Catanduanes Forum

Theres The Rub
‘Aktibista lang po ako’
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
05/01/2008

http://opinion. inquirer. net/inquireropin ion/columns/ view/20080501- 133789/Aktibista -lang-po- ako

Today is May 1, Labor Day, a day reserved for workers. But I’ll break tradition a bit by writing not about a worker but about someone whose heart beats for the worker, or indeed the farmer. I’ll break tradition a bit by writing not about those whose presence produces the means for us to replenish our bodies but about someone whose absence should produce in us an ache to recover our souls.

That someone is Jonas Burgos.

Last Monday, April 28, the Burgos family along with their friends and sympathizers marked the first year of his disappearance. One year had not dimmed their recollection of him—he might as well have been there singing and laughing and swigging beer; their collective memory has kept him vibrantly alive—or the day he was taken away from them, at least physically.

In a special issue of We Forum, the publication Joe Burgos used to help his countrymen reclaim their freedom, his wife, Editha, talks about the day their son disappeared, after piecing the story together with a little help from friends and witnesses:

“Jonas shouted, ‘Aktibista lang po ako’ [‘I’m just an activist’] several times, addressing his plea to the waitress who became our witness, then to the others who were there at the restaurant (Hapag Kainan at the Ever Gotesco mall on Commonwealth Avenue). When Elsa (the witness) took the witness stand, she said, ‘His eyes were asking for help, and I came forward because my conscience is bothering me that I was not able to help him [at that time].’

“Jonas shouted several times as four men and women dragged him. The restaurant was full of customers. It was noontime. Jonas was alone and unarmed. No one helped him. No one lifted a finger… These are the signs of the times. We stand by the safety of our silence and allow an injustice and a crime to be carried out.”

It’s a cry that pierces the heart—for those who still have hearts to pierce. If you are a parent and have known fear and trembling when your teenage son or daughter has not come home past the witching hour and you cannot get through to them, magnify that a thousand times and you’ll know—or have an idea, since you can never really know without being in that situation—in what state Jonas’ mother and siblings have been this past year. Editha’s words are an indictment of this society, Editha’s words are an indictment of us.

And doubly so: We have not just stood by and kept our silence while the shadowy men seized Jonas under the glare of the sun, we have stood by and kept our distance while Editha and her family struggled to shed light on this darkness.

Some of us are bound to comfort ourselves with the thought that we can afford to slink away; Jonas was neither teenage nor lived a life of peace and quiet. True, he was neither, but for that very reason, he deserves more from us. Jonas was not a journalist like his father, but he was an activist like his father. He was someone who, like his father, turned to a life of farming and devoted his energies to helping make the life of his fellow farmers a little bit better. Had government been doing that, we would not now be facing the specter of hunger. An atrocity like this befalls an ordinary person, he deserves our outrage against those that wreaked it. It befalls someone who has done his proud father proud, he demands our implacable hounding of those that wreaked it.

Certainly, Jonas Burgos does not deserve our disappearance. Have we become such an ungrateful nation? Have we become such a soulless nation? Have we become such a dead nation?

Truly, you have to wonder who has disappeared: Jonas whose body was taken away from the embrace of his loved ones in the dead of day or we whose souls have been plucked away from our skeletons by the claws of silence. Truly, you have to wonder who is more present, who is more here and now: Jonas whose kindnesses continue to be told and remembered by those he had touched, or we who are neither here nor there, whose bodies will be swallowed by the earth one day without anyone noticing we were ever on top of it. Indeed, truly you have to wonder who is shouting a louder cry for help: Jonas at the top of his voice in his time of gravest peril or we in the pit of our muteness in our time of disappearance.

I’m not very religious, but I recall a story from the Bible about Jonas’ namesake, Jonah. Jonah, a fairly decent man, was ordered by God to go to Nineveh to proclaim its impending doom because of its wickedness. Balking at the thought, Jonah fled, taking the first boat farthest from it. While at sea a storm broke and threatened to sink the boat. Deeming him a curse, the crew threw him overboard into the sea where a whale swallowed him up. For reasons defying biology, he managed to survive inside the whale and repented forsaking his task. God forgave him and had the whale spit him out. Armed with a new resolve, Jonah turned to face Nineveh.

No, Jonas is not Jonah. Jonas never tried to run away as God, conscience, or an innate sense of right and wrong bade him, which was to tell this government of its impending doom because of its wickedness. We are Jonah. We are the ones who have fled from that task, taking the first boat to an imagined oasis of peace and quiet. We are the ones who have not put up a hand to stop the abduction and/or “salvaging” of people like Jonas Burgos, we are the ones who have not lent a hand to those who desperately seek justice for people like Jonas Burgos.

Jonas is not Jonah, he is the whale. Or I hope he will be, the whale that swallows us up and makes us realize in the pit of its belly the folly of our ways. The whale that spits us out after we have repented, armed with a new resolve to face our Nineveh.

Proclaiming proudly: Aktibista na rin po ako.