Reading history: ‘Po-on’ and ‘Viajero’

This Week’s Winner

Lilia Ramos-de Leon is a short story writer whose works have appeared in the Free Press, Graphic, Chronicle Magazine, and The Nation among others. Under martial law, she practiced "camouflage writing," and wrote a historical column in Panorama. She earned her Master of Arts in English from the State University of Northern Virginia and was an attaché to the Philippine Embassy in Madrid. At present, she alternates writing short stories with painting.

At the Solidaridad Bookshop, in a casual conversation, F. Sionil Jose asked several board members of the Philippine Pen (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) to name the novel he or she thought was the best among those he had written. Not an easy question to answer since to me any of most of them could be the magnum opus of the Ramon Magsaysay Awardee internationally acclaimed as an "outstanding saga writer" deserving of the Nobel prize. After all had given their choices, Frankie gave his own: Viajero. I had answered, "Po-on."

Po-on is where Eustaquio Samson, the hero of the novel, comes from – "where time began…a smudge of brown hidden by bamboo grooves." In my mind’s eye the novel itself is a thatched bahay-kubo brooded over by mountains, skies and bamboo trees with the sturdy and loyal carabao tied to one of its deep-rooted paranapin posts. The text is poesy with the sweet and mourning quality of the kundiman. And the hero talks like a makata. The first time I read Po-on, its very first paragraph was enough to strike me with awe (and envy):

Dusk is the day’s most blessed hour; it is the time when the spirits of darkness drift slowly down the bright domain. The acacia leaves droop, the fowl stop their cackling and fly to the boughs of the guava trees to roost, and as the light starts to fade and the shapes of trees and houses and even the motion of people seem shrouded with darkness, the essence of time, of change, and the brevity of life itself is realized at last.

Idyllic poesy clothes, but does not soften, the grimness of stark injustice and bestial cruelty that crush the Samson family – the teller in the tale draws me into theirr gut-wrenching drama and convinces me that this did and does happen and Po-on can be any barrio in Filipinas.

The title Viajero is taken from Rizal’s poem "Canto del Viajero" – Rizal bewailing his non-stop wandering over the globe. The novel I see as a magnificently structured edifice, of many facades and passages leading to chambers resonant with the past, present, and what is yet to be.

Both the heroes of the two novels are pure-blooded Filipinos. But Po-on’s Eustaquio Samson, or Istak, never strays outside his native Ilocos region; the travails and the sparse joys of his life take place within the confines of its mountain fastnesses. His psyche, despite knowledge gleaned from books written in Spanish and Latin, is of the Indio peasant inured to poverty. He is treated by the Kastilas like a mangy dog and ditto by the rich Indios and ilustrados: he enters their homes through the backstairs and eats with the servants.

On the other hand,Viajero’s protagonist, although born in the Philippines, was brought when he was but a small boy to the USA by a black American who adopts and takes him into his heart and home. The foundling Badong becomes "Buddy," and comes to love hamburger and mashed potatoes, and although his adoptive parent is a distinguished and wealthy scholar, just like Istak, America gives him reasons to grow a grudge against racism.

Both novels tell of "one man’s tortured search for true faith and larger meaning of his own existence." Istak is propelled by this quest across the barren plains of his native region up to Tirad Pass where, fighting with Gen. Gregorio del Pilar against the Americans, he meets a death not a bit less heroic than that of the "Boy-General."

Salvador dela Raza, (translated, this means Savior of the Race"), crosses oceans and continents and by his researches, travels through time, meeting not only living personages who in the future would become historical, but also those of the long-past, as Enrique, the Filipino who sailed but did not die with Magellan in Mactan and going back to Spain became the first to fully circle the globe.

The main characters of both novels are scholars of Philippine history, more so Dela Raza of Viajero, and so they have the tools to delve into the roots of the Filipino ethos and analyze the wherefores of his weaknesses – and both find the lack of a sense of nationhood as primary. The author speaking through his characters deplores this lack even in the present time because of egoism and the loss of "ethical moorings." In Po-on, Mabini, bitter over the death throes of the Philippine Revolution, tells Istak, "Patriotism is selfless" but that, "We have ambitious leaders who think only of themselves." (Doesn’t that call to mind those who help to wreck the Philippine economy just so they could take their turn at power?)

In Viajero, Commander Toothpick, a former Huk, complains to Buddy, "I see no change in our people, and I can see so many sorry events repeat themselves…We fought the Japanese…the collaborators…[but] after the war, who became rich, who did our people elect to power but these traitors…Look around you in Manila – they are all back, the panderers and the plunderers who worked with Marcos. They are in the newspapers being feted, writing columns, justifying themselves… I have lost faith in our people…There will be no change, no revolution if we don’t first change ourselves."

This sets Dela Raza to musing: "The modern Filipino has no morality. The revolution that was being preached would not succeed unless it was grounded on a very strong moral principle. Unless collaboration with the enemy, with Marcos and his rapacious oligarchy, was considered the ultimate crime." (That should hit many people right in the solar plexus!)

Toward the end of Viajero, Dela Raza concludes, "All history is a lie – how could I have missed this! There is so much that is not in the books, documents, frayed or well-preserved though they may be." This was exactly the conclusion I came to while reading both Po-on and Viajero. I was reading history, but a history of living dimensions written with the flow and break of poetry and that rummages around the skull and heart of each of the characters – from political exiles like Ricarte and Mabini to the peasant soldier who lay dead barefoot in the trench though dressed in the revolutionary uniform, down to the overseas workers of today, "strewn wantonly" over the deserts of Arabia and all over the world. In so doing the author bares the innards and soul of the nation as well. (This is the advantage of the journalist –which the author also is; honed to investigate, he gathers not only prodigious data in libraries but also insights from the real players on life’s stage.)

After all his travels, he returns to the mountain, where as an abandoned child he had been nurtured by Inay Mayang of the sightless but shining eyes, the beautiful "spirit of the earth," and by Apo Tale in whose "ancient and withered frame…the wisdom of the earth is entwined." Salvador says, "The Mountain had laid its claim on me because it had sustained me even when I left it, fed me when my stomach was full, embraced me even when my arms were locked in the arms of women loved and remembered." I see The Mountain and their two caretakers as metaphors: of Filipinas –our lost Eden – before the Conquistadors with their concepts of landownership and human exploitation came. Before the friars banished the Gods that the ancient Filipinos worshipped and substituted those of the Roman Catholic Church. Nearing death, Salvador writes, "The thousands upon thousands who died for lost causes [heroes as Marcelo H. del Pilar – whose sacrifice the author values even more than that of Rizal – the Colorums of 1931, the Sakdals of 1935, the Huk rebels, the student activists who fought Marcos and for land reform] left their corpuscles in this soil so it will be firmer, impervious to the visitation of blight, of plunder, the greasy heavings of machines. They planted these trees in an act of redemption, knowing they will not sit in their shade or harvest their fruit."

The author was once a farmer’s child in the town of Rosales in Pangasinan where the village of Po-on is supposed to be located. He is intimate not only with the terrain but with an ethos coalesced from injustice and harsh life. Rosales is a microcosm of the whole nation. And the two novels resonate with, "Land for the landless workers of the land." However, although he admires the dedication of the rebels fighting for this cause, he does not condone their violence. Po-on and Viajero have the entertainment capacity of a telenovela. But written by a patriot, they grip the reader into his own passion – and frustrations.