Freedom’s names

“We are tribeless and all tribes our ours./We are homeless and all homes are ours./We are nameless and all names are ours.”

The first time I read those lines back in the 1970s, I wondered if someone might have turned the poem into a song.

Almost 40 years later, I found myself sitting in The 70’s Bistro on Anonas Street in Quezon City, in a benefit concert for The Project Nameless.

The poem was written in Davao del Norte in 1976 by Emmanuel (Eman) Lacaba, an artist-activist who had studied at Ateneo de Manila (and was an editor of the Guidon) and went on to teach at the University of the Philippines. He went underground during martial law. The poem describes his life in the underground, the references to being tribeless and homeless capturing how many activists were “NPA”—with no permanent address.

And the nameless part. I still have problems remembering names because in the 1970s I was trained by fellow anti-martial-law activists to look at names as fleeting. You met some people, got introduced, and promptly forgot names, the persons, and the places where you met them. Most of the time, anyway, they were using a nom de guerre. The forced amnesia was a safeguard: If you were ever arrested and tortured by the military, you would not be able to give away names.

At the benefit concert, Eman’s brother, Jose “Pete” Lacaba, also a writer, talked about one day in 1976 when Fidel Ramos was signing his release papers from detention and asked if he was related to the Lacaba mentioned that day in the papers, a rebel who had been killed. Pete’s reply: That was his brother, Eman.

The benefit concert was timed to mark Eman’s 38th death anniversary. He would have turned 65 last Dec. 10, his birthday coinciding with Human Rights Day. (The Internet provides two different dates of birth: 1948 and 1949.)

Retiree

It struck me, that figure of 65. Eman was of my generation of the turbulent ’70s. I wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t been killed. Would he have left armed struggle after the 1986 Edsa revolt? Whatever work he would have taken up, he would have retired five years ago if he were in the private sector, and last year if he were in the government. There was a tarp with his photograph, and I tried to imagine how he would have looked as a doting lolo.

Eman’s brother Pete is one of our most well-known writers. I refer constantly to his “Showbiz Lengua”: Chika and Chismax about Chuvachuchu, fun reading, but also serious in the way it documents how Filipino’s development as a language speaks of our culture.

That night, to raise funds for The Project Nameless, we listened to, among others, Tres Marias (that’s Bayang Barrios, Lolita Carbon and Cookie Chua), Michelle de Guzman, Reli German, Ricky Davao (you read the last two names right), and Pete himself, rendering “Salinawit,” popular English songs translated by him into Filipino.

UP president Alfredo Pascual was there, too, and thought of going for an open-mike session. But as he browsed through a printed collection of 138 of these Salinawit, he remarked that it was going to be difficult trying to match the translated songs to the music.

He was right. It takes a certain skill, and probably lots of practice, to get it right with the rendition. Take John Lennon’s famous “Imagine” translated into “Isipin Mo”: “Isipin mong walang langit./Magagawa mo yan./Wala ring impiyerno/o kabilang-buhay./Ang buhay mo ay narito./Sa ibabaw ng mundo…”

But sing they did, the many people who had some kind of connection, not necessarily to Eman Lacaba, but to the spirit of the 1970s.

Past into present

Etoy Castro, who is chair of the Department of Anthropology at UP Diliman, told me he knew the Lacaba family, but emphasized that he is younger than Eman and Pete. His contemporary is a younger Lacaba, Tony, who was at the concert with wife Nanette Matilac, known for her progressive documentaries.

I ran into quite a few of my former students, not from the 1970s but the 1980s: Susan Villanueva and Joey Ochave, Amor Datinguinoo, Patricia Galang—all lawyers and all quite proud of UP’s having topped the bar after almost 10 years. Michelle de Guzman, one of the singers, turned out to be a former student as well. (Ayan, Michelle, here’s proof for your kids that I was indeed your titser.)

I’m naming names to emphasize how much has changed since Eman’s time. Etoy was politically active in the late 1970s, but still had a taste of repression, having been imprisoned and tortured.

Then there were my former students who date to the 1980s. I knew them from their involvement with Samasa, a student political party that carried on the work of activists from the 1970s. In their time, activists could use real names, and remember people’s names. Appreciating that freedom makes it all the more important to remember the nameless ones killed during martial law, including victims of former comrades who in the 1980s had been swept up by paranoid suspicions about each other.

I suspect that if Eman had lived, he would have problems remembering names, not so much because of security concerns as because of senior moments. I had to text Susan the day after the concert to ask for the names of her fellow lawyers who were my former students, and after she replied, I was able to place a face to each of the names.

Faces.  The nameless are often faceless, and today, more than 40 years later, there is the danger of forgetting not just the names and faces of the likes of Eman Lacaba but, more importantly, their legacies.

In that poem, Eman wrote about the nameless ones: “You want to know, companions of my youth, how much has changed the wild but shy poet…”

That night at the concert, we heard love songs, singers quipping about how falling in love belonged to the past, almost as if to say, We’re older now, and wiser.

But are we? I know how youthful idealism gives way to pragmatism. Maybe, in remembering Eman, we might want to let go sometimes, bring back some of that idealism, not just for grim and determined causes, but also for the more personal, still daring to be different, able to toast freedom, and its many names.

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Important erratum and apology: Last week I wrote about the euphoria over UP law graduates topping the 2013 bar exams. I said that the last time we topped the bar was in 1995. That should have been 2005. Inquirer publisher Raul Pangalangan pointed out the error; he should know, because he was UP law dean in 2005.

(E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph)