Magdalena

Magdalena


Posted 00:17am (Mla time) Mar 23, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A13 of the March 23, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


WHEN we think of Jesus' disciples and close followers, we think of men, of the Last Supper with Jesus and his 12 apostles (including a sinister-looking Judas).

Church fathers yes, but who would be the Church mothers?

A recent CNN documentary starts out with an intriguing invitation to rethink early Christianity: "One is revered as the mother of Jesus, the other as the prostitute Jesus saves. They are the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, the founding mothers of Christianity."

Catholics and Protestants are now revisiting the role of the Virgin Mary, not just as a woman to be venerated because she was Jesus' mother but also as someone to emulate for her courage and her faith. But to have Mary Magdalene sharing the main honors with the Virgin Mary?

No solemn "Last Supper" images here; instead, Filipinos will think of Freddie Aguilar's sad song about a "fallen woman," entitled "Magdalena," or the controversial "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "The Last Temptation of Christ," both suggesting Jesus was intimate with Mary Magdalene.

Then there's the best-selling novel "The Da Vinci Code," where Jesus ends up marrying Mary Magdalene and starting a family with her. The novel has turned our current crop of Church fathers livid, so much so the Vatican has appointed no less than a cardinal to defend the Catholic Church from the novel.

Seven demons

There are many reasons the Catholic Church is upset with the novel, but I suspect their main gripe is against this idea that Jesus might have ended up marrying a former harlot.

Ironically, it was our earlier Church fathers who created this myth of Mary Magdalene as a prostitute. The CNN documentary I mentioned eventually clarifies that Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, but I first learned about the myth-making from a lecture of Sr. Helen Graham, a biblical scholar who teaches at the Maryhill School of Theology.

Sister Helen's lecture was about learning to read the Bible carefully. Mary Magdalene was a case in point. From the Bible we know she was one of several women who were loyal followers of Jesus, accompanying him as he preached in the villages of Judea and Galilee.

We know, too from the gospel of Luke that "seven demons had gone out of her," which has been interpreted to mean Mary Magdalene was a very sinful woman. But Sister Helen explains that this was probably a passage referring to Jesus as a healer, demons being a common metaphor at that time for illnesses, rather than to sinfulness.

The reference to Mary Magdalene's seven demons is found in Luke 8:1-3. Only a few passages earlier, in Luke 7:36-50, we find the story of a woman, explicitly described as a "sinner," who washes Jesus' feet with her tears, dries them with her hair and anoints them with ointment. The incident scandalizes people around Jesus, but he admonishes them mildly and declares the woman's sins as forgiven. We now presume this was Mary Magdalene, but as Sister Helen likes to challenge her audiences, "Show me where Mary Magdalene's name is actually mentioned." We find that, indeed, no name is given; it is only presumed that they were one and the same.

Jesus' strong women

So who was Mary Magdalene? The times when she is mentioned by name in the gospels tell us she was one of several women who served Jesus "from all her possessions." Biblical scholars say she was probably wealthy, having made money from fishing.

Mary Magdalene was clearly a leader. All four gospels mention she was at the foot of Jesus' cross. John's gospel only names women, all Marys, at Jesus' feet: his mother, his mother's sister (Mary the wife of Cleofas) and Mary Magdalene.

Where were the men? The apostles probably kept their distance since Jesus was, after all, a criminal sentenced to death for subversion. The gospels tell us that it was the women who buried Jesus, again taking a risk, since Roman law prescribed that the crucified should be left hanging on their crosses.

Most importantly, the gospels tell us it was the women who discovered Jesus' empty tomb. Again, it is John's gospel that gives a lead role to Mary Magdalene, describing her as the one who went, alone, to Jesus' tomb first thing in the morning "while it was still dark." She weeps when she finds the empty tomb but eventually, Jesus emerges and calls out to her, "Mary!" She recognizes the voice and answers, "Rabbi!" or teacher.

Jesus then tells her: "Do not hold on to me because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father, your Father, to my God and your God.'"

Apostle to the apostles

We see then that the message of the Resurrection, so essential to Christianity, is first given to a woman, Mary Magdalene, who in turn proclaims the joyful news to other followers including, presumably, the cowering male apostles.

The four gospels of the New Testament don't tell us what happens to Mary Magdalene and the other women. But the "Gnostic Gospels," coming from a Christian sect that was eventually persecuted as heretical, include a "Gospel According to Mary Magdalene." This gospel was probably not written by Mary Magdalene herself but the passages are from what she preached about Jesus. So thorough is she that there is one passage where a resentful Peter asks: "Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?"

The men eventually came to dominate the Christian churches and women were devalued. Pope Gregory the Great, in the 6th century, was the first to describe Mary Magdalene as a public sinner who repented. There was probably no conspiracy involved here; it was just difficult for the men to think of women as leaders. Mary Magdalene as a, well, Church mother, just didn't seem right. She had to be put in her place, and why not as a prostitute who reformed and then followed Jesus, but not on equal footing as the (male) apostles? In a way, the "two Marys" came to represent the way conservative Christians want to depict women: either as Madonnas (as with the Virgin Mary) or as whores (as with Mary Magdalene).

Fortunately, there is now renewed interest in rediscovering Mary Magdalene. I can't help but wonder though if our gender biases are still at work here, with almost wistful thinking, as expressed in "The Da Vinci Code," to have her as Christ's wife.

Prof. Karen King of the Harvard Divinity School, interviewed for the CNN documentary, observes that if this had happened, there would have been some reference to her, in the gospels or other early Christian writings, as "Mary, wife of Jesus." Instead, what we find are several references in the gospels to Mary Magdalene as among Jesus' closest disciples. Why shouldn't we honor Mary Magdalene that way, as a woman in her own right, an early Christian leader who proclaimed Jesus' resurrection and went on to become, as St. Augustine calls her, "an apostle to the apostles?"

Language, context, politics and health

Language, context, politics and health


Posted 00:12am (Mla time) Mar 18, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the March 18, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


WE often wish we could figure out what's in people's minds. Parents with teenage kids, for example, complain constantly, "Ano ang nasa kukote niya?" [What's in that kid's skull?]

Well, you'd know if you'd just listen to what the kid's saying, or isn't saying. Even those grunts they use to answer our questions have meanings: "Can't you see I'm growing up? I'm happy. I love you, but leave me alone."

I digress. My point is that we can learn about people's values, ethos, world views by listening to what they say (and, again, don't say). Anthropologists do this all the time, and it's a skill I've been trying to pass on to physicians and health professionals. To help them become more effective, I've urged them to listen, not just to what their patients are saying to them, but also to what they are saying to their patients and their patients' families.

It's a matter of listening in context. For non-health professionals, a "bukol" can be a bump on the head. Or it can be used to refer to a growth on the breast -- "bukol" used here sometimes in denial of a more serious problem. Now, when a doctor says they've found a "bukol" on a patient, that pronouncement can cause hysteria because it's immediately interpreted as a deadly cancerous growth.

This example only underscores cultural differences that exist even among people who think they share a common culture. Doctors and patients may use Filipino and yet misunderstand each other because there are different interpretations of the same words. In a sense then, even Filipino spoken by Filipinos needs to be "translated."

’Gamot, lason’

Because words are so powerful, we have to be conscious about how they're used. Last Wednesday, I wrote about how pesticides are now often referred to as "gamot" [medicine], which both reflects and reinforces Filipinos' cavalier attitude toward these dangerous chemicals. If pesticides are gamot, then they can be kept inside the house, often even next to food. The risk of poisoning is all too real, as may have happened in Mabini, Bohol, resulting in the deaths of 28 schoolchildren.

I urged a return to the term "lason" [poison] to refer to pesticides, the term evoking a mental image of a skull and crossbones. "Lason" is a powerful word that tells us, "Danger." I've also been using the term when talking with drug dependents, a way of reminding them that they're poisoning themselves. I do this because "drugs" and "bawal na gamot" [prohibited drugs] have actually taken on positive connotations, words that carry notions of danger but in an alluring and challenging way. "Drugs," in the context of contemporary Filipino society with every other celebrity now hooked, evokes "Try me" rather than "Avoid me."

‘And then there's 'agas'

Context is so important here. Anthropologist Malot Ingel, who lives in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, texted me after reading my column to point out that in Ilokano, "gamot" actually means poison. The Ilokano word for medicine is "agas." So, I asked her how the words are used in her area and, hold your breath, here's what they have: "gamot" is used to refer to substances like rat poison, which is fine in the Ilokano context because gamot there means poison. But stuff used to spray plants, as well as termite control chemicals, are "agas" or medicine.

Now why should rat poison be called poison and pesticides medicine? I don't have certain answers here, but maybe it's because the effects of rat poison (which we also call "lason" in Filipino) are more visible. We see the dead rats, but we don't see the dead insects killed by pesticides. Even several hundred dead termites don't quite have the impact of one dead rat (especially the ones that have grown obese from feasting on urban garbage).

My advice to Malot, who works with nongovernmental organizations, is to encourage a semantic shift -- a change in meanings -- of pesticides from "agas" [medicine] to "gamot" [poison]. It's really reversing an earlier shift. Filipino farmers were calling pesticides "lason" well into the 1980s, much to the dismay of government farm extension workers and pesticide distributors who wanted farmers to use more of these chemicals. The word "gamot" (as medicine) may in fact have come from people who wanted to boost sales of the chemicals. They were too successful, I'm afraid.

'Ligtas buntis'

Let me move to another example of the often-thorny issues around health and language: the current controversy around the Department of Health's “Ligtas Buntis” program.

The first time I heard the term, I knew the DOH was going to get into trouble. It was too vague a term. I was at a meeting when the term was used and everyone asked what the campaign was going to be all about.

The DOH now explains that Ligtas Buntis means "Safe Pregnancy," with family planning advocacy linked to maternal health. Anti-family planning groups, including the Catholic bishops, saw it differently, translating "Ligtas Buntis" into "Safe from Pregnancy."

It's not a mistranslation, when you think about it. Even Donald Dee of the Employers' Confederation of the Philippines, a strong family planning advocate, said on a television talk show that "Ligtas Buntis" meant "safe from pregnancy" and added that the choice of the name was unfortunate, implying people needed to be saved from pregnancy.

Not surprisingly, the wrath of anti-family planning groups has descended on the health department, with groups like Couples for Christ dissociating themselves from the campaign.

I'll save (note that "ligtas" would not be appropriate here) for future columns other examples of unwise language choices in medical consultations and in public health campaigns. Suffice it to say, for now, that words are especially volatile in relation to health. We value health and fear illnesses, so words are all too quickly reinterpreted and misinterpreted.

We learn to associate certain meanings with certain words based on our experiences and those of people close to us. Thus, "bukol" takes on ominous meanings because we hear of how so-and-so died a week after being diagnosed with a "bukol." The actual context disappears, submerged by our own experiences.

There's politics here as well. Whatever the health department may have called its current maternal health campaign, the inclusion of family planning, even if marginally, would have raised the conservatives' hackles. If they had their way, there would be no family planning at all in the Philippines, natural or "artificial."

Despite the limitations of dealing with dogmatic ideologues, I'd still say we need to be careful with words when used in health care. Whether a mother or a health secretary, an NGO worker or a rural health unit midwife, what we say and do as we provide health services and combat illness will go a long way, around our social circles and across generations.

Children in harm's way

Children in harm's way


Posted 00:06am (Mla time) Mar 16, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the March 16, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


THE DEPARTMENT of Health says it was pesticide contamination of cassava snacks sold to students in Mabini, Bohol. The National Bureau of Investigation disagrees (as usual), saying it was cyanide from cassava flour. Whatever the cause, with 28 children dead and more than 70 others hospitalized, the food poisoning raises a host of questions related to the safety and health of our children, whether in rural or urban areas.

Three issues came to my mind as I followed the Bohol tragedy: (a) food safety in schools; (b) the pesticides problem; and (c) basic survival skills for the Filipino.

Food safety

I am certain there are daily outbreaks of food poisoning among our students, mostly going undetected. These are usually mild diarrhea cases from unsanitary food handling, but occasionally you'll have more serious cases that are picked up by the papers, such as this recent case in Bohol.

Our students get their food either from canteens on campus or from the numerous food vendors and establishments around schools. The registered businesses are a bit safer because they have to be inspected. But I say only "a bit" more safe. Inspections by government regulatory agencies are rare, and center on basic sanitation, such as employees being told to use hairnets or to wash their hands before and after using the toilet. After the inspection, it's often back to old dirty routines.

If basic sanitary measures were not observed, I'd worry even more about other food safety issues. It's hard to say if even owners of larger restaurants or canteens are aware of how long foods can be kept safely -- eggs, for example, are notorious for breeding salmonella bacteria, even in the refrigerator.

Then we get to the food vendors, who are completely unregulated. To some extent they may actually be safer because they only prepare small amounts of food, which are usually sold out or consumed the same day they are prepared. But we also see the potential for mass poisoning, as in the cassava cakes sold in Bohol.

Should we now require all food vendors to register themselves? That would only drive up prices of their food products, often the only affordable items for poorer students.

We'd probably get more results if the Department of Education and the DOH could just join forces and conduct workshops for anyone involved in food for students -- from administrators to food handlers to the vendors themselves, instructing them not just on hand washing but on safety around cooking and storage.

And while they're at it, they should be giving basic nutrition education as well. Our canteens, restaurants and ambulant food vendors -- even in, or should I say especially in the most exclusive of schools -- tend to sell foods with dubious nutritional quality, from instant noodles to soft drinks. In a way we're seeing a kind of creeping poisoning here, a warping of Filipino food habits happening, ironically, in our educational establishments.

Pesticides

I can believe DOH officials when they say it was pesticides that killed the children in Bohol. They found pesticides in one of the vendors' homes and theorize that there may have been contamination as she prepared the cassava cakes. Another theory here is that the schoolchildren were already being exposed to pesticides used in the fields and that the cassava, no matter how small the amounts of contaminating chemicals, had enough of a "trigger dose" to cause serious, if not fatal, poisoning.

I hope the DOH follows up on these leads to trace the trail of poison, and use this to warn a complacent public about this ongoing ecological disaster, so terribly lethal because it is so quiet. The pesticides, easily absorbed through the skin, are all around us now, finding their way into the blood of our schoolchildren and into the breast milk of mothers.

Environmental activists have been warning about pesticides for years, including the way Filipinos have become so cavalier about these poisons. Filipinos, especially farmers, often refer to pesticides as "gamot" [medicine] so it shouldn't be surprising they're now kept inside the home, sometimes even in the kitchen next to food items (one time I even saw a pesticide stored next to a can of infant formula).

We associate pesticides with rural areas, but the insecticides in urban homes utilize the same powerful chemicals for an arsenal of products to deal with creatures that fly, crawl or creep: mosquitoes, ants, cockroaches, fleas.

Check how you store and use these chemicals. Do you keep them next to food? Are the insecticides within the reach of children? Do you ask your children to do the spraying? Do you spray the rooms where infants and toddlers sleep and play? Do you forget to wash your hands after using these chemicals? If you answered yes to all those, you're taking the risks of these insecticides too lightly, especially in relation to children.

We need to educate both children and adults, about these pesticides. And it's time we moved away from calling pesticides "gamot" and use "lason" [poison] instead, with stricter regulations on warning on the labels about storage and use.

Survival 101

When you think about it, what we need are basic Survival 101 skills for a transition society. On one hand, we now live with the risks coming with modernity's many convenience products, from junk foods to insecticides and pesticides. On the other hand, we're rapidly losing traditional knowledge and skills from the past that could be useful for survival, including how to deal with some of modernity's problems.

In the context of many rural areas, there's the need to be able to distinguish wild and domesticated cassava, the wild ones having much higher levels of cyanide. Traditionally, even wild cassava was used for food but people knew how to process the root crops to remove the precursors of cyanide. We've apparently lost that skill, resulting in periodic poisoning outbreaks when people consume the wild cassava.

The Bohol poisoning reminds us it's not just knowledge about cassava that we need to revive. We need to reexamine many of our traditions around food, promoting the healthier aspects so we can wean ourselves away from instant noodles and junk foods. I've written, in an earlier column, about the possibilities of giving income-generating loans to food vendors on condition that they prepare nutritious foods. There's a whole array of traditional nutritious snack items -- including cassava cakes -- that can be encouraged.

Similarly, as we look into the angle of pesticide poisoning, we should be looking for safer alternatives, including traditional plant-based and non-chemical methods for controlling insects.

All this information and skills should be taught in our schools, making sure that the next generation of Filipino parents can better protect themselves, and their children.

Suffragettes and commanders

Suffragettes and commanders


Posted 01:48am (Mla time) Mar 11, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the March 11, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


LAST Wednesday, I began writing about our heroines who so often are made invisible in our textbooks, mass media and cinema. I referred to the 20 young women of Malolos and the women who fought in the revolution against Spain and, later, resisted the American occupation.

Today's column takes us into the 20th century and the rise of feminism in the Philippines. After all, we're supposed to be marking the Filipino Feminist Centennial this year, marked by the establishment of the Asociacion Feminista de Filipinas on June 30, 1905. One could argue, of course, that even the Katipuneras were feminists but the establishment of the Asociacion Feminista meant a specific focus on women's rights for itself, rather than in relation to a broader political struggle.

After the Asociacion Feminista was established, there were other women's organizations that followed, from the National Federation of Women's Clubs to the Girl Scouts of the Philippines. any were patterned after American groups, mainly involved in civic work but with women's rights on their agenda.

More than the right to vote

Even during the Spanish occupation, many women had already begun working outside their homes, as is well described in Maria Luisa Camagay's "Working Class Women in the 19th Century," but when the Americans annexed the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, women's participation in public life was still severely limited. We tend to think of these early feminists mainly as suffragettes and forget they also had to fight for the right to own property, to run for public office, maternal leave. The fight for women's rights was an uphill one, involving many years of lobbying; the right to vote didn't come until 1937.

Among the names we hear most often from among the early feminists were Concepcion Felix, Pura Villanueva Kalaw, Librada Avelino, Rosa Sevilla Alvero, Natividad Almeda, Encarnacion Alzona, Maria Paz Mendoza Guazon, Josefa Llanes Escoda, Pilar Hidalgo Lim, Josefa Jara Martinez, Sofia Reyes de Veyra, Trinidad Legarda, Paz Policarpio Mendez, Francisca Tirona Benitez, Maria Manzano, Tarhata Kiram, Geronima Pecson and Minerva Guysako Laudico.

Many of these women were from the elite but there were also notable exceptions such as Concepcion Felix, born to working-class parents in Tondo, Manila. I suspect, too, there were many working-class women involved in broader political struggles. A radical Left had emerged during the American occupation, with very active Communist and Socialist parties that had large followings among peasants and workers. Unfortunately, much too little has been written about the Left during the American colonial period, and certainly much less about the women in the labor and peasant movements.

Commanders

The Left was to play a key role in resisting the Japanese during World War II. The Hukbalahap was organized by the Communist Party and its soldiers recruited mainly from peasants. (Hukbalahap originally meant Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, or People's Army Against the Japanese; after the war, it became the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan, or the People's Liberation Army, waging guerrilla war against the government.)

One of the legendary Hukbalahap leaders was Felipa Culala, better known as Commander Dayang Dayang. She led the first ambush on Japanese troops and eventually formed her own irregular Hukbalahap unit. Sadly, she was executed by her fellow guerrillas in 1943 following accusations of financial opportunism.

Maria Vina Lanzona has written about the involvement of other women in the Hukbalahap. She notes that there were less than 10 women military commanders, the most famous one being Remedios Gomez, or Ka Liwayway, who stayed with the Huks after the war, was arrested and imprisoned for several years before being acquitted.

Besides the women in Hukbalahap, there were many other women who participated in the underground. One example I thought worth citing was Maria Ylagan Orosa, after whom a Malate street is named. A pharmacy graduate, she went into food chemistry and was known for introducing all kinds of food preservation techniques. One of her inventions was "Magic Food," which used soybeans to produce a high-protein food. She was able to get this food into the Japanese interment camps in Manila, Tarlac and Pampanga. It turns out Orosa was a captain in the Marking Guerrilla group. When the Americans began their air bombing Manila to "liberate" us in February 1943, she refused to take refuge. She was hit by shrapnel and died, at age 50, from her wounds.

Martial law

Although the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship is fairly recent in our history, there's still far too little written up about the underground during that period. One reason may be that much of the anti-dictatorship struggle was led mainly by the Left, particularly the National Democratic Front, the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army (NPA), groups considered "terrorist" today.

There were many of these women, I can tell you, from all walks of life and of all ages. I remember several Tandang Sora types, who would allow their homes to be used for meetings. I also knew two silver-headed “lola” [grandmothers] who would chauffeur underground activists around, soldiers at checkpoints waving them through with the most courteous of smiles.

With time, these courageous women's stories will be told but this early, we should at least remember the martyrs from that dark period. There was Liliosa Hilao, the first woman to be killed during martial law. A student activist, she was picked up by the military in April 1973 and tortured before muriatic acid was poured down her throat to make her death look like a suicide. Her death spurred many Filipinos to sympathize with the underground, and helped to create a human rights movement that remains active today.

Asuncion David Maramba has a good biography of Lorena Barros in "Six Young Filipino Martyrs." Barros was doing anthropology at the University of the Philippines but took to the hills to join the NPA, where she became known for her poems. Barros was killed in an encounter with the military in 1975. One of Barros' contemporaries, Purificacion Pedro, was executed by the military for organizing peasants.

I don't want to create the impression that armed struggle was the only pathway for our heroines. Filipina valor took many forms, from the nuns who would form human shields to protect ralliers, to the “doktora” [women doctors] who chose to serve in the most remote rural areas even as their classmates left for greener pastures in the United States.

Then, too, there were the largely women-led small newspapers and magazines that dared to report the truth, what Marcos contemptuously referred to as the mosquito press. I still remember the no-holds barred articles of Ceres Doyo, for example. The best known "mosquito" was Eggy Apostol, whose Mr. & Ms and, later, the Inquirer, proved that mosquitoes could be truly vexing to the most formidable of foes. Is it coincidental that only female mosquitoes bite?

Katipuneras and other heroines

Katipuneras and other heroines


Posted 00:19am (Mla time) Mar 09, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the March 9, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


I WAS going through a textbook used for a Grade I Sibika at Kultura (Civics and Culture) course and found, on a page discussing national heroes, drawings of Apolinario Mabini, Andres Bonifacio, Jose Rizal and an elderly woman, presumably Tandang Sora. That's three heroes and one heroine. No wonder we tend to associate the word "bayani" [hero] with men.

It's not just the textbooks that seem to have forgotten our heroines. Just look at the names of our schools, hospitals, streets, cities and towns, and we again see how men (including quite a few scoundrels) tend to be commemorated more often than women. I realized I didn't know too many of our heroines either, so I did some research and was pleasantly surprised to find that there was enough material to help me write several columns. (MSC Communications Technologies' "Centennial" site on the Internet was particularly useful for information on women and the Katipunan.)

Rising from their knees

For this year's women's month commemorations, I picked out a few heroines who stand out. Today I'll focus on heroines from the war against Spain and the United States. (On Friday, I'll write about more recent times, through the American and Japanese occupation, into the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship.) I also thought I'd give more space to the less known heroines. I'm not going to use subheadings today and will instead do a chronological listing of some of these important bayani.

I'd like to start off with the Women of Malolos, the 20 Chinese “mestiza” [mixed-blood] women who dared, in 1888, to petition Spanish Governor-General Weyler for permission to open a night school so they could study Spanish, something unthinkable at that time. Their parish priest objected so the governor-general turned down their petition, but the women persisted and finally got their way. For more information about these gutsy Bulakeñas, get Nick Tiongson's "Women of Malolos," published by the Ateneo de Manila University press.

Jose Rizal heard about these young audacious women and wrote, in 1889, a letter "To the Young Women of Malolos." Rizal's piece has many passages that are worth revisiting. One should set the tone for our discussion of Filipina heroines: "You know that the will of God is different from that of the priest; that religiousness does not consist of long periods spent on your knees, nor in endless prayers, big “rosaries” [rosaries], and grimy “scapularios” [scapulars], but in a spotless conduct, firm intention and upright judgment."

Katipuneras

We move on to the rebellion against Spain. We forget that there were many other women who helped the Katipunan and got involved in all kinds of subversive activities from gun-running to bearing arms themselves, with some of them even reaching the rank of general. Few people know, for example, of Trinidad Teczon, who led a raid on a courthouse in Kalookan to seize firearms for the rebels.

Not all of the heroism consisted of fighting in battlefields. Many women converted their homes into safe havens for rebels on the run. Some wealthy Filipinas also converted their homes into hospitals for the sick and the wounded.

Tandang Sora is perhaps the best-known woman rebel, with one of Quezon City's main thoroughfares now named after her. Yet, many Filipinos would be hard pressed to remember her real name: Melchora Aquino. Although already in her 80s when Filipinos rose against Spain, she helped the rebels for which she was eventually arrested and exiled to Guam. She returned to the Philippines in 1903 and lived to the ripe old age of 107. (Patriotism doesn't always mean martyrdom. Many of the Katipuneras seemed to have lived to ripe old ages, although I suspect there were also many unsung heroines, unsung because they died during the Revolution or during the Filipino-American War.)

We know all too little about Rosa Sevilla, one of two women staffers of La Independencia, the newspaper of the Philippine revolutionary movement. She later founded Instituto de Mujeres, the first Filipino school to offer all levels of education up to college.

Then there was Patrocinia Gamboa of Jaro, Iloilo, mainly remembered for smuggling a flag to be used for the inauguration of a revolutionary government. She was literally wearing the flag, which would have been uncovered at a Spanish checkpoint if she hadn't thought of a ploy. When they reached the checkpoint, she staged a fight with her escort, a young rebel lieutenant, taking on the role of a spiteful wife, "pinching, biting and boxing" according to one account. Distracted and amused, the Spanish soldiers let them through.

Fighting the Kano

Because the Americans took over the Philippines from Spain, there's an overlap between the heroines of the Katipunan and that of the Filipino-American War, as rebels continued their struggle against two colonizing powers. An example was Agueda Kabagan, who fought alongside Generals Miguel Malvar and Artemio Ricarte against Spain but refused to give up when the Americans invaded.

We also have Teresa Magbanua, the first woman general in the Visayas. She is described as an excellent horserider and a sharpshooter and led troops in the Battle of Barrio Yoting in Capiz. She also joined the resistance against the Americans. It's curious how one article about Magbanua described her as a "tomboy" who climbed trees and rode horses. This is the type of biographical detail that needs to be picked up. Our heroines had childhoods, too, and probably had rather turbulent lives in their youth, not quite fitting into prescribed social molds.

The history books are largely silent about women resisting the Americans, but some do mention Clemencia Lopez of Batangas, who waged war by entering the belly of the whale. In 1902, following the arrest of her three brothers in the Philippines, she went to the United States to appeal for their release. There she began to speak and write about the brutality of the US "counterinsurgency" campaign in the Philippines and the Filipinos' quest for independence, her eloquence belying claims that the Filipinos were "savages" that needed to be civilized.

One of her speeches, "Women of the Philippines," delivered to the New England Woman Suffrage Association on May 29, 1902, is a gem. She describes how political our women could be and explained why liberty meant as much to Filipinos as it did to Americans.

Lopez's speech is part of a collection of audio recordings, "Twenty Speeches that Moved a Nation," produced by Platypus. Lopez's piece is read out by Tessie Tomas. Do note that of the 20 speeches in the anthology, Lopez's is the only one written by a Filipina.

Toys: more than play

Toys: more than play


Posted 11:44pm (Mla time) Mar 01, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the March 2, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


SOME of you may have seen one of the Lego toys that allow children to assemble their own robots. My sister, who works with children as an occupational therapist, loves these toys but was aghast to find out recently that local distributors sometimes offer to assemble the robots for the kids!

This offer to pre-assemble the robot defeats the whole purpose of the toy, which is to help with a child's physical and mental development. It's not just Lego toys that have this function. Generally, toys are tools for a child to interact, through fun and play, with the world and with people.

Nature has built this play mode into the early life of animals to prepare them for survival. Watch puppies and kittens at play and it's hard to miss the parallels with human martial arts designed to hone motor skills as well as the brain's ability to detect threats and opportunities.

Animals have "toys," too. Again, we've seen our pets totally engrossed with a crumpled piece of paper, or a stick, or a ball-nature's way of sharpening mind-body coordination. Humans have gone a step further to create all kinds of toys that have made play even more exciting-and educational.

Unfortunately, toys have taken on a new function in our consumerist, class-conscious society. Toys have become status symbols, children demanding them because their classmates have them, too. A pre-assembled Lego robot becomes a trophy ("My parents are rich enough to buy this!") rather than a tool for play and for education.

Making sense of the world

In early childhood, toys are important mainly for developing visual and cognitive skills, for helping the child to make sense of the bewildering but exciting world out there. You don't need expensive fancy toys for this. String together different objects, hang them from the ceiling and your infant will be kept busy all day, cooing away as she watches the mobile twirling around.

Lego toys build on a child's natural curiosity, the need to assemble and disassemble, without any rules except to let imagination run free. But good toys don't always have to come from stores. Watch urban poor kids transform a discarded rubber slipper into a little boat, to be floated down a canal. An empty alcohol bottle, or a powder container, becomes a car or a truck, with wheels cut out of old rubber slippers and connected with “walis tingting” [thin sticks]. Simply making these toys sharpens the mind and fine-tunes manual skills.

Toys are in a sense simulators that help children to learn to solve problems. Go to your kitchen and get a glass or cup, and find little objects -- pebbles, clips, trinkets -- to use for a little hide-and-seek game with your infant. Point to an object and then cover it with the cup. The child begins to wonder what happened to the trinkets. Take away the cup and they rediscover the trinkets. A silly game? Not at all. The child begins to figure out presence and absence. (A modification on this, without any toys needed, is for you to play hide and seek behind a door, a chair-those of us raising children know this can just go on endlessly.)

Older children are more sophisticated. You can tell which kids are going to be particularly sharp, the ones who are always assembling and disassembling stuff at home, from clocks to cell phones. Exasperated with all the stuff they've disassembled and can't get back together? Then give them mechanical objects that have broken down, and let them play to their heart's content. (Do be careful though: young children shouldn't be allowed to play with objects that have small parts. They might put these in their mouths and choke.)

Social values

Toys converge with games for another important problem-solving function: figuring out one's place in society, and the norms for being a social being. Values of sharing, of self-esteem and mastery in accomplishments, of humility when one's less successful, of winning and losing graciously -- all these come as children handle toys and games with other children (and adults). If you only have one or two children, make sure they get to play with other relatives, or with the neighbor's children.

Toys are "loaded" with value messages. Toy guns glorify violence and aggression, while that imported Barbie doll is telling your little girl that to be pretty is to be Caucasian, dressed in a certain way, with a particular hairstyle, a particular demeanor, and to have certain physical attributes that are actually impossible to replicate in real life. (Barbie's "vital statistics" are too top-heavy -- a real woman with her figure would fall flat on her face every time she tried to walk.)

I started out complaining about how a pre-assembled Lego robot reflects a distorted value: that of looking at objects as possessions and trophies. Likewise, if we buy toys simply because they're the latest, then we encourage children to be superficial and trendy. Don't be surprised later in life if they insist on the latest models of cell phones, or electronic gadgets, or cars.

Children can sense, too, when parents use toys (and television) as a substitute for nurturing, a way of distancing themselves from the responsibilities of childrearing. Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman rightly warned recently about how television is dumbing down young Filipinos. I'd agree, and warn too that the dangers come with both television and toys becoming substitutes for parenting, a way for adults to distance themselves from the responsibilities of childrearing. Toys are only as good as the social interaction that is provided by playmates, caregivers and parents. And if your child proclaims that he or she's bored with a roomful of toys, it just may be a distress signal. The child needs simpler but more fulfilling pleasures that come with reading, or a walk, or just time together.

We might want to ask ourselves, too, about how we respond to children at play. When they bombard you with questions, when they insist on exploring every shape, every hue, every smell of every object in a room, we scold them, "Kulit!" and "Likot!" It's time for a paradigm shift here. "Galing!" in praise of inquisitiveness and innovation, tenacity and agility become appropriate for a child who has exuberantly discovered the joys of learning in toys and games.


* * *

Announcement: This is a bit late, but I hope some of you can catch up. The Philosophy Department of the University of the Philippines’ College of Social Sciences and Philosophy in Diliman, Quezon City, is sponsoring a series of lectures by Dr. Michael Fox, a veterinarian and bioethicist, from March 2 to 4. Co-sponsors are the Philippine Animal Welfare Society and Bodhi Vegetarian Restaurant. Call UP Bioethics (+632 9261008) or PAWS (+632 4751688) for more information, or proceed directly to the NISMED auditorium in UP Diliman. Today's lectures are on "Animal Awareness, Emotions, Care and Rights" and "Cat and Dog Behavior, Development and Communication."

School cults

School cults


Posted 11:33pm (Mla time) Mar 03, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the March 4, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


WE usually think of our schools as safe havens for our children, a second home where they learn to explore the wonders of the world, and to live and work with others.

What happens though when the schools become a breeding ground for cults, where the teachers themselves become cult leaders?

That's what seems to have happened to the JCF School in Cagayan de Oro, the initials standing for Jesus Christ Followers. Last Jan. 28, the school had to be closed down when its officials refused to release a 16-year-old student who had left home after a quarrel with parents and sought refuge in the school.

There was fierce resistance when the police had to be sent in. A feature article last Sunday by the Inquirer's J. B. Deveza said the JCF members fought police "wielding steel pipes, sticks, rocks and human excrement wrapped in plastic." Three policemen were injured in the fracas and 22 JCF teachers and students, including several who were also injured, were arrested and brought to the Lumbia Detention and Rehabilitation Center.

Court hearings have turned into circuses. I caught one newscast and watched with horror as the teachers insulted, threatened and cursed police and government officials while students went into hysterics, refusing to go home with their parents and insisting on being with their teacher-leaders.

High academic standards

It turns out that the January incident was only the latest in a series of encounters between the school and government officials.

The school was established in 1999 by Emelinda and Onofre Tiongco, both of whom had worked in the Middle East. The school's temporary permit expired two years ago and the Department of Education recommended that the school be closed down because it was using a curriculum different from DepEd's. The city council acted on the recommendation, passing a resolution to close down the school, but it was never implemented.

How different is the school's curriculum? Emelinda Tiongco, in a television interview using a pathetically contrived British accent shared by her fellow teachers, said that they were following the "British system." There are no Filipino subjects since these are considered irrelevant. Teachers and students use English, or at least Tiongco's peculiar British-Cebuano patois. The passing mark in JCF School is 90, much higher than the DepEd's current cut-off of 70, but Tiongco said that they intended to increase the passing mark to 95, and then to 100.

So sure are Tiongco and her teachers about their high academic standards that they have now refused the help of public lawyers. They insist that six of their students will be able to defend them in court.

True believers

The JCF controversy reminds us that schools are potential indoctrination grounds for cults, with no less than the teachers themselves taking on the role of cult leaders.

Teachers are often driven by personal ideals and beliefs, which in itself is a good thing. The danger though is that some teachers take on messianic visions of transforming students to fit into their mold.

The students are vulnerable for many reasons. First, they actually spend more time in schools than at home, a ready-made captive audience for would-be cult leaders. It's not just time spent in classrooms. I'd be careful with teachers that require frequent field trips and outings. It's during these times when students become too dependent on and trusting of their teachers.

I'd be very suspicious, too, about teachers who frequently get their students to hang out at their home, or insist on doing things together, whether eating, drinking or watching movies. If you don't end up with cults like this JCF school, there's a strong chance you're going to have sexual seduction and harassment. The worst-case scenario is a cult where the teacher-leader sexually exploits the student-followers.

A second reason students are so vulnerable to cult teachers is that the young see their teachers as all-knowing, and as authority figures. Sure, young people today are sharp, discerning, even cynical, but I'm actually more worried about the bright ones because they're the ones who may eventually be drawn to cult-like teachers, impressed by these teachers' seeming commitment, or by their rhetoric.

Once cult heads have some following, they move on to create true believers, followers who will never question their leaders. Any criticism is dismissed as coming from the ignorant. The leaders also paint themselves as the source of all good: "Without me, you would not be where you are today."

With time, cult leaders draw a following by painting themselves as being misunderstood, as being persecuted by the outside world. A siege mentality is created, with leaders constantly exhorting followers to be absolutely loyal and steadfast and to fight the outsiders, the non-believers.

Social malaise

The JCF controversy reminds us cults aren't just products of rural communities. Cagayan de Oro is a fairly cosmopolitan area, with very good schools like Xavier University. Yet, there was space for something like the JCF School to emerge.

JCF is, of course, an extreme example of schools turned cults, but be on the lookout too for schools that are subtler in the way they indoctrinate students. I cringe at how we call our religious schools "sectarian" without realizing that there's a very thin boundary between being sectarian and being cultish. Schools and teachers that project themselves as the sole purveyors of truth should be looked at with suspicion. Intolerance of other faiths, of other political beliefs, of other lifestyles, has no place in modern education.

Recognize, too, how cults are often symptoms of deeper social malaise. Cults flourish when existing social institutions -- families, faith-based groups -- provide inadequate social support.

Cult followings grow on the anxieties of the times. Listening to Tiongco as well as her fellow teachers, with their "British" accents, I realized how in a way they were actually more of a secular rather than religious cult. They weren't preaching about salvation in heaven and eternal damnation in hell. Their message was that life now, as a Filipino in the Philippines, is hell itself, and that the way out is to use a "British system" in school so one could eventually seek salvation in overseas utopias.

"We will turn this country upside down," Emelinda Tiongco was quoted in last Sunday's Inquirer. JCF alone could never do this, but we better watch out about all the little cults brewing out there, in and out of schools. Cults make us uncomfortable because, even as we shake our heads over the ranting of their leaders, we realize that they, too, are products of our own social institutions and that the values they speak of are those that we cherish and uphold.

Math, physics and HIV/AIDS

Math, physics and HIV/AIDS


Posted 00:51am (Mla time) Feb 25, 2005
By Michael L. Tan
Inquirer News Service



Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the February 25, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


I WAS recently interviewing a 22-year-old male in an urban poor community for a sexuality research project, when he got around to boasting that he'd never had to pay for sex. There were many girls in their community who were readily available. When I asked if he used condoms, he scoffed, "Malinis naman sila. Mga pok pok lang kasi (They're clean. They're just pok pok.)."

I was flabbergasted. In my time, "pok pok" meant a sex worker, but apparently there's been a semantic shift so it now means females who don't necessarily charge for sex but who are available in exchange for a night out drinking. Because they're sort of free, they're seen as "clean."

Last Wednesday, I wrote that the AIDS epidemic in the Philippines, often described as "low and slow," might have shifted gears away from a low simmer to a slow boil. The concerns have been serious enough to spur UNAIDS, the Swedish Embassy and the Asian Development Bank to sponsor an AIDS summit in Manila earlier this week.

At that AIDS summit, Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit named the groups most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS: 500,000 to one million sex workers and their clients; 15.7 million young people aged between 15 and 24; 7.6 million overseas Filipino workers.

The figures, and the story of the "pok pok," got me thinking about how we urgently need more research on Filipino sexuality so we can project how HIV/AIDS might spread, and what we can do in terms of prevention programs.

Critical mass and velocity

Epidemiologists (scientists who study how diseases spread) often use terms from math and physics. Thus, you will find references to "critical mass," which in the case of an HIV/AIDS epidemic would be the pool of infected people who engage in risky sex, which means frequent unprotected sex with a constant change of partners. Once a critical mass is reached, the "velocity" of HIV spread could increase very quickly.

How might young adults contribute to the critical mass? In terms of numbers, their sheer size could mean serious problems. Unfortunately, our anxieties with young people focus mainly on premarital sex, to the point where we may have become blinded to the broader issue of irresponsible sex, whether in or out of marriage.

The 2003 National Demographic and Health Survey found that by the age of 19, one out of every five Filipinas has begun childbearing. I feel this is an even more important indicator of risk than premarital sex. Young people who have had their "coital debut" (first intercourse) may not necessarily be having regular sex, especially if they remain unmarried. I'm more worried about the young Filipinas who get pregnant early and are then marched off to get married.

These young couples could actually contribute to the critical mass for HIV/AIDS. Young husbands, especially if forced into an early marriage, are more likely to be having extramarital flings, exposing themselves and their young wives to sexually transmitted diseases. Yet, little is being done to educate these young couples about their risks.

Transactional sex

What about the sex workers? When "prostitution" is mentioned, we imagine the HIV/AIDS epidemic moving at a high velocity, in terms of frenzied activities in brothels, bars and massage parlors, each sex worker servicing dozens of partners each week.

I'd challenge those perceptions. An ongoing research project of Health Action Information Network (HAIN) found GROs ("guest relations officers") complaining about being suspended for not being able to reach a quota of three customers a week ... for "tabling," meaning customers who will just sit and drink with them. Similarly, massage parlor attendants complain that there are times when they may have no customers at all for a week or so. The brutal fact is that in the Philippines, the supply of sex workers outstrips the demand.

While government and NGOs concentrate on monitoring establishment-based workers through testing and campaigns to use condoms, we may be missing out on an even more vulnerable segment of the population: those engaged in transactional sex.

Many Filipino men may actually avoid the entertainment establishments because they're expensive. A cheaper alternative is transactional sex, involving freelance, part-time sex workers. These include students who may solicit clients in malls or out in the streets to supplement their allowances or to rush a tuition fee installment (thus the term "prosti-tuition"). In transactional sex, the financial remuneration may be quite low; in fact, sometimes the transactions will involve material benefits -- anything from a few bottles of beer, to clothes, to watches and cell phones -- rather than actual cash.

Those who engage in transactional sex (and these can include the pok pok) do not usually think of themselves as sex workers, and will rarely think of using condoms. We therefore have a potential here for rapid HIV transmission.

'Suki' and FB

Ironically, it may be our Catholic culture that creates this demand for transactional sex, as well as other varieties of risky sex. Because outright prostitution is seen as "sinful," our men create alternative arrangements to downplay the commercial angle. Thus, when they do go to entertainment establishments or pick up a freelance sex worker, they will go into "dating" mode, complete with courtship.

I call these "suki" relationships, where a customer returns to the same sex worker over several weeks or months, slowly transformed from a "guest" to a "boyfriend," or even a temporary "asawa" (spouse). What does this mean in terms of HIV transmission? On one hand, it does mean a reduced rate of partner change, which could slow down HIV spread. On the other hand, because the relationship has some semblance of a "boyfriend/girlfriend" arrangement, with illusions of fidelity, condoms could disappear from the equation, which means greater risks for HIV.

Confused? I haven't even started talking about FBs or f---king buddies. Like the suki relationship between a sex worker and a frequent-flier customer, FBs create some semblance of a monogamous relationship, without imposing any claims of commitment to each other. The risks for HIV exist because there will be change of partners, and condoms are again not used because the partners don't think of each other as sex workers.

There will be overlaps across FB, transactional and commercial sex, i.e., you can have someone working as a GRO at night, while supplementing her income with an occasional fling on the side as a pok pok and maintaining a special FB live-in relationship with a boyfriend from high school. What we see in these overlaps are dangerous "bridges" for HIV infections crossing over from one group to another.

Sex and the risks for HIV/AIDS involve more than acts. They involve a mazeway of perceptions, meanings, scripts, feelings about different partners, in different settings. The sooner we understand these mazeways, the better equipped we will be to handle the HIV/AIDS epidemic.