Activism 102

Task Force Mapalad’s member farmers have hailed from La Castellana, Negros Occidental to Manila to pressure the DAR leadership to mandate their physical installation right in the 144-hectare landholding for which they had been awarded with Certificates of Land Ownership Award (CLOAs).

Their coming to Manila must have served another purpose: Flee from the threat sowed by landowner Roberto J. Cuenca, known to be connected to Igi Arroyo, brother-in-law of President Gloria Arroyo. The leader of the La Castellana farmers, Pepito Santillan, was brutally murdered last January 25 right after the self-installation that was done by the agrarian reform beneficiaries. The initiative occurred in the wake of the ’sellout’ that they inferred from the Memorandum of Agreement between Cuenca and DAR Secretary Nasser Pangandaman which provided, among others, that the legitimate farmers occupying about 10 hectares in the former Cuenca landholding be evicted. (What business does Cuenca have negotiating with the DAR when he is no longer the owner of the 144-hectare landholding? The farmers already do.)

Starting February 22, almost all farmers camping out at the DAR Central Office went on hunger strike. It’s the only option they could think of to pressure the seemingly callous Secretary. He said that the DAR will finally be installed “next week” either upon peaceful negotiation with the previous landowner (who has no business at all to be heard) or by force (if the negotiation fails).

The hunger strikers (even after 17 of them were already hospitalized due to dehydration) remain steadfast with their protest. Let’s offer them our best to pressure government as well as our prayers. May the installation push through as scheduled before one or two of the hunger strikers cave in and die.

I felt that my blood pressure went up to 130 as soon as I saw that 25-by-15 cm photograph of Alicia Mayer on Manila Standard’s issue today, on front page. Gee, it was too gargantuan to escape the public fancy, especially those of my gender.

Before we genderize the issue here, that Alicia Mayer’s pose was done in behalf of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), an international group that fights for animal rights. Manila Standard has no text story for the banner photo except a caption, so I assume that PETA’s slogan “Let vegetarianism grow on you” calls on people to eat animal meat less in favor of vegetables like lettuce on which PETA based Alicia’s bikini.

So there. I’m sure women organizations will not take that sitting down. It will even stir debate between moralists and liberals. Does the cause that Alicia carried with that lovely pose excuse the idea’s sexist undertone, equaling vegetables and women as yummy stuff? Does her pose beget evil as it gratifies men’s fleshy desires? Perhaps the message was also to convince people that eating vegetables will make them sexy?

People of my gender in general will not mind. But gender-sensitive men like me of course will think twice. The first thought, of course, is understandable. What matters more is the second thought: that there’s something not good about that propaganda gimmick, that leaves me asking:

1. What convinced the Manila Standard front page editor to make the photograph a banner one? Was it to sell the copy like a hotcake?
2. Can environmentalists not be gender-sensitive at the same time?
3. Did Alicia Mayer know what she did?

That’s why I entitled this entry “Malicia”. I think that that captures the issue here. Is the gimmick inherently wrong? Doesn’t it beget malice among the public? Does Alicia Mayer want to be a sex goddess?

Let me take another look.