Archive for November, 2011

Before All of This is Forgotten

Before All of This is Forgotten

The town is called Ampatuan, Maguindanao.  In that town, on November 23, 2009, 58 innocent civilians, journalists, lawyers, aides, supporters, and motorists were unceremoniously buried in mass graves after being murdered, massacred, and mutilated by gun-toting animals.  Two years later, justice remains elusive, slow, delayed… and perhaps even denied.

We remember not because of the gruesome details or that because it can happen to us.  We remember because it is right and proper and bold for us to remember.  We remember because two years later, no one has paid the price.  We remember because of so many people fighting for justice in a world filled with news items covering murdered celebrities and murdered innuendoes.  We remember because as far as the pursuit of justice is concerned, we have yet to be there.

Today is Blog Action Day to remember the Ampatuan Massacre.

November 21, 2011 0 comments Read More
Spaghetti, Filipino-Style

Spaghetti, Filipino-Style

To some, the gist of “Filipino style” has always been about sweetness.  There’s our sweetened abobo, the sugars added to tapa, the sweet sauces in lumpia, and that staple of Filipino kitchens: banana ketchup.  While pasta purists would frown upon our Americanized, Hispanicized, hotdog-heavy interpretation of spaghetti Bolognese, it is something that we could, perhaps, take into consideration in our search for identity.

The Filipino-style spaghetti, for me, is not a dish brought about by the idea of “sweetness” in Filipino cuisine.  Rather, it is dish made from the cupboard.  There are many variations to the Filipino-style spaghetti that speak to its origins in the eccentricities and quirks of the Filipino kitchen: hot dogs, for one.  Canned tuna, for others, and still for others cans of corned beef thrown into the mix.  The thing with Filipino-style spaghetti is that it is not deliberately shopped for: in many ways it is an analogue to Creole jambalaya.  We put whatever we have in the pan.

November 13, 2011 2 comments Read More
Truth is in the (Im)Balance

Truth is in the (Im)Balance

I figure that this passing essay belongs in the immediate domain of someone like, say, @iwriteasiwrite or @ellobofilipino – but having not written anything for the past few weeks I think I should write something here as meaningful filler.

I firmly believe that the wrong solutions to the wrong problems find their roots in a wrong sense of history.  A wrong sense of history leads to wrong perspectives, in turn creating wrong analysis, which leads to the wrong methods to achieve the wrong goals.  Worse, a wrong sense of history is, for all intents and purposes, a wrong sense of truth.

Note that I’m talking about senses and not sides: to say “side” would mean entertaining untruth into the way we view ourselves (which is really what history essentially is: to recognize truth).  Which is why I’m writing this post as meaningful filler: when and how we tell the story of our nation is to tell – so to speak – the story of us.  While the function of something like, say, social media is to grant us the right to say something, the function of history is to grant us the wisdom and perspective to understand.

When social media functions as a historical resource, it should share history.  Truth, for that matter.

November 7, 2011 15 comments Read More