Bonifacio Day Anti-Gloria Concert Rocks UPLB
It was at the same
time a tribute concert to poet-revolutionary leader Andres Bonifacio –
whose 142nd birthday fell that day – and a protest concert
calling for the ouster of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The concert
was organized by the Artists for the Removal of Gloria (ARREST Gloria).
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
One of the
stories poet-literary scholar Gelacio Guillermo is fond of telling over
bottles of beer is that of his days as a young professor at the University
of the Philippines
in Los Baños, Laguna. That was way back in the late 1960s. He used to
travel regularly, he says, from Diliman, Quezon City
to Los Baños – and it then took all of two hours.
|
It took me
three hours to travel from Quezon City to UP Los Baños last Nov. 30. It
was late afternoon and I knew I had to find a way to reduce my travel time
so I could get there by 7 p.m. A 15-minute ride on the Metro Rail Transit
from
Quezon Avenue
to the Magallanes Station did it for me, and I got to Alabang, Muntinlupa
City in less than an hour. From Alabang to Calamba, Laguna it took an
hour, and traffic in Calamba made it take an hour for me to get to Los
Baños from there. It was just a few minutes past 7 when I got there.
Most of the
artists who performed there had traveled from Quezon City and Manila hours
earlier, but I could imagine they went through the same amount of travel
time. But from the way they performed at the event, it appears they found
it well worth the long trip.
|
TIME WARP: Actors
Soliman Cruz (left) as Jose Rizal and Pen Medina as Andres Bonifacio
at the Nov. 30 ARREST Gloria concert at UPLB
Photo courtesy of Southern
Tagalog Exposure |
It was at
the same time a tribute concert to poet-revolutionary leader Andres
Bonifacio – whose 142nd birthday fell that day – and a protest
concert calling for the ouster of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The
concert was organized by the Artists for the Removal of Gloria (ARREST
Gloria).
The concert
opened with actors Pen Medina and Soliman Cruz portraying Bonifacio and
Philippine national hero Jose Rizal, respectively. “Bonifacio” and “Rizal”
went into a short discussion – punctuated by poetic exchanges – about the
need for ousting the present President, with both in the end agreeing even
as they acknowledged differences in tactics.
“The
rationale behind that part is that we are giving a birthday tribute to
Bonifacio in Laguna, which is Rizal’s home province and where most of his
descendants still live,” said Kiri Dalena of the multi-media group
Southern Tagalog Exposure, one of ARREST Gloria's convenors. “So they ‘came alive and crossed
paths’ in Laguna.”
The exchange
was followed by a string of musical, theatrical, and poetry performances
interspersed with shadow plays and short video presentations. They were
there: Cynthia Alexander, Dong Abay, The Wuds, Radioactive Sago Project,
The Brockas, Agaw Agimat, Kwatro Beinte, Blazing Bulalakaws, Kilometer 64,
Traumaligno, ARTIST Inc., Kulturang Ugnayan ng Manggagawa at Uring
Anakpawis sa Timog Katagalugan (KUMASA-TK), UPLB Umalohokan, Anino Shadow
Play Collective, and Southern Tagalog Exposure.
The concert
highlighted what was described as nine major reasons for ousting Macapagal-Arroyo:
electoral fraud, the imposition of the Expanded Value-Added Tax (E-VAT),
complicity in the U.S.-led war on “terror,” suppression of civil
liberties, refusal to grant workers’ demands for wage increases,
environmental destruction, corruption, refusal to assert sovereignty, and
political killings. Most of the performers injected their own commentaries
on these issues in their spiels before their numbers.
But there
were those who also performed pieces that directly addressed, or were
improvised upon to directly address, the said issues. Traumaligno did for
its first number a song opening with the oft-heard chant “Gloria
Arroyo, pekeng Pangulo!” (fake president). ARTIST Inc. and Umalohokan
did skits tackling the imposition of the E-VAT and the suppression of
civil liberties, respectively. Kilometer 64 performed a long poem on the
so-called “Hello Garci” tapes. Radioactive Sago Project’s Lourd de Veyra
improvised on their hit song “Baboy” (pig) and added a few lines calling
Macapagal-Arroyo biik (piglet).
Meanwhile,
Dong Abay sang his protest-punk classic “Trapo,” which hurls invectives at
corrupt politicians. The song was written and composed in the 1990s and
does not refer to any particular politician, but the audience had no
trouble relating it to the present political scenario.
After the
performances,
Medina
and Cruz would reappear – no longer as Bonifacio and Rizal but as
themselves, reciting verses ending with a call for the arrest of Macapagal-Arroyo.
About 3,000
people watched the concert. “This is a big crowd for UPLB,” said Prof.
Dennis Aguinaldo, who teaches at the university’s Humanities Department.
The campus has an estimated student population of more than 9,000 and the
crowd was surely as big as some of the multi-sectoral rallies that have
been taking place in Manila.
UPLB was
chosen as the concert venue because the organizers wanted to show that
major protest actions can happen not only in Manila but also in the
provinces, Dalena said.
The concert
was produced by ARREST Gloria and Southern Tagalog Exposure in cooperation
with Samahan ng Kabataan Para Sa Bayan, Alpha Phi Omega Fraternity, Beta
Sigma Fraternity, Pi Sigma Fraternity, Pi Sigma Delta Sorority, Sororitas
Astum Scientis, Forestry Society, Sigma Alpha Nu Sorority, Gabriela Youth,
UPLB DevComm Soc, UPLB Ibarang, UPLB League of Filipino Students, UPLB
Anakbayan, UPLB Writers Club, UPLB Sarong Banggi and Umalohokan – with
special support from Jhen's fastfood and
take-out, Bonito's, Painters Club, Gabriela-ST, Pamantik-KMU, and Bayan-ST.
Bulatlat
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