Film, Representation & National Treasures

My feminist friends have lamented that not enough mileage in media have been accorded the passing of beauty queen turned activist Maita Gomez, who recently died at the age of 65. Maita was a 1967 Miss Philippines beauty queen & top couturier Pitoy Moreno model with shows in America & Europe. Amidst these glitz & glamour, Maita chose to go underground with the National People’s Army (NPA). When she emerged from the underground movement, she went back to school to get a master’s degree at the University of the Philippines. Maita Gomez is very well known by my generation & by the activists & in politics, too, as Maita ran in elections. Maita, who founded the political party KAIBA, ran for Senator in 1987 under the Partido ng Bayan but lost. Maita ran again for Congress in 1995 in Manila’s 5th district but lost. She was active in the NGO movement and as well devoted her time teaching Economics & was co-chair of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, a political coalition.

   I so recall the time in the 70s, that I, as one of her fans, would ogle at Maita Gomez in micro mini skirt in magazines then in later decades, found myself sitting beside her in a women’s human rights meeting. The “metamorphosis of a paradox” that is Maita Gomez happens once in every while. The challenge is how to replicate and make more Maitas. The challenge is for academia & for our big society to promote social consciousness among our bratty beautiful children. Not that we are promoting that our children go underground, (even as I have great respect for those who do) but that most of us agree that the ills of our society are caused by the greed of the guardians of our institutions. 

DOLPHY 

In the same breath as national treasures, let me say a few words about the late Dolphy, our actor in comedy films & television & his art. Professor Nick Tiongson’s remarks about Dolphy’s portrayal of gay roles in cinema in connection with the National Artist award process by the National Commission of the Culture & the Arts ( NCCA) & the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) have been published even as Tiongson thinks that these were part of confidential proceedings. Professor Tiongson, who has said that he is just one member of the award process body, reportedly remarked, & I quote, “I believed that the two icons he created for film & TV – the screaming gay & the happy - go – lucky poor man – have, in the majority of his movies, equated gayness with abnormality and mindless frivolity on the one hand, and romanticized or deodorized poverty on the other.” 

 Also, revealing is the rejoinder of film maker Peque Gallaga on what he calls, among others, as about the Pinoy zeitgeist as written by Angela Santiago, & I quote, “Dolphy was playing an elaborate game of mirrors. Most of his audiences were aware that he had one of the biggest dicks in the industry & that he was a 100 % “tunay na lalake” in the kanto scale of machoness – so his doing gays (that were usually quite understanding & quite truthful, meaning they didn’t resort to huge stereotypical mugging) was in a way the more subversive road towards acceptance by Pinoy society at large, without preaching, sermonizing, or the expected Brocka political agenda movie.”  

My own take is that television sitcoms or film is at once about the real & representation. Cinema is a site for play, escapism, fantasy, flight & imagination. The danger of representation is that any text, any portrayal, any film can be trivialized or oversimplified. And most of all, political correctness is learned and yes, promoted. Many years ago, for instance, feminism did not have a name. Today, feminists are serious about how women are represented in films. While the film maker or the actors are the authors, films are also interactively interpreted & authored by many spectators, including me. In this way, all of us have a space in art. My kind of art or portrayal of popular culture is at once mind liberating & entertaining. So, as to the national artist award, let us not hurry but trust the process & that the outcome will hopefully be validated by popular sentiments for how we are now as ancestors of tomorrow.

Davao City

I love Davao City.

Let me count the ways

 Davao City is a city where both mountains and sea are a few minutes away. It is one of few areas in the Philippines where we have forests and biodiversity in our Mount Apo. Because we still have old growth forests, this is ecologically significant in this era of climate change. Davao City is home to rare species and endangered species of plants and birds such as the monkey eating eagle. Most of all, we have people from organizations like Kapwa Upliftment Foundation under the leadership of Ms Alma de la Paz who are working to conserve these forests and for the protection and restoration of biodiversity. Their work is with indigenous peoples, migrants, the government of Davao City, the Department of Environment & Natural Resources (DENR), and civil society organizations such as the Foundation for the Phil Environment, Phil Eagle Foundation, among others. 

Davao City takes care of its poor, who also toil with blood, sweat and tears from sunrise to sunset in making Davao City beautiful and livable. The city is taking care of its poor, among others, through a new Shelter Plan and the creation of the Local Housing Board. I am pleased that we are able to connect to the Local Housing Board through fellows in civil society in our own project to help the informal settlers living in danger zones in Isla Verde, a public park that is also the site of strong storm surges due to monsoons that come every year. According to the Department of Environment & Natural Resources & its Mines & Geo-Sciences Bureau ( DENR- MGB), the Isla Verde sandbar is a young soil formation which is a result of a combination of silt or sediment deposits which was carried by water from our mountains during flood and by the action of the strong water waves. As a young soil formation it is not safe for a permanent human settlement. There is also a legal indication that the whole area is part of parks and playground Davao City has opened relocation sites for those affected by the June 29, 2011 flood and for other informal settlers who are living in danger zones. These relocation sites are in Los Amigos, Catalunan Grande, Panacan, etc. Davao City has already organized its Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (DRRMC) and we are looking forward to the passage of the DRRMC ordinance so that funds will be allocated for vulnerability assessments & community based disaster risk reduction trainings. 

The kind of peace that we enjoy in Davao City did not come in a flash. It has evolved from a time when Davao City was described as some killing fields in the early eighties. So, our kind of peace is a reaction of that era. Anyway, according to official figures the crime rate in Davao City in 2012  is 0.8 in every 10,000 persons per month. Davao City is emergency ready. Our Central 911 is programmed to respond to all kinds of emergency : medical, fire, police assistance for both natural and man made calamities. Of course, the issue of extra judicial killings ( EJK) is still an unsolved phenomenon and deserves our utmost concern. 

Davao City is multicultural. Multiculturalism is and should be a big project in Davao City and it is a way to promote peace in Mindanao and in the entire country. We are continually proud of the Davao City Reproductive Health Clinic ordinance, the first in the country. And, so it really baffled us why our Congress took too long to legislate the national reproductive health measure. The national reproductive health bill was languishing in Congress for the longest time & it was a relief when it finally became a law.  

Davao City promotes project by and for women using the principles of fair trade. One example is the Women’s Market by Oxfam & the Mindanao Commission on Women during the 2012 Founding Anniversary of Davao offering food and wellness products produced by women from all over Mindanao where “ you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables; rootcrops such as camote; fresh seafood like crabs, squid and seaweed; luyang dilaw (turmeric); organic rice; fruit jams; tablea; banana chips; rice and corn coffee and gumamela tea; lemongrass and ginger granules and coconut sugar; dried boneless bangus and cooked dilis; vinegar; passion fruit juice; malunggay polvoron and suman; embutido and bottled bangus pate; homemade peanut butter; chili sauce; and many more.”


 Finally, Davao City’s anti-discrimination legislation for the benefit of marginalized sectors which also includes a reference to sexual orientation, gender identity & expression (SOGIE) has come out as one of  the first ordinances  of its kind in the country. 

Photos credit : Henrylito Tacio

Exercise as Happiness

The lifestyle of our generations makes us sit in front of the computer for hours. And this has produced a generation of obese or unhealthy population. Do you remember the time that play and exercise when we were children were always fun? That’s because exercise per se is happiness. Whereas in other aspects of our lives like work & love, happiness is a result of our zestful expressions of ourselves in our engagements there, exercise is happiness per se. Exercise makes possible the release of the naturally occurring endogenous hormone called endorphins which is a feel good hormone. 

I am writing the results of a research & I noticed that I have been sitting in my chair for hours and for weeks. This writing is also interspersed with Facebook addiction and voila these are exactly the recipe for obesity & other health disasters. It turns out dancing every now and then is not enough exercise. So, I embarked on jogging in our village. It is like I discovered a new formula for happiness. I shared this with my friends and everyone reinforced this endeavor. So, it is something that I must pursue because I have announced this commitment to wellness. I also got many tips from well meaning friends and from Kenneth AB Antonio, my doctor cousin. I was advised that walking briskly maybe better and safer than jogging and just as good as an aerobic exercise for vital capacity. How to jog or walk safely? To jog or run, a pair of track shoes is best. My young daughter recently had tendonitis of her Achilles heels from too much of these walking & jogging. My generation should be more aware and warned of this because as we get older, our bones are now more brittle & thus more prone to fractures. So, walk on flat surfaces and cover distance with successive approximation and increase mileage in time. For stray dogs, a stick with length up to one’s breast will come in handy. And bring water, if you plan to walk for hours. 


My walking path is a sight to behold. The beautiful home gardens are now in full bloom. I noticed also that the foliage and flowers have been refurbished like fashion over the years. I classify flowers as either the classic ones, last season or the new breed. Bougainvillas, gumamelas or hibiscus & gardenias are classic flowers but new breeds are improving their variety. Walking at night scents the air & I recognize the scents of Dama de Noche, Champaca, Kamuning & Nicaraguan Jasmine. 

When walking in the light of the full moon, I feel that I am at the center of the universe yet I also feel so insignificant in the vast cosmos. And as someone shared in a message, when one looks at the vast cosmos, we realize how mundane the things we do during the day. 


Walking in my village is like saying hello again to my neighbors & I oddly realize that I have not really seen them in years. This irony was not lost on me as I realized that I have almost a thousand virtual friends from all over the world, many of them I have not met. When my daughter was growing up, she knew all the kids and their parents in our neighborhood. And, my neighbors fondly referred to me as the mother of Kaye, my daughter. We should be friends with our neighbors and be in communion with them because in this age of disasters they are the ones we should actually be helping & holding hands with. 

The beautiful children models : Marc Giane "Manoy II," Glinggling Merida, Zoie Ysabel Solamo & Glaiza Viktoria

An icon of good governance : Jesse Robredo

Picture credit : Vincent R. Pozon



I met the late Honorable Jesse Robredo briefly up close & personal in Naga City during the Raul Roco & Inday Santiago presidential & vice presidential campaign a decade & half ago. Robredo was the incumbent & outgoing mayor of the city of Naga having served a complete 9 years (3 terms) as mayor. Because he was not a candidate, I saw him as giving the limelight to contenders Raul Roco for president of the Philippines & to the younger brother of Raul Roco who was running for mayor of Naga City. Other politicians would run for a higher post but Jesse Robredo went to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University like he was crystallizing into concepts the praxis & lessons learned for almost a decade as a public servant. When praxis is translated to concepts & paradigms, they become technology transfer ready. And academia is always the best place to pause & reflect & organize thoughts. 


Then that Robredo merited the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay award, Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, is now legendary. Robredo was not only a good manager & technocrat but more importantly he was able to inspire the people of disaster & flood prone Naga City to dream of another reality. Maybe it was true that the reason he could not run for a post higher than mayor was because he did not have the financial wherewithal. Still, he was an excellent mayor judging from the awards that recognized his kind of good governance. Robredo is one of few people gifted with a charism & this he was able to muster for the development of his beloved Naga City. This local success brought him to national attention & to head the Department of Interior & Local Government, a post coveted by presidential timbers because of the post’s access to the entire political machinery of the Philippines. Robredo became mayor of Naga City at age 29 in 1988. 


How was a politician like Robredo able to win as mayor again for yet another 9 years from 1995 – even if he did not have the financial resources to be elected? The simple answer is because an inspired voting citizenry did not have to be bought. Robredo was able to put to good use the resources of government at his disposal for the development of his city & his voters liked this enough to vote for him as their mayor for close to two decades. From a low income city, Robredo was able to bring Naga City to first class status, not only increasing income for all but also making the abstract word empowerment become real & felt by the poor through civil society. And that is why as a member of civil society, we emulate his strategy. 


Defining for us the concept of local representation, is one project promoted by Jesse Robredo which is so close to our hearts in our own Alternative Law Groups Network (ALG). And as shared by a colleague, Atty Claire Pauig Luczon, “Colleagues in ALG were so proud to work with you in ensuring that the poor & the marginalized were represented & heard in local government. We were so impressed with your work that the ALG drafted the proposed Local Representation Law patterned after the experience of Naga City, under your leadership.” In closing, let me quote Anna Leah who said “We must look for Robredo….in the hearts of the next candidates & future leaders. We should look for him, too, for the struggle for good governance, in our hearts.”

Manila Monsoon Flood Aug 2012

I am still shocked to talk about the flood because this time the flood came to the doorsteps of my daughter’s home in Makati. I had the scare of my life. I am still analyzing my young daughter’s nonchalance to the flood. She said, “Yesterday I woke up to see that the thigh-high flood that took a two-day residence upon our neighborhood in Makati was gone with minimal trace. Like nothing happened! It was surreal but not nice. I am reminded of the African Serengeti, a place far away from modern civilization, untouched by modern agriculture. It is bone-dry and transforms into a desert during the dry season and when monsoon season arrives, the land is transformed into vast arrays of lakes and rivers. I like to think that resilience is the best weapon against natural calamities---most of which had already been going on for millions of years, long before we came about. The "wisdom of the crowd," like a herd of African wildebeest, knows best to brush off the dust, move on and fight or take flight to survive.”



I hope like many others in Manila, my daughter is not in disaster denial and not so traumatized. She stayed the night in the office sleeping lounge at the height of the flood & had to ride a water raft for a hefty sum from office to home in the morning. Maybe it helped that she knows she can swim like a fish. And thanks to modern communications, we were in touch moment by moment during the flood. Tons of words have been twitted & posted in media on this massive flood brought about by torrential rains from this August Habagat Southwest monsoon. One would think that after the Ondoy flood of 2009, we would be much better off in coping this time. Maybe we were & our evidence for this is that there were fewer human lives lost, compared to the Ondoy flood. The solutions are so simple that they almost defy analysis. One that needs mention was offered by Antonio Oposa Jr who in a few words said, “Again, why is there flooding? Because excess waters do not have a place to go. Solution: Find a place for it to go. How difficult can that be?” See, it is not rocket science.

We like to live in cities & certainly no one is advocating for us to return to the so called frontier lifestyle and so another real honest solution is good urban land use planning. Needless to say, even if floods affect all, floods affect our poor the hardest. Much blame was wrongly heaped on the poor & the colonies of informal settlers who have settled in river banks & clogged floodways with garbage. But, all these are real governance & urbanization issues such as housing, solid waste management, urban land use, drainage, transportation which are now conflated with global warming & climate changes. As Dr Mahar Lagman of the Department of Science & Technology (DOST) said, “Disasters happen only when people are in harm’s way.”
To adopt a line from a famous comedian, if we live near the crater of a volcano, we should not be surprised if hot lava enters our living room. Likewise, if people live near rivers & waterways, these informal settlers will always be at the mercy of river outflows & floods & storm surges. But, if decent housing were available to our poor, do you think they would like to live in harm’s way? Maricris Valte of the Development Academy of the Philippines says our poor are the people that serve many of us & who perform important jobs in our cities: ordinary employees, drivers, market vendors, beauticians, messengers, security guards, community organizers, even some teachers. If only one or a few families are hard hit by a preventable flood, in Sociology, we call this a personal tragedy but if hundreds & thousands suffered because their homes were in harm’s way, this is a social problem worse than the flood itself.

photo credit : Instagram by Christian Lacsina   

Reproductive Health as Mastery Learning For Us All

Reproductive health (RH) is almost a two decade old concept which should be understood by all given the amount of passion & politics that seem to overwhelm us now at this juncture of our nationhood. The past days have been witness to heated debates on the Reproductive Health bill in our House of Congress. The women’s movement is very clear on its arguments. 


Still, to recap, we have emphasized that we have moved away from a population control paradigm to a women’s rights perspective: informed choice, women’s health, bodily autonomy, etc. In my college classroom, my students had to master four reproductive rights as already spelled out by women & men & governments all over the world in Cairo, Egypt almost two decades ago: the right to found a family, the right to decide freely & responsibly the number & spacing of one’s children, the right to have access to family planning information & education, & the right to have access to family planning methods & services. These are such benign concepts except that some in the Catholic hierarchy want to define for women how we should practice our faith. As the laity is the majority in the Church, we want our voice to matter as much as the clergy. How we women practice our faith in conflation with our bodies is so important to be left to the male Catholic hierarchy who can never get pregnant, for now, at least, given natural law & current technology. For a bishop to say contraception is corruption so insults the dignity of women who have been using contraception. Academicians were quick to brand this logic as resorting to ‘reduction ad absurdum’ or reducing the argument to the level of absurdity. 


There has been serendipitous good news from the Pope in Vatican which seems to be a breath of fresh air. For the Pope to say that condoms can be morally justified is an iconic change in perspective. The Pope reportedly argued that “using a condom to preserve life & avoid death could be a responsible act – even outside of marriage.” Death here is invoked in reference to prevention from the scourge of the AIDS ailment. In our own country, we have a Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ, Jesuit educator & constitutionalist who has communicated a more nuanced stand on the RH bill. He has said that the Philippines is a pluralistic society & that it is wrong to impose one belief system to the rest of the population. In fact, there is an Islamic Official Ruling or Fatwa on Reproductive Health and Family Planning issued by the Assembly of Darul-Ifta of the Philippines in November 2003. By common understanding, a fatwa is a decree made by an Islamic authority. Reading the fatwa, one finds that it is focused on the issue of preventing birth or birth spacing & responsible parenthood. 


According to Emelina Quintillan based on her study, there is, however, very little awareness of the fatwa on family planning. Quintillan notes that according to a survey on the fatwa awareness that was commissioned by the Academy of Educational Development (AED), only 28% of the adult population was aware of the fatwa on family planning in the surveyed areas of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Over the weekend, I ran into Marxists academicians in social media who as expected argue that population is not a problem. This view maintains that what is required is more budget for classroom, for education, for food, etc. From the women’s perspective, we agree. Have we not moved away from the population control perspective? 


I would also like to give a voice to another perspective from Mucha Q. Arquiza, a Muslim thought leader in Mindanao who said, “As Muslim families, I hope we look beyond this controversial law-making & really stare the issue in the eye. No, I do not agree that our children & poor families should be used as the bargaining horses, if not the very stakes burned to stave off poverty or to argue for government priority in development, after all, granting we have all laws in place, we Muslims in the South still have to wrestle with those in Imperial Manila to deliver the crumbs home.” 


Such is a constant struggle that we must address even after the Reproductive Health bill is passed, as it will be. As we say in the women’s movement, work is never done. When the reproductive health bill becomes a law, it will be just a step to a million steps in our journey to our development as a nation.

FATWA on Reproductive Health and Family Planning issued by the Assembly of Darul-Ifta of the Philippines in November 2003

There is an Islamic Official Ruling or Fatwa on Reproductive Health and Family Planning issued by the Assembly of Darul-Ifta of the Philippines in November 2003. The fatwa noted the definition of reproductive health as provided by the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and found nothing objectionable to it. The ICPD defined reproductive health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity in all matters relating to reproductive system and to its functions and processes.” ( from Report of the ICPD, Chapter VII, 7.2, September, 1994.) 


While reproductive health is more than just family planning, the fatwa focused on the issue of preventing birth or birth spacing without addressing the other factors of reproductive health. The Assembly reviewed the Qur’an and found nothing that prohibited the spacing or limiting the number of children. It also consulted Islamic scholars who found that family planning is not incompatible with nature, it is not disagreeable to the national conscience and it is not forbidden by national conscience, and is not forbidden by Shari’a, It is said that the practice of preventing pregnancy was allowed by the prophet Muhammad and found nothing wrong with the use of contraceptives. 


According to Emelina Quintillan based on her study, there is, however, very little awareness of the fatwa on family planning. Quintillan notes that according to a survey on the fatwa awareness that was commissioned by the Academy of Educational Development (AED), only 28% of the adult population was aware of the fatwa on family planning in the surveyed areas of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). (Source : Fatwa Awareness Survey in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, Final Report, March 2006, page 19.) Our Center, the PILIPINA Legal Resources Center (PLRC) is now promoting the broader picture of reproductive health and rights. This right is associated with basic principles of dignity, bodily autonomy, and the ability to make decisions for oneself. Many members of PLRC’s Shar’a Court Monitoring Team are actively promoting this fatwa. Women’s access to health services including those related to family planning is mandated in both Article 12 and Article 16 of the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of All Forms Discrimination Against Women (UN CEDAW, which also includes advocating for the right to informed choice, education, and access to basic health services.