Fields of Cane,
Fields of Struggle
Review of
Sa Ngalan ng Tubo
Video Documentary Feature
Tudla Multimedia Network
and EILER
Produced January 2005
Sa Ngalan ng
Tubo is action-packed and is never dragging. The
music is at one time stirring and at another, solemn. Truly, the film
portrays a history unfolding – and the strikers as the makers of history.
By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat
Sa Ngalan ng Tubo,
a 30-minute video documentary feature, shows in vivid detail how and why
the Nov. 16 Hacienda Luisita massacre happened. The documentary feature
deals on a very sensitive and socially-explosive issue that only
independent and bold filmmakers in this country dare touch – the
dialectics of class contradiction between sugar farm workers and the
landlord clan. The struggle heightens when the plantation workers are
forced to use the only weapon they know in defending their right to life –
strike – and the despotic landlords react expectedly with brute force.
The documentary was filmed after
negotiations between Luisita – owned by the Cojuangco-Aquino clan – and
plantation workers who were demanding a wage increase, more mandays and
land redistribution ended in a deadlock. Hundreds of union leaders and
members were laid off, the labor secretary – Patricia Sto. Tomas – issued
an assumption of jurisdiction (AJ) order to preempt the strike and the
deployment of police and soldiers began. The strike had to end by any
means.
The documentary tries to focus on the
main question: Why do masses dare to struggle, what unites them, what
makes them fight. The thousands of plantation farmers and milling workers
and their families are simply provoked by all myriads of violence thrown
against them: they wallow in enslavement and unspeakable poverty while the
landlords live lavishly on a sprawling, tightly-guarded estate inside the
6,000-ha hacienda complete with a golf course and other amenities; they
are refused decent wage and cannot till the vast idle lands and fish in
the river despite decades of toil that gave the landlords an economic
empire; they are retrenched when they begin to fight for their rights;
they are dispersed with water cannons, tear gas, truncheons and bullets.
Like in other meaningful and
progressive feature documentaries, Sa Ngalan ng Tubo (literally, in
the name of sugarcane) allows the plantation farmers and milling workers
to stand out as the main characters. It also depicts how a just struggle
draws solidarity from all walks of life. Snatches of interviews with
agitated women farmers and workers reveal decades of exploitation and
oppression under the Cojuangco-Aquino clan; fearless words are heard from
union leaders as they summon the strikers, their families and supporters
to maintain the picketline; the union lawyer reminds them that a strike is
never won in court - it is won through struggle. (Tandaan ninyo: ang
welga ay hindi ipinapanalo sa korte, ito ay ipinapanalo sa lakas ng
pakikibaka!)
Dramatization
The film climaxes with the massacre
itself. Although the filmmakers were not able to show actual footage of
the firing by the soldiers and policemen who were holed up inside the
Luisita compound, they succeeded in dramatizing it. The camera catches
flocks of shocked strikers retreating in the hail of bullets and dashing
for cover and it also shows them massing up again back to the picketline
despite the danger. Others pick up the wounded, some of whom would
eventually die in the hospital. The strikers master the art of an
organized fight.
In the end, the strikers win despite
the loss of lives – seven of them were killed. The gates to the hacienda
remain closed and the sugar mill stills. The message is clear; the
villains earn the wrath of the audience.
The narrator supplies the historical
backdrop to the story but stays clear from stealing the show or supplying
a load of information that would otherwise make a film dull. The film
speaks for itself.
Sa Ngalan ng Tubo
is action-packed and is never dragging. The music is at one time stirring
and at another, solemn.
Truly, the film portrays a history
unfolding – and the strikers as the makers of history. Tudla – the video
team – has come of age. Bulatlat
(Sa Ngalan ng Tubo was filmed by
Tudla Media Network in cooperation with the Ecumenical Institute for Labor
Education and Research, Alyansa ng mga Magbubukid sa Gitnang Luson,
Alyansa ng mga Manggagawang Bukid sa Asyenda Luisita, POKUS Gitnang Luson
Multimedia Group and Mayday Productions.)
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