When my family and I emigrated to Canada decades ago, we brought a couple of hand-carved bookends packed in a rigid box, among other memorabilia handed down from my grandfather Francisco Lavides. The weight of these bookends must have left a huge dent on the scales at the airport, as my wife, eldest child, and I embarked on… Read More »
The latter part of 1896 was a pivotal juncture for Jose Rizal, who, after having spent four years as an exile in Dapitan, sought permission to sail for an embattled Cuba as a medical volunteer. The wars of independence against Spain were simultaneously being waged at the time by revolutionaries from both colonies. The Spanish Crown was in… Read More »
After “El Filibusterismo” came off the press in September 1891, Rizal had mentioned to his friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, that he was contemplating on writing a third novel. The Austrian intellectual who had written extensively about the Philippines wrote the preface to what would eventually become Rizal’s second and last completed novel. As a confidant, he was apprised of… Read More »
“A La Juventud Filipina”, a poem of ten stanzas, written by an eighteen year old Jose Rizal in 1879, won a literary contest held in the Manila Lyceum of Art and Literature. An elite society of literary men and artists conferred on him a feather-shaped silver pen and a diploma. Towards the end of the colonial period, when… Read More »
Hallways of power are trodden by shady figures and miserable cowards bereft of conscience. The path of truth is trampled upon by colluding statesmen who brazenly buttress fallacious arguments to serve and protect their esteemed cohorts implicated in graft and malversation of public funds. Included in the mix of malfeasance characters are a ‘riding in tandem’ archetypes of… Read More »
“A La Juventud Filipina”, a poem of ten stanzas, written by an eighteen year old Jose Rizal in 1879, won a literary contest held in the Manila Lyceum of Art and Literature. An elite society of literary men and artists conferred on him a feather-shaped silver pen and a diploma. Towards the end of the colonial period, when… Read More »
THEY PRAY BEFORE THEY PREY depraved traditions of uninterrupted servility persist conspicuously ingrained by foreboding mechanisms vulnerable to predatory systems of living in the gutter from centuries of unmitigated oppression and misery insidious moguls regulate the market at their behest unilateral decision is made in delusions of solipsism downturns impact hens on nest while dogs saunter but horned… Read More »
what you see is what you think you see the colour wheel of popular democracy makes an illusion of communal harmony surreptitiously framed by the bourgeoisie freedom is the brilliant colour of humanity squeezed out on palette of social justice mixes all sorts of liberty and opportunity to paint some semblance forging equality intricate brushstrokes by the bureaucracy… Read More »
The Philippine alphabet has gone through a peculiar transformation of writing system during the evolution of the country’s national language. Undeniably attached to its long history of foreign influences, having been colonized by Spain for centuries and the United States of America prior to the Second World War, the shifting consensus on national language reflects a history of… Read More »
Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel who would later become President of the Czech Republic, wrote in 1967 a satirical play ‘The Memorandum,’ which parodied bureaucracy and society’s adherence to communist rule. Havel critiqued the system by utilizing an invented language “Ptydepe” to magnify the incomprehensibility of bureaucratic jargon or newspeak which disallows ordinary citizens from living in… Read More »