Dreadlocked Dreams

There is this dream I keep having. In it, I am getting married to some dreadlocked dude with tattoos snaking from his neck to his face. We live in a Volkswagen van and I wear flowers in my hair.

In real life, this is problematic on so many levels. For one, I do not believe in marriage and even if by some miracle I change my mind about it, my mother will kill me before she lets me marry someone who matches her definition of a druggie. I also do not approve of uprooting plants and flowers for aesthetic purposes and besides, flower-in-the-hair is so not my style. But I guess I'm fine with living in a VW van. I've always wanted to paint on the outside of one.

But I have to wonder: why do I keep having that dream? Is my subconscious, or perhaps a higher power, trying to tell me something? Like maybe I haven't yet fully recovered from my Jason Castro rabid fan-girl phase?

Whatever it is, I've decided not to make too much out of it. Still, every time I meet someone with dreads and tattoos, I find myself telling him determinedly in my mind, "Nope, I will not marry you."

Whammy Bar defined

Although it sounds like some sort of chocolate candy, the whammy bar is actually a steel lever attached to the bridge of an electric guitar.

To the mere guitar player, the whammy bar is used to "shake" a note or to create a vibrato effect. This is done by a mechanism that can only be explained by someone with a triple degree in physics, philosophy and engineering and a Ph.D. in astronomy, so I'd rather not go into that.

But in the hands of Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Dimebag Darrell and Steve Vai, the whammy bar can do most anything. It can make the guitar sound like a horse, a cat, an exploding bomb, an alien and other things not of this world. Just as a magician has his wand, the guitar virtuoso has his whammy bar.

With the whammy bar, there is an infinite spectrum of sounds to experiment with. Only the imagination is the limit. There is also a variety of facial expressions to discover and practice, because to play the whammy bar without engaging in facial muscle acrobatics is just plain wrong.

The whammy bar represents everything I think guitar-playing should be. Avant-garde, radical, fearless, playful, weird. It also sounds like chocolate candy, and I'm all for that, too.

Why I am voting for KATRIBU Partylist

The Constitution, through the partylist system, provides for the representation of the country's marginalized and disadvantaged sectors, and I can not think of any sector that fits the bill more perfectly than the indigenous peoples of the Philippines. Comprising fifteen percent of the population, IPs have been left out of national governance and decision-making for, well, pretty much the entire of history. Yet they are the ones who face the direst problems and issues, whose struggles are literally life-or-death.

This is not to say that IPs are a victim of powerlessness. Not at all. For didn't the IPs triumphantly resist the colonial forces that sought to breach and convert them, and were thus able to preserve to this day their cultures and ways of life? (Ego-bruised at having lost to spear-wielding natives, the colonizers pegged them as savages and monkeys with tails growing out of their backs. Real mature, I know.) And some thirty years ago, didn't tribal chief Macliing Dulag lead the fight of the Kalinga, Apayao and Bontoc peoples against the World Bank-funded Chico Dam project that would submerge whole villages and rice fields? Even in the face of rifles and army tanks, the Northern Cordillerans stood their ground. April 24th, commemorated today as Cordillera Day, was the day Macliing Dulag was shot and killed by Philippine Army soldiers. His death only intensified the fight, and the dams were never built.

IPs have long fought for rights to ancestral land. They have long opposed government policies that pandered to foreign interests and put the environment at risk. They have always stood up where land, life and liberty were threatened.

And still they remain marginalized, a people on the fringes of this nation.

A paradox, so it seems. But it will make sense if we take a look at the backdrop against which the IPs' plight takes place. With economic policies that promote "development" at whatever cost, centralization of social services (if any) in the urban areas, absence of a genuine land reform program, and a lack of understanding of indigenous culture -- or more accurately, a refusal to understand and respect indigenous culture -- it should come as no surprise that the IPs face the plethora of predicaments that they do. They are essentially being marginalized by the entire system itself, by formal and informal structures alike. To put it plainly, if the IPs' struggle were a movie, it would be called You and Me Against the World.

Here lies the beauty of the IPs' plight. Though well aware of the unfavourable odds, they continue to fight, for theirs is an enduring legacy of vigilance. They go to battle against gun-toting imperialists with only arrows and spears, for theirs is an enduring legacy of hope. This is a kind of steadfastness and fervor that can only be rooted in a deep sense of the rightness of their cause: the assertion of the right to ancestral domain and self-determination, the collective rights of IPs as well as their civil and political rights, the promotion of sustainable development, the acknowledgment of and support for indigenous socio-political institutions and knowledge systems, the cooperation between IPs and non-IPs towards a nation that respects, celebrates and thrives on diversity.

And now the IPs undertake a different kind of fight: the fight to have a voice in Congress. This voice is embodied by KATRIBU Partylist which is made up of various IP organizations and individuals that have long been at the forefront of the struggle.

If elected, the IPs win so much more than a seat in the House of Representatives. And one does not need to be a member of the sector to see that it is a fight worth supporting.

I am voting for KATRIBU Partylist because I choose to be part of this historic fight.

I am voting for KATRIBU Partylist because I believe in the rightness and importance of their cause. The issues they face today are more pressing than ever. The time is ripe to have IP representation in Congress.

I am voting for KATRIBU Partylist because in these troubled times when it is so easy to lose faith in the country's electoral process and structures of governance, the IPs take the difficult road and choose instead to see hope and promise in their bid for representation, as they've done in their every fight. And I choose this as well.