travelers, although very few transients actually go there to slumber. Unlike motels in the past that were located in high-walled compounds for the utmost privacy, love motels nowadays operate more openly in large modern buildings that have been designed to have entrances and exits that lead to shopping malls, MRT train stations, and even call centers.

A 'romantic' atmosphere

The inside of motel rooms tells something conspicuous about their very nature. One notices the absence of windows and the presence of dim lights. Some motel rooms even provide a swing hanging from the ceiling, in the middle of the bed. Some rooms are provided with cable television. What can be shocking to the uninitiated, though, is that these cable subscriptions include channels showing pornographic movies. Also, inside bedside bureau drawers one can find condoms in different fruit flavors.

Motel managers are very strict in following the concept of “short time”. Fifteen minutes before the “short time” lapses, occupants will be reminded that they need to get ready to vacate the room as the next customers are already waiting to occupy it. Such is the popularity of motels that there are not enough rooms for their numerous clients, and as such numerous love seats are provided in the lobbies for the lovers waiting for their turns.

These conditions suggest the nature of the relationships of people lodging in motels -- many times, they are after sex without the benefit of marriage. Since married couples usually have sexual intercourse at home, couples staying “short-time” in motels are generally thought to be engaging in: (1) Pre-marital sex (sex before matrimony) (2) Adultery/concubinage (i.e., a married woman having sex with a man not her husband, vice versa), and (3) Prostitution (sex trade).

Of the three, the last is the most flagrant and the most obvious. Prostitution, as the saying goes, is the world’s oldest profession. But in Metro Manila and in other big cities for that matter, prostitution has also become a thriving industry. One could count Manila, Cubao, Monumento, Pasay, Pasig, Quezon Avenue, as the places with the highest concentration of motels in the metro because of the thriving sex trade in these places. In all these places, prostitution is a 24-hour business. One only needs to walk at anytime of the day in certain streets and furtive offers will be made in exchange for money.

We are thus drawn to answer a very crucial question. Could the proliferation of motels in our midst be an indication of the moral degeneration of Filipinos? Or are Filipinos just beginning to experience a modern sexual revolution already experienced in Japan, the United States, Sweden, and many other countries?

Indeed, one cannot escape the conclusion that although many people consider motels as sinful places of fornication, illicit sex, and prostitution, their popularity reflects the general attitude of the Filipinos towards motels in particular and sex in general. Manilans in general are loathed to be seen entering motels. Nonetheless, the very popularity of these establishments only indicate that motels are a product of our culture-- and not the other way around.

The Lost Children of Ulingan

2011-02-08T17:20:00.001-08:00

In one of the makeshift tent houses in Ulingan, a charred wooden statue of Jesus Christ stood in a grimy corner—the Lord’s hands and arms are amputated as if to deprive the Savior from offering any comfort and hope. The statue was one of the scrap woods gathered by a scavenger in the dump site, and destined to the fires of Ulingan to become good charcoal. But the scavenger thought better of it and left it in his house. Thus was Jesus saved from the furnace.

Hope and comfort are probably scarce among the people of Ulingan but they are not entirely missing. There are many people in Ulingan—most especially the children—who find comfort and hope among the little things they find in the dumpsite or in the charcoal furnace.

A little girl named Jessa collects charred nails from the burnt woods in Ulingan. These blackened nails meant little to most of us, but to Jessa these little nails could save her and her family from the pangs of hunger. The nails sell at eight pesos a kilo—enough to buy a loaf of bread and alleviate their hunger.

Jessa is one of the child workers in Ulingan. The eldest among a brood of five, she is counted upon by her family to help alleviate the meager income. Her father and mother both work in the dump site and the charcoal furnace, or wherever they can find work to earn a little. Sometimes her mother goes to the market to ask for junked vegetables.

Jessa’s family came from the island of Leyte. They escaped the rural poverty and insurgency warfare from their remote village in order to find better living conditions in Tondo, Manila. As it happened, their living condition did not get any better in Tondo. It was not the paradise they envisioned it to be. Nevertheless, here they can live in peace, and can survive poverty, what with all the garbage that they can find and sell, and all the woods that they can burn—even if these pose a significant hazard to their health.

Like many children in Ulingan, Jessa and her siblings never went to school, even though there is a free school near Ulingan. Jessa’s family decided that school and poverty do not mix. Also at eleven years of age, Jessa is deemed too old to study. Now, instead of listening to a teacher’s lecture, Jessa is laboriously scouring the charcoal pits with her small magnet to attract the little nails that may lie within the charcoal debris. She then puts the nails inside her grimy sack.

In another area of Ulingan, I see a little girl of eight with a withered doll she picked up in the dump site. The doll—a plastic Bisque imitation-- was naked and grimy, one-eyed and one-armed. Nevertheless, it is still a doll and the deprived girl is hugging it tightly. It may be the only toy that she has ever had and one can see in her eyes the happiness the doll gives to her.

To the scavenger children of Ulingan and Pier 18 (the nearby dump site), a discarded doll, a junked toy, even if already damaged and grimy--are perhaps some of the most treasured finds in the garbage site. These toys—though they may have once made a home in the upscale villages of Manila-- could still find a home in the heart of a slum child.

Older children, however, no longer need toys. Aged twelve to fourteen, these children have other more important things to find in the dump site than old discarded toys. A plastic bottle, a scrap metal, an electrical wiring, can all be converted to cash at the nearby junkshops. In Ulingan, the boys can work as coal packers or stevedores, earning a few pesos that could be able to buy food for the hungry stomach. The girls meanwhile have to assist their mothers in packing charcoals.

Jason Narido, twelve years old, is one of the older child laborers in Ulingan. Orphaned at a young age, Jason lives a vagabond life, packing coals at day, and wandering by night looking for a place to sleep, which means any sidewalk corner or a makeshift place with a roof. Jason had been to school once but since his father died of a mysterious illness some years ago, he decided to quit school and in order to work.

Today, I find Jason doing his usual job of packing coals into sacks. For each sack that he fills, he earns four pesos. Lifting the coals with his bare hands and carefully putting them into sacks, Jason fills up ten sacks from morning until noon, earning him forty pesos. But Jason has to share ten pesos with his friend Louie who holds the sacks while he filled each.

Jason is amused I took the time to interview him, although he seems hesitant answering many of my questions, especially if they are about his family. Failing to elicit response, I turn to Jason’s co-workers to know more about him. They tell me that Jason is not totally an orphan. His mother, it turned out, is still living, though he doesn’t know her whereabouts. She had abandoned him some years ago. Jason doesn’t like to speak much about his family, and so whenever someone asks him about them, he just replies that he is an orphan.

Jenny, a co-worker of Jason in Ulingan, asked me to help Jason. Although she is poor herself, she has a family nevertheless. She told me how Jason lives everyday. “Kawawa talaga yan kuya” Jenny told me, “walang pamilya walang bahay, palaboy. Kung saan saan siya naututlog. Minsan nakulong pa dahil pinagbintangan na nagnakaw ng kalakal. Pero mabait yan kuya. Tulungan mo”. (Please take pity on him. He doesn’t have a family, no house to go home to. He just sleeps everywhere. One time he was even imprisoned because he was suspected of stealing scavenged materials. But he is a good boy. Please help him.)

The life-story of an Ulingan boy is not one for the soft-hearted. Apparently, Jason has an older sister in Parola, but since she got married and begat children, she too abandoned Jason. Jason soon plunged into the world of squalor reserved for children whose family had abandoned them.

I asked Jason if he would like to live with me. Honestly, I could just adopt him, sponsor his schooling and give him a chance to live a more normal life. He smiles but declines my offer. His world is the Ulingan, and despite the harsh conditions, this is what he truly calls his home. Indeed, despite being poor and without a family, Jason survives in independence. An experienced and industrious laborer despite his youth, he could variously work as an errand boy, a stevedore, a coal packer, a trash scavenger and any job at all that could earn him money and assure that he would have something to eat.

After the grueling work, Jason heads to the nearby carinderia (a local store that sells cooked food). This is the day’s highlight for Jason. With his forty pesos, he buys two scoops of fried rice (14 pesos) and an ice-tubig (ice cold water) for 2 pesos. He calls this meal as altanghap which is shortened for almusal-tanghalian-hapunan (breakfast-lunch-supper combined into one). The next meal he would eat will be tomorrow, if he will be lucky enough to find a charcoal owner to work for. As I bid Jason goodbye, I wonder what will happen to him in the future. But then again, I feel confident Jason can somehow manage to survive in the cruel world of Ulingan. He is such a strong and courageous boy.

In Ulingan, one could stay and gather enough stories that could break the hearts of men. But I do not go to Ulingan to merely tell the tales of pathos, but rather to unravel the conundrum of abject poverty that is a stranger to most of us.

It is said that the eyes are the windows of our souls. And in the eyes of these children, the truth is starkly revealed.

This article is published originally at The Philippine Online Chronicles, now one of the world's leading web resource site about the Philippines. Please check our website here!

Tondo's Ulingan: Life in Manila's Inferno (2)

2011-01-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

Ulingan is a small squatter community in Vitas, Tondo Manila located near the North Harbor where the Manila Bay and the Pasig River meet. Also known as Sitio Damayan--a rather anachronistic name for an impoverished slum community that doesn't receive any subsidy from the government--Ulingan came from the Tagalog word uling (charcoal), and it means “a place where charcoal is made.”

The workers of Ulingan, called ulingeros, rely on the charcoal industry for their daily bread: they work here as wood burners and charcoal packers. The average income per day, however, is way below the minimum wage standards in the Philippines. Many workers earn just around 40 to 70 pesos a day, a fraction of the standard 400 pesos (roughly, 9US$) as mandated by the law.

The ulingeros, however, seemed content enough. They are not looking for other jobs outside of Ulingan; indeed, they even feel complacent they are employed and have some source of income to somehow mitigate their wretched existence. The pay, however meager it may be, gives them assurance that they will have something to eat on the next day. P40 can buy a kilo of poor-quality rice and maybe a 10-peso bowl of pagpag— discarded left-over foods from city restaurants that have been collected and offered for sale by entrepreneurial scavengers.

Aside from the charcoal industry, another source of income for the Ulingan people is the Pier 18 garbage dump site nearby*. The refuse of Metro Manila goes here every day and becomes sustenance for the Ulingan people who sift through tons of Manila’s garbage and find something useful that can still be sold to the junk shops. These include scrap metals, plastics, cardboards, electrical wirings, and so on. After a whole day of digging and sifting through the mountains of garbage, the average scavenger just earns enough money for a day’s worth of food.

A Surreal Place

Ulingan is a place that challenges man’s notion of a normal existence. Outsiders who visit Ulingan are appalled by the inhuman conditions of the community. Sidney Snoeck, the famed Belgian photojournalist, visited Ulingan with me several times. He witnessed first hand how the people lived in terrible condition. “This place”, says Mr. Snoeck, “is surreal."

Indeed, Ulingan is a surreal place, as it breaches our normal notion of a community, even that of a slum environment. We know that a slum is supposed to be a poor community where people live in poverty and squalor. But even here, the word slum is an understatement. Everything in Ulingan is an anomaly. The whole place is laden with garbage piles, dirt, and flies. The rats easily outnumber the people. And as if these were not enough, the whole neighborhood shimmers with waves of fumes, heat, and black smoke. In some places nearest the charcoal factory, visibility is zero. Fire and smoke is perpetually present here.

But Aling Mercedita, 46, and her nine children have long regarded fire and smoke to be their benefactor. “Without the charcoal ovens”, she says, “We would not have survived as we have. Ulingan gives us our daily bread”.

Aling Mercedita, like the many women I met in Ulingan, is a widow (many other Ulingan wives were separated from their husbands who ran away). Her husband, an ulingero, died of tuberculosis a few years ago, succumbing to the long-term effects of smoke inhalation.

Now, working as ulingera herself, she has to support her nine children. To lessen the burden, she was forced to send the three youngest to an orphanage for the simple reason that-- to use her own words--“they will just die here.” Her remaining children had to work too, digging through garbage or sifting through charcoals.

Aling Mercedita smiled while wiping the tears that instantly welled in her wrinkled eyes as she remembered her lost children. Most people can smile in adversity, but one cannot successfully mask the pain, and the tears are the sign of internal suffering. “It gnaws on me”, she continues “I feel guilty whenever I think of my other children. But what can I do?”

In general, fortitude is an admirable trait. But the poor who bear this characteristic do not strive for admiration. They didn’t want to suffer as no people would. What they needed is our understanding and compassion. Theirs is a brutal existence, and we cannot know exactly the extent of brutality unless we are brave enough to enter their world.

Inside the Charcoal Factory

The charcoal factory is the very center of Ulingan. Divided into small shallow pits in the earth enclosed by makeshift fences, the factory is where wood is burned to become charcoal. Each of the pits is filled with neat stacks of wood. The fire is ignited at the top of the wood stack and then covered with yero or iron sheet. Everything is then covered with moist soil. Beneath the piles of wood are small shafts of tubes called tambutso-- flues that act as the exhaust or chimneys of the fire and smoke from within the wood stacks. There are eight or more flues in each charcoal oven, depending on its size.

The combination of dust, smoke and fumes make Ulingan seem like an inferno—which in a way it is. The acrid smoke and the sweltering heat are overpowering. The people of Ulingan have been burning charcoal for over three days now. Looking haggard and restless, they vigilantly monitor the fire, making sure it is under control. The wood must be burned through slow pyrolysis. If the fire grew any stronger, the wood would be reduced into worthless soot.

On the other charcoal ovens of the factory, some workers are already through burning their wood. After three days, it is now time to harvest the charcoals from the ovens. With shovels, they carefully lift the charcoals piece by piece to put them on a dry ground. This too must be done carefully so as not to damage the precious charcoal.

Many of the workers in Ulingan are small children. Some are teenagers and a few are even as young as six or seven. Unable to attend school because of poverty, they are “no read no write” children. Most of them have very low self-esteem and have developed the kind of sullen and taciturn behavior common to children who have endured long-term suffering.

Nonetheless they are here to survive, even if they do not know until when. Instead of pencils and pens, they have shovels in their hands, taking turns scooping the charcoals into sacks, collecting the nails that could be sold to the junk shops, or packing the charcoals into little plastic bags. All the kids work without protective masks, gloves, and boots. Some are naked.

At the end of each grueling working day, the Ulingan people look bedraggled, gaunt weary figures who seem to have just come from a conflagration--which essentially is where they had been. Their eyes look sullen, hair singed with fire, faces masked with soot, and their bodies layered by thick grime.

But the polluted Manila Bay is just a step away, and after their grueling work, many dip into the bay to remove the grime on their bodies, and most importantly, to cool and relax themselves—a welcome respite after spending a day’s work in hell.

*The Pier 18 is actually a garbage transfer point rather than a dumpsite. Nevertheless the people regard it as such.

This article is published originally at The Philippine Online Chronicles, now one of the world's leading web resource site about the Philippines. Please check our website here!

Tondo's Ulingan: Life in Manila's Inferno

2011-01-15T21:28:00.000-08:00

Aling Nelia Gumapac, 45 years old, and her brood of five live a quiet but difficult life in their shanty in Vitas, Tondo, Manila. The word shanty, however, may be an understatement to describe their abode. Built with scrap wood, discarded tarpaulin, Styrofoam, and other scavenged materials from the garbage dumpsite, it is nothing but a withered old tent--covered with soot as a charcoal factory is a whiff away-- a makeshift ramshackle shack if you will, some four feet in height and around five square meters in size. But Aling Nelia and possibly her children seem content enough, even if they have to crouch in order to get in or out of their shack. “At least,” Aling Nelia says,”we have something to sleep in. It’s very hard to sleep in the streets."

Their rickety shack is located right on the dumpsite and near the charcoal factory just aft the new Smokey Mountain. Thus they have to contend all day with the heat, fumes, dust, stench, the flies and, at night, the mosquitoes and the vermin. Aling Nelia and her children have grown accustomed to these hazards, however. For them, these are the features of ultimate poverty which they accept to be their lot. “It’s just a matter of adjusting yourself to the situation. We are poor, so we have to live like this,” she says, sounding resigned to their fate.

Aling Nelia with her five brood, and with some friends

Aling Nelia works in the charcoal factory of Ulingan which is a few blocks away from their house. She is a widow; her husband, a trash scavenger, was killed in Smokey Mountain when one of the cranes carrying trash accidentally fell on him. The husband’s death in 2007 was a big blow to the family.

“Every night,” Aling Nelia laments, “I sleep with my one eye open, wondering if I would be able to support my children, and whether there will be food for them tomorrow. Ang hirap ng tinitiis naming mga mahirap! Hirap na hirap talaga ako. Kung ako naman ang mawawala, ano na ang mangyayari sa mga anak ko?”

In order to survive and make ends meet, Aling Nena works as coal packer. She puts the uling inside small yellow plastic bags. For eight hours of work, she gets paid forty pesos, just enough to buy a kilo of poor-quality rice and a few pieces of dried sardines.

At the end of each work day, Aling Nelia comes home with her face and body covered with soot. Oh, yes, her children still recognize her under the thick grime, she says laughing. More than that, they must see in her the means to survival: the rice that will be their sustenance for the morrow.

Her children—who never attended school-- help augment the meager family income by collecting trash in the nearby dumpsite and selling their collection to the junk shops. At the end of a busy day rummaging through piles of garbage, the children are happy to bring a few more pesos so that they will have money for a lugaw (rice porridge) in the morning. The lugaw assures them that they will be not go hungry for the next two to three days.

But it is not every day that they can eat three square meals. There are days when it is worse -- when the charcoal ovens didn’t have wood to burn and Aling Nelia would be out of work. To make matters worse, the children would go home empty handed. The garbage trucks may have brought only useless trash. With no money and food to eat, they would spend the night sleeping with empty stomachs, dreaming about food, and hoping that the morrow would bring in sustenance.

As a last resort, they dig into trash cans for left-over foods. These discarded foods—known as pagpag in the slums-- are trash to well-off people but manna from heaven to Aling Nelia and her brood--even if these stinking foods are already infested with maggots. The poor has a way to kill the maggots by boiling the food in cooking oil. But it is not everyday there is pagpag. Sometimes all they find are empty food packs. The rats—so numerous in the dump site-- have already beaten them to it.

In a neighboring shack nearby, Mang Julio Dela Cruz, his wife Linda and two small children live. Mang Julio is employed as a wood burner in the same charcoal oven where Aling Nelia works. When Mang Julio first saw me, he shyly asked for a picture with his youngest daughter, Tin, barely two years old. Apparently, he has never had a photo before with her daughter. But Little Tin was afraid of the camera. When I was about to click the shutter, she began to wail. Embarrassed, Mang Julio apologizes to me. I have already taken the shot, however, and the picture that emerged showed a father and daughter smeared with soot and grime.

Mang Julio is a very poor man. He has yet to receive his pay for five days of work (100 pesos a day, or roughly, US$2 ). The scrap woods must be burned slowly—around three to four days of continuous slow burning to become good quality charcoal. It could not be done quickly. Increasing the fire can reduce the wood into powdery soot and therefore render it worthless. Afterwards, when the wood has turned into good charcoal, it is packed by workers like Aling Nelia. Once packed, the uling (charcoal) is then sold wholesale to a market retailer. Thus, Mang Julio must agonizingly wait for a few days in order to get his pay. Meanwhile, penniless, he momentarily relies on the neighborhood sari-sari store to give him a short-term loan of provisions like rice and canned sardines.

Aling Nena’s and Mang Julio’s are just two of the more than 1,600 families living a subhuman existence in a place called Sitio Damayan a six-hectare slum area in Vitas, Tondo, Manila. Sitio Damayan, also called “Ulingan” because of the charcoal industry in the area, may just happen to be the most depressed of all the depressed slums area in all of Metro Manila. It is located just a few meters away from the infamous Smokey Mountain.

During the course of several months, I kept coming back to Ulingan, to immerse myself on the condition of extreme poverty, to study and photograph how the people in this most depressed slum area exist, so that I can report faithfully what they go through everyday. I have been brought up in a middle- class family and the condition of extreme poverty is strange to me.

It is not a very encouraging work. Each time I visit Ulingan, my heart breaks as I witness how people live in a destitute state. It is not easy to see small naked children running around barefooted begging for money so that they can buy food, or to see their fathers carry multiple sacks of garbage and charcoal on their shoulders to earn a few pesos. I know that in general life is hard indeed, but no one needs to live in utter destitution. Indeed, some animals live better.

As a photojournalist, I consider it my duty to expose the social illnesses afflicting the poor, the very social cancer that everybody else neither wants to see nor touch. But photography has a stark way to force people to look into a subject that we have long thought to deny. We can no longer ignore the facts. The truth is staring us in the eye.

This is my first article on my series on Tondo's Ulingan.

This article is published originally at The Philippine Online Chronicles, now one of the world's leading web resource site about the Philippines. Please check our website here!

Quiapo Procession of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno 2011

2011-01-09T14:54:00.000-08:00

A partial movie clip of the more than 1 million devotees who flocked to Quiapo yesterday January 9, 2011 for the 404th Feast Day of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno. Despite all the frenzy and the shouting, no one is fighting here. Everyone just wanted to touch the Nazareno or the rope that is pulling the carossa.Hundreds were injured though while trying to jockey for position.

A Blind Singer at Quiapo Nazareno Fiesta 2011

2011-01-09T05:56:00.000-08:00

A blind man with a beautiful voice serenading the devotees at the Quiapo Fiesta, while waiting for the procession on January 9, 2011.

NAG-IISANG IKAW

Lyrics by Louie Heredia

Araw-araw na lang
Ay naghihintay sa 'yo
Nananabik na mahagkan at mayakap ka
Iniwan mong alaala
Ang s'yang lagi kong kasama
Bakit kapag wala ka
Sadya bang kulang pa

Bakit kaya gano'n
Ang s'yang nadarama
Sa bawat sandali hanap ka ng aking mata
Marahil ay ikaw na nga
Sa akin puso ang ligaya
Dahil sa 'yo ako'y wala nang hahanapin pa

Ikaw ang pag-ibig ko
Ang tawag ng damdamin
Ang mabuhay nang wala ka
Ay hindi sapat
Dahil kailangan ko
Ay laging ikaw
Nasa t'wina'y nagtatanaw
Sa aking puso'y may tinatangi
Ang nag-iisang ikaw

Bakit kaya gano'n
Ang s'yang nadarama
Sa bawat sandali hanap ka ng aking mata
Marahil ay ikaw na nga
Sa akin puso ang ligaya
Dahil sa 'yo ako'y wala nang hahanapin pa

Ikaw ang pag-ibig ko
Ang tawag ng damdamin
Ang mabuhay nang wala ka
Ay hindi sapat
Dahil kailangan ko
Ay laging ikaw
Nasa t'wina'y nagtatanaw
Sa aking puso'y may tinatangi
Ang nag-iisang ikaw

Kahit na ano'ng mangyari
Magmamahal pa rin sa yo
At ang lagi kong iisipin
Mahal mo rin ako

Ikaw ang pag-ibig ko
Ang tawag ng damdamin
Ang mabuhay nang wala ka
Ay hindi sapat
Dahil kailangan ko
Ay laging ikaw
Nasa t'wina'y nagtatanaw
Sa aking puso'y may tinatangi
Ang nag-iisang ikaw

The Senyor Nazareno: Lord of Quiapo

2011-01-06T09:41:00.000-08:00

When I was a small boy, I always knew the Pista ng Quiapo was drawing near whenever I saw colorful buntings and banners being hung around the streets of downtown Manila. Back then, I was afraid of the Pista ng Quiapo because that meant my father would hold me aloft once more amidst the line of supplicants in Quiapo Church -- for me to touch the statue of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, a statue that frightened me because of its bloody face and black skin.

Afterwards, we would line up once more, this time to kiss the foot of the huge Santo Entierro, the Dead Christ, inside his glass coffin. You can just imagine how scared I was at that time. In fact, big statues of saints always gave me the creeps, and we have a few of those in our devoutly Catholic home prominently displayed in the huge altar of our living room. I thought that the mannequins always looked at me straight in the eye, and I imagined them moving during midnight hours.

The 9^th of January is the Feast Day of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, the grandest fiesta in all of Manila. On this day, tens of thousands of barefooted devotees flock to Quiapo to pay homage to the Senyor Nazareno, the Black Christ and the Lord of Downtown. For several years, I have been one of the multitudes who participate in the grand procession of the Senyor Nazareno.

The ultimate task of the devotee is to climb the carossa which bears the Senyor Nazareno, and to touch the statue with hand and towel while asking the Senyor to grant his fervent wish. It is a formidable undertaking as there are the other thousands bent to do the same. The strategy is to jockey for position, elbow and squeeze your way through the humongous crowd, and then with sheer muscle and brawn muster your acrobatic skills to swim on top of a sea of people in order to climb the carrosa.

Not everyone can do this stunt successfully. There were many in the past who got trampled and either injured or killed in the stampede. Those who lacked the daring and the physical agility, and who do not have the desire to be injured or killed, have to be contented to throw their shirts and towels to the guardians surrounding the Senyor Nazareno, the Hijos del Nazareno, who will wipe it for them on the Nazareno’s sacrosanct image.

The frenzy surrounding the procession lies in the supplicants’ belief that the statue of the Senyor Nazareno is miraculous. Many people believe that if they do a panata (vow) to follow the procession every January 9 for an exact number of years, the Senyor Nazareno will repay their devotion by granting whatever wish they have, be it material or spiritual.

Stories of people whose wishes have been granted by the Senyor abound. There was, for instance, the story of Aling Norma Lapuz, who suffered from brain cancer and decided to fight her way to touch the Black Nazarene during the 2007 procession. She was successful, thanks tothe help of the macho men who carried her aloft while the Senyor paraded in front of her. Afterwards she went to have a brain scan, and lo and behold, the tumor was gone—to the amazement of her doctors. Aling Norma attributes the miracle to the Senyor Nazareno.

There is also the story of Mr. Antonio Lucio who won in the Sweepstakes after following the procession for exactly nine years of devotion. The prize money made him a multi-millionaire, and of course, he attributes his great luck to the blessings of the Senyor Nazareno. In gratitude, he made huge donations to the Quiapo Church and ordered new robes for the Senyor. He also became one of the huge money contributors to the Comite de Festejos whenever the Pista ng Poong Nazareno approaches.

And, of course, there is the unforgettable story of a radio announcer who became Vice President of the Philippines because he vowed to follow the procession every January 9 of his life. Up to now that he is back to radio and television, he continues his panata to follow the Senyor Nazareno’s procession.

But there are also those whose wishes have not come true—yet, but who believe, in time, the Senyor Nazareno will grant these. After all, the Senyor Nazareno knows their sufferings and will, if they are steadfast in their devotion, sooner or later grant their heart's desire.

Aling Leticia Mendoza, 54 years old, has been following the procession of the Senyor Nazareno ever since she arrived in Quiapo some 12 years before. Born in Samar, she made it a vow to follow the Senyor Nazareno. Now paralyzed with stroke, she doubled her efforts to please the Senyor, going to church every Friday in a wheelchair, begging the Senyor to heal her. But her condition is no better. She believes, however, that the Lord will answer her prayer soon. “I have faith in the Senyor Nazareno. Even to the last breath I will follow the Senyor,” she insists.

My late maternal grandmother was not a Quiapo devotee, but in August 1944, she suddenly became one. Her husband and my Lolo, Alfredo Santos, a guerilla, was captured by the Japanese Army. Rumor had it that he was executed by the Japanese for his resistance to the invaders. My Lola went to Quiapo Church and knelt all day and night by the altar, asking the Senyor to bring her husband back. But my Lolo never came back. Of course my Lola never blamed the Senyor, but she was angry with the Japanese all her life.

The veneration of statues as true representations of God and saints is a long and deep-seated tradition of the Roman Catholic Church. Through the centuries, the Roman Catholics have created many different versions of statues for one saint. The Virgin Mary, for instance, has various representations. In the Philippines alone, she is variously depicted as the Lady of Penafrancia in Naga, the Lady of Peace and Good Voyage in Antipolo, the Lady of Manaoag in Pangasinan, and so on.

The same thing goes for the Roman Catholics' devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is variously depicted in statues as a sleeping baby (Santo Nino Dormido), as a young boy (Senyor Santo Nino), or as the suffering Christ (Senyor Nazareno). The Senyor Nazareno is depicted in four different statues inside the Quiapo Church alone. The most famous one, of course, is the genuflecting, bleeding Christ in maroon-colored robe carrying a huge cross—its head with a crown of thorns and a diadem forming three golden rays. The three other statues depict the Senyor Nazareno as the crucified Christ, the Santo Entierro (dead Christ), and finally, the triumphant resurrected Christ.

Devotees from all walks of life spend enormous time and energy to queue every Friday to touch the Senyor Nazareno statues so that they may be blessed. Many small children, however, are quite afraid of the Senyor Nazareno statues, especially the Santo Entierro-- the statue of the dead Christ lying inside the glass coffin.

The veneration of the Senyor Nazareno in Quiapo started in the 17^th century when the Augustinian Recollects brought its image to the Philippines. According to legend, the original statue was carved by an Aztec sculptor and, when it was brought to the Philippines in 1606 by way of the Pacific Ocean, the galleon that carried it caught fire, charring the statue and rendering its color black. The statue was initially enshrined in the first Recollect church in Bagumbayan (now part of Luneta Park). That is why the statue is being paraded from Quiapo to Luneta, and then back to Quiapo. Between 1767 and 1790, the Archbishop of Manila, Basilio Sancho de Santas Justa y Rufina, ordered the transfer of the Black Nazarene to its present location inside the Quiapo Church.

*This article was originally published at the Philippine Online Chronicles, now one of the world's leading news and article magazines in the web. For other more interesting articles log on to Thepoc.net here.

Justice for Rizal!

2010-12-31T23:25:00.000-08:00

Ka Ed Punzalan is a man on a mission. Since 1995 and up to the present, he has been deep in research, compiling facts and figures so that he could finally bring to the court of justice the killers of Dr. Jose Rizal—114 years after the hero was shot by a firing squad. The hero was executed here in Bagumbayan (now Luneta) at exactly 7:03 am, on December 30, 1896 by order of the Spanish Military Tribunal for the charges of sedition and rebellion against the government.Ka Ed believed--and rightly so--that Rizal's trial was a farce.

Fast forward December 30, 2010— Ka Ed was standing on the very ground where Rizal fell, distributing leaflets to people, giving impromptu speeches, and promising that he will re-open the Rizal murder case. This was where I met Ka Ed, as I was also on a pilgrimage to the exact execution ground of the Philippine National Hero.

A native of Pampanga, Philippines, Ka Ed grew up with stories of Rizal’s heroism and greatness embedded in his young mind. Although he didn’t get past Grade Six, Ka Ed was a voracious reader of history. As a young man, he read the various biographies of Rizal and became a staunch admirer of the dead hero. Fifteen years ago, he started his crusade to research on available resources so that he could prove once and for all there is still a case against those responsible for the patriot's death.

Earlier in the morning, Ka Ed attended the memorial ceremonies at the Rizal Monument led by President Benigno Aquino III. Ka Ed wanted to have an audience with President Aquino so that he could personally present his case to P-noy, but he could not get through the tight security around the president. I told him that presidents have daily schedules that should be followed and one cannot just go through him at whim.

Ka Ed was complacent. “I will go to Malacanang one day and ask for an appointment”, he said. Meanwhile he started giving out to pedestrians and tourists brochures documenting his various researches. “Here”, he said to me and some of the curious onlookers who stopped by to listen to his impromptu speech,“are the facts that we could use to sue the killers of Rizal.”

I could not for the moment believe what he was saying. Rizal has been dead for many years; whoever killed the hero couldn't still be around today. No mature person alive in 1896 could still be living in 2010. I was here in the Luneta to pay homage to the national hero; but meeting Ka Ed and knowing his strange case is totally unexpected. Indeed, I expected to meet some Rizalistas here as I have in the past—those who believe that Rizal is God and therefore still alive--they always flock to the Luneta on December 30 and June 19 to honor God Rizal. But Ka Ed is not the usual Rizalista you would meet in the Luneta, Calamba, and Mount Makiling. He doesn’t believe that Rizal is God. He believes that Rizal is only a human being like you and me—but a great one, and Rizal was wrongly executed on December 30, 1896 on false charges. Ka Ed is very determined to set the facts straight and correct the injustice. He will exert every effort to re-open the Rizal murder case.

Admittedly, I find Ka Ed’s thinking quite unique, if not downright bizarre. Here was a man trying to put Rizal’s killers to justice. This is the first time I have ever heard a man trying to pursue this long-forgotten, albeit obviously neglected murder case. Ka Ed may be a lone crusader but he was a very determined one. He produced several photocopied sheets of his researches. I was astounded they ran into hundred pages, obviously a task that required a lot of time and energy. I am not prone to judge a person, but Ka Ed doesn’t exactly fall into the category of lunatic—he was quite a sensible man—though his mission is quixotic and unusual.

One of Ka Ed’s audiences said: “Malabo na ho yang sinasabi nyo. Matagal na hong patay si Rizal. At isa pa, patay na rin yung mga pumatay sa kanya. Sino pa ang ikukulong natin?”

The audience smiled but Ka Ed quickly replied, “Tama ka, pero makakakuha tayo ng damages para sa pagpatay nilang ginawa kay Dr. Jose Rizal”.

“Eh sino po ba ang pumatay kay Rizal, di po ba mga Gwardiya Sibil?” said a young man, presumably a college student and one who already took a Rizal course.

“Napag-utusan lang ang mga Guwardiya Sibil. Hindi sila ang may kasalanan kungdi yung mga mastermind”, said Ka Ed quite emotionally.

“E sino po yung mga mastermind?”

“Aba e di yung Gobernador Heneral, yung Hari ng Espanya, at Papa sa Roma noong panahon na yun. Si Gobernador Heneral Camilo Polavieja, Haring Alfonso XIII, at Papa Leo XIII. Patay na sila pero mahahabol pa natin ang bansang Espanya at Roma na magbayad sa atin ng damages”

“Magkano naman po ang damages”, asked another listener.

“We will demand that they pay us 333 Billion U.S. Dollars for the 333 years that they occupied our country. That’s 1 billion every year”, Ka Ed said.

Suddenly a wild applause from the audience erupted and Ka Ed was visibly pleased. But for me, I was getting a little tired of this. After making some excuses, I prepared to leave. But Ka Ed wanted me to wait, because on this very day, he would go to the Department of Justice to file a case to against Rizal’s killers. Fortunately, December 30, 2010 is a working holiday and all the government offices were open. The only problem is that Ka Ed didn’t know where the Department of Justice office was located. I said it’s in Padre Faura street, in Malate.

“Can you accompany me?” Ka Ed said.

Right then and there I would have said no, and instead just give him directions, but I supposed if I helped him go to the Department of Justice (DOJ), and possibly meet with Secretary Leila De Lima, the country’s chief attorney could advise him to stop his fantasies. This way he could retire from his mission (he was already 70) and perhaps embark on another worthwhile and more realistic mission (say, find the true killer/s of the Vizcondes).

So we went to the DOJ. We walked the convoluted Ermita streets, stopping by a few moments to buy crackers and soft drinks from a sidewalk vendor. In half an hour, we were at the gates of the DOJ. The kindly guards at the gates inquired where we wished to go. Ka Ed could barely contain his excitement. He said “I am going to file a case to re-open Rizal’s murder case and bring to justice those who killed him”.

The guards looked at one another, but they realized that Ka Ed was serious and surmised I was a reporter with a camera. The guards requested us to log in our names and directed us to the second floor of the DOJ building so we can meet Secretary De Lima. Unfortunately, the secretary was in an important meeting that could not be disturbed, even for such a momentous case as the murder of Rizal. We were directed instead to the office of one of the government prosecutors.

A kindly middle-aged woman warmly greeted us. “How can I help you sir?” asked the lady who happened to be one of the DOJ’s prosecutors (she declined to give her name though after realizing I was a reporter)

“Madam”, said Ka Ed “I want to file a case”.

“Is it criminal or civil?” asked the lady prosecutor.

“It’s criminal madam!” said Ka Ed, barely containing his enthusiasm “I want to file a criminal case against the killers of Dr. Jose Rizal!”

Now, the lady prosecutor was very matter of fact, very professional, as one could expect from a lawyer--not a little bit shocked by Ka Ed’s statement. She said without a hint of exasperation: “Sir, Rizal was killed in 1896, a period of 114 years. The prescriptive period for a criminal case has already elapsed. For a murder case to be pursued, one must file a case twenty years from the commission of the crime.”

Undaunted, Ka Ed replied: “If it’s not possible to file a criminal case here in DOJ, then I will go to the International Court of Justice to file this case”.

“Well, you certainly can sir. But I doubt if your case will be entertained”, said the lady prosecutor.

“At least I will give it a try, and I'm the only Filipino who have tried to get justice for Rizal” said Ka Ed proudly. Ka Ed asked the lady prosecutor a file form so that he could still file a murder case. The lady gave him one and Ka Ed enthusiastically filled up the blanks. In the blank where it asked what case was being filed, Ka Ed wrote: "Murder Case Against the Killers of Rizal".

Still Ka Ed thought that the DOJ might just ignore his plea. He still wanted to go to the International Court of Justice. He asked me, “Do you know where the International Court of Justice is located?”

Unfortunately,or rather fortunately I do not know where the International Court of Justice is. I thought that I had helped him enough. While I was about to walk away, Ka Ed said to me “Thank you ha? Ite-text kita pag nanalo itong kaso. Kailangan nating bigyang katarungan ang kamatayan ni Rizal!”

I smiled and wished him the best.

Going to the DOJ

Explaining to the DOJ security guards his important case to bring to justice Rizal’s killers.

Filing the murder case for the “heinous crime of murdering Rizal”

Ka Ed with a new supporter, Princess Bae Catiguman

Lecturing the people about Rizal and why it’s important to put to justice those responsible for killing Rizal and other Philippine heroes like Diego Silang, Gabriela Silang, the Thirteen Martyrs of Cavite, and the Three Martyred Priests Gomburza.

***This article originally appeared at the Philippine Online Chronicles, the world's leading online news magazine about the Philippines. For more interesting articles and news please visit our website here.

Artex, Malabon: A Waterworld Village

2010-12-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

During the monsoon season, many areas in Metro Manila are prone to flooding. But in Malabon, just north of the suburbs of Manila, flood is a regular occurrence—rainy season or not---because of its low location and its proximity to Manila Bay.

One of Malabon’s lowest-lying areas is Panghulo, where a small housing village known as Artex is permanently submerged in flood. The houses in Artex have been sunk in five-foot flood since 2004, and the water has never receded into the bay. It has stayed put, permanently changing the way of life of the Artex residents.

The main reason why the flood stayed in the compound is the changing geography and economy of Malabon. With urban population growth, many of the old fishing ponds surrounding Artex Compound were converted into housing villages. The ponds were filled with soil and the area elevated. The conversion of ponds to housing villages resulted in the construction of roads, raising further the land surrounding the Artex Compound, and thereby turning it into a virtual wash basin. All of the 200 houses of Artex sank in five-foot deep waters. During heavy storms, the flood could reach up to ten feet deep. Luckily, all the houses are two stories high, with the ground floor submerged and the second floor more or less dry.

The Artex residents, most of whom are poor, have chosen to stay in the village. They have no other place to go, no relocation site better than what they have in Artex. The people have decided they can live with the flood. It is a hard life indeed, but the Artex people, like most Filipinos living in poverty, have persevered. The permanence of the floods is harsh reality they have learned to adapt well to. They have built small boats to get around the village, to go to work, school or market, or to get in or out of the village. Despite the hardship, no family has immediate plans to leave the village.

The people of Artex continue to live "normal" lives despite the abnormal situation they find themselves in. In fact, many consider themselves lucky to have a home they call their own— even if the lower-half of the houses is sunk in water. Indeed, it is better than being homeless. The residents consider the permanent flood as the “new normal”--they can live with it, they have lived with it, they will endure it.

Artex Compound, however, has not always been a waterworld. There was a time not so long ago when people still walked---instead of paddle--the streets of Artex. The compound was built in 1979 by the Artex Yupangco Textile Mills Corporation---one of the Philippines’ largest textile manufacturers in the 1960s and 1970s—as a housing project for its laborers.

In 1984, however, the Artex Labor Union staged a strike against the corporation, claiming inhuman conditions at work and below minimum-wage rates. They demanded better facilities and payment of back wages they claim the company owed them for the years they were underpaid. They stopped working until the company paid them what they demanded. The company, however, stood its ground. While salary rates were indeed below those mandated by law, the company insisted the gap was compensated for by the housing units workers get to live in free of rent; i. e., the Artex Compound.

There was thus an impasse between the company and its laborers. Lawsuits were filed and counter-filed, with each of the parties not yielding to each other’s demands. The Artex workers held their ground and stayed in the housing compound despite the company’s demand they vacate it. In 1989, the Artex Yupangco Textile Mills Corporation finally shut down, not because the company simply decided to give up on the business, but rather because of the worsening flood situation in the compound and the factory. In the rainy season of 1989, the flood was higher than usual. Although the waters still receded into the bay, the flood was becoming more frequent, even on summer months.

The Artex residents, now jobless, contributed what little money they had to buy an expensive water pump to spill the water outside the compound. But in 2004, as more lands surrounding Artex were elevated by the construction of new roads, and more fishing ponds were converted into housing villages, the Artex Compound virtually became a wash basin—the lowest-lying area in all of Panghulo, Malabon. No matter how long and hard they used their water pump, the flood simply spilled back into the village. It was a waste of time and money. The compound became a virtual waterworld.

The permanent flood did not stop the company and the resident-laborers from battling each other in the courts, despite the fact that all of the houses have all been now permanently submerged. Legally, the Artex Yupangco Textile Mills still owns the housing compound, but as part of their continuing protest, the resident-laborers would not leave the houses unless the company paid them their back wages.

And so, even as Artex residents struggled to cope living with the flood day in and day out, at the back of their minds, they are nagged by a far graver fear -- that any time the courts could issue an order for them to vacate their submerged houses. As yet, the residents are complacent with what they have, still waiting for the uncertain future.

They might have weathered the flood, but the legal battle rages on.

I interviewed Aling Lourdes Mariano, 58 years old, one of the old residents of Artex Compound. A former worker in the textile mills, she was one of the lucky ones to be given a housing unit in the Artex Compound. She grew up in Panghulo, Malabon and thus has known flood all her life. Luckily, the houses of Artex are all two stories high, enabling residents to keep dry on the upper floors.

Today, Aling Lourdes and her family keep body and soul together with the help of a small sari-sari store business. She sells a variety of retail goods to her neighbors, like a pint of vinegar, a pack of garlic, or snack foods. A bag attached with strings is slid from her store to her customer’s house. Her clients would shout out to Aling Lourdes (window to window) what they wanted to buy -- say, for instance, a bottle of cooking oil. Aling Lourdes would put the bottle inside a bag and slide it through the strings into the neighbor’s window. The neighbor then puts the payment inside the same bag and slides it back to Aling Lourdes' store. Some customers, too far away for the strings to reach, paddle their way to Aling Maria’s store to buy the commodities. Business is done this way, everyday.

“It’s really hard to live here in Artex,” says Aling Lourdes, “But we have survived. We have no choice. And we have learned to love this compound despite the flood.”

“Has anyone drowned here?” I asked.

“There was a drunken man who went home one very late night who drowned. His body was discovered early the next morning. Aside from him, no one has drowned here.”

“Are there no plans to rehabilitate Artex, say, to fill these waters with soil?”

“That would be a very expensive project. Most of us who live here are poor, so we cannot afford it.”

“Is the local government trying to help you?”

“Local politicians always campaign here during election time, with lots of promises to help us. But so far, we have received very little support from them.”

“Are you prepared to live here all your life?”

“We really have no choice. If we are destined to live here all the days of our lives, then so be it. Besides, we have come to love this place, and we have already found ways to live with the flood. It is hard but we have to accept it.”

“Is there any news update on the lawsuit between the Artex residents and the Yupangcos?”

“As far as I know, the case is still in the courts. If the courts decide that we should leave Artex, then we would leave. But the Yupangcos must pay us our back wages. We will not leave unless they pay us."

“What if by miracle, you wake up one day and the flood is gone?”

“Then we would be the happiest people in the world”.

Note: This article has been originally published at the Philippine Online Chronicles, now one of the world's leading web news magazine on the Philippines. Please visit the.poc.net here and read more interesting articles about the Philippines!

Cubao Rush Hour

2010-12-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

It happens every night in Aurora Boulevard Cubao: people lining the streets waiting for the jeepney, bus, Fx, or taxicabs that will bring them home. As it happened, rush hour in Cubao is a protracted one. It starts at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and ends at about 10 in the evening, when the people begin to thin out. The photos above and below were taken at about 9 in the evening.

I pity the people who do this on a daily basis. Imagine having to work everyday for eight hours, be it in the office or the construction site, and then waiting in line for hours in the streets afterwards, longing for the much needed rest at home, and there weren't enough vehicles to transport them home. And when they finally get to board a vehicle, the hours of traffic ahead still add fatigue to the already tired body.

I myself experienced this for several years, and I know the pains and the exhaustion of this kind of commuting. In the end, I decided to quit work, because I knew I will not be able to survive this kind of existence, that this will either take a toll on my health, or I'd look older than my age. Maybe I wasn't built so tough, and I must have thought there was more to life than chasing buses and jeepneys. But for many people, this is already an inescapable part of living or working in busy Cubao.

Kropek

2010-11-24T08:58:00.001-08:00

Kropek (or kropeck), photographed above, is a very common Pinoy snack that has stood the test of time. It is a fish or prawn cracklings (mixed with flour) that have been dried in the sun and deep fried. The Star brand pack consists of around 20 pieces of rectangular-shaped kropek cracklings. There is another variety, though, the oval-shaped one that is slightly a bit thinner but same delicious taste.

In one sitting, I could eat one pack of this kropek, especially if I sink each of its contents in a small bowl of sukang maanghang. When I was a kid, a piece of kropek was 10 centavos (one pack would be around 2 pesos). No one sells it by the piece now, however, as it is usually sold in one pack for ten pesos. The sukang maanghang is always free, though. Back then, one pack of kropek would be an ideal snack while watching the Crispa-Toyota games in our old Black and White TV set. Or perhaps a snack while reading Tagalog Klasiks or Aliwan Komiks.

I think every Pinoy must have had acquired a taste of this ubiquitous snack, especially as it is sold in every street corner by our same Balut vendor. In Sari-sari stores, the kropek is among the bestsellers, especially on Sundays, when many Pinoy istambays, hard of cash, prefer it as pulutan with the Tanduay, over the slightly more expensive chicharong baboy.

With the numerous arrivals of foreign-branded snacks like Pringles or Pik-nik, I still prefer the lowly kropek, especially if paired with a bottle of Cosmos or Mirinda. Although some older people would have preferred a sarsaparilla.

Pre-Christmas Rush in Downtown Manila

2010-11-16T22:23:00.000-08:00

Christmas is just around the corner in Manila downtown. Here's some images to prove that Pinoys are very excited about the coming Yuletide season. The street shops are always crowded, and there's always the bargain products for those wanting to save early on Christmas presents. Many products in the sidewalk shops are very cheap, especially those that are Made in China. Well, at least now every child can afford a pirated version of Barbie doll for as little as 10 pesos each.

Toys. 10 pesos each. Made in China.

Bra, 35 each. Made in China.

Ham. Made in the Philippines.

Avenida Rizal

Cubao's Early Christmas Season

2010-11-13T07:47:00.001-08:00

How the Tsinoys Honor the Dead

2010-11-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

All Souls Day Traditions of the Chinese-Filipinos. I interviewed a Chinese-Filipino family on November 1, 2010 about their old traditions during All Souls Day. Shot at Manila Chinese Cemetery, Philippines.

The Best of Siquijor Philippines

2010-11-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

Photography by Dennis Villegas
Music: Absolutely Free Absolutely Beautiful by Magic
Thanks for watching, hope you enjoy the views!

The Pinoy Deathstyle

2010-11-01T04:43:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine died suddenly. He was only 40 years old, and seemed – a day prior to his death – a very healthy person. But then one fateful morning, he complained of fatigue and a slight headache, and then suddenly collapsed. Nobody knew what happened until we brought him to the hospital. The doctor, shaking his head, said to my friend’s wife: “ikinalulungkot ko, subalit wala na po siya.” My friend died of massive stroke. The widow, confronting her two young children said in tears, “Mga anak.. iniwan na tayo ng Papa niyo”.

The widow and the two children were instantly confronted with grief, shock, and the strenuous task of arranging the funeral arrangements. The young bereaved family was in no way prepared to deal with death in the family, and so I was asked by the widow to help in the funeral arrangements. What would the dead wear? Which funeral homes offer good but reasonable charge in service? What type of coffin will be appropriate? Which public cemetery is closest to the home of the family?

As it happened, I was no more knowledgeable about funerals and cemeteries than the recently orphaned family, so the first thing I did was to go to an internet café to Google “Philippine funeral services,” which brought me to a few memorial homes’ websites offering funeral services in Manila. But then, coming back to the hospital, a few funeral agents were already there to offer their services. I soon found that some funeral homes have small offices near hospitals ready for prospective clients – patients who expire in hospitals.

I knew it would be my task to protect the family from the funeral agents so I decided to get brochures from them rather than haggle with their prices. Since the family was below middle class and wanted immediate service, I opted for a funeral home in Quezon City that offered “packages” meaning they provide everything that the dead “needs”, like death certificate, City Hall registration, church rituals, public cemetery, and of course the preparation of the remains (embalming, makeup), the casket, and the funeral service – that includes the provision of catafalque, lighting, carpet, and the limousine.

It was very convenient and the widow liked the idea. And so on the evening of my friend’s death, he was already home in a nice white coffin with plastic handles that looks neither cheap nor expensive. Inside the coffin, he was wearing the barong tagalog that we hastily washed and dried in a nearby laundry. Ironically, it was the same barong he wore in his wedding 12 years before.

My friend’s sudden death exposed how typically ignorant we Filipinos are about the business of dying. Death happens to all of us and everyone knows this is certain, but the surprising thing is that we hardly prepare for it. We consider it morbid to prepare for our death. Our inherent fear of death is probably due to our concept that death is an unpleasant and painful experience, compared to say, eating pizza or watching a good movie. Needless to say, the current majority of Pinoy population – the youth – is largely ignorant of funerals and cemeteries. Comparatively, the senior segment of the population are already planning their move to the “other side,” and are the ones who likely be reading newspaper obits to keep up with who among their contemporaries have kicked the bucket.

The Buddhist monk, Sogyal Rimpoche, famed author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, once defined death as simply “breathing in… and not breathing out.” Is it that simple? Perhaps this is why we take it for granted – the “breathing in and the breathing out.” Right now, as you are reading this, you may even have begun to notice your breathing. It comes naturally, doesn’t it? – even effortlessly provided of course you didn’t have asthma!

When I was young, an old relative died and I remember asking my father why he died. His answer: “nakalimutang huminga.” The boy that was me took his reply seriously. For a time, I always made it a point to remember to breathe in and out. I didn’t want to forget, afraid I'd die. It was only later I found out my dad was pulling my leg.

Back then, I didn’t realize it was typical of parents to shield their children against the facts of death. Our elders, not in so many words ‘taught’ us death is unreal; that it simply doesn’t happen. And that it was good for us not to know what death means. Thus, when a relative dies, we are told the deceased is “natutulog lang,” or “magbabakasyon,” or, “pupunta sa langit.”

The doctor who pronounced the death of my friend did not even have the courage to say “He died.” Instead he said: “wala na siya (he’s gone).” And my friend’s widow, confronting her children also shied away from mentioning death by choosing the less traumatizing word “iniwan na tayo.” But death is a universal truth. No matter how we cushion its impact, the blow of death could be devastating.

The only thing we knew as children was that when our relatives die, they were put inside nice white or bronze-colored coffins (with nice handles), were treated to make-up and hairdo, and dressed in Sunday’s best. The family will then orchestrate grotesque slumber parties or lamay for a few nights, complete with drinking and card games, not only to honor the dead but also to raise funds for the funeral costs.

Dying in the Philippines, I found, is not only emotionally stressful, but financially draining to the family as well, as most Pinoys are unconcerned about funeral insurance unlike people in the West. During my frantic search for my friend’s coffin, I found there were many varieties of coffins to choose from: from 6,000-peso lawanit (cheap wood) coffins to 150,000 peso –“hermetically-sealed oak coffins.” For a complete package, the cheapest is 15,000 pesos (around 400 US dollars) for an ordinary wooden coffin with four days/ three nights funeral service. It is therefore not surprising that abuloy or money donations from relatives, neighbors and friends are most welcome.

The lamay can be a strenuous experience to the family who had to stay awake most of the time to entertain th steady flow of guests and visitors. But the lamay is necessary, even expedient. The lamay can be a way to make the dead feel he or she is loved, although one wonders if the departed ever wants for anything in the afterlife. But it is good for us who have stayed behind to know we have given the best service and demonstration of our love to our dearly departed. Never mind if we totally miss out on the irony that we are doing things for our own rather than the dead one’s satisfaction. Come to think of it, it the dead has his way, would he really like to lie flat inside a claustrophobic coffin, or be displayed in public view for four days and three nights, or be wept over by relatives and gawked at by strangers?

Wouldn’t the dead prefer to lie down on a soft bed surrounded by flowers?--a moot question actually since the dead doesn't feel anything (although their spirits in the after-life may still see us). But then the average Filipino – afraid of death – may even be more afraid of corpses, regardless that of a loved one. Perhaps that is why we need to put our dead inside boxes.

The truth of the matter is that the corpse is no longer our loved one. That is why morticians and undertakers term the corpses as “remains.” The corpse is what “remained” of our loved one. It doesn’t move, it doesn’t do all the things that it was supposed to do, like for example, talk to you, which if it does, can be very disturbing indeed.

Anyway, the lamay also prepares the bereaved family for formal mourning – three or four nights of vigil, and thus prepare to say the final goodbye. Through the formal mourning, the family receives condolences from relatives, friends and even strangers. Long lost relatives could turn up any moment, making the funeral an instant family reunion of sorts.

During the wake, reminiscences of friends and relatives are often a good way to assuage the family’s grief. This is probably a subconscious effort to assure the family that the dead has a good chance of entering heaven. All of us, of course wish to live good enough lives to earn us a place in heaven -- although the later, the better, we hope. Don’t we often tease a friend who did us some favor by saying: “Ang bait mo talaga… sana kunin ka na ni Lord?” Yet, deep in our hearts, we know that we don’t want that to happen very soon, even if the idea sounded good (being in heaven with the Lord). Or how about the common joke we often hear at funerals: "Huwag ka na malungkot una una lang naman yan. Malay mo bukas ikaw naman ang susunod".

But then again, all of us will, sooner or later, kick the bucket, bite the dust, breathe our last, depart, pass on; or in Tagalog, magsasakabilang-buhay, matitigok, matetepok, matotodas, magpapaalam, and all the other euphemisms of death one can think of, except the blunt “mamatay.”

However ignorant we, Filipinos, are of death, whenever the Grim Reaper comes knocking on the door of a neighbor, relative, or friend, we are always there to condole, sympathize, and give help and support – provided of course there is constant supply of biskwit at kape during the lamay.

*In Nueva Ecija and Bulacan, the term for namatay is "nasira", so for instance, if I die I would be called "nasirang Dennis", which is rather amusing to me than disturbing.

This article is originally published at the Philippine Online Chronicles. If you want to read more of more interesting Buhay Pinoy articles, please click here.

Master Anos: Blind Exorcist of the Philippines

2010-10-15T09:34:00.001-07:00

On October 8, 2010, me and my friend Sidney Snoeck, the renowned photojournalist, traveled to Camarines Norte to document the exorcism rituals of Master Herminigildo Anos, the blind exorcist and spiritual healer. I have always been interested in exorcism and when I was younger in our province in Nueve Ecija, I had witnessed first hand people supposedly being possessed by evil spirits.

I first met master Anos some years back during the 2007 Feast of the Black Nazarene in Quiapo. In 2009, I even partially documented his exorcism rituals in Plaza Miranda, where Master Anos performed mass exorcism. You can view my previous post on him here.

Demonic possession fascinates me and I have tried my best to learn more about it through reading many books and magazines. Yet, some people may regard demonic possession as a psychiatric rather than spiritual problem. But the Bible records demonic possessions, and even Jesus Christ was known to drive away evil spirits from possessed people.

The video below is an excerpt of a documentary movie I am making of Master Anos and his exorcism rituals which I plan to present to you in full soon. Master Anos believes that during his exorcism rituals, Jesus Christ himself possesses him, and thereby can compel the evil spirits to come out from his patients. The evil spirits can be Satan himself or his minions like the tikbalang, kapre, dwende, higante, and nuno sa punso. Master Anos also believes that the spirits of dead relatives can possess people. Babies that have died unbaptized can possess their parents.

I just noticed that not all of Master Anos' patients have problems with demons. Many have problems with health and some have terminal illnesses that have been deemed hopeless cases by medical doctors. But Master Anos declares that all illnesses are caused by evil spirits, and that by casting out these evil spirits, he cures the patients' illnesses.

The scene towards the middle of the video shows a young boy named Kevin Opamil, an 11-year mute boy. Orphaned at a young age, Kevin is also disabled. He can stand up but cannot walk. He was brought to Master Anos' by his aunt, who consented for the exorcism ritual. During the ritual, Master Anos declared that Kevin was possessed by a dwende (leprechaun), and he uses his traditional method to exorcise the boy's dwende.

In the end, Master Anos said that he was already able to make Kevin talk, although it appeared to me that the boy was only making some unintelligible words. He also made him stand and walk with assistance, although I can see that Kevin cannot still walk unassisted. Master Anos declared that in a few more days' the boy would talk and walk more normally. Unfortunately, I cannot stay for a few more days to check on the boy's progress since Sidney and I have to go back to Manila the following day.

Meanwhile, you can check out Sidney Snoeck's creepy photo series here on Master Anos.

Views from Siquijor

2010-09-30T19:47:00.000-07:00

This short video offers breathtaking views from the peak of Mt. Bandilaan, the highest peak and dead center of Siquijor island. Actually, this is the first mountain I scaled and it's pretty easy: there are narrow trails leading to the peak of the mountain. Mr. Johnson Siangco, my kindly guide and habal-habal driver, points to the six towns of Siquijor as I point my video cameras on those towns. The six towns of Siquijor are Siquijor, Lazi, Maria, Enrique Villanueva, San Juan, and Larena. I stayed for five days and four nights in Siquijor island. I would say that Siquijor is one of the loveliest places in the Philippines. Actually, exploring the beauty of the island, one easily forgets the Mangkukulam ;)

Kristong Hari's Message to P-Noy!

2010-09-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

Mr. Lauro Gonzales, aka, Kristong Hari, has been for a long time trying to seek an audience with Philippine Presidents (from Marcos to Arroyo), but could not get past the Presidential Security Guards in Malacanang Palace. The Palace guards would not let him near the presidential gate, much less inside the palace grounds.

Now Kristong Hari asked me to film this video message to the newly-elected President Noynoy Aquino. He was possessed here by the Santo Nino (Child Jesus) so his voice was small, resembling that of a small child. Of course, I would not know if he is only acting here or truly possessed by the Santo Nino. I do not want to judge him. If he believes he is God, then I cannot do anything about it.

Kristong Hari is very serious in his attempts to make contacts with global leaders because he claimed he can be the one to solve all global problems. Some would say that Kristong Hari has delusions of grandeur and even a lunatic. But I found him sincere in his belief that he is God.

This short clip is shot in front of Quiapo Church where Kristong Hari and his followers congregate every Friday to bless people and ask for their donations. To those who help him, he promises eternal life. Those who do not will perish in the fires of hell. Well, I didn't want to go to hell, so I decided to give him with some amount of money every Friday. He appreciates that I take the time to listen to him, unlike the many others who malign him and his followers, and even label them as lunatics.

I think that Kristong Hari is a sincere and genuinely kind man, although I do not cater to his claim that he is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. But then it touched my heart that he wanted me to become one of his saints. Although it was an honor, I respectfully declined his offer as I am not holy and perfect. It just pleases me to document a strange and fascinating man like him--not to judge him but to understand him better.

Kristong Hari: A Short Video Preview

2010-09-27T16:42:00.000-07:00

This short video clip is part of the documentary movie I am currently filming on the life story of Mr. Lauro Gonzales, a.k.a. Kristong Hari, the man who believes he is Jesus Christ. In this short clip, you can see Kristong Hari's devotees praying and worshipping him as the true living Jesus Christ. This was filmed in Plaza Miranda, in front of the Quiapo Church, in Manila.The whole movie will be coming soon! ;)

My friend Sidney Snoeck is currently featuring Kristong Hari in an amazing photo series here. We have been following Kristong Hari for sometime now, although not as faithfuls! But then, Kristong Hari wanted us to become his saints: me as St. Peter, and Sidney as St. Jude!

The Social Psychology of the Anting-anting

2010-09-09T14:00:00.001-07:00

A casual visit to Quiapo Church on any given day can give anyone an idea of the superstitious nature of the typical Filipino. Here and there around the vicinity of the church can be seen the various traders of religion and occult. In this motley array of vast and rich cultural traditions, the scapular and rosary vendors, the fortune tellers, and the amulet sellers mixed together to make this part of Manila the center of divination and mysticism in the Philippines. Indeed, in the deelpy religious and superstitious nature of Filipino culture, it is hard to tell where religion and occult divides.

Sagrada Familia anting anting. This medallion offers good luck for business and protection against ghouls like tikbalang, itim na dwende, kapre, and aswang.

The occult merchants occupy a huge space around the Quiapo Church . Most sellers have a makeshift stall composed of a small table and small baskets where they put all their occult merchandise that cater to the Filipino curiosity: from amulets, to herbal medicines, books on folk healing, love potions, elixirs, and various other objects such as odd-shaped stones, gems, crystals, and other freaks of nature called the mutya.

From my own interviews with several of these occult vendors, I found that the anting anting (amulets), are the bestsellers among the various magical objects that they sell. Many people buy them: men and women, young and the old. The anting antings are priced according to their size and the materials used. Generally, the bigger the size the more expensive it would be. Of course, the material used also determines the price: anting anting that is cast in expensive red bronze commands a slightly higher price than the cheaper yellow bronze. The anting antings range in price from anywhere between 20 pesos to 700 pesos.

A group of anting-anting believers in Quiapo

There are hundreds of design to choose from, ranging from the medallion of the Infinito Dios, the Santissima Trinidad, the Infinita Dios, to that of the various other lesser gods, angels, and saints of Folk Catholic mythology. The anthropomorphic figures of the Gods are often accompanied by mysterious initials and cabalistic inscriptions in Latin and Tagalog. Many of these initials are actually the numerous names of God and the power words (oraciones) that he had spoken. They are written in initials because they are meant to be secret and not spoken or uttered, not unlike the belief of the Jews who wanted God’s name hidden, and thus removed the vowels of God’s name in the scriptures, leaving it to be read as YHWH or YHVH, which cannot be pronounced because of the absence of vowels.

In the anting anting, the removal of vowels is no longer deemed necessary. It was already enough to put just the initials of God. Thus many initials that can be found on the anting anting are read as A.A.A, M.M.M., L.M., H.A.H., J.A.H., O.I.A., and so on, which are all the various names of the Infinito Dios, the Infinita Dios, or the Santissima Trinidad.

At present the anting antings are still popular and many people still buy them. It is hard to tell if people buy them because they genuinely believe in them, or because they are just curious about them. But for the faithful, the anting anting have a variety of purpose: there are anting antings that would make one impervious to bullets and knives (kabal at kunat); there are those that can make one invisible to enemies (tagabulag); there are those that can give one powers to control the elements (impasibilidad); there are anting anting that can make one be attractive to the opposite sex (gayuma); there are the anting-antings that can make one lucky in business and gambling; there are those that give protection against illnesses; and there are also the anting antings that can protect one against the ghouls and evil elementals of Philippine folklore: the tikbalang, kapre, mangkukulam, nuno sa punso and the itim na dwende.

The Filipino philosophy of “wala namang mawawala kung maniniwala” plays an important role in the culture of the anting-anting. There is nothing wrong in believing something that one cannot prove to be effective or infective, unless one is hacked by a bolo and either survived or killed. But there is no shortage of genuinely honest people who swear in their honor that the anting-anting saved their lives or made their lives worthwhile. In Cavite and Batangas for instance, I met many aged anting-anting people who told me fascinating stories about how they survived assassinations, accidents, and life-threatening illnesses because their anting-antings protected them. One only has to have faith in the anting-anting to achieve its powers.

I myself subscribe to the concept of “wala namang mawawala kung manininiwala”. There is nothing wrong in believing unless the belief limits your abilities as an individual. The anting anting does the otherwise by providing inspiration that God is with the common people, and that in this modern time of high technology, the anting anting still provides hope and faith to the oppressed people. God would reward their faith and devotion with His protection and blessing.

Indeed my friends and colleagues started treating me differently when they discovered that I was keeping a collection of anting-antings. They thought that anting-antings are only worn by superstitious and weird people. But what if the anting-anting really has the power to save me from harm, illness, and other evil things? What if by a freak accident I get hit by a truck and survive? One thing is for sure, however. I always cross the street with extreme caution, even though I may carry an anting-anting in my pocket. I will never test the power of the anting-anting as it is tantamount to challenging the power of God.

Anting anting scarf of Infinito Dios in battle formation. This scarf is an effective protection against gun and other weapons.

During the Philippine-American War (1899-1901), the so-called Filipino “insurrectos” fought the superior-armed Americans with only their bolos and anting antings. One of those killed was featured in the book “Harper’s History of the War in the Philippines ” in 1899, an “insurrecto” who was wearing an anting-anting vest of the Infinito Dios that proved no match for the gunfire of the Americans.

It astonished the Americans that the “insurrectos” had the courage to face the superiorly armed U.S. Army:

“Why did not these men surrender? It was an exhibition of solid heroism, the like of which I shall not see again. At least over the graves of these men, whose actions we cannot quite understand, should be written the word “heroes”. Many of these men wore anting antings or charms to preserve life….”

The anting-anting therefore served as the vital object with which the Filipinos pinned their hopes in order to gain an edge in the war against the superior-armed American troops. Nevertheless, the psychological impact of possessing the anting anting could have made the war more blooodily contested. Without the anting-antings, one could hardly say if the war lasted as long as it did. The anting-anting is an important part of the Filipino battle gear, along with his bolo and crude firearm.

More recently, during the Lapiang Malaya massacre of 1967, those killed were found to be wearing the supposedly magical vests that could turn bullets into snakes and just fall harmlessly around them. But as it happened, the bullets easily tore through the vests and flesh of the Lapiang Malaya kapatid. Tatang Valentin Delos Santos, the spiritual leader of the Lapiang Malaya also died violently—allegedly beaten by an inmate in the National Mental Hospital where the Supremo was confined as a lunatic.

I think that the reason why the anting-anting failed is that Filipinos who used them become very fatalistic. Their utter disregard for safety and caution led into their own doom. Here comes into mind another one of those old Filipino sayings that may have significance to the anting-anting: “nasa tao ang gawa, nasa Diyos ang awa”.

People who believe in the power of the anting-antings must also exercise caution and discipline and not become foolish and defy logic. Imagine what faith, reason, and hard work can do to defeat evil.

Santissima Trinidad anting-anting. Excellent protector against all evil.

Be that as it may, the anting anting still plays a significant role in the social psychology of the Filipino people. Most people who believe them come from the lower strata of society, the common folk who are deprived of wealth and social power but who nevertheless gain spiritual and psychological powers through the anting anting.

The anting anting evolved from being a magical object that protects the Filipinos from evil and harm to religious objects that serve as temporary or even permanent receptacles of God. The anting anting is thus worshipped as God itself, or his various forms and representations. In this conceptual framework, God becomes a genie which, through proper devotion, faith, and mysterious incantations, can be summoned to protect the believer from evil and harm.

Through the oraciones, the believer achieves a unity, a oneness with the Infinito Dios and is thus able to gain God’s qualities that can make him a superman—a man bearing the powers of God, because through his faith and hard work, the old Bible saying is thus applied to him: You shall be as gods.

Note: This article was originally published at the Philippine Online Chronicles. To find other interesting articles on Philippine Life and Culture, please visit the site here.

You Shall be as Gods: The Enigma of Anting-anting

2010-08-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

Deep in the night of May 20, 1967, around four hundred curiously attired men congregated in Taft Avenue in Manila, near what is now Vito Cruz, with the intent to march to Malacanang Palace to ask for President Marcos’ resignation. The men wore anting antings and colorful vests with mixed Latin and Tagalog inscriptions in them. Despite their odd appearance, they were also wielding daggers and three-foot long jungle bolos signifying their rebellious intent. They were part of the of the millenarian sect called Lapiang Malaya (Freedom Society), a quasi-religious political society led by the charismatic eighty-six year old Supremo Valentin delos Santos, a former Catholic priest, auto mechanic, one-time circus performer, and failed candidate in the three past presidential elections at that time.

Early in May 1967, Tatang Valentin, as the Supremo was called, demanded Marcos to step down. He also demanded that the Philippine Armed Forces surrender their arms to him. Deeply disillusioned by what he termed as the oppression of the poor, and the continuing evil influence of Western powers in the Philippines, Tatang Valentin now decided that it was time to establish the new government with him as the new Supreme Commander, Commander-in-Chief, and President of the Republic of the Philippines. President Marcos promptly rejected Tatang Valentin’s demand.

As the Lapiang Malaya kapatid (as members of the Lapiang Malaya were called) started to arrive from the provinces to gather in the society’s compound in Taft Avenue, the Philippine Constabulary cordoned off the area to prevent more members from joining the already frenzied group.

Then at around 12:30 in the morning of May 21 ( a Sunday), as the volatile tension between the Lapiang Malaya members and the constabulary heightened, a prankster reportedly fired a mock gunfire in the air. A violent skirmish between the kapatid and the constabulary followed. The result of the skirmish was one-sided as to be considered a massacre. As the constabulary opened fire, thirty two kapatid were killed and some forty seriously wounded. The constabulary had one death toll: a constabulary who was hacked to death. In addition, five constabularies were wounded by bolo hacks, and three civilians hit by stray bullets.

This massacre of the Lapiang Malaya was one of the bloodiest episodes in recent Philippine history. As the front line members of the Lapiang Malaya fell to gunfire, many other members realized that their anting-antings have failed to protect them. Dispersing in all directions, they were later arrested and charged with rebellion.

One of the Lapiang Malaya kapatid who was killed on the bloody Sunday of may 21, 1967. Note the magical vest that he was wearing that offered no protection against gunfire.

Later in the morning, Tatang Valentin surrendered to the constabulary. He was brought to the National Mental Hospital, together with eleven of his high-ranking lieutenants. All were subjected to psychiatric evaluation and were all pronounced lunatic.

Following his diagnosis, Tatang Valentin was confined to a cell together with a violent schizophrenic, who allegedly mauled the old man into coma. He never regained consciousness and was declared dead on August 1967. The official medical report stated that he died of pneumonia.

Tatang Valentin surrenders.

After Tatang Valentin’s death, the Lapiang Malaya was officially dissolved by the government, with most kapaitd either pardoned or sent back to their respective provinces. Most kapatid of the sect were peasants, laborers, and common folks from Southern Tagalog who believed in Tatang Valentin’s promise of a new government based on “true equality and true liberty”. They also subscribed to Tatang Valentin’s promise of supernatural powers once they wore their anting antings and sacred vests. He said that the bullets of the enemies would turn to snakes and just fall around them But as it happened, and as proven in the bloody early morning of May 21, their anting antings were no match for the automatic gunfire of the constabulary. The bullets easily tore through their vests, flesh and bones.

The magical vest of Tatang Valentin delos Santos. Author's collection.

In retrospect, the Lapiang Malaya massacre was just one of the many episodes in the history of the Filipino mass movements whose combined desire for freedom and faith in the anting antings led them to fight the abuse or oppression of those in power. The revolt of the Cofradia de San Jose in 1840, the Katipunan in 1896, the Colorum rebellions of Southern Tagalog in 1897, the Philippine Revolution of 1899, the Makario Sakay and Felipe Salvador rebellions during the early years of American occupation, the Sakdal and the Hukbalahap, are examples of uprisings that have their base on the mass movements that are driven not only by nationalistic fervor but by religious and superstitious beliefs as well.

The leaders and members of these movements invariably kept anting antings to protect them in their battles against the enemies. General Emilio Aguinaldo was known to possess the medallion of the Santisima Trinidad, Andres Bonifacio used the Santiago de Galicia amulet, Felipe Salvador used the medallion of Christ’s resurrection, and General Macario Sakay used an anting anting vest with the inscribed Caravaca cross design. In addition, General Antonio Luna, Bishop Gregorio Aglipay, and Gen. Miguel Malvar were also known to possess anting antings.

Aside from them, the anting anting also figured prominently in the lives of folk heroes and bandits, such as Tiagong Akyat, Nardong Putik, Kapitan Eddie Set whose real-life stories were made into popular movies. But for all the supposed effectiveness of their anting-antings, most of these folk heroes and villains ended up being killed by gunfire, in encounter with the authorities.

Even former President Marcos, the man Tatang Valentin wanted to overthrow, was known to possess anting-antings. Bishop Gregorio Aglipay, a firm believer in anting-anting, embedded an anting anting into the skin of Marcos. Could it be that Marcos’ anting anting was more powerful than Tatang Valentin’s?

Did Tatang Valentin and his men truly believe that their anting antings have the power to turn bullets into snakes? If so, why did the anting-antings fail to stop the bullets from penetrating through cloth and flesh? Was Tatang Valentin truly a messiah from God as he claimed? Or was he simply, as the government claimed, a madman? What is it in the anting-anting that attracts many Filipinos into believing in them? Where did it come from? What is its history? More importantly why would some Filipinos reject logic and place their lives in peril just because they possess an anting anting?

The Myth and Promise of Anting anting

Every culture has produced its own set of talismans and amulets, and the Philippines is no exception. While some cultures may regard amulets to be as mere magical accessories to protect one against harm and bad luck, the culture of the Filipino anting anting is different, as it goes further as to be regarded as a religion in itself. The anting anting is interestingly unique in that it invariably contained mixed symbols of the ancient Filipino religion, Roman Catholicism, the Christian Orthodox, and Judaism.

For those who believe in its divine properties, the amulet is one of the few man-made objects that can make man closer to God or even achieve the qualities of God. It is a long-held belief among the mystics, both in the East and the West, that amulets serve as temporary or even constant habitation of God and other divine spirits. The animist belief that inanimate objects can become receptacles of dwelling of the divine is shown through the ancient worship of statues, relics, beads, portraits, tombs, and amulets. (H.P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings, Vol. VIII).

The early Filipinos, before the coming of the Spaniards were already known to keep amulets, talismans, charms, and various other objects to protect them from harm, the elements, and the evil spirits. Crocodile tooth, gems, odd-shaped stones, and even fossilized remains of animals were the earliest known examples of anting-antings used by the early Filipinos.

Filipinos call anting anting in a variety of ways: bertud, agimat, gamit, talisman, mutya, or galing. Like its many different names, it also comes in many different forms. It can be a medallion, a small book, a piece of paper, a tattoo, a crocodile tooth, a meteorite, a vest or scarf inscribed with mantras, and many other forms. No one is quite sure how the word anting anting came to be. According to Lorna Montilla, anting-anting may have evolved from the Latin word “anti”, and thus means anti-anti, or against-against (G.F.Fernando).

Indeed if the present belief in the popular use of anting-anting is to be considered, it may be correct, since the anting-anting is mostly used to protect its wearer against harm and illness. But there are also some who put forward the theory that the term is actually derived from the Javanese “anting anting” which means ear pendants. Anting-anting may also have been derived from the Bahasa Melayu word “anting” that means “dangling” or “swinging”.

The anting anting is steeped in legend and lore. Many of the people who put their faith in the anting-anting, such as the kapatid of the Lapiang Malaya, held the notion that they gain supernatural powers thru the anting anting. Through the powers of the anting-anting they can become invisible to enemies, they can be impervious to bullets and knives, they can escape mortal dangers, they can be at two places at the same time, and so on. Therefore, the anting anting gives them the attributes of the gods, and that thru these magical objects, they can be like gods.

Most anting antings are puzzling because of their cabalistic figures, mysterious mantras, and hidden initials. Many people who keep anting antings are very secretive and would not want to reveal what they keep, except maybe those which they wear around. They believed that the mystical nature of the anting anting, their own covenant with the gods, is what makes it powerful. Once revealed, its power diminishes or disappears altogether.

The secret symbols and initials are part of the original mystical theogony of the Tagalogs. The oracion (mantras)—the prayers summoning the divine—are mostly hidden in initials. I found that many of these initials are the numerous names of God and the words He had spoken. For instance, the initials M.M.M. (Mitam, Micam, Macmamitam or Magob, Mariagob, Magogab) and A.A.A. (Avelator, Avetillo, Avetemit) appear on many medallions which, according to the anting-anting believers, are the initials of the true names of the Santissima Trinidad (Holy Trinity)

Many of the symbols are connected with the Filipinos’ concept of God. The one most commonly seen symbol is the Eye contained in a triangle, which is the symbol of the Bathala or the Infinito Dios, the ancient Filipino God. The connection of God to the anting anting therefore plays an important role in trying to understand its very nature. To unlock the secrets of the anting anting’s hidden meanings, myths, and symbolisms, one must be able to understand the Filipino’s concept of God. The anting anting is the Filipino’s way to approach God, and to contain God within a medallion or vest, and thereby achieve a divine connection which will give him the qualities of God.

The Theogony of the Anting anting

The ancient Filipinos believed in the existence of God. In Tagalog mythology, God is the Bathalang Maykapal or Bathala, the creator of the universe. Although the name Bathala may be Tagalog, it has counterparts in other parts of the Philippines. Bathala rules the world. He provides man his needs and protects the world against evil. There are other deities in the ancient religion of the Tagalogs, but Bathala is the highest and most powerful.

The arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines changed the Filipinos' belief in Bathala. To make the conquest easy and make the Filipinos easily believe and convert into the new religion, the friar missionaries interpreted Bathala to be the same Spanish God of the Roman Catholic religion. There was no effort on the part of the friars to erase the old belief on the Bathala but rather to adapt the Bathala into the new religion. It may even be said that the friars may have encouraged the belief in Bathala as well as other Filipino local beliefs and superstitions, including the belief in anting antings to create an industry to sell to them similar objects like scapulars, scarves, relics, medallions and rosaries. This fusion of folk beliefs and Roman Catholicism is what we may now call as Folk Catholicism.

The proliferation of material objects to venerate, long a tradition among the Filipinos, has thus been encouraged and fused with Roman Catholicism. The Filipinos created their own interpretations of these objects to suit their beliefs. Thus many of the symbols that can be seen on the anting antings have the fusions of the Roman Catholic and the early religion of the Filipinos.

The important change instituted by the friar missionaries was with regards to the concept of God among the Filipinos. Although Bathala is interpreted by the friars as to be the same Spanish God of Roman Catholicism, Bathala’s monotheistic being changed as he was now viewed as consisting of three persons, or the Doctrine of the Santissima Trinidad (Holy Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit).

This doctrine is the most important dogma of Catholicism. In the book Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church published by the Vatican, the doctrine is stated:

"The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but One God in three persons. The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire".

The early Filipinos may have difficulty understanding this concept of the Santissima Trinidad. How can the Bathala be One and Three at the same time? To solve this theological crisis, and to retain the easier concept that the God is only One, the Tagalogs created the mythology of the Infinito Dios. In this new theogony, Bathala is again One, but his name has become the Infinito Dios, and immediately below him—but also Gods on their own—are the Santissima Trinidad: the God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The concept of the Bathala/Infinito Dios existing before the Santissima Trinidad may seem easier to understand for the early Filipinos. Here, the line is clear: the Infinito Dios is the One and Only God. He retains his role as the creator of the universe, the provider of mankind, and the protector against evil.

The later arrival of the Santissima Trinidad into the Filipino theogony, created the myth that the Santissima Trinidad, a newcomer in Filipino theogony, wanted to baptize, i.e., convert, the Infinito Dios, not knowing that the Infinito Dios was already existing even before they—the Santissima Trinidad-- existed.

Altar of the religious samahan Tres Personas Solo Dios. The Bathala/Infinito Dios is higher than the Santissima Trinidad.

Tha Infinito Dios anting-anting

The world of Philippine anting-antings is mainly based on the mythology of the Infinito Dios. The Infinito Dios is figured as the single eye in a triangle. This symbol is still widely used in many folk Catholic religions in the Tagalog region, such as the Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi, Ciudad Mistica De Dios, Tres Personas Solo Dios, to name a few. Even the Katipunan of Andres Bonifacio and later the revolutionary government of General Aguinaldo—both of whom were known to keep anting-antings-- used this symbol in many of their official seals and banners.

The Mythology of the Infinito Dios

In the beginning, there was a bright light that covered the entire universe. This light was called the Infinito Dios. There is no God other than the Infinito Dios. He was the Animasola (Lonely Soul), a winged eye wrapped in shawl, forever changing his form while floating in space. Soon the Infinito Dios decided to create the world. He pulled the light in order to give way to the darkness. His light receded until it became a small ball of light. The ball of light suddenly had a gash on the lower portion that became mouth. On top of the mouth a line appeared that became the nose. On top of the nose emerged two holes that became eyes. From these eyes came forth bursts of flame. Parallel to the eyes, on the sides, two holes appeared that became the ears. In short, the Infinito Dios, the ball of light, became a figure resembling a man’s head.

The Infinito Dios decided to create beings to assist him in his task of creation. While thinking, the Infinito Dios suddenly had perspiration on his right side. When he wiped his right side, the droplets became sixteen spirits. Two of these spirits became Uph Madac and Abo Natac, the two elders who reside in the two corners of the Earth and are the guardians of the Sun and the Moon. The next six spirits became the beings who reside outside the earth. They did not want to receive any blessings from the Infinito Dios. Their names are Elim, Borim, Morim, Bicairim, Persulatim and Mitim. The next seven spirits became the unbaptized Archangels named Amaley, Alpacor, Amacor, Apalco, Alco, Arago, and Azaragoe.

The last spirit was called Luzbel, a spirit whose name means light of heaven. His name is Becca, the being who will later rebel against the Infinito Dios.

Meanwhile, the Infinito Dios decided to create other beings. While thinking, he suddenly perspired on his left side. Wiping the perspiration, the droplets became eight spirit beings. Five of them became the beings who went to Jesus Christ while he was nailed to the cross to ask for his blessing. But before he could give his blessing to these five spirits, Jesus expired. The five spirits never received their blessings and therefore retained their original names of Istac, Inatac, Isnatac, Tartaraw, and Sarapao.

The last three spirit beings became known as the Tres Personas, or the Santisima Trinidad. The Infinito Dios gave them the task to create the world and its inhabitants. On each of the eyes of the Tres Personas can be seen the letter M, which is the initial of their names: Magob, Mariagob, Magogab.

The sixteen spirit elders that emanated from the right wing of the Infinito Dios.

In the above mythology, one can gather that the Infinito Dios was the beginning of everything. No one created the Infinito Dios. He was there from the start, a floating Eye within a triangle wrapped in a shawl. From him emanated the other spirit elders, the archangels, Luzbel (who later rebelled and became Lucifer), and the Santissima Trinidad.

The Infinito Dios is the highest God in the theogony of the anting anting. Sometimes He was called the Nuno or the oldest being from whom everything came forth. For this reason, the Infinito Dios was a separate entity from the Santissima Trinidad (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), although the latter emanated from his body as perspiration, along with the other first beings of the universe. The Infinito Dios gave the authority to create the world to the Santissima Trinidad.

Trespico medallion. Note again that the Infinito Dios is higher than the Santissima Trinidad (Dios Ama, Dios Anak, Dios Espiritu Santo)

The arrival of the Spaniards in the Philippines in the 16^th century proselytized the Filipino’s concept of God. To easily conquer the archipelago, and safely introduce the Roman Catholic religion without antagonizing the superstitious and religious beliefs of the Filipinos, the Spanish friar missionaries adapted Bathala to be the same Spanish God of Roman Catholicism.

The trinitarian doctrine gave way to the mythology that God, a spirit being, is an eye contained in a triangle. The triangle (or in anting anting parlance, trespico), is the perfect representation of God, as it contained three equal sides or three equal corners, consistent with God’s three equal personalities. The triangular medallion, therefore, becomes one of the most popular of all the anting antings. It symbolizes the oneness of the Infinito Dios and the Santissima Trinidad. To those who keep and faithfully believe in it, they can achieve oneness with the Infinito Dios and the Santissima Trinidad.

Revolutionary seal of the Philippine government under Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo used during the Philippine-American War 1899-1901

The Mythology of the Infinita Dios

God’s plan for the world is to save it from the clutches of the Devil. For this reason, one of the Santissima Trinidad has been assigned to go down to earth to save humankind. Only through his sacrifice and death can humankind be saved. But since God is immortal and cannot die, he must assume a human form, and before he must be born a human, he should be conceived by a woman.

God being born as a human by a human mother is again one of those concepts that cannot easily be understood, especially among the early Filipinos who have a simple pre-colonial belief in the existence of God who is the first being in the universe. But for God to become human, and for God to be born by a woman, is something complex, especially if Catholicism teaches that the woman is the Mother of God, instead of just a blessed human person assigned by God to bear his human form.

The woman, the Virgin Mary, conceived God in her womb. The official Catholic doctrine on her personality is stated clearly in the official book Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church published by the Vatican:

Mary is truly “Mother of God” since she is the mother of the eternal Son of God made man, who is God himself.

The image of a Mother God therefore plays an important role in the theogony of the anting anting. The Virgin Mary, as taught by the friar missionaries, is the Mother of God and therefore plays an important role in governing the universe.The veneration of the Virgin Mary as the Mother of God is accepted by the early Filipinos as a given that Mary is an important God in the pantheon of the Gods. Monotheistic though the Catholic religion is claimed by the friar missionaries, to the simplistic views of the pre-colonial Filipinos, the Infinito Dios, the Santissima Trinidad, and now, the Virgin Mary constitute a polytheistic religion. In the theogony of the anting anting, the Virgin Mary must be elevated from her role as a simple bearer of God in her womb, to become the Infinita Dios, the female equality and counterpart of the Infinito Dios.

Thus the myth of the Infinita Dios was established:

Before God created the universe, He decided to have someone help him in his task of creation. While thinking, five shining letters sprang forth from His mind that became the five petals of a beautiful flower (mayuming bulaklak). This flower is called the Gumamela Celis which means the Flower of Heaven or Flower of the Earth (Rosa Mundi). The five letters are none other than the beautiful name M-A-R-I-A, which in Syrian language is Miriam, which means the highest. The original name of Maria before God created anything was Bulaklak.

Maria was thus the first being that emanated from God. In short, Maria was even first to appear than the 16 spirits, the Archangels, Luzbel (Lucifer), and the Santissima Trinidad. The Virgin Mary was thus elevated from her former status as bearer of God in the flesh, into a God that first sprang forth from the mind of God.

Then again, one should not be confused. The Infinito Dios, the Santissima Trinidad, and the Virgin Mary all share in the equality of their divinity. No one is more or less than the other. This is quite difficult to understand, so one can imagine how the early Filipinos had a hard time embracing this set of beliefs about God. Clearly, even a child can understand that there are five Gods being spoken here: the Infinito Dios, the Santissma Trinidad that is composed of three persons, and the Virgin Mary.

The Infinita Dios

But another theological crisis arises: God is One even though clearly there are five of them sharing the one divinity. To simplify this complex matter, the early Tagalogs invented the God called Cinco Vocales: A-E-I-O-U.

A is Bathala/Infinito Dios

E is Mother God (Virgin Mary)

I is God the Father

O is Jesus Christ

U is the Holy Spirit.

The Gods A-E-I-O-U or Cinco Vocales

The Cinco Vocales is the final enumeration of the pantheon of Filipino Gods as a result of the synthesis of the complex doctrine of the Roman Catholic religion and the simplistic pre-colonial religion of the Tagalogs.

The emergence of the Infinita Dios in anting anting symbols also gave way to the belief that God does not have a sexual gender preference. He or she can be revealed as a masculine or a feminine.

To this pantheon of Gods, however, we must add a newcomer: Amang Gat Dr. Jose Rizal, whose name among anting-anting believers is Jove Rex Al, meaning, God King of All. To many anting-anting believers, Rizal is the second incarnation of God. The first was Jesus Christ. Most, if not all, Rizalistas are also believers in anting-anting. Inversely, many anting-anting believers are also Rizalistas.

The anting-anting in the 21st century

Sagrada Familia anting anting. This medallion offers good luck for business and protection against ghouls like tikbalang, itim na dwende, kapre, and aswang.

A group of anting-anting believers in Quiapo

There are hundreds of design to choose from, ranging from the medallion of the Infinito Dios, the Santissima Trinidad, the Infinita Dios, to that of the various other lesser gods, angels, and saints of Folk Catholic mythology. The anthropomorphic figures of the Gods are often accompanied by mysterious initials and cabalistic inscriptions in Latin and Tagalog. Many of these initials are actually the numerous names of God and the power words (oraciones) that he had spoken. They are written in initials because they are meant to be secret and not spoken or uttered, not unlike the belief of the Jews who wanted God’s name hidden, and thus removed the vowels of God’s name in the scriptures, leaving it to be read as YHWH or YHVH, which cannot be pronounced because of the absence of vowels.

In the anting anting, the removal of vowels is no longer deemed necessary. It was already enough to put just the initials of God. Thus many initials that can be found on the anting anting are read as A.A.A, M.M.M., L.M., H.A.H., J.A.H., O.I.A., and so on, which are all the various names of the Infinito Dios, the Infinita Dios, or the Santissima Trinidad.

At present the anting antings are still popular and many people still buy them. It is hard to tell if people buy them because they genuinely believe in them, or because they are just curious about them. But for the faithful, the anting anting have a variety of purpose: there are anting antings that would make one impervious to bullets and knives (kabal at kunat); there are those that can make one invisible to enemies (tagabulag); there are those that can give one powers to control the elements (impasibilidad); there are anting anting that can make one be attractive to the opposite sex (gayuma); there are the anting-antings that can make one lucky in business and gambling; there are those that give protection against illnesses; and there are also the anting antings that can protect one against the ghouls and evil elementals of Philippine folklore: the tikbalang, kapre, mangkukulam, nuno sa punso and the itim na dwende.

The Filipino philosophy of “wala namang mawawala kung maniniwala” plays an important role in the culture of the anting-anting. There is nothing wrong in believing something that one cannot prove to be effective or ineffective, unless one is hacked by a bolo and either survived or killed. But there is no shortage of genuinely honest people who swear in their honor that the anting-anting saved their lives or made their lives worthwhile. In Cavite and Batangas for instance, I met many aged anting-anting people who told me fascinating stories about how they survived assassinations, accidents, and life-threatening illnesses because their anting-antings protected them. One only has to have faith in the anting-anting to achieve its powers.

I myself subscribe to the concept of “wala namang mawawala kung manininiwala”. There is nothing wrong in believing unless the belief limits your abilities as an individual. The anting anting does the otherwise by providing inspiration that God is with the common people, and that in this modern time of high technology, the anting anting still provides hope and faith to the oppressed people. God would reward their faith and devotion with His protection and blessing.

Indeed my friends and colleagues started treating me differently when they discovered that I was keeping a collection of anting-antings. They thought that anting-antings are only worn by superstitious and weird people. But what if the anting-anting really has the power to save me from harm, illness, and other evil things? What if by a freak accident I get hit by a truck and survive? One thing is for sure, however. I always cross the street with extreme caution, even though I may carry an anting-anting in my pocket. I will never test the power of the anting-anting as it is tantamount to challenging the power of God.

Anting anting scarf of Infinito Dios in battle formation. This scarf is an effective protection against gun and other weapons.

Santissima Trinidad anting-anting. Excellent protector against all evil.

Amang Gat Dr. Jose Rizal included in the pantheon of the Gods in Filipino Folk Catholicism.

Rizal anting-anting

Note: This article originally appeared in the Online Magazine Philippine Online Chronicles.

Changed my email

2010-08-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone!

Just to let you know guys, that I no longer use my dennis_villegas@skydsl.com.ph email. Please ignore any emails coming from this.

My old and reliable philippinecollectibles@yahoo.com is my official communications email. If you have any inquiries, kindly forward it to this mail.

Many thanks,

Dennis Villegas

Rizal Day at Calamba Laguna June 19, 2010

2010-07-12T14:58:00.001-07:00

The Second Coming of Dr. Jose Rizal

2010-07-04T06:19:00.001-07:00

For the people of Calamba, June 19 is the Grand Fiesta Day of all, being the birth anniversary of Dr. Jose Rizal, Philippine National Hero and the town’s most illustrious son.

On the 149^th anniversary of Rizal’s birth, the whole town mounted a spectacular celebration to honor the National Hero. Colorful banners were hung about in the streets; flags waved by people, some of whom traveled from the farthest corners of the province to make a pilgrimage to the hero’s hometown.

After the usual ceremonies and toasts, the pilgrims trooped to the old Rizal house, bringing with them twigs and flowers for the revered hero. Afterwards, a parade of garlanded floats rolled its way all around town, followed by music bands and street dancers. Even the weather seemed to pay tribute to the great Dr. Jose Rizal: the sun was up and bright, the skies blue and radiant.

Indeed, even though Rizal has been dead for 114 years now, he still commands a very strong presence in Calamba. In fact, Rizal Day or not, one can hardly pass by Calamba without seeing his posters and statues displayed prominently on buildings and streets. Rizal is forever enshrined in the hearts and memory of the Calambenos, the beloved hero who gave up his life for our country.

What if Rizal still lived?

Unknown to many of us, Rizal is still living, 114 years after he was supposed to have been killed by the Spaniards. The man executed in Bagumbayan field at 7:03 in the morning of December 30, 1896 was a fake, a Rizal double. The genuine Rizal was not killed but still lives and walks among us. He is not a ghost, but a real man of flesh and blood although now very old, with wrinkled skin and grey hair, beard and moustache, but still wearing the same double-breasted coat he always wore, and carrying the Noli and Fili books in his right hand. At present, he has hidden himself somewhere in the forests and caves of Mount Makiling.

Such is the belief of the Rizalista groups in Barrio Lecheria, in Calamba, Laguna. For them, Rizal is God Himself, the Alpha and the Omega, the Kristong Kayumanggi, The Jove Rex Al (God King of All), the King of Kings, the Savior of the Philippines, the New Jerusalem. There may be many different names, but He is only One.

This is rather bizarre to most of us, but the Rizalistas know better. From time to time the National Hero shows himself to a few of them in the barrio of Lecheria, Calamba, to assure them he is alive.

The hill of Lecheria, the center of Rizalist sects in Calamba, is a short drive from the Calamba town proper. It is nestled among the foothills of the mystical Mount Makiling. During the Spanish times, the hill was where the Dominican friars kept goats and cows for milking purposes, thus earning the name Lecheria. Now the hill is home to the Lecheria public cemetery, the chapels of the Rizalista sects, and the residences of its members. From the hill, one can view the lovely landscape of Calamba, the Laguna de Bay, the adjoining Laguna towns, and the imposing Mount Makiling.

Lecheria is believed by Rizalistas as the place where Rizal spent his youth, preached his gospels, and supposedly replicated the miracles of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here, Rizal healed people of their illnesses and fed hundreds with only a small basket of food. Indeed, Lecheria is so steeped in legend and lore about the amazing and wondrous adventures of young Rizal that each Rizalista has one or two amazing stories about him. One old Rizalista, Nanay Naty Rebenque, 80 years old, of the Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi, Inc., said to me: if we were to document all the miracles Rizal performed in Lecheria, we would not have enough paper to write them down on.

Fascinated with these amazing, if not altogether bizarre, stories, I decided to spend days and weeks going back and forth from Manila to Calamba to study the Rizalist cults in Lecheria. What I found out was more than what I was willing to find out.

The beginnings of the Rizalista sects in Lecheria

Originally, there was only one Rizalista group in Lecheria: the Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi that was founded in 1936. In 1987, however, the sect was wracked by schism among members and was, after tedious legal battles, eventually divided into four factions: The Samahan ng Watawat ng Lahi Presiding Elders*, Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi Malvarosa Faction, Iglesia ng Lipi ni Gat Dr. Rizal, and Pilipinas Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi.

In addition, there are other Rizalista groups that have been more recently formed, such as the Jerosalem Alpha at Omega, the Jerosalem Religious Group of the Philippines, the Pampara (Pambansang Makabayang Pananampalataya Para kay Dr. Jose Rizal), and, in far away Barrio Rongot, the Iglesia Sagrada Familia.

Historical account of Rizal’s birth

Looking back 149 years ago, in this small peaceful Calamba town, the boy Jose Rizal was born on June 19, 1861. He was the seventh among the 11 children of Don Francisco Mercado and Dona Teodora Alonso. Older than Rizal were Saturnina, Paciano, Narcisa, Olympia, Lucia, and Maria. His younger siblings were Concepcion, Josefa, Trinidad, and Soledad. It seemed that Rizal’s birth was a difficult one, almost costing the life of his mother. Thankfully she survived, and as a result, his father, Don Francisco, vowed to bring the child Jose to a yearly pilgrimage to Antipolo for the first seven years of his life. The baby was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church of Calamba by Father Rufino Collantes with Rev. Pedro Casanas standing as sponsor.

Those are the quick facts one can gather on Rizal’s birth and family, as told and retold in hundreds of Rizal biography books, notably the standard biographies by Rafael Palma (Biografia de Rizal), Leon Ma. Guerrero (The First Filipino), and Austin Coates (Rizal: Philippine Nationalist and Martyr).

Their biographies, however scholarly written, largely ignored the Rizalista beliefs about the life of Jose Rizal. I discovered that there are “spiritual” versions of Rizal’s birth that are shrouded in mystery. I decided to meet and interview some of the elders of the Rizalistas in Lecheria, Calamba to find out their version.

Rizalista chapels

The chapels of the Rizalistas are simple one-story nondescript structures similar to the small bisita iglesia of the Philippine Roman Catholic, except that they have statues and huge pictures of Rizal displayed prominently on the altars. On top of the altar is the single Eye enclosed in a triangle, which according to folk beliefs, is the symbol of the Infinito Dios (Everlasting God). In other parts of the altar can be seen various statues and paintings representing God the Father with white hair and beard, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, the Santisima Trinidad, and a white dove representing the Diyos Espiritu Santo. There are also portraits of other Filipino heroes like Andres Bonifacio, Marcelo H. Del Pilar, General Miguel Malvar, Fathers Gomez, Burgos and Zamora, Antonio Ma. Regidor, Jose Maria Basa, and Apolinario Mabini. The Philippine flag is also displayed in some prominent corner.

All Rizalistas, regardless of the sect they belong to, subscribe to more or less the same set of beliefs. For instance, all of them believe that Rizal is God Himself. He took on a human form, much like what Jesus Christ did 2,000 years ago. In fact, Jesus Christ and Jose Rizal led parallel lives even though they lived two millennia apart. Both were conceived by a virgin, were Asians, advocated the equality of all human beings, were born in a small country under a foreign rule, performed miracles, advocated the Golden Rule, healed people, were maligned and persecuted, and gave up their lives for the people.

Be that as it may, the concept of Rizal as Christ reincarnated is wrong. Some Rizalistas believe that Rizal is a higher divinity than Jesus Christ. One Rizalista sect, the Mariang Sinukuan cult in Arayat, Pampanga, even believed that Jesus Christ never even existed.

First version of Rizal’s birth

According to the Rizalistas, Rizal’s birth was prophesied in the Bible, specifically in the Book of Revelation, Chapter 12, verses 1-5:

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour the child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

The symbolism of these verses, as interpreted by Supreme Bishop Pedro Reblando of the Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi, is as follows:

The pregnant woman clothed with the sun and crowned with the stars is none other than Inang Bayan Pilipinas, a woman clothed with the sun and stars of the Philippine flag. The child she is bearing is Amang Gat Jose Rizal who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. The Dragon mentioned is Spain who was then colonizing Pilipinas, and the dragon’s Seven Heads, Ten Horns and Seven Crowns were Spain’s organizations and empires in the world. The dragon was waiting for the birth of the child so that it could devour him the moment he comes out.

The coming of God Rizal into this world to save the Philippines and all nations is therefore the fulfillment of this biblical prophecy.

There are, however, diverse versions on how God Rizal descended from Heaven, and born as a child on earth.

Mr. Lito Penamante, 47, is an elder of the Jerosalem Religious Group of the Philippines. He has devoted his life studying mysticism and the occult. He has become a Rizalist member of the Jerusalem Religious Group of the Philippines some 17 years ago. He recounted the following story about Rizal's birth:

Diyos Rizal is one of the four Supreme Kings in Heaven. The other three are the Diyos Ama (God the Father), Diyos Anak (God the Son), and Diyos Espiritu Santo (God the Holy Spirit). However, it must be noted that they are only One God, or Quadro Personas (a slight variation of the Santisima Trinidad or Holy Trinity Doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church).

One day, Diyos Rizal, Diyos Ama, Diyos Anak, and Diyos Espiritu Santo had a conference in heaven because they had a problem: they were worried about the Philippines which was then being oppressed by Spain. They wanted to save the country from the Spaniards. The meeting concluded with Diyos Rizal being assigned to take human form. Diyos Rizal was accompanied by the seven Archangels of heaven as he traveled to earth. Their journey started in 1786 and ended in 1861, a period of 75 years. It was not clear why it took them that long to reach the earth. Then finally on June 19, 1861, Diyos Rizal, a spirit, arrived on earth -- but because of the different elements and climate conditions of the place, he was transformed into a baby boy. In other words, he was born as a human.

The seven Archangels went to the three mystical sisters Mariang Makiling, Mariang Sinukuan, and Mariang Banahaw and requested them to take care of the baby boy. Afterwards, the archangels went back to heaven. The three sisters named the baby Jove Rex Al. Jove is the secret name of God: Rex meaning King, and Al meaning all. Jove Rex Al thus means God, King of All. This eventually became Jose Rizal.

But the three sisters were worried about what people might say if they took care of the baby boy because they were all maidens! They therefore decided to find a couple to take care of the baby. They heard of a well-to-do couple who was reputed to be the most respected in town. One night, the three sisters went to the house of this couple named Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonso. They left the child by the door but before doing so, they embroidered the name Jose Rizal on the baby’s cloth diaper so that the baby’s name would not be changed. The three sisters hurriedly left when they sensed that Don Francisco and Dona Teodora had waken to the sound of baby cries. The couple was overjoyed to see a baby left on their door step, and decided to take it as their own child. Moreover, during those times, it was considered lucky to be the foster parents of an abandoned child. Thus, Francisco Mercado and Teodora Alonso were not the real parents of Rizal. Rizal was, after all, a God. The couple did not know that they are taking care of God Rizal as a baby.

Second version

This next version is interesting because it bears a strong parallelism to the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nanay Naty Rebenque, 80, is one of the 24 elders of the Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi. Nanay Naty is a very nice lady and has been one of the longest-serving members of the Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi. A graduate of Watawat’s spiritual course on Mental Physics and Occult Sciences, Nanay Naty claimed Jose Rizal appeared to her on few occasions, with the hero still wearing his traditional coat, and holding his two novels in his right hand.

Nanay Naty recounted to me how Rizal came to this world:

There was a couple named Emmanuel and Juana who lived in the forests of Mount Makiling. They had three unmarried daughters named Mariang Makiling, Mariang Sinukuan, and Mariang Banahaw. One day, an angel of God visited the eldest daughter Mariang Makiling while she was fetching water from a well. The angel told her she would be bearing the child who would save the Philippines from the Spaniards. Mariang Makiling got pregnant. As months went by, Mariang Makiling’s parents noticed that her belly was getting bigger. They demanded to know who the father of the child was. Maria could not tell her parents that she was bearing God in her womb. One night, Emmanuel and Juana were visited in a dream by an angel who told them they should not worry because Mariang Makiling was carrying God in her womb.

On the eve of Rizal’s birth, Mariang Makiling, accompanied by an angel, went to the house of a well-to-do couple named Don Francisco Mercado and Dona Teodora Alonso. Mariang Makiling asked the kindly couple if they would let her spend the night in their house. The couple gladly welcomed Mariang Makiling, knowing that she could give birth any time. During the night, Mariang Makiling delivered a baby boy. She clothed the baby in a diaper with the name Jove Rex Al sewn into it. She hurriedly left afterwards. Mariang Makiling, however much she was sought by Dona Teodora, was nowhere to be found. Dona Teodora therefore took care of the baby as her own. When she saw the name of the baby on its diaper, she changed the name to make it similar to Filipino names, therefore, Jose Rizal.

Third version

Unbelievable as it may seem, there is yet a third Rizalista version of Jose Rizal’s birth. This one was narrated to me by Tatay Pedro Timajo, 87, President of the Jerosalem Religious Group of the Philippines. Interestingly, even though Tatay Pedro Timajo and Mr. Lito Penamante belonged to the same Rizalista sect, their versions of Rizal’s birth differed. Tatay Pedro’s version is as follows:

Rizal came to this world as a flower sent by God, but when he reached the earth, particularly in Calamba, Laguna, Philippines, on June 19, 1861 at exactly 4:00 pm, he was transformed into a baby. An old beggar found the baby in the middle of a road. The beggar brought it home, clothed it in diaper with the name Jove Rex Al embroidered on it, and deep in the night of the same day, brought it to the door of the Mercado house in Calamba. When Don Francisco Mercado and Dona Teodora Alonso decided to have the baby baptized, no one was willing to stand as godfather. One night, the old beggar went to the Mercado couple and volunteered to be the boy’s godparent. After the baptism, the old beggar again mysteriously disappeared.

These versions of Rizal’s birth and divinity may reflect the hearsay nature of these stories. I found that the Rizalista sects do not have a strict dogma with which to guide their faith. Nor do they have an instruction book in which to base their beliefs. Although they believe in the Bible, they only focus on the portions that allude to Rizal or the Philippines.

Tatay Pedro Timajo cited, for instance, Ecclesiastes 9:14-15 of the Bible as a prophecy of Jose Rizal’s salvation of the Philippines:

There was a little city, and few men within it; and there came a great king against it, and besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it: Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered that same poor man.

Citing the above Bible verses, Tatay Pedro explained that the “little city” could be interpreted as the “little country” or the Philippines. The “great king” being mentioned was “Spain,” who besieged and built great bulwarks against the city ( i.e., colonized it), and the “poor wise man” who delivered the “little city” was of course, none other than Dr. Jose Rizal.

Citations from the Bible like this reinforce the Rizalista belief that the Philippines is mentioned in the Bible, and that the messiah for its deliverance against oppression is Dr. Jose Rizal.

Rizal’s escape from prison

Dr. Rizal, if we are to believe the Rizalistas, was not executed by the Spaniards on December 30, 1896, contrary to popular knowledge. Mrs. Gliceria Solis Gonzales, leader of the Pampara, Mr. Pedro Timajo of Jerosalem, and Supreme Bishop Pedro Reblando of Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi, are unanimous in this belief.

According to their story:

Early in the morning of December 30, 1896, a few hours before his rendezvous with a firing squad, Dr. Jose Rizal requested his jail guard to provide him with a banting ng saging, or a banana trunk. As this was the last request of a dying man, the jail guard acceded and brought a trunk of banana to the prison cell of the condemned hero. When the jail guard momentarily left, Rizal, through his supernatural powers, created a duplicate of himself from the banana trunk. He then magically slipped out of his prison cell and into freedom, leaving the fake Rizal in prison. Thus, the man executed by the Spaniards was not the genuine Rizal, but his double. In fact, when the Spaniards checked the ground where Rizal fell in Bagumbayan, they could not find blood.

When the news of Rizal’s death spread, some guardia civil stationed near the Hotel Francia in Manila shouted, “Viva! We have finally killed the indio!” But a waiter in Hotel Francia, who went out to see what the shouting was all about, told them:“How can you say Rizal is dead? I just served his breakfast here a few hours ago! Look, there’s still the plate he had eaten from! Alas, he already left!” The guardia civil reported this to their commander who later exhumed the body of Rizal, only to find that the pit contained only a banana trunk. They decided to keep secret what they found so that people will believe that Rizal was indeed killed.

And so, if Rizal was not killed on December 30, 1896 as believed by the Rizalistas, when did he eventually die? The answer by Bishop Pedro Reblando, Mrs. Gliceria Solis Gonzales, Mr. Penamente, and President Timajo were again unanimous: Rizal never died.

In the chapel of the Iglesia ng Lipi ni Gat Rizal in Lecheria can be found an antique portrait of Rizal that was supposedly taken in 1936 when he was 75 years old. The portrait, done by an anonymous artist in the art deco style of foto-olio popular at that time, is being worshipped by the sect’s members and believed to be a real photo of Rizal. It shows Rizal with white hair, beard and moustache.

He is old, but he is alive.

Up to now, the Rizalistas believe that Rizal is still living. By their reckoning, the National hero is 149 years old, making him the oldest living man in the world today. The hero, however, hides in the forests of Mount Makiling and will only show himself to all at the time of the Armageddon, the end of times, to save those who believe in him.

***

Although many of us might dismiss these stories as mere myths and pigments of the imagination, the Rizalistas wholeheartedly believe them. There might be other versions out there about Rizal’s life, and the Rizalistas mostly keep an open mind to more stories and mysteries about God Rizal. They accept these as a way of acknowledging that God Rizal cannot be truly comprehended by the limited human mind.

Notwithstanding their unique beliefs, the Rizalistas are genuinely good people. As a frequent visitor and observer to their unique rituals, I felt the warmth of their famed hospitality. One can also feel a certain degree of piousness and deep religiosity among them, having been reared to the noble teachings of the Bible and the writings of Dr. Jose Rizal. At least these are people who are sincere in their beliefs, unlike a few religious groups that flaunt a hypocritical Pharisee-type of faith.

Be that as it may, the Rizalistas are also a very superstitious people. They mostly rely on the stories told them by the elderly members of the sect, which may also be based mainly on legends and myths handed down to them by their own elders. The problem, I believe, lies in the fact that they have not compiled a book of dogmas with which to base their beliefs and principles. Thus some members may have resorted to legends or even fantasies to fill up the dogmatic void. In the superstitious nature of the typical Filipino, any long-standing legends or myths may become, in time, gospel truths. This may result in many interpretations of the same story, such as if Rizal is God Himself, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, or a higher divinity than all three.

In fact one Rizalista told me that Rizal is only the final incarnation of God. God incarnated before in other famous spiritual personages in history: he was the Buddha in Nepal, Zoroaster in Persia, Lao Tzu in China, Khrishna in India, Amaterasu in Japan, and so on.

In other words, the Rizalistas may differ in their beliefs even though they may belong to the same Rizalist sect. In fact, while I was interviewing some of the members from the Jerosalem and Iglesia Watawat ng Lahi groups, some members had “birth” versions quite different from the versions being told to me by other members.

But Supreme Bishop Pedro Reblando posits that it is part of God Rizal’s mystery that no one can know everything about Him. The words the reverend bishop used to describe God Rizal are kahiwagaan and kalihiman (mystery and secrecy). In other words, God Rizal can only be understood in a limited way even by those who fervently seek the truth. This is because Rizal is God and immortal, and we are only human and mortal.

“If you look at the heavens”, Bishop Reblando says, “you will see the infinite, because heaven has no boundaries. Even if one spent a whole lifetime studying where heaven begins and ends, one will not be able to understand it. There are just some things the mind cannot understand.”

For me, the parallelism is significant: the finite cannot define the infinite; the mortal cannot know the immortal.

What is important, the Bishop adds, is we must believe that Rizal is God, and when we do so, we must live His teachings: love of country and love of fellow men. And then we will all be saved in His Second Coming.

Barrio Lecheria. At the background is the mystical Mount Makiling

*The Samahan ng Watawat ng Lahi, under the leadership of Dr. Luis Parabuac no longer regards Rizal as God, but rather as their guide to lead a morally upright life. The other members could not accept that Rizal was not God and therefore broke away from the Watawat and established their own Watawat factions)

Pagpag: Survival Food for the Poorest of the Poor

2010-06-09T14:52:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered whatever happened to the left-over food you did not finish in fast food restaurants? You may think they would have been thrown away and discarded for good. For sure they are headed to the trash bin after people leave them on the table. But what happens next is something you ought to know. The morsels of unfinished Chickenjoy in Jollibee or the left-over spaghetti in McDonald’s might yet save a family from hunger.

The leftover food stuffs are thrown in large black plastic bags and collected by a garbage truck. The truck travels towards a garbage dumpsite, either in Payatas in Quezon City or Smokey Mountain in Tondo, Manila. After the truck has dumped the trash in these garbage sites, the leftovers begin to change its nature: from trash to food. Scavengers would swarm on these morsels like they were gadflies, sometimes even fighting over them.The food we consider trash becomes for them sustenance.

You may think that it is cruel and inhuman to let people eat food thrown away by others. But that’s the way it is in the poorest slums of Metro Manila. Whatever that can be eaten will be eaten. It is the law of nature. It may be harsh but it is the reality. After all, who cares?

These food discards are called pagpag, an ukay-ukay term that has taken a new meaning. Pagpag in this context is to shake away the dirt and maggots in the food. The scavengers would smell the food to determine if it is still good or has started to spoil. If it still smells fine, more or less, then they will eat it right there in the dumpsite. Bringing it home may spoil it some more. Time is of the essence. Hence when a truck unloads some "fresh pagpag" in the dumpsite, an instant feast takes place. The scavengers do not mind the malevolent stench of the garbage that surrounds them while eating.

If the pagpag smells bad, they would simply bring it home to wash in a bucket of water. Some even re-fry the food for good measure. They think recooking would kill the fly larvae already infesting it.

Pagpag is an essential survival food in the poorest slums of Metro Manila. No matter if it is already spoiled, the empty stomach will still appreciate it. In fact, many scavengers consider pagpag as comfort food, much better than the gulay at asin they are accustomed to eat everyday. On a lucky day, they would find whole unsold Shakey’s pizzas or whole Max's fried chicken. A cause for royal celebration!

Indeed, living in the slums is like living in the jungle; the only difference is that there is already cooked food to be hunted in the mounta ins of trash. In this case, a scavenger needs all the survival techniques he has learned: jockeying for position, digging, clawing, shaking, and eventually developing the taste for discarded food. It does not matter. It is still food anyway.

There are also some very enterprising scavengers who dig for pagpag as a small business. They would collect pagpag from the trash a nd sell it fo r 20 peso s for each small plastic bag. Mary Ann, 15 years old, of Smokey Mountain, Tondo, is a pagpag entrepreneur. She wakes up early at six a.m. and waits for the garbage trucks that bring in yesterday’s discarded foods. At seven in the morning, the trucks start to pull in. These scavengers would be alerted which trucks carried pagpag, because the truck drivers would raise a hand and make an "OK" sign. Mary Ann and her friends would then wait for the trucks to unload the garbage and scamper to hunt for the food items. Today is a good day. The trucks unloaded tons of garbage from the fast food restaurants including of course, food discards.

Today, Mary Ann collected some five bags of pagpag, which she would sell for twenty pesos each. Each bag contained some leftover chicken (chicken bones with some meat still attached to it) burger patties, and spaghetti. But still twenty pesos is hard to come by in Smokey Mountain. If the pagpag bags she collected would not be sold, Mary Ann and her family would feast on them for lunch.

In another garbage dumpsite, Jennifer Cordero, 28, and her family live everyday on discarded food. Jennifer is married with three young children. She is a scavenger in the Payatas dumpsite in Quezon City. She is a little more fortunate compared to the other scavengers in Payatas. She keeps a job guarding a trash bodega owned by a Chinese businessman who contracted some garbage trucks to directly dump their trash in his bodega. Jennifer’s job is to sort out the dumped trash: plastic bottles, Styrofoam boxes, plastic cups, plastic spoons and forks, cardboard boxes, and the like. In exchange for her work, Jennifer helps herself to the pagpag that is dumped in the bodega. The pagpag she collected would be her pay plus free lodging in the bodega. She also gets fifty pesos a day sifting "kalakal."

Jennifer found one of the huge black plastic trash bags from Pizza Hut, containing pagpag of many kinds: chicken morsels, spaghetti, and slices of pizza. She smelled each of the pagpag and set aside those that can still be eaten. Afterwards, she washed these inwater and re-fried them in boiling oil “to ensure”, she says, “that all the bacteria are killed." She then served the meal to her three excited children.

The pagpag is food not only for the people of Smokey Mountain and Payatas. There are also many beggars and homeless people in the streets that rely on pagpag for their daily meals. They would open garbage cans scattered all over the metro to hunt for any food that can still be eaten.

Some beggars in Ermita even have a regular supply of pagpag coming from the garbage of restaurants and hotels there. The management of these establishments may have willingly given these leftovers to the beggars rather than deal with their disposal.

In crowded Hidalgo Street in Quiapo, I chanced upon a man who was raking a trash can with his bare hands. He found some discarded food which he ate right there beside the trash can, eliciting varied reactions from spectators. One woman was touched: “tsk, tsk, kawawa naman o;" another was aghast: “kadiri naman yan, eeeew;" and yet another felt awe: “grabe ang galing nung mama, kumakain ng basura!”

These varied reactions show how ordinary folks misunderstand the poor scavenger’s plight. Certainly, they did not grow up in the poorest slums of Manila, nor are they vagabonds without food to eat or shelter to go home to, nor have they experienced going to bed on an empty stomach, not sure if the morrow would bring in provenance. In short, they would never understand why the scavenger eats spoiled or spoiling food direct from the trash can.

“Iba ang nararamdaman ng taong gutom," said the scavenger to me after he feasted on the pagpag. “Makikipagpatayan ka nga para makakain lang eh. Iba-iba na ang pumapasok sa isip. Pag nalilipasan ka na ng gutom, parang gusto mong pumatay. Alam ko rin na marumi yun at nakakahiya, pero mabubuhay ba ako sa hiya?. Mabubuhay ba ako sa awa kung laging kumukulo naman ang aking sikmura?”

Pagpag may indeed be disgusting to most of us who eat well-prepared, freshly-cooked, and delicious foods at home and in restaurants. But to understand the nature of the pagpag, one must look at it from the viewpoint of the scavenger. It is only natural for common people to regard pagpag as “kadiri”, but one must not condemn the beggars and scavengers who eat them as callous or “patay-gutom."

To understand better their situation, I interviewed one of the pagpag scavengers in Smokey Mountain. Boyet, 23 years old, from Tondo, has been eating pagpag for as long as he can remember. He agreed to be interviewed to share his experience eating the pagpag.

Bakit ka kumakain ng pagpag?

Masarap ang pagpag, kahit paano nakakatikim din kami ng manok, baboy, at minsan pizza at spaghetti. Tsaka pag gutom ka na, wala ka nang sisinuhin eh. Lahat ng pwedeng kainin, kakainin.

Kailan ka nagsimulang kumain ng pagpag?

Matagal na, batang-bata pa ako. Di ko na matandaan. Basta matagal na yun.

Lahat ba kayo sa pamilya niyo ay kumakain ng pagpag?

Oo, lahat kami. Minsan nga kulang ang nakukuha naming pagpag. Lima kaming magkakapatid. Tapos nanay ko pa. Kaya hati-hati na lang.

Nasaan ang tatay mo?

Patay na.

Ano ikinamatay?

Matagal nagkasakit. Tomador kasi kaya namatay sa pag-inom ng alak.

Mabalik tayo sa pagpag. Kinakain ba ninyo kahit marumi na ito, o ang kinakain ninyo ay yung mga sa palagay nyo ay malilinis lang?

Ganito yun eh. Pinapagpag muna namin para maalis kahit paano yung dumi. Tapos inaamoy namin. Kung wala pa namang mabahong amoy pwede nang kainin ng diretso. Kung may amoy na, huhugasan namin ng tubig tapos minsan piniprito uli.

Kung may uod na, kakainin nyo pa rin ba?

Depende kung talagang gutom. Sa amin kasi kapag idinarang mo sa apoy, sigurado patay na lahat ng mikrobyo, di ba? Ganoon din mga uod, mamamatay lahat sa apoy. Pwede nang kainin pag idinarang na sa apoy.

May mga bacteria na minsan hindi namamatay sa init, tulad ng Salmonella. Baka magkasakit kayo kung mayroon noon.

Hindi naman siguro. Ano ba yung salmonella?

Ito’y isang uri ng mikrobyo na maaring pagmulan ng sakit tulad ng tipus. Kailan ka huling kumain ng pagpag?

Kahapon. May nakuha kaming spaghetti galing sa Pizza Hut. Maayos pa naman kaya di na namin ininit. Tamang-tama nga eh, dahil ilang araw na kaming walang nakuhang pagpag.

Bakit?

Minsan kasi walang natitira yung mga kostumer. Puro buto na lang naiiwan. Minsan naman yung mga naghahakot ng basura sila na rin kumakain ng pagpag. Kaya pagdating dito sa dumpsite wala na halos natitira.

Hindi ba kayo nagkakasakit kung nakakakain kayo ng maruming pagkain?

Nagkakasakit din. Minsan sumasakit ang tiyan. Pero pinakamalala na yung nagsusuka at nagtatae.

Food poisoning ang tawag doon. Nagpa-chek up na ba kayo sa doctor?

Wala kaming pera para magpadoktor. Kung suka’t tae lang e ilang araw lang maayos na rin naman. Pinapainom lang kami ng apdo ng manok, tapos ayos na.

Sa ngayon ba ay mayroong maysakit sa inyo?

Wala naman.

May nabalitaan ka na bang namatay dahil sa pagkain ng pagpag?

Wala naman po.

***

The pagpag is one of the most blatant symbols of extreme poverty in the Philippines. It may be easy for most of us to dismiss pagpag as “kababuyan” o “kadiri "-- two powerful Tagalog words that have no equal in the English language. But we have to remember that thousands of people rely on the pagpag for their daily survival. The pagpag exists not because there are desperate people who feed on them, but because poverty has forced them to do so. The sight of people feeding on the trash may be disturbing and even disgusting to many of us, but once we look at the problem from the perspective of the poor, then the pagpag becomes manna from heaven.

Kristong Hari Versus Master Anos: A Preview!

2010-05-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

I am currently busy doing a short documentary film and photography series about the messianic prophet Kristong Hari and the blind exorcist Master Anos, the two fascinating mystics, and their fierce rivalry in Quiapo! Coming soon!!!

Mr. Herminigildo Anos aka Master Anos The Exorcist

Master Anos

Mr. Lauro Gonzales, aka Kristong Hari

Kristong Hari

Hoy Mamang Tsuper!

2010-05-26T08:15:00.001-07:00

Ito na yata ang isa sa pinaka-nakabubwisit na ugali ng tsuper na Pinoy (hindi ko naman nilalahat), ang dyumingel sa gulong ng sarili nyang sasakyan. Kunsabagay dyipni nya naman yan, pero paano naman ang mga sasakay sa kanyang dyip? Hindi kaya sila biglang bumaba dahil sa ubod ng panghi ang gulong nito? O paano naman ang kalsada na dinaraanan ng mga tao? Tiyak na matatapakan nila ang ihi ng mamang ito. Bagama't may ordinansa na laban sa mga ganitong gawain, nalalabag pa rin ito. Wala naman kasing pulis, ang nasa isip siguro ng tsuper na ito. Oo nga naman. Maari na nga sigurong wag sumunod kung wala namang nagpapasunod.