Hindi

Tula

Hindi

Al P. Garcia

Hindi ako iibig sa babaing puti
O sa may buhok na olandes
Gaya ng buhok ng mais,
Kahit ito may pula o kasingitim
ng pusikit na dilim,
Hindi ako matutulad sa mga Pinoy
Na nahibang sa mga mestisa;
Dahil sa matagal na pagsamba
Sa mga rebulto ng mga diyus-diyusang
Birhen ng kung anu-anong lupalop:
Birhen ng Antipolo, Piat, Guadalupe,
Manaoag, Penafrancia,
at kung anu-ano pa,
mga birhen ng mga birhenes
liban siguro sa mahal na birhen
ng Calumpang o Culiculi;
na hinugis mula sa mga dayong
birhenes ng Fatima at San Bernadita,
Santa Teresa de Avila at mga santo
ng agua de pataranta.


Tulad din nga pagsamba
ng mga baliw na kabataan
Sa mga artistang puti;
na may matang pusa
o bughaw na mata
sa mga bagong artistang
galing Amerika
o kung saan lupalol
bulol pa rin managalog
hanggang ngayon.

Dahil hindi ako rasista,
Hindi ako nabubulag sa gandang dayo,
Kahit na sa mga Asyanong
Mahilig uminom ng tsaa
O kaya malibugan sa mga artistang
Nililinang ng ABS-CBN o GMA
Galling sa ibang bansa
maging galing sa Espanya
Alemanya o naging Miss universe
tulad ni Venus Raj,
Na mga nalahian ng mga Pinoy at Pinay
O nagsipunta sa Pinas para sumikat
Sa telebisyon at pelikula.

Bagamat humahanga parin
Ako sa kagandahan,
Naniniwala ako na ang ganda
Ay nasa mata ng tumitingin
At humahanga
Naalis ko na ang kolonyal at pyudal
Na pagsamba sa anumang dayo
Naniniwala pa rin ako
Na ang tunay na ganda
Na nilinang ng araw at bukid
Ng hirap at pagod
Ng simpleng paggawa
At hindi nang anumang kolerete
O pabangong galling sa ibang bansa.

Nasanay ako sa amoy ng gugo
at kalamansi,
amoy ng buhok mga nag-alaga sa akin,
na linahukan at lalong pinabango
ng langis ng niyog,
katulad ng baby oil para sa sanggol,
amoy ng kababaihan sa kanayunan,
na maging galing sa araw
sa maghapong gawain sa bukid,
ay maliligo para maglinis ng katawan.


Doon pa rin ako sa gandang Pilipina,
Dito sa Amerika at doon man
Sa aking bansa
para sa akin
ang babaing Pilipina
pa rin ang tunay
na larawan ng ganda.

************

Thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2011

Thoughts on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2011

While watching the War of 1812 in the History Channel, I was surprised to find out that the reason why the British forces burned the White House when they occupied Washington DC was that it was a reprisal.

The American troops burned down the Commonwealth building in Canada when the US forces invaded it earlier. And yet the War of 1812 is used to rouse American patriotism and stress the anthem words, "The flag was still there."

And then I got back on a stream of historical events that made Martin Luther King Jr. to remark that,

“the greatest purveyor of violence and our enemy is our own American government.” It occurred to me that violence is really the bludgeon of the state to institute or implement its policies.

War against the Native Americans

Even as early as its very founding, the US cavalry freely and frequently used these same tactics of burning down the tepees and huts and villages of the Indian nations in their westward expansion of the army of the new United States and the early pioneers.

Again, the American army used these tactics against the pueblos of Mexico in a concerted effort to rid of/exterminate them in the westward push of the United States across the mainland. They burned down and destroyed Vera Cruz and even the city of Mexico in order to add what were then Mexican provinces to the US west coast in the mainland.

This became the SOP of American occupation forces wherever they fought for the flag or to say it straight, for American corporations super-profits all over the world. And they started in the Philippines in 1898.

The Filipino-American War

American troops certainly weren't discriminating in the US war of colonization of the Philippines called the  “Benevolent Assimilation“ against both the Filipino people and the Bangsamoro after all as many as 1.5 out of seven million perished from the forgotten Filipino-American War from 1899-1916.

At the onset of the war, American ships bombarded Manila (from Tondo to the south), Caloocan, Malolos in the north, and razed inland and lake towns from their gunboats running though the rivers. They burned down Pasig, Pateros and Taguig, prompting Filipino revolutionists who were being pursued to burn their own cities later instead of letting the Americans do it.

The American military perfected Spanish inquisition torture tactics in the Philippines calling it “water cure,” suffocation and the like that they have used as recently as a few years ago at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. They used their tactics of “free fire zones” and “strategic hamlets” and perfected them first in the Philippines. (The thought of this is enough to get a chill up your spine when you recall how George W. Bush extolled the Philippines as a model for Iraq to follow in his speech onboard an aircraft carrier weeks after the intrusion into Iraq.)

World War II

This was also the policy of the US military during the Second World War, except on a much bigger scale than previously. It was evident in the way US bombers leveled whole cities in Germany and Japan without sparing civilian population centers.

Warsaw was the most devastated city in the Second World War, but in the drive to repulse the Japanese occupiers (who by the way spared the city when they entered Manila in 1942) Manila became the second most devastated city, thanks to intensive US bombing. More than 300,000 Manileños died in the US re-occupation of the Philippines.

The great irony is that the US recruited more than 500,000 Filipinos to fight their war against Japan, but recognized only 250,000 loyal soldiers to America and never recognized their military services as "active," and until now has not compensated the surviving veterans.

The US became the first and only country to use atomic bombs to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in Japan ostensibly in order "to spare more lives and end the war."

The Korean War, 1^st American Defeat

When the war in Korea broke out a few years later, the Americans really pulverized the north – every building, every school, every church or temple, and every dam was demolished, perhaps, in retaliation for unexpected losses on the ground. An American air force general boasted then: “We will bomb them back to the Stone Age.” After the smoke cleared, the people of the north literally crawled out of caves and Pyongyang only had two building structures left standing.

Four million Koreans, mostly civilians, perished because of US military tactics that included employing carpet bombing, napalming villages, the deliberate use of germ warfare bombs, and wholesale massacres of refugees like the well-documented No Gun Ri massacre.

[In 1958, after the US begrudgingly signed an armistice with the DPRK, in 1953 ,every single soldier of the Chinese People’s Volunteers had returned to China). In contrast, the US remains as the only foreign power to station 28,500 soldiers in the Korean peninsula, and to have hundreds of tactical nuclear warheads pointed menacingly at the north.

And Americans wonder why even today the people of the DPRK (north Korea) hate US imperialism so much?!

The Vietnam War

The US continued these identical indiscriminate practices throughout the war in Vietnam and the US did not spare the key cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. During the Christmas bombing of 1972, the US was dropping more bombs in a single day there than the entire amount expended during the Second World War.

In the aftermath of the failed Tet offensive of the Vietnamese, the US and their South Vietnamese puppet military killed as many as 10,000 suspected cadres and members of the National Liberation Front (NLF) in a desperate bid to "get even," undermine the deep popular support for the revolution, and eliminate the people's resistance in the south. All this before the widely publicized My Lai massacre committed by US troops in Vietnam in 1968.

All these examples explain and illustrate why Martin Luther King Jr. months before his assassination became the most prominent critic of the US war in Vietnam and described the US government "as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world."

Despite the US atrocities, the people of Vietnam still persevered and eventually defeated US imperialism in 1975. In all, several million people also perished in the 30 years of fighting in Vietnam.

We haven't even discussed how the US conducted itself in its "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq and in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.

That is another long discussion. In the meantime, we should await the full content of the declassified US cables courtesy of Wikileaks. #