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I am in
Zamboanga as I write this. A while ago, we had dinner in
the restaurant on the roofdeck of a hotel, the table
laden with everything except pork. As a pork eater, it
is a respite not to see anything that has to do with
pigs. Good for goodwill, and good for the health. Good
for pigs, too.
From
afar I can see the
island of
Basilan.
In
Manila, mention the name of Mindanao, and people will
enumerate 50 and more ways of imaging danger. As if
Manila itself is not danger and violence. Talk of
Basilan and you deal with relentless pictures of
disorder, where life does not exist anymore. Where no
one has a chance at all to build families, witness the
growth of children, and even marvel at sunrises and
sunsets, and plan for the future.
Here in
this gathering of community organizers, health
coordinators, and housewives and volunteers and youth,
one can only be pleasantly surprised at how things
appear to be greatly possible and positive for this
group of highly differentiated islands called Mindanao.
Very much like Luzon, except we in Manila, we always
fancy that we are one united republic of knowledgeable
and smart individuals, at the expense of placing all the
other citizens of this nation at the periphery.
Now, in
the heartland of a region where Christians and Muslims
are by number and ideology and power—potentially, not in
reality—on equal footing, things look different. The
news that the Abu Sayyaf leader was killed seems not to
be talked about. If ever there is a mention of the name,
the tone is hushed because it is about a dead person.
In one
of the meetings, the conversation drifted to the mixed
ethnicity of the fallen leader. His mother is Ilongga?
Talk of purity of identities and ethnic identities
become the focus of the talk. The talk, however, remains
just like that—talk. Soon the conversation drifts back
to the project. It is an activity that recognizes
differences but appears to be built to cross boundaries
made for the Tausug, the Badjaos, the Christians, the
Yakan and others.
I do not
believe the women and young workers I am teaching
research methodologies are not aware of the violence
inflicted by the government forces and those who
continue to fight them. They tell me about the killings.
They tell me about the danger. They are not naïve, and
they are not dumb. What I sense, however, is that thing
that always escapes us: an openness to things different
and a brave desire to understand the other side.
By this,
I do not mean to ask you to condone the violence and
injustice of the two sides. It’s just that there are
always basically two sides to the conflict. Or even
more.
***
THIS
morning, before my bacon-free breakfast, I happened to
catch the Tuesday edition of ABS-CBN’s Magandang Umaga
Pilipinas. I have been avoiding the morning shows of the
two giant media companies. GMA’s show, with its
unfettered passion for reporting murders and gross
deaths and community scandals while you try to sip with
art your morning cup of coffee, has been, in my book, a
most unkind program. I am not even counting the
enervation of Jolina Magdangal who has mastered the art
of a carnival barker. There must be a way to energize
the beginnings of our day without being grotesque and
loud about it.
I
focused on ABS-CBN’s day-opener out of curiosity
again—after all, it won the Star Awards this month as
the best program to greet the day.
Is it
just me or is bad taste an overrated vice?
Seated
around a sofa with a backdrop that seems to have
captured all the colors of paradise, were Julius Babao
and Anthony Taberna. Let me say it first that Babao and
Taberna are two of the most amiable broadcast
personalities on free TV. That morning, though, they
were interviewing the Marines who led the assault on the
group of Khadaffy Janjalani. You know the story, how
government forces waited until the break of dawn before
making an attack, and how several men from their side
immediately got hit and died and how the bounty yielded
not quantity but quality, for there in the dead was the
leader himself.
I have
no problem with this. Marines are tasked to do their
jobs, and their duty is to do things and do things well.
They have done their job following their job
description.
My
problem that morning was how the two newscasters reacted
with glee at every violent turn of the tale as told by
the soldiers. I cannot blame the soldiers with how they
recited matter of factly their operation. My problem is
whether that was the right time, the right forum. I
respect the opinions of these two newscasters but that
morning, by their amiability—for image is crucial on
TV—and other factors only they can explain to their
audience, they supremely trivialized a most serious
event. The greater tragedy has befallen the two
soldiers. If the purpose of the presentation is to
humanize the two warriors (one is a frustrated
photographer while the other paints), the opposite took
place gently: they were instantly dehumanized.
Mary
Douglas, a favorite anthropologist, wrote in her seminal
book Purity and Danger how “dirt is essentially
disorder...it exists in the eye of the beholder....In
chasing dirt, in papering, decorating, tidying, we are
not governed by anxiety to escape disease, but are
positively reordering our environment, making it conform
to an idea.” Dirt is really a construct. Every time we
take for granted the serious by being flippant about it,
for each moment that we feel we can be humorous about
violence when the time is reserved for easing into a new
day, we are persistently forming a world where bad taste
and big breakfast go together, where merienda and murder
can be mixed and masticated. |
