I HAVE long been around on this Earth and I could vividly recall some of the tragic events that have happened to us, earthlings, especially those that affected me and our family.
But never in my lifetime ‘til my late elderly years today – when I now focus more on life’s eager longings for peace and dedicate life’s available time to care for others and as I patiently await the call of home from my Creator – have I been so disturbed about a crisis stalking mankind, which COVID-19 generated.
I have gone through some bloody pages of World War 2, which snapped millions of human lives and many more in grief. It was horrible to imagine how just two bombs (one dropped in Hiroshima and the other on Nagasaki) could kill several thousands just by the push of a button.
Yet I was able to pass off that horrible time (1942-1945) with my family in a lonely barrio in Guimaras Island, about two nautical miles across Iloilo City, where the smoke of war was nary even on sight from my seeing farther than my normal.
Here, the Japanese patrols did not even care to visit us because our place was so remote on land and sea travel and where only a few kept their peace under nipa-roofed homes, making the Japs believe it was no place to worry about. In reality though, our home was where the guerrillas secretly stayed when not in operation elsewhere.
Our father (Bless his soul!) was a travelling businessman then using our batel (a kind of sloop) for travel with an assistant. He was also acting as an intelligence man for the guerrillas providing them information on his trips, passing through Japanese marine patrols using two passes, one of which was for the Japs. The other was for the guerrillas’ friendly eyes stalking from some unfrequented nooks by the coastal areas of Negros Occidental nearest the shore.
Our father carried palay to the coastal barangays of Negros Occidental and came home with dried fish in exchange. I heard him reporting to a certain guerrilla Captain Golez about a massacre of over a dozen barangay folks along the coastline of Cadiz, which was perpetrated by the Japanese soldiers.
Unfortunately, my father was never recognized for his intelligence work. This happened because he failed to be listed in the roll of guerrillas for compensation submitted to military authorities.
He was able to show an ID designating him as a lieutenant by Captain Golez but this was not recognized, not being confirmed. In fact, I saw a copy of this ID from our eldest sister. When asked later to get the signature of Captain Golez to confirm his membership in the guerrilla unit, it was also too late, as the latter had already died.
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In Guimaras, our family was also far from the continuing fight between the joint American and Filipino forces and the Japanese occupation forces following the landing of the American liberating forces on March 18, 1945 in Tigbauan, Iloilo. The assault of the liberating forces advanced to as far as Iloilo City forcing the retreating Japanese forces into the hinterlands and their final surrender.
Later, we transferred residence to Iloilo City where our father joined the Philippine quarantine service there as a motor engineer in one of its service boats.
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It was in college, particularly at the University of Iloilo, when I got into some trouble with the Marcos Regime after he declared martial law on Sept. 21, 1972.
As a student leader and activist, and opposed to Marcos’ martial law, I was obliged by my then sickly mother to stay away to our little farm in Guimaras.
I survived the anxieties and military surveillance of being a suspected communist, which is not true! How could that be for a very independent-minded person like me! I just disliked martial law or any strongman rule which deprives me of my liberty as a free man.
When the Marcos Regime fell in February 1986, I consoled myself with the cutting of my hair, which I vowed to remain uncut for years until Marcos was done for good in 1986.
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Then came the flashfloods that Typhoon Frank brought to almost two-thirds of Iloilo City’s flatlands, where our home in Mandurriao was located.
Frank was not as strong as the fiercest storms that ever visited us, but it rained viciously for over a week that June 8, 2008 throughout Region 6 (Western Visayas), bringing damages to some P1.6 billion in cost. We really had it coming so hard for the first time of my lifetime.
I heard from the radio about Typhoon Frank early afternoon that day of June 8, not minding it, though, because our place had never known any flashflood, or any kind of flooding, beyond the height of our floor.
I decided to open the TV while our two daughters were doing what they were doing at home. My wife was then visiting a niece who was hospitalized at Mission Hospital at the City Proper, which the floods spared though.
Suddenly, I heard a shrill voice calling out to me: “Tito, pakadto na di ang baha (Tito, the waters are already here)!”
In only about five minutes the flashflood was already at our doorsteps and fast rising in a swirling run. We didn’t have a second floor then, so we hurried to escape to the nearby Panay News Compound, where I also worked, unable to bring many important things with us. Panay News Compound had several huge buildings on it and had a third floor on one of them.
I had our younger daughter on my back and the other wading ahead of me to the compound. From the second floor I saw the waters rushing fast through our area, which was cut from the main road by a wide swath of farmland. By that time, I could measure it to be at three feet deep from the ground floor where we were stuck at the second floor, and still rising up to about four feet by 6 in the evening.
We stayed there with two other families, whose homes did not second floors. One, in a home behind us, had to save himself by climbing to the roof of their home until the water subsided at about 4 in the morning. Sometime later, somebody passed around some loaves of bread; we ate it and thanked him.
My wife came home some time about 8 in the morning of next day when she was already able to cross from the main road to our home about 300 meters inward.
Our home, among other homes (about 10 of them here in close-knit), was left in bad shape and still drenching from the flood waters leaving marks it reached up to my waist when I came to it the next morning, with many important things and documents destroyed and missing.
We thanked God for sparing us. After that we decided to build a second floor.
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Then came Presidente Rodrigo Duterte on his pro-people platform and vowing to clear the country of grafters, the drug menace and every nasty bad man in the country in that 2016 presidential elections.
Well, he won in that May 2016 elections with a huge margin, reminiscent of the victory in the 50s of the man of the masses, President Ramon Magsaysay, whose far larger victory spiked fear to the rich thinking his overwhelming victory could send him cascading hard on the moneyed and big business. It didn’t happen, though.
How is that in the case of Duterte? I think our 1987 Constitution can prevent that scenario, being built on the collapse of the Marcos Regime, unless he could convince Congress to amend the constitution to give him strongman powers, which I doubt very much.
We appreciate the many good programs of President Duterte for the poor and disadvantaged in our society, though we do not live by bread alone, as the Good Book says.
On the other hand, Duterte’s war to cleanse the stable, is getting many people uneasy. Not for anything he wished done, though, but because of the many instances of breach of due process in the apprehension and killing of drug suspects, as well as the broad daylight killings that go unchecked, especially those committed by riding-in-tandem killers. His fascist threats did not also fare well to the more freedom-loving Filipinos.
Well, he still has two years to go to really give the people a more appreciable peace and order in the country.
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Today, we face a faceless enemy – the COVID-19, which makes us suffer mildly and sometimes frighteningly while not telling us for certain when it would stop.
Health experts say, however, that it would be as seasonal a disease as the flu, which may stop within one month, or, at worst, at full length in three months.
But we share the hope of Mayor Treñas that we may already be able to start off with things going for our economy after April 14, when the home quarantine wallops a strike after March 20, 2020 when it was imposed.
How would that happen, the mayor did not say for sure. I can, however, imagine many residents passing the grade with their Covid-19 testing even before ending their home quarantine, with others completing their home quarantine of about one month with a negative mark.
As an added precaution against a possible renewed spike with the virus, it may also be advisable for workers to pass the grade with the thermal scanner every time they arrive for work, with workers at the counters still wearing their masks on facing the customers. The now more free-wheeling public may also wear their masks as they may do so. Of course, on the go-signal of the Department of Health!
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Undoubtedly, we are not happy about what is happening in our city, our country and the world today, with or without Covid-19 anyway. But we are happy that Panay News has gone so far beyond expectations. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!/PN