A Cebuana Goes Dutch
/Book Review: Chasing Windmills by Maya Butalid (London, Olympia Publishers 2022. 254 pp.)
Maya Butalid’s Chasing Windmills
If there are those still interested in finding an answer to this enigma, this book will be worth their time.
In the first part of her memoir, Butalid looks back at her life as a UP student and then a cadre of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Her radicalization is enlightening because it gives us insight into how one moves from being an apolitical 16-year-old to a Ganap na Kasapi (full member) of the “proletarian vanguard.”
Marx, even Mao, figured very little in her decision. Instead, it was her taking seriously the social justice message of Catholicism while growing up with parents who admired American liberalism. Police brutality heaped on students joining the first protests against the tuition policies of the Marcos dictatorship were the icing on the cake. Once inside "the movement," however, she was introduced to the Party's secretive, top-down style of work.
In her junior year, Butalid became a Party member and swiftly rose through the ranks to head the Party branch assigned to UP. She eventually left UP, went underground, married her cadre husband, and was promoted to the Party's Manila Youth Commission. The Party then sent the couple to the Netherlands to be part of the National Democratic Front's international liaison office.
Party leaders must have admired her dedication. And this is what the red taggers missed -- her commitment to the poor in action. She was meticulous in her work but was not a "task-oriented bastard" (a popular term among student cadres used to describe comrades who just accepted orders from their political officers without even thinking about them). On the contrary, she patiently educated those under her on the revolution, conscious of uneven levels of understanding. And she knew how to handle a diverse group of activists, from private-school girls who tested her patience by deliberately asking her to watch porn with them, to those who violated the Party's puritanical regulations on premarital sex. The work and her wards were always her priority.
These "habits" stayed with her even after she and her husband Carlo left the Party. She chose her work well - local government offices concerned with developing parenting programs, caring for the Dutch poor and immigrants, and addressing primary education needs. She assiduously studied Dutch, firm in her belief that this was essential to the road to citizenship and integration in her new country. In time she became quite fluent, writing public commentaries, participating in class, and even posting Facebook messages in Dutch. She introduces Chapter 7 with the statement, "Language is a means to connect, communicate and participate in the society you are in."
Maya Butalid
Language was also her way of solving parents' common dilemma when raising their children. Butalid's tight balancing act of raising her daughters as Dutch citizens while encouraging them to recognize their Filipino pedigrees resonates with many parent-migrants, including myself (http://www.positivelyfilipino.com/magazine/single-parenting-an-american-1). After several missteps, she, Carlo, and the eldest find a reasonable compromise: "We told Ligaya that she may talk to us in Dutch while we continue to speak to her in Cebuano." Ligaya is "pleased with the arrangement." A visit to the Philippines seals Ligaya's and her sister's connection with their Filipino heritage.
As you read her constant repetition of this mantra, you begin to realize that the ethos of a communist cadre is very much still with her. During the martial law years, Filipino activists were enjoined by their political officers to take to heart the "mass line." If one wishes to become a true revolutionary, one must ultimately immerse oneself with the masses. One must learn to live with them and live like them. Makisalamuha ka sa masa is second nature to Butalid. And you find this prominently displayed when social workers asked her to talk to a distraught and angry refugee. After he calmed down, the refugee told her, "I cannot be angry with you. You remind me of my mother." The revolution's face is not that of "the Party " but of the caring revolutionary.
But this was not the case with her seniors. Butalid recalls telling the CPP's founding chairman, Jose Ma. Sison, how happy she was for the South African people with the release of Nelson Mandela, to which Sison replied: "Our movement missed the opportunity to organize massive celebrations similar to South Africa when I was released from prison." The ego looms large.
She also was appalled by how Sison treated his wife, writing, "I can still remember how he commanded, 'Julie to take such and such a document from his files (Kunin mo nga iyong... papeles,) or to bring him coffee (Kape nga Julie.). I was tempted to say to him 'Could you please say please?'" But Julie was a loyal cadre, and when Butalid and the other women talked about Joma's cacique-like attitude, "Julie blurted out that there is no need to take action towards this because once socialism (is) achieved, the women will be automatically empowered and emancipated."
These incidents, plus the chairman accusing them of being "contaminated with the western way of thinking" when she and others worried that a socialist regime might be as evil as its reactionary Other, were more than enough signs that the revolution had lost its soul. She resigned soon after.
Maya Butalid opens her memoir with her oncologist telling her she has breast cancer. It is a roller-coaster ride from there. She is shocked and introspective, only to snap back to reality, ensuring the family is cared for after she dies. She worries: "Knowing that I have cancer makes me think differently of death. Death is no longer something (for) which I generally prepare… Suddenly death gets to have a time frame. Do I live towards it a year from now? Two years? Five years? Ten or maybe twenty? There was a time in my life when I made a list of what I would like to have done if I only had a day to live, then a year to live, then five years to live, then ten years to live. Suddenly those lists I made are no longer hypothetical, they are no longer wish lists."
This is what is peculiar about death: you head into the nebulous, a next phase of which you know almost nothing, yet you must set your apprehensions about the future aside to work through a list of concrete tasks – the will, the insurance, down to whether it'll be oak or a cheaper wood for the casket. Butalid, however, refuses to be drawn to this dark side. And she gifts us a glimpse of her fascinating life as a Filipina, ex-revolutionary, migrant, Dutch citizen, social worker, and mother.
Patricio N. Abinales' latest book is Modern Philippines (ABC-Clio, 2022).
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