Firebrand

Narkokristo, 1896 by Ronaldo S. Vivo Jr.

Mararating na nila ang kahustuhan ng unang bahagi ng kanilang pag-aaral. Nakalatag na ang mga talang pinagtibay ng kanilang mga isinagawang pagsusuri. Pinakamahalaga ay ang mga kasunod na preguntas de investigación o salitang sa Aleman ay forschungsfragen—na kanilang dadalhin sa Universität Heidelberg sa Alemanya—para sa gagawing pagsasala ng mga kapuwa iskolar at propesor. Sa gagawing presentasyon, layon nilang itanghal ang kanilang mga materia tulad sa nangyaring Exposition de las Islas Filipinas noong 1887, sa Parque de la Vuelta del Duero, Madrid.

[They are on the brink of completing the first phase of their study. The findings, certified by their investigation, are now on file. The most important thing are the new preguntas de investigación or what in German is called forschungsfragen—what they plan to bring to the Universität Heidelberg in Germany—for peer review by fellow scholars and professors. In the upcoming presentation, they aim to showcase the specimens, just like what was done in the Exposición de las Islas Filipinas in 1887, in Madrid’s Parque de la Vuelta del Duero.]

The 1887 Exposición General de las Islas Filipinas was an event meant to showcase the economic resources and human populations of the Philippines as a colony of Spain. The exhibits included living people from various ethnic groups of the Philippines, among them Igorots, Manobos, and Negritos. They were displayed as if in a “human zoo” for the colonizers to mock and gawk at. Even José Rizal was scandalized by such an exhibition mounted by the “civilized” people of Spain; he viewed it as a violation of human rights. This kind of exposition was a fad during colonial times, meant to assert the superiority of the western colonizers over their subjects.

An “expo” akin to this was recounted in Ronaldo S. Vivo Jr.’s Narkokristo, 1896, a novel that disrupts the template of the Filipino historical novel. Vivo trained his sights on the consequential events in and around Pateros town during the flashpoint year 1896 when the revolution against Spanish occupation broke out. The characters in the novel shared profiles of the novelist's characters in his previous books: corrupt people in power (now in the robes of Spanish friars and military rulers) and victims navigating the maelstrom of violence and forces which transformed them into desperate vigilantes seeking justice to avenge personal wrongs. The readers knew they are situated in a new dreamland world with the same restless nightmares when they are thrust into a spate of killings and injustices, both extrajudicial or state-sponsored (although the two may be synonymous). The readers also knew they will bear the impact of this violence and trauma.

What are the uses of historical novels in an era bursting with information both factual and fake? The outline of events in Philippine Islands, circa 1896, has already been recreated in books and films a hundred, a thousand times over. Do we still need new configurations of characters, motivations, and plot points in the competing narratives of history? These “research questions” are moot once the novel applied its brute and blunt force, i.e., once the characters were triggered and emboldened to enact the ideas of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli.

A novel can retell or reiterate things past. It can tell a good story and entertain readers, explore facets of history already familiar or in a new light. Yet a novel can embroider history just as well. It can falsify things, create new characters, motivations, and storylines in the service of the story or some other agenda. It can be a corrective of history to set the record straight about some unknown characters or unreported/misreported events. At worse, a novel can be a false revision of history.

In 1904, as part The Philippine Exposition in the St. Louis World’s Fair, American organizers boasted off the conquerors’ new possessions: the peoples and natural resources of the new colony. Unlike the Madrid exposition, this one was grittier and more cinematic: “Entire villages were built to replicate those of the Visayans, Bagobos, Samals, ‘Moros’ (as they were called then), Igorots, Tingguianes, Negritos, and 30 other tribes. These villages were ‘stocked’ with over a thousand tribal men, women, and children as living exhibits.”

In the Negrito Village, half-naked Negrito men and boys displayed their bow and arrow skills to curious fair-haired men and boys in suits and bowler hats.

The Igorot Village, spread over six acres with 100 natives, was a World’s Fair hit. Every day, throngs of curious Americans flocked to the village to witness the G-stringed tribe boil a dog for dinner. [Filipinas Magazine, 1994, reprinted in Ortigas Foundation Library]

The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair would go down in history as the “largest human zoo”. But we are getting ahead of ourselves with the American occupation. Vivo's projected trilogy will be set in three colonial periods (Spanish, American, Japanese). In this opening move, he already dramatized the literal and metaphorical caging of human lives during colonial times. In this novelistic draft of history, we recognized how conquest and colonialism wore the same garb as human trafficking, slavery, and establishment of a human zoo on a massive scale.

So the historical novel could have many functions and purposes. An annotation of historical events; an exposition of human tragedies and capacity for cruelty; a “living exhibit” of crimes, violations, and iniquities; a corrective against ignorance and forgetting. As written in Narkokristo's dedicatory page, the novel resurrects the heroes whose names never reached our consciousness.

If it has power at all, the historical novel could be a diorama of stories that give life and agency to characters who act in unforgiving situations and take justice into their own hands. It arms the subjugated and gives power to the vanquished so they can achieve justice denied them by history. While the novelist has no power to rewrite history, he has the power to reimagine actions and situations, the power to choreograph power plays, and the power to yield power to the oppressed. The historical novel can be a form of redress. In troubled times or at any time, it dispenses justice when no authority can.

But what of the colonial mindset, the caged spirit? The colonized is caged if their mindsets do not allow them to hatch resistance and revolt. The colonizer is caged whose mindsets do not allow them freedom to think beyond their perverse beliefs.

If it has power at all, the historical novel is also a decolonizing instrument. It subverts power and decolonizes worldviews. It overturns notions of racial superiority, manifest destiny, and bigotry. Western pseudoscience, xenophobia, slavery, and racism. These kaput ideas and ideologies propagated through a caged mindset and toxic doctrine of dehumanization cry for obliteration.

The radical novelist decolonizes history by shattering the zoos and cages of the mind. He sets fire to entrenched values and philosophies of race superiority. He arms tortured souls and demystifies the grand spectacle of savagery. He torches imperialistic dreams and razes naked power to the ground.

The radical novelist is an arsonist.