Babaylan Speaks

This Publisher's Column shall feature developments related to Filipino literature. Each monthly update also shall include a featured poet and poem. For comments and suggestions, please e-mail Meritage Press Associate Editor Jade Afable at Jade@meritagepress.com

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August's featured poet is Oliver de la Paz. We present three poems by him to illustrate the diversity of Oliver's talent beyond his first book NAMES ABOVE HOUSES (Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry, 2000) whose form utilized the prose poem format (while also blurring the lines between poetry and the novel). The reader can check the "Babaylan Speaks" July 2001 Archives for a sample of Oliver's prose poems. With these newer three poems, Oliver shows not just a mastery of other forms, but also the insight to take the lyric, the fragmented, the free verse, the imagistic, and the abstract (say: religious; say; abject) into compellingly fresh, eye-catching combinations. Oliver was born in Manila and raised in Ontario, Oregon. He has taught at Arizona State University, Gettysburg College, and he currently teaches creative writing at Utica College in New York.

MY DEAREST CONFLICT,

Urged, I chose to celebrate the body
with rocks and stilettos.
I've hollowed the tips of my bullets. I've poisoned
the mouthwash.

Look at these hands--at the heart,
they're contemplating God. God, they think, can drop
a branch without warning.

Spare me
your sympathy, dearest. Spare me
the discretion of an overdone murder
or the secret of the sinister man you've willed me.

What good is it to be overdone without the rest of the story?
What good will you be with your hands behind your back
and your legs
bound as in predestination?

Think--rain. Think--a man in a black shirt at the back of the bus.
There are eyelids at work here.
Dearest . . . Dearest.

Let drive the rock you've sharpened to fury. Let fly the blade
to my suspect body. I suspect everything will thank me for this.

So thanks. Again, thanks.

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ON THE EPIDERMIS

I am so riven to my body that everything else vanishes.
--Katherine Young

Regard,
the skin taut across the body,
its simplicity--something assisted like a corset

or a finger wrapped in a stitch. Here on the table
the body draped in cloth looks ominous,

like a thumb bound in string,
limb gone numb. How light

catches the loss of color. Gray touch.

The corpse wants to rule the shade
with its bald musculature.

To move
some realm of inquiry

missing when day goes to thicket,
thicket to the quiet
and uneven blanche.

A flash in the eye.

This then is the benefit of morbidity,
the loss of wince, gasp
or in-breath from a barb-prick. That something

like a lesser of twin lightning forks,
something like the hammer

and the pain of a horse's flat shoulder
baring the weight of it's rider, gone

to ferret out

the fox in the bush, gone
to the haystacks we confuse with the sea.

What then,
for the flesh and the needle? What then

for a current on the skin,
this last pure quilt of reason?

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WHAT THE EAR SAID

Nothing to hear in that hollow. Not boats,
not the cadence of boats and their oars.
Not wood and water and the ferry
to island in a storm, not rain. Not
the repetition of rain and the often loved
sound of trees. Or the sea.
Or the open mouth receiving. Not the lean
of the grief-struck against an ox-cart or the low
of the dog caught in that rain. Again
the sound of the heart in the throat, and the too soon
lapse of breath. Again the beat of the foot
against the floor--the speech of the bed-creak
or the priest. Not to hear a cloak or some ghost.
Not moon. Not door. Not the entered shoes of a beautiful
stranger and her door, her moon.

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POEMS FORM/FROM THE SIX DIRECTIONS

For more information, contact Dori Caminong (510.883.1808/dori@bwf.org).

Dear All,
You are invited to the following events, open to the public. Please note the 3 p.m. start (not the 2 p.m. start mentioned in earlier releases)

Pusod Center
1808 Fifth Street
Berkeley CA 94710

Saturday, August 10, 3PM, Artist Talk and Opening Reception
"POEMS FORM/FROM THE SIX DIRECTIONS"
On Exhibit: August 10-September 15, 2002

A Visual Poetry Exhibition and Wedding Happening

The Pusod Center is pleased to present an exhibit of poems, drawings and sculptures by Eileen Tabios "& the Universe." The exhibition also features guest artists who either collaborated with Ms. Tabios or created works with a similar sensibility to Ms. Tabios' poems: V.C. Igarta, Patricia Wood, Alice Brody, Paolo Javier, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Max Gimblett, Thomas Fink and Cal Strobel.

The exhibition will open with various festivities at the Gallery on Saturday, August 10, 2002. At 3 p.m., Eileen Tabios will present an artist's talk, followed by a celebration of Ms. Tabios' metaphorical (and real) marriage to "Mr/s Poetry" through a wedding performance "Happening." Poet Oscar Penaranda will "minister" the wedding. Poet Catalina Cariaga will play an instrument from her collection of vintage ukeleles to provide music for the rite where audience members will pin poems on the outfits of two brides: Ms. Tabios' original wedding dress, worn in postmodern mode by poet Barbara Reyes, and the original wedding dress of BWF/Pusod Founder Malou Babilonia worn by cultural activist Dori Caminong. Reception music will be provided by the dynamic SPAMSILOG Band.

The Wedding Happening references a wedding tradition in Filipino and other cultures of guests offering support by pinning monies on a newly-wed couple during a dance. In this Happening, poems will be pinned on the wedding outfits to symbolize how Poetry, too, feeds the world. Reflecting the Six Directions concept of integrating the universe into a poem, poets from around the world wrote and sent the poems that will be handed out to the audience for pinning on the wedding outfits.

Also reflecting how Poetry "heals" the world, the Happening will serve as a fundraiser for Pusod's activities to clean up the environment: a private donor has agreed to match any dollars pinned by attendees onto the wedding outfits. See www.bwf.org for more information about BWF/Pusod's activities to facilitate a better understanding of the economic, cultural and ecological conditions that affect the world.

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POETIC ALCHEMY WORKSHOPS

August 14, 21 and 28, 2002, 7 - 9PM @ Pusod
"POEMS FORM/FROM THE SIX DIRECTIONS"
Eileen Tabios presents Poetic Alchemy Workshops

Ms. Tabios will lead a poetry workshop for three Wednesdays, from 7-9 p.m. on August 14, 21 and 28, 2002. Participants may attend all or just one of the workshops. Each workshop is structured to be open to beginners as well as long-time poets. This is a unique opportunity to interact with Ms. Tabios (more information on her next groundbreaking collection, REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE, is available at http://www.marshhawkpress.org/). Each workshop will begin with a discussion on poetry as well as include ways to facilitate writing poems. Ms. Tabios believes that everyone is born a Poet, and that it is Life that makes us forget this part of our roots. Now, she wants to remind you through Poetry!

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INTERLOPE SPECIAL ISSUE ON INNOVATIVE FILIPINO/A WRITING

The public is invited to the launch party for this unique (and collectible) edition:

8pm-Friday, August 23, 2002
Locus 1640 Post, 1640 Post Street, San Francisco, CA 94115
$5/general admission
For more information, please call 415/864-6740

Interlope is proud to present INTERCEPT, an evening featuring the release of Interlope magazine's issue #8 devoted to innovative writing by Filipino/a American writers. Eileen Tabios, guest editor of this special issue, has put together an amazing array of contributors for this project, which we are sure will bring awareness to contemporary practices by Filipino/a American poets all over the country. Six local contributors from this issue--Catalina Cariaga, Jean Gier, Barbara Pulmano Reyes, Tony Robles, Eileen Tabios, and Annabelle Udo--will give readings of their work. Additionally, Eileen Tabios' "Poem Tree" piece will be performed. A reception featuring a celebratory cake, bibingka (Filipino coconut desserts), and wine will follow the performances.

Eileen Tabios' performance piece, "Poem Tree," began on March 12, 2002, when she "married" Mr/s Poetry in Sonoma, California. Poets from 13 countries, Philippines, the United States, Canada, England, Singapore, Israel, Australia, Iceland, Russia, Germany, France, Finland, and Indonesia, "attended" the wedding by sending poems for the "Poem Tree." The "Poem Tree" references the Filipino wedding tradition of guests pinning money on the bride and groom's clothes during the wedding celebration to offer financial aid for the new couple's life together. "Poem Tree" is pinned with print-outs of poems to symbolize Eileen's commitment, or "wedding" to Poetry, as well as the notion that Poetry also feeds the world. To integrate the (external) world into the (internal) world of the poet's imagination, all of the poems are written and were sent by other poets from around the world. For Intercept on August 23, 2002, "Poem Tree" will be performed again. A local poet will don Tabios' wedding dress. Audience members will be given a poem to pin to the dress and a copy of that same poem as a wedding party favor. Annabelle Udo, also reading from her own work during the evening, will perform drumming to accompany the marrying of poetry. There will be instruments available for participants in the audience to help provide sounds.

INTERCEPT #8: INNOVATIVE WRITING BY FILIPINO/A AMERICAN WRITERS:
Poems From The Future That Raise The Threshold For Writing That Next Poem. Poems That Break The Forms to Create New Forms, Poems That Adhere to Old Forms And Still Create New Forms. Poems That Leap Off The Page In Three And More Dimensions. Poems That Are Impossible To Read But Also Impossible to Ignore. Poems Reliant on Erasure. Poems Reconfiguring Myths. Poems That Diss Colonialism. Poems Distilled Through Alchemy. Poems That Sear Your Eyes Then Soothe Your Heart. Poems That Rage Far Into The Long Night. Poems That Are Wise, And Not. Formally Risky Poems. Poems That Proclaim: "Filipinos Are Not Invisible!" Poems That Foretell The 21st Century As the Century of Filipino Poets "Wrought"-ing From English. Poems by

Catalina Cariaga
Jean N.V. Gier
R. Zamora Linmark
Veronica Corpuz
Luisa Igloria
Eric Gamalinda
Paolo Javier
Sarah Gambito
Nick Carbo
Annabelle Udo
Tony Robles
Cristina Querrer
Barbara Jane Pulmano Reyes
Irene Suico Soriano
Eileen Tabios
Jose Garcia Villa

ORDERING INFORMATION: $5 to Summi Kaipa, Interlope, PO Box 423058, San Francisco, CA 94110

Summi Kaipa and Eileen Tabios thank the Potrero Nuevo Fund Prize, administered through New Langton Arts for support of INTERCEPT: To Thwart, Cradle, Exchange. This evening program is part of a year-long project intending to further Asian American literary artists in the Bay Are

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LETTER TO A YOUNG POET

This unique, but timely, letter is written by scholar Leny Strobel, a teacher at Sonoma State University and author of the groundbreaking Coming Full Circle: The Process of Decolonization Among Post-1965 Filipino-Americans (Giraffe Books, 2001).

Dear Poet,

I am called the maid of the world and the world has made me dirty
--Irene Duller, poet

It's been almost a year now since I heard you speak this line. The words are still with me. I have carried them with me like amulets, like beads on a rosary, not knowing exactly what they will move me towards as I mulled them over and over in memory.

This line in your poem speaks about the Filipina domestic worker in Hong Kong, Italy, Spain, France, Los Angeles, New York. Name a country, she's there. I have followed their paper trail and learned about "global care chains." A Filipino American scholar simply calls them "the servants of globalization".

Dear young Filipina American poet, you are my sister. The maid of the world is our sister, too. How am I going to establish the connection that we have to each other? I, an academic; you, a young poet, and the maid. What is the story?

After writing a book on the process of decolonization, I was left with a new question: what do you do after you decolonize? The answer was unexpected: Break your heart open and wider. Follow where the breaking heart leads you. Fall in love deeper with your sisters. Fall in love wider with the world. Fall in love with hope. Fall deep enough to embrace the hurts of history. Fall deep enough to emerge whole. Fall deep enough until you learn to give absolutions freely.

I dream a space
Where for an instant
I can reject History
And melt its chiseled
Sounds with a kiss.

I wrote these lines when I didn't know where or how to begin the story. Since then I've been begging the gods for guidance. For a clue here and there. At least a beginning line. What is the Filipino "grand story" upon which we can draw from to understand the situation we (I mean this collectively, as a Filipino people) find ourselves in, e.g. you as a second generation Filipino American poet trying to reconnect with your Filipinoness, the domestic worker in Rome, the mail-order bride in Norway, the caregiver in Los Angeles, and I, an academic trying to understand through the lens of politics and history?

Is it simply our karma, our god-given fate? If so, then I have no business arguing with the gods. But something else tells me that there is a story yet to be told. It is an old story, really, but I choose to enter the narrative within the scope of the last forty years.

The words are "globalization" and "new global order." The architects of this order believe that unfettered free enterprise leads to "progress" thru the strategies of privatization, deregulation, import liberalization, and export-oriented economies. These strategies were imposed on countries like the Philippines by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) which were established in 1954 at Bretton Woods, and World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1985 through agreements like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). These world bodies claim to promote economic competitiveness in global markets; they said it would improve our quality of life through modernization. In their vision of a "borderless world," these strategies have resulted instead in the forcible integration of southern economies into the northern economies dominated by transnational corporations.

In this new order, nation states are supposedly no longer relevant when they get in the way of the global free market. Yet, in the U.S., the government (especially through its military-industrial complex) is used by its transnational corporations to dominate the world markets. Filipino critic Renato Constantino calls globalization the "recolonization of the South by the North fueled by the almost missionary-like belief that democracy and capitalism equals the belief in the superiority of Western economic systems and cultural values."

In the U.S., if one were to watch the media's images of the global village - of people making connections with one another, of cultures intermingling, of people becoming wealthy, and technology facilitating these - one is bound to come away with a sense of awe, even euphoria. There is an element of magic in what science and technology has achieved, but there are elements of deception as well. It is much more difficult to discern how we are being deceived as the very things that wake us up with awe and wonder constitute the ways of deception as well.

I often think of the consequences of globalization in a country like the Philippines. Here is a country newly emerging from its neocolonial status, still in its birthing stage in the formation of people-hood or nationhood. This is also a country whose educational system is a product of America's early experiment in colonial engineering which produced English-speaking, westernized, highly skilled professionals like doctors, nurses, engineers, accountants, which could not be absorbed by a then largely Philippine agrarian economy. This was the beginning of our contemporary global diaspora in the mid-1960s.

This is also a country whose ruling elite has a history of being complicit with colonizers and therefore has little inkling or sense of where the majority of the common masses are coming from, how they feel and what they need. Filipino scholars have long struggled with the fact that the Philippines, because of its history as a colonized country, suffers from a Great Cultural Divide. Many of the elite are not invested in the welfare of the masses; they send their own children to study abroad, they invest financially in their own future through acquisitions of real estate property abroad, or hide accumulated wealth in Swiss bank accounts. As a neocolonial state and under pressure from globalizing forces, even educational institutions are run as businesses and intellectual production is often adjusted to the needs of the market.

According to a World Bank Report in 2000, today fifteen families in the Philippines own 55% of the firms, and 39 family-owned conglomerates own 216 of the top 1000 firms in the country.

The elite politicians have amended the basic laws of the land to conform to the trade and liberalization policies of globalization despite its devastating effects on the masses: peasants, fishingfolks, farmers, and industrial workers, women and children. Policies have been passed that signal the abdication of the state's protection of the rights and prerogatives of Filipinos. According to Prof. Roland Simbulan, the Agricultural Tarrification Act, Seed Industry Development Act, The Bank Liberalization Act, Mining Act, Retail Trade Liberalization Act and the Visiting Forces Agreement have all dealt blows to the Filipinos' ability to control their own economy.

Dear poet, who is to say that our presence in California is not a result of the manner by which globalization has swept us off and carried us here? Filipinos have been swept up by the forces of globalization (especially if we consider that this is just an updated form of colonization and imperialism). Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), our warm body exports number over five million. Everyday, almost 8,000 leave for elsewhere. The government has had to endorse and support OFWs by calling them the country's "new heroes" because their money remittances equal billions of dollars annually ($7B/yr).

Since the majority of OFWs are women, what is hidden is the devastating effects these have on women, children, and families. The government turns a blind eye on the export of women as entertainers, domestic workers, sweatshop workers, caregivers, and even condones mail order bride businesses which camouflage themselves as matchmaking businesses but in reality may be fronts for sex-tours and other shady businesses. A 1999 study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) on the emergence of a 'sex sector' in Southeast Asia, show that poverty has pushed 600,000 Filipina women towards prostitution, putting the Philippines at the top of the list of Southeast Asian countries troubled with exploitation of women. Abuse and violent exploitation of OFWs have resulted in deaths; statistics say that at least two dead bodies arrive from overseas everyday.

This, however, doesn't deter Filipinas from finding work overseas. The common folks in the Philippines who rarely rely anymore on the ruling elite in the government to take care of their needs believe that their poverty can only be alleviated by sending at least one family member to work overseas. Indeed, the money remittance from OFWs is enough to keep the economy barely afloat and able to pay back loans owed to the WB and IMF. Fifty percent of the national budget goes to servicing these loans. There is not enough money left for education, and human and social services. According to Filipino anthropologist, Edilberto Alegre, 80% of Filipinos today fall below the poverty line which is $124 a month ($48:1). Do you even wonder anymore?

Some fundamentalist religious groups sanctify the plight of the overseas workers by calling it the will of God, as a way for Filipinos to be used of God in evangelizing the rest of the world - whether by taking care of other people's children, cleaning other people's homes, cleaning hotel rooms, as entertainment workers in Japan, as mail order brides in Australia and Europe, or as sweatshop workers in Taiwan or Saipan. I feel ambivalent towards this because I have seen first hand the sincere belief of many overseas workers that this is the will of God in their lives; it is a privilege and an honor to sacrifice one's self in this manner. This belief helps them to overcome feelings of sadness and loneliness about leaving their families or their own children to serve others and take care of other people's children. In the larger scheme of things, they are not aware of the politics of power being played by global powermongers where they are the victims of exploitation rather than the heroes they are celebrated to be. Heroic perhaps because of their personal sacrifices for their families but this needs to be challenged in other arenas.

Thankfully, the challenge comes from the civil society sector in the Philippines such as the organizing and advocacy efforts of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in dealing with environmental issues, protest organizing, protection of human rights, community grassroots development, fair labor laws and practices. As sites of resistance, the 20,000 NGOs registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the 65,000 non-registered NGOS at the municipal and grassroots level, function as alternative government. Prof. Simbulan says that these grassroots structures are today the model of civil society for the rest of Asia: systems of accountability are being created; intellectual production that shapes national consciousness is empowering the masses; the increasing use of the national language as lingua franca instead of English is noteworthy; reclaiming and honoring indigenous values and traditions lead to cultural recovery; and technology is serving the needs of nation-building and people empowerment. All these serve to challenge elite-based politics in the Philippines.

The Philippines leads the countries in Southeast Asia in being part of a global movement which sees the need to de-legitimize transnational corporations and world organizations whose policies exacerbate the inequalities between the North and South. Executive Director of "Focus on the Global South", Filipino scholar and critic Walden Bello, is one of the leaders in this movement. In recent speeches in Melbourne, Prague, Davos, Porto Alegre, he emphasized the need to delegitimize transnational corporations, the WTO and IMF. In Prague where he debated James Wolfenson, President of the WB, Horst Koller of IMF and George Soros, and Trevor, South African finance minister, Walden Bello mentioned the effects of structural adjustments imposed on the Philippines during the 1980s.

"In my country, the Philippines, so deep was the crisis triggered in the mid-1980s by structural adjustments in both the countryside and the cities that the population flow shifted away from the cities to open access forests, watersheds, and artisanal fisheries, severely destabilizing them in the process". Quoting John Gray, he says: "it is legitimate and indeed imperative that we seek a form of rootedness which is sheltered from overthrow by technologies and market processes which, in achieving a global reach that is dis-embedded from any community of culture, cannot avoid desolating the earth's human settlements and its non-human settlements. The role of international arrangements in a world where toleration of diversity is a central principle of economic organization would be to express and protect local and national cultures by embodying and sheltering their distinctive practices. Let us put an end to this arrogant globalist project of making the world a synthetic unity of individual atoms shorn of culture and community. Let us herald, instead, an internationalism that is built on, tolerates, respects, and enhances the diversity of human communities and the diversity of life."

Indeed, the Philippines suffers one of the worst records of environmental degradation in the world, according to the World Watch Institute. The general scenario in the Philippines remains thus: poverty rates remain high, government infrastructures are inadequate to deliver basic human goods and services, and local businesses aren't able to compete with the efficiency of neighboring countries. These result in problems like lack of garbage disposal sites, water contamination, worsening air pollution index, inadequate storm drains resulting in flooding, rampant illegal logging and mining, impossible transit and traffic problems, and a lively but unstable political system.

It is becoming clear that where the land can no longer support its population, dramatic downward shifts happen. The biodiversity of Philippine waters and natural resources are depleted to meet export demands. When profits are not distributed equally resulting in rural poverty, rural folks migrate to urban areas. The loss of traditional ways of making a living and seeing their land bought by foreign investors pushes people to find work in urban areas and eventually, outside the country as overseas foreign workers.

I have said earlier that my paper trail has led me to "global care chains". I am referring to Rhacel Parrenas' book, Servants of Globalization, where she chronicles and analyzes the dislocations of our Filipina sisters and which, for me, raises questions about the social costs we are paying as a people. The book does not deal directly with the global structural inequalities and uneven development of regions under globalization so I attempted to draw a general perspective of this in the above paragraphs. The author writes that even though the Filipina workers have well-developed personal coping strategies of resistance against the forces that shape their lives, somehow these strategies have not translated to a structural changes that can improve their working conditions. The activists and advocates for workers' rights have not always translated these strategies to public policy at governmental level that would create better and more humane conditions for workers both in the sending and receiving countries.

What the Philippines calls "the new heroes", Parrenas calls "displaced and partial citizens," those whose emotional and physical labor earn them a salary they would otherwise not earn back in the Philippines. Their remittances keep transnational families fed and clothed but still the poverty level remains constant, if not rising. The goal of most workers is to accumulate enough capital to be able to invest in a microbusiness (a jeepney, or a sari sari store) and retire and yet only a small fraction of remittances are translated into capital investments compelling the workers to extend their contracts and stay abroad longer.

Overseas workers are proud of their ability to provide the material needs of their families; they see it as a sacrifice worth making, in spite of the anomie and dislocation that they feel everyday in countries where they are rendered invisible and denied access to public spaces. Yes, they feel marginalized but see no better alternatives. Oftentimes it is also a way out of domestic unhappiness and a chance to experience being on one's own. We call them transnational families and the Philippines a "global nation." We are proud of our extended networks of kin who are able to fill in the gaps in parenting and raising children left behind by overseas workers. But I find myself thinking of the social costs of this phenomenon.

I think of the child who pines for her mother and writes her daily until the day comes when she no longer believes that writing will bring her mother home. I think of the girl child who is sexually molested by her own father when she turned 10 because the father says "you look just like your mother." Or the child who writes that all the money and material goods in the world do not compensate for the absence of a mother's love and physical presence. There is the child who is finally reunited with her mother in Rome, but now she is a young woman who has nothing to say to her mother. There is the child who learns that her mother has started another family in Los Angeles. Or the child who is neglected and abused by the relatives with whom she was left. Children learn to be heroic at an early age even as their young minds can barely understand their mother's absence.

Our children do not deserve this. This is heart-breaking.

I am called the maid of the world and the world has made me dirty.

Dear young poet, now I understand these words more fully.

How can the scenario and consequences of globalization inform my way of being in the world? What I have found useful for me is to begin questioning the paradigms that I have always taken for granted: the idea of progress and development, the idea of capitalism and its systemic values, the idea of individualism and freedom of choice - all of which have been defined by the Western world for the rest of the world. In my studies, I became aware that these paradigms that we have assumed to be god-given, natural and universal are really products of the imagination which in the hands of powerful people then became arsenals of knowledge by which the West has been able to colonize vast portions of the world. I do not mean to throw out the baby with the bath water and I do believe in democracy and its radical version of creating spaces for all of our voices and views and not just those of people in power. But I intend to pare down these big ideas to bare knuckle realities as I go along on this journey.

What does "progress" and "development" really mean within the context of a global capitalist system? Is the diaspora of Filipinas and their ability to earn more money in the global care chain a sign of "progress"? If capitalism is about the commodification of almost all forms of life on this planet, is it sustainable and healthy for all the people on the planet? If this system has already overshot the carrying capacity of the planet, will there be a future for the seventh generation after us? If we, in the U.S., are all indicted for using up the greater number of the planet's resources, what does it imply about the devastation of the Philippine environment? How does this picture locate you and me and how are we called to respond? These are the questions that I work with everyday in my life.

Ultimately, however, it is not only knowledge that will transform our understanding of the world of our sisterhood as Filipinas. It is also our courage in saying aloud the very things that need to be said in the face of power, no matter how incomplete or partial our understanding is at the present moment. At least we have begun to ask questions.

I am called the maid of the world and the world has made me dirty…these are courageous words that need to be said over and over again.

Your words break my heart…open. Where do we go from here?

In solidarity,
Your sister

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OPEN LETTER ON THE ARTS TO PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT GLORIA MACAPAGAL

This letter is written by Geejay Arriola, a theatre artist, music artist, web designer, and a development worker based in Davao City, Philippines.

Why Artists and Cultural Workers Haven't Been Sleeping Well Lately, Madame President

I never made it to the first part of your speech at the National Conference on Culture and the Arts 2002 on June 13, Madame President-although many have told me I didn't miss much. I was in the lobby smoking my impatience off-you arrived late. And when you did arrive, I was in the middle of a very important chat with somebody from the Concerned Artists of the Philippines (CAP) who told me they were organizing a demonstration outside the Pearl Manila Hotel entrance where the conference was held. (Some of us joined them later.)

When I finally got inside the ballroom to hear you speak, I had to stop myself from walking out on you. I wanted to give you a chance, Madame President, so I decided to stay on. As a line in this movie I just saw goes, "I never hung up on anyone, just in case the next thing he/she says will change everything (for the better)."

First I heard you say, Madame President, that you wanted to get rid of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) because it is "elitist." Alas, you probably just inherited that word "elitist" from the activists of yore, during the time of Imelda Marcos when the CCP was, indeed, built for herself and her socialite friends.

You probably don't know, Madame President, that soon after the Marcoses left, it was because of the CCP that there were National Theatre Festivals where grassroots, traditional, and contemporary performing artists would meet, dialogue, share skills, and network. It was because of the CCP that the Mindanao theatre network (Mindulani, Inc.) thrice held Mindanao-wide Theatre Festivals. You probably don't know, Madame President, that it was because of the CCP that music and theatre groups in Mindanao like the Kaliwat Theatre Collective, Sining Kambayoka, IPAG, and Joey Ayala at ang Bagong Lumad, among others, became known nationally because of the CCP's production and tour grants. You probably don't know that it was because of the CCP that people in Mindanao know there is a Tony Maigue, a Cecile Licad, and a Ballet Philippines, among others-all wonderful, competitive artists bred locally and known internationally.

You probably don't know, Madame President, that because of these many inter-artist, inter-cultural, inter-regional exchanges and journeys, artists in the regions have developed friendships with staff at the CCP whom you can approach not for an autograph but for a problem at your local arts group, for advice, or for consolation even.

And you probably do not know, Madame President, that when there are budget cuts at the CCP, the first casualties are these powerful and beautiful exchanges between and among artists from everywhere in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. That's when CCP is forced to become "elitist" again, confining its services to performances and workshops inside the building, because it can no longer afford nationwide mobility.

Then I heard you say, Madame President, that you were going to revitalize the Metropolitan Theatre because the cinema, for you, is the most popular form of art-to which I grudgingly agree. (I only watch Lino Brocka, Peque Gallaga, and the younger Carlitos Siguon-Reyna.) As a kid, you said, you used to watch the movies of Nida Blanca and Nestor de Villa with your grandmother at the loge of a movie house while your driver Romeo would pay for his own ticket and watch the same movie at the orchestra. After the movie, you said, your grandmother would call out, "Romeo, Romeo, uwi na tayo!"

You said, further, Madame President, that 20% of the population in the country come from Metro Manila. Add another 20% from neighboring towns and cities, you can get 40% of the entire population to go to the Metropolitan Theatre to watch a movie, perhaps of Judy Ann Santos, as Nida Blanca is now dead (my line).

Because of this population estimate-your version of bringing art closer to the masses-and because of your wonderful memory of watching movies with grandma, you would shell out 50 million pesos for a nationwide search of the best movie script.

Now that, Madame President, implies that all artists and writers ought to shift to movie scriptwriting-because that's where the buck is. Meanwhile, while the Judy Ann Santoses and Sharon Cunetas of Philippine cinema get paid millions for each puppy love, Cinderella, and ménage-a-trois movie they make, theatre artists get paid 500 pesos for every performance of a play about peace in Mindanao. Traditional performing artists get paid much, much less, if at all!

And how sad it is, Madame President, that you do not know that culture and art exist among the majority of the population which this government must seriously support as well.

Consider the traditional arts of Moro and indigenous peoples, Madame President-their crafts, their dances and their music-which have managed to survive, despite the onslaught of MTV culture. Now traditional art is not to be "accommodated," as you condescendingly said, Madame President, rather it is to be nurtured. There is a major difference. When you "accommodate," you presume it exists as a non-essential, as an "other," an existence outside your own which you
put on display in museums or wear at costume parties. When you "nurture," you presume it exists as an essential part of your identity, which it is, in case you don't know, Madame President-unless you have forgotten you are a Filipino.

Imagine for a moment, Madame President, if you allocated that 50 million pesos for the sustenance and development of Moro and indigenous art. Trees will grow, rivers will flow-for their art is sourced from nature-and the countrysides will reverberate with the sounds of gongs, drums, flutes, bells, and stomping feet playing all night long, singing the music of peace. You will be filling tables with food and houses with the harmonious spirit of art.

Consider other folk art traditions-the tinikling, the harana, the uyayi, the rondalla. Have you heard Visayan folk songs, Madame President-Matud Nila, Usahay and their kin? Alas, these traditions are slowly dying as well.

Consider the many Pasyon plays performed in small towns and barangays during the Holy Week and witnessed by entire Christian communities, the child angels singing on Easter Sunday, and the Flores de Mayo-these are all part of the rich folk arts traditions of our nation.

Consider the visual artworks on peace made by children survivors of war during stress-debriefing workshops, the storytelling sessions and the songs sung in refugee camps and crossfire communities, the poems written by women survivors of abuse and domestic violence. Culture, Madame President, is the process of creation from human minds and hands, and art is making sense and creating order out of the world-art that won't make it to the entrance of your Metropolitan Theatre.

Artists and cultural workers are therefore not unruly, Madame President, as you implied, so much so that they need to be managed by "professional managers," or facilitated by "professional facilitators" to put order to what you think would otherwise be a chaotic organization or event. Perhaps you meant they are free, and not unruly-free to express, free to talk, free to write-that's why it appears like they have no sense of order? Or perhaps you meant they are "too free" and must therefore be silenced, put in single-word hexagonal meta cards without explanation, like what we were subjected to during the conference?

Historians, ethnographers, archeologists, folklorists, and Margaret Mead will tell you, Madame President, that civilizations were borne out of creative work. Nations have been built upon arts and culture. Thus the first casualties of war and invasion are the arts and culture. Remember Hitler? Remember the Cultural Revolution? Remember the Japanese and the Spaniards?

And, Madame President, you wear a dress because an artist invented cloth.

And in case you don't know, Madame President, the conference ended with a closing speech from the new NCCA Board Chairperson Undersecretary Evelyn Pantig who told all of us that because there was little fund for the arts and culture, the distribution of funds is on a first-come, first-served basis. We therefore request you, Madame President, to advise the Chairperson that a first-come, first-served basis of fund distribution does not spell sustainable development. Neither is it an effective resource and artist management. It is compelling us, artists and cultural workers, to race against each other for that single plate of rice on the table. Fortunately, Madame President, we don't work that way. For us to have happy and peaceful lives, we need to plan, to program, and most of all, to share resources.

The resource speakers saved the day, Madame President. Except for one or two, they were, to say the least, virtuosos in their field who provided exciting information based on a wealth of experience and research. Unfortunately, the process of interaction and reflection provided by the workshop facilitators was stifling. Fortunately, artists that we are, we knew better. And so on the second day, Madame President, we broke away from the hexagons and we managed our own group processes. Now that, Madame President, empowered us all. Empowerment and genuine interaction are supposed to be the essence of a gathering of minds.

Despite the many bugs in the conference, Madame President, I left the two-day session in high spirits. The best discussions about culture and the arts were at the coffee table after the conference sessions, late into the night, and mostly with artists I have met for the first time. There at the table were debates and quite disparate views about globalization, peace, unity, spirituality, and nationhood. There at the table were artists negotiating each other's views, and facilitating their own discussions amid joy and laughter.

I hope that one day soon, Madame President, you will sit down with us and discuss and learn about culture and the arts, not as a keynote speaker, not as the President of the country, but as an ordinary human being seeking answers to age-old questions.

I know we can work together, Madame President. I personally think people in government can be open-minded, and can work well with artists and cultural workers. We continue to have successful government-business-artist partnerships in the regions-Bohol, Zamboanga del Sur, and Davao, to name a few. It is just that the arts and culture is not your territory, it is ours. All you have to do is to listen, understand, and support our endeavors. Leave it to us experts in this field to define our structures and programs, and to set our own directions.

We are not here to destroy society, Madame President, we are here to re-build it.