Luisita farmers to start impeaching Noynoy

SUNBURNT, WITH CALLOUSED HANDS AND GNARLED BARE FEET. Marching in their hundreds or thousands, with their families, and their supporters, under the scorching sun or pouring rain. Peasant masses streaming once more into Manila, with a sheaf of papers in their hands. This time, the papers will not just be a renewed cry for genuine land reform, but a resounding demand to impeach the sitting haciendero president for violating the constitution.

I have a dream, and this is one. One of many, actually, and a minor one at that. My dream is that the beleaguered farmers and workers of Hacienda Luisita, who are still being denied the land that should already be theirs, be among the first citizens to file an impeachment complaint vs Noynoy Aquino.

IRAIA thoughts
IRAIA thoughts

The Tarlac peasants, joined by many thousands of supporters, will then march — and I mean really march by foot — all the way to the Batasan to deliver and file their complaint in time for the SONA. I hope to join them, perhaps not all the way from Tarlac, but at least from Monumento or Balintawak, partly riding my bike and partly by foot.

Maybe my dream won’t become reality, or not immediately. But we can all dream, can’t we? I often dream doing great stuff while riding my bike, and a few of them have turned true. Maybe this one can, too. #

The banana is dead. Long live the banana!

Have you ever witnessed the execution of royalty in real life? I have, many times. In fact, I have had the honor of serving as the executioner quite a few times. Last weekend, I made sure to take pictures to show you how we do it in my secret corner of the world.

The royal victim isn’t a person. It’s one of the two maturing banana fruit bunches that I had selected for a quick harvest, before a possible strong storm came in. I consider the banana as the king of tropical fruits, thus the reference to royalty.

I should clarify that after a banana “tree” (the trunk is not woody, it’s actually an overgrown soft-plant stalk) bears a single bunch of fruits, it starts to dry up and die. After the maturing bunch is harvested, what a farmer does is to cut down the useless trunk, and thus give way for small adjacent suckers to grow into a new banana “tree.”

Thus, the axiom “The king is dead, long live the king” applies to banana trees as well.

Image 1. The executioner sharpens the death weapon — a peasant’s
scythe — on a whetstone.

banana 1
Image 1. The executioner sharpens the death weapon -- a peasant's scythe -- on a whetstone.

Continue reading “The banana is dead. Long live the banana!”