Alejandro Roces, freedom fighter

Alejandro R. Roces was, very simply, a freedom fighter. Although he actually bore arms as a guerrilla captain during the Japanese occupation, his main battlefield was the hearts and minds of Filipinos.

Roces fought against three types of oppression: colonial mentality, censorship, and literary prejudice.

His first enemy was the way Filipinos always looked up to Americans as models.

As Secretary of Education from 1961 to 1965, Roces convinced then President Diosdado Macapagal to change the Independence Day of the Philippines from July 4 to June 12. When an American diplomat protested that the country was not yet independent from Spain on June 12, 1898, Roces immediately shut him up with this question: “Was the United States of America independent on July 4, 1776?”

Roces also convinced Macapagal to change the English language used in Philippine passports, stamps, and currency to Tagalog (then known as Pilipino), in order to proclaim to the world that we had a language that we were proud of.

Roces spent most of his writing life defending the fiesta. He saw the fiesta as a uniquely Filipino creation, embodying the variety of Filipino creativity. When the EDSA Revolution happened in 1976, he immediately recognized it as a fiesta.

The second target of Roces was censorship. As Chairman of the Philippine Center of International PEN, he led the fight against censorship of writers not just in the Philippines but around the world. As Chairman of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board, he liberalized the thinking of the members, in order to accept what previously were considered censorable.

Roces was particularly incensed by the restraints on individual freedom that were imposed by the dictatorship. When President Ferdinand Marcos called a mock presidential election and decreed that everybody had to vote, Roces did not vote. Although there were millions of Filipinos that defied Marcos, there was only one person who was prosecuted for not voting – Roces.

Several big-name lawyers volunteered to defend him. Roces refused their assistance and defended himself. He said only one sentence in his defense. “Your Honor,” he told the judge, “the obligation to vote comes from Marcos, but the obligation not to vote comes from God.” The judge answered, “I cannot go against God,” and immediately acquitted him.

The third target of Roces was literary prejudice. As Lito Zulueta and others have pointed out, there is a prevailing prejudice in literary circles against writers of nonfiction. Literary critics regard writers of works that are not fiction or poetry as second-class citizens of the world of literature. As a result, the newspaper columns of Roces (in Manila Chronicle, Manila Times, and Philippine STAR) were not usually regarded as literary.

The nonfiction of Roces was always well researched. Roces went to all the fiestas in the country. He is particularly credited for popularizing two fiestas – the Ati-Atihan and the Moriones Festival. When he discovered those fiestas, he realized their importance not only to Philippine culture but to tourism. Because of his writings on the fiesta, he was called the Hermano Mayor of the Philippines.

Roces fought on two fronts: he wrote mostly newspaper columns, and he wrote comic short stories.

Literary critics have always favored tragedy over comedy. Shakespeare scholars, for example, regard the tragedies as better written than the comedies.

When fellow writers would tell him that it was so easy to write comic stories, Roces would counter with, “If it is easy to write a comic story, then write one.” No one would take up his challenge. No one could write the kind of comic short story that he could. His comic short stories are now part of the canon of Philippine literature.

The stories of Roces revolve around what he regarded as the center of Filipino culture – the cockpit.

Although he would tell everyone with a straight face that he himself had never been inside a cockpit, Roces was clearly proud of cockfighting. Cockfighting, he would boast, is the world’s oldest and most popular sport. Even Abraham Lincoln, he would say, was called Honest Abe because he was a trusted referee during cockfights.

Because Roces wrote about the international sport, his short stories were read around the world. That is one reason he received so many international awards, such as the 1997 SEAWRITE Award from Thailand, and various decorations from China, Germany, Indonesia, Malagasy, Mexico, and Spain.

Only a few years before his death, Roces conceived of a sarsuwela that, in his words, “would make the Filipino one inch taller.” Broadway musicals set outside the USA (such as “South Pacific,” “Flower Drum Song,” and “Miss Saigon”), he would say, were all written and produced by outsiders. His Aliw-awarded “Something To Crow About,” based on his cockfighting stories, was written and produced by Filipinos.

When it was staged in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco in 2007, his modern sarsuwela drew huge crowds and earned raves from various newspapers. It was earlier staged in Manila as the featured Filipino play of the International Theatre Institute Festival in 2006, also to enthusiastic audiences composed of leading theater artists from various countries.

Paradoxically, the National Artist who wanted only to proclaim what it was to be Filipino was an international celebrity.

As Roces loved to say, even during his long fight against disease, “everything’s coming up Roces.”