THE TWENTIETH OF MARCH
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
March 22, 2004
Solidarity and indifference. Relevance and inconsequence.
The truth is, like each day of the year, the twentieth of March is in a mortal struggle with itself.
On this day in 1345, "the planets Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were in conjunction in Aquarius. Some astrologers saw this as an omen, bringing on the bubonic plague that killed a third of Europeans before it was over."
Ahem.
On March 20, 1896, US Marines invade Nicaragua for the first time. "To protect American interests."
Yes sir.
Just over a month after the United States' annexed the Philippines - A.A. Barnes of Battery G of the 3rd U.S. Artillery wrote to his family on March 20, 1899 about America's mission to liberate the Filipino:
"Last night one of our boys was found shot, and his stomach cut open. Immediately orders were received from General Wheaton to burn the town and kill every native in sight, which was done to a finish. About one thousand men, women, and children were reported killed. I am probably growing hard-hearted, for I am in my glory when I can sight my gun on some dark skin and pull the trigger."
On the same day in America, the San Francisco Call reported a story concerning a US senator's proposal "to increase the regular army to the number of 35,000 additional men if it would be recruited largely from the Negro ranks" because the task of garrisoning America's new possession and of pacifying Filipino "savages" who refused to accept the American yoke were best left to Negroes.
"It has been pointed out," wrote The Call, "that the Negro regiments are not only very efficient, but the Negro, whose progenitors were accustomed to the rays of a fierce African sun, will not be afraid of spoiling their complexion in the Philippines, Cuba, or Puerto Rico."
Impeccable logic.
On the twentieth of March in 1933 in Germany, the Nazis opened their first concentration camp in Dachau.
On March 20, 1946 the Tule Lake relocation center was closed. Located just south of the Oregon border, Tule Lake was a US concentration camp for Japanese-Americans.
On March 20, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono flew on a private plane to Gibraltar. Upon arrival they proceed directly to the British Consulate and get married in a ten-minute ceremony. Hours later, they arrive in Amsterdam where they have reserved a hotel suite for their honeymoon and for the famous "lie-in" where, "from the comfort of their own bed, John and Yoko talked peace to anyone who would listen. Not surprisingly, the whole world did."
Remember The Ballad of John and Yoko?
"Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton talking in our beds for a week / The newspapers said, say what're you doing in bed / I said we're only trying to get us some peace."
Bed peace; hair peace, said John. It was a restless time. On the same day of their wedding - on March 20, 1969 - US President Nixon "stated flatly that the war will be over by next year."
Yup.
Thirty four years later in Iraq, on March 20, 2003, another purported cake walk - an act of aggression "of a force and scope and scale that has been beyond what has been seen before" - is initiated again by the US. Exactly a year later, over 10,000 Iraqi civilians are dead and not one weapon of mass destruction has been found.
On the twentieth of March in 2004, a pair of Greenpeace anti-war activists in London scale the Big Ben and unfurl a banner which read "Time for Truth" while millions marched across the globe in a 24-hour protest against America's occupation of Iraq.
It is the global day of action and in Manila a five year-old boy is holding the hand of his father as he walks with 500 other people demonstrating against war. The little boy's name is Rio; he is my son and it his first march. He wonders why there are so many colorful flags and why people are shouting and why people sound angry even though many of them are smiling.
I tell him a story about bullies and braggarts and small people banding together. Rio recognizes the story and proceeds to re-tell the story in a shorter and simpler way. I smile and squint, embarrassed at my clumsiness. I am about to open my mouth to try another story when Rio grips my hand and gives it a tug. "They're moving Tatay. Let's go."
***
Comments welcome at xioi@excite.com
References:
1. Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar. See http://www.nortexinfo.net/McDaniel/0320.htm
2. "Negroes to Fight the Filipinos," San Francisco Call, March 20, 1899, http://www.boondocksnet.com/centennial/sctexts/sfcall990320.html
3. "Nixon Redivivus" Theodore H. Draper, New York Review of Books, Volume 41, Number 13, July 14, 1994, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2173
4. Interview by Jim Lehrer with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. See http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june03/rumsfeld_3-20.html
5. "Anti-War Protesters Climb London's Big Ben," March 20, 2004, http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4611542
6. I flew in from Guangzhou in time to join the rally. My wife and one-year old daughter both had a mild cold; they showed up at the assembly point of the demonstration to see us off.
Recent political and travel essays by Renato Redentor Constantino. Email Red at redcosmo(at)gmail(dot)com.
Monday, March 22, 2004
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
FASHION IN HONGKONG
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
March 1, 2004
It is nighttime in Hong Kong and the drizzle which began early in the morning has not stopped. Buildings wink with moisture while the shadows of early vening blend with the fluorescent glow of Hong Kong's billboards and the general glimmer of wetness.
It is winter and in a shopping center in Hong Kong Central, a lanky woman is wearing an elegant warm-looking beige coat with soft amber piping. The woman is a model of femininity fronting the display of chic designer, Salvatore Ferragamo. She is wearing brown gloves that look equally elegant and which bears a hue that matches her well-pressed trousers. Her back is straight and a shoulder is slightly dipped; her head is tilted faintly and her eyes seem to be fixed on a far away unseen object while a muted pearl grey handbag hangs loosely from one of her hands.
The woman is a pageant by herself but she is not your usual Ferragamo model. In truth, despite the fact that she is more striking than the mannequins clothed with modish wear lining the shopping center's walls, the woman is sitting outside the designer's display window, her head leaning on the glass and her shoes - sneakers, really - far from her feet and far from the elan of Ferragamo's designs.
The woman is a Filipina domestic worker in Hong Kong and she is sitting with other Filipinas outside the mall on translucent plastic sheets that keep away the dampness of the sidewalk. Many are eating, some are playing cards and talking animatedly, and a few are looking through concrete walls, temporarily dissociated from the moment.
It is a Sunday, the day off from work for most of Hong Kong's foreign migrant workers.
I approach the woman in the beige coat and ask her for directions to the Tsim Sha Tsui-bound ferry, which I knew was just a few minutes away, and I ask her for her name and where she's from. "Elena," she said. "From Bulacan. The ferry is over there so you turn right at that corner and walk a few feet and you'll see the ferry sign which you just need to follow." I nod and she smiles and looks away once more. "Kain?" [Join us for a bite?] a woman in Elena's cluster asks me almost immediately in typical Filipino fashion, the question genuine. I decline politely, saying I had to be in Kowloon very soon.
I walk on and in seconds I pass by more clusters of Filipinas sitting on similar plastic sheets along covered sections of pavement. Many are also eating and playing cards. At the edge of one group a young woman in a black sweater is hugging her knees and swaying and kissing her ring. Or is she biting her knuckles? She is blinking slowly, repetitively, and she looks ad and her head is bowed and the pendant on her necklace is dangling gently. As she sways, her ornaments catch the sharp gleam of the tiny halogen lamps above her illuminating the small window display of Bulgari fine jewelry.
One set glitters radiantly, and another radiates melancholy.
Ferragamo and Bulgari.
Two classy names synonymous with timeless fashion, if the followers of today's fashion world are to be believed. Who knows? Maybe the late Blas Ople was a secret student of the two icons while he headed the Ministry of Labor and Employment during the martial law years.
Ople who, in a move to arrest the disintegrating Philippine economy which was threatening to disrupt the rule of Ferdinand Marcos, designed a class-based policy of such panache it would remain the fabric of choice of the Philippine government decades after the collapse of the dictatorship: the export of people, not products, to unfamiliar shores.
The export of Filipinos is still the rage today.
RENATO REDENTOR CONSTANTINO
Op-Ed, TODAY/abs-cbnnews.com
March 1, 2004
It is nighttime in Hong Kong and the drizzle which began early in the morning has not stopped. Buildings wink with moisture while the shadows of early vening blend with the fluorescent glow of Hong Kong's billboards and the general glimmer of wetness.
It is winter and in a shopping center in Hong Kong Central, a lanky woman is wearing an elegant warm-looking beige coat with soft amber piping. The woman is a model of femininity fronting the display of chic designer, Salvatore Ferragamo. She is wearing brown gloves that look equally elegant and which bears a hue that matches her well-pressed trousers. Her back is straight and a shoulder is slightly dipped; her head is tilted faintly and her eyes seem to be fixed on a far away unseen object while a muted pearl grey handbag hangs loosely from one of her hands.
The woman is a pageant by herself but she is not your usual Ferragamo model. In truth, despite the fact that she is more striking than the mannequins clothed with modish wear lining the shopping center's walls, the woman is sitting outside the designer's display window, her head leaning on the glass and her shoes - sneakers, really - far from her feet and far from the elan of Ferragamo's designs.
The woman is a Filipina domestic worker in Hong Kong and she is sitting with other Filipinas outside the mall on translucent plastic sheets that keep away the dampness of the sidewalk. Many are eating, some are playing cards and talking animatedly, and a few are looking through concrete walls, temporarily dissociated from the moment.
It is a Sunday, the day off from work for most of Hong Kong's foreign migrant workers.
I approach the woman in the beige coat and ask her for directions to the Tsim Sha Tsui-bound ferry, which I knew was just a few minutes away, and I ask her for her name and where she's from. "Elena," she said. "From Bulacan. The ferry is over there so you turn right at that corner and walk a few feet and you'll see the ferry sign which you just need to follow." I nod and she smiles and looks away once more. "Kain?" [Join us for a bite?] a woman in Elena's cluster asks me almost immediately in typical Filipino fashion, the question genuine. I decline politely, saying I had to be in Kowloon very soon.
I walk on and in seconds I pass by more clusters of Filipinas sitting on similar plastic sheets along covered sections of pavement. Many are also eating and playing cards. At the edge of one group a young woman in a black sweater is hugging her knees and swaying and kissing her ring. Or is she biting her knuckles? She is blinking slowly, repetitively, and she looks ad and her head is bowed and the pendant on her necklace is dangling gently. As she sways, her ornaments catch the sharp gleam of the tiny halogen lamps above her illuminating the small window display of Bulgari fine jewelry.
One set glitters radiantly, and another radiates melancholy.
Ferragamo and Bulgari.
Two classy names synonymous with timeless fashion, if the followers of today's fashion world are to be believed. Who knows? Maybe the late Blas Ople was a secret student of the two icons while he headed the Ministry of Labor and Employment during the martial law years.
Ople who, in a move to arrest the disintegrating Philippine economy which was threatening to disrupt the rule of Ferdinand Marcos, designed a class-based policy of such panache it would remain the fabric of choice of the Philippine government decades after the collapse of the dictatorship: the export of people, not products, to unfamiliar shores.
The export of Filipinos is still the rage today.
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