HIMAGSIK KAYUMANGGI

REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS ALMOST PAST BY AN ENGLISH MAJOR IN U.P. (1954-58) by E. SAN JUAN, Jr. Mimicking Proust’s memory, mine is a prismatic and selective affair, conditioned by what I am now as an unfinished project. And like any member of the 1954-58 cohort, I was a bifurcated citizen caught between a dead world and one struggling to emerge. Born before the carnage of World War II and growing up during the bloody Huk “pacification” campaigns of Magsaysay in the early Fifties, I entered UP at the height of the sectarian wars. It was a time of crisis and of “great expectations.” The Philippines was then leading the Asian countries in economic development and sociocultural progress; today, alas, it is mired in fierce class/ethnic antagonisms, corruption, and abysmal poverty, with nearly ten million compatriots transplanted abroad as exploited migrant workers and professionals. The crisis in UP has been recurrent since then. The death of student Gonzalo Albert from fraternity hazing...

JOSE RIZAL : RE-DISCOVERING THE REVOLUTIONARY FILIPINO HERO IN THE AGE OF TERRORISM BY E. SAN JUAN, Jr. Fellow, WEB Du Bois Institute, Harvard University Yo la tengo, y yo espero que ha de brillar un dia en que venza la Idea a la fuerza brutal, que despues de la lucha y la lenta agonia, otra vzx mas sonora, mas feliz que la mi sabra cantar entonces el cantico triunfal. [I have the hope that the day will dawn/when the Idea will conquer brutal force; that after the struggle and the lingering travail,/another voice, more sonorous, happier than mine shall know then how to sing the triumphant hymn.] -- Jose Rizal, “Mi Retiro” (22 October 1895) On June 19, 2011, we are celebrating 150 years of Rizal’s achievement and its enduring significance in this new millennium. It seems fortuitous that Rizal’s date of birth would fall just six days after the celebration of Philippine Independence Day - the proclamation of independence from Spanish rule by General Emilio Aguinaldo in K...