Subversive Lives. Susan F. Quimpo

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СКАЧАТЬ between reformists and revolutionaries, or moderates and radicals. Groups such as the NUSP were moderate; they worked for social reform through peaceful, parliamentary means. The moderates were mainly based in religious-run schools, but they also had followings in some state-run and private non-sectarian schools. The radical organizations included KM and SDK, which advocated a complete overhaul of the unjust social order through armed revolution. They drew many members from state-run universities and colleges such as UP and private, non-sectarian schools, including the substandard diploma mills that produced graduates en masse at great profit for their owners. The radicals also attracted young workers and poor out-of-school youth. The government regarded these groups as mere fronts for illegal, subversive organizations such as the Communist Party of the Philippines.

      During the First Quarter Storm, none of us in San Beda High School actually joined an activist group. Those sympathetic to the activists were drawn toward the moderates, but not I. Perhaps my family situation affected me. Perhaps Jan had influenced me. Within a few weeks, I lost any hope of meaningful social change through purely parliamentary means. Still, I was not a revolutionary; I was still hopeful of averting a violent conflict that could cost countless lives. I believed that extralegal actions short of revolution were necessary to break out of social apathy and generate meaningful change. Some degree of violence in the struggle against social injustice was regrettable but understandable, and perhaps even justified.

      DELIVERING THE VALEDICTORY before the Class of 1970 of San Beda High School, I veered away from the nonviolent credo espoused by the Church and by the moderate activist groups. I said:

      Belonging to the country’s upper and middle classes, we—or most of us, at least—have lived sheltered, comfortable lives. We live in fine houses or apartments and eat three full meals a day. We study in an exclusive school and receive the best of liberal education. We go the movies every once in a while, have parties and festivals, and cheer ourselves hoarse at NCAA games.

      Over the past few months, however, we have been witness to a storm, a mighty social storm, that has somewhat intruded into our sheltered lives. On our TV screens, we’ve watched how protest rallies have turned into riots, street battles, and melees. We’ve seen how soldiers and policemen have beaten up demonstrators, and fired their guns and killed or maimed scores of people—protesters and onlookers alike. We’ve seen how demonstrators have hurled stones and rocks, Molotov cocktails and pillboxes against the police and military. Shocked and aghast, we’ve joined the civic-minded sectors of society in condemning the violence of both sides and calling for sobriety. But this is as far as we’ve gone.

      Soul-searching, I’ve asked myself why protesters risk their lives in the face of police brutality and why they have resorted to violence themselves. I believe that they are trying to open our eyes to the world outside our sheltered existence. Their anger and fury have been directed against an unjust social order in which an elite few controls the country’s wealth and power, while the overwhelming majority of our countrymen and women wallow in poverty and misery, and in which the gap between the rich and the poor, instead of narrowing, has become a gaping chasm. In resorting to drastic means, the protesters seek to shatter the apathy and inertia in Philippine society and impel structural change. The stones, Molotovs, and pillboxes have to be seen in their proper perspective. We cannot expect the struggle against the institutionalized violence of social injustice to be entirely peaceful.

      We cannot just stand aside and watch the storm. As Filipinos concerned for our country and the well-being of all our people, we have to take part in dismantling the structures of oppression in order to bring about a truly just social order and to prevent a cataclysm. Let us be part of the winds of change.

      My speech was received with prolonged and hearty applause. Beaming, I returned to my seat. I wondered later if what I said would have any real impact on my fellow graduates. I didn’t realize what a profound impact those events would have on my own life.

      NOTES

      ¹ The convention, members of which were soon to be elected, was being convoked to revise the 1935 Philippine Constitution, approved when the Philippines was still a U.S. colony.

      ² Recently renamed Don Chino Roces Bridge after a leader of the protests against Marcos.

      ³ Even worse was what I had heard of Smokey Mountain, the huge slum in Tondo built on a mountain of garbage, where tens of thousands made their living by scavenging in the dump. The reports of rotting garbage emitting acrid or even poisonous fumes and sometimes catching fire made me shudder and think of it as the most terrible place in the world to live.

      Nothing Like Having Two Good Legs

      6

      DAVID RYAN F. QUIMPO

      SOME MEMORIES OF my early childhood now appear like images in a dream: fragmented, incoherent, and blurred. Yet they remain. I see mentally ill patients dressed in dirty white muslin, walking aimlessly or lying on the pavement as my yaya (nanny) carries me over what appears to be a cement footbridge. In the next image, I am in an operating room, but this one, unlike others, has two operating tables. I am on one table. A nurse thinks I am fast asleep, but I can see what the doctors are doing at the adjacent table. Using a shiny stainless steel saw, a surgeon amputates a patient’s left leg.

      In yet another image, I am seated on a bed. An attendant has just removed the cement cast on my feet with a rotating electric saw. Dr. Inocentes, my orthopedic surgeon, comes in and examines my foot. With his fingers, he firmly grips what looks like a button on my ankle. He mutters something about me being brave and then pulls the button. The button holds in place a string that goes through a hole in the bone, and passes through the other side—at my foot’s sole—to another button he has just severed.

      It was only much later, in my early adolescent years, that I managed to piece together and comprehend these images. As a seven-month-old baby, I contracted poliomyelitis. My parents decided to move the family from Iloilo to Manila where the country’s only orthopedic hospital was located.

      The National Orthopedic Hospital (NOH) was located inside the National Mental Hospital in Mandaluyong before it acquired its own premises on Banawe Street in Quezon City in 1963. My first three orthopedic operations were completed at the old site, while the next two were at the Banawe Street address. It must have been in Mandaluyong where I had the traumatic experience of witnessing an amputation. The scarcity of public funds at the time probably explains why the NOH had to maintain two operating tables in one surgical room.

      As a result of polio, my body was paralyzed from my neck to my feet. Mom told me that for a time doctors were considering using the iron lung machine on me. The Emerson iron lung machine used in the mid-1900s helped polio victims whose breathing muscles were paralyzed. The patient’s whole body, from neck to feet, was placed in a large cylindrical steel drum where the action of breathing was mimicked by altering the pressure inside the drum. Luckily, it was not necessary for me to use the machine as I regained my capacity to breathe. Through a series of operations and years of therapy, my upper body recovered completely, even as large groups of muscles and nerves on my legs and feet remained dysfunctional. To stand up and walk, I needed metal braces on both legs as well as crutches on both arms.

      Ryan, age five, holds a sheet of Easter Seal commemorative postage stamps for the year of the handicapped, to present to First Lady Leonila Garcia at Malacañang Palace (1959).

      I was too young to remember these events or to know their significance. However, I do recall another image. I was on a beautiful, sunlit lawn with tiny butterflies flitting about. Mom ushered me through the garden and into a building. March 25, 1960, was a nice day СКАЧАТЬ