#SaveMaryJane

BLOOD RUSH
By SARAH RAYMUNDO

bu-op-icons-sarahDarren Veloso, Mary Jane’s younger child, would spontaneously be asked by his Lolo Cesar to deliver a statement in a press conference organized by Migrante on April 7. He would fall into silence. And just when everybody’s thinking that he did not have anything to say, he breaks into a song:

“Kung hindi ngayon ang panahon na para sa iyo, huwag maiinip dahil ganyan ang buhay sa mundo. Huwag mawawalan ng pag-asa, darating din ang ligaya. Ang isipin mo’y may bukas pa na mayroong saya. Kabigua’y hindi hadlang upang tumakas ka, huwag kang iiwas pag nabibigo, dapat nga lumaban ka.”

He would even sing through its famous videoke chorus:
“Ang kailangan mo’y tibay ng loob kung mayroong pagsubok man.
Ang liwanag ay di magtatagal at muling mamamasdan.
Ikot ng mundo ay hindi laging pighati’t kasawian.
Ang pangarap mo ay makakamtan, basta’t maghintay ka lamang.”

[If this time is not yet yours, don’t be impatient because such is life in this world. Do not lose hope for happiness will follow. Just think that tomorrow there will be joy. Failure is not a hurdle for you to escape from, do not shun from it, you should battle it. What you need is a strong heart should there be challenges. There will be light and you shall see it soon. The world revolves not only around sorrow and heartbreak. Your dream shall come true if only you wait.]

Those lyrics were typed from memory as I know Ted Ito’s “Maghintay Ka Lamang” well. I remember citing it a long time ago as an example in a paper that tackled how the masses are pacified by pop industry’s hackneyed themes. I thought it gave a wrong prescription not only about overcoming life’s hurdles but also on how to view these difficulties. Structural issues are reduced as personal troubles whose solution depends on a correct behavioral disposition. The systemic roots of the crises that plague individual lives along with the potential of collective intervention melt into thin air.

Meeting Darren last April 17, together with Mac-Mac (Mary Jane’s elder son) and the couple Celia and Cesar, (Mary Jane’s parents), gave me another chance to sing the song in my head from time to time but now with the Velosos and not ideology critique in mind.

Here in the University, and together with my fellow unionists, we thought that the very least we can do for the family’s extremely difficult situation is to launch a campaign to save the life of Mary Jane. We know full well of the Philippine government’s labor export policy and how it facilitates human and drug trafficking. GPH’s labor export policy also pushes millions upon millions of Filipinos, especially our women, to assume dangerous and precarious jobs in different parts of the world, mostly as domestics and blue collar workers. The same policy has also created its own Frankenstein, its obscene yet inevitable double: illegal recruitment.

Mary Jane is a victim of illegal recruitment and human trafficking. Yet soon, she is up for execution by firing squad in a land where she wished to work in order to support her children. But instead of working, she has only been imprisoned for five long years in Indonesia. Celia, her mother, tells the press on April 17 that for years, they have tried to contact government agencies that can assist Mary Jane in her plight, but to no avail. So when Migrante knocked on their doorstep in Nueva Ecija and offered assistance, Celia recounts how she gave her hasty and grateful yes for it was the first time that an organization ever reached out to them.

Mary Jane is not only a victim of illegal recrutiment and human trafficking by unlawful elements, possibly even one of those big international drug syndicates kept at large by narcopolitics (drug syndicates funding the careers of politicians). She is primarily a victim of the Philippine government’s preference for foreign investments over the cultivation of a strong domestic industrial market that can provide jobs for Filipinos. This development thrust can only be realized through genuine land reform and the provision of implements necessary to boost agriculture thereafter.

But precisely the Philippine state is currently built on preserving foreign interests that can only be realized by US Imperialist’s continuous political support of feudal elites and other plutocratic mutants. This is a class that has seized the Philippine state from the rest of us in order to rule in favor of their narrow class interests. This is a class that refuses to legislate against itself, that is, its own monopoly of land.

Such refusal has produced a logical continuity of misery from Cesar—Mary Jane’s father—who raised his children by planting and harvesting sugarcane as a farmworker in the “presidential family estate,” Hacienda Luisita. How painful it was to listen to and watch Cesar live lamenting over the plight of his daughter who is only one among the millions of migrant workers celebrated by government as our nation’s “bagong bayani” (“new heroes”). This is the same government that pimps its own people through the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) as we speak. Indeed, history hurts.

But what really hit me hard during this presscon is what seemed to be for the Veloso’s an urgent agenda. Celia opened her press statement with an observation of UP’s surroundings. They did not get the proper instructions of the presscon’s venue so the family had to walk from Palma Hall to Vinzons Hall. Along the way, she saw white ribbons tied around the Sunken Garden trees with Mary Jane’s picture and a call to save her life. “Naiyak ako nung nakita yung mga puting ribbon sa mga puno na may kasamang mukha ng anak ko, naisip ko kahit papaano may mga naniniwala palang inosente siya.” (I cried when I saw white ribbons tied around the trees with Mary Jane’s face on them, I realized that, after all, there are people who believe she is innocent.)

Right there and then, I realized that Celia has more at stake than saving Mary Jane from death row. Saving the life of her daughter means asserting the diginity of that life. A life that has been lived so that her grandsons may live a life of dignity, too. Mary Jane appeals to President Widodo: “I sincerely pray to to be saved from the death penalty and to be given the opportunity to bring up my children.” Millions of Filipina mothers leave their children for migrant work to bring up their children. But unlike millions of Filipinas who have been separated from their children, Mary Jane has languished in prison for five years and faces death penalty by firing squad.

Atty. Edre Olalia, Filipino pro bono lawyer of Mary Jane’s family describes her as “incredibly strong, calm, and composed.” His team of lawyers from the National Union of Peoples Lawyers (NUPL) has coordinated with Mary Jane’s Indonesian lawyer and has arranged for Mary Jane’s family, including her two sons, to spend quality time with her. Olalia adds that Mary Jane “tells her family not to feel sad and is bouying up their spirits.” Mary Jane has written different articles addressed to different audiences as she await her final twist of fate. This is the kind of woman who is to be killed for a crime that she is not guilty of. This is the kind of mother whom government has pimped, exported, and neglected for so long.

While Mary Jane’s case for acquittal is very strong, we cannot simply beg for death penalty to remove itself by applying some legal remedies. Beyond this, it is imperative to demand the junking of government’s labor export policy which it uses to make up for its puppetry to foreign interests, rejection of land redistribution, lack of plan for national industrialization, and penchant for corruption. Recall how Malacanang and DBM Secretary Florencio Abad justified presidential pork or DAP as a stimulus package that supposedly boosted the economy. But our economy is largely driven by consumption (not by production) made possible by the purchasing power of OFW families. The Philippine state could only pimp and take away from its so-called new heroes.

It is touching how left-leaning organizations like Migrante International and NUPL—often been tagged as communist fronts by government—are dealing with the case of Mary Jane like there is nothing else in the world that matters. Which prestigious law firm would bother to fight for the rights of poor people who can’t pay their professional fee? Which government agency that is mandated to protect Filipino migrants responded to any of the family’s appeal for assistance?

It is only within the context of genuine bayanihan, an astounding sense of determined and collective action shown by these progressive organizations and Mary Jane’s family that I can sing “Maghintay Ka Lamang,” and like Darren, offer it as a message of hope to Mary Jane.

Today, as we grieve for the motherland, weep for its ills, and count every hour to Mary Jane’s salvation or final doom, we also embrace her dream: “to be given the opportunity to bring up our children” in ways that the political elite in this country will no longer dictate.

*In 2010, Veloso was apprehended in Indonesia for allegeldy carrying 2.6 kg of heroin that was sutured and hidden in a bag lent to her by her recruiter. It is her first time in Indonesia, though in the past, she had worked in Dubai as a domestic helper. She is not a seasoned drug mule and is in fact a victim of human trafficking and miscarriage of justice. (https://www.bulatlat.com)

Sarah Raymundo is a full-time faculty at the University of the Philippines-Center for International Studies (UP-CIS Diliman) and a member of the National Executive Board of the All U.P. Academic Employees Union. She is the current National Treasurer of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) and the External Vice Chair of the Philppine Anti-Impeiralist Studies (PAIS). She is also a member of the Editorial Board of Interface: A Journal for Social Movements.

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