The last time I saw Cuba

photo from Generacion Y





The last time I saw Cuba was on the face of what I thought to be Rated B artist. Which is not how I think of Cuba.

The artist was on the last leg of her travel grant, courtesy of NCCA, which allowed her to go to Havana to interact and talk art with the Cuban children. I had the impression she was not so happy about her trip. She kept on complaining about the exorbitant rate the Cuban government is charging tourists as though she wanted to be Tourism Minister herself.

The audience were mostly laissez-faire artists who had little interest in Cuban history and politics, about which the artist herself seemed badly informed. What I thought was, the gringos in the bureaucracy there took her for a schoolmarm from political wasteland Pinas and had her properly relegated to the singing children department rather than make time for her discussing Cuban art and revolution. And so, of course, the most she could tell about the Caribbean island was that it is a poor country, no shopping malls, no colorful arrays of goods to choose from, and how men harassed you, propositioning you so that you will marry them and take them out of the country. When someone in the audience mentioned the US embargo and that it was one country where anyone may address the President by their first name, her IQ dropped. But she was considerate enough to make one upbeat observation, i.e., that there are no prostitutes, no street children, no roaming lunatics in Cuba, something one cannot say of Bayang Pilipinas.

It was unsettling for me. At the time only thing I knew about the downside of the food rationing was that ice cream was not available for everyone and gay artists wanting to get out. I hadn’t as yet read literature about the scarcity of milk and meat. Yoani Sanchez and wordpress.com did not exist then, though of course, I had already noted by then the silences of my French radfem sisters who made visits there, who said they rather enjoyed talking to the fags they met in Havana and that No, they could not cut canes for the Cuban revolution if revolution should come down to cutting canes, that’s so fucking peasant economy which only Germaine Greer could appreciate. I also thought of Margaret Randall, lesbian, feminist and socialist activist, who spent decades of her life working and writing for the Cuban revolution, only to opt out of the country and get back home to capitalist haven America. Made me wonder if women like her, like me, can only grow old and irrelevant there and die broken?

I hadn’t as yet read the fiction of Ronaldo Menéndez. About how zoo directors slew ostriches, crocodiles, monkeys, red-feathered birds, camelids just because there was nothing to eat at home, so that now only hyenas and wolves were left to eat each other. I hadn’t as yet heard of pigs being raised in the bathtubs of the metropolis squealing every morning very far from the river and very close to one’s bed. I hadn’t as yet heard of Yoani’s stories about homemade shotguns in the countryside and farmers’ families staying up until sunrise to protect crops and animals from those who try to steal.

And I do not thoroughly agree that that there are no prostitutes in Cuba. Besides, anywhere where contraception and abortion may be accessed without Catholic churches raising hell over it, and in any place where women as equal partners in a revolutionary project may say to a comrade Quiero hacer amor con tigo any day she likes, who needs to pay for prostitutes for specialized services? Who needs to pay for dowries and weddings.

I remember very well one woman in Margaret Randall’s book. One good thing that the Cuban revolution had done to her, she said, was that now she could marry the man she chose and not that which her parents chose for her. Another woman said that her daughter was her daughter not because she was the one who gave birth to her, but because she chose the girl to be her daughter and the girl chose her to be her mother. The girl just turned up in her door and set camp in her house and they got along fine and that's it. Such arrangement, the mother said, could only be possible in revolutionary Cuba with its revolutionary conception of the family. And then, of course, what do you make of “womanizing” when even in “post-revolution” Cuba, we will not want of women who will defend their men’s womanizing, granting that such womanizing is male prerogative, patriarchal privilege and feudal entitlement?

I don’t know what to make of Cuba now. Once I thought I had been there and shook hands with Fidel and walked with the women in the defense and the production brigades. Once I thought I will not substitute roasted chicken and ice cream for taro and red beans.

Guess it’s just the growing hate I feel for the flabs in my middle. Guess I just miss the Cuba that I once knew.

One day in March

One day in March I was in this IWD rally. I was feeling sick because the marshals (all-male, of course) came at me over the placard the witchie hanging by my side was brandishing. As the megaphone blared I sat in a corner under a shade not quite decided what to do: to leave or to stay. Then out came Nelson smiling a mile high.

Nelson is from those days when to be poor and hard-knocked was a way to live and to steal or damage property, say of a bus company monopolizing the Davao-Cotabato route or a banana plantation not following labor laws, was glorious. It was one of those post-recovery period rallies where a few thousands of people had been collected and hauled aboard Sarao jeeps and garbage trucks to make a show of force, so it was like happy-days-are-here-again! So Nelson he approached and extended one hand to me, and I myself wasn’t scowling exactly, just my old wary and hyperacidic self. I didn’t really mean to join that rally, only to look for Godot or some other being who might bring news big or small that will perhaps turn the tide, so when Nelson asked how I was doing and what exactly am I doing there at the back side when I should be with the crowd or at least up there on the stage with Macariu Tiu and Don Pagusara reading poems for women, I just said that them Gabriela boys probably didn’t think of my poems good enough for women and that Mac and Don were probably the new women poets now, not I. Besides, I said, I was only here in the hope that I would run into somebody who could lend me a few hundreds as I had been on indefinite fast. This embarrassed him he blushed. Then genuine distress took better hold and his hand went looking for some bills in his side pocket. I started talking feminist organizing among street lesbians that his embarrassment soon turned to suspicion, maybe fear: That his otherwise very intelligent and once pretty friend would end up a street loonie. He was also glancing down at the witchie slung around my shoulder with a nylon string.

At my witchie’s broom’s end is a tiny placard saying Legalize abortion! which an hour ago had earned me the kinship of a 37-year old woman from a Muslim village nearby, the indignation rally of a well-heeled host of Mom’s Radio, smiles and looks of recognition from streetside onlookers, and the eight-mile long lecture of the marshal who did not leave my side through the march along the city’s main thoroughfares. Nelson seemed to have seen the resemblance between me and my witchie and he lent me a five.

I promptly left the rally.

Went to an internet café and did printouts of Marge Piercy’s Right to Life, a bullet-size poem telling priests and legislators to fuck off, we’re no corn field, no factory, no uranium mine no cattle for fattening, and a nice poster telling guys to vasectomize if they didn’t like an abortion. I hopped from CR to CR of restos, coffee shops and malls gluing the papers up in front of the urinals. I felt I was doing some high crime, like wiring a bomb onto the bathroom door as I pasted and wiped sticky glue off my hands. Just around the time the rallyists were dispersing the herd at the plaza for home, I was done.

I bumped into Jimmy as I was walking along the dark corridors of San Pedro Street. Jimmy is a guy from a high school I went to some 25 years back, and my, was he darker and handsomer. The first thing he noticed was the placard-carrying crone strung around my shoulder. His nose screwed up at me. Oh I went to a rally for abortion rights, I explained, and No, I have not gotten married yet, I’m a dyke, you see, how are you?

He looked like he didn’t hear a word of what I said, just kept on screwing his nose and looking me in the eye, head shaking like he couldn’t believe the fuck that he was seeing.

“You never changed, didn’t you?” he finally asked, voice low and strangely bereft of vehemence.

I looked away, heart lurching, then looked back up at him.

“I just said I crossed over. You may tell our high school friends in our little town that. I did, I have, for the worse.”

“No, I don’t mean that.”

I stopped in my track.

“I mean, when I heard you went with the activists? I thought it was just rebellious youth. I thought you would mellow, get a job, lie low. Just like the rest, you know?” He chuckled, still shaking his head.

“But you haven’t! Tsk. You’re something, Man!…”

Isang Pitak ng Isip

Ang pagiging kawal, o pagiging kadre, ay pagiging isang bitak ng bato. Pagiging isang bloke ng semento sa itinatayong pundasyon ng pagbabago. Isang pares ng braso’t kamao sa walang mukhang digma. Isang buhay. Isang kulumpon ng buto. Baril man o salita ang hawak mo, mag-isa kang tatalunton sa masukal na gubat ng pag-alam. Mag-isa mong tatawirin ang ibabaw ng bangin, ang madulas na tulay na kawayan, at mag-isa kang mahuhulog, mag-isang lalangoy, aahon, aakyat sa kabilang pampang. Mag-isa kang haharap, makikipagtunggali sa panganib. Ano man ang iyong kahihinatnan, matitipak ka ba, o manatiling nakatayo, walang kamay na sasalo sa iyo; walang ulo, balikat, katawan na tatakip o mananagot para sa iyo. Sa katapusan ay mag-isa mong ipaglalaban ang buhay mo. Sa katapusan, ang lahat, ano man ang kanilang adhika, ay mag-isang makikipagdigma at mag-isang mamamatay.

Three Takes plus 1

a slut in a ballot box

I have this sense this is the dirtiest election this country has ever had. Or Ka Satur and Lisa Masa wouldn’t be fucking with Bongbong Marcos aboard Villar’s campaign wagon. Or the feminist icons of my youth wouldn't be campaigning for Noynoy like he is all they could scavenge from all this political garbage the country has produced. Or I wouldn’t be there whoring around doing errands for fags writing solicitation letters to Councilors that they may pay for our snacks. Or I wouldn’t be writing press releases a peso and fifty cents per word and explain it away by saying I did it for a friend who wanted company in some shit job or that I needed the money to pay for someone’s fare to Leyte that he may be able to vote and campaign for Ladlad.

Yes, Dear Reader, I am depressed. Suicidal.

Now I cannot say I am out of this fuck. Now I cannot say that I am not voting for anyone there screwing for my vote the ballot is the coffin of class consciousness period. I have lost that right.

And now I lost appetite writing and can’t even read a book with a clear conscience, cannot meet my deadlines doing reports for children rights offices so that I can keep tab of the rent and buy the Carol Lewis classic and the Tolkien volumes I promised my nieces.

Dear Reader, help. I feel like a slot in a ballot box.

BLOGSHOT: Why I am (not) voting

About a week back, you should have seen me crapping I am not voting for Ladlad. That Ladlad is for the fags and belongs with the fags, and to please give it to them, I am not there.

Homophobic?

No, just suffering from some kind of a new strain of elections-related allergy.

In the first place, I didn’t know my account with Comelec is still active. I have stopped bothering about people’s right to vote, mine most of all, after having been robbed of my vote in the last presidential elections that put GMA in power. Other than that, for a long time I couldn’t take what had been going on, I am out of the pale. Then a housemate had this notion of checking it out with comelec.gov.ph and voila, it’s my name alright, I may cast a vote if I like!

Then I got a call from a gay friend saying Ladlad nominees are around, let us please take them around and help them to gay people we know?

I couldn’t tell him right on that, But I am not legal and I don’t even know what my citizenship is, even if he himself likes to think he lives in Gay Republic! I couldn’t tell him that I may be currently employed and can manage from time to time to iron my clothes and sit anywhere near a Wifi zone, but my legal papers are spotty and that my employment record highly suspect. Moreover, I’m lesbian, not gay and that the last party I voted was Partido ng Bayan. I had had by then enough dosage of sermons about the need for compromise and more compromises, about the fluidity of gender and the importance of an LGBT representation in Congress, about how hard the struggle for legitimacy and political representation had been, and how having someone up there speaking for us and in behalf of us means for people like us. So when I realized that the Ladlad guys were here to collect from me what they call the pink vote and to tell me further that they are doing this—running—for me and for the entire Pinoy LGBTs, I swang on my feet. Like: What’s happening around me? Could it be that I am the only lesbian voter not voting for Ladlad? And then felt contrite. Like: Am I to let them alone in this difficult part of their careers as gay advocates and if and when they win a seat and succeed in passing the anti-discrimination law, will I avail of it the next time that another macho dude search for my dick like I myself fought hard for it?

When I think of it, the harder part of the trauma was not so much being made a sack bag by those who wanted to give you a lesson in good manners and right conduct as walking alone on the street at two in the morning to find police officers to whom you may show your hurts to. Nothing as tough as going around the welfare ward of the Davao Medical Center carrying a slip of paper saying Non-VAWC case. Nothing as sad and crazy as going home alone, praying Dear God, Dear Fucking Goddess If You Are There At All, Let it not happen to another woman again please! when you felt that there was no law protecting you, when you understood that the women manning the barangay justice system who could have been your mothers were out to protect your attacker from your accusations, and not only protect him, but back his countercharges against you as well that you may shut up and stop feeling good about yourself.

Am I saying I am voting for Ladlad now so that other welfare cases lesbians like me may find succor in the anti-discrimination bill when and if the same or worse things happen to them?

I don’t know.

I still don’t like what’s going on. When I filed a case and lost, my faithlessness in the law and the kind of democratic processes that put such laws up there only grew harder. It’s defeatist, you might say, but to me it’s not.

I still cast myself as Opposition, which means that anything Establishment has to come down by all means. Which means I hate the paternalism, the relying so much on the few dubiously good old men to do the job for us, the banking so much on the law-making powers of those who cannot think far beyond getting pork barrels that they may give livelihood to aging basket cases.

I think I will go with L.G. who posted at FB that No way, she is not participating in this ugly dirty circus; she declares herself apathethically apolitical, and that she is taking her vote to her grave.

Lord, it is so refreshing. Like: hey, isn’t that the most political thing to do these days???

Pagmumunimuni ng Isang Kabebe

Diyata’y schizophrenic rin ang kilusan. Split. May dalawang mukha. Magkabilaan. May kaliwa at kanan. Leftism at rightism. May panglabas. May pang-loob. May bukas. May sarado. May kasinungalingang mga patotoo. May dalawang lengguwahe, dalawang boses, dalawang tono ng salita na ginagamit. Ang isa’y pangsentro, at ang isa’y panglabas sa sentro. O labag sa sentro. Itong pangsentro, eto iyong di tumatawa, at di nagmumura. Eto ang ginagamit na lengguwahe tuwing nagmimiting naglalagom tumatalakay ng mga usapin, nagreresolba ng mga suliranin. Eto iyong boses ng Diyos, naghuhusga: Tamang linya, lihis sa linya. Ang kabila nito’y yaong madalas ginagamit sa breyktaym pagkatapos ng mahahaba at masinsinang usapan. Eto iyong mga salitang hitik sa lecheng yawa at mga putangina: mayaman sa mura. Mga salitang parang pag-uutot at pagkakantot na hindi kailangang giyahan gabayan upuan na parang kursong rebolusyunaryo. Eto rin iyong boses na laging nagbibiro, nanunudyo, tumatawa. Boses at salitain na sumasalungat, dumidekonstrak, at rumirebisa sa kani-kanina lang ay napagkaisahang pagtibayin at tupdin. Kung susuriin iisa lang ang tinutukoy dinadala na usapin ng dalawang ito. Sa magkasalungat lang na panig ng iisang dibdib nanggagaling. Habambuhay silang maggigirian, magtutuligsaan, isnaypan, trayduran. “Isentro iyan.” At dadalhin sa gitna ang salaring salita para doon itabi. Upisyal na hihilumin at patatahimikin. Ngunit hindi ito mahihilom, hindi tatahimik: parang sugat sa isip na kikislot-kislot, kikibot-kibot. Lulusot nang lulusot. Gagapangin ang mga namamahinga nang mga usapin. Kamuka’t-mukat ay may mauuga, at magtataka ang mga guwardiya ng gitna, dahil may humihila mula sa ibaba, dinidesentro, nilalabas, dinadagit pabalik sa kadawagan ang paulit-ulit nang ihinimlay at ikinahon. Ganun di natatapos ang dayalektiko ng pagtatalo.