Panorama. Vol. IX, No.8 August 1957

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Part of Panorama

Title: Panorama. Vol. IX, No.8 August 1957
Issue Date: Vol. IX (No. 8) August 1957
Year: 1957
Language: English
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extracted text: CONTENTS .4rticles Com and Superstition . . . . . . . . Richard Arens, SVD 3 Symposium: An Economic Program for the Philippines .................. Jose Yulo Claro M. Recto Carlos P. Garcia 8 Food From Mud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 The Case Against Colonialism . . . . . . . . Sixto D' Asis 23 Peace Came Suddenly· ........ Lorin A. Uffenbeck 27 How Free Is Our Pre·ss? ...... Vicente Albano Pacis 29 Meet President Wan ................ Free World 34 The Fabulous GuanO" Caves of Colorado . . . . . . . . . . 36 The Old Manila Galleons . . . . . . . . . . Percy A. Hill 39 Hong. Kong's Refugee .FroblerR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 The Oneness of Philippines and India .. Tara Ali Baig 63 Bonifacio, the Katipunan and Freedom ......... . Felix B. Bermudo 69 The Barrio Fisherman's Secrets .... Maximo Ramos 80 Toward a 'Clean' Hydrogen Bomb .. Manuel Tiempo 86 The Art of Miguel Covarrubias .... Mitron Paniqui 89 Poetry J. D. at the Circus . . . . . . . . . . . . • Dominador I. llio 79 Fiction Native Land .................. Narciso G. Reyes 46 Regular Features Are You Word Wise? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Panorama Peek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Book Review: The Magsaysay Story . · .......... . Leonard Casper 54 Literary Personality - XXXII: Georges Bernanos . . 60 Panorama Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 In the Beginning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 5 Fililippine Panorama - XXXIII: Davao . . . . . . . . . . 76 Fun-Orama by.Elmer ...... .- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 PAN ORAM~ is published monthly· by the Community Publishers, I Inc., 1986 Herran, Manila, Philippines Editor: FELIXBERTO C. STA. MARIA Foreign contributing editor: Leonard Casper Art director: Rodolfo P. Peres Business ManaAer: MRS. C; A. MARAMAG Subscription rates: In the Philippines, one year PS.00; two yean P9.00. Foreign subscription: one year $4.00 U.S.; two yean $7.00 .U.S. Single copy 50 centavos. Cling-fit, ... Roomy comrort. ... with.MBHM. ":Lf_J. II <Tb~ AMBASSADOR STRMHABLE SOCKS ... shetches from top to toe to fit b o t h leg olld to« perfectly . . . mocle of oil nylon body. Special absorbent Finish-Sole lined with fine DURENE' COTTONNYLON, reinforced heel and toe. SOLD AT ALL LEADING BAZARS A N D D E P AlR T M E N T S T 0 R E S MANUFACTURED IY: Manila Bay Hosiery Mills about the Panorama, the Philippines' most versatile, most significant magazine today. a year's subscription - NOW! they will appreciate it. SUBSCRIPTION FORM -------------------- 1 year for P5.00 -------------------- 2 years for P9.00 -------------------- Foreign subscription: one year $4.00 U.S. Name Street City or Town ------------------------------------ Province --------------------------------··Enclosed is a check/money order for the amount specified above. Please address all checks or money orders in favor of: 2 COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. 1986 Herran, Sta. Ana, Manila PANORAMA fllb __ AUGUST 1957 VOL. IX Entered as second class mail matter at the Manila Post Office on Dec. 7, 1955 MANILA, PHILIPPINES CORN AND SUPERSTITION In Leyte they have elaborate rituals No. 8 By RICHARD ARENS, SVD 1 OR CERTAIN sections of th . e population in Leyte and Samar, corn mixed with rice has become the primary part of the diet. The provinces of Leyte and Samar, because of the evenly distributed rainfall throughout the year, have become high ranking in the production of corn. In the whole Philippines in 1949-50: 853,212 hectares were planted with corn; the production was 10,847,029 cavans. Leyte planted .· in 1949-50: 56,632 hectares with corn, with a yield of 472,978.6 cavans of corn. In the same period, 1949-50, Leyte planted 90,367.5 hectares with rice and yielded a production of 2,503,366.8 cavans. Rice is still the main food item for the Leyteno; corn follows second. In the same period, Samar planted: 3,612 hectares with corn yielding 50,867 ca vans; 55,60 I hectares with rice, yielding 165,475.8 cavans. Since corn is the second biggest cro for the two provinces, a corn ritual has developed which is similar to the rice ritual in its main characteristics, although simpler in form; its symbolism is different due to the peculiar qualities of the corn. During the harvest time of the preceding season, the farmer selects the stalks for seeds. Before he does this the farmer of Dulag prays one Our Father, Hail Mary, and the Credo; then he proceeds gathering the stalks without saying a word. He takes the stalks home for drying and places them in a secure and safe place, usually close to the stove. A few days before planting, the farmer separates the grains from the cob and soaks the grains in fresh water until they become soft and ready for planting. PANORAMA JN THE EVENING before planting the farmer of Dulag gathers his helpers for a celebration. They proceed to the field and build a bamboo structure with 4 poles and a platform on which young coconut leaves are placed. When this is done the farmer leads his helpers around the field singing hymns and praying to God to give a good harvest. After this a "calipa}an" brush is planted in every corner of the field that all who eat this corn might be happy and attain success in all their undertakings. Thereafter they sing other hymns and pray; then the party returns home and enjoys eating, drinking, and dancing at the farmer's expense until late at night. In the early morning hours at 3 a.m. the farmer goes alone to the field and crosses its length and width three times. He plants a few grains; with the seeds he places the manure of rats, so that rats would have no appetite in eating the fruit during its period of maturation. AUGUST 1957 Digging a second hole he places with the corn the manure of a bird called " balinsasayau." The Dulag farmer believes that this will protect him against strong winds and typhoons. In a third hole he places with the corn seed the manure of a strong animal, for example carabao, hoping that the corn grows as vigorous and strong as the animal. He then silently prays again the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Credo, and a prayer to San Roque, patron of farmers. After the prayer he goes home. At home meanwhile the help· ers have gathered. He takes them to the field; some carrying the seeds. The farmer goes to the center of the field and burns "kamangyan," a kind of incense together·with the petals and leaves of palm trees gathered during Palm Sunday, in order to drive away the evil spirits that might bring destruction to the corn. In Alangalang (Central Leyte) the farmer sees to it that 5 all his planters have a complete and perfect set of teeth. In Gamay (Samar) the planters during actual planting do not open their mouths. Their lower and upper teeth are firmly closed together. It is the belief that in this way they influence the growth of the corn, so that at harvest time the corn cob is compact and nicely arrange_d in form of a perfectly closed set of teeth. The planting ritual is in its major characteristics the same in Leyte and Samar; although there are local variations with regard to the charms used. A bamboo stick about 2 meters in length is planted in the middle of the field in most municipalities of Leyte and Samar. The bamboo stick represents the symbolic growth and strength of the c o r n stalk. Sugar is also quite often used as a charm to give the corn a sweet taste. Three weeks after the planting of corn, that is when the planted corn has developed leaves, the farmer of Dulag carries three whole pieces of bamboo at 1-1/2 meters in length to the field. In the center of the field he digs a hole of about 20 centimeters and firmly grounds one bamboo stick in order that the plants grow healthy, strong and tall. The other two bamboo pieces are placed at the side of the 6 field. The selected bamboo has the blue color of the sky which is one distinctive characteristic of a healthy plant. In those two bamboo sticks at the side of the field the farmer now inserts alternately bamboo branches of about 50 centimeters of length. The symbolic meaning is that the plants will bear pieces of corn of the same size and length as the bamboo branches. 1\1\'1 HEN THE corn starts to Wbear fruits, "Awog" is placed in the center of the field. This is composed of dried banana leaves which are placed on a s t i c k . In placing the "awog" prayers are recited. The purpose of "awog" is to refrain other people from stealing the young corn. The people believe that after placing the "awog" only the owner can get the corn without suffering harm. If someone steals and eats the corn, he either becomes very pale or his stomach swells. When the corn is ripe, the master -of ceremonies (paratikang) begins at either side of the corn field which he thinks is appropriate. While harvesting he recites some prayers. After choosing some 25 big and good ears, he brings them home and places them near the stove for seeds in the next season. Thereafter helpers join in the harvesting. PANORAMA In Gamay (Samar) the first ears of corn are thrown to the edges of the cornfield as an offering to the spirits. Then the whole family with relatives and friends build a big fire in one corner of the field to roast some corn. It is a thanksgiving meal with plenty of merriment, story telling, singing and dancing. f) ooMED to vanish under the gigantic Kariba Gorge hydroelectric project, the Gwembe Valley is seeing a trek of about 60,000 Africans from the region. The elephant herds also must go but they are fighting back. The valley will be drowned under 150 feet of the harnessed waters of the Zembesi River. New villages are being built for the Africans on the hills looking down on the yorge. But it is a different story with the elephants, estimated to number 1,000. Game rangers are trying to move the herd up the escarpment to the Tonga Plateau, but so falT' they have had little success. They are meeting with what a.ppears to be organized resistance from the animals. The rangers in their drives employ many African villagers, both men and women, in human chains, moving up from the valley floor. One chain was attacked by a big elephant and the men and women scattered. AUGUST 1957 7 Symposium 8 J An Economic Program for the Philippines Panorama prese!1ts the economic platforms of three presidential candidates: Jose Yulo (Liberal Party); CI a r o M. Recto (a Naciona1 i s t a independent candidate, official p a r t y still unformed) and Carlos P. Garcia (Nacionalista Party). T h e o th e r candidates' economic platforms w i I I be published when they become available. y u L 0 R E c T 0 G A R c I A T HE PARAMOUNT objecti.ve of government is to promote the welfare of the great masses of the people. The masses of our own people live in poverty. The great challenge to any administration is to so conduct the public business as to speed up the attainment of a richer life for the bulk of the nation upon the principle that the greatest good of the greatest number is, in 1 THE MAIN economic ob• jectives. - A 11 policies and measures shall be geared towards the creation of job opportunities and the elimination of unemployment, the increase and expansion of our national and per capita income, the bringing down of the high cost of living, the improvement of living standards and the asB y THE USE of official figures and facts, I should like to nail down once and for all the fallacies foisted upon the people concerning the budget, p u b 1 i c indebtedness, American aid, and a few other matters. 0 u r administration was charged with foisting upon the people an unbalanced budget. The official figures show the exact opposite. The previous PANORAMA fact, the gteatest good of all. I believe that the key to the attQ.ininent of this primary goal of accelerating t h e material well-being of our people is the effective solution of our economic problems, one of the m.ost serious being unemployrnent. Once we shall have solved them, we shall also have acquired the e~sential means to the solution of other vexing national difficulties. Liberal administration, f r om 1946 to 19S3, foisted annual budgets upon the people with fantastic deficits. In 1946, the deficit was over PlS6-million; in 1947, over Pl89-million; in 1948, over PSS-million; in 1949, ever f>89-million; in 19SO, over Pl S4-million; in 1951, over P42million; in 19S3, over P50-million. In contrast to these deficits, the Nacionalista budgets from AUGUST 1957 An auspicious start was made towards the solution of cur economic problems from 1946 to l 953. During that period, the Government effectively recoristructed the country and its economy out of the ruins of war. By 1953, the public finances had been balanced. At the end of that year, a coordinated and comprehensive national economic development plan was alsurance of the economic security of all our people. The cause of our mass discontent stems mainly from our major problems of unemployment and high cost of living, aggravated by a fast growing population. New sources of national i n co m e must be found and developed, with provisions for equitable distribution of the newly-pro1954 to 1956 have always shown surpluses. The surplus in 1954 was PIO-million; in 1955, nearly P2-million, and in 1956, nearly P2-million. When it comes to loans, the p as t Liberal administration's record borders on recklessness. Not only did it borrow the huge a m o u n t of P208,200,000 to spend on ordinary operations of the government but it also illegally took more than f>lS2 9 ready in operation and was fast gaining acceleration. Thus, I think it can be said in candor that the march towards the achievement of the country's economic objectives was already well advanced. THE CONDITIONS in the country today are very revealing. With all the advantages of plans already drawn, of projects already started or in process of duced wealth, to create jobs and reduce the cost of living by means of appropriate and consistent economic measures and policies as hereinafter specified. 2. Industrialization and Agricultural Expansion. -Agriculture, mining, fishing and all other non-industrial activities must be intensified and expanded to achieve national self-sufmillion from the government's fiduciary, trust, special and sinking funds, making its total borrowing more than P360,200,000. In addition, government obligations totalling over P205 million were not recorded in the books and remained unsettled. In contrast, our administration's record shows that we have been able to pay Pl57,915,000 of the Liberal adminis· 10 completion, and of a great momentum towards economic stability generated, progress has been slowed down, if not paralyzed, by the interminable dissensions among policy-makers which have resulted in unsettled, changing, confused and contradictory p u b I i c policies and decision. Both domestic and foreign investments have accordingly shied away, and risk capital has gone into hiding. tration's budgetary loans and return all the pilfered funds from the fiduciary, trust, special and sinking funds, except P8 million. J T HAS ALso been charged that "economic aid f r o m the United States has steadily decreased, primarily because of the failure of the Nacionalista policy-makers to properly and efficiently program such assistPANORAMA In a frantic effort to keep the wheels of economic activity rolling, an astronomical public debt has piled up, a rnpidly increasing money supply is flooding the country, the dollar reserves are approaching a dangerously low level, a fantastically unbalanced budget has again been foisted upon the people, prices are rising and unemployment is mounting to serious proportions, throwing ficiency. But industrialization, more particularly the processing of our mineral ores and manufacturing from raw materials produced here, being the key to a higher standard of living amcng our people and the solution to our unemployment proble.m, must be pushed through, as successfully demonstrated in th e United States, England, ance." It is amazing that this statement has come from the highest official of the Liberal administration directly in charge of American aid. The records show that up to fiscal year 1956, the total American aid received by the Philippines from ICA and its predecessors was $172,· 600,000. While, of this sum~ $72,600,000 was received during the Liberal administration, AUGUST 1957 the masses of our people into increasing want and misery. Above all, it seems to me that every program designed to bring about economic advancement and every effort to implement that program should not lose sight of a higher obJective: the preservation of the regime of free enterprise. O UR MOST pressing need today is, as you all know, to Germany, japan, and other industrial countries. 3. The Filipino's priority. - Filipinos shall have priority in the development and enjoyment of the country's natural resoµrces, trade and industry, and public utilities. They shall be given every possible incentiVP, and inducement, in financing, scientific and technological aid, $100,000,000 was received dur· ing the Nacionalista administration. Furthermore, for fiscal year 1S58, the United States government has proposed to give the Philippines $35 million, an amount greater· than that previously given during any single year. This administration, furthermore, recently concluded the Agricultural Commodities Agreement, under which the Phil11 provide employment for our continually increasing 1 a b o r force. We are told time and again that unemployment stood at 1,200,000 in 1953, and, according to Central Bank figures, that it had increased to 2,500,000 at the end of 1956. This, of course, is an abnormally and excessively very large volume of idle manpower compared to our population. It indicates that two out of every and if necessary, in direct government partnership investments, to the end that Filipino participation in business, commerce, industry and finance shall predominate. 4. Foreign loans and investments.-Existing foreign-owned enterprises shall be respected, shall not be impaired, and shall be entitled to government proippines will acquire essential commodities for pesos amounting to $10,350,000. The commodities thus acquired will supply the raw material requirements of our expanding industries without expenditure of Philippine f o re i g n exchange. In addition, 51 70 of the peso proceeds a r e earmarked for loans to the Philippines for economic development. The Liberal Party spokesman 12 ten able-bodied and employable worker in the country are without work, and, therefore, depend for their livelihood upon those who have work and who sre already supporting their own family dependents. We realize, however, that the problem of unemployment is m o st intimately inter-twined with the main problem of government; the maintenance of internal peace and order; the tection. Foreign aid, by means of long-term loans, payable on easy terms, and without strings attached, in accordance with the recent change in U.S. policy on foreign assistance, as recently announced by the U.S. Secretary of State, pursuant to the proposal of the U.S. Secretary of Treasury, shall be encouraged. New direct private charged our administration with incompetence and lack of managerial ability, implying thereby that the Liberal administration had been matchless and perfect in its efficiency, effectiveness, leadership and statesmanship. Rather than give my own opinion on this matter and thus be accused of prejudice ~nd bias, I shall limit myself to quoting from the famous report of the Bell Mission in PANORAMA stamping out of law violations ~.nd outlawry; the provision of adequate welfare services; the determination of educational directions and objectives; the administration of stable fiscal, credit and monetary policies; the creation of conditions conducive to th e accelerated growth, expansion and diversification of private economic enterprise; the advancement on all fronts of the national ecoinvestments from foreign sour· ces that will substantially contribute to the development of the country's economy, increase the national and per capita income, and raise the level of employment, shall be welcome. 5. National self - sufficiency and Community Development. - (a) To hasten the develop· ment of our rural and agricul1950 which came to the Philippines in the middle of the Liberal administration in a frantic attempt to shore it up and save it from total economic and political collapse. This is what the report said of the Liberal administration:· "The mounting deficits of the government during these years of high national income and inflationary pressures is indicative of the lack of forceful AUGUST 1957 nomy; and many other similar governmental functions and activities. M a n y economic analysts, much to our humiliation, have characterized conditions in our country as those of an underdeveloped economy. We must, therefore, set, as our immediate task, the acceleration of the advancement of that economy. This acceleration needs the coordination of public and pritural communities, the government shall promote the establishment of factories or processing plants in every locality where raw materials foi' processing, such as rice, coconut, sugar, hemp, ramie, tobacco, and cotton, etc., are in abundance; but the government shall pioneer in setting up these factories and plants wherever pr~ policy on government finances ... It indicates a failure on the part of the public to appreciate the grave. monetary and economic dangers that flow from a breakdown of orderly government finances." In another place, the Bell Re· port had this to say : ''The Liberal Party's fiscal administration has been ruinous and their fiscal reports are of no value to any one except 13 vate economic activity. On the part of the government, we have various production-boosting public improvement programs that need and should be given immediate execution. The completion of our hydro-electric development program to produce cheap power; of our irigation construction projects to increase farm production; and of our trunk and vecinal highways systems to vate capital is unable or unwilling to do so. (b) Farm production shall be pushed with vigor by expanding and improving irrigation systems, and by providing for cheap and abundant fertilizer and other facilities and incentives to increase output and develop new export products, such as coffee and cocoa. Canthose interested in historical facts • . • In 1950, the Secretary of Finance did not have the necessary information f r o m which to determine currently just what is the real financial condition of the Philippine gov· ernment." THE NACIONALISTA administration has perfected a Five-Year Economic and Social Development Program covering 14 place isolated farming and virgin areas in contact with centers of marketing and distribution to hasten increased agricultural cultivation; the provision of increased facilities and intensified financial and credit assistance to agricultural and industrial production; and other labor intensive activities can be immediately put into execution. 1dng and preserving plants to avoid seasonal wastes shall be established, an effective netwvrk of barrio roads shall be constructed, an d an efficient distribution system for all locally produced goods to assist in channeling them to other sectors of the country or exporting them shall be installed. (c) To break the middleman's the period from 1957 to 1961 which, when implemented, will generate, directly and indirectly, a total of 1,500,000 new jobs, or an average of 300,000 annually. This will be the best answer to the charges that the employment situation is worsening. Up to a few months ago, we had only been able to contain unemployment; we were able to maintain the number of unemployed already existing unPANORAMA 0 N THE PRIVATE front, you know as well as I do wherein business enterprise has been hamstrung these past few years. The Government should make up its mind and adopt settled and stabilized business to frame its own programs of action. Under such a favorable climate, agricultural, manufacturing, mining as well as trading enterprises, all facilities, large ·scale employment of lader the Liberal administration at a more or less stationary figure. But this year we begin to aim at the target of full employment, and expect to hit it by 1961. We believe that we can do this under the Five-Year Economic and Social Development Program which has been the result of exhaustive study and programming by the National Economic Council. AUGUST 1957 bor, will, I am sure, intensify efforts towards maximum production. It is obvious, however, that the extent to which the economic development program can be implemented, given the incalculably rich resources we have and the great potentialities of our organized manpower, will depend primarily on the availability of two things: one is capital - domestic and forstrangle-hold on our producers and farmers, autonomous Filipino producers', consumers' and credit cooperatives shall be encouraged; and a special Cooperatives' Bank to take care of their needs shall be established. 6. Grading and standardization of local products. - The quality of locally produced ar-The program proposes, first, for the government itself, to undertake a program of public investment; and, second, for the government to establish and consistently implement coordinated public policies and encourage and enable private enterprise to perform its rightful role in the economic development of the country. As manufacturing grows in the number of establishments 15 eign capital; and the other is administration - efficient a n d honest administration. Every opportunity by which capital can be attracted should be exploited. If domestic capital in quantities required to satisfy developmental needs can not be coaxed out of hoards and hiding places, the situation is indicative that our investment policies need revision in a manner that will inspire the ticles and goods shall be standardized and improved, in order to develop confidence in and enhance demand for Filipino products, by setting up revitalized and effective supervisory agencies and through honest implementation of all measures and regulations as may be found necessary to insure that our products are properly gradand in the scope of output, its capacity for employment will correspondingly increase. Our total labor force employed today in manufacturing industries is only 11 per cent as against from 21 per cent to 47 per cent in the more highly developed countries. Under our Five-Year Economic and Social Development Program, the aim is to acquire a similar balance in the proportion of employments in 16 confidence and breakdown the hesitancy on the part of the investor. Our present investment policies do not do this. Dcmestic capital will not venture into productive enterprises that offer no reasonable assurance of safety and, under normal management techniques, a reasonable margin of profit. If foreign loan capital can not be induced to come at customary international interest ed, standardized and improved. 7. Surveys and statistics. - Scientific, technological, marketing and economic research shall be promoted, and their facilities expanded and made available to private industry. Surveys of national needs and resources shall be conducted from time to time, and centralized accurate and up-to-date farms and factories. Expanding employment is, of course, only one of the objectives of the Program. In its scope, it includes the in tensification of J:lroduction in all sectors of our economy. This goal, in turn, can only be achieved by making available reasonably easy credit and sufficient capital. And the latter, in turn, must be attracted by fair and reasonable conditions before it PANORAMA rates, let us attract risk capital and give it the same opportunities for earning profits and the same assurance of security as those enjoyed by local investments, an d o f receiving such profits in the situs of their origin. Foreign capital will not be attracted unless the security afforded, the opportunities for profit offered, and the means of remitting earnings assured, are sufficient to entice it away stat1st1cs on all pertinent economic data shall be compiled. 8; Power development. - Power and development shall be accelerated, so that every section of the country shall enjoy the benefits of cheap and abundant electric power for use in industry, agriculture and in the homes. 9. Communication and transwill venture into the chann.el of production and commerce. The Nacionalista administration has had a comprehensive economic development program since 1954. This was revised and updated in 1955-1956, resulting in a new composition of the National Economic Council when disagreement on some aspects of the program made it necessary. The plan was later suppleAUGUST 1957 from other investment areas. We should, of cvurse, guard against exploitative capital, but we need not entertain an excessive fear in that direction. We have, as an independent and sovereign state, the means, legislative and administrative, to stamp exploitation out wherever it may rear its ugly head. Above all, investment capital will be wary and watchful that it does not get bogged down portation facilities. - Development of the shipping industry and strengthening of the merchant marine, construction of Pew roads and bridges, and improvement of existing railroad lines, shall also receive preferential attention. 10. Land distribution a n d utilization.- Public lands shall be opened for cultivation and mented with a five-year fiscal plan and foreign exchange budget, together with a system of industrial priority. A 11 these plans have now been consolidated and coordinated in the new five-year Economic and Social Development P r o g r a m . However, in the nature of things, plans and programs cannot be iron-clad; they must be altered according to the dictates of experience and the de17 in a morass of red tape and regimentation. We cannot attract capital unless we can give it assurance of freedom from fickle and changing investment policies and irresponsible monetary experimentations. Even domestic savings will be discouraged if one peso today will be worth fifty centavos tomorrow. Therefore, it is of the utmost urgency that measures be taken calculated to encourage distribution among the landless, and the Government shall assist in the dissemination and populariza~ion of improved and scientific methods of farming. 11. Foreign commerce a n d trade. - Commercial relations with other countries shall be stimulated and encouraged by means of commercial treaties, payments ~rrangements, and mand of the situation. u NDER THE PREVIOUS plans and programs, the Nacionalista administration was able to record a substantial achievement and this is supported by the important statistics of the nation. From the end of 1953 to the end of 1956, the gross national production, representing the total output of goods and services of the Philippine 18 capital formation and immigration. SPEAKINC: OF regimentation to which I have referred earlier, I believe that the time has come for a serious re-exemina tion of our exchange and import control policies. When the controls were instituted, it was never intended that the economy would be permanently regimented. The management other international trade agreements, with the prime end of stimulating exports of, an d opening new markets for, Philippine products. 12. Japanese reparations. - Politics s h a 11 be completely barred from the handling and disposition of the reparations payments, and an office entirely f r e e from political influence economy, went up from P8,002,000,000 to P9,415,000,000 or an increase of 17.7 per cent. Under the previous Liberal administration, 1951-1953, the increase was only 8.6 per cent. Whereas the per capita income in our country at the close of the Liberal administration in 1953 was only P34 l, the corresponding figure in 1956 under the Nacionalista administration was P371. With an increase in PANORAMA and administration of the controls have in the last four years only succeeded in shackling and paralyzing private enterprise without accomplishing the overall purpose of the. control system: to stabilize the country's exchange reserve position. The time has come when we should be thinking of lifting the controls in an accelerated but orderly manner. We must forever obtain guidance from the funshall be created for their efficient administration. 13. Exchange and import controls. - As soon as conditions warrant, exchange and import controls shall be gradually abolished and replaced with tariff ;md other measures for the protection of the national interest in general and of Filipino inper capita income of 9 per cent under the Nacionalista administration in 1953 to 1955, the Philippines, today, enjoys one of the bighest living standards in Southeast Asia. Production has also increased considerably. At the close of the Liberal administration in l 953, the combined index of the physical volume of production, the year 1952 being taken as 100 or normal year, was only AUGUST 1957 damental tenet that free enterprise is an essential of democracy. Meanwhile, further programming should be based on the extensive surveys and studies already made of our soils, our fishery resources and possibilities, our forests and minerals, and our manpower for their more effective utilization in our developmental projects. I have a deep faith and a dustries in particular. During the existence of said controls, all regulations shall be strictly enforced and honestly implemented. 14. Taxes. - While increased taxes may be justified to meet legitimate requirements and functions of government, our present tax rates have reached a level where they threaten to 108 as against 141 under the Nacionalista administration in 1956. The index of agriculture was only 107 in 1953, whereas it was 135 in 1956; mining was only 102 in 1953 while it was 122 in 1956; and manufacturing was only 113 in 1953 but 160 in 1956. Surely, in spite of the determination of many to rock the boat, we are sailing on smoothly to the port of sufficiency and prosperity. 19 great deal of confidence in the inherent elements of strength, soundness and resiliency of our economy. I sincerely believe that most of our difficulties today that began pressing upon us w i t h increasing urgency since the second-half of 1956, are traceable primarily to rank mismanagement in the fiscal, financial and trade fields, in respect not only to policies but also to their implementation impair the initiative of private enterprise, necessary capital formation and the purchasing power of the taxpayer. The funds needed by the government can be raised by improving our tax collecting machinery, and by intensifying the collection of taxes from all sources, particularly those heretofore untapped. The same port is the goal of my having vetoed Senate Bill No. 167, more popularly known as the Dollar Retention Bill. When I disapproved it, I announced that I would create a body of competent persons to search more carefully for the best ways and means of providing incentives to producers. This study w i 11 inevitably take into its scope such other matters as dollar and import 20 b y t h e various government agencies concerned. It is either the lack of sufficient comprehension or of honest effort on the part of key administration leaders that is responsible for all the confusion, the uncertainty and the lack of the requisite resources, natural and human, to achieve a higher plane of economic wellbeing. 15. Consistent economic policies. - Specific economic policies and plans shall be clearly laid down and shall not be arbitrarily subject to constant and drastic revisions, so as to enable business and industry to formulate and carry out longrange plans and to fulfill their legitimate commitments. control and other arrangements, permanent or temporary, which are related to these matters. The aim is to be fair to all concerned, impose no harm or hardship to any one, and get our economic development program on the straight road to our overall goal of improved individual incomes, national prosperity and intensified progress. PANORAMA Food From 'mud 1n un FROM the bottom of Lake Victoria in Central Africa is rich enough in protein and minerals to be used, when dried, as hog and chicken feed, according to government scientists. The finding has emerged from a long-term survey of the fish potential of Lake Victoria. Researchers of the East African Fisheries Organization found that plankton, the minute organism on which fish feed, were scarce in the water of the sulphur necessary for plankton growth. Sulphur is normally released from mud by bacterial and chemical action. The observation that it was missing in the material from the bottom of Lake Victoria led to an analysis of the mud. The researchers found tittle evidence of decomposition in layers of abou.t thirty or forty feet in depth in which were locked the accumulated organic riches of thousands of years. The samples contained unusually huge amounts of sulphates, nitrogen and other plant nutrients. Experiments have shown that the mud begins to decompose when dried. It has been suggested that it be dredged from the floor of the lake and spread over the adjacent swampy land. R. S. A. Beauchamp, an investigator from the Government Research Station at Jinja, Uganda, on the northern shore of the lake, is convinced that large quantities of the mud could be used as hog and chicken food. He had tasted it, he said, and found the mud "quite palatable." AUGUST 1957 21 Most of the twenty words given below should be in your reading vocabulary. That is, you should be able to recognize them, although you may not be able to define or actually use them in writing. Select the proper definition for each, then turn to pae-e7-' for the correct answers. Fifteen is passinlZ'. 1. babble-(a) to give forth noise; <rA to talk idly or foolishly; (c) to become depressed; (d) to adorn or ,.decorate lavishly. 2. aloit-(a) unreachable; (b) unrealistic; (c/ above the ground; (d) hovering abovSJ(' 3. incorrigible-(a)l'bad beyond reform; (b) cannot be bent; (c) rustproof; (d) beyond reproof. 4. rumpus-(a) ~n i formal jacket; Yb) a small, intimate party; (c) an exp_r~ssio of disgust; (d) {in uproar. 5. sedate---(a) c m or composed; (b) exclusive and segregated; (c) profound; (d) lonely. 6. dranr-(a) a humorous person; (b) a unit of pharmaceutical weight; (c) a short classical play; (d) a whirring noise. 7. gragarious-(a) loud-mouthed; (b) full of eie gy; (c+../fond of company; (d) huge. 8. cautious-(a) suspicious; (b) full of fears; ( ) very careful; {d) ignorant. 9. dunce---(a) an ol9"fashioned person; (b) a trumpet; (c) king's royal guard; (d) !(""dull-witted person. 10. preJude-(a) ~liminary action or re~ar s; (b) opening shot; (c) outside of; ( d) a short musical co osition. 11. hindmost-(a) the most developed; ( last; (c) facing the wind; ( d) away frgm the wind. 1.2. mulct-(a) tO""Cieprive of somehing by trickery; (b) to force to produce; (c) to stop or prevent, legally; (d) to plug, as a hole. 13. circumvent-(a) to measure around; (b) to add color to; (c) to go aro~ (q) to rotate rapidly. 14. disgruntle---(a) t~9/lie down into parts; (b) to undress; (c) to make disc.errtented, ( d) to proclaim loudly. 15. specter-(a) a g st; (b) azmal particle; (c) a trace or shadow: ( d) a legend or myth. 16. waver-(a) to beckon; (b to hesitate between choices; (c) to become a follower of; (d) to show nervousness. 17. titanio----(a) formi_slable or unbeatab~ (b) impressive; (c) like a pagan; ( d) ..gfgantic. / 18. smirk-(a) to insult r bully; (b) to smile in an offensive manner; (c) to blame; a) to denounce falsely. 19. flaccid-(a) s and flabby; (b) outwardly calm; (c) ve~y quiet; ( d) slightly acidic. ../ 20. eulogizf'--(a) to dedicate; (b) to compose into a song; (c) to praise highly; ( d) to deplore. 22 PANORAMA In whateyer form ••. If T IS TIME to liquidate." !). Such was the advice to the French and English empires given almost fifteen years ago by liberal Harvard professor, Albert Guerard. Today, expressing himself in the Southwest Review, he feels it is past time. When a man refuses to share power, history \\-Tests it from him. At the time of its own Revolution, France was ready to give up its colonies rather than surrender the principle of selfdetermination. Such men were called idealists; but they have proved more practical tha:n the Napoleonic "realists" who on several continents built a colonial empire now crumbling. Guerard suggests that "Principles are simply the policies that pay best in the long run and for all concerned; 'realism' means . immediate gains for a few." AUGUST 1957 By SIXTO D'ASIS Yet Guerard would divide the types of colonialism into four, claiming that some of the'Se have been beneficial. The flrst is colonialism by settlement of land practically vacant; for example, America north of the Rio Grande, New Zealand, and Australia. The original peoples here were so primitive ~nd so scattered that the newcomers passed over th,e land as pioneers, not as invaders-despite Hollywood's exaggeration of the Indian wars. No one has ever seriously suggested evacuating these countries of all but native stock to whom the land might be returned. · Ori the other hand, Latin America · had two centers of highly developed culture, be. fore colonization began. Only 23 in Bolivia and Paraguay does this aboriginal element have any predominance in numbers, today. However, in countries like Mexico the mutual tolerance of European, Indian and mestizo is a cause for pride, a source of progress. All of North and South America, therefore, in one sense, are colonial: race, religion, language, political principles, economic methods were imported from Europe. Trade and cultural ties have remained even after the breakdown of political ties. Is such interdependence evil? Benelux is, in modern times, a healthy confederation of Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg; and no one would be scandalized if Norway and Sweden be·.::ame one nation as centuries ago they wef'e--or the United States and Canada. Where mutual respect can exist, the incorporation of small national part~ers seems, in fact, the wisest alternative in this modern world. Liberty can be maintained, whereas complete mdependence cannot be. Ireland seems to have injured herself seriously in her long, however successful, war for independence. CJ' HE SECOND form of colonialism Guerard calls "the civilizing or educative." It played only a minor part in North and South America (as 24 missionary work) and in Australia. But it is most evident in South Africa whose people were literally redeemed from savagery-tribal warfare, slav~ ery, cannibalism and human sacrifices-by the colonial powers. "If there are still profiteers for whom the sole aim of colonialism is exploitation, the proper goal is not to ~m. but t~rs." No European has been more murderous than native chieftain Behanzin of Dahomey; a n d many have had the kindness. the desire for justice, of Albert Schweitzer, Edward Dene Morel and Andre Gide. Civilizing colonialism ha& as its worst enemies today not even the would-be economic exploiter of ·native labor but false anthropologists, who still believe that cultures are .organ· ic entities-the soul of a people. Gaul emerged a better country after Roman occupation; Britain's st'rength is the multifold sourges of her culture; India will reach adulthood only after shedding sut tee, purdah, child marriages and the caste system. When a New Zealand anthropologist urged preserving Maori culture from the AngloSaxons, Maori professionals resenting such a return to nearbarbari~m. South Africa would clearly be more civilized without its new apartheid segregation of white and black; and PANORAMA Haiti, without its mass belief in voodooism. But educative colonialism is justifiable only where all who are capable are given opportunity to rise, and color ceases to be a test. Belgian Congo cares for its natives well, but does little to encourage full citizenship. The record of France, taken in individual cases, is better. It has produced native generals like Dodds, native governors 1 i k e Eboue, cabinet members like Diagne, a president of the French Senate like Monnerville, and writers .like . Senghor. "We forget that every child is born a rank primitive and has to be taught the ways of civilization." ft THIRD TYPE of colonialism is symbiotic, as in French North Africa where Moslem tradition having lost its strength 125 years ago (in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco), Europeans chose to assume political control. The two million Europeans m French North THE RIGHTS OF MAN The hope of mankind is to transcend cultures and civilizations, so as to clear the path for culturre gnd civilization; to foster the rights of Man-the avowed purpose of the United Nations-not to preserve fossilized prejudices." - Albert Guerard. AUGUST 1957 Africa are only one-tenth of the population but c o n t r i b u t e much more than their share to the civilization t he r e . The choice offered them-gto"t out or get killed-is not sensibie. The real North African problem is the presence of four distinct elements there: the? Berber aborigines ( Mos 1 e m ) ; Arabs; Jews; and Europeans. The mistake of the French is that they have tried to rule alone. In 10 or 20 years, all North Africans will be equal citizens. This will be resented by the French colons who want a rigid caste system; but because France has insisted that Algeria is not a colony but a part of metropolitan France, where equality is taken for granted, the colons cannot have their way. For their part, Arab leaders prefer becoming part of Pan-Arabia even to full citizenship within France. They are prone to use the fanatical Berber tribesmen to help them in their revolt. Bourguiba, leader of the Tunisian Neo-Destour party, seems to realize the mutual need that all civilized people-Christian, Moslem, French, Arabianhave to live together, lest fano.ticism destroy them all together. The fourth type is outright imperialism: domination of the many by the few. In several decades India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Burma, Indonesia, Viet25 nam, Iraff, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt have been freed. Only "satellites" of major powers remain. The peaceful way of Britain kept India and Ceylon in the Commonwealth. The French, however, trying to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh over Vietnam, fell into a trap of violence. If the ensuing conflict had led to full liberty for all the peoples of Indo-China, no one would have regretted seriously the removal of imperial French power. Unfortunately, in the north there has been only a substitution of one imperial force for another, this time the Communists, as Sir John Kotelawala recognized at Bandung. 26 Road ot P1z.ou 7 HE oNLY highway in the world built on a roadbed of iron ore is nearing completion in Brazil, the Pan American Union says. The new road will link Rio de Janeiro, the national capital, with Belo Horizonte, the capital of the minerally rich state of Minas Gerais. It promises to become a major spur to the economic and industrial development of the Latin-American republic. Known as the Rio-Belo Horizonte Highway, the road has been under construction for four years. It will be 320 miles long, with much of that distance winding through the rugged mountains of the Sierra do Espinhaco range.· Soon after the road builders began work, they encountered a serious problem. The cost of transporting crushed rock and gravel through the difficult terrain for use in the roadbed became prohibitive. At this point one of the engineers recalled that the highway was being built through an area rich in iron ore. So the builders dispensed with crushed rock and used the iron ore. A forty-mile stretch of the new highway now has an iron base covered with an asphalt surf ace. PANORAMA On August 14, 12 years ago ..• PEACE CAME SUDDENLY WITH A SWING of his strong arms the young man landed feet first on the steel deck of the truck, his carbine in his hand, a ragged cap on his head. It was approaching darkness and as the truck began its slow crawl down the hill, he could hear the crickets in the quiet rice paddies and terraces. Evening! He relaxed his grip on the side of the truck and waited patiently, like a man in church. As the truck gathered speed, the dust began to rise and the heavy tailgate banged noisily. The young man sat riding in that mystic green land between the San Bernardino Strait and the South China Sea. He sat between incense and the bullet. "How long," he asked himself, "is a lifetime?" From down the narrow road came the answering cry of the locust. AUGUST 1957 By Lorin A. Ullenbeck The young man riding down the evening-cooled road of August sat patiently awaiting the mosquitoes, the darkness, and the strange noises of night and blackness in a far-away land. He sat thinking of the exotic places. He sat between Aparri and Legaspi and he thought of the mystic places, of Samark and Sarawak, of Balikapan, of Shanghai and Manila. The man in the mud-browned uniform thought of the far-away places. Then, night came. The truck lights went on, the Filipino women walking at the roadside carried flaming oil lamps. Across the wet fields came the solitary shots of the nervous guards seeing strange things in the night. A cloud covered the moon. The truck halted and the young man jumped out, 27 thanked the driver, and began walking down a narrow path, carbine slung loosely over his shoulder. He walked and felt the thin piece of paper from the girls' seminary in Indiana. "How long?" he asked himself. A HEAD, at the theater built under a tin shed of the Central Luzon Agricultural College, the familiar faces danced across a screen. He went in and stood up forward. The picture was fuzzy and blurred. He concentrated, trying to project j1imself from out of the sweat and stench of the shed onto that fuzzy screen where a tall blonde spoke throatily. But the carbine and the tired feet and the heat permitted of no luxuries and he stood watching, waiting. Two Filipino boys in khaki uniforms walked p a s t the guards in the dark and stood watching the screen, talking to themselves. Outside, a gun went off. Then a voice came over the loudspeaker, interrupting the picture: "This is Miller, the United Press correspondent. japan has accepted Potsdam." Then there was no voice and the movie went on and nobody listened. There was silence. Then a submachinegun fired a clip through the tin roof. Somebody joined in with a carbine. Pam-pam-pampam-pam-pam went the slugs through the roof. It had come and gone. It was here. The young man felt a pain in his stomach and his knees went weak. "God!" he muttered. The bullets kept up their pampam, the blonde on the screen kept opening her mouth, but there was no sound, the lights were on and there was noise but no sound, except the singing and the shouting and the bright flashes of noise and flame. The young man walked out into the night air and the pink envelope in his pocket was wet with sweat. All night long the firing continued. The guards in the black r.ight prayed · to them~elves and the frightened Filipinos kneeled down before the black crucifixes and made the sign of the cross. The Japanese had come again, they thought; the war had co m e again, they thought. And on the trucks riding through the night some men emptied their carbines into the air and some men said nothing. Overheard: "There are two things I can't bear about that woman - her faces." 28 PANORAMA The llow ol truthlul information meets roadblocks in our country, including limited lacilities and publisher bias HOW ';ue IS OUR PRESS? By VICENTE ALBANO PACIS I I THEORETICALLY, under our Constitution and our laws, our agencies of mass communication are af.ong the freest in the free war] . The Bill of Rights expressly prohibits the Congress and other government agencies from enacting any law abridging the freedom of speech, press and assembly. Although we do have laws punishing slander and libel, indecency and pornography, no further limitation may be imposed by law without being unconstitutional. The essence of our liberty of expression is freedom from previous ~· Any individual may utter or print anything it pleases without submitting it for government approval before its publication. If, howAUGUST 1957 ever, anyone is harmed or offended by what is said, printed or published, then and only then may the speaker, writer or publisher be made to account for his action. -ill' practice, unfortunately, there exist many roadblocks to the free flow of truthful information. Among them are the IJmited 86QAOmic means and the rl.l.dimentary reading habits of Jhe people; the limitations sometimes imposed upon the working personnel of the agencies of mass communication either by themselves or by their employers; the deficient programming in radio and TV and the discrimination in the sale of and/or the increasingly prohibitive rates of their time; the quite frequent 29 restrictive government policies; and the increasing use in politics of the means and methods of psychological warfare, public relations and other forms of propaganda. Although since the war the circulation of Philippine newspapers and magazines have considerably increased, the sectors of our country and our population that until now are untouched by the blessings of journalism are big and wide. Before the war, highest Sunday newspaper circulation ever reached was about 80,000, and this was only a claim without benefit of the independent auditing. Today, with independent auditing checking circulation claims, the highest S u n d a y circulation known is nearly the double of this figure. Magazine circulation has also correspondingly increased; however, the most popular magazines are vehicles of fiction and other materials of entertainment rather than of information. T h e provincial press has also relatively progressed. There are now wideawake newspapers in quite a few of the bigger cities outside of Manila, including Iloilo, Cebu, Davao and Dagupan. Nevertheless, the circulation of the newspapers and magazines are spread so thinly that they have very little effect or influence in most of the provinces and towns. Since news is interesting to people in direct 30 proportion to its freshness and the proximity of the locale, the attempt to blanket the Philippines with newspapers published in Manila and a few other cities is not very satisfactory. More of the cities and towns should have and no doubt will eventually have their own newspapers, and the total circulation of newspapers and magazines should be more in direct proportion to the total population. In the United States, there are about two newspaper copies sold daily for every family. T HE LIMITED circulation and the absence of newspapers in many communities in the country are primarily due to two causes. The economic life of most of the communities cannot support newspapers of their own, and the people themselves, except a relatively few, neither have the means to buy newspapers nor the developed habit to wish to read them. The average citizen who may be said to have been adjusted to democracy feels strange and uneasy unless he is abreast of the news by being able to read a daily or at least a weekly newspaper regularly. Fortunately, the cost of newspapers and magazines is often a real bargain, thus enabling them to render a twofold public service. Copies of newspapers and magazines are usually sold to the public at cost and somePANORAMA times at less than cost. This is possibly because a publication derives its income not only from subscription but also from advertising. In order to have a real newspaper, a community must therefore not only have enough subscribers but also enough businesses that can afford to buy advertising space. Such indispensable support just does not exist at the present time in most of our communities. Not only are established businesses that are able to buy advertising too few or entirely lacking, but the generality of the people do not read. This is a strange situation in the light of the years of effort of the schools, through courses in current events, to habituate our youth to read newspapers and magazines. In spite also of the 65 per cent literacy that we have already achieved, we have perhaps the lowest rate among nations of equal social and political development in book, magazine and newspaper readership. The basic reason for this situation should be thoroughly looked into and, if possible, remedied, for it is a powerful factor conditioning the quality of Philippine democracy. The flow of truthful information meets another roadblock, in spite of the broad liberties of expression, in the acts of omission and commission of some of the working personnel of the AUGUST 1957 a~'-"'----'='""--~~=--------'1ici:ated the owners who noLQ.11_!,y bave to protect their ..QWD.j_I!!~r• ests but also curry_ faVQ!:iLlr_Q_tp. ~nd pl~ favorites_Jl~C ~· As a result, some public ngures get into the headlines more often than others, not because they are more newsworthy, but simply because they are friends of the publisher. In the gathering and displaying of news some working press, radio and TV men themselves often abuse or fail to use the freedom of expression. It is a well-known fact that some newspaper and magazine writers are in the payrolls of the government or business offices whose activities they are supposed to report with objectivity and impartiality. Once they place themselves under such obligation, 'however, they in effect play the role of press relations officers for the public officials or private businessmen in their ne~beats. '!'he reporting of provincial news, except for the handful of correspondents appointed and paid by the Manila newspapers, is now undertaken by a single press service. In most cases, no other newspaperman is available in a locality outside of the service's correspondent to check on the veracity of his report. This condition is not of course the fault of the news service, for there is no prohibition 31 against the organization of rival news gathering services. The point is simply that at this stage of our countrywide news-gather-. ing effort, the conditions produce a veritable monopoly. T HE COVERAGE of radio and television in the Philippines is limited. There are only about 10,000 radio sets and 1,000 TV sets in use in the Philippines. Many of them are dependent on batteries or an electric systems that function only during certain hours of the evening. With the strict limitation on the importation of sets and their consequently prohibitive prices, a substantial increase in their number in the near future is doubtful. Theoretically accessible to a 11 parties and all political candidates, the radio and TV have sometimes also discriminated by selling their desirab1e hours to buyers of their choice, leaving others in the cold. Their rates are also prohibitive to virtually all but the best-heeled parties and candidates. It may eventually be necessary for the stations to divide their available time among parties and candidates equitab'y, or the government itself will step in to impose a simih.r requirement. Because the greatest service of the mass media is to disseminate information to serve as the raw material of public opinion, the bulk of the infor32 mation they carry is about and from the government. This is even more so in the Philippines where the government intervenes in most aspects of everyday life. Sometimes, however, government officials follow regulations or" procedures which in effect greatly curtail the freedom of information. This happens when they put their offices off limits to newspapers, radio and TV -men; or when they confine their contact with the press to prepared press releases; or when they discourage or obstruct newspapers, radio and TV reporters from making inquiries or digging up records and documents in order to develop enterprise stories. It goes without saying that the government official and the govetnment office that are afraid to take the accredited represent~ tives of the mass media intt> their confidence usually have something to hid~ from the p&blic. But even before we have been able to develop the mass media to a position of strength and influence, certain phonomena that have come to constitute another roadblock to the free flow of truthful information are catching up with us. These are the means and methods of psychological warfare, public relations and other forms of propaganda which politicians and political parties are employing in increasing measure. PANORAMA These means and methods are in themselves relatively new developments, but even in highly-developed democracies with vigorous and stab!e mass media, their impact has had an upsetting effect. In the Philippines, with the public press, radio and television relatively younger and weaker and the people less sophisticated, their advent can be disastrous. There is as yet no clear-cut record in Philippine politics of the insinuated power of public relations. It can perhaps be said that its serious use also began in the 1953 presidential election, and it is quite safe to predict that its use in the alreadyraging presidential campaign will be far greater. If in the United States, where popular political sophistication is common, the political use of public relations is regarded with apprehension, in the Philippines, where such sophistication probably barely exists, its extensive use in politics should perhaps be regarded with alarm. Mother: "Darling, what did you do at the party?" Little boy: "Sang the refrigerator song." Mother: "Tell mamma how it goes." Little boy: "Freeze a jolly good fellow." :{. Juan: Do not be discouraged, man. In this world there is a man for every woman, and a woman for every man. You can't improve on an arrangement like that! Pedro: I don't want to improve on it. I just want to be a part of the arrangement, that's all. :{. "And what did you do before you were married?" asked the radio announcer of the dour-looking contestant. "Anything I wanted to," was the reply. * AUGUST 1957 33 () y UNANIMOUS VOTE, Prince J) Wan Waithayakon of Thai 1 an d was elected President of the eleventh session of the United Nations General Assembly. This is the culmination of his long career of serving the cause of world peace, which began in days of the old L~ague of Nat:ons. Prince Wan is perhaps Asia's most experienced diplomat. He has served his country as diplomat, statesman and teacher for forty years. Currently, he is Thailand's Minister of Foreign Affairs and his country's permanent representative at the United Nations, in addition to serving as President of the General Assembly. In Thailand, this prince-diplomat is addressed as His Royal Highness, Prince Wan Waithayakon Krommum Naradhip Bonsprabandhat. He is a member of the Thai Royal family, a third cousin to the King. But in the world diplomatic circles of which he has long been a part, the effervescent, friendly diplomat is known simply as Prince Wan. As President of the UN General Assembly Prince Wan maintains a gruelling day and night schedule. At night he meets with the various delegations; during the day in the great blue and gold assembly room where the delegates of 79 n.:itions hold their meetings. Tall and broad-shouldered, 34 ?neel Wan ... In the cause ol peace with black hair and heavy brews above sparkling dark eyes, Prince Wan looks much younger than his years. He was born in Bangkok, August 25, 1891, the son of Prince Naradhip and Tuan Montrikul. At the age of 14 he was sent to Marlborough College in England, and later studied at Balliol College, Oxford University, where he received his B. A. degree in 1914. His career as a diplomat began there three years later when he went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Sciences Politzques and to serve as secretary of the Siamese legation. In 1920 he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and within the next ten PANORAMA years was named Siamese Minister to London, Brussels and The Hague; he returned to Oxford to obtain his Master's degree; and was named Siamese permanent delegate to the League of Nations. Returning to Bangkok in 1931, Prince Wan became a professor of history at Chulalongkorn University, and later served as acting dean of the University's Faculty of Law. Since 1939 when he returned to government service by popular resuest, Prince Wan has served his country as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague; President of the Royal Institute, Bangkok; a member of the Thai Senate; Ambassador to the United States, 1947-1952; and chief of the Thai delegation and permanent representative to the UN since 1947.-Free World * * * Friend to the Heart A NEW electronic medical device, called cardiac monitor, which records heart beats so feeble that pulse cannot be detected, has been developed in the United States. Originally designed for hospital use, the monitor provides a continuous "picture" of the electrical activity of the heart and enables physicians to diagnose instantly such dangerous conditions as cardiac arrest, shock or peripheral vascular collapse, and ventricular fibrillation or heart tremor. During surgery it has pevented unnecessary opening of the chest for cardiac massage and has enabled surgeons to initiate other resuscitative measures instantly. The cardiac monitor has many advantages which suggest its use outside cf hospitals, such as ambulances and by police, fire department and other rescue squads at disaster scenes and in cases of drowning, electrocution, injuries or illnesses requiring resusci tat ion efforts. The instrument we_ighs only three pounds and is housed in a handy carrying case. It is inexpensive, simple to operate and explosion proof. In operation, the :monitor receives heart impulses through standard electrocardiograph electrodes strapped to a patient's forearm. Inside the device is a transitor circuit which amplifies the heart impulses and records them on a dial or feeds them into headphones. Equipped with its. own power, the cardiac monitor operates for one year on four flashlight batteries. ( USIS) AUGUST 1957 35 60 million years of acretion The Fabulous Guano Caves of Colorado A VISITATION 60,000,000 ~ years ago in what is now the Grand Canyon is of immediate import to American farmers. In that prehistoric period a colony of giant carnivorous bats occupied a labyrinth of limestone caves high in the canyon wall above the Colorado River. The droppings of the creatures over countless years filled the caves, and with the passage of time have become high-grade fertilizer called guano. The deposits are estimated at at least 100,000 tons. The material soon will be on its way to West Coast markets. A few months ago a helicopter c re w strung an 11,500-foot strand of wire across the canyon from its north bank to the cavern's mouth. That wire was 36 used to haul heavier wires in turn, until now a one-and-ahalf-inch track cable for the world's longest single-span, material-handling tramway is in place. Within six weeks the United States Guano Corporation will s ta rt hauling the fertilizer, which over the ages has become an odorless powder, from Bat Cave. Present plans are to take out 10,000 tons a year. That is 10 per cent of the deposits already proved. Since the caves extend far into the earth it is possible that more guano will be found as deposits now located are cleared away. In that event, extraction will be stepped up. Bat Cave guano is a highnitrogen fertilizer especially useful for the green vegetables PANORAMA and long-staple cotton that make up a great deal of California's production. In the shorthand of fertilizer tags, Bat Cave guano ranges from 10-2-2 to 14-2-2; that is, it has a nitrogen content of 10 to 14 per cent, a.nd 2 per cent each of potassium and phosphoric acid. In addition, half a dozen organic substances used in pharmaceuticals have been isolated from it. Any commercial development of these drugs and drug intermediates would naturally add to the value of the guano deposits. They are worth $10,000,000 at the present price for guano of roughly $100 a ton. Bat Cave was discovered in the Nineteen Thirties, shortly after Hoover Dam was completed. Its finder approached the area by boat from Lake Mead, the huge reservoir backed up by Hoover Dam. He filed a claim and later sold it for $50. The first development of the guano was by barge. The material was drawn from the cave by suction, and dropped by gravity into the flat-bottomed craft. This worked well until last year, when the cumulative effect of dry years and the requirements of the Hoover Dam powerhouse dropped the level of Lake Mead some ninety feet. That left sandbars exposed in the river and the u p p e r portion of Lake Mead. AUGUST 1957 ~HE OPERATING group for a while hoped to build a road up the side of the canyon, but abandoned the plan because existing roads to the nearest shipping point would have had to be improved at prohibitive cost. The $500,000 needed for constructing a tramway also was beyond the operators' means, so they sold out to New Pacific Coal and Oils, Ltd., a Canadian holding company. New Pacific through United States Guano started construction of the tramway last August and now is about ready to exploit the guano. In full operation, the deposits will be sucked from the floors of the chambers of Bat Cave by a powerful vacuum gatherer. This will draw the powdery material through a ten-inch pipe to a bag house, so-called because it functions like the bag of a v a c u um cleaner. From the bag h o u s e the guano will be dropped to loading bins, which will discharge their contents into the tramway bucket. In addition to the lateral mile-and-a-half run of the tramway, there is a lift of 2,900 feet involved, from the canyon floor to its rim on the opposite side. The guano will be sacked at the rim, since it comes from the cave in condition to be used. In five, ten and twenty-five pound sacks, it will be hauled 37 in twenty-ton trailers to a warehouse at Kingman, Ariz., where there is a rail connection to Los Angeles. a pioneer in development of guano deposits on islands off the west coast of South America, and has been in the guano business for more than fifty years. Sales a gen t is the Pacific Guano Corporarjon, which was 38 :A C9ostly Joke A CCORDING to the history of Padre Juan Concepcion, the antipathy natives of the Ladrone Islands had towards the Spaniards was caused by the following occurrence, the evil consequences being visited upon the innocent, as usual. About the year 1591 a young sprig who had lived several years in Manila was on the way back to Mexico with what wealth he had garnered. While in Manila he had been befriended by one of its most distinguished personages, whose name and that of the sprig are withheld. It was the early custom, before the northern circle had been adopted as the regular route mapped by Viscaino, to call at Guam for fresh water and supplies. As usual the galleon was immediately surrounded by the Chamorros in their dugouts loaded with fruit and vegetables for sale. The young Spaniard for a joke loaded an arquebus with beans (habas) and fired it at a boat full of natives, who as customary were arrayed in the robes nature had given to them and nothing more. The charge took great effect amongst the surprised vendors and killed outright a young and popular chief. After a great hubbub they rowed ashore and buried the chieftain by their rites. From that d::>.y on, no more conoes came to meet the galleons, and fresh provisions had to be taken ashore at the point of a gun. The man was ostracised by captain and crew and the episode was made the subject of sermcn in Manila itself. A year later the galleon Santa Margarita run ashore on the Island. being out of provisions. under-manned, and storm-battered. Its unfortunate crew and passengers were murdered with horrible tortures, the sick and ailing being dragged by ropes to the villages and impaled on sharp stakes, in revenge of the wanton murder of their chief. A costly joke indeed! PANORAMA By PERCY A. HILL .------------~ ....... ~--------tht old manila 6alltons THE TRACK of the annual galleon to and from the Philippines to Mexico was to the sea, what the King's Highroad was to the land, for the traverse taken by these ships was always the same. For nearly three centuries these stubby old naos were the link binding the Islands of His Majesty to Spain and the civilized world. Sailing the wastes of an ocean far from pacific, guessing at latitude by rheumatism, daring thirst, scurvy and the privateer, the men in these ships served a picturesque yet vital need of the colony. As early as 1568 Uradneta, the priest-navigator, had fixed on Mexico as the center of Oriental comBeing a quaint chapter in our history AUGUST 1957 39 merce, choosing the port of Navidad for refitting and provisioning the galleons. But in 1602 a change was made to Acapulco, its waterless, barren hills shutting in a hot steaming port but a safe place for the shipping of the Pacific. It possessed a masonry fort, San Diego, similar to San Felipe in Cavite, the Philippine terminus, the church, convent and hospital of San Hipolito, and was a busy port during the arrival and departure of the galleons but sunk in lethargy amongst its hills the rest of the year. Orchards of limes - that medicine for scurvy so welcome to the crews - oranges, bananas and papayas, gardens for vegetables, and herds of cattle driven over the rocky trails from Chilpanzingo - the twin mountains that stood for all this were a happy sight to men of voyage-battered n a o s for two centuries. The restriction of the traffic itself was brought about by the jealous and short-sighted merchants of Cadiz and Seville, whose influence was paramount with the Council of the Indies. By royal decree they had the trade limited to two, and then to one galleon each year. The value of the cargo was limited to a quarter million of pesos on the voyage westward and half a million pesos eastward, 40 but these values were measured on an elastic scale and often were triple the amounts specified, especially on the return voyage. The privileges of shipping were limited to the Governor, the judges of the Audiencia, religious and charitable orders, the petty officials, their friends and favorites, these privileges being transferable at a price that often was 500 pesos for each boleta. The galleon was fitted out at the King's expense, for they were purely r o y a l treasure ships. The duty was one-third of the registered cargo; but in actuality the patriots allowed the King as much as a sixth. The merchants who handled the boletas contributed 20,000 pesos as a bounty for the "General" in command, who had nothing to do with the sailing of the ship, his prerequisites in the early days rising as high as 40,000 pesos. The galleons were nearly all constructed in the Islands, for a ship costing, .50,000 pesos in treeless Peru, could be built for eight in the Philippines. The woods used were of the hardest kind, impervious to cannon, but the weight made the ships unwieldy and difficult to handle. A GALLEON rarely exceeded 220 feet over all, and was fitted with a high prow and a PANORAMA much higher stern, containing the main cabins. Some ships had as many as four decks and mounted 40 cannons, but most of the latter were carried as ballast. They had three masts with an immense spread of sail, but their apple-bows prevented swift sailing even if they threw an acre of froth before the prow. The inward traverse being direct, it consumed only from iO to 90 days, but the outward traverse rarely was made under six months. They ranged from seven to eight hundred tons burden and carried from 1,000 to 1,500 boletas, or from 3,000 to 4,500 bales, each boleta having a capacity of about 18 cubic feet. Upon this trade plus the annual subsidy from Mexico of a quarter million silver pesos, Manila existed for over 200 years. But the profit was immense. It was quite easy to make as much as 800 percent. The first cargo of spices realized V asco de Gama 6,000 per cent, and Sebastian Biscaino who charted the galleon route about 1605, estimated a thousand percent profit in the galleon trade. Maritime losses were provided for in the eighteenth century, the funds being supplied by the religious confraternities, and later the Consulado. The people of Manila were AUGUST 1957 in a "happy confusion" for two or three months assembling the boletas, for while Cavite was the home port, Manila supplied the cargo and of course took the profit. The Plaza de Almacenes back of the Santa Clara Nunnery was the chosen spot for months, a busy crowd there packing a n d repacking the bales. There was a multitude of clerks an d escribientes an d huge amounts of paper were consumed in making the invoices in longhand, the description being written out at great length. The lading, an old historian says, was accomplished "amidst a labyrinth of complaints, leg a 1 entanglements, and divided permits for the alloted space on board." Merchandise crowded each available spot and it was common custom to heave to after leaving Cavite and clear decks while still in Manila Bay. The galleons carried between four and five hundred passen41 gers and crew, cramped into odd spaces like sardines on the outward voyage, but there was more elbow room on the return. The passage cost 1,000 pesos to Mexico and 600 on the return, as the ticket makers evidently thought even those with nothing but brawn, cunning or ambition should amass fortunes while in Manila, and were alert to garner their share. Every available space was hung with water jars on leaving Cavite, for the ships could not carry a s u p p 1 y sufficient for six months. But swinging up into the regions of the 40th parallel they found the never-failing rains and with bamboos and mats during the storms refilled the water jars. This region was called "the graveyard of Dona Maria de la Zara," and both crews and passengers suffered a high mortality from pneumonia. THE COMMANDERS were not chosen for any nautical ability but as being the relatives of influential men, who expected a division of the spoil. It was often bestowed upon some individual "whom the governol desired to make happy." It wa one of these, the brother o Governor Zabalburu, Don Franr cisco, who sailed with his wealt~ in the San Zavier in 1705, witl) the slogan "Acapulco or Purga;. tory." As they never arrived at the former port they evidently must have made the latter, hav~ ing been lost at sea. from ~ too hasty preparation and from'. overloading. The food supplied the crew and marines had little variety. Dry beans, garbanzos, rice, salt fish, dried beef and vinegar called wine. The officers and passengers carried their own supplies: dried fruits, hams in salt, dried tongue, and limes in sugar, wines, and live goats, pigs, and fowl which never lasted long. Often, for lack of water, the rice was cooked by steaming over salt-water. The long voyages were deadly monotonous - games of dominoes, dice, chess and tresillo, the daily mass, and repetitions of old news - until the porra or Heating sea kelp off the Lower California coast was sighted. Then the voyagers sang a solemn "Te Deum," and made Cape San Lucas, turning south for the twin hills that marked the cove of sun-scorched Acapulco. After that they made ready for the mule-back journey to Mexico itself. In Acapulco the galleon was warped in to a steeply wooded bank, and later unloading tackles were passed from the masts to trees ashore, and the vessel gently careened so that the accumulations of barnacles and sea weeds, the results of long topic voyages, couid be scraped off. Reversed, the ship was cleaned on her other side, after which the cargo was put on beard and the s1!ip proceeded on its return voyage at a much swifter rate. The captain was ordered to leave Acapulco not later than April the first, water and supply himself at Tinian or Guam, and make for the cape of Espiritu Santo in Samar. Watchfires on Mount Bulusan and a AUGUST 1957 peak on the Catanduanes told him the way was clear to Manila. Columns of smoke indicated the presence of an enemy. The galleons always fired a salute off the coast of Batangas in honor of Our Lady of Casaysay, patroness of happy voyages. The sailing instructions to the captains were explicit and in many ways tended to cramp whatever style of seamanship they possessod, and were based upon security of cargo rather than that of passengers or crew. The hardy Basques and Gallego captains were master marines, after their style, but many were imprisoned for what would be regarded as rank injustice today. A captain, meeting a Dutch man-of-war off the Catanduanes, escaped north in a lucky fog. Fearing ~!lrsuit he ran the galleon ashore and safely landed the treasure, passengers, crew, and ·dispatches, taking these overland to Manila. He was sentenced to be hanged by the misanthropic Governor Fajardo because he had lost his ship! This severe sentence was only kept from being put into effect by the combined efforts of the clergy and the citizens. JN ACCORDANCE with Castilian custom, the galleons nearly always bore the name of some saint, a highly ornamented and 43 gilded image of which looked down from beneath the tall poop lanterns. Our Lady of Peace and Happy Voyages, the patron saint of Antipolo, made several voyages across the Pacific by special order of both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. While during the early period of the galleon trade the generals and pilots received enormous sums for their services, the pay was later brought within reason. In the year 1731, captains received from 2,750 to 4,125 silver pesos per year, according to rank of service. The general received a lump sum, much larger, as always. Mates only got 300 pesos, carpenters 225, gunners 175, mariners, surgeons and artillerymen 100 each, sailors 75 and marines but 50 pesos. The Royal Contador in charge of the annual subsidy received one half peso for every 100 silver pesos duly delivered, but as this rarely was less than a quarter of a million, he was richly rewarded by the voyage. There were other emoluments to the chaplain, the licensed pilot and others, all drawn from the profits of the rich cargoes. The cargo of the galleon of 1731 ran as follows: 447 great chests of Chinese silk, including 60,000 pairs of silk stockmgs destined to adorn the legs of European nobility; 554 onehundred-pound bags of cinna44 mon; one chest of gold dust; 200 curiously carved canes - to go with the stockings perhaps; 1470 great cakes of bees-wax for the making of sacred candles; 51 cases of fine porcelain from Japan ad China; 296 arrobas (25 pounds each) of storax; 1977 arrobas of pepper; 45 chests of the Governor, the contents to be exchanged against supplies and furniture from Mexico; and 19 great chests the property of the religious orders, the greater part to be exchanged for wines for the Mass, the cargo being valued at over half a million. The mortality among the galleons themselves was great. Ten of the great ships were lost in the treacherous currents of the San Bernardino Straits between Samar and Sorsogon before this route was abandoned for the more spacious water passage north. To show the losses caused by faulty maps of the uncharted seas, the following galleons lost in the space of a few years are recorded: The San Luis, lost off the rocks of the Cagayan coast in 1646; the Buen Jesus, burned off Lampon in that same year; the Nuestra Sra. de Buena Esperanza, wrecked off the coast of Negros in 1647; the Nuestra Sra. de Guia, lost off Cochin China in 1648; the San Antonio de Padua, wrecked off Mindoro in 1649; the San Jose and the Encarnacion, both PANORAMA lost off Lubang Island at the mouth of Manila Bay in 1651; the San Diego, lost off the Limbones Islands in 1653; the San Francisco Xavier, capsized near Borngan, Samar, in 1655; the Santa Rosa de Lima, destroyed by fire in 1679; the Santo Nino, damaged and cargo rotted by sea water in 1687; the Santo Cristo de Burgos, damaged near the Marianas, refitted, sailed, and lost - "No report" - 1693; and the San Joseph, cast away three days' sail from Manila in 1691. NOT A FEW voyages ended with the capture of the galleon and its rich cargo. As early as 1587, the English freebooter Cavendish took the Santa Ana off the coast of Lower California, and was reported to have entered the Thames with "'silk and damask sails." Lord Anson captured the Nuestra Sra. de Covadonga and its treasure off Samar in 1743. The English took the galleon Philippino in 1762 and destroyed the Santisima Trinidad at its moorings in 1763. From these brief notes it would seem that about as much rich cargo lies strewing the ocean bed as arrived safely in Acapulco itself. While during the early pericds as many as four ships were allowed until about 1620, the gradual restriction choked off all trade and had much to do with keeping the colony in conAuGUST 1957 stant stagnation and poverty, but the monopoly persisted in spite of the complain ts of the colonists, and few were the ships that dared load in secret, although some were reported, not to speak of illicit coastal pilferings by the way of Borneo and China, and Formosa after the Dutch took this island over. Acapulco is now a sleepy, deserted town on its cove with a negligible t r a de ; Cavite no longer sports the rope-walks, artisans and calkers of old, and its trade has gone to Manila whose great piers are constantly crowded with commercial liners that traffic with the four quarters of the globe. Gone too, are the Spanish k i n g s who merely had to note on the margin of a paper, "Let it be so," even as the high-pooped caravels that bore the commerce of Spain and all the Indies, in the days that Empire exported its strongest and most worthy men, and imported gold and silver in their place. The last galleon left Manila for Acapulco in 1811, returning three years later in 1814. This was the last of the Manila galleons and the end of the galleon trade, for Mexico became independent a few years later and the urges of _the modern era had to be supplied with a more or less free trade, which riid away with monopolies as it did with the terrors of the ocean deeps. 45 By NARCISO G. REYES T HE TRAIN moved out of the station amidst much n o is e and confusion. Newsboys shouted their wares: Miss, Miss, Mabuhay! Mabuhay Extra! Mister, Heraaaaald! Foto News, Mister! Snatches of goodbyes and last minute mes· sages. Don't you forget, ~indo, PANORAMA you get off at Sta. Isabel; watch out for your s.fation. Temyong, don't you ever let go of that b a g , pickpockets are everywhere, be careful. Regards to Ka LJweng, Sela, and tell them we'll go home for Holy Week. Happy t r i p , Mrs. Enriquez. Give me a smile, Ben, I won't be gone long, I'll write every day. Thank goodness that pest of a Turo has left at last; now we'll have peace in the house. Just extend my best wishes. Goodbye. Goodbye. Till next time. The sudden and sharp snort of the engine. Then the screech of the cars hooked to one another. A long blast and the doubtful chug-chug of the pistons. The train sprang to life and moved slowly. H-s-s-sssss. Chug-chug-chug . . . Danding left behind the dimness of the Tutuban Station as the untrammeled air and the brightness of the morning enveloped him. His Tia Juana breathed deeply and said, "Thank goodness we're on our way at last. It was very noisy and so warm in the station." His Tio 9oryo was looking beyond the window at the houses and gardens along the tracks. The movement of the engine was now fast and rhythmical, like the beating of a healthy heart. The din of their departure was gradually lifted from Danding like a mist, and into AUGUST 1957 his mind crept the purpose of their trip to Malawig. His Tia Juana was saying something again. "The man who had died is your Tata Inong, nephew of your Lola Asy.ang, and is also my and your father's cousin. He was a good man." Danding grew sad although he had never seen the relative who had died. The mention of his father bared a hidden portion of his heart and brought his feelings closer to the unknown dead. He remembered that his father was born and brought up in Malawig. He turned to his Tia Juana and asked about the barrio: whether it was prosperous or poor, whether it was near the town or out of the way. And while his good aunt was ransacking her memory, a pleasant image of the place took shape in Danding's mind, and in his heart dawned an unusual eagerness. At first glance Malawig was no different from any other barrjo in Central Luzon. A narrow and crooked road, coated with thick and yellow dust. Bamboo clumps, mango, coconut and acacia trees. Nipa houses, most of which were very old, the walls and roofs burnt from too long exposures to the sun. In between the nipa houses was an occasional wooden house or two, big and unpainted; or a store, hardly re47 cognizable from a distance. Here and there, between the thin rows of houses, could be seen the beautiful and beneficient countryside. And above everything else, the cloudless sky was wreathed in smiles, full of the glory of the morning. "Nothing is beautiful here except the sky," jokingly said the kutsero of the calesa they had hi red. Danding fought against the disappointment that had welled up in his heart. "It is not so," he replied softly, then added to himself: "In barrios like this one were born and brought up men like Del Pilar and ot_her martyrs of the race; in their fields precipitated the heroism of the Revolution." This thought consoled him and gave a new face to the surroundings. HE HAD so many relatives. Tia Juana did the endless introductions. This is your Lolo Tasyo and this is your Lola Ines. Your cousins Juan, Ce-· ling, Maria and Asyas. Your Nana Bito. Your Tata Enting. Bow and smile here, handkissing there. Relatives close and distant, real and adopted, old and young. It seemed as if all the people in the house, from the ones at the foot of the stairs to those in the rooms were Danding's relatives. "It's good that my nose is naturally 48 flat," he thought. "Otherwise, it would have been worn down to a stub by now." Because they were the only ones who arrived from Manila, all the attention of the people were focused on them. Greetings buzzed forth. Everybody inquired about Danding's sick father, and his mother, who was now the sole support of the family. Danding glanced at. his Tia Juana who was trying to catch and answer the more particular questions. She was already indifferent to her nephew's sensitiveness. and she knew that the misfortune of his father was an unhealing wound in his heart. But she could not understand the replies of Danding, w h o n o w seemed to be more communicative, at least with his relatives, whom he had just met. A thin sawali wall was all that divided the living room from the inmost recess of the 1 10use wherein the dead lay in state. The people, paying their !·espects to the dead and to the bereavt:d family kept streaming in and out of the entrance which was decorated on both sides with white curtains caught by black ribbons. But when Danding entered the room something within him changed. The noise from the outside feeme:d to have ceased all of a sudden and the silence of d;;,, ''1 touched his heart. Slowly ht 'Tproached the coffiin and gazed at the face of the dead man. He saw a fair and pleasant visage that showed honesty and courage in every line. Danding traced in the breadth of the forehead, in the eyes which were not comptetely closed and in the shape of the nose, a slight resemblance to his father. He was moved to sudden sadness and sympathy. "You haven't greeted your J\;ana Marya yet," his Tia Juana softly reminded him. "And your cousin Bining," she added in a whisper. Danding kissed the hand of the widow of the dead man. Afterwards he sat down beside Sining, but he could not say anything to her. His heart was somehow full. After a few moments he reached for an album from the table nearby, opened it and then reflected on the mysterious and powerful role of blood in joining people together. 49 AFTER LUNCH, Danding went downstairs and walked to the rice field at the back of the house. The harvest season was over, the sheafs of palay were gathered in a neat stack. The bare earth which smoldered from the heat of the sun was already cleared. Danding sat down beneath a bamboo clump and looked around him. At his left, not far away, was his Lolo Tasyo who was at that time splitting several bamboo poles. The keen blade of the old man's bolo glinted like a jewel in the sun. Danding got up and approached the old man. Lolo Tasyo was the first one to speak. "You are like your father," he said. "Why, sir?" "Because you are restless in the midst of many people; you prefer to be by yourself." "There are moments when one must be alone." "He also talked that way, young in years but possessed of a mature mind." "Did you witness his youth, sir?" "Witness!" Lo 1 o Ta s yo laughed. "This boy! It was I who buried your father's inunan. I made him his first toy. He was orphaned early by his father." Lolo Tasyo stood suddenly and pointed his bolo toward the boundary of the rice field. 50 "There he often flew his kite when he was still a child. At the other side of the field he fell from his carabao when once went to plow with me. He was hurt that time, I thought he would not stop crying." The old man turned his head and looked up the mango tree behind him. "I made your father climb up this tree and hide among its branches one afternoon, during the heat of the revolution, when it was rumored that Spaniards who had run berserk were coming this way. And over there, where you had been sitting just a few moments ago, he wrote his first poem - dedicated to the beauty of one of the maidens he had met in town. Your father had a naughty streak in him." Danding smiled. "Was that girl the reason why he went to Manila?" "Yes," Lolo Tasyo paused for a while, as if he were recalling to mind what had happened. "They were caught beside a palay stack." "Caught, sir?" "Yes - under the light of a few flickering stars." There were m a n y things which Danding wanted to ask the old man, but he remembered the dead and the people in the house; they might be looking for him. Gradually he cut off the conversation, leaving old Lolo Tasyo to his me· PANORAMA mories. "What did you see in the field?" teased one of his newlydiscovered cousins. "The sun," said Danding as he closed his eyes which had not yet adjusted themselves to the twilight that seemed to shroud the house. The cemetery was situated beside the church; this reminded Danding of God's promise to Adam and his children, and the sad and painful parting between them which only death could end completely. He also remembered that in the small graveyard forever s 1 e p t the dust of his forbears the poor remnants of the Katipunan, of the hopes, love, sorrow and joy, the noble dreams and the frustrations which were his heritage from his family. His tread was light on the soft earth; he tried not to step on even the meanest plant. The grave was ready. There was nothing more to be done except the lowering of the casket and the covering of the hole afterwards. But at the last moment the lid of the coffin opposite the face of the dead man was opened again, so that the orphans could take their last look at the deceased. The silence was ruffied; suppressed sobs and mute cries, more heartrending than loud outbursts, reigned for several minutes. Danding clamped his jaws toAUGUST 1957 gether, but in spite of his restraint on his emotions, he felt t e a r s ::lustering around his eyes. For a moment his sight became blurred. An intense grief and a vague feeling that he was also undergoing another kind of death flooded his heart. Feeling uneasy and disturbed by the tightness in his breast, Danding slowly left the cemetery and returned to the house. HE WANTED to be alone, but when he saw that some people still remained in the house he slipped away toward the field. The sun was already going down and the wind was becoming chilly. The grey arm of dusk threatened the sky. Danding stopped beside a bamboo clump and wiped away the perspiration on his face and neck. The serenity of the field was like a mother's hand that caressed Danding's hot brow. He breathed deeply, sat down on the ground and closed his eyes. Slowly he straightened his legs and pressed his palms against the earth. He raised his head, letting the gentle breeze play on his feverish face. How cold and sweet-smelling was the breeze! Gradually his sadness a n d anxiety left him; his tired body began to feel relaxed. His heart felt light on the piece of land 51 which nurtured his father. The wind was blowing harder and harder, bringing with it the scent of the earth and the palay stack. Danding remembered the stories of his Lolo Tasyo about his father, and he smiled to himself. The flying of the kites in the fields, the fall from the carabao. Hiding from the Spaniards, composing a poem. The girl beside the palay stack - all these became fresh in his mind. Danding laughed softly and made himself more comfortable on the ground. Like a tree whose roots were deeply bedded, he felt a kinship with the field which once was watered by tears and rang with the laughter of his father. At that moment Danding ~eemed to hold within his grasp the secret of love for the native land. Now he understood why banishment to a foreign country was a heavy punishment; why the sons who were separated from their families by distance braved typhoons and floods just to reach their homeland; why Rizal and Bonifacio, unflinchingly and without question, gave up their lives. B e y o n d the courageous words, the unusual sacrifices and the death of heroes, Danding caught a glimpse of the piece of land upon which had stood their homes, the source of their livelihood, a sharer of their secrets and keeper of their heritage .. . From the direction of the house he heard voices; his name was being called. He got up ~lowly. Night had fallen and the darkness had spread everywhere. The moonless sky was dusky. But Dariding could still discern the bamboo tops which had seen his father composing his first poem, and the few twinkling stars which had witnessed his first love. -Translated by Florlinda F. Soto. • • • Said the beautiful Hollywood star: "I Jove the simple thi~s of life!' And to prove it she married three or four of them. * PANORAMA . " ....... ,....,., ~ j . . . . . . . -~i'.... 'r.l .. . ; '~ • • ···~_,.~i'.~:'.·'.,.:,,,. '"', . ·-·-· - ·-~"-'>~-- ~ " . i.'fl".--·~ ;1. - ~ ~ U -°" : ,~--SOil-~<i!" i;o- ·~ ~ ----·~ - ·~ ·"".{_•· , •M , . . ~. Ja, ·~ .~ • . . ., • l\'1 l\'1 k PRIDE OF MANILA is the Luneta (upper center), .fJanorama .fJee scene of many a national fe~tivitv, and the ' h•00 d clean Dewey Bguleyqrd ''n·er fggeg•o1uvU Book Review The Magsaysay Story* By LEONARD CASPER D ESPITE THE prefatory warning that "This book makes no pretense of being a dispassionate study of a life," the weakness of the Romulo-Gray biography lies pre· cisely in its occasional remoteness from Magsaysay, boy and man. Long stretches of the first several chapters, dealing with the future President's youth, are practically spelled out in basic English by someone (Romulo? Gray? some reporter from the Evening News?) devoted to the belief that the first word in every sentence must be its grammatical subject. Although the guilt for such sophomorism may never be fixed, one sus· pects the voice of Romulo in later apostrophes of such florid nature as "Blessed is the benevolence of Nature that keeps awareness from youngsters who rely on their elders for protection during the hazards of war." And Romulo's narcissism is indisputably evident in the final chapters on the 1953 election, in which he is assigned the role of the noblest Roman of them all. In a typical paragraph, the authors explain why Magsay· say did not appoint Romulo ambassador to the United States. "Anyway Romulo did not want any such appointments. He wanted no 'plums' from the administration. He had been Magsaysay's campaign manager. He wanted no reward. But Mag• Carlos P. Romulo and Marvin M: Gray, The Ma,gao11•011 StoT71 (John Day Co.: New York, 1966). 54 PANORAMA saysay needed someone he could rely upon in the United States. Romulo was asked to be special and personal envoy of President Magsaysay in the United States, in lieu of ambassador." To any close observer of the 1953 election and subsequent events, this self-professed nobility must seem farcical! While pages are devoted to the "services" performed by Romulo and Gray, no mention is made of such men as Bob Stewart, whose radio resourcefulness did so much to make possible the "clean election" of 1953. THAT The Magsaysay Story is often interesting despite its elementary style and frequent explorations of the wrong by-paths is a tribute not to the writers, but to the subject himself. At least the public man is visible, with some truth to his private temper secured, in the facts alone. The reflection of Ramon Magsaysay's youth on his political career is clear. His father's scrupulous honesty (Exequiel was fired from his job as teacher of carpentry for flunking the school superintendent's son) and respect for manual labor were influences that lasted as long as Magsaysay lived. Without complaint, Ramon was on a road construction gang at the age of seven; then he labored in his father's blacksmith shop; later he worked his way through Zam bales Academy (living cheaply for awhile in a haunted house) and, by 1927, the University of the Philippines and Jose Rizal College (he was a mechanic at 30 centavos a day: but, however broke, always open-handed). As a mechanic for Try-Tran, after 1931, he found a system for defeating the graft of drivers; and by 1933 had become not only a trusted emp"loyee but also, after a labored courtship, the husband of Luz Banzon, daughter of a rich family from Bataan which had sold Its transportation system to Try-Tran. His removal to the Zambales branch, under a new manager, brought only poverty and misery, increased when the line was requisitioned in 1941 for defense purposes. While his wife and children hid in the hills, Magsaysay served the 31st Division and later Merrill's guerrillas, so bravely (and careless of promotion) that he was recommended to become Zambales' military governor in peacetime. At no time then or thereafter would he accept gifts from his old outfit; but he enjoyed their respect and devotion. Later, as Congressman, he continued to dress simply, speak softly, and AUGUST 1957 55 56 not abuse the PNB. By (950, sensing the country's internal danger (Quirjno even kept an escape gunboat on th_e Pasig), Magsaysay suggested himself as Secreta_ry of National Defense with a plan to rehabilitate those Huks who were willing to surrende_r. Within a snort time, dramatically, the Politburo had been betrayed to him (and been d~fended by Recto and others), as were also the Panay Huks .. Gradually Quirino felt that Magsaysay w~s outgrowing his use: he had planned EDCQ.R; brought Moises Padilla's body to Manila and urged the trial of Liberal governor Rafael Lacson; been properly lionized by the Lions International in Mexico; placed much of the blame for the trouble with Kamion's Moros on maladministration. FINALLY the break came, in 1953, with the organizing of such groups as the MPM under Crisol and its counterpart under Pacita Warns, favoring the new Nacionalista candidate, Magsaysay. The elections were clean: otherwise, say the authors, Magsaysay's armed guerrillas were poised for a coup d'etat! The rapid round of executive and legislativ~ accomplishments in Magsaysay's term of office are still fresh in the popular memory: the founding of the PCAC; the splintering of Alejandrino from Taruc so that the latter's surrender was forced; the rebuilding of the MRR and the transfer of arrastre; SEATO; Operation Brotherhpod; the Retail Nationalization Act; the digging of artesian wells in the barrios; and a long list of important etceteras. Magsaysay was a man of action; and died actively, sooner than the authors or anyone else would have guessed. In one of their rare insights, Romulo and Gray wrote: "Magsaysay had only the people. The people had only their votes." The comparison with Eisenhower is superficial: Magsaysay was more dynamic, more original, more indispensable. His loss is greater. Exactly how much greater, time and more-intimate histories alone can tell. * * * IN MEMORIAM: Ramon F. Magsaysay - born August 31, 1907; died March 17, 1957. PANORAMA Will the Free World help? _AN ESTIMATED t 0 t a 1 of ~ 700,000 refugees are liv. ing in Hong Kong today in extreme poverty. Some have little more than the barest necessities of life. The vast majority went there to escape from Communist China. Now they have nowhere else to go and little more to · hope for in life unless international aid is made available to help the Hong Kong government cope with the problem. On the basis of housing fa. cilities, space and employment possibilities this British colony is estimated to have normal accommodations for a population of about 1,200,000. At the present the population is slightly more than 2,500,000. AUGUST 1957 There are only twelve square miles in the colony's total of 391 square miles of rock-bound land that are adaptable for housing areas and only fifty other square miles suited for agriculture, according to official estimates. On the basis of space alone, the administration is desperately pressed to care for the refugees. Approximately 200,000 refugees have been housed by the Hong Kong government in fireproof concrete buildings under living conditions that would seem primitive to most Westerners. But the housing has electric lights, communal sanitation, water, warmth and ventilation. Limited schooling and medical attention are also available to the refugees. 57 Many in this group have integrated themselves in to the business and industrial life of the colony. The outlook is grim, however, for the half million still to be cared for. Most persons in this group sleep almost any place where they can find room enough to lie down. Huts of packing case wood, flattened tin cans and burlap spring up overnight on housetops and hillsides, along sidewalks and in back alleys. In the worst squatter areas there are no sanitation facilities an d n o refuse disposal areas. Water is scarce and food even scarcer. Usually there are no windows in the huts and the doors are o ft en improvised from burlap sacking. The more ''privileged" classes share their huts with such chickens, ducks and pigs as they can steal or lure into their possession. ,,?'/SIDE FROM the humanitarian aspects of the problem, this large group of destitute refugees is a breeding ground for discontent and vice. Even though the group includes individuals who left China voluntarily, mainly because of their hatred of communism, this alone does not prevent the growth of bitterness as a result of their almost hopeless plight. This became violently evident 58 last October when lawless elements incited riots marked by an element of racial hatred. The appearance of a white face in the troubled areas was a signal for attack. .Before the riots, a number of fires had broken out in squatter areas. On Christmas night in 1953 the largest of the fires ! e ft 50,000 refugees without shelter and leveled and charred forty-five acres. This gave rise to a refugee resettlement program that is still in effect there. According to government estimates, about $55,000,000 in public funds already have been spent directly and indirectly in the refugee resettlement program. Plans exist now for resettling 230,000 more squatters in the next six years, but successful accomplishment of these plans appears impossible without outside assistance. Among the refugees there are some who went to Hong Kong before the communists seized control on the China mainland and some who sold their dwellings to refugees with means and then became refugees themselves. By far the largest group, however, is composed of those who fled China because of the communist take-over there. The Hong Kong government makes no distinction among the refugees. Most of the refugees have one thing in common: PANORAMA They refuse to return to Red China regardless of how desperate is their existence in Hong Kong. A number of political observers there cite this as strong evidence of the failure of the communist government to win the full support of the Chinese people. Hong Kong has struggled unassisted and with a minimum of complaint in dealing with a problem created mainly by individual desires for freedom. But it is becoming increasingly evident that the burden is growing too heavy for Hong Kong to bear alone. Without considerable assistance from outside sources, thousands of refugee lives will inevitably be lost because of privation and sickness. Democratic nations of the world may be hard-pressed to explain their indifference to this group that turned its back on communism. As one Hong Kong official explained the problem, the question boils down to whether this colony must be made to face the full responsibility of extending a friendly ha n d to thousands who sought refuge there because of a world problem, or whether the free world will share that responsibility. Roll Call Time Did you hear about the wreck? No. Y ah, four professors and a student were killed. Poor fellow. ¥ Overheard on campus: "One of our professors is such a sloppy dresser that even the other professors have noticed it." ¥ History professor: "Name an early settler." Student: "Bicarbonate of soda." ¥ Bright student: "My, the teacher's English was mutilated this morning." Dim student: "Yeah, who done it?" ¥ AUGUST 1957 59 Literary Personality - XXXll {.Jeorges 1Bernanos: <Darl? Vigniy Sun Everywhere: space MY LIFE is already heavy with the dead. But none are so dead as the little boy that was once me," wrote Georges Bernanos. The resurrection of his childhood, its faith and knowledge, has been the purpose of his writing, in book after book, trying to recover the forgotten tongue of children. This is a strange thing to say of an author whose works record the constant intersection of the orbits of devils, like dark pigmy suns burning man's overhead; but since his youth he has been even more aware of the space which permits the will of the sun passage and at the same time marks its way with friction - grace which Bernanos says is everywl!ere, in the most unlikely cranny of fear or hate. His worldly men are often subtle, shadowy beasts of prey themselves, peering as Neville Braybrooke says "out of this jungle where the trees have turned to stone and the skymastering pylons are like cancerous parasites." Yet they are not fully free to say they are fully enslaved by circumstance. The shadow of a Cross falls athwart their lives as a reminder that from hard blocks of dirt one can build either a barroom or a cathedral. The last, confident words of the Cure of Ambricourt, dying of cancer in this infectious jungle world (The Diary of a Country Priest, 1936) are the expression of hope di~coverable in the other Bernanos novels: Star of Satan ( 1926), The Deception (1927), Joy (1929), A Crime (1936), Open Mind (1943); and the posthumous Night Is Darkest (1952). The rest 60 PANORAMA of his work is pol~mical, "the notebooks of a novelist about freedom, liberty and responsibility in the religious sense." B ERNANos' vision is that of the constant, ongoing battle between heaven and hell, reflected in the daily mutual torture of men and women who sometimes betray their demoniacal possession. Only eternity's eye can see th~ full justice of human events; but even through a glass darkly a man might guess it. Guided by that flickering hope of chance, Bernanos has stood firmly against the political tides of his time. His condemnation of Franco during the Spanish Civil War was as unrelenting as E.l Caudillo was ruthless, neither opportunist bishop nor imported general nor tongue-in-cheek patriot being spared. When Czechoslovakia was dismembered, he prophesied the days of wrath that would lie ahead. Of collaborators and quislings in his own country during the war he spoke with righteous contempt. Among people with a materialistic philosophy, Bernanos felt little confidence even in parliamentary democracy as the decisive antagonist against demonism. But as a Frenchman ·he recalled that brave sanctity sometimes bursts out of the shadows, as Joan of Arc did. The Beatitudes could become a battle cry. Each man would find his own way to say them. A writer could not turn his back on God because his profession, taken seriously with full honesty, was sacramental. In Bernanos' writing, murder is a daily event (Star of Satan, A Crime, Night Is Darkest), always committed by a woman and always symbolic of the attempted suicide of her soul. Each of his murderers has been corrupted as a child. Often they sin because that is a way for them to express their liberty, truth making conditions too hard for a greedy person! So instinctive is their evil-doing, they are understood to be performing demoniacal worship. BUT BERNANOS also makes his readers aware of one of the paradoxes of the free will. Men are not completely free of the presence of grace. In Star of Satan the murder which Mouchette commits is removed from her complete responsibility when her moral heredity is explained to her; her pride is so lowered when she realizes that, alone, she is not really capable of murder, that she asks to be carried into AUGUST 1957 61 62 church to die before the tabernacle. Evil is scatter~d abroad but has just as much difficulty taking root as has -good. The communion of sinners is not destined to triumph. Being a man without illusions, Bernanos is a realist: his characters are "beasts with shoes on." He does not force his beliefs on those characters; there are no quick, timely conversions, but at the end of his novels only "perhaps." Yet such promise is sufficient, as is the future for any child. T HE JADED big game hunter who has been everywhere and bagged everything might consider a safari to the Fiji Islands where two new species have been added to the list of fair game. W'ith a little luck a sharp-shooter here might get a nice Jersey cow with a good spread of horns er a hefty China blue shoat with a handsome head for mounting in his trophy .room. The government of the Fiji Islands, a British colony, has recently put these familiar beasts on its list of undesirables and encouraged their slaughter. It goes back to days of the whalers, when ships without refrigeration carried their own livestock. Often a few would escape and today there are large herds of wild pigs and cows roaming the interior of the 216 inhabited Fiji Islands. They raid the plantations and village vegetable gardens to the detriment of island economy. Several methods have been tried to get rid of the pigs and cows. Once the government offered 45 cents for every pig jaw brought in for official proof. Nothing much happened. Officials decided that the 45 cents had been weighed in the balance by village economists against a longstanding tradition of free pork in the hoof and found wanting. Now the government is sponsoring an island-wide roundup to do the job. * PANORAMA The ONENESS of PHILIPPINES and INDIA "The unity of Asia is visible ii you care to look for it." By TARA ALI BAIG • EVER SINCE the travels of Marco Polo, man from the West has looked for the strange and sensational in his wanderings in the East. The result of this apparently harmless human foible is an astounding acceptance of false ideas and false knowledge about each other, for all the glibness of one's modern talk of internationalism and understanding. But let alone understanding between East and West, take our own regions irt the East, contiguous as they are by land, sea and ancient history. Not only is there widespread ignorance about each other, but even prejudice attributable to Mrs. Ba1:u was in Manila during the t01LT of duty of heT husband, H.E. MiTza Ra.skid Ali Baig, Indian MinisteT to the Philippines,· 1951-54. AUGUST 1957 a form of education in our immediate colonial past. Imagine my amazement on reaching the Philippine Islands to 1 e a r n that Indians wert> known of as "Bombais" whose only use apparent to the naked eye was to frighten the recalcitrant young. Imagine too my astonishment on learning that to the average educated Filiipno, India presented a picture of teeming millions perpetually hungry or perpetually afflicted with disease, whose history went back to immemorial time; who built the Taj Mahal and lived in mud huts; whose lives were spent in a fatalistic yogk stillness on top of a fence; whose women crept veiled and submissive from cooking pot to funeral pyre; whose maharajahs 63 squandered wealth and collected wives and finally whose Mahatma Gandhi, jawaharlal Nehru and Vijayalakshmi Pandit were improbable phenomena not quite human or real, rising phoenix-like out of the dead wood and ashes of some 360 million backward and probably quite primitive and superstitious people. And over it all, like an inc cubus, lay the caste system. This picture was undoubtedly a clear triumph for Miss Katherine Mayo. And proved, if such proof were needed, that the pen is indeed migthier than the sword. But then what did I as an Indian know about the Philippines? My impression, I must confess, was a vague Daguerortype of a gay Malayan people happily Co ca - Colonized; of Spanish conquistadores and American big business. It was as though one flipped the pages cf an old photograph album; on one page was "Mother India" and on the other "Lady be Good." While any Asian is liable to feel completely at home in any other Asian country, a sense of surprise that this should be so is almost invariable, for in the passage of the last few hlltl:: dred years, both history and rnltural bonds linking us in the past have either been severed or forgotten. Of course there are all too m an y travellers 64 everywhere who only see the surface and who could leave the Philippines after a threec!ay visit with only the night club, and fancy-building-plumbing-and-kitchen fixtures aspect of the Philippines remaining in their consciousness. And oddly enough that is an aspect of the country many Filipinos unconsciously desire the visitor to see for fear of being considered unprogressive and such was the effect of Christianity coming from the West, in a sort of atavistic horror of ever being linked with a pagan forbear or thought either Igorot or Muslim Moro. The resulting impression on the ·casual traveller then remains a talse one of a people suspended as it were above their own culture and history ... a sort of l1ydrophonic tree with roots floating in modern imported chemicals. Reality, fortunately enough, is very different. And the striking fact is not the various differences between India and the Philippines but the thousand and one conscious and unconscious similarities. IN THE MATTER of language alone, Sanskrit has left two hundred and fifty words in Tag, the national language of Philippines, a legacy ~f the six undred years contact during the Hindu period of Shri PANORAMA Vijaya (an influence which came from the powerful Shri Vijayan Empire from Indonesia). Some words have been modified such as the Tagalog 'Lasa' for the Sanskrit 'Rasa,' 'Apo' for 'Apa,' 'Tala' for 'Tara,' 'galit' for 'gali,' )<alunya' f o r 'karunya,' 'ganda' or 'maganda' for 'gandha,' 'citra' for 'Cihtra,' 'dalaga' for 'darika' and so on, with the mean in gs substantially the same or with minor additions of meaning. Other words, however, are completely unchanged, such as 'guru' for teacher being exactly the same in both countries, as are 'mukha' for face and Kalinga and Naga. Strangely enough new cultural influences forced upon a country by the process of conquest or colonization frequently supplant the cultural pattern of a people in almost everything but language and indigenous textiles. It is therefore interesting to see proof of this in the Philippines with the survival of so many Sanskrit words in the lai:iguage and the colors and weaves of various textiles. In the Mountain Province the waistloom worked by the Igorot women is absolutely identical with the looms, cloth and color schemes and patterns woven by women in the hill tribes of Assam and Northern India. In the south the filmy textiles of Iloilo closely resemble the silky AUGUST 1957 gauze fabric woven in Benares. Further south the check cottons and the brocades of Mindanao resemble the handicrafts of Indonesia, Malay and Bengal. Even costume retains great resemblances despite the strong Spanish influences that so modified the costume of the Philippines. The modern Filipino men's "Barong Tagalog" is a shirt almost the same in cut and embroidery as the "Kurta" of Lucknow, except for different collar and cuffs. Likewise the closed coat still worn by the old generation of the revolutionary period, is almost identical with India's official men's dress. But the mantilla and the shoulder scarf worn with the feminine dress called "pa tadiong" and "balintawak" are relics of the veil which in varying forms is worn to this day from Arabia to the Philippines: In Arabia, Turkey and Persia it was the head scarf with which modest women would always cover their hair. In India it is the "ordni" and sari. In Indonesia it became the 'salendang' while in the Philippines it became the tiny scarf worn over one shoulder. Most interesting of all, however, is its progress to Spain with the Arab conquests of that Peninsula and its subsequent in tr o duct ion through the church as an essential head covering for wo65 men at devotions. The veil indeed played yet another role and one which few perhaps even recognize ·as an unaltered relic of an Asian past. In the Philippines the Cord and Veil ceremonies are the remains of ancient symbolism practiced in both Hindu and Muslim weddings to this day. With modifications the svmbolism is the same. A Hindu bride and groom will exchange garlands, and the bride's sari will be tied to the groom's chaddar during the ceremony. In a Muslim wedding, an ornate silken cloth will be placed over their heads. What is more significant, however, is that the Cord and Veil ceremony are apparently not part of the Catholic rites of marriages observed in Rome or Spain, but one observed only in the Philippines. I N THE MATTER of devotions, there is an astonishing resemblance between Hindu and Catholic practice in the matter of household shrines. In every good Hindu home there is a corner or a small room with a statue before which the family conducts its daily collective or personal devotions. Flowe.rs are placed at the shrine and oil lamps lit before the dawn and sunset prayers. Processions are likewise almost identical whether it is that of a Christian saint or a Hindu 66 diety; both are taken out in elaborately decorated wooden platforms with a multitude o·f lights and drawn by the devout. A procesison of Indian or Filipino Christians with candles and song, taking out a statue of the Virgin seated in all her glory on a temple car, is nothing incongruous. Then we come to the timehonored ceremony of garlanding to greet arrivals, to bid godspeed and to honor the distinguished. Only in Hawaii, the Philippines, Malaya, Indonesia, Thailand and India is this custom religiously observed and in these countries no ceremonial is quite complete without the fresh-flower garland an d its message of love and welcome. Towards evening whether you are in Bombay, Delhi or Manila, vendors will come to you w i th sweet-smelling jasmine strings to wear in the hair or round the wrists. And though we call this flower jasmine in India, perhaps its Tagalog name Sampaguita comes from "champa" (ancient name for IndoChina) or "champaca" with the additional diminutive of 'ita' to make it the little champaca or Sampaguita (Champa-gita) or the Kanarese "Champangay." And what is the symbolism of garlanding if it is not an expression of hospitality, the proverbial human quality in which Asian countries excel. PANORAMA For it is not a matter merely of breaking bread and eating salt but a. deeper expression of brotherhood in a sense of identity through sharing of all one has. In India as in the Philippines, there is a sense of guilt if even a friend of ;i friend stays in a hotel rather than in one's home; if the casual visitor is not offered some refreshment on entering one's house; or if one ventures empty-handed to a celebration or birth. The feasts, the fostivals and elaborate religious processions are a common heritage and better to be ruined unto the third generation than disappoint one's friends and neighbors ·with a feast of inadequate proportions or a wedding banquet that does not supply ample possibility for both criticism and indigestion. If 'idli' is relished in Madras, a similar rice cake called 'puto' is almost a national dish in the Philippines. Then the man from Batangas has his 'pastilla de leche' which a Bengali will recognize happily as almost his own delicious 'sandesh.' "Have some of our native 'lumpia'" a Manilan will say to a man from Bombay, who will exclaim instantly that apart from slight differences of interior, it is his own 'samosa.' "Do you have mangoes in India?" is the polite social enquiry of a Filipino. but it is advisable to accept their rooted belief that Indian AUGUST 1957 mangoes are stringy for great national pride is -generated in their loyalty to their own species of mango: "the caratas." It is also useless to remind them that the mango originally came from India along with many of the i r shrubs and flowering trees. Better in fact to turn to the cockfight which takes place in the villages of India as it does all over the Philippines for somehow there does not seem to be the same fierce pride about the pedigree of the fighting cock as there is about the queen of fruits. Safe too is the subject of folk dances, for no dispute will arise in finding the "Tinikling" the bamboo dance, both in the Philippines and the Assam Hills in India. No rivalry either will exist in the placid old habit common to both countries in the chewing of betel nut which the Filipino calls "buyu.' The only difference is that in the Philippines it is now only the old and provincial who still maintain this habit. THE HOUSEWIFE in both countries not only has her occupations in common, but goes forth to almost identical markets antl returns, in the case of the rural folk and less wellendowed to almost identical kitchens. The fruits and vegetables she 67 buys are season for season the same ... mango, tamarind, guava, oranges, ampalaya (lndian Karela), Malungay (drumstick leav'es) brinjal, okra and mongo (mung dal). Separated by the land masses and seas, they blow on the wood and charcoal in almost identical stoves; scour with coconut husk and use almost identical clay pots, iron "karais" and aluminum pans; cool water in the same earthen jars; grind rice and millet in similar stone mills, scrape coconut on similar serrated scrapers and slice their ~egetables on the same upright curved blade attached to a footboard. Even in the cloth and clothing markets the women of each country would feel entirely at home. And were a magic carpet to whisk one up from shopping in Divisoria and set "her down in Chandni Chowk, New Delhi, or Crawford Market, Bombay, in all probability sge would not blink more than once, but continue fingering the cloth piled high on tiny wooden stalls or watch the remnants being weighed, with no break in concentration. Even the noises and the smells and huckstering are the same, as are the little human touches of conversation between the buyer and the seller. But what of another kind of life away from the kitchen and 68 markets, the provinces and the cradles where the legends of long ago seem to be tales in each land out of the same ancient book. Here the similariites are not so astonishing for they are the inevitable result of our more recent contact with the west ... the architecture of the cities, the vehicles on the streets, the chimneys of industry, the banks and apartment houses, the girls going to work and the society-girl to play. In one country the women may wear European dress or a "terno" while in the other you will see the sari but in the cities their activities are hardly different ... committee meetings, political meetings, bridge parties, and social functions and last but not least, better methods (from the point of view of the hapless male and winner of the daily bread) of well-disguised brigandage in the name of charity. Whether in the city or the country, whether in India or other countries of Asia, in the sari, the sarong or the saya, above the babble of tongues or the silence, behind the shell windows or the plate-glass ones, below the chandeliers or the oil lamps, whether planting rice or eating it; the unity of Asia is visible if you care to look for it- Hindu Weekly Review. PANORAMA Bonifacio, the Katipunan and Freedom In August 1896 he led the revolt against the Spaniards I N FRONT of what is now the Tutuban station, Manila, where the founder of the Katipunan was born, Bonifacio's parents lived .in poverty. Their hom,e was a small nipa house of a rude kind, and nothing seemed more unlikely than that the child, coming into the world in such humble surroundings, should be destined to be one of the great leaders of his time. He led the Filipino people through difficulties and dangers and a revolution aimed at liberating the Filipinos from foreign tyvanny and oppression. The story of this man begins and ends with a tragedy, for his parents died while he was young, leaving his younger brothers and sisters under his sole support; years later BoniAUGUST 1957 By Felix B. Bermudo facio met death from a countryman's bullet. Bonifacio inherited industry from his father who was a t&ilor by calling and his modesty from his mother . .Young Andres did not have the advantages of a higher education. It is said that he barely finished the equivalent of the second year of the high school. However, by diligent study, he learned how to w.rite adequately both in Tagalog and Spanish. A voracious reader, he was well-informed. His collection of books included Rizal's novels, Les Miserables, The Ruins of Pahnyra, the Bible, The French · Revolution. The s e books influenced, to a great extent, the founding of the Katipunan. 69 T N 1892, WHEN La Liga Filipina was established by Rizal, .Bonifacio was an active member. It may be recalled that La Liga Filipina was established by Rizal to promote cooperation among the Filipinos, which was necessary if the Filipinos were to free themselves from Spanish domination. While Rizal believed in. attaining freedom by peaceful m e a n s , Bonifacio believed otherwise. He was a radical. He believed that independence would be had only through the use of force. ~e banishment of Rizal to Dapitan saw the founding of the Katipunan by Bonifacio. It was commonly called the K. K. K., which means Kataastaasan Kagalanggalang Katipunan. Translated into English it means Most High, Most Venerable Katipunan. In the early period of the Katipunan, it had around 200 members in Manila and in the provinces. Rizal was chosen honorary president without his knowledge. Rizal had always been the idol of the Filipinos. Before one could become a member of the organization, he had to take an oath and fix his signature with his own blood. The fight against oppression and. tyranny was begun in a little village of Balintawak with shouts of "Long Live the 70 Philippine Republic." Any school child remembers that memorable date, August 26, 1896. The Katipunan Revolution was the resulting outgrowth of the developments of the time. The Filipino leaders, incensed by the cruelties and tyranny of the ~niards, were constrained to choose between the things: to die suffering from abuse and oppression under a foreign power or to die fighting against that power. On August 29, 1896, Bonifacio issued a manifest urging his followers to wage war im~diately. San Juan del Monte saw the first real engagement on August 30, 1896 between the Katipuneros under the direct command of Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto, and the Spanish forces. The Filipinos fought against odds. They had nothing but spears and bolos and a few. shot guns: 'The Spanish forces were heavily armed. THE FOLLOWING day, many towns in the provinces surrounding Manila rose in arms against the Spanish forces. After this engagement Bonifacio and Jacinto led their men to the hills near Mariquina, San Mateo and Montalban. So great was the enthusiasm of the people that in a few days their number increased tremendously. The combined forces of BoPANORAMA nifacio, Jacinto, General Francisco de los Santos and Hermogenes Bautista attacked the Spanish forces at San Mateo. The Spaniards were defeated and were forced to leave San Mateo under complete control of the Katipuneros. The Spaniards retreated to Mariquina where they waited for reinforcements. In a few days, they returned to San Mateo where once more a fierce engagement took place. The Filipinos had to disperse, leaving behind hundreds of dead. Bonifacio and his troops returned to Balara, Caloocan, where Bonifacio himself almost lost his life in a savage encounter with the Spanish forces. Here Bonifacio reorganized his men in preparation for any eventuality. At this time the Spanish government awoke to the danger. It was necessary that a governor general with an iron hand equal to the ta5k of the time should direct the war operations if Spain was to retain the colony. The new governor's brutal acts constrained Bonifacio to issue a fiery proclamation to bolster the enthusiasm of the Filipinos. To make the fight against the enemy more effective, the leaders in Cavite met at Imus to discuss a'hd perfect the revolu tionary organization plan. Bonifacio was appointed to designate some leaders to helP' him formulate the bases for the reorganization plan. T HE SECOND meeting held at Tejeros, where the revolutionary government was, was composed as follow::;: Emilio Aguinaldo-President Mariano Trias-Vice-President Artemio Ricarte-Captain General Emilio Riego de Dios-Director of W a;r Andres Bonifacio-Director of the Department of the Interior. In spite of the minor position Bonifacio was supposed to hold, some members of the convention questioned Bonifacio's eligibility. Bonifacio felt insulte.d. He left the 'ConvenRock of Ages Give us the man of integrity, on whom we know we can thoroughly depend; who will stand firm when others fail; the friend faithful and true; and adviser honest and faithless; the adversary just and chivalrous; such a one is a fragment of the Rock of Ages. AUGUST 1957 71 tion Hall and declared the decisions reached null and void. This incident was the offshoot of the rivalry between Bonifacio and A.:,<>'Uinaldo which was brewing at the time. to report. Garcia made the recommendation that a court-martial with General Noriel, presiding, be appointed to try Bonifacio and his brothers. The Bonifacio brothers were accused of promoting a counter revolution for the overthrow of Aguinaldo's authority. Placido Martinez was the counsel for Bonifacio and Teodoro Gonzales for Procopio. The courtrnartial, after the investigation, sent its findings to the Judge Advocate (Baldomero Aguinaldo) with the recommendation that the death penalty be imposed. The Judge Advocate gave his approval, but President Aguinaldo c:immuted the sentence. Kalaw in his The Philippine Revolution says: 72 "Unfortunately, the misunderstanding between Andres Bonifacio and his adherents on one hand, and Emilio Aguinaldo and his adherents on the other, which had their beginnings at the convention in Tejeros, were revived. While the Bonifacio brothers were returning to Manila, they were followed and overtaken by the followers of Aguinaldo and in an encounter between the two factitms at Limbong, Indang, two soldiers of Aguinaldo were killed and Andres was seriously wounded and his eldest brother Ciriaco was killed. Emilio Aguinaldo in his capacity as President of the Revolutionary Government appointed Pantaleon Garcia a committee of one, to make an investigation and "On Mount Buntis, to which the seat of the Revolutionary Government was transferred, Andres Bonifacio and his only remammg brother, Procopio, were shot by Aguinaldo's adherents on May 10." That was the tragic end of the Fathe.r of the Philippine Revolution. - Philippine Journal of Education. * * * CONGRESS PALACE T HE CITY of Geneva will build a special Palace for the use of congresses. The site chosen is a magnificent private estate in the vicinity of the UN and WHO premises and near the seat of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The property belongs to the Martin-Du Pan family and will be purchased for 11,early three million francs. * PANORAMA One mark of an educated man is the possession of a reasonable fund of general information. The highly specialized individual, often dubbed an "'expert," frequ~ntb knows little or nothing outside his own line. Try yourself on the following question•. then turn to the next pae-e for the correct answers. I. The ~· mortal American classic, Leaves of Grass, was written by:· A Edgar Allan Poe; B. Nathaniel Hawthorne; C. Walt WhLman; D. Robert Frost. 2. Your friend's illness has been diagnosed by his psychiatrist as "agoraphobia," which means it:\!11orbid fear of: A. being in an open space; B. high places~ closed-in places; D. being in the dark. 3. The statue of Jupiter, or Zeus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient worl~ was located in what is now: A. Turkey; B. Iran; C. Italy;~ Greece. 4. If a third world war should break out, the casualties would be considerably greater than those of the last world war, which was, in military personnel alone, close to: A. 5 millions; B. 10 millions; C. 30 millions; D. 60 millions. 5. Fire-proof asbesto~hemists would tell you, is made from : A. cotton and coal; \IV a mineral found in the ground; C. plant fiber; /ii' cement and flax. 6. You muM"have heard of Death Valley, where no living $in-g survives, located in: A. Utah; B. California; C. Nevada; O. Colorado. 7. The much-disputed Suez Canal is the longest man-made waterway in the world, measuring: A. 210 miles; ~ 150 miles; C. 87-1/2 miles; D. 289 miles. 8. Ferdinand Magellan's flagship during his unsuccessful circumnavigation of the world in the 16th century, was A. Sta. Maria; f:j1 Victoria; C. San Lazaro; D. Olympia. 9. As a result of the most recent purge in the Kremlin, this commuIJ,ist is solidly on the top of the Soviet hierarchy: A. Molotov; B. Bulganin; c:lKhrushchev; D. Zhukov. 10. Speaking of the ani~l kingdom, an example of the "marsupials" is the:~ kangaroo; B. elepl!ant; C. heron; D. crocodile. AUGUST 1937 73 ARE YOU WORD WISE? ANSWERS PANORAMA QUIZ ANSWERS 1. (b) to talk idly or foolishly 1. C. Walt Whitman 2. (c) above the ground 2~ A. being in an open space 3. (a) bad beyond reform 3. D. Greece 4. (d) an uprear 4. B. 10 millions 5. (a) calm or composed 5. B. a mineral found in the ground 6. (b) a unit of pharmaceutical 6. B. Californoa 7. c. 87 1 h miles weight 7. ( c) fond of company 8. B. Victoi:ia 8. (c) very careful 9. C. Khrushchev 9. (d) a dull-witted person 10. A. kangaroo 10. (a) preliminary action or remarks · 11. (b) last 16. (b) to hesitate between choices 12. (a) to deprive of someth:ng by 17. (d) gigantic trickery 13. ( c) to go around 18. ( b) to smile in an offensive manner 14. (c) to make discontented 19. (a) soft and flabby 15. (a) a ghost 20. ( c) to praise highly 74 * * * FULLY AUTOMATIC WATCH THE BRACELET-WATCH is such a simple and rational instrument that it would seem diff cult to introduce any further perfections in its outward appearance. Nonetheless, a Swiss firm now announces another interesting novelty - an automatic watch without any winder. Although an automatic watch does not need to be wound up while it ·is being worn, it requires setting, and winding when at rest. In the new model, both actions are performed by the rim of the watch-case. This innovation offers both techn,ical and aesthetic advantages, improving the water-tightness of the watch-case, and eliminating the asymmetric projection which can cause the breakage of the stem of the winding apparatus. * PANORAMA In the Beqinninq . .. SPIDER (any animal of the Arachnida group) From the Anglo-Saxon spinnan, meaning "to spin," comes the name of this creature with an amazing architectural ability. JANUARY (first month of the year) The old Latin deity ]anus, who was the god of all beginnings and of the Roman household (his two-faced image carved on their doors) gave the month of January its name. AUGUST 1957 GAZETTE (a newspaper) The modern gazette owes its name to the Venetian coin Aazetta, said to have been the price of the first newspaper published in Venice. 15 Philippine Panorama - XXXlll DAVAO: to tame a frontier DAVAO IS one of the biggest and richest provinces of the Philippines. It is found in the southeastern part of Mindanao, bounded on one side by the Agusan valley and by the Davao Gulf and the Pacific Ocean on the other. Its mountains are rife with rain· forests; its lowlands are dark with fertile soil; m'ineral extrusions lay untouched in its unexplored wilderness. Long ago, this province was the wild home of several pagan tribes. Most of these tribes were primitive and nomadic. These people were Malays. Some of the better known tribes are the Calagones, the Tagacaoles, the Aetas, the Samalese, the Bagobos, and the Mandayas. 76 The Calagones inhabited the southeastern slopes of Mt. Apo, 9,690 feet above sea level, down to the headwaters of the river Digos. The Tagacaoles transpired on the west coast of the Davao Gulf and by conquest spread to the Malaean plain and the peninsula of San Agustin. The Aetas thrived along the Libaganon river, a tributary of ~ ~ ' ~ ~ r ~~ ~r\ PANORAMA the Agusan river. The Samalese occupied the island of Samal and Talikud. These tribes have been so ravaged by wars, disease and dispersal that at the present time only rudiments of their organizations exist. The Davao tribes that have been able to preserve their pristine strength are the Bagobos and the Mandayas. The province was originally ruled by the Sultan of Mindanao, a typical Oriental potentate who exacted periodic tributes from his subjects. In 1884, however, control passed from his hands to the Spanish government. This was accomplished by Zamboanga Governor Figue1 oa a n d Brigadier General Agustin Bocalla. After the cession, Don Jose Oyanguren was dispatched by the central gov.ernment to survey the place. This sane person's hyperbolic report so excited GovernorGeneral Narciso Claveria's imagination that he immediately outfitted an expedition to occupy and exploit the territory. The expedition left in 1847 with Oyanguren as the leader. Two years later, he organized the region into what is now known as Davao. It is not, however, to be assumed that the Spaniards did net know about Davao before this time. As early as 1528, Alvaro de Saavedra, on an expeAUGUST 1957 dition to what was s i m p I y known as the East, passed Davao and even spent some time in its placid gulf. Then the adventurer Villalobos followed in 1543. These adventurers, however, did not think of settling the territory. From the time Oyanguren opened the territory for occupation, coveys of Christian Filipinos have settled in the area. As the Christian population increased, the indigenous tribes retreated hinterward. By 1918, a census year, it was certain that almost half of the population of Davao was Christian. DAVAO started to burgeon as an economic force in the early I 930's. Japanese immigrants planted vast areas to abaca, making Davao the hemp center of the Philippines. With abaca, the province pushed on to progress. But the war destroyed the hemp industry of Davao. After the war, Filipino planters took over the Japanese plantations. Both private capitalists an d the government poured huge amounts of money into the abaca industry of Davao. So rapid was this rehabilitation that a few years after Liberation, almost all the arable areas of the province were under abaca. And then the mosaic disease struck. Planters went bankrupt. Plantations 77 were abandoned. Banks foreclosed. The abaca industry was miserably crippled. It reflects on the resiliency of the Davao people that they were not discouraged. While some of them, at great expem:.e, made attempts to save their plantations, the other farmers an d businessmen turned to other enterprises. At this time, the government had taken over the old Furukawa Abaca Plantation and had converted it into a farm settlement for veterans. These people did not have encugh equipment and capital for h em p production, so th e y turned the area into a corn plantation. At present, most of the corn needs of the Visayas are met by the Davao corn producers. The only abaca plantations of consequence that have managed to survive the mosaic attack were the TAD ECO and the Davao Penal Colony plantation. The TAD ECO occupies a part of the Davao Penal Colony. Its production, however, is n o t even enough to meet local demand. With the decline of the abaca industry, new industries were started. The most important Davao industry at the moment is lumber. The other industries, mostly in the southern part of the provine, are coffee, cocoa and citrus. 78 A MAJOR portion of the income o f th e province comes from lumber. The most important lumber magnate in the province, Gaudencio Maiialac, grosses close to f>2,000,000 a year. Most of his products are exported to japan. An adjunct of the lumber industry is plywood manufacture. The biggest plywood factory in the Philippines - the Santa Cl a r a Plywood Factory - is found in Davao. Its capacity is 2800-3000 plywood sheets a day. Production is geared to meet local demand. The lumbermen of Davao are a new breed in the history of the Philippine lumber industry. The techniques of spoliation that were common a decade or so ago among lumbermen are looked upon with disfavor by the Davao lumber producers. They are the most assiduous converts to the government's program of selective logging. With this system, the forest resources of the province could be made to last indefinitely. The province is growing at an amazing rate. Its population has been estimated at 420,000, representing a 60,000 increase over ttie 1948 census figure. This is approximately one person per ten square hectares of its 16,990 square miles of land. The population of Davao is mixed. Most of the settlers come from the various parts PANORAMA of the Philippines, but the majority are Visayans and l10canos. The rapid growth of Davao is an indication of the future place of Mindanao in Philippine economy. The natural re~ources of the province have not been scnHchcd. Some economists h ave predicted that 1\:lindanao will replace Luz0n as the center of industrial activity. If Davao is taken as the gauge, the replacement will come about very soon. J.D. AT THE CIRCUS Nix. Don't be afraid, son, in this Mock-w.orld of clowns and absolute skills. Our seats, Moderately. priced, are perlectl"f sale lrom the spills Of the equestriennes or the buckets ol water the dwarfs Indiscriminately lling in their clowning. Here come the growling lions. Don't get scared. for all you know the beasts are only men In lion's clothinq and the handsome tamer Is the ticket seller's husband. But now The thrilling numbers ol the program. Watch, How carelullv the acrobat.s take stance And time th-eir somersaults, the tightrope walker Making each step poir;ed and sure, and there! The trapeze artists flipping in the air. - Dominador I. llio * AUGUST 1957 79 THE BARRIO FISHERMAN'S SECRETS By MAXIMO RAMOS J UST as the barrio farmer has his planting "secrets," so the barrio fisherman has secrets of his own. Often, indeed, the barrio farmer and the fisherman are one and the same man, and is acquainted not only with secrets insuring success in farming and fishing, but in stockraising, house-building and gambling. With all these secrets known to him, the wonder grows that he is not more successful than he usually is! The fisherman usually makes his traps of bamboo. For the purpose he prefers to use bamboo from a clump in which some bird has built its nest or which harbors some other forms of animal life - lizards, snakes, rats, even black ants. Other lucky types of bamboo come from clumps that lean over a trail or against another clump, clumps that stand highest in the grove; those in which the leaves form clusters at the top; and finally those bamboo stalks which contain one or more joints strikingly different in length than the joints above or below. He believes he will catch more fish in a trap made of these kinds of bamboo. For hi$ nets and lines he prefers indigo as a dye, believing that this muddles the heads of the fish, causing PANORAMA e has a bagful ol them, to Insure a go them to be easier caught. a successful catch. He does not hurry with his There are however certain lines. He doesn't buy a hook days which are lucky regardand prepare his line and walk less of the state of the weather straightway to the water. He the night before. These are keeps his new hooks immersed Good Friday, Easter and "Juin wine for a few days before das Monday" which is the first he uses them, and afterwwds Monday in August. Early in he never neglects to wet his hooks with wine each time he the morning of Good Friday or goes out. This he believes will Eastern, the fisherman cuts protect his hooks from the spell down the bamboo he wishes to of the mischievous and thievish use for constructing his traps sprites which he knows as. Ki- nod also procures the twine for ba-an. · his nets, and his hooks and There are lucky and unlucky lines. These he then buries in days for fishing. He never be- the street along which the regins work on a trap or net or ligious procession will pass line on the day fol- --------~ t h e arches leading lowing a c 1 o u d y toward the booth night. He waits for where the scene of a starry night, when the Resurrection will the moon is full, and be enacted. After the is adorned with a procession or the halo. After such a performance, he digs night h i s prepara- the material up and parations will ensure starts to work. Judas AUGUST 1957 81 Monday, however, is just as lucky and is preferred by him as there are no religious observances to take up his time. Of the seven days in the week, he believes that Sunday is the luckiest for him for he says that it is then that the sprites that inhabit the fishing holes are temporarily deprived of their evil power by the msas performed on that day. A good day to go fishing is dso the day following a night during which the moon showed a halo, or when a cock crowed in the neighborhood about supper time. These are two signs of plentiful waters. THERE are a number of valuable charms known to the fisherman. Most common of them is the bill of the bideng, a small species of kingfisher which is indeed a king fisher. He catches the poor bird - it must be fullgrown and alive - and cuts off the tip of its bill, about a third of its total length, and then sets it free. He keeps the tip of the bill in a pouch and he has but to touch his hook with it to catch plenty of fish. If, some day, upon raising his hook out of the water he discovers the eye of a fish sticking to it and nothing else, 82 he blesses his stars for his luck. He has but to touch this eye to the hook when he baits it. The fish will bite and will be held fast. In the Eastern night religious procession, a figure of the dead Christ, in a lighted glass coffin set on a black-painted carriage is pulled through the streets. After the procession it is taken into the church and the foot end of the coffin is opened whereupon the villagers one after another, kiss the feet of the effigy over which a strong perfume has been sprinkled. The perfume bottle, with some of the perfume remaining, is hidden by the sarcristan somewhere beside the holy figure. If without purposely trying to find this bottle and without iiny apparent movements, some fortunate one among the devout takes hold of it, he brings it home in triumph. He has merely to wet his hook with this perfume when he goes out, so he believes, to be assured of a plentiful catch. Sometimes t h e fisherman catches a large fish in the stomach of which he finds one or more hooks. He does not throw such a hook away, but ties it to the end of a stout line, for he believes that it will secure for him more and larger fish than a hook obtained in the ordinary manner. The ordinary paltat or catPANORAMA fish is dark in color, but on rare occasions the fisherman catches a white one. This he does not kill, for it is a lucky fish. He keeps it in a jar of water, changing the water and feeding it frequently enough to keep it alive. Whenever the fish is unusually active, he believes that it is telling him to go fishing at once and anticipates coming home beneath the weight of a big catch. I F the fisherman in his sleep dreams of fighting or killing a dog, he considers it an omen of g o o d fishing luck; also when he dreams of having been bitten by a snake. On the other hand, if he happens to sneeze on starting out on a fishing trip, h_e believes luck will be against him. Other bad omens are his recalling after he has gone down the ladder of his house that he has forgotten something; his meeting with a woman rather than a man first; his happening to encounter a funeral procession; and the crossing of his path by a lizard or a bird-the salaksa"k, a species of kingfisher larger than the bideng. In these events he usually returns and devotes the day to something other than fishing. The barrio fisherman also ebserves a number of interesting precautions. He does not, for instance, set his bamboo trap .... uGUST 1957 in the water without first ascertaining whether or not a Kiba-an inhabits the spot and, if so, whether it will tolerate his placing the tap there. His procedure is as follows: About the time of sunset he drives a bamboo crossing to the bottom, under water, in the place he has selected as a possible site for his trip. He leaves it there overnight and when returning very early in the morning, he finds that the cross has been "knocked oown," he looks for some other place, but if he finds the cross as he left it he goes ahead and sets the trap, leaving the cross, however, to keep any kiba-an from stealing the fish. Another precaution the fisherman takes is never to allow himself to get angry when he starts to go fishing. He is also careful not to shake his things. Losing his temper or shaking his belongings, will cause the fish to be afraid of him, he thinks. If a neighbor of his happens to have died on a day he is bent on going fishing, he does not neglect to go and view the dead before he starts. On going night-fishing, he starts either before or after, but never during the time his wife or daughter is washing the dishes. If he has any ill-wishers, he does all he can to keep them from seeing him off, because 83 such people can easily bring him bad luck doing any of the following three simple things. They can call out to him as he goes out of his stage: "Mine all the heads." More secretly they can take a coconut-bowl ladle, scrape the inside of a pot with it, and then wave it at him. Most potent of all, an enemy can follow him down the street for a distance, and then, facing about in the direction opposite to which he is heading, band over so deeply that the seat of his pants points to the sky. This practically guarantees that the fisherman will come home with an empty basket! BEFORE stepping into the water, the fisherman mutters a short prayer, immediately after which he unsheaths his glistening bolo and describes a cross with it on the surface of the water. This he believes will drive away the kiba-an which would otherwise keep scaring the fish away from his nets or hooks. He keeps very close watch over his newly set traps or lines in order to prevent some other dishonest fisherman from stealing the first catch. He believes that what happens to a thing from the very first, will continue to happen. _ And, finally, he does not roast any of the first catch. He boils all of it; if he has to sell a part, he makes the buyer promise not to roast any of the fish. Roasting the first catch taken from a line, net, or trap will affect the durability as well as the catching capacity of his appliance, he firmly believes. Veterinary Surgeon-"This cow must take a tablespoon of this medicine twice daily." 84 Farmer-"But our cow uses no tablespoons. She drinks out of a pail." PANORAMA ';een-()1t,ama , , , , , , by Elmer THe Gu'( IN THE MIDDlf= MUSI l3f: --n-JE: OFr1CLAL- CANDIDA!~ TOWARD A 'CLEAN' HYDROGEN BOMB Rfi The solution is only half-way to the true goal: global peace By MANUEL TIEMPO i. PANG~ • s A CLEAN hydrogen bomb ossibl · a ques-__,.;= that recently faced P...«rerii.hss tS"iiira ITiiTi tl;l ry men. An atomic explosion is ' t't.y in the sense that the ~ill'lll~rsion cf matter into enC' by a process called fission results in the production of dangerous radioactive particles that are showered back to earth. This is a condition known as a fall-out. When military men and scientists, therefore, talk of a clean hydrogen bomb, they mean a weapc:;n with the least fall-out materials. Dr. Edward Teller, o ft en called the "father of the hydrogen bomb," said that they had "high hope of obtaining a virtually clean bomb." Chairman Lewis L. Strauss of the Atomic Energy Commission had announced that progress had been made toward the development of a "humanized" thermonuclear weapcn. The last semi-annual report of the A.E.C. tells us that Operation Redwing, the last series of H-bomb tests in the Pacific in 1956, "gave important information relating to AUGUST 1957 developing means of reducing fall-out from weapons firing." These announcements a r e , however, nothing but official reassurances. If we are to take Dr. Teller's remark at face value, it only means that the development of a clean hydrogen bomb is still a "high hope." The fact is that atomic scientists have not yet arrived at the satisfactory translation of the principles of atomic fusion into a practical, clean weapon. It is common knowledge that all radioacctive fall-out consists of fission products from 30 to 45 times heavier than the hydrogen elements used in the hydrogen bomb. This makes it obvious that the fall-out particles, such as strotium 90, which is the most dangerous, could not come from the hydrogen elements of the bomb, which provide the explosive power by c:. process called fusion but from the fission of heavy elements such as uranium which is a necessary component of the bomb. It is, furthermore, a fact that the fusion c:;f hydrogen can be attained only by the generation 87 of a temperature of 100,000,000 degrees, which can only be induced by the explosion of a fission bomb as a trigger to start off the fusion process. Since the fall-out is caused by the fission and fusion is not possible without fission, then a fall-out under existing conditions is an impossibility. I N ADDITION to a fission trigger, a hydrogen bomb contains large amounts of an element known as uranium 238. This is supposed to be a nonfissionable material which is responsible for 80 to 90 per cent of the explosive force of the multi-megaton hydrogen b o m b . Unfortunately, this otherwise i n e rt element becomes highly fissionable during a fusion reaction, a condition produced by the release of extremely potent neutrons that are capable of splitting uranium 238. Under such a condition, fission materials are created in large quantities. From this it becomes obvious that to create a clean hydrogen bomb means to eliminate heavy uranium which is impossible because then the bomb would lose its explosive power. Dr. Teller was careful to apply the epithet "virtually" to the bomb he had in mind. The problem with this bomb is production. Dr. Teller has said that such a weapon "could not be built without tests." Ill-feeling exists at the moment between the United States and other nations because of atomic tests. If the United States desires to preserve the amity that she enjoys with other nations, she has to stop the tests. But to stop the tests would mean the delay in the production of a "clean" hydrogen bomb, which is necessary for her and these nations' protection. Again, there is a stalemate here. The solution to this problem is, to quote President Eisenhower, "global peace." * * * 88 Beware! Some cry like a summer squall, Others like a lost-calf bawl,· But beware! Beware! Be she short or tall, Of the woman who doesrit cry at all. PANORAMA Mexican genius The Art of Miguel Covarrubias By Mitron Paniqui M IGUEL Covarrubias was one of the most popular caricaturist in the Twenties and Thirties. His ciroll drawings of famous contemporaries were one of the hallmarks of the old Vanity Fair, sophisticated review thirty years ago. However, in later years Miguel turned to serious works and anthropology and archaeology. He was born in Mexico City, in 1904, son of an engineerpolitician in charge of the National Lottery in the Carranza government. But he decided early to make his own name. When he showed a natural ability to draw, his father got him a job in a federal bureau, drafting maps. Meanwhile, the youth made caricatures of celebrities which he offered to magazines. Although he never went to art school, his cartoons were so successful that they were syndicated from Cuba to Buenos Aires before he was 18. AUGUST 1957 Juan Tablada, Mexican poet influential with the government, made it possible for Miguel to be sent to New York to study art for six months. After his arrival in 1923 however, Miguel neglected s c h o o 1 , ran through his fellowship funds, and spent all his time freelancing work to popular magazines. His appearance in Vanity Fair made him famous. His best drawings included those of the Prince of Wales, John D. Rockefeller Sr., Charlie Chaplain, and many stage and screen starts of the day. IN 1925, these drawings published in book form, . The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans. With his sketchbook Covarrubias frectuented Harlem night clubs, and these works also made a book, Negro Drawings, published in 1927. Covarrubias was not equal to the greatest artists in the Mexi89 can Renaissance of the Twenties. Rivera, Orozco, Sequieros and others were incomparably more powerful and significant, both socially and esthetically. Covarrubias' work was always good-natured, documentary, yet decorative, sharply, precisely drawn. Like all modern Mexican painters, he used color vividly. But, unlike most, he never dramatically distorted forms or content. He executed striking stage sets for the Garrick Gaities and George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion in 1925. Then, he traveled to Paris, Tunisia and Bali. From two Balinese visits, he produced his first serious boks on ethnology. The Island of Bali in 1937 was a history of its people, flora and fauna, illustrated with lush paintings and photographs. The photographs were contributed by his wife, Rose, a dancer and photographer born in Los Angeles of a Spanish father and Irish mother. Senor Covarrubias illustrated a deluxe edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin in I 938. The next year, he painted six panels for the Golden Gate Exposition, showing the flora and fauna of the Pacific islands. He did murals also, some for the Hotel del Prado in Mexioc City. In 1946 appeared his second work on anthropology, Mexico South, an illustrated historical. 90 study of the Olmec Indians, who built Monte Alban and other cities in Tehuantepec. He then taught the history of art in the National Anthropological School of Mexico and became director of dance for the National Institute of Fine Arts. IN 1950, his last important book was published, Eagle, Jaguar and Serpent, a survey of Indian art of all the of all the Americans, lavishly illustrated, as the others had been, by his own paintings and his wife's photographs. Senor Covarrubias and his wife lived abroad more than in Mexico. From his travels he spoke English, French and some Asian languages, including a little Chinese. He felt himself, in a sense, the human counterpart of the Virgin of Guadaloupe, patron of darkskinned people; he was proud of his illustrations for the Revue Negre in Paris; Blues, an anthology of Negro music; and Mules and Men, a book on Negro folklore. He had started as a cartoonist of human bodies, drawing only the circumference of their bodies; and worked inward, inward, until he reached the heart It was more than coincidence that, when he died of blood poisoning in Mexico early in 1957, his corpse awaited burial in the National Museum of Anthropology and History. PANORAMA MANILA PAPER MILL, INC. Manufacturers of • KRAFT PAPER Factory: 0 WRAPPING PAPER •BOND PAPER •ONION SKIN • MIMEOGRAPH • GOLDEN KRAFT N ovaliches, Rizal Manila Office: 180 Echague, Quiapo Tel. No. 3-26-45 3-43-11 91 "THE SMARTEST THING ON FEET" UNIVERSAL HOSIERY MILL CORPORATION MANILA, PHILIPPINES 92 PANORAMA ReadTHE MORNING JOURNAL The only Chinese Daily Newspaper with Editorials in English Advertise· THE FOOKIEN TIMES The Leading Independent Chinese Newspaper with the Largest Circulation in the Philippines we started this· year Since January your Panorama has come to you in a slightly larger format. The cover is in full color, too. But that isn't all. There is also a wider variety of reading matter: articles of immediate value and enduring significance to the Philippine reader. The regular features - fiction, litel"ary personality, cartoon, book review, etc. - are here as usual to challenge or amuse you. Tell your friends about Panorama. Give them a gift subscription. They'll appreciate it. Jl.t-.ln1 'Krwwn in tire U.S. as Miehk 11 Litlwprint) * TM moat modern Offset prMa o4 its siH ( 14 x 20 inches I * The easiest to operate with Its centralized control panel end pu•~ button operatio11. * No dampening roHers to bother witti its patented Rotafount, ghiJ19 mechanically controlled da~ ing. * Hairline register-ideal for mufti. color jobs 011 any type of paper et low cod e111d greet speed. . • Model R. 30/90 Actual Demonstration now going on!! You are invited to see COMMUNITY PUBLISHERS, INC. PRINTERS * U1H051APHERS * PUIUSHIRS 1986 llenwl, Sta. Au !rel. 5-41-98