Memories, murmurs
I'm doing a buffet column today. the articles can stand alone, but are related. So they can be read in installments. Choose what you want to read and when.Mercifully brief, I thought to myself at 9:20 on Wednesday as the Sandiganbayan clerk finished reading the verdict and sentence for ex-President Joseph Estrada.
The Sandiganbayan was wise to choose that path because reading the entire decision, said to run more than 200 pages, would have been more "correctly" Filipino and yet dangerous. Like the "Pasyon" sung out every Holy Week, no one would have really been listening, much less understanding, the decision (written in English), but it would have amplified whatever emotions people had. I couldn't help contrasting Wednesday's courtroom atmosphere with that of the "Nicole" trial a few months back, where the "guilty" verdict for Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith was followed by cheering.
I'm glad, too, that government and media seemed to agree that we didn't need to stoke people's passions. The television cameras were not allowed to focus on Estrada while the verdict was being read. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo kept her silence, as did Raul Gonzalez and other presidential advisors with foot-in-mouth afflictions. We did get a still fiery but relatively subdued La Senadora Miriam Defensor-Santiago preaching about Christian magnanimity.
Maybe because there was so little of fireworks and political noise, we ended up hearing more of public "murmuring," muted but perceptible feelings that were actually quite similar, regardless of people's support of or opposition to Erap. I can summarize this feeling as: "But the looting and plundering have worsened," sometimes accompanied by a wistful: "She better be careful; someday she could be the one on trial."
I'm using "murmur" here in a medical sense. A heart murmur may be mild and muted, but it "speaks" of potentially serious trouble, even as it troubles the entire psyche. If the trial seemed anticlimactic, it is because people feel shortchanged . . . not by the verdict itself or the sentencing (which I think many people found too harsh, in the context of Erap's age), than by the way the country continues to plod along, like a patient with heart disease who has gone to see the doctor--and has been advised to stick a band-aid plaster on the chest every time he suffers distress. People want more, but we're not getting it for now, so we just move on.
Histories
Justice, oh justice. Visit Youtube on the Internet and type in "Cebu, Thriller" to get a video of a thousand Cebu prisoners dancing away to Michael Jackson's "Thriller." The star of the show is "Wenjell," a drag queen who ends up getting devoured by the "zombie" prisoners. Well, she's been in prison now for three years on drug-related charges, and has not been brought to trial. Erap got a trial, but languished, sort of, under house arrest for six years before a verdict was handed down.
In the long run though, justice comes not through courts and judges but from the pen (or computer keyboards) of our historians looking back at our troubled times. Years from now, historians not even born today will go through the archives--hard and electronic copies, court transcripts and newspaper columns and yes, blogs and YouTube--and pass judgment. We will hear again of our presidents, from Aguinaldo to Marcos and Aquino and Ramos and Estrada . . . and Arroyo.
Historians are no longer just chroniclers dishing out dates and names of great people. Today's historians are more like explorers and archaeologists, piecing together the most minute of detailed information to produce what they call "total events," complete with descriptions of context of places and people. They are not just using official archives now but also looking into letters and diaries, folklore and life histories. In the graduate anthropology course I teach, I often have quite a few history majors eager to learn new ways of understanding, and interpreting, our past.
Instead of one Philippine history, we have many histories written and waiting to be written. There are Filipinos who grew up learning about the Philippines from American historians. Then Filipino historians came in to rewrite the textbooks, sometimes questioning earlier accounts: Zaide, Agoncillo, Constantino, the Inquirer's own Ambeth Ocampo. Ambeth's books are best-sellers because they show the human side to our heroes and villains--what they ate, whom they loved (now why did I think of eating and loving at the same time?).
Historians give life and color and perspective to the events. For many years, Vietnamese history books tended to be hagiographies, full of praise for all the brave Vietnamese generals who defeated the American imperialists. Today, there are new books talking about daily life during the war. One of the current best-sellers in Vietnam is a book featuring excerpts from the diary of a young Vietnamese woman doctor who wrote about all her fears and anxieties and sadness, even while remaining totally committed to her work of ministering to the wounded and dying. She died before the war ended, and young Vietnamese feel that history must reflect, too, the valor of the Vietnamese outside the war arenas. (It's interesting, too, that the diary ended up with an American GI, who was able to return it to Vietnam after the war ended.)
Future histories of the Philippines will feature more "inside stories" about the famous and not-so-famous that will put many of our presidents in a new light. I have no doubt we will hear more of Joseph Estrada's life, when he was in Malacañang as well as under house arrest. So too, we will hear of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's life in Malacañang, as a president's daughter and as a president.
Time is always on the historian's side, people now silent will come forth in safer times to speak and to hand over important documents. But time is also on the side of controversial figures like Marcos and Estrada and Arroyo, allowing future generations of Filipinos access to more facts and therefore to become more critical, but kinder and gentler in their judgments.
UP memories
Our anthropology department at UP turns 90 this year while the university will be celebrating its centennial next year. From time to time, I'll be talking about some of the anniversary projects and activities, often with an appeal for help. For starters, the UP Diliman Information Office is compiling a coffee table centennial book, "UPD Sights and Sounds," and needs back issues of the Philippinensian (1918 to 1931, 1937 to 1941, 1949, 1951, 1966 to 1968), as well as The Plow, The Veterinarian, The Woolsack and The Tic. (You can figure out which colleges produced the first two magazines, but woolsacks and tics?) Call the Information Office at 924-1881 or 920-5802 if you have copies that you can lend or donate.
