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aso o agila?
Reblogged fuckyeahpauloavelino
aso o agila?
Reblogged
The IndioHistorian Posts of 2017
To dear readers and followers near and far, to my beloved readers on Tumblr, followers on Twitter, and new readers via my facebook fanpage, this 2017 was a year of deepening of our roots, the strengthening of our resolve against the twisting of our national memory, and renewing of our faith in our democracy against those who seek to weaken it further by fake news and propaganda from the powers that be.
Thank you for liking and reposting my posts!
This will sort of be a beastmode post. The situation calls for it. The year 2018, as many intellectuals are foreseeing, will be a harder year.
We are at the edge of the precipice, and the call for honor, and the call to stand for what is right has never been harder than it is today. It sounds cliche now to even say “dangal” both in government and in our daily conversations. The romanticizing of our national heroes, or speaking about love for country like an abstract pleasant feel-good feeling must end. These are cheap talk. It sounds good to the ears, but it does nothing.
We must realize the truth more than ever… that it is in our able hands–Filipino artists, Filipino writers, Filipino dreamers, Filipino government workers, Filipino businessmen, Filipino scientists, Filipino workers, Filipino overseas workers Filipino historians and academicians–it is in OUR hands that the future of our People will be decided.
Long ago, Jose Rizal wrote this words in El Filibusterismo:
Where are the youth who will dedicate their innocence, their idealism, their enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who will give generously of their blood to wash away so much shame, crime and abomination? Pure and immaculate must the victim be for the sacrifice to be acceptable. Where are you, young men and young women, who are to embody in yourselves the life-force that has been drained from our veins, the pure ideals that have grown stained in our minds, the fiery enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, come for we await you!
When the call is sounded, will we be brave enough to answer it?
Or will we stand aside, and be silent, as Rizal put them into words:
“…we see our countrymen feel privately ashamed, hearing the growl of their rebelling and protesting conscience, while in public they keep silent and even join the oppressor in mocking the oppressed…”
Tayo ay mga Pilipino, at hindi tayo mananahimilk.
May these posts in 2017 inspire you dear reader, to be brave for the hard year ahead. Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions!
Isang mapagpalayang bagong taon, mga kababayan, mula sa isang historyador.
October ♥ 41: Spain’s Last Stand: An IndioHistorian Review of the film “1898: Los últimos de Filipinas”
January ♥ 1057 : “We are descended from Voyagers”: How Disney’s Moana point to Filipinos’ Distant Past
*Generated using the best of tumblr tool.
Source: studiomoh.com
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Rizal in a Strange Church
It was May 9, 1882. A Tuesday.
A throng of passengers alighted the ship Salvadora docked in Singapore. Amidst the rushing coolies and the smell of spices and the noise of the port, a small Malay-looking man, around 4’11 in height, went out from the dispersing passengers. It was his first time in Singapore, and a first time too to step on the soil of another country.
He was none other than Jose Rizal.
Singapore, this little British colonial outpost in Southeast Asia, was his first stop in his more-than-a-month trip to Spain, where his brother Paciano intended for him to study and perhaps lead to the emancipation of their people. But that is a stretch in our narrative today. For now, he will take his time looking at the sights and sounds of this strange place for the first time.
Rizal proceeded to the carriage, driven by an Indian who said to him “Nam, nam,” which apparently pertains to the number plaque he held, which corresponded to the Indian’s. After confirming the number, they left for the hotel, a certain Hotel de la Paz.
Rizal saw the clean streets, the coal warehouses, the plants on the sides. There were lots of Indians, and Chinese men, a few Europeans, and there were bustles of shops he passed by, and houses too that did not impress him.
“I have not seen pretty houses like those in the Philippines.”
But there was a building that caught his eye.
“…returning to the hotel, I saw the Protestant Church in Gothic style.”
*St. Andrew’s Cathedral in the 1800s, from the National Archives of Singapore.
The church, which is the St. Andrew’s Cathedral, loomed large, its spire reaching atop the sky. It is the central church of the Anglican Diocese of Singapore.
*The church tower, in English Gothic style.
It would have reminded Rizal of the grandeur of the Manila Cathedral in the Walled City, or a hint of the San Juan Bautista Church back home, the oldest church in Calamba.
*From the church courtyard.
The diary entry Rizal wrote mentioned this in passing, but we know for sure that the church caught his interest, for immediately after settling down in his hotel room on his first day, Rizal went out of the hotel, and made sure he got inside the church.
“I went to the Protestant church and I saw there a holy-water basin and a child carried by a lady and several Englishmen. There was a minister.”
*Entrance to St. Andrew’s
*The pulpit of St. Andrew’s Cathedral
From what we could gather, the minister probably would have been Reverend George Frederick Hose, the first Anglican bishop of Singapore, Labuan, and Sarawak, who began serving the church a year from the day of Rizal’s visit. The Early English Gothic style of the church building is immense to look at, with the building construction commencing in 1856 and its consecration and use in 1862. It was only the second church building, as the first church building was seen as unfit for use due to lightning strikes on its spire.
The cathedral was also funded by Scottish merchants, hence the naming of the building after the Anglican patron saint of Scotland, St. Andrew. One controversial fact though was that the Cathedral was built through convict labor, but much of Singapore’s old English buildings were constructed in this way.
Rizal sat in one of the pews and read a Bible tucked in front of him.
“I saw also many ladies who were seated. I sat down also and read the Bible a little.”
The place is quite hot, especially in a scorching heat of summer in Singapore which made him say, “The good thing in there was the many punkahs which served as fans for the faithful.”
*Entrance of the church from the inside. Seen here is the church organ on the gallery atop the main entrance, made by famous English organ builder J.W. Walker, that dates back to the late 19th century. After years of disuse due to intense humidity, it was finally restored by Modular Pipe Organ Ltd. in 2009.
One had to infer what Rizal was thinking. First he found it difficult to speak the English language (He would try to master it years after). But this encounter may have spurred him on a personal journey, as he eventually settled in Madrid and caught new ideas in a very open environment, which was in so much contrast to the Philippines under Spain, then held by dogma that forbade to be questioned. The journey was such that when his mother Teodora Alonzo, worried for his son for being influenced too much by the ideas of the Enlightenment, wrote him a letter, Rizal replied with the following (from Madrid) in 1885:
“A belief that cannot withstand examination and the test of time ought to pass on to memory and leave the heart. I should not try to live on illusions and lies. What I believe now, I believe by reasoning, because my conscience can accept only what is compatible with reason. I can bow my head before a fact even though it be inexplicable to me, so long as it is a fact, but never an absurdity or a mere probability.
For me religion is the holiest of things, the purest, the most intangible, which escapes all human adulterations, and I think I would be recreant to my duty as a rational being if I were to prostitute my reason and admit what is absurd. I do not believe that God would punish me if I were to try to approach Him using reason and understanding, His own most precious gifts; I believe that to do Him homage, I can do no better than to present myself before Him making use of His best gifts, just as in appearing before my parents I should wear my best clothes they have given me. If someday I were to get a little of that divine spark called science, I would not hesitate to use it for God and, if I should err or go astray in my reasoning, God will not punish me…”
(Italics mine)
Spoken like a Reformer of old.
Reformation 500 is a blog series commemorating not only the events in Europe five hundred years ago that ignited Protestant Reformation and the Modern World, but also the points of contact between Protestantism and Philippine history. This is a contribution to Philippine church history.
For more Indiohistorian notes on the Reformation, check out this link.
For other heritage sites, click here.
Unless indicated, all pictures were taken from my old mobile phone upon my visit to the church last March 2017 in Singapore.
Reblogged
The IndioHistorian Posts of 2017
To dear readers and followers near and far, to my beloved readers on Tumblr, followers on Twitter, and new readers via my facebook fanpage, this 2017 was a year of deepening of our roots, the strengthening of our resolve against the twisting of our national memory, and renewing of our faith in our democracy against those who seek to weaken it further by fake news and propaganda from the powers that be.
Thank you for liking and reposting my posts!
This will sort of be a beastmode post. The situation calls for it. The year 2018, as many intellectuals are foreseeing, will be a harder year.
We are at the edge of the precipice, and the call for honor, and the call to stand for what is right has never been harder than it is today. It sounds cliche now to even say “dangal” both in government and in our daily conversations. The romanticizing of our national heroes, or speaking about love for country like an abstract pleasant feel-good feeling must end. These are cheap talk. It sounds good to the ears, but it does nothing.
We must realize the truth more than ever… that it is in our able hands–Filipino artists, Filipino writers, Filipino dreamers, Filipino government workers, Filipino businessmen, Filipino scientists, Filipino workers, Filipino overseas workers Filipino historians and academicians–it is in OUR hands that the future of our People will be decided.
Long ago, Jose Rizal wrote this words in El Filibusterismo:
Where are the youth who will dedicate their innocence, their idealism, their enthusiasm to the good of the country? Where are they who will give generously of their blood to wash away so much shame, crime and abomination? Pure and immaculate must the victim be for the sacrifice to be acceptable. Where are you, young men and young women, who are to embody in yourselves the life-force that has been drained from our veins, the pure ideals that have grown stained in our minds, the fiery enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, come for we await you!
When the call is sounded, will we be brave enough to answer it?
Or will we stand aside, and be silent, as Rizal put them into words:
“…we see our countrymen feel privately ashamed, hearing the growl of their rebelling and protesting conscience, while in public they keep silent and even join the oppressor in mocking the oppressed…”
Tayo ay mga Pilipino, at hindi tayo mananahimilk.
May these posts in 2017 inspire you dear reader, to be brave for the hard year ahead. Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions!
Isang mapagpalayang bagong taon, mga kababayan, mula sa isang historyador.
October ♥ 41: Spain’s Last Stand: An IndioHistorian Review of the film “1898: Los últimos de Filipinas”
January ♥ 1057 : “We are descended from Voyagers”: How Disney’s Moana point to Filipinos’ Distant Past
*Generated using the best of tumblr tool.
Source: studiomoh.com
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The Beauty and the Diplomat: How Carlos P. Romulo fell in love with a Carnival Queen
It was February 1922, and Manila was brimming with excitement.
The annual Manila Carnival was about to begin, just as it always had, always before Lent. The Carnival was a two-week revelry held at the Old Wallace Field in Luneta, where people wore masks of different shapes, carried horns, and sprinkled confetti all around. What would be the carnival, without the two icons it had? It had the enormous Meralco Tower that brightens up the entire carnival with its dazzling lights, and the squatted child-like elfin figure, the Billiken, always laughing, and always funny to look at, right beside the carnival gate.
Amidst all this happy fanfare stood an awkward 24-year old guy, in a strange costume, right at the carnival gate. His expression looked conflicted.
Not so long ago, before he became a Pensionado (a Filipino scholar sent to the United States to study), Carlos was just one of those reporters on the beat to catch a scoop in the Senate, then at the building where the National Museum is today. He couldn’t forget how, even when the Carnival was ongoing and his fellow reporters surrendered and gave in to the Carnival, Carlos stayed on in the Senate Hall. Not long after, Carlos was rewarded. Then Senate President Manuel Quezon suddenly gave an impassioned speech that awakened the dull litany of hearings, condemning the newspaper La Vanguardia for writing against his Filipinization efforts. That was a big scoop Carlos caught, and it was printed front-page at Cable-News. It earned Quezon’s praise, and also his trust.
And so, he was asking himself what he was doing in the Carnival.
When he went to the U.S., earning his Master of Arts at Columbia University, Carlos vividly remembered how he fell in love with a blue-eyed American lady. When Carlos was homesick in New York, it was her who got him through–in those four years of constantly being at his side. Even his landlady in his rented room thought that Carlos would end up marrying this girl.
But all came to naught, at the beck and call of the U.S. Chief Justice and former Philippine governor-general William Howard Taft. When Carlos graduated, he was called upon by Taft, who stood as his guardian while he finished his studies there. Taft, that day, was frank with him, asking him if he was serious with the girl. When Carlos answered that he is, Taft told him he needed to go back home to the Philippines and ask for his parents’ permission first and think it over. Right then and there he was given a ticket to go home. Goodbyes and tears were exchanged with the girl, and the brokenhearted Carlos went home.
And now he’s here at the Carnival. A year had already passed. And he was still trying to move on.
Carlos was hesitant to become an escort for a carnival queen, dressed as her prince consort, complete with a laurel crown on his head, mismatched sandals and a Roman toga. Carlos never liked wearing these silly costumes, and worse, he was there for all eyes to see in the carnival.
The contest for the carnival queen was a complicated affair. Each candidate was sponsored by a newspaper. The Philippines Herald, where Carlos worked as Assistant Editor, sponsored a young 16-year old Filipina from Pagsanjan, named Virginia Vidal Llamas. During the campaign, as Carlos rummaged through the photos of the Herald candidate, he recognized her as an acquaintance in a picnic back in his Columbia University days. As fate would have it, Virginia garnered the most votes, and as such, the Herald chose Carlos as the Queen’s escort for the coronation. The Carnival Queen was given the title, Virginia II.
There were a series of nine balls hosted by the Carnival Queen, aside from the numerous parades, with which the Queen Virginia II would head the floral parade, with her court.
She was described by a granddaughter as:
…the quintessential lady—informed, impeccably dressed, and quietly dignified—who in her own words chose to “glow faintly in her husband’s shadow. Perectly at ease in Western dress, she preferred to wear the traditional terno, complete with pañuelo. Well-versed in English and Spanish, she preferred to speak Tagalog.
She was a lady of substance and dignity. And so, when Virginia heard that her escort refused to be her escort days before, she never hesitated to show her displeasure. After all, a Filipina would not stoop down and beg for any man’s attention. She knew her value. And in the floral parade, and in those nine balls, the poor guy endured the wrath of the beautiful lady.
“I was staring at her… she was so angry and so much prettier than her pictures that I, usually glib of speech, found myself tongue-tied,” writes Carlos in his autobiography.
As Queen Virginia II showed her irritation, the Prince Consort looked on in fear and wonder.
And Carlos surprised himself, when he found himself in love again.
But love is not just a fleeting feeling. And so began the two and a half years of ligawan (courtship). Commitment had proven itself true, and the two finally married on 1 July 1924 in Pagsanjan. They had four sons, all of whom were born before the war.
When the Second World War came to the Philippines, Carlos and his family went with the officials of the Commonwealth Government in Exile in the U.S. Virginia rarely saw her husband in those three years due to military operations. But she was a strong woman, even in the time of uncertainty and danger.
Virginia showed this resilience when she was diagnosed with leukemia in 1968 after years of a happy marriage. Contentment and happiness defined that marriage, something that honed both of them in private and public life. At her deathbed, one of her sons confirmed that Virginia looked at them as though she never feared death. In those final moments, the Queen gave a long look at her Prince Consort, also wrinkled as she was. She gave him orders to take care of the kingdom she would leave behind.
She reassured her dear husband, to be brave, that everything will be alright. Virginia weakly smiled, even in the deepest of pain.
Finally, with tears flowing, the Prince Consort found the courage to let his Queen go.
A Valentine’s Day Post, wishing you a love that endures.
*Photos from www.CarlosPRomulo.Org.
Read more on How Beauty Pageants in the Philippines Originated.
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A Monument to the Forgotten Filipina
When you walk along Manila Bay in a beautiful afternoon, amidst the numerous statues of heroic figures that don the beachfront, one would encounter a disturbing sight– a statue of a veiled Filipino woman, gripping the hem of her veil in fear, with her eyes blindfolded. The statue, beautifully and hauntingly made, stands on a black marble pedestal where a historical marker of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines is installed. The marker inscribes:
MEMORARE:
Ang bantayog na ito ay alaala sa mga Pilipinang naging biktima ng pang-aabuso sa Pilipinas noong panahon ng pananakop ng Hapon (1942-1945). Mahabang panahon ang lumipas bago sila tumestigo at nagbigay pahayag hinggil sa kanilang karanasan.
(MEMORARE: This monument is in memory of the Filipinas who became victims of abuse in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945). It took a long time for them to testify and tell of their struggles.)
The monument, built through the kind donations of selected Manileño citizens and groups such as the Lila Filipina, Tulay Foundation Inc. and Wai Ying Charitable Foundation Fund Company Ltd., may perhaps be the country’s first monument for the Comfort Women in our history–the women who were forced by the Japanese military to be their sex slaves during the Second World War in what the Japanese servicemen then would call “comfort stations.”
According to research findings, there were 17 comfort stations established by the Japanese during the occupation in Manila, 2 in Iloilo City, and an unconfirmed number in Laguna province, Tacloban, Butuan, Cagayan, Dansalan, other parts of Panay Island and Masbate.
*Painting entitled “Rape and Massacre in Ermita” (1947) by Diosdado M. Lorenzo, now displayed at the Art Gallery of the National Museum of the Philippines, depicting the rampage of the Japanese marines during the Battle for the Liberation of Manila in 1945.
After the war, some victims have come forward, especially in countries that were also invaded by Japan, like Korea. But only recently, decades after, did some Filipina women come forward to tell their sad story. It took great courage for them to even talk given the trauma they endured and kept secret, and the stigma in the Filipino patriarchal society that they would encounter. But talk they did, sacrificing even the comfort that their silence gave, for freedom, justice and truth. Some of them still surviving today are now in the ages 80-90. The wrinkles on their faces hide the broken and still mending spirits that still try to live their lives despite what they have lost.
Take for example the story of Rosa Henson, who was forcibly taken by the Japanese into a hospital converted into a garrison. There, in three whole months, she was raped. The other six women with her also had the same ordeal. From there she was transferred to a former rice mill made into a comfort station, where she and the women with her were made to wash clothes by day, and to service Japanese men by night.
Many of the women endured those harrowing days from a month to a year. Many were single women, but some were married when they were captured by the Japanese, forcibly taken from their homes. One Filipina was captured with her husband. Her husband was incarcerated in Fort Santiago, tied upside down and beaten to death, while the woman endured what the Japanese military men did to her. Some who resisted took a lot of beatings. One even had her face singed with a lighted cigarette, that for her, to face a mirror meant that she would be reminded of those horrendous nights.
As interviews were conducted to the surviving women, these women revealed that they feared nighttime as it makes them remember the things that were forcibly done to them. Imagine what it took for them to even forget what happened. They were scarred for life, tried coping by drowning themselves in work, in silence. They tried to move on, some of whom got married, with honorable men who knew their stories and still accepted them. Some had a hard life ahead, above and beyond the struggle to keep the secret that pained them. But some rose to great heights, mustered the courage to speak their truth. They founded groups such as Lila Filipina and Lola Compañera as support groups of the surviving victims.
That was what this monument that stands alone in Manila Bay, means. As the sun sets today, only a silhouette of the woman statue could be seen, as if to say to every passers-by, “Here I am. No matter what you say to me, or to others against me, here I am, and this is what happened to me.” It beckons Filipinos of every background and stature in life to look to the most painful and dark parts of our history… to feel something, and to be empowered to protect our dignity as a people.
Up to this day, Japan has refused to acknowledge this injustice. Many of the surviving women are now old, and as with other revisionist moves in history, it is a topic avoided and not even discussed in Japanese history textbooks.
The Philippine government, through the Department of Social Welfare and Development, has since acknowledge the existence of these lolas (old women) and had implemented a program from 1997-2002 called Assistance to Lolas in Crisis Situations (ALCS) to attend to the surviving comfort women’s psychosocial needs for their healing from trauma. When a society ignores the injustice done to victims, it only leads to their retraumatization. Our acknowledgement therefore matters. That is part of the justice that is due them.
Last December 2017, the installation of the Comfort Women Monument caused an uproar in our very own Department of Foreign Affairs when the Embassy of Japan filed a complaint for the installation of the said monument. The embassy seemed to imply that as the sisterhood city ties of San Francisco and Osaka was severed due to the same issue, Manila might suffer the same fate, as Manila is a sisterhood city of Yokohama, Japan. The DFA was quick to reprimand the agencies responsible, and the City Government of Manila denies responsibility, even implying that the groups that built the monument did not have a permit.
But history is clear. The evidences are here to stay. If Japan has to face their responsibility, we as a country should own this dark history of ours. These are our women. They are our grandmothers. If their countrymen, their leaders, won’t stand up for them, who else will stand up for them? We owe it to them, and to our collective dignity as a people.
In this occasion of the International Women’s Day, let us resolve to ourselves to never forget. We remember them, for their deepest of pain are ours too.
*All photos of the Comfort Women Monument are mine taken last 2 March 2018.
To learn more about the testimonies of Filipino comfort women, check out this link that includes an excerpt of their oral history interview transcripts, publicized with their permission.
Reblogged
The Mambo President: A Tribute
It was November 1953, in one small town in Zambales.
As crowds gathered amidst the sweltering heat under the noonday sun, above the platform stood a tall moreno figure–5’11” tall to be exact. As soon as he spoke, the crowd went wild, raising their placards, “Magsaysay for President”, “Magsaysay is our Guy”, and “We want Monching!”
*President Ramon Magsaysay, speaking at the crowd at night, at Iriga, Camarines. Photo from the National Library of the Philippines.
*President Ramon Magsaysay in his travel to the farthest reaches of the Philippines. Photo from the Presidential Museum and Library.
It was hard to imagine that this sturdy brown-skinned man in summer polo and khaki pants was a former mechanic-turned-war hero who had just recently resigned as Defense secretary. The euphoria of the crowd was infectious as Mambo Magsaysay jingle was heard in the air that left the entire country under its last song syndrome spell. Nothing could have prepared his opponent in the presidential race, President Elpidio Quirino. No matter what Quirino did, it did not deter the people’s admiration for the guy in that fateful election season. Not since 1946 had the Philippines had a populist president, one whose words captured the imaginations and longings of the lowly and the forgotten. And for the very first time, as the election results came in, Magsaysay won a landslide win for the Philippine presidency, a whooping 68.9% of all registered voters, a figure that is unmatched to this day.
*The viral campaign jingle, “Mambo Magsaysay” composed by Raul Manglapus in 1953. It was so influential that it was also played in the EDSA People Power Revolution in 1986.
Perhaps the images of what the nation imagined him to be would make us understand his great following among Filipinos. Even when he was thrusted into politics, Magsaysay proved promising. As Congressman in 1949, he was touted by the Philippines Free Press as the “Ten Most Useful Congressmen” chosen for his and the other nine’s “industry and competence.”
That time, when the Philippines had just survived World War II, who could forget how in 1951, Magsaysay, as Defense Secretary of Quirino, carried the body of the slain Moises Padilla himself, that great war hero who challenged a political dynasty in Negros Occidental, who was beaten, humiliated, and shot multiple times at the town plaza of Magallon? Magsaysay carrying the body of a budding politician, killed by the private army of a threatened corrupt governor—that powerful photo encapsulated the feudalism of the countryside, and the man who the people saw would challenge and change the status quo.
And in a sudden twist, amidst the rebellion in Central Luzon, instead of fighting and annihilating the rebels, Magsaysay lended his ear to the Hukbalahap, many of whom laid down their arms and rejoined the people, apparently assured that Magsaysay was deserving of their trust.
When he ascended the Presidency and administered government in three short years, the expectation was really high. Magsaysay streamlined government services by merging some agencies and creating new ones, to alleviate poverty and address prevalent problems. He signed several laws addressing the issues of agrarian reform, cementing on the people’s consciousness his commitment to the common people.
Historians paint a different, and more balanced picture though. Magsaysay apparently was, “pragmatic, not ideological… He had little patience with written reports” but “ quick in grasping problems and ideas orally presented to him.” His close associations with CIA Edward Lansdale was also in question, as Magsaysay implemented a mix of psy-war, and carrot-and-stick style of wooing the rebels. Magsaysay’s reliance in the U.S. irked even the pro-American Carlos P. Romulo himself. Romulo was apparently instructed by Magsaysay to ask for instructions from an adviser of the U.S. Embassy. Romulo retorted, “Mr. President, you can’t do that!.. That man.. I’m not even sure if he isn’t in the CIA.” Magsaysay’s economic policies, described by historian Lewis Gleeck, was “vacillating and uncertain,” and his government “proved ineffective.” Economic historian A.V.H. Hartendorp was also not impressed.
Perhaps if Magsaysay did not die in a plane crash, our collective memory of him would have proven to be more balanced. We after all, are a people with a tendency for fanaticism, putting all our hopes on one leader, who understandingly would fail our high expectations.
*President Ramon Magsaysay talking to a farmer, unknown location. Photo from the National Library of the Philippines.
So for the sake of argument, let us deliberately forget how the plane crashed today, 61 years ago. Or how the nation grieved greatly for the fallen leader, and how eulogies were uttered as if Magsaysay was the greatest president the country ever had. While these raise Magsaysay to heights unknown in our reckoning, it does not do him great service, but only blurs the imperfect but great man that he was. “His heart was in the right place,” as many people of the time would surmise. While history has judged that that is never enough to fix the country, perhaps that is good starting point for progress.
*Photo of the remains of the presidential plane “Mt. Pinatubo” Douglas C-47 Skytrain on the crash site at Mt. Manunggal, Cebu, circa 1957. Photo from the Presidential Museum and Library.
*The funeral procession of Ramon Magsaysay as it passes through Escolta in 1957. Photo from the National Library of the Philippines.
Let us remember him then, how Magsaysay travelled the far reaches of the islands of the Philippines, had his shoes dirtied by muck of the rice fields, his sweat on his summer floral polo that he wore, or the flashy un-elitist smile. Or how Magsaysay made headlines when he opened the Malacañan Palace to the public for the very first time and called it “the Palace of the People,” where anyone, from the humblest tinderas to the affluent matronas, could enter the palace and talk to the President, through his Presidential Complaints and Action Committee, and air their concerns and misgivings. Perhaps in his short presidency we have misunderstood Magsaysay all along–that it is not in one person that we should all put our hope on. No president is perfect. To see them as messiahs is to smear our dignity as a democratic nation, whose power and drive comes from all of us, big and small.
*Ramon Magsaysay in the mountains with farmers, circa early 50s. Photo from the Presidential Museum and Library.
By giving us, the People, the respect and attention we deserved, Magsaysay’s legacy point us to the truth that our democracy is only as dignified, collected and people-centered as we want it to be, if we, together, will work on it and be vigilant with this responsibility. We are a government OF the People, BY the People, and FOR the People, and the People elected an outsider of the political establishment for change. But Magsaysay never abused this temporal power over. Reaching across political lines, Magsaysay was a unifier, and always emphasized the value of his people. His emphasis on human rights, that “he who has less in life should have more in law” was evidently seen in his presidency.
I am reminded of a line in the Magsaysay Credo, inscribed in white marble at the Ramon Magsaysay Awards Foundation building:
“I believe that this nation is endowed with a vibrant and stout heart, and possesses untapped capabilities and incredible resiliency.”
True leadership does not make one’s self the strongman, but envisions and empowers his People to be strong.
Pray that we will have another Mambo President.
In the occasion of the 61st death anniversary of the late President Ramon Magsaysay (1907-1957).
Watch the documentary made by the National Historical Commission of the Philippines on Magsaysay’s life, here, from the Museo ni Ramon Magsaysay at Castillejos, Zambales.
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#Goyo2018
Source: henantonioluna
Hi first post! I'm not new on tumblr, this is actually my second account. I want to start over again, 'cause my first account was messy. Anyway, ayoko na mag-ingles! Ingles-inglesin ako sa sariling bayan ko p*--, jowk. Ako si Binibining Salome! 'Di mo alam na baka finofollow kita o nastalk na kita (I'm a damn good stalker if you can call stalking a good thing lol). I stalk accounts na may History, Filipiniana, art, mga panitikan atbp. Ewan ko hilig ko lang, so kung ikaw ay may hilig sa ganito at certified fangurl o fanboy ka baka nastalk na kita haha! Please don't be scared, I'm not a harmful stalker. I'm in need of someone who shares my interest (or finding evidences that I'm not the only one with these what they call "weird interests and baduy" ) Kapag may nakikita naman ako tuwang-tuwa ako dahil may mga bago akong nalalaman. Yun nga lang naranasan ko nang ma-block, so just to clear it out, kinse anyos po ako and I'm completely harmless! Magandang gabi!