We Worship an Executed God

I have found it disconcerting to celebrate Easter Sunday apart from the horrors of the crucifixion. But many people find nothing problematic about this. The crucifix has become a fashion accessory for a lot of folks. They can do their Easter egg hunts, enjoy their Easter sunrise services, and preach a risen, triumphant Lord without any thought that the God we proclaim as risen was actually murdered on Calvary. Jesus did not die. The empire killed Jesus. He was executed. He was a victim of state-sanctioned terrorism. We who call ourselves Christian actually worship an executed God.

Everyday in our beloved country, in Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, and in many parts of the world, people are being crucified, victims of institutionalized oppression—cultural genocide, poverty, racism, gender injustice, capital punishment, global capitalism, militarization, and marginalization. What does it mean to proclaim a resurrection faith in the midst of all these?

What does it mean then for us, who are among these crucified people, to proclaim Jesus as risen from the dead?

The Parable of Juan and Maria's One-Peso Loan

Juan and Maria deposit their hard-earned peso in a bank. Government propaganda have convinced them how helpful banks are and being poor farm-folk, they have identified with bank commercials that go, "Ayokong maging dukha!" (I do not want to be poor!). The bank pays them 5% a year. That's 5 centavos less final tax of 20% so they net 4 centavos. The economy being what it is drives the couple to ask a one peso loan from the same bank. Again, government sponsored info commercials that went, "Isip entreprenyur!" (Think entrepreneur!) helped. Their peso deposit serves as collateral. The bank charges them 30% on the loan. In effect, on the peso they deposited and actually loaned, the bank earned 25 centavos. From another perspective, Juan and Maria paid the bank 25 centavos for allowing them to use their own money!

It's no wonder banks and lending institutions are among the most profitable businesses in the country today. (Don’t get me going on the oil cartels that bleed our economy dry.). But let's go back to that one-peso loan of Maria and Juan.

The couple earns a peso so they go back to the bank to pay their loan. 30 centavos is used to pay for the interest. 70 is left for the principal. They still owe the bank 30 so they get another peso loan. 30 centavos of that is used to pay for the balance of the first loan. They leave the bank with 70. If this cycle continues, Juan and Maria will be perpetually making new loans just to pay their maturing loans. But what if tragedy strikes, in the form of pestilence, typhoons, sickness, or worse, death? They cannot pay their loan and the bank forfeits their collateral. Without collateral, loans require higher interests. The cycle continues at a much painful level: Maria and Juan take new loans just to meet the interest on their maturing loans. This happens every day: at the level of the 5/6 operators, at the local banks, in the IMF and the World Bank. Most people do not know that private banks actually run the economies of many countries. Think Hong Kong.

Leviticus 25 is probably one of the best pieces of Israelite legislation ever written. Most scholars believe that it was never actually implemented. Nevertheless, the celebration of the Sabbatical year, and more importantly, the Jubilee meant restoration when all slaves were set free, all lands returned to their rightful stewards (God being owner of the land), all debts canceled.1

The issue of Jesus' parable of the estate manager in Luke 16:1-9 is the cancellation or at least the reduction of debt. The machinations of the steward led to a lowering of debt. It was a temporary respite for the debtors but still a foretaste of a time when all debts will be canceled.

When someone is up to one's neck in debt; someone else is wallowing in surplus. When someone is up to one's neck in debt, getting through today is the most important thing; to that someone who is wallowing in surplus, today does not matter, tomorrow's gains do.

The past is very important to those whose only hope is God. It is something we can look back to. It is the past where most of us draw strength for today. If we survived yesterday, we, hopefully, can survive today. Tomorrow is in God's hands. It is therefore fascinating to note that Filipinos call God "Bathala" which, some have argued, literally translates "God WILL take care."

James 4:15 echoes the same faith: "...you ought to say, 'If the Lord WILLS, we shall live and we shall do this and that.'" Tomorrow is in God's hands.The rich though, like the foolish one in Luke 12: 16-21, live for the future as if the future is in their hands. It was not then. It still is not. James 5:1-6 compared to the Lukan parable, I think, is a more powerful tirade against the rich:

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have killed the innocent; they cannot resist you.

“Scattered across the countryside one may observe certain wild animals, male and female, dark, livid and burnt by the sun, attached to the earth which they dig and turn over with invincible stubbornness. However, they have something like an articulated voice and when they stand up they reveal a human face. Indeed, they are human beings...Thanks to them the other human beings need not sow, labour and harvest in order to live. That is why they ought not to lack the bread which they have sown.”2

They ought not to lack the bread which they have sown, but in the Philippines, and in many parts of the world, they, unfortunately, do and it’s worse.

Notes

1 John Dominic Crossan in his lecture on method (as part of the Jesus Seminar Workshop held at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, New Orleans, 23 November 1996) believes that Jesus' message of God's reign has for its context the Israelite peasantry's thirst for justice; justice as demanded by God in the Sabbatical year and the Jubilee.

2 Jean la Bruyere, French moralist of the late seventeenth century (cited in J.D. Crossan's The Essential Jesus (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), v.

Tabernacles and Jeepneys

Biblical interpretation has privileged the centers of power within, behind, and in front of the text. Biblical studies in the Philippines have been a stronghold of colonial scholarship for over a century, especially among Protestant churches. Indigenous denominations refuse to become autonomous and continue to depend on their mother institutions in the United States or elsewhere in the First World. Church buildings and institutions are named after benevolent foreign church leaders and missionaries. Seminaries continue to have more foreign teachers (who are paid in dollars by foreign boards) than Filipinos (who are paid in pesos and, usually, significantly below the living wage). Libraries are filled with books written by European and American scholars and continue to receive donations of old books from the First World. Traditional historical-critical methods remain the key reading paradigm. Establishing what the Bible meant in the past is the first step towards discerning what it means today. Ways of interpreting the Bible that do not follow this so-called fundamental paradigm are labeled eisegesis (reading into the text) or reader-response. Filipino Protestants know more about Bible history and American history than their own history; and they read the Bible the way their colonial masters did and still do, because they have been socialized for generations that this is the correct way. Filipino social scientists call this collective condition of the Filipino psyche a colonial mentality. Historian Renato Constantino traces it to the systematic mis-education of Filipinos. Theologian Eleazar Fernandez argues that the Philippines can still be called a “mental colony” of the United States of America. Biblical studies in the Philippines today exemplify his claim.

But side by side with this “reading-the-Bible-the-way-our-masters-do” is a wealth of Filipino literature, practices, and reading strategies that engage the Bible in unexpected ways. Two quick examples. Take a regular Bible Study session among women. Let them role-play a passage in the Bible. Let’s say, Luke 10:38-42, Jesus visits Martha and Mary. In my experience, most women WILL NOT follow the Biblical script. They will change the story.

Take a nursery Sunday School class. Tell the story of Jonah. Most adults will identify with the plight of Jonah, including the nursery teacher. But children have no problem reading the text from the perspective of the fish, the vine, and the worm—who, by the way, obey God.

I call these interpretations models of jeepney hermeneutics, reading that go against “authorial intent.” The jeepney is the most popular mode of public transportation in the Philippines. It is an excellent example of the Filipinization of an American icon, the military jeep. It is also, as I will argue, one very powerful metaphor for Filipinos’ engagement with another icon, the Bible, offering a range of strategies to decolonize biblical studies.

The U.S. Army, back in 1940, required an all-terrain reconnaissance, go-anywhere, vehicle that seated three and had a mount for a 30-caliber machine gun. Filipinos have turned this military vehicle into a sort of mini-bus that can accommodate about twenty people. There are those who look at a jeepney and call it Frankenstein’s monster. There are others who see it as a “Filipino home on wheels,” complete with an altar. The military jeep was, and still is, a sort of imperializing text. A jeepney resists this text. The inventors of the jeep never imagined that this weapon of mass destruction can be transformed into a public transport vehicle. The jeepney is an “unexpected reading” of a jeep.

Interpretation, by definition, is always perspectival and particular. In other words, everything—including the supposedly objective historical-critical method—is reader-response. This interpretation of biblical passages as imperializing texts presupposes the reality of an empire as a backdrop to the construction of the narrative. Many Filipinos employ a similar assumption when engaging Filipino resistance literature: for example, Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Francisco Baltazar’s Florante at Laura, and Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart. This interpretation does not equate the biblical narratives with historical facts. What it does is argue that the narrative is constructed and framed by a particular historical setting.1 Anticolonialist Frantz Fanon and educator Paolo Freire show that dynamics leading to literary production exist not only between the colonizer and the colonized, but also between various interest groups of the colonized, some of which try to gain power to define national cultural identity, as well as to compete for the attention of their collective oppressor. The interpretation below argues that Matthew is not rejecting Roman imperialism, but seeking its favor, or at least condoning it.

This interpretation also presupposes resistance, as reflected in what activist Salud Algabre and historian Reynaldo Ileto call “little traditions.” Algabre and Ileto memorialize all those resistance fighters who have been victimized by the violence of institutionalized forgetting, a fate most of the unnamed children in Matthew share.

New Testament scholar Musa Dube posits the following questions in order to measure whether Matthew is an imperializing text: Does the text offer an explicit stance for or against Roman imperialism? Does the narrative encourage travel to distant and inhabited lands, and how does it justify such travel? How does the narrative present those who are different from the main characters? Is there dialogue and liberating interdependence between the main characters and “others”? Or is there condemnation and replacement of all that is foreign and other? Is the celebration of difference authentic or mere tokenism? Does the text present relationships of subordination and domination? How does it represent them?

Using these questions to analyze Matthew and its effects upon its readers, Dube concludes that the author’s stance toward the imperial powers presents imperial rule and its agents as holy and acceptable. Matthew’s Jesus is politically un-subversive and encourages travel to distant and inhabited lands. Matthew’s positive presentation of the Empire and the decision to take the word to the nations (Matt. 28:16-20) is born within and as a result of stiff competition for power over the crowds (Israel) and the favor of the Empire. Matthew’s mission to the nations embodies imperialistic values and strategies. Matthew does not seek relationships of liberating interdependence among nations, cultures, and genders. Rather, this Gospel upholds the superiority of some races and relegates other races to inferiority. Matthew represents gender relationships as relationships of subordination and domination by featuring the Canaanite woman (15:21-28) and the centurion (8:5-13) in contrasting stories, which foreshadows the mission to the nations. Matthew’s presentation of Pilate, his wife, and the Roman soldiers at the trial, death, and resurrection of Jesus shows a clear-cut pro-empire position (27:1–28:15).

The Tabernacle motif, though implicit, plays a critical role in the Matthean narrative. The Tent of Meeting or Tabernacle symbolized, literally, God’s presence among God’s people (Exodus 35-40). In the 40-year sojourn of the Israelites in the wilderness, God was always with them via the Tabernacle, a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night. In other words, where the Tabernacle was, there was God. Matthew begins and ends with Immanuel, God-with-us (1.23, 28:20). Thus, the Gospel effectively sets the boundaries of its own “tabernacle.” Matthew creates a world of insiders and outsiders relative to this “tabernacle.”

And right at the middle of this “tent” is the greatest symbol of faith in the gospel—the centurion.

The encounter between the centurion and Jesus, according to Dube, particularly highlights Matthew’s stance toward the Empire. Both men are presented as having authority to effect things simply by the power of their words (Matt. 8:8-9). The comparison of Jesus’ authority with that of the centurion’s has the effect of sanctifying the imperial power. Jesus pronounces the centurion’s faith greater than the faith of everyone in Israel (Matt. 8:10), a statement that contrasts the imperial agent with the colonized and exalts his righteousness above theirs. The passage casts imperial officials as holier and predicts that they, and other groups, will have more power (in the kingdom of God). Such characterization not only disguises what imperial agents represent—institutions of exploitation and oppression—but also pronounces imperialism holy and acceptable. A quick survey of the history of the interpretation of Matthew and centuries of Western colonization—euphemistically called “civilizing missions”—in Asia, Africa, and Latin America shows that most interpreters followed the Gospel’s imperial rhetoric.

In Matthew’s “tabernacle,” God’s presence is most evident in a military officer, in an imperial agent. The first one thousand years of Christianity was one millennium of war and destruction in the name of Jesus Christ. And those “civilizing missions” have not stopped. Even today, the most oppressive and dehumanizing societies are led by “Christian” centurions who have no qualms maiming and destroying those who are not “one of them.” And two of these are in the White House and in Malacanang, George W. Bush and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, respectively.

The centurion is to Matthew as the 30-caliber machine gun mount is to the military jeep. To read Matthew inside a jeepney is to celebrate the fact that the first thing Filipinos did in their transformation of the military jeep was to rid it of that machine gun mount. To read Matthew inside a jeepney is to remove our gaze from the centurion—and, yes, even Jesus, who mimics the centurion—and focus it on someone else. I suggest focusing our attention on the servant (pais in Greek) of 8:5-13.
The pais, whether translated son, daughter, girl, boy, servant, slave, or sex slave, is a child. He or she serves to remind flesh and blood readers that the reality of empire—in varying forms and degrees—is experienced by children and by those who are treated as children. Political sociologist Ashis Nandy draws attention to the way the colonized are viewed as children by the colonizers.2

Fred Atkinson, the first American General Superintendent of Education in the Philippines, inaugurated more than a century of racist public education in the islands when he remarked that “the Filipino people, taken as a body, are children and childlike, do not know what is best for them. . . . By the very fact of our superiority of civilization and our greater capacity for industrial activity we are bound to exercise over them a profound social influence.”3

The pais reminds flesh and blood readers that children’s oppression—of varying forms and degrees—is written in the text because, despite the rhetoric that God’s reign is for children (Matt. 19:14), no child is ever named—except Jesus—or is given a voice in the gospel—except Herodias’s daughter, who says what her mother tells her to say. Like the Canaanite woman’s daughter (15:21-28) and the pais, Herodias’s daughter serves only as a medium through which competing discourses present their claims. The girl falls prey to manipulation by her mother and by Herod. We don’t even get to hear the cries of the children who are massacred in 2:18, only their mothers’ cries. Children are the primary victims of Matthew’s “culture of silence.”

Look at how the pais is described in Greek: ho pais mou, “the servant who is mine.” That child’s body is under somebody else’s control—whether it’s his father, his owner, or, as I have argued elsewhere, his pedophile. The centurion’s act on the pais’s behalf emphasizes the latter’s marginalization. As far as Matthew is concerned, the pais cannot speak or seek his own healing. Yet, because that child is “paralyzed,” albeit momentarily, he also paralyzes his owner, who must seek help from Jesus. The child also interrupts the goings and the comings of the centurion’s soldiers, since the centurion is not with them to give them orders (Matt. 8:9). Thus, with his paralysis, the child also interrupts the imperial expansion.

Throughout the Gospel, characters come and go, borders are crossed: magi from the East come seeking the king of the Jews (2:1-12); Joseph and his family flee into Egypt (2:13-15); Herod sends his death squads to Bethlehem to murder children (2:16-18); Joseph and his family go to Nazareth, from Egypt (2:19-23); Jesus goes to John the baptizer and is led by the Spirit into the wilderness (3:1–4:11); Jesus leaves Nazareth and makes his home in Capernaum (4:12); the centurion comes to Jesus and the latter is convinced of the imperial authority that effects goings and comings, travel to distant lands, and control at a distance (8:5-13). The disciples are systematically prepared for their commissioning (10:1-42); the Canaanite woman comes to Jesus (15:21-28); the heavy-laden come to Jesus (11:28). Jesus eventually sends out his disciples (28:16-20). Everyone in the story moves, except the pais in Matthew 8:5-13. Yes, even for a brief moment, the pais revels in the space her paralysis brings. For about eight short verses in the very long 28 chapters of the Gospel of Matthew, the pais is free of the centurion.

The colonized is free of her colonizer.

The majority of Filipinos remain colonized subjects, a part of a mental colony. Migrant Filipina domestic workers, numbering over 7 million, are the global servants of late capitalism. Tens of millions find themselves squatters in their own homeland. Those who have opted for “the Promise Land”—the United States—find themselves treated as second-class citizens. Yet, despite all this colonization, they have always resisted. The jeepney is the best-known symbol of resistance and decolonization for Filipinos. Now, because of the Gospel, they have another symbol, the pais—paralyzed outside the “tabernacle”—who disrupts imperial progress, even if only briefly, in the Gospel of Matthew.

Notes:
1. The Gospel of Matthew is a narrative discourse constructed against the backdrop of Roman imperial occupation. In other words, it is a story of people in this imperialistic situation.
2. See Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory (New York: 1998), 32.
3. Quoted in Daniel B. Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 12.


Works consulted:
Abesamis, Carlos. A Third Look at Jesus. Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1999.
Carter, Warren. Matthew and the Margins. New York: Orbis, 2000.
Constantino, Renato. Neocolonial Identity and Counter-consciousness : Essays on Cultural Decolonization (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1978).
De La Torre, Edicio. "The Philippines: A Situationer." Those Who Would Give Light Must Endure Burning. Bautista and Amirtham, eds. Quezon City: NCCP, 1987.
Dube, Musa. Postcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2000.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: 1968.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Myra Bergman Ramos, trans. New York: Herder and Herder, 1972.
Fernandez, Eleazar. Toward a Theology of Struggle. New York: Orbis, 1994.
Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 32.
Levine, Amy-Jill. The Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Matthean Social History (Lewiston: Mellen, 1988).
Ileto, Reynaldo. Pasyon and Revolution. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University, 1979.
Patte, Daniel. The Gospel According to Matthew. Philadelphia:Fortress, 1987.
Powell, Mark Allan Powell. Chasing the Eastern Star. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001.
Schirmer, Daniel."The Conception and Gestation of a Neocolony." The Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol 5. No. 1, 1975, 43-44.
Velunta, Revelation. "The Ho Pais Mou of Matthew 8:5-13: Contesting the Interpretations in the Name of Present-Day Paides." Bulletin for Contextual Theology, School of Theology, University of Natal. Vol 7.2. June 2000, pp.25-32.

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From TUGON (re-launch edition, copyright 2008, NCCP)

Texts of Terror

If crying is the first prophetic utterance (as lifted up by Chung Hyun Kyung's statement during her controversial opening address, and spirit-invoking dance, at the 7th Assembly of the WCC), then TEXTS OF TERROR's poignant, gut-wrenching portraits of women as victims offer us a hearing of those "cries."

In Texts of Terror1, Phyllis Trible sets out to tell sad stories as she "hears" them. Indeed, she offers us tales of terror. She comments: "Belonging to the sacred scriptures of synagogue and church, these narratives yield four portraits of suffering in ancient Israel: Hagar, the slave used, abused, and rejected; Tamar, the princess raped, murdered, and dismembered; and the daughter of Jephthah, a virgin slain and sacrificed. Choice and chance inspire my telling these particular tales: hearing a black woman describe herself as a daughter of Hagar outside the covenant; seeing an abused woman on the streets of New York with a sign, 'My name is Tamar'; reading news reports of the dismembered body of a woman found in a trash can; attending worship services in memory of nameless women; and wrestling with the silence, absence, and opposition of God. All these experiences and others have led me to a land of terror from whose bourn no traveler returns unscarred" (p.1,2)

We are invited to a journey that is solitary, painful and intense. In joining this venture, we, the readers, assume its risks; we are challenged to hear not just the cries within the text but also those in front of it.

Hagar's story conjures images of oppression in three very familiar forms: race, class, and sex. As symbol of the oppressed woman of color, Hagar becomes many things to many people. "She is the faithful domestic helper exploited, the black woman used by the white male and abused by the white female of the ruling class, the migrant worker without legal recourse, the pregnant young woman alone, the expelled wife, the divorced woman with child, the shopping bag lady carrying bread and water, the homeless woman, the indigent relying upon handouts from the power structures, the welfare mother, and the self-effacing female whose own identity shrinks in service to others( (pp.27,28).2

The tragic story of Tamar occurs within the circle of male power of a supposedly God-ordained monarchy, David's, a system that was supposed to protect her (a time that was supposed to be better than when "leaders were lacking in Israel"). Sibblings Absalom and Tamar were a handsome pair in the land but now the sister dwells desolate. The narrator has more to say on the subject though, switching from Absalom to his offspring. "There were born to Absalom three sons and one daughter; her name was Tamar." Strikingly, the anonymity of all the sons highlights the name of the lone female child. In her Absalom has created a living memorial for his sister. A further note enhances the poignancy of his act. Tamar, the daughter of Absalom, "became a woman beautiful to behold." From aunt to niece have passed name and beauty so that rape and desolation have not the final words in the story of Tamar (p.55).3

The story of the unnamed woman in Judges 19 reminds us that violence and vengeance are not just characteristics of a distant, pre-Christian past; they infect the community of the so called elect to this day. Woman as object is still captured, betrayed, raped, tortured, murdered, dismembered, and scattered. To take to heart this ancient story, to listen to the cries of the unnamed woman, then, is to confess its present reality, to admit that today the only form of resistance left countless of unnamed women is their cry. Do we hear them? Usually it is the one who has ears who takes forever to hear.

Trible adds that the story is alive and all is not well: " Beyond confession we must take counsel to say, 'Never again.' Yet this counsel is itself ineffectual unless we direct our hearts to that most uncompromising of all biblical commands, speaking the words not to others but to ourselves: Repent. Repent"(p.87).

The fourth tale is equally disturbing: Jephthah is praised; his daughter forgotten. Unfaith becomes faith. Thus has scripture and tradition violated the ancient story (108). So to this day, heroes of faith are male; wives and children live under the shadows of husbands and fathers; and the world on the whole finds identity in its connection to male power. And yet that story endures to this day for us to recover and appropriate; the story endures, like the other three tragic stories, because of women's cries.

The postscipt reports an extraordinary development. Whereas the female who has never known a man is typically numbered among the unremembered, in the case of the daughter of Jephthah the usual does not happen. "Although he had not known a man, nevertheless she became a tradition in Israel." In a dramatic way this sentence alters, though it does not eliminate, the finality of Jepthah's faithless vow. The alteration comes through the faithfulness of the women of Israel, as the next line explains. "From year to year the daughters of Israel went to mourn for the daughter of Jepthah the Gileadite, four days in the year." The unnamed virgin child becomes a tradition in Israel because the women with whom she chose to spend her last days have not let her pass into oblivion. They have established a testimony: activities of mourning reiterated yearly in a special place. This they have done in remembrance of her. The narrative postcript then shifts the focus of the story from vow to victim, from death to life, from oblivion to remembrance. Remarkably, this saga of faithlessness and sacrifice mitigates, though it does not dispel, its own tragedy through the mourning of women (p.106-107).

Four stories. Four tragic tales from the ancient past. Yet four stories that ring true to this day. If these stories and the images they conjure fail to drive us to tears, to righteous indignation, and then to collective action, then there is very little hope left.

1 Texts of Terror:Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Philadelphia:Fortress Press, 1984), 128pp.

2 These images remind me of the over seven million Filipino migrant workers, most of whom are women. Only two million of them are recognized by the government as legal, the rest are illegal. Most of them are stripped of their passports the moment they get to their destinations. Many of them are forced into prostitution. Many bear the pain of leaving families behind to seek greener pastures, only to find a worse situation abroad. Flor Contemplacion and Sarah Balabagan are just two of these women. I am also reminded of our ancestors who were called "injuns,""niggers," and "brainless brown monkeys" by the white colonizers. In the beginning, only the white folk were called Filipinos. Then there was my mother, the most selfless woman I've known. From childhood, being the eldest in a brood of ten, to adulthood she served and served and served family and church, church and family. She didn’t even get the chance to experience the respite her children’s graduation promised. She died at 49.

3 This narrative strikes a sensitive chord for me. I know of so many mothers whose lives of hardship, of sacrifice is empowered by the dream that their daughters and sons, one day, would experience something better. And, again, I remember my mother. My parents dreamt of having four children, two girls and two boys, Alpha, Omega, Genesis and Revelation. My parents were very poor but very bright. It was actually stupid to dream of becoming pastors then. They did. God gave them Genesis, Revelation and then Alpha. Alpha's birth was very difficult. It triggered my mother's congenital heart condition. There were also complications. Having to leave the hospital early (due to financial difficulties) aggravated her condition. Omega was to remain a dream, the sister, my partner, who never was. Nanay never got to meet Omega, Genesis' daughter--so named in memory of a sister, a mother's dream for her children.

A Spirituality of Struggle

A SPIRITUALITY OF STRUGGLE*

Most leave their families and their work behind. With the barest of essentials they struggle to survive in the mountains. Up there they learn to live with lots of mosquitoes, lots of rain and mud. Up there one does not have porcelain toilet seats, nor decent bathrooms, nor even a regular bottle of Coca-Cola. In the dense jungles of the Sierra Madre mountains, they sleep with rusty World War II Garand rifles or, if they are lucky, old, Russian-made AK-47s or surplus Vietnam-era Armalite rifles. There they sleep half awake, half expecting that at any moment a military patrol will attack their camp or, worse, US-supplied helicopter gun-ships will blow away all of them--men, women, children, even the few pigs and the chickens they have--to kingdom come.

Some of them have been there since the late 60s. It has been a protracted war. Most of them are tired. Yet they continue fighting for the hope that has kept the movement going for close to 40 years now.1

In Mindanao, Lumad2 communities organize to demand their rights to their ancestral lands. Many of them have been killed, shot by "mistake" by soldiers or civilian CAFGUs3, the very same people who swore to defend and protect them.4 They ask the government for help, they ask their "elected" congress people for representation, they ask the churches for assistance in airing their side, they put streamers and banners around Mount Apo declaring it as holy ground, they go through peaceful channels. And they wait patiently. They wait hoping. While they wait, trans-nationals rape their land. Oil cartels desecrate Mount Apo in the name of development and for the sake of the majority. And Lake Lanao, the Maranaos’5 sacred waters, is re-channeled for progress' sake. Still the Lumads struggle and hope. And so do the Moslems and the Cordillera communities for genuine autonomy.6

In the CALABARZON7 area, prime agricultural land under CARP8 are converted into industrial estates overnight depriving farmers, the rightful heirs, ownership of the land they have lived and worked on for generations. Over 35,000 farmer families have been dislocated by this foreign-funded "development" project in Cavite alone. Although without the land that should be theirs, the farmers still have their voice. Together they have raised their voices in a collective effort to cry stop to the massive conversion. Community leaders have been salvaged9 while others have been threatened. Still with voices now hoarse, the peasants continue.

There are countless others like these people who actively hope and dream of a future where peace and justice and equality would reign, where children would live to be one hundred, where everyone gets to live in her/his own home, and eat and share the fruits of her/his labor. They actively dream and hope in spite of the seeming hopelessness of the situation, they continue struggling in spite of the deaths, in spite of the pain and the suffering they face.

What keeps them going? Most of them have spent almost all their lives struggling for just wages, for a place to sleep, for 3 square meals a day. Many have given up on the struggle. But much more have continued. What is this empowering spirit? It is the power that arouses people to respond most creatively and appropriately to the particular challenges of their situations. The challenge may have to do with land for the landless, equal rights for women and children, cultural identity. But at the very heart of all these challenges is the single hope for the coming of a new humanity, a new creation, whose every member enjoys the blessings of peace and of justice.10

This is the spirituality of Macli-ing Dulag11; a spirituality willing to be broken up in order to bring wholeness. This spirit, this breath, is LIFE itself.

The struggle for wholeness, for community, for justice allows one to be fully human, and being fully human allows one to struggle. When a person is immersed into the stream of the struggle, is one made whole or is one broken? Or both?

The feeling of being burned out, of running out of steam has been described as akin to battle fatigue, the feeling of being drained, the feeling of being spent.12 Here arose the need for an integrating and rejuvenating spirit, the same breath of life coming, blowing as a second--or third--wind. Those in the struggle need support systems and mechanisms for re-charging, for re-animating. Those in the struggle need to be re-assured that they are not alone. They have to be able to draw strength from the collective reality that--despite being separated by time and space--they have sisters and brothers who have walked, are walking and will walk the same hard road they have chosen to follow.13

A few get the opportunity to go on sabbaticals and retreats. Jesus is reported to have gone on retreats when he prayed alone. The transfiguration in Mark, when he went with Peter, James and John up a mountain, has been interpreted as Jesus' way of seeking his "second wind" in the light of what lay before him at Jerusalem. Sr. Rosario Battung and her group of nuns did not go to Palanan in 1977 for a retreat but I really believe that what they experienced there with the Dumagats, in their mutual affirmation of personhood, was a totally unexpected new "surge" of the spirit, a "rushing" of Life's wind.

How about the majority of people who have to face the nitty-gritty14 details of struggling through today? How about those who will never, ever, get the luxury of a sabbatical leave or even a weekend free? How about the people who have to confront the violence of poverty as a daily experience of life? Where do they get their first, or second, or third wind?

The religious leaders in Jesus' time accused him of being a "drunkard and a glutton" no doubt because he loved to host fellowship meals in the home he stayed in. He loved attending weddings and other community gatherings. Most of his parables centered on these gatherings. It is within the struggling communities' celebrations, not outside, that we receive this "rush" of life.15

Tired and weary, laborers on strike at EMI16 sit down together to have a round of drinks. It is here where people share their frustrations, their dreams, their hopes--amidst the bubbles of beer and the cigarette smoke--that the spirit blows. Soon they are back in the picketlines.17 Empowered by the brew? I do not think so.

High school students attending Lean Alejandro's18 funeral march stop for a little rest. A few are ready to quit because of the heat. Some are ready to quit because of the long 20-kilometer march. A lot more are ready to quit because of the presence of truncheon-wielding police. They share a loaf of bread. It is not much but everyone gets to have a bite. And they continue. Strengthened by the dough? I do not think so.

An NPA19 guerilla comes home in the cover of darkness to visit his family. His wife has taken care of their children alone for years. She is afraid for her husband, afraid for their children. He too is afraid. In the stillness of the night, they make love. And for one single moment the fear disappears. He leaves. She stays. The fears come back but now they are a little bit stronger to face them.

The wind blows where it wills and on that particular night it blew upon that couple.

To believe in spirit20 is to believe that faith is greater than fear, that love is stronger than indifference, that hope overcomes despair, that goodness triumphs over evil, and that life can and will conquer death. Despite the magnitude, complexity and apparent insolubility of our problems, humanity and creation can be and, in the end, will be liberated. Every form of evil--sickness, suffering, oppression, injustice, death--can be overcome21 and the only power that can achieve this is the power of people's faith in life, in the future and in one another.22

Notes:

* I’m borrowing the title of this brief essay from the book of my father-in-law, Rev. Melanio Aoanan, Th.D. He has written extensively on articulating the Filipino Theology of Struggle (coined by former SVD priest, Edicio dela Torre during the early ‘70s as expressive of the Filipinos’ celebration of victories, small or great, along the hard road to liberation). Detailed commentary and explanations of unfamiliar terms will be found in this section of the paper.

1 "Actually, one does not need theology to be committed to justice. One does not even have to believe in God. Any decent human being could decide in the midst of oppression and exploitation to work for justice for the sake of the oppressed and exploited people." (Mary John Mananzan, "Response from the Philippines: Commitment," Spirituality of the Third World, Abraham and Mbuy-Beya, eds. New York: Orbis, 1994, 182).

2 Lumad is the collective term used for the indigenous communities in Mindanao. A similar collective term is used for the indigenous peoples of the Cordilleras, Igorots.

3 Civilian Armed Force Geographical Units were organized under the Aquino administration to “assist” the military in combating terrorism in the countryside.

4 There are massacres that we get to read in the newspapers. And there are massacres we never hear or read about. Bombings by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, using MG520 assault helicopters, OV-10 warplanes and 105mm howitzers have been used to flush out Lumads in Mindanao to allow “fast-track” (a term coined by President Ramos) development to happen in the island. The Task Force Detainees of the Philippines reports that hundreds of Manobo and Mamanwa Lumads have been displaced from Surigao del Sur. “War exercises” where 60 bombs were dropped in Agusan have left children dead, their bodies mangled, dismembered and strewn all over the place in Sitios Labuo and San Juan. Of course, government reports say that the children were killed after toying with a gun. When human rights groups raised a howl, the AFP admitted the killing with the reason that the children were used as shields by NPA guerillas (Massacre in the Highlands available at http://bioc09.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/nl/9601/0006.html).

5 People of the Lake.

6 Although ancestral lands were recognized in the Philippine 1987 constitution, subsequent laws like the Small-Scale Mining Act of 1991 has forced the Igorots out of their land. About 15% of the Philippine population are tribal peoples, the Igorots number about 1 million. But of course, without giving foreign companies from the former 40% to the present 100% ownership of the Cordilleras’ rich mining deposits, Philippines 2000 cannot be realized. These companies, with government support, now have the legal right to displace and resettle people within their concessionary areas (Urgent Action: Igorots of the Philippines available at http://bioc02.uthscsa.edu/natnet/archive/nl/9509/0203.html).

7 The foreign-funded CALABARZON project that covers the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon, hence the acronymn, is one of the centerpieces of the Ramos’ administration. This area is advertised to foreign investors as offering cheap labor, about $5/day, and as strike-free.

8 The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program passed under the Aquino administration earmarked hundreds of thousands of hectares of agricultural land held by the landed few as subject to distribution to tenant farmers. Of course, the landed lawmakers wrote two provisions that will exempt their land: land deemed unfit for agriculture cannot be placed under land reform (overnight, irrigated lands were bulldozed to fit the “unfit for agriculture” category); tenants who do not want to own land but would want to continue serving the benevolent masters of their foreparents can choose to do so (so Aquino-Cojuanco Hacienda Luisita, 6,000+ hectares all, remain in the hands of the former president’s family after the tenants were convinced that they were not ready for ownership).

9 Salvage has acquired another meaning in the islands. To be salvaged is to be liquidated.

10 “Archetypes of a Spiritual Person,” Religion and Society. Manila:FIDES, 1988,245.

11 Macli-ing Dulag, Igorot chieftain, was killed by government forces in April 1980. He and his people were forced off their ancestral lands so that the the government can put up the Ambuclao and Biga Dams in the Cordilleras. Development was more important than any minority group’s burial sites. He is famous for his belief that, “We do not own the land, the land owns us.”

12 “On the Spirituality of Struggle,” Witness and Hope amid Struggle. Manila:FIDES, 1991, 91.

13 Anthony Pinn writes, "I believe that human liberation is more important than the maintenance of any religious symbol, sign, canon, or icon. It must be accomplished....despite the damage done to cherished religious principles and traditions. Holding to this belief, I will stand and fall." (Why, Lord? New York: Continuum, 1995, 11). I agree. In the movie "Romero," Father Grande (played by Richard Jordan) tells Bishop Romero (played by Raul Julia), "How can I love God whom I cannot see if I cannot love my brothers and sisters whom I see?" Matthew 25: 31-46 is one of my favorite texts in the Bible, I've often called it the parable of the Great Surprise. Both groups were either blessed or cursed because of what they did or did not do for people, not because of what they did or did not do for God. The parable also reminds us that working for human liberation takes seriously the needs of the the whole person.

14 Term used by Pinn to describe the hard, concrete, raw realities of life (see Pinn, 116-117).

15 It is in the most ordinary that we encounter the transcendent. It is in the secular that we meet the sacred. Jesus’ abiding presence is most real in a community’s sharing of food and drink.

16 EMI or Eds Manufacturing, Incorporated is one of the biggest transnational, industrial complexes in Cavite. Workers there are hired on temporary, 6-month contracts. Those who perform well during those six months will be hired for another six months. Security of tenure does not exist in this company’s vocabulary. Unions are illegal. Still the workers organize. They join the KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno, or Labor Day Movement), the umbrella organization of supposedly “lelftist” labor unions in the Philippines. A hundred ants cannot face an elephant on their own but a hundred thousand ants probably can.

17 Sr. Mary John Mananzan writes: "I joined a group called 'Interfaith Theological Circle,' which aimed at evolving a 'Filipino Theology' in the air-conditioned library of the university. Needless to say, we came under critique for undertaking 'intellectual gymnastics.' After a period of defensiveness, we realized that it was indeed futile to evolve such theology without being involved in the struggle of the people. That was what made me respond to the invitation of the workers of a wine factory "La Tondena" to accompany them when the military threatened to arrest them....During this first encounter with military brutality, I felt helpless when the military came, beat the workers, and herded the bloody mass of humanity like animals into waiting buses. That was my starting point." ("Response from the Philippines: Commitment," 183).

18 Lean Alejandro, secretary-general of BAYAN (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan), was gunned down at 27 in 1987. His murder sent a message to militant organizations, among them the League of Filipino Students (LFS), the Student Christian Movement (SCM) and the University of the Philippines Christian Youth Movement (UPCYM), to stop all politically-charged mass actions. The students stopped alright, they stopped being harrassed and staged one of the biggest funeral marches ever held. The march began at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City and ended about 20 kilometers later in Navotas, Malabon.

19 The communist New People’s Army was born on August 1967. Founder Bernabe Buscayno (alias Commander Dante), a peasant farmer from Tarlac, was captured under Marcos’ rule and then later released by the Aquino administration. He now heads the 3,000 plus strong farmers’ cooperative in his home province. Reports vary on the strength of the army at the present, estimates run from 10,0000-30,000.

20 This spirit, this breath of life which binds everything together can also be called God. It is interesting that John Taylor in his Go-Between God (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973) believes that God is the “and” in You and Me. God is the power that creates relationships of mutuality. God is the go-between. Also, if God is God, then I think it’s not very important for God to receive worship and adoration. If God is the parent of us all, then like any human parent, God’s greatest joy would be to see God’s children sharing with and caring for one another.

21 Adopted from Albert Nolan's Jesus Before Christianity. New York: Orbis, 1978, 140-141.

22 "Humanity," Pinn argues at the end of his book (158), "is far better of fighting with the tools it has--a desire for transformation, human creativity, physical strength, and untapped collective potential."

Again, I quote scripture to offer my agreement with Pinn’s point. William Herzog’s Parables as Subversive Speech (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994) served as major resource for this reaction.

Again, I quote “parables about people’s struggles” to support my point. The Laborers in the Vineyard (Mt 20:1-16) offer us a portrait of an oikodespotes, a despot, an elitist oppressor who, in order to possess, to ensure a timely harvest, offers a denarius--subsistence level pay--to workers; workers who'll take anything just to get by today. Is this what God's reign is--as the church has proclaimed the parable to be--going to be like? More of the same oppression and exploitation?

The Tenants in the Vineyard (Mk 12:1-12) initially possess the land after claiming it violently from its absentee landlord. But "...what then will the owner of the vineyard do?" How can we reclaim our status as rightful heirs of the land if violence always ends in violence? Are there other ways to assert our claims?

In the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31) Jesus uses Abraham as paradigm of the blessed rich to shock his listeners: Father Abraham should have received the rich man into his bosom but he does not; he receives Lazarus--poor Lazarus who dies and doesn't even get to be buried. The elite, possessed by possessions, have for so long used Abraham as justification for their oppression.

"How do we get ourselves out of debt?," people ask. A good King might do it or even a Christian president or a Christian senate. The parable of the Unmerciful Servant (Mt 18:23-35) reminds us of the hopelessness of looking for deliverance in a king (or president). Rulers are part of the system that created them. The parable proposes that neither messianic hope nor popular kingship can resolve the people's dilemma. To reshape their world, to assert their claim as God's heirs, the people must look elsewhere.

The Talents (Mt 25:14-30;Lk 19:11-27) offer a portrait of the whistle blower; the one who, sickened by the system, cries, "Enough!" It offers us a glimpse of the dispossessed who live in the outer darkness, far from the centers of power and light, struggling to survive from day to day, "weeping and gnashing teeth," Pinn’s nitty-gritty experience.

The Friend at Midnight (Lk 11:5-8) paints a different kind of portrait. Village peasants offer hospitality to visitors and sojourners and are engaged in little acts that challenge the efforts of their oppressors to dehumanize them. Rather than cave in to the desire to hoard and accumulate, as the rich then and now do, peasants, then and now, continue to cooperate and to provide hospitality. Their shameless social order of small redistribution of food and resources foreshadows a different order of human relations.

Last Words...

LAST WORDS

(Binan UCCP, 21 March 2008)

Last words are important to many of us. Famous last words include
Rizal’s “Mi Ultimo Adios” and Antonio Luna’s “P___ -Ina!” Those of us who watched the coverage of FPJ's wake and burial four years ago will remember the variety of remembrances of people who talked about his last words to them. My late mother's last words to me--when we were in the air-conditioned ER of the Philippine Heart Center--were: "Anak mainit, paypayan mo ako." And, of course, the most famous last words ever
recorded would be Jesus’ Seven as found in the gospels: Mark and Matthew have one; Luke has three; and John has three.

Many Christians do not read the Bible. We read books about the Bible and parts of the Bible. If the Gospels were movies, the way most of us “read” is akin to watching only parts of a movie, not the whole show.

Now, who among us only watch parts of a movie--5 minutes of Spider-Man 3 or 10 minutes of Marimar? The Gospels are complete narratives.I propose studying Jesus’s Last Words based on that fundamental assumption.In other words, if Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were movies or tele-dramas, then Jesus’s dying words play important roles in how the stories play out.

Last Words-- Matthew

If one reads Mark and Matthew from beginning to end, one will discover that both narratives privilege Galilee as locus of God’s activity. Most of Jesus’s healing, teaching, and preaching ministry happen in Galilee. In the Matthean and Markan narrative Jerusalem is bad news. Jesus is betrayed in Jerusalem. Jesus is arrested, tortured, and executed in the Holy City. Jesus dies in Jerusalem. One can even argue that God forsakes Jesus in Jerusalem, thus at the point of death he cries, “Eli, Eli lama sabacthani?” or “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Many of us who grew up in church and in
Sunday school remember the countless number of Bible verses we memorized. Many of us hated the ritual. I know I did when I was growing up. We thought those verses were useless until something happened in our
lives and then the verses suddenly took on a life all their own.

The Jesus of Matthew was rooted in the Hebrew Scripture. At the lowest point in his life, near death, Jesus was not blaming God. He was quoting Scripture. Psalm 22 to be exact. I have witnessed people pass from this life to the life beyond and quite a few were quoting scripture. Remember that Matthew does not end with Jesus dying on the cross. The gospel ends with God raising Jesus from the dead. Psalm 22 begins with despair but ends with triumph and an affirmation of faith in a God who saves. Go and read it.
Jesus’ last words in Matthew celebrate the promise of Immanuel. In life, in death, in life beyond death, we are not alone. God is with us. Always.

Last Words—Mark

In Mark, Jesus cries, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani” and dies. Unlike Matthew, the risen Jesus does not appear in the ending. Check your Bibles. The gospel ends in 16:8, where we find women silent and afraid. What we have in the story is a young man who tells the women that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee and will be waiting for them there. Jesus is not in the tomb. He is not in Jerusalem. He is not where we want him to be. He is back in Galilee where his ministry began and he is waiting for us there. And we are afraid. Why? Because we know that this path will eventually lead to the cross. We know that following Jesus will lead to suffering and, yes, death.

Unlike Matthew, Luke, and John where we find beautiful stories of the resurrection—Jesus appears to Magdalene, to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, by the beach and eats breakfast with his followers, Mark offers a young man with a confirmation of a promise – Jesus is risen just as he told you. We do not see Jesus. We are told to believe he is risen. And it is only in going back to Galilee, in places we do not want to go, in ministering among the poorest and the most oppressed, that we will eventually find him.

The last words of Jesus in Mark are dying words. The gospel does not end with Jesus’ triumphant words as a risen Lord but with a young man’s affirmation of God’s resurrection power: that hope is stronger than despair, that faith is greater than fear, that love is more powerful than indifference, and that life will always, always conquer death.

Last Words—Luke

Many Filipinos love the Gospel according to Luke. I read somewhere that our favorite parables are The Prodigal Son and The Good Samaritan. Both come from Luke. A lot of the scriptural support for the Roman Catholic Church’s theology of preferential option for the poor is based on Luke.

God is definitely pro-poor in Luke. Jesus’s birth is announced to poor shepherds. Jesus's first sermon--which almost gets him killed--is a proclamation of good news to the poor. And this God who loves the poor so much is most often described as a loving parent. From Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, to Mary, the mother of Jesus, to the Father of the Prodigal Son who waited patiently for his son’s return, to Father Abraham who takes poor Lazarus into his bossom… the Gospel of Luke reminds us, offers us metaphors of God’s unconditional love as parent. At the cross, two of Jesus’s last three words in Luke are addressed to his father. Jesus says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” If God is our parent and we are all God’s children, then we should ACT as brothers and sisters. This means not behaving like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, or like the Rich Man in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. This means acting like the Good Samaritan who did not consider the wounded Jew as an enemy but as a brother. Jesus in Luke challenges his followers to love their enemies and to do good to those who hate them. Jesus set the example. We call ourselves Jesus followers but do we really follow? If Jesus is our "Kuya" then our words and our deeds should remind others of our "kuya."

Bombing Afghanistan, invading Iraq, trampling on Philippine sovereignty in the guise of "visiting rights"-- are Jesus's brothers and sisters supposed to do these things? Jesus says to one of the criminals crucified with him, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Filipinos are social creatures. The worst punishment for Filipinos is solitary confinement. Many Filipinos turn on radios and televisions when they are alone, not to listen or watch, but simply to create a semblance of community. God’s salvation is a community project. No one can be a Christian alone. When God saves, God saves communities and peoples. To celebrate the incarnation is to celebrate that God has left heaven to be with us. So no one lives and dies alone. God is with us. In the midst of death on the cross, Jesus reminds his fellow victim that he is not alone. Hindi siya nag-iisa.

Then Jesus says, “Father, into they hands I commit my spirit.” Luke follows Mark and Matthew’s lead here. Jesus also quotes an Old Testament Psalm. In this case Psalm 31. It is also like Psalm 22, a Psalm of deliverance. Jesus believed in a God who will never forsake. And God does not forsake Jesus. Many of us pray Jesus's prayer before we sleep at night. We commit everything to God, yet we stay up all night thinking of so many things only God has control over. Let us follow Jesus. Even in death, he knew that he was safe in God’s hands. We are never alone.

We will never be alone.

Last Words—John

If one reads the Gospel of John from start to finish one will discover that the story celebrates the discipleship of the unnamed. In other words, the most effective followers of Jesus in the story have no names. The Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well, who runs to her people to share her experience with Jesus, is unnamed. The young boy who offers the five loaves and two fish so that Jesus can feed over five thousand people is also unnamed. The beloved disciple who plays a role bigger than Peter’s in the story is also unnamed. But most important of all, the only disciple who we find at the beginning and at the end of Jesus’s life is also unnamed: Jesus’s mother. We find the two—Jesus’s mother and the beloved disciple—at the foot of the cross. Jesus says to them, “Woman behold your son; behold your mother.” Jesus asks that his two faithful disciples take care of each other. Love is the key theme of the Gospel of John. God became human because of love. The world is supposed to be blessed by our love for each other. Jesus in John leaves his followers only one commandment—for us to love one another as Jesus loved us. Mothers behold your sons; sons behold your mothers; parents behold your children; children behold your parents. We are members of the family of God and our primary task is to live in love for each other, like a family: each one willing to offer one’s life for the other.

Then Jesus says, “I thirst.” Again, in the Johannine story, particularly in his conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus is the Living Water. Thus, many people find it puzzling that the one who says he is Living Water is suddenly thirsty. And he is given vinegar by his executioners.
Like Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s quotations, John’s “I thirst” represents a quote from the Old Testament--Psalm 69. Faith draws strength from the past. Like Daniel’s three friends who faced death, yet believed in a God who will deliver them as God has delivered in the past, Jesus affirms the same unwavering faith in a deliverer God. And God did deliver Daniel’s three friends. And God delivered David (who wrote the Psalm). And Jesus believed God will deliver him, as well.

Then Jesus says, “It is finished.” The End. Jesus is dead. Remember the only commandment Jesus left his followers in the Gospel of John—greater
love hath no one than this, that one offers one’s life for another? Jesus does
exactly that. His life was an offering. And we are challenged to do the same. At the beach Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Jesus… We are asked the same thing. Can we love as Jesus loved? Jesus was not alone when he faced the cross. And his last words on the cross affirmed his faith in God, in people, in the transforming power of love and life, and empowered him to face death. Psalm 22 which Jesus quotes in Matthew and Mark, Psalm 69 which he quotes in John, and Psalm 31 which he quotes in Luke celebrate a God who delivers, a God who liberates, a God who will always take the side of the poor and the oppressed, a God who will not forsake us. And God did not forsake Jesus.

And God will never forsake us.

[Preached at the Binan UCCP, Good Friday, 2008]

Filipinos and their Jeepneys

Filipinos and their Jeepneys

(An Essay in Honor of Valerio Nofuente)

“The western mind is so used to having everything planned and performing like clockwork while the Filipino, conditioned by survival instincts and desperate situations, can do things on-the-spot waiting for every development to guide the next big move. This is simply revolting to the Western mind… The jeepney is typically representative of the Filipino character. It evolved out of a need to survive, to earn a living, to augment an inadequate transport system. Western countries will have all the reasons not to have the jeepney as a means of public transport. Yet millions ride to work and school daily on it. Majority actually prefer it to the buses.”

From The Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 19, 20011

Definitions

This essay offers no truth claims. It is a work of fiction. By fiction, I am following Clifford Geertz’ definition: “Something made, something fashioned—the original meaning of fictio—not that they are false, un-factual, or ‘as if’ thought experiments.”2 I present my own constructions of some fragmented realities representing what I believe are powerful symbols of the decolonizing Filipino. According to Gerald Arbuckle, “A people can communicate, transmit, and hand over their culture to the coming generations by means of symbols. And the whole gamut of their knowledge, values, beliefs, and outlook in life is thus transmitted.”3 Symbol, according to Geertz, has been used to refer to a great variety of things, often a number of them at the same time.4 Turner offers a similar broad definition: “Almost every article…every gesture…every song or prayer, every unit of space and time that stands for something other than itself. It is more than it seems, and often a good deal more.”5 One of Turner’s specific definitions is helpful for my argument: a symbol is a thing regarded as typifiying or representing something by analogous qualities or by association.6 And according to Geertz symbols as vehicles of culture should not be studied in and of themselves. They should be studied for what they can reveal to us about culture. Symbols are concrete embodiments of ideas, attitudes, judgments, longings, and beliefs.7 More importantly, people need symbols as sources of illumination to find their bearings in the world8 and they instigate social action and exert influences inclining persons and groups to action.9

Fernando Segovia defines the imperial-colonial framework as the structural reality practiced in terms of a primary dynamic: on the one hand, a political, economic, and cultural center, more often than not symbolized by a city or metropole, on the other hand, any number of margins, colonies, politically, economically, and culturally subordinated to the center. He continues: this primary dynamic entails and engenders in turn any number of secondary binomials: civilized/uncivilized; modern/primitive; cultured/barbarian. This reality should not be seen as uniform in every imperial context across time and culture but as maps or broad representations; and this reality is of such reach and such power that it affects and colors the entire artistic production of both center and margins, especially their literary production. Yet, in the wake of this reality lies the inverted, deconstructing, de-colonizing dynamic of resistance, where the margins actually take the initiative, while the center is forced into a reactive position.10

This work of fiction, focused on one particular symbol for the de-colonizing Filipino, attempts to make available what Geertz calls, “answers that others… have given, and thus to include them in the consultative record of what man [sic] has said.”11

Jeeps and Jeepneys

As has been noted earlier, on the shores of Mactan Island in the Visayas, central Philippines, people will find two monuments memorializing April 27, 1521. One reads: “On this spot Ferdinand Magellan died on April 27, 1521 wounded in an encounter with the soldiers of Lapulapu, chief of Mactan Island. One of Magellan's ships, the Victoria, under the command of Juan Sebastian Elcano,sailed from Cebu on May 1, 1521, and anchored at San Lucar de Barrameda on September 6, 1522, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the earth.” This monument was erected in 1941 when the Philippines was still a US Commonwealth. The other reads: “Here, on April 27 1521, Lapulapu and his warriors repulsed the Spanish invaders, killing their leader, Ferdinand Magellan. Thus, Lapulapu became the first Filipino to have repelled European aggression.” This second monument was built in 1951, six years after Independence.

In 1941, the same year the Magellan plaque was put up, the US War Department adopted the Willys model for its all terrain, go-anywhere, reconnaissance vehicle: the military jeep. In 1951, the same year the Lapu-Lapu plaque was put up, the jeepney was already on its way to becoming the most popular means of public transportation in the Philippines.

The US Army specifications for the jeep called for three bucket seats, and a mount for a 30-caliber machine gun. The first thing Filipinos did in their transformation of the military jeep was to get rid of the machine gun mount. They then transformed the vehicle into some sort of mini-bus that eventually could accommodate sixteen or more people. There are those who look at a jeepney and call it a Frankenstein’s monster. There are others who see it as a “Filipino home on wheels” complete with an altar. Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s WWII liberation forces, after literally bombing Manila to smithereens, rode into the shell-shocked city in jeeps. Today, American Special Forces, stationed in the Philippines as part of Pres. Bush’ anti-terror war campaign, patrol the poverty-stricken streets of southern Mindanao riding jeeps. The military jeep was, and still is, a symbol of imperialism.12 A jeepney resists this symbol.

According to Dianne Bergant, anthropologists when confronted with the particularities of social reality attempt to construct a “thick description” of behavior, a highly detailed ethnographic analysis that explicitly includes, as far as this is possible, the insider's perspective. The most common approach toward this end is through a process of radical empiricism known as participant observation. Concerned with the comparability of empirical data, it begins with a particular, microscopic life-situation, and moves toward a contextualized understanding of meaning with the hope that general principles or parameters might be formulated. The findings then are tested against data from other life situations. Conclusions are drawn by induction as well as by comparison. The key authenticating factor here is resonance.13

By resonance, I mean the power of a text, an object, or a song to reach out beyond its set boundaries to a larger world, to evoke or conjure up in readers, viewers, or hearers a variety of memories, feelings, or responses. In the Philippines, the invitation “Mangisda tayo” (Let’s go fishing) has at least two meanings in Tagalog (the language spoken by a third of the population). The literal is the summons to go catch fish. With over seven thousand islands, the Pacific Ocean to the West and China Sea to the East, many Filipinos are fisherfolk. The symbolic meaning, according to Leny Strobel, comes from Tagalogs of the 16th century who listened to friars’ sermons in Spanish, and fished out words and phrases out of the stream of the sermon and arbitrarily assigned them to their own imaginings. Out of a barrage of unreadable signs, the Tagalogs were struck by recognizable words then went on spinning out narratives that bore no relation to the logic and intent of the priests’ discourse.14 “To fish” is to conjure up unexpected meanings.

Valerio Nofuente’s essay,“Jeepney: King of the Road?,”15offers a thick description of a jeepney.16 As I go through his detailed description, I will interrupt the narrative flow, disrupt the interstices of structure, “fish” for meaning, with insights, particularly from Geertz and Turner, that I hope helps me prove my case: that the jeepney works as symbol of the decolonizing Filipino.

Jeepneys: A Thick Description

War-torn Philippines ceased to be a US colony on July 4, 1946. World War II had crippled the country’s economy, left almost all engine-driven vehicles wrecked, and transportation—or the lack thereof—loomed as a major recovery problem. The Americans, according to Nofuente, also had a problem: what to do with the surplus of jeeps rotting and rusting at various depots. A mutual solution was reached. The vehicles were sold to Filipinos, who turned these into mass transportation units. The jeepney, therefore, was supposed to be a temporary solution to a postwar problem, but the short-term turned permanent. This turn of events was unexpected for the Americans. Not only were their rejects sold at a profit but suddenly they had a growing market for spare parts.

Nofuente continues: “The first jeepneys, then, were hybrid vehicles. Engines and body frames came from the US, all the rest were Filipino add-ons and creations. The frame was stretched and an opening was made in the back to allow easier entry for passengers. The plain olive drab was removed and repainted with a rainbow of colors. Jeepneys have evolved from the early eight-passenger AC (Auto Calesa) to the long 16-plus-passenger PUJ (Public Utility Jeep). In 1970, Japan and Germany began supplying the engines.” I believe that Baguio City, 5,000 feet above sea level and established early during the US occupation as a summer retreat for American military officers and their families, is probably the only place in the country that still have ACs.

“Between 1945 and 1968,” according to Geertz, “sixty-six countries attained political independence from colonial rule… the great revolution against Western governance of Third World peoples is essentially over. Politically, morally, and sociologically, the results are mixed. But from the Congo to Guyana the wards of imperialism are, formally anyway, free.”17 The realities of postcolonial life, for Geertz, can be a deflating experience.18 Considering all that independence seemed to promise including popular rule, economic growth, equality, cultural regeneration, national greatness, there are those in the former colonies who, confronted with concrete demands and challenges of postcolonial life, thirst for anything that reminds them of their former lives.

Thus, as Nofuente points out, there are those who quite easily conclude that the jeepney is an ugly mutation of the jeep. Its extended frame looks out of proportion, it is narrow and crowded, and it almost always drags when full of passengers. Because a foreign-made car is a status symbol, there are jeepneys that use car parts—or copies of car parts—as decorations. It is not uncommon to see jeepneys with hoods that bear the Mercedes Benz star, or have Toyota hubcaps, or Volkswagen mudguard, or even a Benz radiator grill.

Geertz, in describing the impulses involved in decolonization, describes essentialism as a people’s need to look for mores, for traditions, for roots that will ground the basis of a new national identity. Epochalism, on the other hand, is to “look to the general outlines of the history of our time, and in particular to what one takes to be the overall direction and significance of that history.”19 The tension between these two contrasting impulses—to hold on to an inherited course or to move with the tide of the present—gives nationalism its peculiar air of being at once morally outraged at modernity and hell-bent toward adopting it.20

I agree with Matt Stevens21 who describes epochalist strains as those movements that espouse concrete steps that the nation, as one people, has to take before it can join the modern world, to stand on its own. These tendencies accuse the United States and its agencies of hamstringing local economic development and keeping the country in a perpetual state of dependence and poverty. I grew up under Ferdinand Marcos’ epochalist Bagong Lipunan (New Society) that promoted a “One Nation, One People, One Language” approach to industrialization. For Stevens, the essentialist strain, celebrates nationhood and independence as efforts to strengthen and restore indigenous culture and traditions. These tendencies argue that the West, particulary the United States, has done irreparable damage to Filipino culture. Essentialists condemn the cosmopolitanism' of the metropole, and sees separation from all things Western and American as the only way to preserve Filipino culture from extinction. I would classify historians and anthropologists who advocate a grand pre-colonial history dating back to 250,000 BC, and linguists who celebrate the country’s different languages and dialects as essentialists.

These two strains according to Geertz22 are present in just about nationalist movements, but they are not equally present in every movement. For Stevens, the strength of one strain or another depends on the severity of the 'nation's' problems, and the extent to which they can be blamed with any credibility on the former colonial power. If poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment are chronic problems, and there are no signs that the current state is willing or capable of dealing with them, then the 'epochal' strain will be fairly strong. On the other hand, the 'essentialist' strain will be emphasized if the local culture seems in danger of being supplanted by that of the metropole. These two strains may also appeal to different groups within the separatist movement. Epochalist nationalism may hold a greater appeal for the poor, the unemployed and the financially insecure. Essentialist nationalism, on the other hand, will probably have a somewhat different constituency: The devout, who see local pieties undermined by metropolitan heresies; intellectuals, who feel more comfortable speaking in their own idiom but who feel forced to use the symbols of an alien culture; bureaucrats and businessmen, who have to learn the language of the metropole if they want to keep their jobs. To simplify, one could say that epochalist separatism appeals more to the poor, and essentialist nationalism appeals more to the well to do, as a general rule.23

Nofuente’s description shows both these impulses at work in a jeepney. Right on top of the jeepney, dead center is a plastic headdress that looks like a crown, and, since crowns are symbols of king (of the road or a pre-colonial past?) names like JEEPNEY KING, QUEEN LEAH, SUPER-STAR or simply the kings of jeepney body makers, SARAO MOTORS, INC., are written on it. By night, this area is filled with blinking lights, almost like vigil lights around a saint's statue. Sometimes there is a dark-colored sun visor below the headdress, perhaps with a pair of outspread eagle's or chicken's wings, also surrounded by lights. Usually, between the visor and the windshield, is a plastic strip with the jeepney’s destination, route, or main road plied such as "Dasmarinas-Silang," or "UP Diliman-Quezon Boulevard." On the windshield are plastered the last few years’ accumulation of Land Transportation Commission stickers, stickers from colleges and universities, or from pilgrimages to Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage at Antipolo, and colored pieces of reflectorized paper that serve as a patterned border around the happy windshield. Between the hood and the windshield is a bit of space dedicated to the "name" of the jeep: the name of a child, grandchild, or the owner, like "Nanay Cely," "Gingging-Nene," in big, bold letters.

The hood, as Nofuente observes, is about a meter square, is a repository of the creativity of the jeepney decorator. Almost required here is the chrome horse bolted upright on the hood, which may signify homage of some sort to the horse drawn calesa. However, what does it mean when an operator has many as 10 such horses on the hood? Along with the horses is a forest of other decorations, mostly roosters and other animal forms, bolted on the hood. I would characterize these, like the headdress, as essentialist tendencies. There are also straight and U-shaped stainless steel bars; antennas not connected to any radios, but wrapped in plastic strips; perhaps 10 side mirrors creatively placed; and parking lights in the combinations of red, green, blue, and orange. One wonders how the driver sees his or her destination through such exaltation of ornaments.

I would like to point out that not much has been written about the Filipinos’ relationship with the animal kingdom. As Daniel Patte, in his teaching stints in the Philippines, has experienced first-hand: there are churches in the country where even dogs, cats, and birds congregate. Cockfighting and horseracing are two of the most popular past-times in the archipelago. E. Arsenio Manuel, in Treasury of Stories: Filipino myths and folktales, argues that in many indigenous Filipino myths, first there were plants, birds, and animals. Then came humans.24 Manuel’s arguments resonate with Howard Harrod’s who, in his The Animals Came Dancing, says that Native American traditions made the point that being human meant fundamentally being intertwined with a relationship with particular places and specific animals.25 It is no wonder then that in Mindanao, home of the endangered Philippine Eagle, jeepneys are called “Agila” (eagle).

Nofuento sees the grill as another fertile area for Filipino artistry, since it may be copied from Ford, Toyota or Mercedes Benz or made of red steel bars arrange side-by-side in some welding shop. Here one can see hanging as many as 19 blinking parking lights. The bumper serves, not just to ward off bumps, but to hold more artwork. Here are fastened the license plate, the trademark of the jeepney’s body builder, and strips of reflectorized sheets. A skirt-like rubber sheet may hang from it decorated with a sun motif, or five stars surrounding the title of a popular or sentimental song, usually foreign ditties like " Love Me Tender," "No Other Love," or "You're My Everything."

The jeepney’s sides are a painter's canvas. In between the chrome strips again echoing the car, and the steel bars, painters insert different colors, lines, pictures, mini-landscapes, decorative motifs. One often sees rocket ships in wild chase, as in Star Wars or Buck Rogers; jet formations, like those of the Philippine Air Force's Blue Diamonds; planets in orbit; bursts of flame; "realistic" landscapes, and girls’ names. Are these epochalist tendencies? The extra-wide jeepney windows take on a homey look, what with the red and yellow cloth, or crocheted curtains, the jalousies, and, when it rains the plastic awnings go down. Below the window is usually screwed the signboard of the destination or route of the jeepney, like the one in front. Right beside the driver is the ever-present spare tire, as smooth and bald as the four tires in use. There is a hubcap which, don't believe if you can't, has whirling lights rigged up on it so that at night it seems like a mini-Ferris wheel or the fireworks made in Bocaue, Bulacan, for New Years’.

Nofuente observes that the back of the jeepney has been through over half a century of evolution too. This opening, meant to let passengers through, used to be covered by a canvas curtain. Now, however, a dome structure has evolved, suggesting perhaps a door, even a church door through which pass royalty and nobility. On each side of this entrance are steel bars to hold onto, as one pulls oneself up and into the jeepney. Here, too, can hang the passenger for whom there is no longer room inside. Here, too, one will find hooks on which to hang market baskets, bushel baskets, shopping bags, puto (rice cake) containers, and taho (soft tofu drink) cans.

The steps are another obvious place for more slogans since one has to look at them as one gets in. There are the welcoming sign: "WATCH YOUR STEP," "HALINA BABY(Let's go, Baby)", "WELCOME CHICKS;" or the teasing ones - "WOW LEGS," "CHICKS LOADER," "CHICK MECHANIC." The bravado and bluster of the jeepney driver is never missing, so sometimes the rubber skirt (there is one here too) has still more information like "DRIVER, WALANG SABIT (The driver is unattached);" "WANTED WIFE; 35-25-35;" or it may boastfully warn: "DISTANCIA AMIGO (Keep your distance, friend)." The mudguards may bear Toyota, Volkswagen or Mitsubishi Galant imprints, or may be bits of rubber improvised by some auto shop with "Passing side" written on the left and "Suicide" on the right.

The slogans that appear sexist and not “welcoming” to women are exactly that, sexist and not “welcoming” to women. Those slogans serve as reminders of the West’s worst contributions to the country: the objectification of women. What is ironic is that once one gets past those steps one discovers that the majority of jeepney riders are women. Actually, women make up the majority of the population.

It is a fact of history that Spain introduced patriarchy in the Philippines. Sr. Mary John Mananzan, one of the foremost Filipino feminists, using Spanish sources argues that “when the Spaniards came in 1521, they were shocked by the freedom manifested by the mujer indigena, which did not fit into their concept of how women should be and behave since the women in the Iberian peninsula at that time lived like contemplative nuns. Although the missionaries were forced to acknowledge the superior quality of the indigenous woman, they set out to remold her according to the image and likeness of the perfect woman of the Iberian society… The Spaniards introduced the cult of the Virgin Mary that was focused on the obedient Mary of the Annunciation. They took great efforts to convince the indigenous woman that she had a pearl of great price, her virginity to protect, yet as the documents of the Archivo General de Nacion show, the Spaniards both lay and religious were guilty of robbing her of this very same treasure.” 26 They also introduced prostitution in the service of Spanish soldiers.27 Mananzan points out the unfortunate reality that in the predominantly Christian country, women are still discriminated against and subordinated in the home, in church, and in society.28 For many women, a jeepney ride with mostly women is probably the best respite, though fleeting, from the established structures of patriarchy.

Nofuente observes that there are three entrances by which one enters a jeepney. One is only for the driver, or anyone he or she allows to squeeze into the tiny space between spare tire and driver’s seat. The second one is for the two passengers who can be accommodated beside the driver. The third is the most important, the one at the back that leads to the passenger compartment. When one enters the jeep, one senses an atmosphere different from that of most motor vehicles, since he seems to be in a Filipino home rather than in a conveyance. First of all, one notices the altar, with its image of the Sto. Nino, or the Suffering Christ. It seems to be a ritual, the faithfulness and regularity with which the driver hangs a garland of sampaguita, the national flower, or everlasting flowers near this altar (sometimes on the rearview mirror.

Fr. Jaime Belita, in And God Said:Hala!, argues that Filipinos’ dedication to the Sto. Nino, or the Suffering Christ is an example of “relating to deity with a vengeance.” He continues: “It is similar to nationalist Jose Rizal’s description about ‘colonized Filipinos’ fishing out for meaning—that is, deriving a meaning that is different from the one intended. These devotions were forms of vengeance against a rationale introduced to perpetuate white domination. Instead of simply accepting the lordship of Christ, a fitting model for the dominant Christian colonizer, Filipinos accepted him as Lord Infant Jesus, but more infant and crucified than Lord, with all the weakness and vulnerability that these images suggested.”29

Nofuente observes that just below the altar, within easy reach, is the moneybox that must be filled before the jeepney is returned to the operator. To the right, with a miniature bottle of San Miguel beer or Coca-Cola glued on top, is an 8-track cassette recorder-player lustily blaring a Yoyoy Villame song in the vernacular. Notice that the ammeter and the gas and oil gauges are not working. This is ironical, since the dashboard is equipped with, aside from the 8-track, a crocheted doily on top of the recorder, a tiny electric fan, and eight small blinking lights. Ornamentation is complete, but the gauges are inoperative. Stuck to the windshield beside the 8-track are stickers and printed inscriptions that give the "house rules" as if to say "You’re in my house so you follow my rules." One reads, "Magbayad ng maaga nang di maabala (Pay early so as not to cause delays);" "Barya po lamang sa umaga (Only change please, in the morning);" To remind passengers that discounts are only given to students with proper identification, there is "Barok, Dabiana, ID mo'y ipakita (Barok and Dabiana, show your ID's)." Fares are paid in the jeepney according to the "honor system," since there are no tickets or collectors; thus the sticker "God knows Hudas not pay" which can be interpreted at least two ways: “Hudas” can be read as “who does” so “God knows who does not pay.” The sticker is an appeal to conscience. “Hudas” can also be read “Judas.” The sticker then has more bite: “God knows Judases don’t pay.”

Between the driver and the passenger is a board on which are usually found pin-up posters of famous Filipino movie stars, singing idols, or "bold" stars (stars of soft-porn films). Up on the ceiling are hung the two perpetually blaring stereo speakers. There are two parallel bars for passengers to hold onto so they don't fall off or over each other during sudden stops (which are frequent, especially in Manila). The ceiling serves as canvas for assorted designs, names and titles. On it one might find the names of the jeepney operator's whole clan, or the titles of his or her favorite songs, or six local comic strips.

The images, metaphors, and rhetorical devices that build nationalist ideologies are, according to Geertz, cultural devices designed to render the broad processes of collective self-definition and self-redefinition into a practical force.30 In my opinion, there is nothing more powerful than the jeepney as a transformative cultural device. To be more specific, then and now, only a nationwide jeepney strike can paralyze the whole Philippine economy.31 I have heard foreigners describe their experience with jeepneys as a cultural event.

God Bless our Way

By Emmanuel Garibay

Jeepneys and Loob

I agree with Nofuente’s comment that the seemingly elastic capacity of the jeepney mirrors the Filipino's power to adjust to situations. Six passengers fit, but one can make that seven, and even crowd in eight. If there isn't enough sitting space, someone can hang on at the steps—see--it can be done. It is something like the Filipino home. If one arrives while the family is at table, an extra place is immediately laid, and the rice and fish somehow are enough for all, for everyone adjust his intake for the guest. But more than creating more space, elasticity mirrors the Filipino’s loob.

I have argued32 elsewhere that in the Philippines, the criterion of ethical value is in interpersonal relationships and communal interaction. This value system resonates with Geertz’ observations about Balinese notions of personhood that is focused toward achieving smoothness in interpersonal relations, quite different from the European autonomous ego.33 Among most Filipinos, it is the other tao (human), the equal tao, kapwa (neighbor, fellow human), that is the foundational objective and external reality that tests the humaneness of humanity. The ideal of loob is kabuuan (wholeness, integrity, harmony) or kapwa/kapatiran (the collective body of loob). In the New Testament, the church has often been described as the body of Christ.34 In Filipino thought, this identification is most important because the body and body parts have always been used to symbolize the Filipino.35 For example, the English “You worthless ingrate” is Walang hiya (shameless) or Makapal ang mukha (thick faced). Both translations are about “face.” A man without honor is walang bayag (no balls) in Filipino.

Melanio Aoanan argues that the most vital part of the Filipino human body is the loob. The center, the core of one’s loob, is his or her lamanloob or bituka ( the intestines--roughly the equivalent of the Greek splagxnon which literally means “guts” or “entrails”). The most concrete example of its use as a term for connectedness, for the community of loob is the word kapatid (brother/sister/sibling). The word is a contraction of the Tagalog patid ng bituka (cut off from one intestine). The word in Visayan is igsoon (igsumpay sa tinai) and kabsat (kapugsat iti bagis) in Ilocano. Therefore siblings come from one and the same intestine!36 To children who get bruised or who are bleeding from minor cuts their elders say in a soothing tone: Huwag kang mabahala, malayo sa bituka (No need to worry, the wound is far from your intestine). But more than being body-related concepts, these terms do not just describe individual parts but communal body parts.37 Thus a small wound is not just far from the center of one's loob but also peripheral and insignificant as far as the center of the community of loob is concerned. The community inside a jeepney is an example of this communion of mga loob. Those soothing words from elders simply mean: "Children, we (meaning the community and its collective experience) know about little cuts like these and we do not worry about them so you do not have to worry about them too."

This is the reason why most Filipinos greet each other with “Kumain ka na ba?” (Have you eaten?)38 instead of the Western form “How are you?” And this is not just a perfunctory greeting. Filipinos are renowned for their hospitality. Closely linked to this “relational” practice is the padigo or patikim where neighbors share with neighbors what they have cooked.

When my brother, sister and I were children we could not understand why Nanay (Mom) had to share food with our neighbors. We also had to leave some food on our plates for our pet dogs and cats. She used to tell us that food shared fills up more than one's stomach. When I was a teenager working with urban poor communities in the garbage dumps of Tondo, Manila, I met a girl, a young scavenger. She was probably around twelve. I offered her the remaining half of the Coke I had on that hot, humid morning. She drank a third of it. Realizing that she might not be accustomed to having a softdrink all to herself, I told her, "Drink all of it. It's all yours." She smiled back and asked (and I remember this scene as if it were yesterday), "Can I bring this home? I have two little brothers who would love to have a taste of Coca-Cola."

According to Virgilio Enriquez: “Relationship or pakikipagkapwa is evidently the most important aspect of Filipino life. As codified in the language, eight levels of interaction have been identified: (a) pakikitungo (transaction/civility with); (b) pakikisalamuha (interaction with); (c) pakikilahok (joining/participating with); (d) pakikibagay (in-conformity with/in-accord with); (e) pakikisama (being along with); (f) pakikipagpalagayan/pakikipagpalagayang-loob (being in rapport with/understanding/acceptance with); (h) pakikiisa (being one with). These levels of conceptual and behavioral differences are most concretely manifested in Filipino food-sharing, in the context of meals.”39 It is not uncommon to see jeepney passengers, literally strangers, sharing food.

Nofuente argues that each jeepney ride seems part of a communal experience. The passenger who sits directly behind the driver helps collect fares, as a matter of course, be reaching for the money of those sitting farther. The money is often passed from hand to hand. If someone asks the driver to stop (and the jeepney can stop almost anywhere), everyone echoes the request, just in case the driver has not heard. If a child is in the jeep and an adult gets in, he or she is offered a lap (not necessarily a relative's) to sit on in order to make space. If a woman laden with a market basket and a chicken gets in, hands reach out for her basket, and feet are moved aside to find a place for it. The passengers seem to be performing a ritual. They are, as a matter of fact, not facing the direction of their destination, but each other.

A jeepney ride, fleeting and communal, is a liminal experience. By liminal, I’m using Arnold Van Gennep’s definition: all rites of transition are marked by three phases—separation, margin (limen or “threshold”), and reintegration. “The first phase of separation comprises behavior signifying the detachment of the individual or group from an earlier fixed point in the social structure, from a set of cultural conditions, or both. During the intervening liminal period, the characteristics of the ritual subject, the passenger, are ambigious; he[sic]passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state. In the third phase, re-aggregation or reincorporation, the passage is consummated.”40 For most jeepney riders, that ride could run from minutes to hours depending on location. Jeepney rides early Monday mornings in the Silang-Dasmarinas route in Cavite are usually liminal moments between home and work, home and school, or home and marketplace.

For Turner, liminal personae, “threshold people,”or liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between. They are represented as possessing nothing; their behavior is humble or passive obeying leaders or instructors completely; they develop intense comradeship and egalitarianism.41 Turner calls these fleeting relationships of lowliness, homogeneity, and comradeship, involving liminal personae, communitas.42 The passengers in one of those jeepneys plying the Silang-Dasmarinas route is a communion of equal individuals who submit to the authority of the jeepney driver, their lives are in his or her hands. Race, rank, education, possessions do not matter. What matters are the two pesos each person needs to get to his or her destination. Van Gennep argues that people are released from structure into communitas only to return to structure revitalized by their experience of communitas.43 People need a break. And for majority of Filipinos who have to face the daily grind of work, school, church, and other structured communities, the jeepney ride is the only non-structured break they can get, yes, even from home. And many look forward to it. A jeepney ride is an example of spontaneous communitas, a “winged moment as it flies,” or what hippies might call “a happening,”44 moments that disrupt the interstices of structure.

Recently, the multi-nationals Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen and Chrysler decided to cash in on the popularity of the jeepney and created similar small passenger vehicles. However, since these are mass-produced, they are plain, and without the art and the baroque designs. They come in plain colors. A few drivers of the Tamaraw (Toyota) tried painting in designs - a pink heart, some flowers - but it just didn't have the jeepney magic. The structural lines of the mass-produced jeepney are too straight, and do not tally with the curves and twists of Pinoy sensibility. A “jeepney” mass-produced by multi-nationals, agents of globalization, which is what imperialism calls itself these days, cannot, by definition, be a jeepney.

Nofuente concludes: compared to the bus, a jeepney is more wasteful, since it sits fewer people, uses up almost as much gasoline per day, and spends almost as much on tires and spare parts. It crowds the streets. Research shows that some 27,000 ply the major routes of Metro Manila, a figure equivalent to 4,050 buses in passenger capacity. There have been many attempts to eliminate the jeepney from the transportation scheme, but these have never succeeded because the jeepney is part of the sociological situation. The Philippines has an unemployment problem, and the jeepney provides employment not only for the drivers, but for the body-makers, painters, accessory makers, repairmen, “sampaquita” and cigarette vendors, and even “call” boys—children, mostly boys, barkers who call out to passengers at jeepney depots. Philippine streets are narrow and dimly lit; most of them cannot take large busses. It is in these tight and crowded streets, a network of capillaries that criss-cross the country, where the jeepney lives and breathes. And so it will still be around, this bastard vehicle that is literature, pop art object, ambulant home, statement of belief and personality, center for transient and communality and, at the moment, King of the Road.

The history of decolonization, for Geertz, has four phases: that in which the nationalist movements formed and crystallized; that in which they triumphed; that in which they organized themselves into states; and that (present one) in which, organized into states, they find themselves defining and stabilizing their relationships both to other states and to the societies from which they arouse.45 I would like to argue that these phases fall into that liminal stage between and betwixt colonial rule and that point in the future Geertz has defined as “when the desire to become a people rather than a population, a recognized and respected somebody in the world who counts and is attended to” is realized.46

The jeepney’s evolution, from the time that 30-caliber machine gun mount was removed, to the time the first 8-seater ACs roamed postwar Philippine streets, to the advent of the colorful 16-plus-seater PUJs, to its present position as eye-sore to the elite yet favorite of the masses, can serve as a gauge of the Filipino people’s unfolding process of decolonization. The jeepney is in transition: caught between and betwixt the military jeep and that uncertain future version dictated by powers-that-be beholden to multinationals whose development plans don’t include the jeepney. The people the jeepney reflects is almost in the same position: caught between and betwixt a painful colonial past and a future quite far off from Geertz’ stage of “worldwide recognition and respect.”

Eleazar Fernandez, in Exodus-toward-Egypt, notes that majority of Filipinos remain willing subjects of the United States’ “mental colony.” Migrant Filipina domestic workers, numbering over 7 million, are the global servants of late capitalism.47 Tens of millions find themselves squatters in their own homeland. Those who have opted for “The Promise Land,” the United States, find themselves treated as second-class citizens.48 Yet, there is hope for both the jeepney and the Filipino people.

Jeepneys and Revolutions

The quote from the Philippine Daily Inquirer at the beginning of this essay attempts to explain to the Western mind the recent People Power uprising, popularly called EDSA II, which ousted Joseph “Erap” Estrada from power. Jeepneys, according to the article, best represents the Filipinos’ on-the-spot survival instincts conditioned by centuries of desperate situations. The “people” in People Power are the millions who face the violence of hunger everyday, those who barely get the minimum wage. They are the “bakya” (wooden clogs) crowd, the “masa,” Mark’s ochlos. The late Luis Beltran, popular radio political commentator, called them “bubwit” (mice). These are the millions who are underpaid, who are overworked, and who will never get a bank loan approved for a house or even a second-hand car. These are the ones who ride jeepneys everyday. Yet, these are the ones who overthrew Marcos and “Erap.” According to nationalist historians Teodoro Agoncillo, Renato Constantino, and Reynaldo Ileto, the “Revolt of the Masses” that overthrew Spain was exactly that—a revolt of the masses!49

“No uprising fails. Each one is a step in the right direction.” Ileto memorializes this famous saying of peasant leader Salud Algabre in his Pasyon and Revolution.50 Algabre was one of the leaders of the anti-American Sakdal uprising in 1935. The quote is from an interview she gave in 1968. Ileto comments that her words may seem perfectly clear to us. The first thing that comes to mind is the notion that each resistance movement, in whatever form it is mounted against the empire, learns from the experience, particularly the mistakes, of its predecessors. Though an uprising leads to failure, it paves the way,it becomes part of that “archival power” that eventually leads to victory. But Ileto thinks that Algabre’s meaning was more than this. He argues that she privileges the resistance movements that we actually never read or hear about, the “pocket revolts of the masses.” This “Little Tradition,” distinct from the “Great Tradition” that glorify the Ilustrados led by Jose Rizal and Emilio Aguinaldo, was and still is muffled to preserve the image of elite-led national unity against colonial and, now, neocolonial rule.

For me, what Salud Algabre ultimately does with that short yet profound statement is memorialize all those unnamed legions of freedom fighters that have been victimized by the violence of institutionalized forgetting. These include the indigenous communities of Igorots and Lumads, forcibly driven out of their ancestral domain, in the name of development that now find themselves squatters in their own homeland. These include rural “messiahs,” like Hermano Pule and Macario Sakay, who led anti-colonial movements against Spain and America yet are marked as tulisanes (bandits) and thieves in Filipino and American history books. And these would also include people, like the women of cause-oriented organization GABRIELA, and communities, like peasant cooperatives in Tarlac and teachers’ cooperatives in Davao, struggling to dismantle structures of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and systemic violence in all its forms.

Since the late 40s, the jeepneys have been integral to the lives of many Filipinos who are not full participants in the economic system. Albert Ravenholt’s case study notes that jeepneys “relate so intimately to the daily life of Filipinos throughout the archipelago” yet government and financial institutions do not provide support of any kind to their manufacture and/or sale.51 Without establishment support, manufacturers, which are usually family operations, work on the kumpadre/kumadre (ritual kinfolk)52 and seal deals with a handshake and palabra de honor (word of honor). Young people who learn how to drive on jeepneys see jeepney driving as the best option for livelihood, given their very limited opportunities to find work elsewhere. With no credit schemes available from banks, these young Filipinos have no choice but to approach private money lenders who eventually, because of exorbitant interest rates, get to own the jeepneys themselves.

Yet despite all these difficulties the jeepney population in Manila alone managed to grow 60 percent in 36 years.53 There is no accurate account of the number of jeepneys operating in the rest of the country. It is not uncommon to see Jeepneys carry passengers and cargo to and from festive occasions such as baptisms and fiestas. Also, the vehicle’s four-wheel drive enables it to cross dry rice fields with their low dikes and carry off the harvest. Jeepney drivers are the new “kwentong kutseros” (driver storytellers) who passed news and gossip to passengers riding to and from work, school, or marketplace.54

Ravenholt notes: “Jeepney drivers are so influential as molders of public opinion that successive city mayors seeking to bar them from Manila’s main streets have been thwarted.”55 In the twenty years or so that I have been involved in social activism in the Philippines, I have observed that the only thing that can paralyze the country’s business and government infrastructure, literally bringing everything to a halt is a jeepney strike. No. Actually, there are two: a jeepney strike and a “People Power” uprising from the masses that ride jeepneys.

Recall the description of the jeepney with all its lights. No other public vehicle is better equipped to navigate the Philippines’ narrow and dimly lit streets at night. No other person is better equipped to drive a jeepney at night than a Filipino. The people’s revolt that overthrew the US-supported Marcos dictatorship in 1986 began and ended at night. I was there, with about two million other folks who ride jeepneys. “Some of the greatest revolutions occur in the dark.”56

1 The quote is from the column “Observations of What We Are,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, 19 April 2001, available at http://www.inq7.net/vwp/2001/apr/19/vwp_3-1.htm, which discusses the recent EDSA II uprising against Joseph Estrada. The Western media has described it as mob rule. The author uses the jeepney to argue that it was not. The missing portion of the quote follows: “…It [the Western mind] cannot fathom why a nation must reject the constitutional options even if and when there are clear signs that these have already been prostituted as in the case of the sham impeachment trial and the now historic Tuesday, January 16, 2001 vote. Then go viva voce in replacing a crooked president…”

2 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (Basic Books, 1973), 15.

3 Gerald Arbuckle, quoted in Eduardo Domingo, “Opium or Catalyst: The Ambivalence of Religious Symbols in Social Change,” And God said: Hala, Jaime Belita, ed. (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1991).

4 Geertz, 91.

5 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1969), 15.

6 Victor Turner, The Forest of Symbols (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1967), 19.

7 Geertz, 91.

8 Geertz, 45.

9 Turner, 36.

10 Fernando Segovia, “Pedagogical Discourse and Practices in Cultural Studies,” Teaching the Bible: The Discourses and Politics of Biblical Pedagogy, Segovia and Tolbert, eds. (New York: Orbis, 1998), 158-159.

11 Geertz, 30.

12 For the most comprehensive account of the US’ colonial and neocolonial “presence” in the Philippines, please read Daniel Schirmer and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom’s The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1987) and Resistance in Paradise: Rethinking 100 Years of US Involvement in the Caribbean and the Pacific (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee and Office of Curriculum Support, 1998).

13 Based on Dianne Bergant's "An Anthropological Approach to Biblical Interpretation: The Passover Supper in Exodus 12:1-20 as a Case Study," Semeia 67.

14 Leny Strobel, Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization among Post-1965 Filipino Americans (Quezon City, Philippines: Giraffe Books, 2001).

15 Valerio Nofuente, “Jeepney: King of the Road?” in Rogelio Santos’ Onli In Da Pilipins, c1998 (available at http://www.jetlink.net/~rogers/jeepney.html).

16 A jeepney is a mass transport system (blink). It is a symbol of the decolonizing Filipino (wink). The former is a “thin” description, the latter a “thick” one. Geertz uses an example from Gilbert Ryle to shows the difference between a "blink" and a "wink." A blink is an involuntary twitch (the thin description). A wink is a conspiratorial signal to a friend (the thick description). Although the physical movements involved in each are identical, each has a distinct meaning "as anyone unfortunate enough to have had the first taken for the second knows" (Geertz, 6). A wink is a special form of communication which is: deliberate; to someone in particular; to impart a particular message; according to a socially established code; and without the knowledge of the other members (if any) of the group of which the winker and winkee are a part. In addition, the wink can be a parody of someone else's wink or an attempt to lead others to believe that a conspiracy of sorts is afoot. Each type of wink can be considered to be a separate cultural category (Geertz, 6-7)

17 Geertz, 234.

18 Geertz, 235.

19 Geertz, 240.

20 Geertz, 243.

21 Essentialist and Epochalist definitions adopted from Matt Steven’s dissertation, The Class Basis of Nationalism, available at http://www.columbia.edu/~mfs10/public/Thesis_Chapter_1.html

22 Geertz, 240.

23 Stevens, http://www.columbia.edu/~mfs10/public/Thesis_Chapter_1.html

24 E. Arsenio Manuel, et al, Treasury of Stories: Filipino Myths and Folktales (Manila: Anvil Publishing, 1995).

25 Howard Harrod, The Animals Came Dancing (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2000), 43.

26 Sr. Mary John Mananzan, The Woman Question in the Philippines (Manila: Institute of Women’s Studies, 1997), 4.

27 Mananzan, 5.

28 Mananzan, 11.

29 Jaime Belita, “The Nono and the Nino,” And God Said: Hala, ed. Jaime Belita (Manila: De La Salle University Press, 1991) , 160-161.

30 Geertz, 252.

31 Albert Ravenholt reports of such strikes in “Jeepneys by Sarao: A Case Study of a Self-Made Young Philippine Industrialist,” Southeast Asia Series, Vol X, No. 10, American Universities Field Staff, Inc., 1962.

32 Revelation Enriquez Velunta, "Ek Pisteos Es Pistin and the Filipinos' Sense of Indebtedness" in Kent Richards, ed., Seminar Papers of the Society of Biblical Literature, 1998 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998), pp.33-59.

33 George Marcus and Michael Fisher, Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 47.

34This portion is based on Melanio Aoanan's "Teolohiya ng Bituka at Pagkain: Tungo sa Teolohiyang Pumipiglas," Explorations in Theology, Journal of Union Theological Seminary, Vol. 1 No. 1, November 1996, 23-44.

35Fr. Leonardo Mercado discusses this in his Elements of Filipino Philosophy (Tacloban Divine Word Publications, 1974).

36Aoanan, "Teolohiya ng Bituka," 35.

37Daniel Patte in his Discipleship According to the Sermon on the Mount (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Trinity Press International, 1996), 386, comments: "While conversing with students and colleagues at Union Theological Seminary (Dasmarinas, Philippines), who cannot think of themselves apart from the community to which they belong, it became clear to me that I was looking in the wrong direction. The word of God is never 'for me' by myself; it is always 'for us.'"

38In its most literal sense, the greeting means, "How are your intestines?," because it is a question prompted by a situation of kumakalam ang bituka (hunger pangs).

39See Virgilio Enriquez, “Kapwa: A Core Concept in Filipino Social Psychology, “ Sikolohiyang Pilipino, Aganon and Ma. Assumpta, eds. (Manila: National Bookstore, 1985).

40 Arnold Van Gennep, Les Rites de Passage, 1909, quoted in Turner, Ritual Process, 94-95.

41 Turner, Ritual Process, 95.

42 Turner, 96.

43 Turner, 129.

44 Turner, 132.

45 Geertz, 239.

46 Geertz, 237.

47 From Rhacel Salazar-Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).

48 Eleazar Fernandez, “Exodus-toward-Egypt,” A Dream Unfinished, Segovia and Fernandez, eds. (New York: Orbis, 2001), 167-184.

49 Reynaldo Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979), 4-5.

50 Ileto, 7.

51 Ravenholt, 10.

52 Ravenholt, 9.

53 Ravenholt has Manila figures at 17,000 in 1962 (3), while Nofuente has 27,000 in 1998.

54 Ravenholt, 3.

55 Ravenholt, 3.

56 Geertz, 238.