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By Rome Jorge
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Photo by
KJ Rosales |
At times of peace, the friends a man keeps
define his character. His quiet toil speaks of his dignity. But at
times that call for blood and iron, a man’s worth can be weighed
by the villains he dares battle. Their rage and vengeance betray how
close to heart he strikes and how deep he wounds.
When fascism took hold of our country, Jose
“Pete” Lacaba picked a fight with biggest man he
could—then-President Ferdinand Marcos and his US-backed military
dictatorship. Under the nom de plum Ruben Cuevas, Lacaba published
his poem “Prometheus Unbound” at Focus, a magazine that had
allied itself with the Marcos regime.
Mars shall glow tonight
Artemis is out of sight.
Rust in the twilight sky
Colors a bloodshot eye,
Or shall I say that dust
Sunders the sleep of the just?
Hold fast to the gift of fire!
I am rage! I am wrath! I am ire!
The vulture sits on my rock,
Licks at the chains that mock
Emancipation’s breath,
Reeks of death, death, death.
Death shall not unclench me.
I am earth, wind, and sea!
Kisses bestow on the brave
That defy the damp of the grave
And strike the chill hand of
Death, with the flaming sword of love.
Orion stirs. The vulture
Retreats from the hard, pure
Thrusts of the spark that burns,
Unbounds, departs, returns
To pluck out of death’s fist
A god who dared to resist.
The first letter of every line spelled “Marcos
Hitler Diktador Tuta”—a favorite protest chant in
anti-dictatorship rallies. Using his own opponents’ massive
propaganda machinery, the frail poet had deftly executed literary
jujitsu. Published and circulated nationwide in 1973—a year well
into martial law when scores of Marcos opponents had already been
killed, tortured and jailed—he had accomplished more than just a
mere vandalism on the monolith of Marcos; Lacaba had cracked the
fearsome façade and had emboldened others to do the same.
Authorities abducted Lacaba in April 25, 1974.
He recounts, “One of the things they asked me during torture was,
‘Did you write that piece “Prometheus Unbound”?’” His
legal deposition for the class suit filed in Hawaii against Marcos
after his downfall succinctly articulates his two-year ordeal:
“Constabulary officers and enlisted
men—including a buck private who was himself under detention for
murder—took turns making me a punching bag.
Mostly I was pummeled with fists in the chest
and the stomach. I was seated on the edge of a steel cot. My
tormentors and interrogators sat in chairs or stood before me,
hitting me each time a question was asked or an answer was
unsatisfactory. Troopers passing by, on their way to their lockers
or wherever, felt free to hit my nape or the back of my head with
open palms or karate chops…
…I was made to lie down with the back of my
head resting on the edge of one steel cot, both my feet resting on
the edge of another cot, my arms straight at my sides, and my
stiffened body hanging in midair. This was the torture they called
higa sa hangin [lying down in air], also known as the San Juanico
Bridge, named after the country’s longest bridge, built during
martial law and dedicated by Marcos to his wife Imelda.
‘Lying down on air’ is difficult enough,
since you have to contend with the pull of gravity. But even before
gravity could take its toll, somebody standing close by would give
me a kick in the stomach and bring my body down to the floor…”
And just as the Marcos dictatorship’s
brutality demonstrated how potent and dangerous his words were, so
too did the actions of friends prove how loved he was. No less than
the late literary giant Nick Joaquin came to his rescue. In exchange
for Lacaba’s freedom, Joaquin agreed to accept the title of
National Artist and lend his credibility to Marcos’ flawed awards
institution. Lacaba confides, “What Nick himself told me was . . .
he accepted it so that he could bring up my imprisonment. But he
didn’t make it a condition. The effect was the same nonetheless.
On awards night Marcos said to him, ‘Okay, his release will be
part of your prize.’ He got it on a Friday. The first working day
after that I was released.”
Lacaba received his temporary release papers in
1976, on the very day that General Fidel Ramos, then chief of the
Philippine Constabulary, informed him that his younger brother Eman
had been killed along with other members of a New People’s Army
cadre.
The long shadow
In his lifetime, Eman had already gained acclaim
as the “brown Rimbaud,” winning numerous awards for his poems
and short stories in English. He was a stage actor and playwright
for the Philippine Educational Theater Association, the lyricist of
the theme song of the Lino Brocka film Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang, a
labor organizer, a propagandist, a martial artist, an honor student
of Ateneo de Manila University, “a flower child who hung out at
the hippie Indios Bravos Café” and an “occultist who liked
staying with the messianic sets on Mount Banahaw.” He was a
renaissance man for his time. Pete admits, “In some circles, it
was I who came to be known as ‘Eman’s brother.’”
Eman’s own words speak best:
“Threw out windows doves of paper.
If I could pack in a fist of feathers
Veins, intestines, and brains,
I would hold up palms to graphic needles
Predicting wounds of flies.
Hanged my head and drowned my shoulders.
Encircled moles with penciled targets;
Hunted scabs from ledge and grass.
I would things violated curves of branches
Or decoyed for their wings.”
For the foreword of Salvaged Poems, a posthumous
anthology of Eman’s works first published in 1986, Pete writes:
On March 18, 1976, Emmanuel Agapito Flores
Lacaba—my younger brother Maneng, better known to friends by the
nickname Eman or Emman—was killed in the barrio of Tucaan Balaag,
Asuncion town, Davao del Norte province. He was 27 years old.
I remember waiting in a funeral parlor in
Pateros, our hometown, for the coffin that was being flown from
Davao and fetched at the airport. One of the funeral attendants
asked what Eman had died of. “Tingga [lead],” I said.
Pete and Eman Lacaba represent a host of
dichotomies both between them and within them: heroes of pen and
sword; heroes martyred and surviving; heroes of epic battles and
daily struggles.
Pete defines heroism, then and today: “During
the time of the Iliad, heroism meant being a mandirigma [warrior].
Now it takes many forms. Even during our Propaganda Movement, there
were those who showed their heroism by writing and there were those
who joined the Katipunan. The same thing happened during the First
Quarter Storm, especially during martial law.” The First Quarter
Storm, so named because it occurred during the first quarter of
Marcos’ second term in office, was the height of activism in 1970
culminating in the Battle of Mendiola.
As a 25-year-old reporter, Lacaba, along with
his entire generation, had his baptism of fire that year. He
recalls, “Since I was also the youngest staff at the Free Press, I
was also the one assigned to cover the youth. When the First Quarter
Storm broke out, I was young enough to join rallies and pose as a
student.”
“What Eman did was to go to the hills. Some of
us just went on writing under conditions where you couldn’t write
freely in the mainstream press,” Lacaba says. But he adds,
“There are other forms of resistance. Some journalists, for
instance, opted to stop writing for the Marcos press. Some people
boycotted the Marcos papers. And it’s not just writing. The
dichotomy is not just pen and sword. At a time when strikes were
prohibited, some labor unions went on. That was a form of heroism.
During the early years of martial law, there were students who
conducted lightning rallies. They would converge in Plaza Miranda,
shout slogans and disperse just as quickly—that’s neither pen
nor sword.”
Undying flame
He notes, “Today, engaging in NGO [nongovernment
organization] work is a form of heroism. Despite the small pay,
people go into it—to improve the environment, to help women in the
struggle for equality, to organize unions, to join marches [for
ancestral land rights such as the one] for Sumilao farmers. These
are all forms of heroism.” Lacaba himself worked for an NGO, the
Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, before his current post as
executive editor of celebrity magazine Yes!
Yes, the poet who had endured torture and lost
his brother to the fascist regime is now immersed in showbiz. And it
should come as no surprise.
He admits, “A lot of people wonder why I
joined Yes!” The truth is, the man simply has come full circle. He
recalls his first full-time job at 19 years of age: “When I joined
the Free Press in 1965, I was actually covering the arts and culture
beat. At Free Press, that included show business.”
He adds, “Even during the First Quarter Storm,
I would do movie reviews occasionally. That’s why when I got out
of prison in 1974 and there was no newspaper or magazine to go back
to, that’s when I started writing for the movies.” Lacaba’s
social realist screenplays include such immortal films as Mike De
Leon’s Sister Stella L. in 1984 and Lino Brocka’s Bayan Ko:
Kapit sa Patalim in 1985.
The highly esteemed Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism lists Lacaba among its board of advisers.
“Once in a bit, people ask me to sign manifestos and protest
statements. On poetry readings and protest gatherings, my old poems
are still read,” he says. During recent gatherings marking the
forced abduction and disappearance of activist Jonas Burgos,
participants revived Lacaba’s poem about the disappeared. Lacaba
also translates western pop music classics such as John Lennon’s
“Imagine” and Paul Simon’s “Sounds of Silence” to Filipino
with his SalinAwit program.
Be it by writing poems and screenplays,
translating songs, or editing magazines, the man brings the fight
with him to whatever he does.
He continues the struggle to promote critical
thinking among readers and rigor among journalists in even the
unlikeliest of venues. To his credit, the magazine Lacaba stakes his
name upon stands apart from the inane gossip rags. He explains,
“I’m trying to improve showbiz reporting by not doing blind
items, not relying on rumors and practicing the standards of
journalism such as corroboration, verification and
substantiation.” Ever humble, he credits the high standard of
journalism in the magazine to his editor in chief, Jo-Ann Maglipon,
a colleague from The Manila Times, for which Lacaba wrote the
language column Matter of Fact during the 1990s.
Steeled and tempered by days of fire, Pete
Lacaba carries the torch that the likes of his brother Eman have
passed on. We can do no less. These are times that call for us to
pledge in both ink and blood, hone words well, and aim with mortal
intent. This coming Day of Valor, be reminded: always write
dangerously. Titans and gods beware.
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