BOOK REVIEW 
Reclaiming Ka Amado

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.

BY ALEXANDER MARTIN REMOLLINO
Bulatlat.com

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. Bulatlat.com

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