A short statement I read in a forum on the Frankfurt Book Fair Boycott campaign in solidarity with Publishers For Palestine
In 1985, a few weeks before the historical presidential elections, a group of cultural workers consisting of writers, visual artists, musicians, and people from the performing arts – all luminaries of their day - published a statement of support for one of the two presidential candidates. It begins: “[…] The life of the imaginative intellect flourishes in open debate and often strikes light through the clash of ideas. Nevertheless, a nation founded by writers and artists in that great watershed of the propaganda movement and the Philippine Revolution in 1886 cannot be insensitive to what the men of thought and imagination in its midst have to say on the choice of alternative national futures. [...] When great issues are joined in the life of a people and life-and-death choices present themselves in political terms, the writers and artists must take a stand and must not seek refuge and false comfort in total political anonymity.” It then goes on to endorse then-president Ferdinand Marcos, Sr.
Under the endorsement was the list of names of the signatories, and under that was another list, of promises made by President Marcos to our cultural institutions, to be fulfilled when he wins, dubbed “An Agenda for Culture.” A wonderful diptych of juxtapositions, the declaration couched in artistic enlightenment offset by this mercenary shopping list of favours. Of note are:
2. The establishment of a Publication Fund endowed by the national government to undertake the printing and publication of books (including artbooks) that otherwise could not be published by the authors concerned.
9. The promotion and development of Pilipino as a national language and as a medium of literary expression, and the endowment of a Translation Center for the translation of major Filipino works into Pilipino and Asian languages as well as translations of classical works into Pilipino.
10. The grant of an endowment to the UP Creative Writing Center and to the Silliman University Summer Writers Workshop which have helped discover and encourage literary talent.
Lured by these promises of prestige and financial reward, despite great issues joined in the life of a people and life-and-death choices presenting themselves during Martial Law and the dictatorship, prominent cultural workers co-signed this declaration of support.
I imagine they co-signed the declaration to politically safeguard the institutions they worked for and represented. Trabaho lang. We all know how this story unfolded: Marcos lost and was exiled, but despite their public declaration of support to the opposing candidate, most of the writers and artists would still go on and continue to thrive under the post-EDSA Aquino administration. Trabaho lang, e. Most people may have forgotten this moment in cultural history, but its spectre, however small, continues to haunt the signatories to this very day, forty years later. They named themselves the Coalition of Writers and Artists for Freedom and Democracy, but people who remember remember them under a different name. Today, however small the audience, we are still talking about them. History and art - culture - refuses to forget.
Today, lured with promises of prestige and financial reward – opportunities – in Frankfurt Book Messe, cultural workers once again find themselves walking past the Rubicon on their way to a crossroads (hopefully to Damascus - from the river to the Syrian city). The most resonant reasoning for choosing to cross the picket line this time is the potential loss of opportunities to tap a global audience of readers who are eager to discover the culture of lands they had formerly colonised or under the thralls of their neo-colonial project, where previous declarations of solidarity with Palestine are papered over with the words “trabaho lang.”
There is no “trabaho lang” in cultural work. Culture is humanity’s way of talking to itself and talking about itself. For good or ill, cultural workers like us decide how we want our country and our people to be seen and understood and remembered by our fellow Filipinos and also by the world. There is no “trabaho lang” in the face of genocide. Frankfurt Book Messe wants the publishing world to ignore the atrocities it is helping bankroll and whitewash by dangling business opportunities in the publishers’ faces. There are no lost opportunities when we choose to fight for freedom. In fact, it opens us up to opportunities to build bridges between other lands like ours, formerly colonised and/or currently in the thralls of neo-colony, empowering and emboldening each other as we collectively continue the fight in our own terms, in our own languages.
How do we want our culture to be known and remembered by the world, and by our fellow Filipinos? As comrades in solidarity with the oppressed and abused, or as compradors eager to sell books with oppressors and abusers? History and art - culture - will never forget. Cultural workers will see to it. Truly, the imagination peoples the air with spectres - upwards of 53,000 of them today. Please, heed their call.