BANANACUE
REPUBLIC
Vol I, No. 17
Dec 29, 2004
social criticisms by
Vicente-Ignacio de Veyra III
(continued)
The
Holidays
B.
Anatomy of an
Explosive Powder
IT’S
THE morning of the 27th of December that I sit in front of the
computer and start to write this. This should be a day of rest from all
the feasting -- however modest -- of the hectic Christmas holidays. Except
that tomorrow would be the start of another set of belated holiday buffets
(equally modest) with other parties. Tomorrow it’s with my father’s
farmhands. All of which leads to the coming New Year celebration,
interspersed only by the required official remembrance of the execution of
a national hero.
We
know, of course, how true the band U2’s song line is that goes,
“Nothing changes on New Year’s Day!” One could get philosophical,
however, and say it’s not on New Year’s Day that changes occur but
inside the new year. Still, in the coming year, as in the past years or
decades, nothing is expected to change the things we hope had changed or
got erased. Rizal will continue to be contextually insignificant to our
times although we acknowledge his and contemporaries’ obvious
significance to times gone past. In this country, history and historical
museums are taboo. And Functional History, otherwise known as historicism
in historiography, is quite alien in zones outside the Philippine
republics of academic theses and journal articles. We can’t place Rizal
or Christ in the present, often mistaking our politicians’ unpatriotic
policies as standing for Rizal’s ideals, George W. Bush’s
foreign-policy lies for Christ’s universal truths.
But
the “nothing changes on New Year’s day” truism is more visible in
local channels than on CNN. And I don’t just mean the all-too-powerful
unchangeable signs in front of government projects that carry the
supposedly benevolent names of the politicians who “made it possible”;
all-too-powerful in the sense that no strong republic nor president full
of idealism and intellect has been able to topple the culture behind the
practice. But, yes, that too is quite a billboard that I can offer as
evidence of why nothing has changed in the past new years in the
Philippine islands, offer this too as a winning horse I can bet on will
not fade away within the next decade of Macapagal-Arroyos and what-not.
SO
LET me zoom in closer on a local channel to better appreciate this, our
self-assigned stagnation. Let’s consider such a small spot of the world
as Tacloban City. What? Where? Well, it’s a synecdoche, a part
representing a whole. After all, like so many Philippine cities, Tacloban
City has had several mayors at its helm in the past decade, with seemingly
no significant change occurring up or down town.
For
example, when I left Tacloban eleven years ago, the people worshipped dogs
as gods and symbol of their bravery in the same way that Indians worship
cows in the highways of Bombay as manifestations of sacredness. The people
of Tacloban believe that dogs should be allowed to shit on the streets and
in front of neighbors’ gates because they are the real barangay tanods
of this city. Letting them bark inside their owners’ gates won’t do
because that would be an embarrassment to the reputation of the Waray
tribe as “matatapang”. To realize the “tapang” and biting myth,
the Warays need real brave armies at the frontlines, in this case the
street dog-shitting dogs of the city’s subdivisions no mayor could
touch. Coming home one decade later, I realized that in Tacloban, nothing
changes on any new year.
Also,
Tacloban’s cityscape one decade ago was somewhat like Quiapo and Cubao
-- the private buildings roofed in a cantilevered fashion the sidewalks
that belong to the city. Of course past building laws allowed it and
we’d have to wait till these buildings get condemned before the city can
reclaim the sidewalks’ skylights, but I doubt if the city is at all
going to go in that direction of liberation.
Today
there are no sidewalks in Tacloban City, thanks to the mayor and the city
administrator. The sidewalks of Tacloban City are meant to serve only
three purposes (with zones allocated to each of the purposes): as parking
lots for the SUV’s of store and shop owners, as little squares for rent
to vendors with mini-stalls or none, and finally as little warehouses
where storeowners can stack up their boxes during their stores’ delivery
and inventory hours. Pedestrians can only use what’s left of the
sidewalk for their pedestrian and therefore insignificant purpose. So much
for lip-serviced hopes of the governor about turning Leyte into a tourist
destination, since tourists are pedestrians and would be treated as
insignificant inside Tacloban’s cityscape.
Trembling
at the thought of losing grassroots support, the city government’s brain
cells are thus disabled from imagining a more grassroots-friendly idea of
establishing a bargain zone where all sidewalk vendors can congregate to
function like a continuing bazaar. Istanbul maintains such a zone,
disabling mall concepts from ever coming into fruition.
Also,
each building in Tacloban’s downtown can decide what tile type it can
use for the sidewalk fronting it, and what level, so that walking on these
sidewalks can be likened to running a steeplechase or playing monopoly.
Obviously, in Tacloban, nothing has changed in any new year.
TACLOBAN’S
administrators have also forever been scratching their heads on what to do
with the tricycles of the city. Public complaints about the inefficiency
of this mode of public transport have been pretty rampant. Many see how
the Tacloban tricycle has become a symbol of stupidity and fossil-fuel
wasting. Drivers would rather roam around the city for five kilometers’
worth looking for a bunch of passengers needing a ride to a next block
than let in an instant single passenger needing only a 500 meter-long
ride. If this isn’t stupidity, then I’d say Tacloban will never change
in any new year. And administrators continue to scratch their heads
instead of follow what other cities have already done, place in “ikot”
mini-jeepneys with specific within-downtown routes that will not have the
lazy option of refusing passengers. Lazy option? Well, industrious
tricycle drivers would sometimes travel a kilometer to a spot beside a
police outpost where other tricycle drivers are playing cards on the
sidewalk pavement under a big acacia tree. So much for city
administration. Tacloban will never change, not in a lifetime.
But
what is Tacloban? If even the bravest senators can’t get to what should
be the basic first step of an anti-corruption career, namely holler for
the abolition of the billboards and signs that allocate credit for a
project to any government official, why should small mediocre Tacloban
citizens even be expected to design revolutions? After all, this is
neither Olongapo nor Marikina, and Mayor Bejo Romualdez and administrator
Yao Ka Sin are not exactly Oscar Orboses with great ideas and overflowing
creativity.
What
is Leyte? Recently, the governor of the northern part of this island
converged private entities from several interest groups (artists,
restaurateurs, etc.) to come up -- in a consensus sort of impossible
THEY
SAY Filipinos have an absent sense of history, thus enabling history to
repeat itself here. But worse is our absent sense of inter-island current
history, an absent sense that refuses to learn from anything that has
already been done in other islands or cities like Olongapo, Marikina, Cebu,
Dumaguete, Baguio, Davao, etc. Myopia is a basic element that guarantees
nothing will change in a new year to a people wearing this sort of visual
cangue.
So
the question is, why does the majority make so much effort to make noise
in welcoming a new year? I believe we can find an answer to this in two
Waray proverbs that my grandfather would always take great pride in
quoting: “the barking dog runs, the silent dog bites” and “empty
cans clank loud”.
I
do not mean to assert that such people as the Warays are a people with
nothing between their heads. It’s just that contentment among the elite
with watching cable tv shows on a rainy day, and a similar virtual
contentment and surrender among the merely complaining poor of this
supposedly brave people, all amount to living lives that can be likened to
the unimaginative prayers of empty-can clankings. This revelry is nowhere
near the context of superstitious HongKong’s clankings (spiritual) or
the context of the eardrum-suicides of Boracay’s rich young yuppies
(bacchanal). The usual context of Pinoy putukan on a New Year’s Day is
the blind welcome of a new year that is neither spiritualized nor
bacchanalian, more as a sort of irreligious and stupid prayer for a better
life that cannot be articulated in this comparatively illiterate nation.
Alongside with this is of course the usual filial vanity that finds
parallel in Christmas decorations aimed to better those designed and
funded by the Smiths and the Benjamins and the de la Cruzes.
This
New Year’s Eve, no one would like to believe that nothing will change in
the coming year, in Tacloban and in much of the archipelago. What better
way to drown out this reality bite than through the cowardly surrender of
everyone to the noise and smell of a relatively non-violent form of
explosive powder?
#
# #
Posted at the Bananacue
Republic website 12/29/04. Send comments to:
[email protected]
"This
New Year’s Eve, no one would like to believe that nothing will change in
the coming year, in Tacloban and in much of the archipelago."