EXACTLY
SIX months after the celebration of the centennial birth anniversary
of Amado V. Hernandez—activist/labor leader, poet, journalist,
dramatist/fictionist—a book on the man and his writings was
launched at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon
City.
Edited by leading art critic and historian Alice G. Guillermo and
Ateneo de Manila University professor Charlie Samuya Veric, Suri
at Sipat: Araling Ka Amado (Scrutiny and Sighting: Studies on Ka
Amado) is published by the Amado V. Hernandez Resource Center (AVHRC)
and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts. It puts together
essays from noted scholars of Hernandez’s life and works: Rosario
Torres-Yu, Dr. Epifanio San Juan, Jr., Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, Gelacio
and Ramon Guillermo, Monico Atienza, Enrique Francia, and Veric.
In its foreword, the AVHRC states: “Ang mga akdang tinipon
sa aklat ay hindi lamang bunga ng kumperensya na naglunsad sa pagdiriwang
ng sentenaryo na ginanap sa Cultural Center of the Philippines noong
Setyembre 13, 2002. Pinili sila upang ipakita ang wastong pagtanaw,
ang wastong pagsipat, sa katauhan at ambag ni Ka Amado sa panitikan
at lipunan (The writings collected are not just products of the
conference that initiated the centennial celebration at the Cultural
Center of the Philippines on Sept. 13, 2002. They were chosen to
show the correct way of looking at and analyzing Ka Amado and his
contributions to literature and society).”
The book is divided into five chapters corresponding to the different
aspects of Hernandez’s life and works: Manunulat sa Kanyang
Lipunan (Writer in his Society), Sangandaan ng Tradisyon at Pagbabago
(Crossroads of Tradition and Change), Pulitika ng Pagkilala kay
Ka Amado (Politics of Assessing Ka Amado), Ka Amado at ang Mapagpalayang
Kilusan (Ka Amado and the Liberation Movement), and Manunulat sa
Kanyang Daigdig (Writer in His World).
Unifying thread
But
though the essays in this book tackle various aspects of Hernandez’s
life and works, they are bound by a common thread. At some point
each of the essays stresses the significance of Hernandez as a writer
who stood unequivocally for the Filipino people’s liberation
from national and social oppression.
The emphasis on Hernandez’s historical role as a dedicated
people’s writer—as one who depicted almost graphically
in his writings the sufferings of common Filipinos, particularly
workers and peasants, in the hands of the moneyed classes and their
imperialist masters, and discoursed on the importance of struggle
for revolutionary change—is of no small importance.
As Lumbera points out in his essay “Si A.V. Hernandez Bilang
Pambansang Artista (A.V. Hernandez as National Artist),” while
Hernandez undoubtedly deserves to be a National Artist for Literature—which
the Marcos government named him as in 1973—the award was given
in an attempt to coopt his legacy. “Wari’y tunay na pagtangkilik
ang ginawa ng Bagong Lipunan sa makata at lider manggagawa nang
iluklok ito bilang isang Pambansang Artista (It seemed that the
New Society truly recognized the poet and labor leader when it named
him as National Artist),” Lumbera writes. “Sa katunayan,
inagaw si Hernandez sa kilusang mapagpalaya at sa panahong umiiral
pa ang Batas Militar sa bansa,kinulong siya sa isang bilangguang
kristal upang hindi siya pakinabangan bilang huwarang rebolusyonaryong
manlilikha (In fact, Hernandez was seized from the liberation movement
and at a time when martial law was still in place, he was placed
in a crystal cage to prevent him from being emulated as a revolutionary
artist).”
Not only did Hernandez write about the need to fight for revolutionary
change—he was also a prominent part of it as anti-imperialist
activist, labor leader, and civil libertarian.
Hernandez had been dead for three years when he was named National
Artist for Literature. The award was given a year after the declaration
of martial law.
During martial law, many of the writers who advanced the causes
Hernandez fought for—among them Liliosa Hilao, Jose Maria Sison,
Ma. Lorena Barros, Bonifacio Ilagan, Jose F. Lacaba, Satur Ocampo,
Luis Teodoro, and Bienvenido Lumbera—were incarcerated. A number
of them — like Hilao, Sison, Ilagan, Lacaba, and Ocampo—were
heavily tortured by their military custodians, and Hilao would eventually
become the first political detainee to die in the hands of the dictatorship.
(Barros escaped from prison and eventually joined the armed struggle,
where she lost her life in an encounter.)
Others, like Romulo Sandoval and Antonio Zumel (now both deceased),
eluded arrest but were forever on the run at the same time that
they valiantly carried out various forms of resistance work.
If Hernandez had been alive at the height of martial law, he would
surely have met the same fate as that of the writers who were punished
or pursued by the fascist Marcos regime for taking the side of the
oppressed against the oppressors.
In naming him National Artist for Literature, the Marcos government
sought to project itself as a regime that represented the progressive
aspirations of the people—a subtle way of sanitizing itself.
Sanitization was part of the Marcos dictatorship’s arsenal:
it tried to pose as a radical regime by paying lip service to nationalism
even as it rabidly followed the U.S. agenda, employing the rhetoric
of railing against the “oligarchy” even as it had its
own set of elite cronies, and mouthing such militant-sounding slogans
as “democratic revolution from the center.” As Alice G.
Guillermo points out in the introduction, “Sinikap ni Marcos
na ipaloob sa ideolohikal na sistema ng kanyang diktadura ang kahalagahang
makabayan upang makamit niya ang suporta ng buong sambayanan sa
ilalim ng kanyang bandilang ‘Isang Bansa Isang Diwa.’
(Marcos tried hard to incorporate patriotic values into his dictatorship’s
ideological apparatus in order to gain the support of the entire
people under his banner ‘One Nation One Spirit.’)”
That the Marcos government did not really take seriously the social
causes Hernandez espoused in his writings, even as it paid lip service
to his practice of “committed art,” is made all the more
evident in the fact that he and Jose Garcia Villa, as noted by Lumbera,
were named National Artists for Literature in the same year. Villa
was an unabashed exponent of a literature that steers clear of political
questions in the midst of neocolonial oppression and social injustice.
The Marcos government considered Hernandez a “safe” figure
because when martial law was imposed, he could no longer refute
its pretensions to progressive politics.
A people’s writer to the end
But
as Gelacio Guillermo points out, Hernandez’s last poem, “Enrique
Sta. Brigida, Paghahatid sa Imortalidad (Enrique Sta. Brigida, To
Immortality)”—written in 1970 at the onset of the First
Quarter Storm—is a tribute to seven student activists slain
in the “Battle of Mendiola” and an open call for revolutionary
armed struggle. He quotes from the poem: “…isang higanteng
nagbabalikwas na paa’y/Central Luzon at ang ulo’y/Sierra
Madre, nagsisigaw sa sansinukob:/Makibaka, huwag matakot,/Hanggang
sa ang bulok na sosyedad ay bumagsak at/Madurog (…a giant restive,
whose feet/Are Central Luzon and whose head/Is the Sierra Madre,
shouting to the universe:/Fight, fear not/Until the rotten society/Is
felled and crushed)!”
Yu and San Juan both tackle the politics of Hernandez and how it
figured in his writings. They also point out that though Hernandez
received several awards from the neocolonial establishment, the
totality of his life and works do not give any reason to suspect
the man.
Ramon Guillermo reviews the three versions of the Hernandez poem
“Bayani (Hero)” which were written under three different
historical conditions. Francia, meanwhile, compares Hernandez to
Praemoedya Ananta Toer, a progressive Indonesian writer.
In his piece, “Kung Ano ang Nakataya sa Pagsasalin kay Ka
Amado (What is at Stake in Translating Ka Amado),” Veric discusses
Cirilo F. Bautista’s translation into English of selected poems
by Hernandez and its political implications.
Of the writers whose works appear in the book, it is Atienza who
touches on the more human side of Hernandez. His piece, “Si
Mang Amado, Si Ka Joma atbp: Huntahang Samu’t Sari (Mang Amado,
Ka Joma, et al: Various Tete-a-tetes),” contains a good number
of humorous and inspiring anecdotes on Hernandez. But the anecdotes
Atienza chose to cite still fit neatly into the over-all context
of Hernandez’s work as writer and activist. These are stories
of incidents in the course of Hernandez’s interaction with
fellow writers and activists.
By emphasizing the significance of Amado V. Hernandez in the historical
scheme as a socially committed writer of the highest order, Suri
at Sipat: Araling Ka Amado reclaims—with finality—his
legacy from the clutches of posthumous cooptation, and clarifies
that his proper place is—as it invariably was during his lifetime—on
the side of the struggling masses.
