Gabo 101

JUST GOT MY HANDS on the first edition of Márquez's Cien Años (Barcelona, Círculo de Lectores, 1967) and Eréndira (México City, Editorial Hermes, 1972), both for less than $40. In Spanish, of course. Buen provecho!

Spring Reading

ARGENTINE WRITER CÉSAR AIRA a fascinating read, and this spring break, I got my hands on his fictional memoir The Linden Tree which is about the small town he grew up in and how Perón's presidency roiled his parents' marriage. Classified as a realist, surrealist, absurdist, cubist, philosophical, master of the supernatural, he has published more than one hundred books of stories, novels and essays, all of which he claims as "a footnote to Borges". Read an excerpt from the memoir here.

Open Hands

AND THIS IS OPEN. There is nothing legal here, just humor and a clean slate (like a Mangyan clearing) for everyone to mark on and tweak into whatever they like.

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
Martín Espada

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours

at a printing plant

that manufactured legal pads:

Yellow paper

stacked seven feet high

and leaning

as I slipped cardboard

between the pages,

then brushed red glue

up and down the stack.

No gloves: fingertips required

for the perfection of paper,

smoothing the exact rectangle.

Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands

would slide along suddenly sharp paper,

and gather slits thinner than the crevices

of the skin, hidden.

Then the glue would sting,

hands oozing

till both palms burned

at the punchclock.

Ten years later, in law school,

I knew that every legal pad

was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,

that every open lawbook

was a pair of hands

upturned and burning.

Staying Alive

DÍA DE LA HISPANIDAD (October 12) is observed on the same week as Columbus Day. Spanish is the most widely-spoken foreign language in the city, and as a filispanophile trying to learn it late in life, I find memory trainer Anthony Metivier's book interesting, what with the Philippine flag on its cover, and am delighted to see and hear Pinoys speak the language. The use of Spanish in the Philippines started its rapid decline after the Second World War when American pop culture flooded the country (The New York Times' effect on man?) and got another nail in the coffin when the new constitution removed it as one of the country's three official languages in 1987. Its comatose state got some jolt when Spanish-speaking presidenta Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signed a directive in 2007 requiring the Philippine school system to resume including Spanish in its curriculum, for which she deserves some credit. And thanks to the (dwindling) number of Spanish-speakers in the country (and maybe to the creole Chavacanos), we maintain memberships in the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española and the Unión Latina. 

Also thanks to programs of the Instituto Cervantes de Manila, partnerships with the Spanish and Chilean governments which offer scholarships and teacher-training programs to Pinoy students and educators, and other filispanophiles like Pepe Alas of San Pedro, Laguna (his blog went belly-up in 2016; ¡Alas, que lástima!), the Spanish language torch in the Philippines is still alive, barely. Whatever. But this Chavacana girl's love song, applauded by viewers from as far away as Spain and Mexico, is haunting. TV Patrol Chavacano is equally interesting, although I cringe every time I hear the improper use of simple articles--el calle, el universidad--in every other sentence. Also check out these hour-long broadcasts of the radio program Filipinas, Ahora Mismo before it also folded up in 2009 when the Spanish government discontinued funding as it faced its own economic recession. (More ¡que lástima! Any wealthy sponsors out there?) Finally, let's move to madre España and watch the performance of "Yo Te Diré" by filispañola Alexandra Masangkay, star of the movie 1898, Los Ultimos de Filipinas, if only to see just how pretty she is. And this not-so-HD file of the anti-war movie (shot in the Canary Islands and Equatorial Guinea) without subtitles for exercise and look for the controversial Pinoy sex in public scene.

I think we Pinoys have the natural gift of learning a language, given the multitude of dialects in the country many of us know how to speak, and that we are losing out on opportunities in the Latin world, job-wise and otherwise, by skipping on this endeavor to learn a not-so-new language. I believe we Pinoys will be better served, and will discover a whole new horizon, if we learn and know how to read, write and speak Spanish the way we do English.

Miembros de la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE)

Me Gusta

ESTE FRASCO DE BALSA, una especie de calabaza gigante para almacenar la tuba de Colima. The beverage became so popular in Western Mexico (it still is) that a decree by viceroy Luis de Velasco in 1610 prohibited the production of tuba because it had become the beverage of choice for the local Mexican population in the provinces of Colima and Zacatula and the sales of Castilian grape wine had dropped, costing Spain a large amount of tax revenue. Taverns and even churches replaced the Castilian spirit with the tuba, which prompted its prohibition and the deportation of Filipinos who produced it. "It can be averted, provided all the Indian natives of the said Filipinas Islands are shipped and returned to them, that the palm groves and vessels with which the wine is made be burnt, the palm trees felled, and severe penalties imposed on whomever remains or returns to making that wine.” Geographer Henry J. Bruman traced the Pinoy roots of Mexican palm toddy and its distillation in The Hispanic American Historical Review and Geographical Review. ¡Compuesta, y conquista al revés, señores! Here's to harvest season.

One For Captain Kid

BEFORE SAYING GOODBYE to serious history posts and getting down to work, I want to share this kid-friendly picture story, complete with music and sound effects, of a Manila galleon's voyage (based on Gemelli Careri's 17th century narrative) by columnist Adolfo Arranz and infographic designer Marco Hernandez in last May's blog issue of South China Morning Post. This is only one chapter in a series of posts; read the rest by clicking the other tabs at the bottom of the screen. Also Dutch resident Kees Koonstra's cool project for the town of Puerto Galera, on whose beaches still wash up grains of black, petrified rice from galleons that once sought shelter in its safe harbor, loading supplies before heading out the treacherous salida at the Embocadero. Aye aye, captain Kees! says SpongeBob SquarePants.

                                                     Such is the legend. Hear this truth:
                                                     Over the trackless past, somewhere,
                                                     Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
                                                     Only regained by faith and prayer...
                                                             --Bret Harte, "The Lost Galleon"       

Homage to Puerto Galera's history

Kees Koonstra and Puerto Galera mayor Rockey Ilagan with the miniature replica of a Manila galleon

End Of A Deadly Passage

AFTER THE TE DEUM and the magnificent trade fair in Acapulco, flocked to by merchants and wealthy buyers from as far away as Peru, many questions still remain. Did Isagani Timbulan, one of four survivors of the Concepción who made their way back to Manila in 1639 ten months after the disaster, ever get to see once again his beloved Yanihan, who was on board the almiranta San Ambrosio that successfully made it to Nueva España? What about those rafts of coconuts and sacks of discarded mango seeds, used as toilet wipes in the meantime to extend their usefulness on the sea-tossed galleon? Who among the wretched and maltreated Pinoy crewmen jumped ship with nothing but rags and galleon trash on their backs to seek new lives in the New World? Art by Robert McGinnis of the James Bond posters fame.

Franciscan missions were later established in California (once thought to be an island) to provide life-saving citrus to the Manila galleons

The Acapulco trade fair

Weekend Reading

THE LONG LABOR DAY WEEKEND should give me time to read up this hoard of resources about Mangyans and Manila galleons, less tedious with marine archaeologist William M. Mathers' coffee table book Treasure of the Concepción which I got earlier this year, signed and loaded with stupendous photographs of the recovered cargo. Also glad to find Bruce Cruikshank's chronology of all Manila galleons from 1565-1815, Blair and Robertson's brief mention of the Concepción tragedy, and Catherine Lugar's detailed report on the ill-fated galleon and the corrupt governorship of Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera, compiled from three years of research in seven countries by historians Peter Earle of the London School of Economics and David Webb of the University of London. From Lugar's article: "There were also more inundane trade goods, like 1,500 cakes of beeswax he was sending to Mexico." Inundane? What does does that word mean? Ora et labora! reverberates my Pinamalayan high school battlecry.

More gold from the Concepción: necklaces, a rosary cross and a figa amulet

Photographs too large to scan also appeared in the September 1990 issue of National Geographic 

The author holds one of 156 jars found intact which once held water, wine, oil and other vital supplies

A steersman in San Bernardino Strait struggles to survive a skirmish with a squall

The Beeswax Wreck

AND SPEAKING OF BEESWAX, the summer 2018 special issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly entitled “Oregon's Manila Galleon” features the research done on the mysterious "Beeswax Wreck."  Thought to be that of Manila galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos which left Manila in 1693, the wreck carried a large load of beeswax (used by churches in the Spanish colonies to make candles) much of which washed ashore and contained wings of bees native to the Philippines. I am sure that some, if not most, of those beeswax were gathered by Mangyans from the mountains of Mindoro. And if some Pinoy crewmembers survived the shipwreck as the video suggests, then they would be the second oldest group of Filipinos in the US, after those that arrived in Morro Bay in 1587. 

To order a copy, contact Andrew VanDerZanden, Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Avenue, Portland, OR 97205, phone (503) 306-5230, email Andrew.VanDerZanden@ohs.org.

Missions And Mentions

THANKS TO FR. RANDY FLORES, SVD of Divine Word Seminary, Tagaytay for sharing this special issue of Diwa: Studies in Philosophy and Theology, devoted to Antoon Postma's research "Mangyan Encounters: East and West (1570-1985)". I was looking for Mangyan responses to Jesuit and Augustinian Recollect reduccíon during the 17th century to finish writing the story of Yanihan in "The Giant Clam of Sibale Reef", and given the dearth of information available within these parameters, I was glad to find valuable snippets of accounts in Postma's research. To begin with, the earliest mentions of Mangyans were those by Hernando Riquel (1570), the official scribe of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi's voyage to Luzon from Cebu in search of the prosperous trading settlement of Manila, who heard about a group of people that lived in the interior of Mindoro he referred to as "Chichimecos" (after a nomadic Aztec tribe in Mexico), and by Fray Martin de Rada (1577) who was first to mention the term "Manguianes" in a letter.  Fray Juan de Medina (1630) wrote about a group of indios who lived in the mountains that were "whiter than the Tagalos" and who collected an abundant amount of beeswax. "Especially do these Mangyans fear the sea. They don't pay tributo. They are afraid that the Spaniards force them to man their ships." In 1632, the Litterae Annuale (Annual Report of the Jesuits) of the Residentia Nauhana noted the Mangyan attitude that "Money made from gold or silver is looked upon as useless, but they consider it a fortune when they possess knives and pots for cooking their food."

Between 1665-1666, Jesuit Diego Luis de San Vitores (known for his work and martyrdom with Pinoy saint Pedro Calungsod in Guam) led a fairly successful mission in Naujan where he baptized a hundred and twenty or so Mangyans before heading for the Mariana Islands in 1668.  In 1679, seven years after San Vitores' terrific death in the hands of Chamorro leader Matapang, Fray Martin Diaz wrote about the loyalty of the Mangyan converts the priest left behind in Naujan: "I know for a fact that they maintain the chapels of straw that they had built at the initiative of the venerable Father Diego Luis de San Vitores. They repair these chapels, take care of them, clean them, and say that they are waiting for him. When they are told that this priest had died already, they say: "nevertheless, some others, like him, are going to come." None of the accounts about Mangyans, however, is more powerful than these remarks from the 1633 Annual Report of the Residencia de Nauhan, which describe the credibility of Mangyan morals that baffled even the Christians: "They told me that they want to be sure that their children will not end up becoming slaves once they have become Christians. One thing that has given us much consolation, admiration towards these pagans because notwithstanding (the negative aspects), they are a people who are very trustworthy. The Mangyans will never tell a lie. That is why, if you tell the Christians, 'that is what the Mangyan says,' they will answer, even if it is not in their favor, 'well, then it must be the truth.'"

Joris van Spilbergen map of Mindoro (ca. 1619) depicting a Mangyan woman in typical rattan waistwear

Simbahang Bato in Bancuro, Naujan, Oriental Mindoro built by Augustinian Recollects in 1680

Overgrown Fuerte de Bongabong or Kuta Fort built by Augustinian Recollects in the 17th century as defense against Moro raids, Anilao, Bongabong, Oriental Mindoro

Fray Diego Luis de San Vitores, evangelist to the Mangyans, 1665-1666

A New Book

SDSU FRIEND Marilyn Chin has a forthcoming book whose title poem came from Strange Attraction: The Best of Ten Years of ZYZZYVA where a piece of yours truly she recommended to the magazine also appeared. More power to you and ZYZZYVA!

Dirge For The Lost One

THE SIEGE OF BALER and Phil-Spanish Friendship Day. The beginning of American colonization, the slaughter of the infant First Philippine Republic and the advent of fifty years in Hollywood. World traveler Pico Iyer's observation about current Philippine popular culture puts us to shame: "The most conspicuous institutions that America had bequeathed to the Philippines seemed to be the disco, the variety show and the beauty pageant. In the Philippines, I found no sign of Lincoln or Thoreau or Sojourner Truth; just Dick Clark, Ronald McDonald and Madonna.” What can I say? I'm a filispanophile, if there is such a word. I lament the near obliteration of the filispanic legacy, despite all the trauma--the pure love for country, the language, the art, the medieval city of Intramuros, the (unknown) Filipino soul before it was bastardized by Yankees. Where would we be if the First Philippine Republic triumphed and flourished? That can only be left to the imagination. (Panamanian) Carlos Almaran's familiar composition haunts on this sad day (at least for me), and so does Jose Honorato Lozano's early painting (párvulo was misspelled). Notice how the Pinoy attire of the revolutionaries hasn't changed much after more than half a century, albeit with different materiel. Last is the Spanish version of a story about another lost infant. ¡Viva la república filipina!

La tropa del lugarteniente Simón Tecsón en Baler, Mayo 1899, La Ilustración Artística, M. Arias y Rodríguez

por José Honorato Lozano, ca. 1840, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid

A Manila Magazine

"THE FOUNDLING" in the Father's Day issue of The Sunday Times Magazine, with edits by its literary editor (including wrong punctuation) that I protest against. Read the original version here.

Flotsam And Jetsam

NOT QUITE THERE YET, but I think I'm off to a start with this galleon story, wobbly though it may be. Putting a historical perspective to a piece of fiction is a challenge, and there are other sources to read, about how the early Mangyans of Mindoro and those who fled to Romblon were forced to conversion by the Jesuits through reducciones, the reasons for the mutiny on the Concepción, and the deceitful business of galleon trading during the 17th century. Posting this fragment to keep myself going.

The island of Maestro de Campo (Sibale to locals) is closer to Mindoro than to the rest of the province of Romblon that administers it, and its present residents have been clamoring for annexation to the province of Oriental Mindoro where they buy their basic goods and necessities (particularly in Pinamalayan, which is two hours by boat from Concepcion), go for education and hospitalization, and take the faster and more frequent and reliable transportation to Manila, but their petition remains stalled in the Congress.

Detail of the Baldwin map from the June 1763 issue of The London Magazine, showing the horseshoe-shaped Maestro de Campo east of Mindoro along the galleon track from Manila to the Embocadero in San Bernardino

An early photograph of Mangyans taken by Dean Worcester in 1891

Of Slaves And Toddy

TWO INTERESTING READS on Memorial Day weekend (in Lake Hopatcong) for something being worked on. The first came out of Cambridge University Press a few years back. I never thought of the Manila galleons as slave ships, given that there were only two trips made each year--one eastbound and one westbound--and the Acapulco-bound vessels were so crammed full of Oriental goods that space was limited for human cargo. But Vince Rafael of the University of Washington gives the book a nod, so I must read. The other is the collaborative work of El Colegio de Michoacán (especially Paulina Machuca who has done extensive work on Filipino contributions to Colima culture) and the Ateneo de Manila University, in Spanish. Such informative diversion, when I only originally intended to do a sea story about the fate of a galleon built in Mindoro, typhoons, tuba and coral reefs.

A Slice Of Romance

I CAME ACROSS THIS brief and sad story of Santa Rosa de Lima pilot Gerónimo Gálvez and Doña Solina, beginning with the second paragraph on page 206. Was the spy he employed a Pinoy? Where is the spot where once stood the haunt of bandits and desperados on Calle Rada? Can anybody find the grave of Sebastián de la Plana? Sometimes this book reads like a novel.

Lost Then Found

GLAD TO REDISCOVER these lost sea marks from two of my endeavors. First, my gratitude to Linda Goin of La Grange, Kentucky for reuniting me with this issue of CARACOA IV: New Voices where some of my early poems saw publication in 1984, thanks to the Philippine Literary Arts Council, among kindred writers most of whom have passed on and are remembered today with respect, including one of the council's founding members Cirilo Bautista. (I lost my only copy after years of moving around in America.) Linda, also a writer, sells books and has acquired copies of the journal's back issues while on a business trip to Manila. The other is the five-year service certificate which the deputy chief misplaced and was presented to me only yesterday, almost five years later, with apologies. No matter, sir. The sea is still there, its shoals duly recorded. Here's to ten years in December!

Rites Of May

MY ATTEMPT TO WRITE a children's story turned out to be a tad gory, but that's okay; Mindoro kids need to be freaked out to behave and go to sleep. This old story, a satire on how we respond by instinct to the unfamiliar, previously appeared in Mikrokosmos (sorry, I don't post unpublished stories), fiction then edited by lovely classmate Janet Peery. When Albie Goldbarth told us to bring our favorite poem to class, Janet brought in the same one I did: ''Fern Hill'' by Dylan Thomas, and she hasn't quite forgotten that. Reposting this short piece, in kaingin Rousseau, for the feast of San Isidro Labrador (May 15), the patron saint of farmers and laborers, and of proper Bansud, Oriental Mindoro. Credits go to Emil Nolde, Leonard Everett and Jean Lepautre for the woodcuts. Moral lesson from the story? Don't jump into a granary of mungbean seeds when playing hide-and-seek.

Kids with San Isidro Labrador on the pier in Bansud, Oriental Mindoro. Photo by Nonoy Millares

A Mangyan family  preparing dinner inside their hut with light from kerosene lamps. The women are removing peas from beans collected in the field, which will be used to make a tasty dinner. Photo and caption by Jacob Maentz

Writing 101

WORDTOONS are the creative invention of Wayne Logue, a professional cartoonist creating illustrations and animations for books, posters and web sites. He works with Dr. Rich Allen, an educational psychologist who travels the world promoting advanced learning concepts to teachers and trainers. I think the principle (or metaphor) behind it applies to writers as well: a backbone of an idea around which an author builds the flesh of his beast, no matter how jazzed up he makes it to be. Fun, don't you think?

Distance Diploma

HEY KIDDOS, wanna earn that MFA in Creative Writing without leaving the comfort of your computer desk? Paying out-of-state tuition not a problem? (Online assistantships are also available, but you must know Blackboard.) Then check out University of Arkansas at Monticello's no residency program. Think of all the money saved on plane fare, housing and living expenses, and the anxiety saved from face-to-face workshops. But you won't get to see Dean Mark Spencer's haunted Allen House (not to be confused with Sallie House, which is in Kansas).