I was 39 years old then. Yet, a South Asian fellow participant in a short course on food security in Bangkok, Thailand in 1999 commented I was an “angry young man.” Actually, that’s what he wrote on the piece of cartolina paper posted on my back during our class group dynamics. It’s an exercise whose intent was to enable other participants to convey what they could not tell you face-to-face.
To this day, I’m still at a lost on what prompted that comment. As I’ve said, I was already 39 years old then, thus, I was far from being young. And, angry? At that time? Far from it. In fact, I was then very excited as it was my first trip outside the Philippines. Moreover, I was very eager to share my experiences in helping farming communities become food secured in the country and learned from my fellow participants’ initiatives.
But, if pressed for an explanation, I can offer two conjectures—at least, on what made him perceived I was angry.
One was my demeanor during animated discussions. Lately, I’ve realized that no matter how I repeatedly reminded myself to be nice and not look menacing while having discussions with other people; they would almost always end up thinking I was sore. Changes in my facial expressions, especially my eyes that tend to glare, gave them this wrong impression. The pitch and timbre of my voice whenever I get excited during these exchanges contributed further to this. Even my wife of almost 24 years is still misled on some occasions.
Two, unlike most of the participants, I had no qualms blaming and saying unsavory remarks about the government’s utter failure to attain food security to the detriment of the poor and the marginalized, including, of all people, the farmers themselves. About half of the participants were employed by their respective governments while the remaining half was civil society representatives, like me. I was practically the only one that was very vocal and critical of and had the gall to “bad mouth” our government’s policies.
It also did not help that the other Filipino participant, a Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) employee, shared her observation while we were in a huddle during a break in one of our sessions that a number from the civil society delegation were former armed combatants in their respective countries’ liberation movements. She particularly mentioned the Karen “sit-in” participant who just disappeared, without a word, after Karen activists were implicated in an explosion during a student protest in downtown Bangkok. This ethnic minority group was demanding recognition and establishment of a Karen state in Myanmar and a sizeable number that feared persecution had sought refuge at the Thai border. Then she named the two Cambodians. Both were armed partisans that battled the brutally criminal Pol Pot regime in the late 1970s. One of them, then a deputy director in their Department of Rural Development, had fought with the Vietnam-backed army of Heng Samrin that toppled the Pol Pot regime. The other one, a liaison officer of a Khmer NGO, was with the army of former Prince Norodom Sihanouk.
I was the last one cited. She thought I was one because I was a former colleague of their regional director in the Davao provinces—DAR Region XI—who was a leading cadre of the Mindanao Commission of the Communist Party of the Philippines before he joined the founding of the NGO we were with. The group was called back to session before I could straighten her claim. I could have told them that indeed I was a regular habitué of rallies and other protest actions against the Marcos dictatorship and Cory Aquino administration in my youth but I never bore any gun, and joined the New People’s Army.
This comment was first thing that came to my mind when I was thinking of a title for my blogspot. I must say that the anger I felt over the social, political and economic issues and problems I’d observed as a youth socio-political activist had never left me as these issues and problems continue, some had in fact worsened. I cannot help but see them daily as I review the landscape in the country, my province, my town and my village, even in the world, so, that comment is really a very apt title for my blogspot save for the adjective young. Thus, the title angry old man’s musings, as I try to say my piece on each of these issues and concerns. Hopefully I could come up with an article each week. (30)
