I.
Imagine, for a moment, the district of Tondo in capital city Manila, colonial-era Philippines—water-bound, fishing boats, traders, wooden shops, hawkers thronging and rakish, nipa huts touched hither and thither by tropical light, families frolicking under mangroves and coconut palms, dusty streets like arteries pumping abaca blood back into the walled city of Intramuros, heart of Spanish-lorded Philippines, seat of its colonial and clerical power, proxy for King Alfonso XII. In the midst of indios working to their native bones to earn a little less than a living, Chinese immigrants peasanting in the plains, old money mestizos colluding with Spanish friars to uphold tranquility in all the realm, silhouetted against an equatorial sun, a young poet named Francisco Balagtas implores his mentor, José de la Cruz, to edit his latest. The former offers the only payment the latter will take: a single baby chick, or sisiw as they are called in Tagalog, which the mentor has an acquired taste for. De la Cruz, known widely as “Huseng Sisiw” for his chosen delicacy, glances at his mentee’s payment and, unlike times past, gently refuses. But rather than falling back on despondency or complacency—on la indolencia de los filipinos, as one national hero would so rightly call it in 1890—the rejection stirs something within Balagtas.
Read Full Article »