Corazon de Jesus, Corazon de Nosotros
“If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.” -John Steinbeck
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly. -Jonathan Swift
You shall find out how salt is the taste of another man's bread, and how hard is the way up and down another man's stairs. -Dante Alighieri
The car was once a sleek, shiny symbol of power, technology and achievement. Now, rusted, dented, and faded, it is just a shadow of its former self. Oh, it still runs. It has to. It has to carry us down the darker, shadowed valleys that seem to be the only route out of here. The dull, chipped green paint, the broken tail light, the cracked windshield, the missing hubcaps: This poor clunker is the very essence of misuse, abuse, and recklessness. Even the exhaust pipe is loose and unhinged from the undercarriage, occasionally banging the ground as we careen down the bumpier roads. We never see the resulting sparks flying up from the pavement and the potholes, even in the rearview mirror; but we know they are there.
And this is not to say that these sporadic dancing showers of sparks are not seen at all. Although hidden from our own view, others, the mysterious sort, hovering along this dark, winding road- they see them.
The angels always revel at the sparks. With mad laughter at the irony, the angels see these haphazard illuminative displays. They see them for what they really are.
Bundled in quick lit, little packages trailing behind this tired, old clunker; these sparks are hope, the hope of the collective all- ever elusive, yet always following, always waiting to flash behind us in the darkest of nights.
These sparks are the colors of the barrio, ever vibrant, ever bright- the last vestiges of humanity in its glory and disdain, revealed in all of its shamefulness and shamelessness. This is where life screams real; this is where the essence of all things human dwells. This is where the children laugh and cry as they scour the cracked pavements and narrow cardboard alleys of ramshackle shelters. These are the sparks of our collective hope so seen in the irreverent giddiness of the young. These are the sparks the angels see, their laughter echoing all the way to the firmaments- for they know: Everything is connected and hope is contagious, especially the hope of poor barrio children.
We might pontificate, and evaluate the mechanisms, structures, statistics, and horrors of oppression and the poor- whether it be old fashioned, overt tyranny, or the more insidious, cutting-edge global corporatism models, or perhaps the foreboding specter of state-sponsored capitalism. But maybe, just maybe- armchairing this thing was never meant to be anywhere near enough.
Getting our hands good and dirty at street level, and depending on which hemisphere we find ourselves, one is made aware that oppression is ultimately about the beans or the rice. It is the fifteen-year-old Mexican girl cooking frijoles for her younger brothers after school, because their parents are both working two jobs, or quite simply, gone. It is the infirm, aged man in Singapore scouring the alleys, his daily route, hunting corrugated for the recycler, hoping that he will find enough to add some fish to his bowl of rice.
Quite simply, depending on the smorgasbord of available distractions and self-centric priorities, oppression is about forgetting people. Ultimately, that is what the oppressed are: Forgotten people.
This writing is about such a people, those that were of a place known as barrio Corazon de Jesus in Manila. It is also an attempt to show the oft hidden vibrancy of life in such places, those elusive sparks of hope, often and only manifested in the faces and movements of our mutual humanity.
You see, Corazon de Jesus is no more. Yea, it’s gone.
For over twenty years, Corazon was basically a developed barrio town of squatters. Those residing there, albeit poor, had all the essentials of community: Stores, shops, homes, each other- all the stuff that evolves when humans reside in the same place for decades. For many of the residents, prior to their expulsion this month, this was the only home they had ever known. With the offer of some pocket money and relocation twenty miles outside the city, residents of Corazon were forcibly exiled so the demolition could begin. And boy did it begin.
In this piece, we could go into all the travails brought about by the Philippine judicial system, or the lack of preemptive measures on the part of landowners, or the rampant use of Shabu (meth) in such places, or the insidious corruption that is an accepted institutionalized mainstay of this massive archipelago. We could elaborate on the power of real estate moguls and the greed resulting from rising land values. We might even discuss the historical significance of the properties- that some battle was fought here or some famous patriot died there. Yea, we could get into all of that.
But how quickly such thinking might take away the vision, an uncluttered view of the sparks that were and always will be. For no matter how badly we might be squashed and cast asunder, the sparks will always flash again- sometime, somewhere- and not a time or place of our choosing.
On several occasions, I was given the opportunity to do shoots in Corazon, as well as other Manila barrios. Under Barangay protection, I ventured these dark valleys; these often-abhorrent places where smells might assault and images are forever stamped into one’s unconscious consciousness. I was witness to the laughter amidst the hardship, and the despair amidst the brightness of barrio color. I was welcomed by the toughest and the meekest; I often felt a part of …
In many ways, I was witness to humanity at its very core, our very essence revealed in the collective shame and splendor.
And often enough, I felt a privileged passenger in that beat-up clunker of a car, only to hang my head out the back window to try and catch just the quickest of glimpses- the sparks of hope flying up from the cracked pavement as we careened down that dark, worn road.
And I am grateful for that.
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Originally published in Downtown LA Life Magazine Int'l
From the Assoc Editor's desk.