A 4


The Manila Times


SATURDAY


S eptember 18, 2010


Edit orial Art of the matter


O


NE of the more interesting ideas that prize-winning playwright and National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) executive director Maria Lourdes “Malou” Jacob offered in an exclusive roundtable discussion with the editors and reporters of The Manila Times on Tuesday is the idea of employing our arts and culture to address, even attack an altogether different kind of “cul- ture”—the pervasive culture of corruption, discrimination and violence in our country. Granted, this idea is hardly new. But the strange thing is, a lot of us seem to treat it as though it is something novel, even groundbreaking. Strange because our history has shown how many of our artists—composers, creative writers, painters—have deeply and totally espoused this idea. Consider Jose Rizal. Who would have thought that a pair


of provocative Spanish-language novels written by a Laguna- born ilustrado would inspire a one-time theater practi- tioner—Andres Bonifacio—to establish a clandestine movement dedicated to secure independence from Spain through armed force. A secret society which, despite being plagued by all sorts of problems, had managed to accom- plish its objective, if only for a few years. The early 20th-century dramatist Aurelio Tolentino was another. In a time when speaking out against the Ameri- can colonizers meant risking imprisonment or worse, he courageously wrote and staged an anti-imperialist and heavily allegorical play—Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow)—that called for the burning of the revered Stars and Stripes in one scene. It’s easy to imagine how the arrogant white men must have turned red with rage upon hearing about or watching the “offensive” work.


The spiritual descendants of these two talented patriots keep their legacy alive in varying degrees. Among our novelists, National Artist for Literature F. Sionil José stands out for consistently articulating and rendering the appalling political and social problems confronting Filipinos. The same applies to award-winning filmmakers working today like Joel Lamangan and Brillante Mendoza and to advocacy-minded theater organizations like the Philippine Educational Theater Association (PETA), which staged, among others, Jacob’s Juan Tamban—perhaps her best-known play—during its peak in the 1970s and early 1980s. For her part, Jacob has put her own idea into practice by spearheading a series of worthwhile projects that brought her to some of the country’s most marginalized communi- ties. In such seemingly bleak settings, she and her associates conducted workshops, exposing participants to dance, literature, music and theater. She shared with those present at the roundtable discussion how much the participants appreciated her efforts, how cathartic the workshops have been for them. Indeed, art can heal and transform lives as much as it can inspire and incite change.


Missing the point Yet for all the power that art wields, most, if not all of our country’s leaders somehow fail to recognize that. Worse, some of those who do tend to dismiss it for some inexplica- ble reason, reluctant to regard it beyond its ability to delight and entertain people. Count President Benigno Aquino 3rd as belonging to such seemingly benighted folk, if his lack of a clear and defining policy for the arts and culture sector is any indication. The absence of such a concrete policy reflects how the


government, in general, pays very little attention to the development and welfare of artists. Artists who struggle to juggle the demands of everyday life—earning a living, putting food on the table, raising a family—and the occa- sionally ill-timed demands of their Muse. Artists who sometimes feel belittled and left out by other sectors because of the erroneous perception that they contribute little to the country’s progress. Artists deserve better treatment than that. For this to change, it’s important for President Aquino to recognize that he and the arts and culture sector can cooperate to achieve surprisingly similar goals. Think about it—he has vowed to fight corruption; so does the arts and culture sector as embodied by the NCCA. The President, never as brilliant or as charismatic as his revered father and namesake, hopes to inspire people; the arts can extend some assistance in that matter. The Chief Executive has shown us a vision—computer-generated, no less, if one remembers his campaign ads—of a “straight path;” the arts can present a clearer and sharper view of that path in his behalf and those he serves. We have earlier raised the idea of culture and the arts to combat the culture of corruption, discrimination and violence in our country as nothing new. What can prob- ably make it so is for the President to try to adopt it as his own. If he does, perhaps others will follow his lead. What does he have to lose? The thought may sound revolution- ary to some; but come to think of it, we are no strangers to revolutions and revolutionary ideas. Our history will tell us that.


SATURDAY September 18, 2010


The Manila Times DANTE F. M. ANG 2ND, Executive Editor


FRED DE LA ROSA, Chairman Editorial Board RENE Q. BAS, Editor in Chief ROMY P. MARIÑAS, News Editor


ARNOLD S. TENORIO, Business Editor CONRAD M. CARIÑO, National Editor BRIAN M. AFUANG, Art Director RENE H. DILAN, Photo Editor


 DANTE F. M. ANG 2ND, President and CEO


Telephone All Departments. 524-5665 to 67 Telefax 528-1729; Subscription: 524-5664 Local 222 URL http://www.manilatimes.net • e-mail newsboy1@manilatimes.net Letters to the editor


THE MANILA TIMES is published daily at 2/F Dante Ang and Associates Building, 409 A. Soriano Avenue, Intramuros, Manila 1020


VOLUME 111 NUMBER 339


Writing in English in the Fifties (Continued from September 11)


Pomeroy had left Diliman. I saw him leave the Main Building then (now Malcolm Hall) to get in a beat-up car, filled with grim-look- ing men, waiting in the driveway. I had no inkling about the times, harassed as I was by frat “mas- ters.” By summer of 1952, I learned that an American Huk named Pomeroy and his wife Celia Mariano were captured in Nueva Ecija. Their stay in the hills teaching new Huk cadres ended when they were pursued by the military in the Sierra Madre wilds from Laguna to Central Luzon. This long march would be the subject of Pomeroy’s The Forest (1963), later translated by Rogelio Sikat as Ang Gubat. This part about Pomeroy, spe- cifically about what he wrote in For a Significant Filipino Literature for the 49 to 50 Apprentice, recalls another American writer, Wallace Stegner, who asked during a 1951 visit to UP Diliman: where were the stories about the agrarian unrest? Stegner was no ideologue like Pomeroy, but it seems he was simply referring to the duty of writers to bear witness, consider- ing that young Diliman writers had endured army checkpoints and seen the Markang Bungo flag of troopers of Col. Valeriano’s Nenita Unit, trucking in and out


B


BY PAUL HANDLEY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE


RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s planned massive arms deal with the United States is aimed at establishing air superiority over rival Iran while also addressing weaknesses bared in border fighting with Yemeni rebels, experts said on Tuesday. Under the potential $600 billion (47 billion euros), 10-year deal, the Saudis would be authorized to buy 84 new F-15 fighters and upgrade 70 more, as well as buy 178 attack helicopters and various missiles. That should give the oil giant a clear advantage over Iran and any other of its neighbors save Israel, experts said. The deal, revealed by US defense officials on Monday, would represent a sweeping upgrade of Saudi Arabia’s military that could also see an additional $24 to $27 billion spent on naval vessels and missile defense systems, a Saudi defense expert said. “It’s so big because we need an


entire modernization of our armed forces,” he said. The package would also include 70 Apache, 72 Black Hawk and 36 Little Bird helicopters; HARM anti- radar missiles, precision-guided JDAM bombs, Hellfire missiles and fighter pilot helmets that have high-tech displays. The goal is to clearly establish


Riyadh’s military superiority over its neighbors, including its current Arab allies, defense analysts said. “We need to guarantee our security and the security of our


Y summer of 1950, Apprentice editor and classmate William


mourned Manuel Arguilla’s death in the hands of the Kempeitai by writing, “we have too many patri- ots . . . too few writers.”


ELMER A. ORDOÑEZ


of their camp in the former US Signal Corps site (now UP Bliss housing). The anti-Huk cam- paign was in full blast in the early 50s, as Stegner himself saw in his trip outside Manila. Indeed, how could we have missed writing about those times in our fiction? Any assessment of post-war crea-


tive work in English would show that Pomeroy and Stegner were right. Was it escapism when writers then wrote introspectively about the Pacific War, lost loves and variations on the themes of growing up, dis- enchantment and epiphany? The writers survived a brutal Japanese occupation and a destructive “lib- eration,” but their stories were de- rived from models—Chekov, Hemingway, Faulkner, James, Conrad, Joyce, to name a few— taught in UP Padre Faura and Diliman by workshop masters Paz Marquez Benitez and NVM Gon- zalez, for one. They taught us pri- marily the craft of fiction. Critics like Manuel Viray, Edilberto Tiempo and Franz Arcellana talked about technique and style rather than so- cial content in literature. Franz


»analysis


Huge Saudi arms deal aimed at Iran, Yemen troubles – analysts


allies,” said the Saudi expert. The Saudis are most worried


about Iran’s push to build missiles with greater precision and longer range and possibly a nuclear weapons capability. The United States, Israel and


many Western countries suspect Iran is using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop weapons, which is denied by Tehran. The existing Saudi fleet of 70 F-


15s—to be updated under the new contract—as well as 80 European-built Tornados, and 72 Typhoon Eurofighters currently being delivered, already gives the Saudis air superiority, according to Theodore Karasik of the Institute for Near East & Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. “Iran’s air force is not very


capable. I think either the Saudis or the UAE [United Arab Emir- ates] could take them out quickly,” he said. Any conflict with Iran could endanger the Saudis’ principal oil production facilities, and the arms package would increase defense and counterattack capabilities. “If Israel is not involved, Saudi Arabia will have to take care of its own air space against the Iranian threat,” said Karasik.


He said the package is also a


response to failures in Saudi Arabia’s three-month assault on Shiite rebels along the Yemeni border in late 2009 and early 2010. The better-armed Saudi forces


lost at least 109 men in guerrilla- type fighting in the craggy border mountains, and the conflict went on many weeks longer than they expected. “The Saudi forces were not


prepared for this type of warfare. They suffered much in the same way the Soviets did in Afghani- stan,” Karasik said. The strike helicopters, the JDAM


smart bombs, and night warfare technology possibly in the package would boost Saudi capabilities in this kind of scenario, according to Karasik. The Saudis had also wanted to buy missile-carrying drones like the Predator used by US forces in Afghanistan, but were unlikely to get them, according to another analyst who requested anonymity. The roots of the massive deal go


back to the administration of former US President George Bush, who laid the ground in 2007 for large defense sales to America’s Gulf allies in the face of Iran’s perceived threat, hoping to deepen security ties. “This [deal] locks us in to 10 to 15 years of close defense coopera-


tion” with Washington, the Saudi expert said. Analysts saw the deal as posing


little threat to Israel, and, in the way it deepens US-Saudi ties, actually benefitting the Jewish state. Israeli leaders, as a matter of


habit, will criticize the deal, said Yiftah Shapir, a military expert at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. “But in this case it’s not a real


threat to Israel. We really have to see it as directed against Iran. In this case, Israel and Saudi Arabia are on the same side. They are not used to it,” he said.


One crucial part of the package—an advanced radar configuration for the new F-15s— has not been decided yet, according to the Saudi expert. The Pentagon did not give any details on this. However, Aviation Week and Space Technology reported in August that the Saudis are seeking a Raytheon- made AESA [active electronically scanned array] digital radar that allows pilots to spot small, moving objects, like fighters, 150 nautical miles away. The current standard radars only pick up large objects like airliners at that distance, Aviation Week and Space Technology said.


Discussions about the Huk re- bellion were muted, perhaps be- cause of the local version of McCarthyism and perhaps be- cause a number of writers were sympathetic to the radical move- ment and preferred to mask their politics with subjective themes in their writing. It would take Sen. Claro Recto to shake the young writers from their stupor or pretense when he openly assailed US imperialism in his com- mencement address to UP gradu- ates in April 1951. It would take several more years for this call for renewed national- ism and social consciousness to take effect. By 1956, in the Appren- tice, a young writer, Alma Pecson, had the war in Central Luzon as backdrop for her story May Day Funeral, using the Markang Bungo as emblematic of the PC’s (Phil- ippine Constabulary) repression of the peasant rebellion. From 1948 to 1957 the Appren-


tice came out regularly, edited by younger members of the UP Writ- ers Club who had called them- selves the Ravens. By 1952 the Palanca Awards were instituted at NVM’s suggestion, and it was this group, together with writers from other schools, who competed with their mentors for the awards. In 1953, NVM founded the Diliman


Review in the manner of Kenyon Review. By 1955 a new journal called Comment was founded to counter conservative thinking or the prevailing “fear of ideas.” By 1957 the writers may well


have gotten their bearings with the founding of the Philippine Center of PEN International. The follow- ing year, the first post-war national conference of Filipino writers took place, with “The Filipino Writer and National Growth” as the con- ference’s theme. Senator Recto de- livered his keynote lecture—in Tagalog—on how the subversive ideas in Rizal’s novels (through characters like Elias, Cabesang Tales, Capitang Pabling and even Padre Florentino) influenced Andres Bonifacio to ignite the revolution. By then, nationalism was a given, despite the efforts by attending American writers to denigrate it. Meanwhile, a new generation of writers in English and Filipino had already embarked on creat- ing literature for social change. Writers who were no longer in- timidated by local Red-baiting/ witch hunting. They were to fig- ure prominently in the radical movement of the 60s and on- ward; a good number still pro- duce nationalist works in English and other Philippine languages, more than what well-meaning foreigners like Pomeroy or Stegner could have dreamt of.


eaordonez2000@yahoo.com


opinion


THE OTHER VIEW


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