Inti Illimani: El Pueblo unido / Inti Illimani sings "The People United" - POSTSCRIPT MARCH 2024

Frens (as the Green Frog People say), it is March 2024 and the Estallido Social of October 2019 is a faded memory.

The Covid Plandemic has come and gone.  It was the death knell for the popular awakening.  The violence in the streets was weaponized to polarize society.  The aim is always to destroy unity.

Then the people got the opportunity to form a Constitutional Assembly that would replace Pinochet's 1980 constitution.  It was a battle from Day 1, and the multiple fractions all had to get their parcels of vindication.  The Piñera government and Pinochet's Army got to work too, and their campaign of disinformation was a complete success.

In September 2022 the proposed new constitution was roundly rejected.

A new constitutional project was formed, this time by technocrats convoked by Congress.

In October 2023, it too was rejected.

The administration that succeeded Piñera's double tenure, the left-wing government of Boric, staunch admirer of Salvador Allende, has natureally become the Bogey Man.  I can't say the new generation has been the sharpest knife in the drawer either.  They're still trying, but you can't change the system from within the system, because it buys you, and if you're not for sale, it still coopts you.  Chilean deputies and senators are the highest-paid politicians on planet Earth.

The entire planet is plunging ever deeper into chaos and world war.

I observe.  I have the deep intuition that what is happening, must happen.  That something New is already forming and about to be born, but first the old must fall, the old must die.

The old isn't about to fall or die without a struggle to the death.

Says the old:   Humanity, if I can't keep enslaving you, then no one else will ever see you free.  Over my dead body.  


And another intuition I have, is that Humanity must assume its responsibility for  transforming the violence within itself into peace and light.  But Humanity will not make the evolutionary leap by itself, it needs assistance.  And we will receive it, but ONLY IF WE SHOW THAT WE DESERVE TO BE ASSISTED.

                                     El Pueblo unido jamás será vencido
                   The People United will never be defeated
Ang sinisigaw nila sa katapusan ay:  ¡El Pueblo, Unido, Jamás Será                                                                  Vencido!                                                                  
                    Ang Bayang Nagkakaisa, y Hindi Matatalo Kailanmán.             

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBapx7P5NNQ

El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido

Inti-Illimani

De pie, cantar Que vamos a triunfar Avanzan ya Banderas de unidad Y tú vendrás Marchando junto a mí Y así verás Tu canto y tu bandera florecer	Stand up, sing For we will win Move onward now Flags of unity And you will come Marching beside me And this way you’ll see Your song and flag blossoming
La luz De un rojo amanecer Anuncia ya La vida que vendrá	The light Of a crimson dawn Already announces The life that will come
De pie, luchar El pueblo va a triunfar Será mejor La vida que vendrá	Stand up, fight The people will triumph The life that is coming Will be better
A conquistar Nuestra felicidad Y en un clamor Mil voces de combate se alzarán	To win Our happiness And in a clamor A thousand voices of combat Will shout
Dirán Canción de libertad Con decisión La patria vencerá	Dirán Canción de libertad Con decisión La patria vencerá
Y ahora el pueblo Que se alza en la lucha Con voz de gigante Gritando: ¡adelante!	And now the People Who rise in the struggle With a giant’s voice Shouting: Onward!
El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido El pueblo unido jamás será vencido	The People united will never be defeated
La patria está Forjando la unidad De norte a sur Se movilizará Desde el salar Ardiente y mineral Al bosque austral Unidos en la lucha y el trabajo Irán La patria cubrirán Su paso ya Anuncia el porvenir	The nation is Forging union From north to south It will mobilize From the salt flats Burning hot, mineral To the austral forests United in struggle and work They will go The homeland they will cover Their footsteps already Announcing the future
De pie, cantar El pueblo va a triunfar Millones ya Imponen la verdad De acero son Ardiente batallón Sus manos van Llevando la justicia y la razón Mujer Con fuego y con valor Ya estás aquí Junto al trabajador	Stand up, sing The people will triumph Millions already Impose the truth They are steely Fiery battalion Their hands go Bearing justice and reason Women With fire and valor You're here Beside the workers
Y ahora el pueblo Que se alza en la lucha Con voz de gigante Gritando: ¡adelante!	And now the people Who rise up in the struggle With a giant’s voice  Shouts: Onward!
El pueblo unido, jamás será vencido El pueblo unido jamás será vencido	The People united will never be defeated The People united will never be defeated

People celebrate, do dance, do theater, get to know their neighbors again.                            Inti Illimani sings a beautiful song from the 1970s.  These songs begin to be heard again, in the streets.

                           The military and carabineros arrive with tank trucks and armored jeeps that shoot tear gas, the people disperse, the soldiers and police leave. The people return.  There was an 8pm curfew. The people stayed in the streets and were arrested.  The curfew was pushed back to 10pm.  People went home early!

                            There have been deaths, many seriously wounded by police and military brutality (firing blanks, rubber bullets and live ammunition at peoples' heads, eyes, necks, chests), torture and rapes have been denounced, 41 deaths, 11 rapes that are not being reported by the govt and main  stream media. Nagising na ang bansang chileno.

                            Foreign journalists such as Argentines          are divulging what is not reported by Chilean govt and media.  El Pueblo chileno ya despertó.

                           Here's a video report by TELEFE, the brave journalist Abigail Hermo isn't afraid to expose herself to tear gas:

                             If the government insists on repressing             the peaceful people, creating chaos and doing nothing about
those who loot, burn, commit terrorist acts such as burn entire subway stations (which ordinary Chilean students and citizens do not have the resources and know-how to carry out) and if the government itself orders the carabineros and military to commit human rights violations, refuses to dialog with the citizens and make structural changes such as convoke             a Constitutional Assembly to change the 1980 Constitution of Pinochet, it will fall.          SING WITH US.

Carta a don Guillermo Gómez Rivera / Letter to GGR: Hispanic Filipino Literature, a literature of resistance

21st Century Hispanic Filipino Literature: A Literature of Resistance

13 October 2019

Sabes, Guillermo, me he dado cuenta hoy que la literatura hispanofilipina a fines del siglo XX, hasta la actualidad, mientras el gobierno, las instituciones educacionales y el público lector filipino no dé importancia a la recuperación del español y del legado cultural hispanofilipino, necesariamente será una literatura escrita y leída en la resistencia.

You know, Guillermo, I’ve realized today that as long as the government, educational institutions and the Filipino reading public don’t give importance to the recovery of Spanish and the Hispanic Filipino cultural legacy, Hispanic Filipino literature of end-20^th century up to today will necessarily be a literature written and read in the resistance.

¿Puede haber una literatura nacional auténtica que intente amoldarse a las exigencias de un régimen foráneo, un régimen que se instale violentamente y, ganada la guerra de invasión, rehaga las estructuras sociales, estatales, y lleve una persecución solapada contra una cultura hispanofilipina arraigada tras siglos de avenimiento perseguido con la hispanidad? 

Can there be a literature that is authentically national, if it accommodated itself to the demands of a foreign regime, a regime violently installed after waging a war of invasion, after which it changed the social and state structures of Filipinas, instituting the insidious persecution of a Hispanic Filipino culture already deeply rooted after centuries of difficult bonding with Hispanic civilization?

 ¿Que bajo el régimen neocolonial, en completo aislamiento del resto de los países de hablahispana, intenta sobrevivir e incluso florecer (ya que los yanquis instituían una falsa libertad de expresión mientras preparaban el golpe de gracia institucional, cultural, sociopolítico) bajo las nuevas condiciones y ante la presión que sería cada vez más intensa del inglés impuesto a todo nivel, castigando a los que no lo adoptaban, cerrándoles el futuro profesional? 

A culture that, under the neocolonial regime, in total isolation from the rest of the Spanish-speaking countries, tried to survive and even to bloom (given the Yankees’ institution of a false freedom of expression while they prepared the final institutional, cultural, and sociopolitical coup de grace), faced by the intensifying pressure of English imposed at all levels, and the penalization of those who refused to adopt it by closing off their professional future?

¿Frente a la dura e implacable realidad de la llegada de nuevas generaciones avasalladas, condicionadas desde la cuna por la nueva pseudocultura filipina de los servidores nativos y una élite hispanofilipina acólita de todo lo estadounidense? 

Before the unstoppable, implacable reality of the arrival of new subjugated generations, conditioned from the cradle by the new Filipino culture of the native lackeys and a retrograde Hispanic Filipino elite that worshipped everything American?

Y los que lo habían dado todo, que se la había jugado muy joven aún, en pos del sueño de la República filipina, cómo era posible que no vieran con toda claridad que su mundo, que los había formado e inspirado a comprometerse al ideal de la generación rizalina de un país por todos y para todos, liberado de la tiranía monacal, con su cultura nativa diversa, país unificado por el castellano desde hacía siglos, ya era condenado a desaparecer?

And those who had sacrificed everything, who had gambled everything while still very young, on the dream of the Filipino Republic; how could it be possible for them not to see with utter clarity that their world---a world that educated and inspired them to commit to the ideal of the Rizalist ideal of a country by all and for all, freed from monastic tyranny, a country unified by Spanish for centuries---was already doomed to disappear?

La literatura filipina en idioma inglés es un fracaso.  Es una mala copia y solo conmueve cuando revela la angustia del exilio económico, la enajenación, el desgarro, la angustia de su explotación económica en EEUU y la soledad y penuria, vivir hacinados en apartamentos ubicados en barrios de mal vivir, la marginación de los trabajadores agrícolas de California, Hawai, y en las fábricas pesqueras de Alaska, en los años de comienzos del siglo XX, hasta la II Guerra.  Pero los filipinos en Filipinas ni conocen esa literatura.

Filipino literature in English is a failure. It is an inferior copy that only moves when it reveals the anguish of economic exile, the alienation, the wrenching sorrow of abandoning their home, the anguish of their exploitation in the U.S., the loneliness and penury, living in overcrowded apartments in red light districts, the margination of the farm workers in Hawaii and California, and of fishery factory workers in Alaska, in the years before WW II until the war. But the Filipinos in Filipinas don’t even know about that literature.[1]

La literatura en inglés escrita en Filipinas no podía competir con los clásicos anglosajones enseñados en los colegios e universidades, tanto públicos como privados. Y los intelectuales de las generaciones des-castellanizadas, no son leídos en masa, son encerrados en pequeños reductos donde no pueden movilizar a la masa porque la masa no los conoce, ni los conocerá. 

The literature written in English in Filipinas could not compete with the Anglosaxon classics taught in the schools and universities, public and private.  The intellectuals of the de-castillianized generations are not read massively, they are separated away in small circles from which they cannot mobilize the masses because the masses don’t know about them, nor will they.

Las masas ven películas y televisión y leen novelas de preferencia con contenidos importados. Cuando hay creaciones nativas, por ejemplo películas filipinas de excelentes directores filipinos, representan los paisajes del presente, las realidades de la globalización, y cuando tratan el pasado, son capaces de crear imágenes que conmueven y transportan a otro tiempo, pero no son capaces de verbalizar, y penetrar la selva cultural en la que todos nosotros nos hemos perdido.

The masses watch movies and television and read novels preferably with imported content. When there are native creations, such as films by excellent Filipino directors, they portray the alienated present, the realities of globalization, and when they deal with the past, they are capable of creating images that move and transport to another time, but are incapable of verbalizing and penetrating the cultural jungle that all of us have become lost in.

¿Y escribir en español?  Porque hay escritores, poetas que escriben en español en la actualidad. 

What about writing in Spanish?  Because there are writers, poets who write in Spanish today.

Y ha habido ciertamente producciones en tagalo y en inglés, que intentan afirmar y expresar el sentirse filipino, la resistencia a la consciencia avasallada pero sin el componente de la consciencia de otras luchas, otros nombres, otras mujeres, otros hombres del mundo aquel que en la lejanía son el reflejo y el eco tan sorprendentes del nuestro.......entonces no hay posibilidad de resonancia mayor. Y no habrá, consecuente y fatalmente, movilización en un nuevo sentido,  ligada tanto a nuestra ancestralidad como a la ancestralidad del Caribe y de Hispanoamérica.

And there have certainly been productions in Tagalog and in English that attempt to affirm and express Filipino sentiment, resistance to the subjugated consciousness. But without the awareness of other struggles, other names, other women, other men of the worlds in faraway lands that are the uncanny reflection and echo of ours … there’s no possibility of great resonance. And consequently and fatally, there will be no mobilization in a new direction that will be bonded to our ancestrality and to the ancestrality of the Hispanic Caribbean and Hispanic America.

El ser humano que solo tiene este presente vaciado de espíritu de lucha, de sentido histórico, es un ser sin voluntad de autocreación, sin espíritu de autosuperación, y sin conciencia de la unicidad de la especie humana y por lo tanto, no es plenamente humano.  Estas cosas estaban a flor de piel en el siglo XIX, pero se perdieron con asombrosa rapidez en el siglo XX y hoy por hoy, ya somos casi solo mitad humana, porque la otra mitad es máquina.

The human being who has nothing but this present, emptied of the spirit of struggle, of a sense of history, does not have the will to self-creation, self-surpassing, and without awareness of the unicity of the human species and, therefore, is not fully human. These things were very much felt during the 19th century, but they were lost with amazing speed in the 20^th, and today we are nearly only half-human, because the other half is machine.

Y esto es la razón por qué el filipino, si no es capaz de recuperar el espíritu hispanofilipino, está nuevamente condenado a ser nadie.  Un nadie y una nadie útil, tal vez hasta a las multinacionales, a sus países y sociedades adoptivos, pero para sí, será vacío y sin saberlo.

This is why the Filipino who is incapable of recovering the Hispanic Filipino spirit is once again condemned to be nobody. A nobody who is useful, perhaps even to the multinationals, to his or her adoptive country and society, but for himself, for herself, they will be empty and they won’t know it.

Por lo tanto, que viva o muera, poco importa. 

Therefore, whether they live or die, will matter little.

De hecho, esta ha sido mi condición de nacimiento, de crianza, hasta llegada a la adultez y ahora a la vejez.  Como escritora, soy de bajo estatus, lo mismo que cuando yo era hija, estudiante, activista, una secretaria, y ahora una traductora y una intérprete.  De bajo estatus.

In fact this has been my condition of birth, of my growing up, until reaching adulthood and now of old age.  As a writer I am low status, the same as when I was a daughter, a student, an activist, a secretary, and now a translator and interpreter. Low status.

No obstante, mi activismo, y mis escritos, han sido un intento honesto, firme, de liberación de la consciencia avasallada.  Y mis trabajos por muy insignificantes que son, igual serán una huella tenue.  No he terminado aún.  Hay tiempo que matar.  Seguiré intentando escribir ficción que recree aquel mundo hispanofilipino.....tal como Gauguin imaginó el Tahití que lo obsesionaba, que había desaparecido 100 años antes de su llegada a Polinesia en 1891, y finalmente se dio permiso para rajarse con su imaginación y atreverse a plasmar la imagen interior que lo había poseído, y que terminó por redimirlo.  Así es Hispanofilipinas para mí.  

However, my activism, my writings, have been an honest and firm attempt to free myself from subjugated consciousness. And my works, no matter how insignificant, will leave a tenuous trace.  I haven’t finished yet. There is still time to kill. I will continue to try and write fiction that will recreate that Hispanic Filipino world…just as Gauguin imagined the Tahiti that obsessed him, that had disappeared 100 years before his arrival in Polynesia in 1891, and finally gave himself permission to let his imagination rip, and dare to give shape to the inner image that had possessed him, and that finally redeemed him. This is what Hispanofilipinas is for me.

Mi literatura ---al igual que la tuya Guillermo, es  literatura de la resistencia.  No puede ser de otra forma, porque hoy, escribir en castellano en Filipinas es subversivo, sobre todo si uno está vinculado profundo y vivamente al pasado, tú por tu pasado personal como hijo ilustre de Iloilo e Intramuros, héroe cultural hispanofilipino, yo por mi pasado ideológico que me llevó a Chile.  A diferencia de ti y con infinita deferencia hacia ti, que eres el autor hispanofilipino que ha mantenido vivo la llama de Balmori, Recto, Mercado Abad, y eres premiado y miembro de número y director de la Academia Filipina---mi literatura y mi persona somos de bajo estatus, invisibles, pero una cosa que comparto contigo Maestro, me atrevo a gritarlo silenciosamente, es que NO SOMOS VASALLOS.

My literature, like yours, Guillermo, is of the resistance. It can’t be any other way because to write in Spanish in the Philippines or outside it today is subversive, above all if one is connected deeply and powerfully to the past, as you are because of your personal past, as the illustrious son of Iloilo and Intramuros, Hispanic Filipino cultural hero, and as I am because of my ideological past that led me to Chile.  Unlike you and with infinite deference to you, who are the Hispanic Filipino author who has kept the flame alive of Balmori, Recto, Mercado Abad, recipient of the Zobel Prize, member of the Academia Filipina, my person and literature are low status, invisible, but one thing I share with you, Maestro, I dare shout it silently, is that WE ARE NOT VASSALS.

Con todo mi amor,

Liz

---

[1] The Manong Generation.