History books for Christmas

It is not because I own Solidaridad, a bookshop, that I say books make the best Christmas gift. Giving one compliments the giver as well as the recipient — both are presumed intelligent readers.  The real reason is that as material objects, books today are still well made, they last more than 50 years. Imagine gifts that stay that long!

This year, publishers — particularly the university presses — have put out quality titles particularly on history. They may not sell, though — Filipinos do not read — but they illustrate a growing attention to history and the need for Filipinos to know more about themselves.

Below are four I have read recently.

Taming People Power: the EDSA Revolution and their Contradictions

By Lisandro E. Claudio

Ateneo de Manila University Press, 225 pages

Many of those who elevated Cory Aquino to sainthood will not appreciate this book for the simple reason that it debunks the Cory legend by probing closely at that giant Hacienda Luisita which Cory and her family own. It is an affirmation of what I already knew from way back except that I never had what this young able scholar has accumulated — a mass of empirical evidence. Way back in the ’60s when I first visited the hacienda (I was brought there by Ninoy), I told Ninoy to look how miserably the workers in the hacienda lived. Ninoy told me then, “Frankie — you know that this is not mine. Wait till I become president.”

His wife did become president but conditions in the hacienda did not improve. The reason is simple: For all her reputation as an “Icon of Democracy,: Cory Aquino was “mata pobre.” I am now afraid that her son, as President, judging from his attitude towards the hapless victims of typhoon Yolanda is the same, incapable of empathizing with the poor.

Claudio does not limit his study to Hacienda Luisita; the Hacienda story leads to a much wider narrative about EDSA I, what I have always called it — a revolution which Cory turned into a Restoration of the Oligarchy — a condition which was obvious but had not been studied in detail. With this book, Claudio makes that transition clear and almost inevitable primarily because as we fiction writers call it, “character is fate.”

Having made these profound and disturbing insights into our history and its manipulation by elite politicians, I wish Claudio went further in his conclusion and suggested ways by which such stranglehold on this blighted country could be loosened or wrested away. Claudio is a young, brilliant thinker. Maybe, this will be the subject of his next book which, I hope, will also be written in more readable personal point of view but without the gobbledygook of academics.

Kasaysayan Ng Ating Bayan—The Philippines Then and Now

The Four Volumes of Philippine History

By Fe. B. Mangahas

Fe Mangahas, writer-activist, has written the history of the Philippines in Tagalog —readable and eloquent — which should be adapted as textbook in our schools. Although written particularly for a church group — this can be ignored for this is a serious and important text particularly for the young.

The first volume traces our origins as a people, our pre-historic culture. This section is illustrated with photographs of documents and artifacts of ancient Filipinos — (we were not known then as such) our houses, implements, trading vessels. This volume also illustrates the great diversity in our culture.

The second volume details the Spanish colonization up to the Revolution of 1896. It also traces the growth of Filipino nationalism, its articulation in the Propaganda Movement.

The third volume begins with the Philippine-American War, the 50 years of American colonization and ends with the liberation from the Japanese in 1945.

The fourth and final volume focuses on the post-war years, the presidencies of Osmeña up to the regime of President Benigno Aquino III. Half of this volume depicts our cultural development, a breezy commentary on the artistic trends and the artists who dominated the post-war scene up to the present. The conclusion calls for an understanding of our history, and the hope that democracy and justice will eventually triumph.

Fe Mangahas, as writer and teacher, has written a narrative, lucid and intellectually solid enough to be appreciated by high school and college students. It also challenges current orthodoxies in economics, politics and development mantras for the point of view is unashamedly nationalist. It is amazing what a good Tagalog writer can do when that writer wants to be understood and explains abstract ideas simply. Those who always felt that Tagalog is inadequate in its exposition of ideas have to change their minds upon reading this book.

Not On Our Watch: Martial Law Really Happened

We Were There

Edited by Jo Ann D. Maglipon

Published by the League of Editors for Democratic Society, 219 pages

For so many Filipinos, particularly the very young, this collection of essays by the activist generation of the ’70s is a must read. The martial law years were a significant epoch in our history as were the 1896 Revolution and the Philippine-American War, and the three-year Japanese Occupation in 1942-1945.

A faded dictum states that “if you are not a communist when you are 20, you have no heart. But if you are still a communist when you are 40, you have no head.” Using this as a measure of these authors, it is so easy to conclude that rebellion and its heady effect on the mind seems to be an inclusive activity of the very young, the untainted “idealists” who perceive themselves as saviors of the nation. At what age, or at what phase of human development, does idealism fade? When pragmatism and the crass realities of life mellow the youthful enthusiasm? How can we sustain, or maintain the “fire” in our bellies?

These are questions I ask not of the young but of the now middle aged activists who braved Marcos and his thugs 30 years ago. Remember, they were all in their late teens or early 20s then.

How credible are these personal accounts? One essay is written by a known Marcos lackey; he professes otherwise and writes as if he was never a party to the propaganda machine that legitimized the New Society. Indeed, many of those who shouted curses at Imelda and Marcos did not keep the faith — they ended up working for the corrupt establishment that were the inevitable outgrowths of the big lies that Marcos “New Society” was.

The so-called intelligentsia is very small, usually centered in Manila where the major newspapers and universities are. One significant thing Marcos did was to create clearly the dividing line in this intelligentsia — he made the facile distinction between those who were for freedom and those who weren’t.

That clear, definitive line has been blurred as Filipinos lost their memory and many of those who helped Marcos in his looting of the country are back in the murky corridors of power.

There is one account in this book, however, which is truly moving. Roberto Verzola graduated as electrical engineer from the University of the Philippines in 1972. He was a columnist of the University of the Philippines student paper, The Philippine Collegian. While in the university, he joined the revolutionary movement, was captured by the military and imprisoned twice—a couple of years the first time and six months the second. He writes eloquently of the life of the hunted, of his capture and the vicious sessions with his torturers and how they tried to break his spirit. He learned of how the Communist Party as led by Jose Maria Sison masterminded the Plaza Miranda bombing, how Sison lived it up, the deadly internal purges Sison sanctioned. In the end an unbowed Verzola concluded: “Those of us still living, who carry the marks of torture, who suffer the nightmares, who grieve for our loved ones murdered by the two dictatorships — the State and the Party — or who have never found their bodies, leaving us in limbo and without closure for the rest of our lives, must put these events on record so others will not forget.”

It requires great courage as well as humility to say this, to admit to oneself that he had been deluded or betrayed. Those who did not do this were not really cowards or blind to the awful truth. To do so would mean that they had  thrown away their lives, that all their sacrifices were of no value.

Not Verzola and for this, I salute the man. In middle age, he has continued to pursue the humanist ideals that lifted him in his youth, teaching and by continuing work with the peasants and the disenfranchised.

But his wish will not be fulfilled because Filipinos, without racial memory, do not remember.

The Half-Remembered Past: A Memoir

By Nelson A. Navarro

ABS-CBN Publishing Manila, 275 pages

There drifts into a person’s life when he thinks it’s time to leave mementos of his past for “the record,” to validate his existence, explain himself and unload the vital information to which he was privy. Memoirists — rich and famous, or poor and meek — are therefore possessed with more aplomb and ego than those of us who don’t dare strip in public.

Nelson Navarro, journalist, historian, social gadfly and delightful raconteur, has put it all down, titled it The Half-Remembered Past. Why half-remembered? This implies the recovery of the other half maybe soon. Though physically hobbled by a slight limp, Nelson is energetically traipsing about and, at this writing, has just returned from a week’s visit to Sri Lanka. Abangan.

In his bubbly middle age, eyes clear of cataract, he is still collecting knowledge, memories that will translate into a volume similar to this — a gleaming hindsight into our recent past, the personalities — saints and scoundrels — who influenced events and Nelson’s own perceptive take on these characters.

How could he have known so much of these people, some of whom passed away before he was born? What prodigious memory, what fastidious scholarship!

Shortly after martial law was declared by President Marcos in 1972, Nelson — then editor of the University of the Philippines student paper, The Philippine Collegian fled to the United States together with several anti-Marcos activists. He was charged with the bombing of the Plaza Miranda political rally that killed half a dozen in 1971.

In the United States, Nelson struggled with several jobs, among them as a reporter of a New Jersey paper. Based in New York, he frequented that burg’s libraries, read history, zeroing in on his country; he traveled widely, motivated by the allure of exotic places and more important, the need to know. Some popular travel writers like Paul Theroux condescend or sneer when confronted by an experience or a landscape not pleasurable to them. Not Nelson; he does not snicker — he immerses himself into the new encounter and draws from it fresh impressions, insights. These, and the sensual evocation of such divergent destinations like Paris, Beijing, Machu Picchu in Peru attest to the author’s sensitivity. His foray into Intramuros brings vividly to mind long-forgotten images of a hallowed and battered walled city known only to people like myself who paced its cobbled streets before World War II. This is travel writing at its finest.

Nelson returned to Manila when Marcos was booted out, went into journalism and resumed his social and political flirtations including a tenacious friendship with the sterling public servant and lawyer, Haydee Yorac. She must have influenced him a lot.

It is in the historical essays where Nelson really shines; he fleshed out national icons, Rizal, Recto, Magsaysay, apart from the arid if rabid treatment by routine biographers. He made them human, understandable like people we know. He recognized their warts and blemishes so we see them, too as commoners; not as the giants that they truly are.

He wrote columns, pontificated on TV, and was a chi-chi cocktail party presence, all the while amassing those precious arcane nuggets, connectives that joined the dots and made the picture whole and understandable. This, only a social arbiter with a vast multi-layered background can achieve.

As a social Baedeker, Nelson’s omniscient perception goes to town (pardon the addled metaphors) in his brilliant and naughty essay on the royalettes — the country’s Spanish mestizo social pretenders. His prose (again those mixed metaphors!) actually a dozen stilettos, a can opener, and a brush dripping with Clorox — describes the origin, the pork barrel sustenance and reach of this group that has, for generations, tried to dominate the country. Ridicule is the satirist’s most formidable instrument; he confirms the old cliché about the Filipino elite: the upper crust consists of a lot of crumbs with a lot of dough.

Nelson’ last work is the memoir of Juan Ponce Enrile which he edited. It sold a lot because of the controversies it provoked. That book may be categorized as fiction. He also wrote the biographies of Emmanuel Pelaez, the best foreign minister we ever had who, had he played the game, would have been president, not Marcos. When Nelson started work on his biography of Max Soliven, that peripatetic editor and publisher told him to exaggerate.

To label this most readable and elegant memoir by a man in love with life and his country “a loving, living testimony to our time” is no exaggeration.