ON A hot summer day
like today, exactly a year ago, a girl went up to the mountains, lived
with the masses and learned their struggles. She was just 22, all
rosy, with a bright future ahead of her, as people would always want
to put it.
She was an Atenean, a literature student, a young journalist, a poet—needless
to say, compassionate. She had pains, lots of it. Growing up in a
family ripped by class contradictions and the painful contradictions
of life surrounding it—having a father coming from an upper
class family who married someone of the lower class, her mother, life
must be tough for her and she had to grow up with the grandparents.
She grew up quite ordinarily.
Yet, Benjaline “Beng” Hernandez was no ordinary person.
What kept her apart from the preoccupations of her generation soaked
in “electromedia escapism” is the part of her that made
her follow her passions.
At that time she was still a college student in Ateneo, the militant
youth movement was already burgeoning. As some would put it, as has
always been, Ateneo is a fertile ground for activists. Why is it so
is a question that deserves asking for it could help us find out about
the consciousness that shaped her and made her an out-and-out activist
later.
he very first poem she wrote in Arakan Valley with the introduction
“written in a cold August night,” she spoke of her former
school as that, undoubtedly, of the elite. She wrote:
Ang akong unibersidad
Gidumalahan sa mga hesuitang pari
Gitudluan kami bahin kang Kristo
Gitudluan sab kami unsaon magpadato
Diay mao ang pagpangawat sa kusog pamuo
Ug dili ang pag-inisig-katawo
Ang akong unibersidad
Marmol asta kasilyas
Asta kasilyas gimentenar
Aron maipasigarbo nga kuno klas ug pang dato
Sa akong unibersidad
Estudyante
.....Bawal mag tsinelas
.....Bawal mag sando
.....Bawal mag shorts
Ang wala’y ID dili kasulod
Katarungan sa mga pari
Dapat pormal ang pamarog ug panagway
Aron husto ang pagtuon
Niining pangdato nga unibersidad
Sa akong unibersidad
Bawal mangutana o magtuki
O mangatarungan
Instructor nga perte ka istrikto
Mao ra’y pirmi sakto
Ang pagtuon murag pagkaon
Nga diretso pagatunlon ug dili paga-usapon
|
(My university
Is run by Jesuit priests
We are taught the life of Christ
We are taught how to get rich
To steal the labors of workers
And not to be men for others
(In my university
Even toilets are made of marble
Even toilets are well-maintained
So they can proclaim proudly
That we have class and we are for the rich
(In my university
Students are prohibited
.....From wearing slippers
.....From wearing sando
.....From wearing shorts
No ID, you can’t go in
The priests would say
We should look formal
So we can learn well
In this university for the rich
(In my university
You can’t ask questions nor discuss
Nor reason out
Instructors are much too strict
They think they are always right
Learning here is like eating
Without masticating)
|
And Beng once treaded the corridors of that school, tarried around
with both the rich and the “struggling,” those who were,
like her, also had a hard time putting through school.
“Kolehiya na may Kaya”
While everyone was forced to live the lifestyle of a “kolehiyala
na may kaya,” she was confronted with the reality that she could
hardly live with the sum sent by an overseas contract worker aunt—another
contradiction that she had to deal with.
Little wonder then that Beng, as her activist colleagues would put
it, was not difficult to convince to join marches and demonstrations
that slammed the school for the skyrocketing tuition fees and underpaid
teachers.
She felt poverty right in her very gut and she felt it more when
surrounded by her filthy rich classmates. Aching to understand society
further, Beng finally went out of the university and decided to learn
more about the world she was in.
Apart from that, she saw poverty present everywhere. There were the
workers demanding just wages from owners who are capitalizing on their
labor; there were the urban poor trying to frustrate attempts of demolition
of their shanties; their were peasants struggling for lands and yet
the political decisions rendered by the state continue to pronounce
policies in defense of the oppressive economic order. With a country
of almost five million jobless, a person like Beng could not have
missed the necessity for people to bond together and do something
to arrest the economic order that perpetuates the oppression. She
wanted to learn, and she learned well. And so Beng did choose to march
with the oppressed majority on the streets, dissenting against anti-people
policies.
Contradictions
Beng ached to know for herself further why these contradictions
exist. And she moved on to know for herself why. She was one of the
best and bravest students there ever were. While still a student,
she volunteered for the human rights alliance Karapatan. There, her
eyes were opened to more realities. Beng learned about rampant killings
by military and paramilitary elements. And she wondered why those
killed were always the poor, the peasants, the landless and the perpetrators
were always the private armies of landlords and the military with
connections to the ruling class.
Beng saw these and she searched for more. Not only did she choose
to deal with the families of those killed by the military for senseless
reasons. She was with them in times when they demanded justice for
their loved ones. Beng walked with them, even if it meant a great
deal of sacrifice for her.
When there were needs for Karapatan volunteers to go out to the areas
for fact-finding missions, she was always there with a ready “Yes,
I will go!” It was at that time when she heard of peasants massacred
in Tababa, Arakan Valley.
Reaching Arakan Valley, one would think, Beng must have really fallen
in love with the place. It is beautiful and yet dangerous. Arakan,
at first glance is a very contested place. Somewhere in its lowlands
lie vast ricefields owned by the few rich. Buildings at its foot range,
the city of Kidapawan, is host to foreign-funded development projects
with buildings sprouting everywhere.
In its logged-over hinterlands where houses of farmers who till the
lands which are either set to be confiscated or turned into large
palm oil plantations by capitalist intruders. And yet these farmers
she once lived with, continue to live there under threats of being
dislocated.
She went there to know about how peasants in Arakan valley and the
kind of lives they live under conditions of abject poverty and oppression.
Simple Lives
Poor as they were, these peasants live to be able to eat
and eat to be able to live. They live very simple lives. At daytime,
she would teach their children songs, and tell stories, for she had
this certain fondness for children. On starry nights, she would just
be there hanging around with the folks and talking with them about
anything - their dreams, their aspirations under constellations whose
names she took time to teach them, as one farmer would later recount.
And such was the life that drove Beng to learn more, search more
until that fateful day, on a day like today, April 5, when Cafgu paramilitary
men and elements from the 12th Special Forces surrounded the house
where she was about to eat with peasants, that fate met her.
The dry, cogon-covered rolling hills which spelled hunger for the
people was witness to how she was felled by bullets from Cafgu and
military elements. These men took away a life of a very young human-rights
advocate who just sought to walk along the people in their struggles
for land and justice. And yet, months after, she had to come back
in a cold coffin.
What could have Beng done that deserved the ire and recklessness
of these men who fired M16 bullets into her lithe body at close range?
This is the question that human-rights advocates have been asking.
Indeed, in a country where an economic order yields massive oppression,
siding with the poor has come to mean death. And yet, our lives continue
to be touched by people like Beng who was brave enough to take the
side of the poor. It was a life that will continue to lead others
to follow her path. She lived a life that is an inspiration to many
who, until now, are still crying out for justice.
How else she had lived her life, getting out of the secure corners
of the university and out alongside the terrain of mass struggles,
only the poet in her could best put it. Beng, in this poem, wrote
how different was her newfound “university” from the one
she used to have:
Ang akong unibersidad
Usa ka komedya
Ang angay matun-an, wa matun-a
Ang angay tudlo-un, wa tudlui
Ikaw na’y nagbayad, ikaw pa’y ulipon
Sa mga paring hesuita
Ug magtutudlong nagpaka-aron-ingnon
Samtang ang inyong unibersidad
Unibersidad sa katawhan
Nagtudlo unsaon pagpukan
Ang dunot nga sistemang
Nag-ulipon sa kadaghanan
Inyong unibersidad
Wala’y bongbong
Wala’y lingkuranan
Wala’y mesa
Wala’y pertahan
Blakbord mao ang taffeta
Apan nagmatinud-anon
Simple lang ug dili magarbo
Inyong unibersidad
Estudyante mayukmok gyud
Sul-ob ang tsinelas, shorts ug sando
Sa inyong unibersidad
Ang instruktor muhagit
Nga tukion ang katilingban
Tun-an ang pagpahimulos
Ug barugan ang pakigbisog
Sa inyong unibersidad
Ang instruktor dili binayran
Dili masuko kung pangutan-on
Ug sukit-sukiton
Ibalos ang pag-esplikar ug pahiyom
Mainantoson, maalam, nangalagad, nagserbisyo
Ang inyong unibersidad
Usa ka drama
Wala’y yuta nga katikaran
anak nga dili ka-eskwela
pananom nga wala’y bili
kapobrehon, pagkaulipon
Kini nagpamatuod
ang tinoud nga pagtuon
wala sa dagkong unibersidad
kon dili diri sa kabukiran
gihisgutan ang kasinatian sa katawhan.
|
(My university
Is like a comedy
You don’t learn things you ought to know
They don’t teach things they ought to teach
You pay yet you feel like the slave
To the Jesuit priests
And pretentious instructors
(While your university
Is the university of the people
They teach you how to destroy
A rotten system
That enslaves the people
(Your university
Has no roof
No chairs
No tables
No doors
You have taffeta for blackboard
But your university is for real
It’s simple and not proud
(In your university
The students are poor
They wear slippers, shorts and sando
(In your university
Your teachers will challenge you
To discuss society
To learn why there is oppression
And to stand up and fight
(In your university
The instructors are not bought
They won’t mind questions
And discussions
They answer you with knowledge and a smile
They are patient, learned
They serve
(Your university
Is like a drama:
No land to till
Children can’t go to school
Crops are rendered useless
Poverty, subjugation
This only proves
That true knowledge
Can’t be found in big universities
But here in the mountains
Where the life of our people
Are taught and learned)
|
Beng Hernandez: November 21, 1979 - April 5, 2002
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http://www.bulatlat.com/news/3-11/3-11-beng.html
