What I’ve learned: Getting there my own way

by Sara O. Siguion-Reyna

(This article appeared in the Learning Section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer today. Sara is the daughter of filmmaker Carlitos Siguion-Reyna and movie/TV scriptwriter and actress Bibeth Orteza.)

I grew up on Mama’s stories of the anti-Marcos days and her activities: running in her clogs to flee truncheon-wielding Metrocom soldiers, bringing home the red flag of the Diliman Commune after a Makibaka march (she wanted it draped on the window, my grandmother turned it into a pillowcase) and, after Sept. 21, 1972, distributing underground newspapers, attending underground political discussions, doing this and that in the name of democracy.

Papa, light years away from his own “awakening,” got arrested one night for violating curfew. He would not tell the arresting policemen that he was the defense minister’s nephew, so he and his friends weeded the vacant lots of Camp Crame.

Times have changed. While in the ‘70s most students were presumably anti-Marcos, now the youth is divided: hordes go on the streets to protest but an equal number believe that the status quo cannot be undone, should not be undone, so why bother to undo it?

We are going through our own Gilded Age. We are caught between pretending all is well for the sake of our material comforts, and fighting for what we feel is right, no matter the consequences.

This is the story of my life in the shadow of my family’s political predilections.

During the censorship debates towards the end of the century, my parents and grandmother were branded pornographers for defending freedom of expression and daring to depict the seedier side of Philippine society.

I was in a small, predominantly Catholic school in Alabang. My classmates taunted me whenever my lola was quoted in media; one of them even drew a caricature of her, with smoke steaming out of her ears.

In a current events talk on the first Friday of the month set aside for non-Catholic service, the pastor urged us all to carefully listen to the issue in order to make our own informed decisions. Almost every head swung towards my brother and me. To my paranoid grade school mind, it seemed they had decided that we were heirs to a “pornocracy.”

Fast forward to a couple years later. President Joseph Estrada’s impeachment gripped the nation, with EDSA II a sad imitation of its predecessor. Everyone in school knew my family’s position: solid support, when his previous “allies” had deserted him.

Through text messages, students were asked to be in black to dramatize the movement against him. In defiance, I dressed in white; my brother went a step further and wore orange. No one, except my real friends spoke to me that day; a boy I thought I liked faced me, and spat out: “Disgusting!” I remember thinking what would happen if I twisted his head 360 degrees.

In recent years, there have been rallies and demonstrations where my parents and my grandmother were tear-gassed or doused with water on live television. My mother is a four-year breast cancer survivor, and my grandmother is unable to walk without a cane, but rally out in the streets they must—and will.

Then there was the Nov. 29 Manila Peninsula incident where my mother, a curious onlooker, was arrested.

You watch the television coverage of the event as it unfolds. You do not quite know what to make of the police’s sending an armored car through the hotel front door. You know your mother is inside. And then you see her on TV, talking about not wanting to be killed just by cancer.

In a while, you get a call. “Hello, I have been arrested. Please do your homework and don’t forget to submit your college application essays to your guidance counselor.”

She was released after 36 hours, for “humanitarian reasons.” The first thing she did when she got home was order for a mosquito net, “in case they pick me up again.” I did not know what to say.

Earlier that afternoon, I lazed around watching Papa’s documentary on YouTube. Someone my age talked about how soldiers shot her parents. I instinctively felt I had no right to complain.

I went to school the following Monday. Following a light, but sober conversation with the secretaries in the high school department, my guidance counselor and my history teacher about the weekend events, I prepared to dialogue with classmates, only to discover silence.

Some refused to give an opinion, others merely echoed their parents’ thoughts. I did not expect them to gush over me, or ask, “W— t– f— was your mother doing there?” I thought they would at least ask what brought that about.

A couple of months passed then came Rodolfo Lozada Jr. Soon, rallies again. With my family, I went to a huge one attended mostly by young people. Somebody took my picture and it was published two days later, the caption talking about three amazons—my grandmother, my mother, and I.

I got ribbed in school but I did not mind. I did not expect my friends to share my feelings about the ZTE controversy, which we talked about at home, over breakfast, lunch and dinner. I figured we all had different experiences and they could not have uniform impact.

Then I asked myself. Did I truly want to learn outside the classroom? Or was I like my classmates, seeing only through my parents’ eyes, molded by what they said or did?

I was not sure of the answer until the Monday marking the Fall of Bataan. My parents twisted my arm and took me to the launch of “Corruptionary,” a dictionary of words used in corrupt practices, published by the Center for People Empowerment in Governance.

I was not in the mood; I sulked most of the way.

At the fourth floor of the Popular Bookstore on Tomas Morato, the emcee introduced the young women—not one male!—volunteers who were about my age or slightly older. They researched under the heat of last year’s summer sun for the new, corrupt meaning, of old words. They cajoled a mixed bag of cops, agents, operators, fixers, office drivers, lawyers, small-time businessmen, and government employees into sharing the terms.

When one of the publishers said the researchers’ efforts should be the essence of most “What I did last summer” essays, the women just stood there, unaffected by the praise.

When the launch was over, they approached well-known personalities in the audience, and had their pictures taken, as if the celebrities were the ones who had done something important.

I was humbled by their matter-of-fact stance.

Up close, and face-to-face with the “real deal,” I realized I was fretting in my comfortable cocoon. Compared to the young researchers, I have not done much.

All of a sudden I got scared. What if, while studying abroad I lose what little nationalism I have, faced with the temptations one is sure to encounter in the First World? Will I look at my country the same way I do now? Or shall I see it from the “global” perspective, whatever that gets to mean, four years hence?

Papa always said he found out what it was like to be truly Filipino in the four years he lived away from home. I hope it will be the same for me, but how?

Months away from the college life I have long anticipated, I have not fully decided what I want to be. Some days I want to be the next Anna Wintour, to my parents’ dismay. There are weeks I aspire to be the next Christiane Amanpour. When I do, Mama and Papa relish the prospect of having their daughter dodge bullets.

But thanks to my chance meeting with the “Corruptionary” team, I’m finally positive I want to learn outside the classroom, not to be merely pro-this, or anti-that, or to march out on the streets, and call for the end of a self-serving regime.

I want to know things without being spoon-fed, to go somewhere, according to how I want to get there.

It is going to be quite a walk.