The General
I was a soldier, not by choice but by circumstances. My father was a soldier. I really wanted to be a lawyer. When I was in Leyte, it was the lawyers who became politicians. Maybe at that time I already have a liking for leadership, because I appreciated this one powerful politician. He was campaigning in our barrio, and he had followers, and he was in charge, and people listened to him. So as a young, very young boy, Grade 1, Grade 2, I admired him. People listened to him.
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Jonas Burgos, 41
Edita Burgos is going to court. There is a ruffle of white lace at her throat. The cap of dark hair is the same, the black jacket and fading slacks the same. She sits quietly, smiling and nodding at the newcomers who come to offer their support. She has the complaint in a folder, along with a cover letter addressed to the prosecutor general.
“It is therefore with a ray of hope that I am herewith filing my Affidavit Complaint,” reads her letter, “for the violation of Article 124 of the Revised Penal Code (Arbitrary Detention) or possibly murder, in the enforced disappearance of my son.”
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Codename Hero
Geronimo
The story is told that he could walk without leaving a single footprint.
The military men called him a renegade. His people called him a hero. After Mexican troops massacred his family, he eluded capture for decades, resisting colonization, demanding his people’s freedom, disappearing into his beloved Sierra Madres even as 5,000 American soldiers thundered in pursuit. His small band of warriors stood as the last line of Apache resistance against white America. His name was legend long before he surrendered in 1886. They called him Geronimo.
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Castro the crusader
Fr. Melvin Castro, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, is very pleased with his successful crusade against the evil threat Ronald McDonald. In a statement to the media, Castro says he is glad McDonald’s has seen the error of its ways. And then he rubs it in.
“I do hope it doesn’t reach this point again. It would have been better if they had been sensitive to our culture, and respectful of our faith.”
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The executioners
In 2005, 36,510 Filipinos died from pneumonia. 20,951 died from tuberculosis. In Quezon City alone, there were 3,349 attempted homicides, 69 murders, 55 rapes, and 629 robberies. In the entire country, there were a total of 2,962 recorded rapes, 11,833 major thefts, 44 recorded kidnappings, and 4,352 recorded drug offenses. The impunity index ranks the country third in journalist deaths, with 142 killed since 1986. The number of dead climbs every year, and very little has been done to prevent it. Flood, fever, kidnapping, poverty, pregnancy, robbery—in the Philippines, the danger may be clear and present, but it has little effect on a nation that has accepted survival is accidental.
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Aftershock
The death toll is at 7,197; the missing has risen past 10,000. Almost half-a-million Japanese are homeless, millions without power and water. The earth’s axis has shifted by 6.5 inches. The day is less 1.6 microseconds. The country’s nuclear and industrial safety agency raised nuclear severity from Level 4 to 5, increasing the likelihood of deaths from radiation and a release of radioactive material. A nuclear facility’s managing director has publicly broken down in tears. The Japanese government attempts to reassure a devastated citizenry forced to watch their homes swallowed by tsunamis, their elderly die in gymnasiums.
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Forgetting Edsa
The story of my country begins with a mad king.
There are some who say the king was once a just man, and a wise one, whose heart turned dark at the taste of power. Others say he had always been mad, and hid his madness behind a cunning charm.
The king had a queen, the most beautiful in the world, and again there are those who whisper that it was she whose madness turned the king’s. So they ruled, the black king and his butterfly queen and their army of bloodthirsty knights, from a golden castle built on a lake whose waters turned a darker red with each cruel year.
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