volume 8
Tanzania to Detroit, Manila to Chicago
by Marlon Esguerra
There are times you thank God you're American.
There are times you know you are more an exile than a citizen.
“I watched the dead float down the river in Tanzania ,” wrote Keith Richberg nonchalantly, in the opening lines of Out of Africa . In his essay documenting the images of civil unrest in Northern Africa, Richberg comes to very stark, personal revelations about his identity as an African-American male, born in Detroit , “born in White America.” In witnessing and documenting atrocity after atrocity in Africa as a reporter for the Washington Post , Richberg comes to “thank God that [he is] an American.” He boldly accepts the slavery of African people as a basic historical fact in the creation of the United States of America , and given the current state of Tanzania , Northern Africa , and the entire continent, he claims, “Thank God my ancestor got out, because, now, I am not one of them.” He accepts that he sounds “cynical, jaded. I'm beaten down, and I'll admit it. And it is Africa that has made me feel this way.”
I am a Filipino Muslim, a teacher, performance artist, Chicagoan, and community organizer. I would like nothing more that to take Keith Richberg's argument and shred it to pieces, to take his privilege and tell him that a colonized mind is a terrible thing to waste . We live in a time that has never known a day without war: the war on drugs, the war in the Persian Gulf: Part I, the war in IRAQ: Part II, the war on terrorism- all translated- the war on the poor, the war on the working class, the war on people of color, the war with nations who have what we want, the war on anyone who is not American. I understand that this America , which I am privilege to as a U.S. citizen, comes at a cost. I own my privilege and I know that makes me a child of war, empire, and imperialism. As a child of empire, it is my life's goal to live in honesty and congruence with those who have paved the way for me to be here, but that does not entail living as a modern slave to this country, unwilling to challenge it and its hypocrisy. My overall disgust for Richberg's blind patriotism and internalized oppression would make for a very short essay were it not for the fact that for six months in the Philippines, from the summer of 1984 to the spring of 1985, I felt as Richberg felt- I was happy that my parents got out of this God-forsaken place and made it to Chicago. I was happy that I was American.
I can waste the whole day listening to “Thriller”
while the tanks make their way.
I wrote those lines in one of the first journals I ever owned (which I still have). My Kuya, (Tagalog term for big brother or relative) Larry, bought it for me at the Shoemart Department Store in downtown Manila . There had been weekly, sometimes daily, demonstrations for months following the assassination of revered political leader, Benigno Aquino. It was a long time since August 21, 1983, but the people kept protesting, the tanks kept coming, and I kept hearing the chants of Laban! (Fight!) , Imperialismo! Ibagsak! (Down with imperialism!) , and Makibaka! Huwag Matakot! (Struggle on! Have no fear!) for two whole months since arriving in the summer. My Lola (grandmother) had been sick, and nearing ninety years old, had fewer and fewer days ahead. My mother chose to go to the Philippines and take her only son, who had never met his Lola, and consequently rescued me from St. Helen's Roman Catholic Elementary School, which was ruled by the iron hand of Sister Janet of the beneficent order of St. Francis of Assisi . All I kept thinking when she told me that my Lola was sick and that we were to see to her was, “You mean I don't have to go to school for at least three months?”
I saw the tanks roll down the street again today.
People who got too close were crushed, but that never makes the news.
My mother always thought we just went shopping at the Shoemart in Manila . She didn't realize that I was twelve years old and Kuya Larry was eighteen years old, and between the both of us, we were bored very easily. The adventures at the Shoemart lasted all of two excursions. By the end of my first week there, we had inched our way to the demonstrations and had witnessed as many as fifteen thousand in the streets, calling for the end of a corrupt Marcos regime.
Any escape to the Shoemart, the Mohammed Ali Mall , its adjacent Mega MoviePlex, or any of Manila 's flagships for American capitalism was always so fervently supported by my mother. Both Kuya Larry and I were great at basketball, and I, being a product of U.S.D.A. Grade A beef and whole milk, towered over and dwarfed those my age in the village. “Don't stay in this God-forsaken Project 4 barrio! Go see the world!” my mother said every day. “Larry! Take your cousin out of this place!” she commanded, sliding ten dollars into his pocket. And so we'd go— past the corner store selling individual cigarettes and Chicklets, the town square of Maragondon , past the soon-to-be Nike shoe factory, even past the makeshift basketball court that called out to us- to cram into a Jeepney and go to Manila . In the months I spent in the Philippines , I saw my Lola a total of three times.
It's a funny thing about shame. Most people in the village knew who I was, or had heard about my arrival and my mother's return from local gossip, chismis . They all wanted to see me do something American or fill them in on some aspect of American life: speak perfect English, speak Tagalog with that funny Chicagoan (insert bangbang mobster reference here) accent, or tell them what was happening on TV shows they got six months behind like Dallas and Knots Landing . At first, I thought my mother wanted to save me from the annoyance of the gossips, to get me out of Maragondon to see the vibrancy of where she was from, where I was from. But she never wanted me to see Lola, to hang around the village, to talk to anyone who had known her or her life before America . And why not my sisters? Why didn't they come? We didn't have much money, but my sisters were begging to visit. It had been much longer for them, and they wouldn't see Lola before she died, either. In many ways, my mother had brought me to her home to say to everyone, “Look at my American boy! Look at my American son!” I was everything American and nothing Filipino. I had never felt so American. I had never felt so less Filipino.
I began to look around more closely as Larry and I made our daily trips into Manila . Maragondon was a suburb, but not in any way we know suburbs to be in the States. It had no primary industry, and the only saving grace for the village then was the nearby shoe factory going up. No doubt it would be another slave-shop. The town wasn't much of a town. Wherever I went, people stared at me. Simultaneous to my mother's pride in her American-born was her shame of leaving behind her family. She was ashamed of the place of her birth, her home . She was ashamed of what had become of her Maragondon, her Philippines . She was ashamed she was so eager to leave it behind. She never wanted me to see the poverty in the streets, the vendors selling trinkets to make do, the searching for food in garbage heaps, à la Melanie in the Sally Struthers' for-seventeen-cents-a-day-please-feed-this-poor-child commercials. Melanie was from the Philippines , from Smoky Mountain , the world's largest garbage dump, a smoldering mass of refuse. Maragondon was no shantytown, but it was a barrio, a reflection of the day-to-day life that was simmering and ready to boil over onto the downtown streets of Manila .
Richberg's pity for the people of Tanzania was my pity for the people for Maragondon, for the people of the Philippines and its exploited Melanies. I had it easy with two working parents, one a bookkeeper and the other a factory worker. Despite the regular beatings, I had a solid education in St. Helen's Roman Catholic Elementary School. I was Filipino, but not in Maragondon. What was I doing here? I thought I was here to see my Lola before she passed. Instead, I'm shooed away from my grandmother by my mother, asked not to notice my family in poverty, and told to hide out in a wanna-be JC Penney for the duration of three to six months. I was also resentful for this Maragondon, this Philippines that was a cause of so much pain to my mother. This was no picnic for her. I was happy that she met my papa and got the hell out of this place.
First there's one hundred, then one thousand, then two thousand.
They are all screaming, “Down with the Cronies!” They are all chanting for change!
Ironically, my mother's shame for her upbringing in the Project 4 barrio urged me on to seek personal revolution in the streets. Richberg and I part ways in that I made it my goal to continue to document what I saw, to make the most of my time, despite her shame and my Americanness. I snuck out of the house nightly to go to the village square. Kuya Larry and I played basketball under lantern-light and tagged the slogans we learned from the protests on the walls of the shoe factory. I wrote every day, sometimes walking into the crowd to chant alongside senators, clergymen, and children who were younger and smaller than I. I refused to be the target of anyone's shame or anyone's politicking. Anti-American chants were common at the rallies. Marcos was a long-time supporter of continued American military presence and influence over the Philippines as a “ward” of the United States . Many chanted, “Down with American cronies,” but I quickly shouted back, “I am American! And I say down with Marcos, too!”
I chanted and wrote down everything I saw. Even if I wasn't sure about where all this was going, I knew I was changing. I wanted my 12-year-old American frame to beat back 500 years of shame and inhumanity— for my grandmother I could not see, for my mother who saw too much, for me as a child of empire. Who better to break down a house of atrocity that has stood for so long than its murderous children, its chickens who have come home to roost?
They interviewed me, and Ate Marivick said it made the news!
Then Mom came and nearly beat it out of me.
I was near the front, clutching a banner I could barely make out, except for the five-foot-high hand, fingers painted in the formation of an “L” (for Laban). Maybe it was the new Levi's jeans I picked up the last time I went to Shoemart many months ago. Maybe it was the Swatch watch. A local camera crew, spotting that I was American, walked up, then kept stride for stride next to me.
Why are you here today?
I am here for the same reason most people are here. To take down Marcos!
Aren't you American?
Yes, I am American, and proud to be so!
Why are you here in Manila ? Why are you marching with the Filipino people?
I'm here today to fight for me, because I am Filipino!
Because no one sees that I am Filipino!
For my mother, because she is ashamed of her home.
Because I can't be anything but a twelve-year-old American.
I am here because my mom can't be here; she's with my sick Lola.
What will you do when the tanks come?
Laban!Laaabbbbaaaaan!
It was the most poetic thing I have ever said. I would have forgotten it were it not for the fact that it was broadcast on November 17, 1984. My cousin, Marivick, while doing her homework and listening to “ Thriller ,” saw me on television and screamed so loudly it shook the shingles off the new Nike factory. It was rebroadcast thirty minutes later, and again on the late night news. My mother saw it. The villagers of Maragondon saw it. They turned the TV up as loudly as they could so my Lola could hear it in her room. That night, my mother beat me so hard I wished I was back in St. Helen's with Sister Janet. She screamed so loudly, so furiously, and in such a manner so Filipino, that witnesses swore that my near-death-American-self responded in kind with 100% Maragondon-slang-laced-Tagalog. There, with my last-ditch effort to save my life about to fail and my mother in tears with anger, I remarkably had never felt so Filipino. I had never felt so American.
Her noose-like grip folded into an embrace as she cried for her Maragondon that I had also learned to love. She cried for the guilt she harbored- the simultaneous pride because I was American and shame because I was American. I just smiled because I realized that I would not be killed, by mother or tank or anything that night. I realized that her shame was my responsibility to bear, and my privilege was a birthright that I could not deny.
I had sought out, willingly, the grief she wanted to save me. Even at twelve, I had seen people younger than I and older than my Lola fight for change with nothing more than banners, chants, and rocks tagged with the hopes of towns and villages not unlike Maragondon. I had witnessed the act of flesh and bone under tanks, and I would always take that battle cry with me, from Maragondon to Chicago and back.
I'm going home today. This is my last [entry] in Maragondon.
Lola passed last week. I saw her twice before she was too weak to say anything.
She said I have a good American voice. She said I should keep using it.
You can't stop fighting for change for even in instant. The tanks never stop coming.