Another Invitation To the Pope To Visit Tondo 
       by Emmanuel Torres

     Next time your Holiness slums through our lives, we will try to make our poverty exemplary.The best is a typhoon month. It never fails
To find us, like charity, knocking on
all sides of the rough arrangements we thrive in.
Mud shall be plenty for the feet of the pious.

We will show uoi how we pull things together
from nowhere, life after life,
prosper with children, whom you love. To be sure,
we shall have more for you to love.

We will show you where the sun leaks on
our sleep,
on the dailiness of piece meals and wages
with their habit of slipping away
from fists that have holes for pockets.

We will show you our latest child with a sore
that never sleeps. When he cries,
the dogs of the afternoon bark without stopping,
and evening darkens early on the mats.

Stay for supper of turnips on our table
since 1946 swollen with the same hard tears.
The buntings over our one and only window
shall welcome a short breeze.

And lead prayers for the family that starves
and stays together. If we wear roasries round
our nexks
it is not because they never bruise our fingers,
(Pardon if we doze on a dream of Amen.)

But remember to remember to reward us
with something . . . more lush, greener than all
the lawns of memorial parks singing together.
Our eyes shall belss the liveliness of dollars.

Shed no tears, please, for the brown multitudes
who thicken on chance and feast on leftovers
as the burning garbage smuts the sky of Manila
pile after pile after pile.

Fear not. Now there are only surreal assassins
about who dream of your death in the shape
of a flowering kris.
GIA ABIGAIL :)         

"COLONIZATION"

                                                   COLONIZATION

The Philippines can be seen as an abboration in relation to other Asian countries. Early on in its history it was subject to colonial rule by the Spanish. The Spanish introduced Spanish culture and Roman Catholicism to the Philippines. The period of long colonial rule also produced a culture that was neither directly Spanish nor directly Filipino. Filipino society and culture today can be best described as a synthesis of the two cultures that has been tempered over time. However for some Filipinos this is not enough. Some long for a more solid notion of identity. They ask, “What is Filipino?” Two novels from the Philippines, When The Rainbow Goddess Wept, by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, and Dusk by F. Sionil Jose, suggest that Filipino identity can be seen in the struggles and oral traditions of their past. The Philippines were originally Asian in culture and race, but lost this identity through the Spanish, and American colonial experience. But we see that through the colonial experience a new Filipino Identity developed. In the novel, Recuerdo, by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, one learns that prior to colonialism the Philippines traded and had contact with China.

When we hear the word “ colonization” the first  thing/idea comes to our mind is about how spanish colonization rule our country. For three hundred years of ruling our country we have so many lessons, religious beliefs, supertitituos beliefs, traits, traditions and other spanish way of life. The coming of the spaniards brought the  Filipinos in contact with them when the Filipinos  were conquered the spanish way of life was introduced their clothing, their eating habits, their cooking and etc. All of these resulted in the mixing of Spanish and Filipino cultural elements. Our land is peaceful when there is no Spaniards ruling on us. But when the spaniards or the spanish colonization rule our country we have no freedom to say what we want to say. The first one hundred and fifty years of Spanish rule was characterized by a slow economic development. Population decreased and uprising and revolts became problems to the colonial government.

There were no formal schools before the coming of the Spaniards. The children of school age were taught in their own homes by their mothers who in the Filipino homes even today, were the first teachers. The children were taught reading and writing in their native alphabet or alibata. Perhaps music and religious were also taught to the children for it was unthinkable that a religious people like the Filipinos would neglect the teaching of their religion to the children. The Spanish organized in the Philippines a highly centralized form of government was so powerful that almost everything had to be done, with it’s knowledge. Filipino culture is very influenced by the Spanish conquest which began mid-millenium. Many of the traditions of the Phillipines are actually Spanish traditions. The food is a combination of Asian and Spanish cuisine, and the language is made up of Spanish, English, and a touch of Japanese. The colonization experience erased what was Filipino culture and replaced it with a synthesis of Spanish, Catholic, and Filipino elements.

:) GIA ABIGAIL....