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The Manero mindset is all around us

Fr Tullio Favali
FR. TULLIO FAVALI WOULD JUST BE THE FIRST AMONG MANY. I regret to say that until now, the Manero mindset is as prevalent as ever among us.

Tullio Favali was an Italian missionary who was a parish priest in a town in Cotabato where the New People’s Army operated and who therefore was a suspected NPA sympathizer because he worked among farmers and protested martial law abuses. He was confronting a government militia force led by the Manero brothers when they shot him in cold blood, his head blown off by a militia gun fired pointblank into his face. (Fr. Favali’s story is told more fully on the Bantayog website.)

That was in 1985. But that did not stop foreigners—priests, nuns, lay volunteers, researchers, activists—from joining progressive organizations and protest rallies not just in Metro Manila but in other cities and town centers as part of their advocacy. We welcomed all forms of support that they extended to unions, urban poor groups, peasant associations, indigenous communities, and Filipino activist groups that worked among the poor.  Continue reading “The Manero mindset is all around us”

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Basically naman pala e.

Basically ka jan!

Mukhang kagalang-galang na ako ngayon, mga tol. Sa galaw at salita. At pag sinumpong, pati sa suot. Pero di ako ganito mula pagkabata. Me panahong astang lumpen ako bok. Siga sa suot at salita. Pati sa gawa kung kelangan.

Tibak kasi ako nung kabataan ko, at marami akong barkada na ganundin. Kahit galing kami lahat sa uring petiburgis, talagang itinulak namin ang sarili na bumabad sa masa, at umastang masa. Maski minsan e O.A. na, at wala sa lugar.

Ganun kami nun ng mga barkada ko. Puro barumbadong maka-masang intelektwal-kulturati-kuno. Sipilyo, twalyang Good Morning, bolpen, at pang-Grade 6 na notbuk. Yun lang halos ang baon namin, pwede nang bumabad sa purok-iskwater. Continue reading “Basically naman pala e.”

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You want to clear Manila’s waterways? Clear these first.

The government of big landlord-big bourgeois scions Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas has recently announced a plan to clear Metro Manila’s waterways of some 20,000 informal settler families. Their reason is that urban poor shanties are a big (if not the biggest) factor in clogging these waterways and thus in worsening floods during the rainy season.

This has fanned the already raging fires of debate between those social sectors that hate the urban poor aka informal settlers aka squatters aka homeless poor aka scum of the earth, and those social sectors who support (or consider themselves part of) the urban poor and who believe that they are people with rights, not scum of the earth.

I will have more to say later about the points being debated by both sides. But for now, let me just focus on one simple question: What kinds of structures will be affected if we are truly serious and determined in declogging Metro Manila’s waterways? And since I don’t have the luxury of time to write a research tract on this subject, let me just focus on the very heartland of Manila—that district that surrounds the old Spanish city called Intramuros.

The Manila City Hall area in an 1898 map
MAP 1A. Waterways such as creeks and esteros crisscrossed the very heartland of Manila until the early American period. This shows the Manila City Hall area in an old Spanish map circa 1898.

Continue reading “You want to clear Manila’s waterways? Clear these first.”