Accents
The political passion of the Personalities (1)
First and foremost, the persons extolled in the book launching of PERSONALITIES From the Philippines, Chile & UK, May 15, 2008 at the Philippine Baptist Churches Convention Center are: Josefina Jainga Ruiz, Satur C. Ocampo, Maria Luisa Posa Dominado, Francisco Sionil-Jose, Ernesto B. Carvajal, Salamat Hashim, Charles Wesley, and Victor Jara — eight personalities in the order of how they were featured in the book. How they left footprints in the sands of time was well-chronicled by writers-editors Rudy Bernal and Olof Lindstrom.
An Ilonggo, Rudy Bernal has worked as journalist, radio preacher, and social commentator. Olof Lindstrom has been a minister, journalist, and teacher of the Baptist Union of Sweden. PERSONALITIES From the Philippines, Chile & UK is the eighth book the pair has published under the joint sponsorship of the Iloilo People's Forum and the Alternative Resource Development Center in Leganes, Iloilo.
I'd like to bring forward two personalities ahead of the six Filipinos anthologized in the book: UK's Charles Wesley (1707-1788) and Chile's Victor Jara (1932-1973). Considered "Prince of Lyricists" in the United Kingdom, Charles Wesley's works have flooded many an ecumenical hymn-book through the years. He was the least political in the group of these personalities, owing perhaps to his milieu, one rich in religious fervor.
Rev. Charles Wesley wrote, edited, and published a large number of hymns, many of these printed and sung around the world as in the volumes Hymns on God's Everlasting Love (1741), Hymns for Times of Trouble and Persecution (1744), Hymns of Petition and Thanksgiving for the Promise of the Father (1746), and Funeral Hymns – first series (1746). Of the many hymns quoted in the book, noteworthy are the last lines about Jacob's wrestling in the night (Genesis 32): "I rise superior to my pain/When I am weak, then I am strong/And when my all of strength shall fail/I shall with the God-man prevail."
From Chile is musician, poet, folksinger, guitarist, and martyr Victor Jara (1932-1973). A vintage activist of his time, he was a prominent figure among thousands of political dissenters imprisoned and executed by the brutal military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. When the dictator died in 2006, he was said to have accumulated 600 pending cases of human rights abuses—torture, forced disappearances, and summary executions. He was further accused of embezzlement of public funds, tax evasion, and depositing millions of dollars in US banks stolen from Chile's public coffers. Sounds familiar — a regime as detestable, ruthless, culpable as the conjugal partnership of Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda.
Victor Jara was one of the organizers of Nueva Cancion Chilena (New Chilean Song Movement) whose songs are "arsenals of political weapon to attack unjust governmental systems." His songs of love and protests, freedom and justice made him "the symbol of resistance against the elitist (Pinochet) democracy that caused the oppression, exploitations and injustices in Chile." His fingers were cut during his imprisonment, to stop him from playing with his guitar, but he tried hard to sing to his fellow prisoners—"giving them hope, strengthening their faith and resistance, hardening their resolve to live and continue to fight."
Along with other progressive and nationalist musicians, Victor Jara composed songs that raised the social awareness of Chileans and empowered the many working for political change. Nueva Cancion artists were known for their "great love for the simple people and a great respect for the culture, instruments and music of these people." Think of Asin and a number of our own nationalist composers and singers.
"Victor Jara of Chile" immortalizes him with these lines: Victor stood in the stadium (named in 2003 Estadio Victor Jara in his honor), his voice was brave and strong/And he sang for his fellow prisoners till the guards cut short his songs/They broke the bones in both his hands, they beat him on the head/They tore him with electric shocks and then they shot him dead. His wife Joan Jara said in his memorial: "They could kill him but they couldn't kill his songs."
The book's feature on the musician-martyr fittingly concludes: "Victor Jara did not die. He lives through his songs in the heart of the Chilean, Latin American and freedom loving people of the world." (To be continued)
E-mail: lagoc@hargray.com