I was a teacher. No, scratch that. I am a teacher. Jose dela Cruz, cum laude with a degree in education. And I did pass the licensure exams for teachers, so I’m a bona fide educator. No, maybe “was” — the past tense — is more appropriate since what I am now is a convict. A convicted drug smuggler.
After getting my education degree, I thought getting a teaching job, even with the government at a public school, would have been the easiest thing — I was young, idealistic, and ready to take even the most meager of salaries. But after months of applying, there were no jobs for me. In the private sector, you needed a master’s degree (I had none) and in government, well, you needed a padrino (I also had none). So being out of work for over a year and with no income, the offer to transport some contraband to China — just two short flights from Manila and entry into a provincial airport — and get paid the equivalent amount in salary that a teacher in a public school would get in a year, was overwhelming.
It didn’t help that my daughter had gotten dengue and that our family was deep in debt. Whatever moral objections I had were easily forgotten when I had a family to feed. I got paid half the promised amount in two installments before I left. This money afforded me and my family a bit of happiness, something that we hadn’t had in quite a while. It’s hard to be a happy family when you’re broke. Happiness was, well, simple stuff — like being able to watch a movie at the mall, go to Jollibee afterwards, and take a trip to the toy store. We even got to pay off some debts, particularly the one at the neighborhood sari-sari store so my wife wouldn’t have to keep swallowing her pride whenever she’d go there to “buy” (read: borrow) groceries.
Life seemed almost perfect. And then I had to leave for China. It was only on the day that I left that I found out for certain that the “contraband” I was bringing was heroin. To be totally honest, I had suspicions, strong ones, that I’d be bringing in drugs but I rationalized that at least it wouldn’t be for the Philippine market. Misplaced patriotism maybe? Whatever. Anyway, my protests to the Chinese authorities that I didn’t know what was in the bag, that I was just a teacher looking for work abroad, etc. fell on deaf ears. And after a quick criminal investigation and trial, I’m here, a simple convict, now facing the death sentence. No, scratch that. Maybe if there is anything good that can be salvaged from my miserable train wreck of a life is that I am not just a teacher or a convict. I am a cautionary tale.
Jose Dela Cruz is pure fiction but his life embodies the experience of many Filipinos who have chosen a life of crime abroad. It is perhaps easy for some to dismiss them as simple criminals and say that they deserve their fate; that their decision to embrace a criminal life justifies their punishment and obligates us to view them without pity. There is some validity to this viewpoint but this perspective is incomplete without seeing the context within which the decision to commit the crime was done. Certainly, there is no way to rationalize or mitigate the fact that a felony was committed — and that drug crimes are heinous — and, accordingly, that punishment must follow. However, attempting to understand the circumstances that may lead some Filipinos to make these wrong decisions can be not only instructive but also can help focus our attention to the root problems in our society that lead some to crime.
If Filipinos had employment or entrepreneurial opportunities at home, would they even consider working abroad or risking their lives in criminal ventures? Obviously not. I find it ironic that we Filipinos romanticize the great sacrifice of our OFWs and yet we forget that their sacrifice — leaving the country, missing their families, exposing themselves to risks in a foreign land — is but a result of the corruption and mediocrity that continues to fester and destroy our country. Put another way, we forget that the reason the OFW leaves the safety and security of his family and motherland is because we all have failed, to one extent or another, in the enterprise of nation-building. Thus, we are complicit in the suffering that is the sad lot of some, if not many, of our OFWs.
Let us now focus on the real world example of the Filipino drug mule in China who was executed on Dec. 8, 2011: some people argue that the Philippine government should not have spent taxpayers’ money to beg for clemency for him and, worse, paid for the tickets and accommodations of his family. They claim that is public money that could have been better spent for education, health or social welfare.
But what is the cost of a human life? Particularly, the life of a Filipino who, because of lack of opportunities in his homeland, has gambled his own life, for a chance at quick money in the drug trade, and lost. Every day, thousands of our countrymen leave in search of work abroad, both legal and not so. They do it for their families and their sacrifice, very simply, is one of the things that allows our country to survive.
So to analyze the government’s efforts to save the life of a Filipino convict abroad as a simple calculation involving pesos and centavos demeans us as a nation. The effort may be expensive and ultimately futile; however, it manifests our best qualities as a people: our love for our countrymen and our ability to hope even in the very worst of situations.
So what is the cost of a human life? Well, it’s certainly worth more than plane tickets and hotel rooms. In fact, we should not forget that in our fight to rescue Filipino citizens abroad who are on death row — regardless of our success or failure — we end up saving something else: our values and, yes, even the very soul of our nation. And, at the very least, we provide a few more cautionary tales.