Torn and frayed in Manila

Jose Rizal: The Man Who Refused to Give Up His Reason

Leon Ma. Guerrero’s biography of Rizal, The First Filipino, is a rambling life, punctuated by too many lengthy quotations, and written in a discursive style. However, it contains genuine insight into the Philippines’ enigmatic national hero and presents a consistent and convincing picture of Rizal as a torchbearer for rationalism and humanism martyred by an essentially medieval colonial government violently opposed to independent thought.

One thing I have never understood about Rizal is why he did not save himself while he could. Having moved most of his family to Hong Kong in 1891¬¬-1892, why did he not settle for life as simple bourgeois eye doctor with a second career as a novelist? Instead of returning to the maelstrom, why did he not decide to have an arms-length relationship with the politics of his country? As Guerrero recounts in great detail, by then he had already fallen out with many Madrid-based exiles, particularly Marcelo H. Pilar, and had refused to write any more for the journal Solidaridad. Even after his return to the Philippines and exile to Dapitan, it was not too late. Why did Rizal not take the advice of Governor General Blanco in 1894 and go to Spain? Or simply escape from Dapitan as many of his friends urged him to do?

Rizal’s own explanation of his return from Hong Kong is contained in a letter “to the Filipinos” dated 20 June 1892.

The step I have taken or am about to take is very risky no doubt and I do not have to say that I have given it much thought. I know that almost everyone is against it but I know too that almost no one knows what goes in my heart. I cannot go on living knowing that so many suffer unjust persecution because of me … I also want to show those who deny our patriotism that we know how to die doing our duty and for our convictions. What does death matter if one dies for what one loves, for one’s country and loved ones?”

This is fine as far as it goes, but it is too general to provide the complete answer—it is possible to imagine Ninoy Aquino saying the same 94 years later. It seems to me there are at least four main ways of explaining why Rizal made the choices he did.

1. He was a true intellectual who valued ideas above everything, even his own life—“a man should die for his duty and his convictions” he wrote to his parents (note not “be prepared to die for his convictions”). Rizal knew, with a certainty only the truly brilliant can ever have, that his ideas were correct and would conquer the forces of obscurantism that overwhelmed his country. Even on his last night, while assailed by priests trying to force him to recant, he clung to his Enlightenment beliefs: “But Father, what do you want me to do? It seems I cannot give up my reason” he told one persistent Jesuit.

2. Rizal found the mantle of leadership of the Filipinos impossible to shake off in favour of bourgeois respectability. Since his patriotic speech to celebrate the gold medal awarded to Juan Luna’s Spoliarium in 1884 (“the Oriental chrysalis is breaking out of its sheath”), he had been anointed the leader of the illustrados (although Guerero points out that “Rizal did not have the temperament that makes for success in politics”).

3. Rizal’s tragic and in part self-inflicted death was consistent with a dominant trait of Filipinos, a love of melodrama and the dramatic gesture.

The fourth possible explanation comes not from Guerrero, but from Rizal from Within by Ante Radaic, who refers to Rizal’s “Hamlet disposition.” (See Nick Joaquin’s essay on the two works here.)

"Rizal, the bold dreamer, strikes me as weak of will and irresolute for action and life. His withdrawal, his timidity, proved a hundred times, his timorousness, are no more than facets of his Hamlet disposition. To have been a practical revolutionary he would have needed the simple mentality of an Andrés Bonifacio. He was, I think, a faint-heart and a dubitator."

This is too strong to describe a man who displayed such heroism in his final hours, but at key points in his life Rizal did show great indecision. None of his numerous relationships with women ended in marriage until his wedding to Josephine Bracken in his death cell two hours before his execution. He travelled continuously around Europe, and his inability to settle down anywhere, or even to decide on Europe over Asia, suggests a man overwhelmed by the many and competing choices that lay before him.

This indecision pursued him to the end. Despite the statement in the letter to the Filipinos quoted above, when Rizal was finally arrested in 1898 for the crime of subversion he had just arrived in Barcelona on his way to Cuba to join the Spanish forces fighting the revolutionaries as a doctor, surely a curious occupation for a revolutionary. It is fascinating to speculate what would have happened to this brilliant man had Bonifacio not begun the revolution a few months earlier, which Rizal was unjustly executed for leading. The fourth reason for Rizal’s refusal to leave danger before it was too late would therefore read something like this.

4. Unable to decide on a career (doctor, writer, political agitator), a wife (Leonora, Tottie, Josephine, to name just a few), where to live (Madrid, London, Paris, Heidelberg, Hong Kong, Manila, Borneo), he remained in the Philippines, paralysed by indecision, until events overtook him.

To accept at least part of Radaic’s thesis does not seem to me to diminish Rizal. He was an intellectual and an artist, why should we expect him to be a Napoleon as well?

There are so many sides to this fascinating man that I can well understand why historians such as Ambeth Ocampo have dedicated much of their lives to try to figure him out. However, it is the preternatural calmness with which he awaited his (completely unjust) execution that is the most impressive part about him. To the end, he was vigorously debating theology with the many friars who pestered him to recant, writing poignant letters to his family (“Tell our father I remember him. How? I remember his tenderness and love. I ask him to forgive me for the grief which I unwillingly caused him”), marrying Josephine, and of course writing the beautiful poem Mi último adios. Perhaps the most affecting part of Rizal’s final preparations is in the last line of a letter to his family, in which he asks them to look after the dulce extranjera of Mi último adios

Pity poor Josephine.

This Bigote Business

Me bigote?

There is some justice in the fact that it is former President Estrada’s bigote (moustache), for so long a critical prop of his roguish image, that is now causing him so much grief.

Jinggoy Estrada’s claim that “There are so many men sporting a moustache,” is simply not correct. Compared with, say, India, this is a clean-shaven country; Erap the actor knew that when he was constructing his on-screen persona, hence the bigote. Therefore, whatever the truth of the rest of Cezar Mancao’s statement, his claim that “bigote was the commonly known pseudonym of Erap” rings true.

The most intriguing article I have read about the Dacer-Corbito killing is “Dacer’s Killers: Who and Why?” by Supreme Court Justice Antonio F. Carpio, originally published on 24 June 2001 (when Carpio was in private practice) and reprinted in Friday’s Inquirer. Please read it—I think it is important for two main reasons.

First, Carpio points out that an affidavit by one of the accused policemen Glenn G. Dumlao, “is like a map that leads us right to the very doorsteps of Dacer’s killers.” In essence, Dumlao links the killing to papers on the BW resources scandal supposedly held by Dacer, thus providing a motive for the rub-out. According to Dumlao, Michael Ray Aquino, one of the shadowy figures who people this murderous cast, had been ordered by Lacson to enter Dacer’s office at the Manila Hotel to steal documents. The hotel surveillance cameras made that impossible, with the result that we all know. Dumlao’s affidavit was eventually withdrawn, but if it can be corroborated by other evidence this version of events could prove very damaging for Erap.

Second, Carpio’s article recreates the atmosphere surrounding Erap’s mafia presidency. A stock market fraud carried out by the president and his business cronies that virtually destroyed the national stock market; policemen stalking hotel corridors in an attempt to carry out illegal activities; an abduction in broad daylight on one of Manila’s busiest thoroughfares, almost certainly by policemen; a grisly murder in an isolated spot; a key witness (Teofelo Vina) gunned down at a party in Cavite before he was able to execute an affidavit—it is a poisonous mix of Watergate and the Sopranos, carried out by PNP goons.

I really hope that the media and the Department of Justice pursue this, so we can get to the bottom of this bigote business.

Were Ninoy Aquino and Bubby Dacer killed on presidential orders?

The release of the 10 remaining soldiers convicted of assassinating Ninoy Aquino in 1983 in the same week as an announcement that a former policeman is willing to spill the beans on the murder of publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver in 2000 is an intriguing coincidence. How high do orders for assassinations go in this country? Did the instructions to kill Aquino and Dacer come from Presidents Marcos and Estrada?

Aquino Assassination

Most commentators have argued that the Aquino assassination was too crude and blatant for an experienced operator like Marcos. In America’s Boy, James Hamilton-Paterson tells a nice story: “The president was alleged to have thrown a dish from his bedside table at the faithful Ver, furiously exclaiming ‘Idiot! Now they’ll all blame me.’”*

However, Hamilton-Paterson’s claim that “Oddly enough, Marcos was the one person not to have been seriously blamed” is not correct. In Waltzing with a Dictator (pp. 348¬¬-349), Raymond Bonner notes the following.

In July 1983, after Aquino had let it be known that he planned to return to the Philippines, Marcos asked one of his most trusted assistants to research political assassinations and expressed particular interest in the killing of Archbishop Romero, a human rights activist gunned down with a single bullet while saying mass in El Salvador.

US intelligence reported that Marcos sent Colonel Abdilla, a notorious torturer, to the USA to trail Aquino. Some intelligence officials felt that Abdilla was under orders to assassinate Aquino if the opportunity arose.

Bonner continues:

Abdilla’s mission and other evidence led one [US] diplomat, who was a in a senior position in the embassy at the time of the assassination, to conclude, “It was Marcos. He wanted get to rid of him. In effect, there was a standing order to shoot on sight. The order had gone out to take care of Aquino. It wasn’t an order to kill at the airport.” The operative words were the last three. Marcos wanted Aquino killed. But he didn’t give the order to do so at the airport.

Nevertheless, Bonner concludes that “most people believe that the cumulative weight of the evidence points to Imelda Marcos and her brother Kokoy Romualdez … The two were motivated, some American officials concluded, by their belief that Marcos was dying and by Mrs Marcos’s desire to run the country if he did.”

The official inquiry into the killing of Aquino, the Agrava Commission, was split, but unanimous on the involvement of the military, which most have taken to mean the head of the armed forces and Marcos’s fellow Ilocano, General Fabian Ver. In the words of Roberto Ongpin, the trade and industry minister, “Galman did it. Ver set him up” (America’s Boy, p. 372).

There is also plenty of evidence to implicate Imelda Marcos in the assassination, not least because the Agrava Commission found that, at an operational level, the operation was masterminded by General Luther Custodio, whose relationship to Imelda was succinctly described by a US intelligence official, “She owned him, lock, stock, and barrel” (Waltzing with a Dictator (p.350).

My guess is that, while Marcos probably didn’t issue a direct order, he certainly thought about it. By 1983, he was a very sick man, and in the atmosphere of paranoia that surrounds the sickbed of a strongman, it is reasonable to look for those who might be looking to establish a chain of succession, a chain that would be threatened by the arrival of Aquino. That seems to point to Imelda in concert with Ver, a conclusion that is also reached by Mark Thompson in The Anti-Marcos Struggle (p. 115). It is a shame that the assassination is rarely if ever raised in interviews with Imelda, which mainly concentrate on banal questions about her shoe collection.

Dacer and Corbito Assassination

Former Senior Superintendent Cesar Mancao has apparently signed an affidavit identifying the perpetrators and the mastermind behind the brutal killing of publicist Bubby Dacer and his unfortunate driver Emmanuel Corbito in 2000, a skeleton that has been rattling around in the Estrada-Lacson closet for the last eight years. I think someone had better tell Ping that running around all over the town denying a crime no one has directly accused you of might not be such a smart move. On the other hand Ping, as head of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, was Mancao’s boss, so it seems unlikely that he is going to escape an accusation of involvement.

The really intriguing question is the participation of Erap. Did he issue an order? Or did he, as writers have argued above for Marcos, simply set the context for the killing and allow his subordinates to figure out what he wanted? Or did he have nothing to do with it?

Option C is clearly the one Erap himself wants us to believe. Speaking of his meeting with Dacer (“one of my good friends”) in Malacañang shortly before Dacer’s abduction, a meeting he can’t deny, since it will have been officially recorded, Erap reminiscences in today’s Inquirer “We talked about many things, for old time’s sake.”

That’s not quite how I remember contemporaneous reports of that meeting. In fact after Dacer’s disappearance newspapers reported that his meeting with Estrada had been acrimonious, shouting had been heard from inside the room, and Dacer had left hurriedly. Given that Dacer was abducted and killed in November 2000, at the beginning of the impeachment proceedings that were to lead to Erap’s fall two months later, there was conjecture that Dacer had tried to blackmail Erap by threatening to expose some more of his good friend’s shady dealings. Someone should dig up those old newspaper articles I think.

In all this interesting speculation, we should not lose sight of the pure horror of Dacer and Corbito’s last moments. Here is the account of Diloy and Jimmy Lopez, both of Indang, Cavite, who witnessed this ghastly scene:

Lopez said a group led by SPO4 Soberano arrived at his home in Barangay Buen Alejos I, Indang, on the afternoon of Nov. 24, and asked him where they could hold the two victims for safekeeping.

Hog-tied

Dacer and Corbito were already hog-tied and their eyes and mouths covered with masking tape when they were brought to Lopez’s house, according to Wycoco.

Lopez recalled that the party arrived in two vehicles. Dacer and Corbito were still alive and were inside a white Toyota Lite Ace, he said.

Soberano and the two other PAOCTF agents, Escalante and Purificacion, were aboard another vehicle, he said.

From Lopez’s narration, it was not clear which car carried SPO3 Torres.
"When they arrived, they were looking for a place to hide the two men they brought with them. I said I would find a place, so I brought the group to the garage of my brother, William," Lopez said in Filipino.

Lopez said the group waited until it was dark. Around 8 p.m., the party left for a nearby creek, bringing the two victims along, he said. He told reporters he stayed behind because he has trouble walking long distances.

At this point, Diloy took up the narration.

Face down

Upon reaching the creek, Diloy said, he was ordered to gather firewood for the pyre.

Dacer and Corbito were made to lie face down, he said. Three men used the electrical cord to strangle them to death, he told the news conference.

Asked by reporters to identify the killers, Diloy replied, "Mauro Torres, William and Diego."

The murderers placed the bodies on top of the pyre of wood and tires, doused them with gasoline and set them on fire, he narrated.

They let the corpses burn for about half an hour, he said. When it was over, he walked toward nearby Binakayan town, leaving the others behind.

* In the version in Waltzing with a Dictator, Marcos throws something at Imelda (not Ver), hitting her on the cheek.

Meanwhile the killings go on …

For people who are basically charming, decent, and gentle, Filipinos spend a lot of time killing each other. After a lull in the extrajudicial killings that were attributed to the Armed Forces of the Philippines by the report of UN special rapporteur Philip Alston in 2007, another atrocity has been reported from Davao

Believed kidnapped by military agents only 24 hours earlier, the daughter of a ranking communist guerrilla has turned up dead with stab wounds and torture marks. A farmer found the body of teacher Rebelyn Pitao, 20, late on Thursday near an irrigation ditch in Purok 5 in Barangay San Isidro, Carmen, Davao del Norte. She was the younger daughter of Leoncio Pitao, aka Commander Parago, of the New People’s Army (NPA).

The President has announced an investigation into the killing, which will no doubt prove to be as effective as all the previous commissions and inquiries into brutal killings that might lead to inconvenient places.

Still, everyone knows it is very hard to receive justice in Philippines unless you have powerful friends, and there is one intriguing element to the despicable killing of this young woman:

Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, a close friend of Pitao or Commander Parago, called Rebelyn's murder "a deed most foul." "Kung galit sila (NPA), mas galit ako (If the NPA is angry, I’m more angry)," he said.

Duterte is a pretty big man in Davao and this killing of the daughter of one of his friends on his home turf is big loss of face. Let’s see how he responds.