Everyone can partake of their own slice of Bangkok. This piece of street art along Ratchadamnoen is a celebration of color and innocence. But how many tourists are really aware that just a few minutes from here, just behind those gaily-painted walls, in a quiet and unobtrusive street corner, is a memorial to the October 14, 1973 uprising of heroic Thai students, workers and other citizens that led to the overthrow of military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn? That was one slice of Bangkok I set out to seek.
There’s a bit of a gentle rant here, but not a big one.
When I was told that my trip to Bangkok would push through, actually I was a bit underwhelmed. This was because–apart from the colleagues we needed to meet there and the critical collaborative work we needed to accomplish, which were of course the main reasons for the trip–I couldn’t think of any tourist feature of that ancient Siamese city along the Chao Phraya that made my innards pulsate with excitement. Continue reading “You have your Bangkok, I have mine”
Much of our working hours were spent at the DZME radio station along Roosevelt Avenue in San Francisco del Monte district, where we maintained two block-time programs. This was mostly due to our good alliance work with the station owner and manager, Joey Luison. I remember we maintained a talk show around lunchtime, and another talk show just before midnight. We also gave extra time at the DZUP radio station, which was then housed in UP Diliman’s Palma Hall, and where I sometimes joined the MDP radio staff for its late-night radio program.
Tamad na burgis na ayaw gumawa,
Sa pawis ng iba’y nagpapasasa.
Pinalalamon ng manggagawa,
Hindi marunong mangahiya (Walang-hiya!)
Bandilang pula, iwagayway.
Bandilang pula, iwagayway.
Bandilang pula, iwagayway…
Ang mga anakpawis ay mabuhay!
It’s near midnight, and the sign above the radio booth door reads “ON AIR.” Imagine a small group of youthful men and women, including a lanky bespectacled 15-year-old boy. He is sporting shoulder-length hippie hair, an oversized Vietnam-era GI fatigue shirt, faded denims, and non-descript rubber sandals.
It’s his turn inside the booth, and he is playing a vinyl record of a protest song in Tagalog, Bandilang Pula, which is derived from PCI’s Bandierra Rossa. As the red-flag anthem wafts onto the airwaves, he is singing along with clenched fist punching the air in time with the marching beat.
To my utmost satisfaction, Conrad reprinted my letter in full a week later in his column. I had misplaced my copy of that issue. This morning, however, it reemerged, yellowed and brittle, from a closet of old files that I was cleaning out. Its contents might be of interest not just to the younger generation of PSHS scholars, but to student activists who, I hear, are still doing the same kind of mass work among the squatter colonies of North Triangle as we did 40 years ago.
I hear The Bourne Legacy is shooting a few sequences along Agham Road in the North Triangle area of Quezon City’s central district. I suppose some film scenes will utilize the communities’ slum-housing conditions, which represent perhaps one of the starkest contrasts between abject poverty and cosmopolitan glitz this side of Metro Manila.
Portions of this sprawling area have now been cleared of so-called squatter communities and replaced by sleek malls, carparks, and office buildings. But there remain urban poor pockets that continue to remind us of how this part of the city looked ten years ago.
Nay, twenty years ago. Nay, forty years ago, when the road now known as Agham (“Science”) Road was just a gravelly dirt track that led to God knows where.
