Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (18 page)

It was thirty years before I got to the Philippines, but the
islands were no disappointment. I arrived in February 1986, in the
midst of the Marcos ouster. I found adventure and excitement; in
fact, I saw more action than my father had. (His battalion went
through the whole war with only one casualty-a palm tree fell on
somebody.) The country was as exotic and the people were as
attractive as I'd known they would be. I met a young woman I liked
very much, a Filipino journalist named Tina Luz, with anthracite
hair and the most beautiful color skin I've ever seen-something
between peanut butter and bronze. And the society, culture and
politics of the Philippines were unfathomable, desperate, violent
and strange, which is a large part of what romance is all about.

I was there for a month and spent the next year trying to
wrangle a way back. I invented dozens of journalistic "hooks' for
Philippine articles. I told my editors at Rolling Stone that each
bungled coup attempt was the hottest story since Morton Thiokol
used the Challenger to move teacher hazing into the space age.
"The Philippines are Democracy with its thumb in the door hinge
of history," I'd bluster. "Civilization-as-we-know-it is walking the
balance beam in the political gymnastics of death." And other
such. Finally, on the first anniversary of the Cory takeover, they
gave in.

I returned to Manila to find myself a hero, sort of. Each of the
one thousand plus members of the foreign press who'd been present
at the Marcos heave-ho was made a "Hero of the Revolution."
There was an austerely dignified award ceremony. By that I mean
we had to buy our own drinks-in clear violation of the international journalists' code of truth, fairness and an open bar. But Cory
Aquino came to thank us in person for having suddenly discovered,
in 1986, that Marcos was a pig. "Joe Rorke from Rolling magazine,"
said the master of ceremonies. I mounted the podium, and General
Ramos, the Philippine Army chief of staff, put the medal around
my neck as canned applause played on the PA system.

It's a silly-looking medal, showing a hand making the proCory LABAN-coalition "L" sign with a little happy face on the tip
of the upraised index finger. But it's the only medal I'm ever going
to get, and, hell, I'm proud.

"Freedom Week," as the anniversary of the Cory revolution
was called, was choked with self-congratulatory festivities- songwriting contests, public-speaking competitions, a display of children's art about "people power," fireworks, street dances and
eleven million Catholic masses. Dignitaries and various fans of
social justice arrived from all over the world. Even Peter, Paul and
Mary came to play. The Filipinos were pretty sure they were
famous. Everybody recognized "Puff the Magic Dragon," anyway,
and sang along.

"We were in El Salvador in 1983 and in Nicaragua last year,"
a fervent Mary Travers said to the puzzled crowd, who didn't see
what that had to do with anything. The Cory government was
supposed to get rid of communists.

On the last day of Freedom Week a million and a half people
shoved themselves into the avenue along the front of Camp Carrie.
Camp Carne is the military base where Defense Minister Enrile
and Chief of Staff Ramos had announced the revolt that brought
Cory to power. Marcos sent loyalist troops to snuff the coup, and
unarmed civilians (though rather less than a million and a half of
them) blocked tanks and armored personnel carriers with their
bodies.

Camp Carne's gates were opened for the anniversary. Some of
the troops inside had already been involved in another revolt against Cory. And six months later nearly half of them would rise
up in more stupid mutiny. But, today, they were all smiles. You
could tell it was a special occasion because the soldiers had their
shoes on.

A thousand vendors sold mementos of the revolution, all of
them yellow, Cory's campaign color, and most of them bearing Mrs.
Aquino's likeness. One T-shirt said simply, "I Am A Filipino." But
what passes for a size XL in the Philippines splits right down the
beer gut when I put it on.

There were lots of speeches. It was hard to tell who was
making them or where. But loudspeakers had been nailed to all the
phone poles so everyone could hear. Filipinos enjoy a good political diatribe. But in the hopelessly decent Cory administration
rhetorical bombast is always trimmed with polite qualifications.
"Professionals, students, rich and poor embraced themselves and
fought," bellowed the kick-off speaker, "almost nonviolently
against what we thought might be an autocratic government."

The autocrats themselves were by no means gnashing their
cosmetic orthodontia. The parking lot at the Manila Polo Club was
as full of Range Rovers and BMWs as it had been in Marcos days.
The club was holding a "Freedom Cup" match to celebrate the
revolution and decide the Philippine polo championship. A priest
blessed the ponies with a squirt bottle full of holy water and then
prayed at length for Cory and her government. The Hermes-scarfed
and Ralph Lauren-shirted crowd (People at polo matches actually
do wear Polo-brand clothes, at least in the Philippines.) prayed
along and applauded vigorously.

Meanwhile, Manila was the same squalid mess ie s always
been.

Cory Aquino is the most upright, kindly and honorable person
running a country today. Given the other people running countries,
that's probably safe to say. And there doesn't seem to be anything
particularly wrong with the men and women she's got helping her,
especially compared with the pack of muck spouts, scissors bills,
jacklegs and goons who used to be in charge. But it would be nice
if cashews on the top always meant ice cream on the bottom. It
would be nice if swell national leaders meant instant peace and
plenty.

There are more than 57 million Filipinos spread across 7,107
islands. Almost every island has a communist or moslem insurrection of some kind. Per capita income is $652 a year. It seems hard
to find an army officer who isn't ready to toss a coup d'etat. And
pages could be filled just listing the country's other problems. It
would be amazing if the Cory government even knew where to start.

One of the features of Freedom Week was an inventor's convention. It was a modest affair. Most of the inventions had to do
with improved charcoal braziers for home heat and better ways to
spread water buffalo dung. But there was one very complicated
mechanical device with a hand-lettered sign taped on the front:

MACH-7 SUPER MACHINE

Compact and Portable

90% Local Materials

Durable, All Metal Parts

Very Simple and Practical

Will Create Job Opportunities for the Out-of-School Youth

Here was a paradigm of the Aquino administration-nowhere on
that sign did it say what the MACH-7 SUPER MACHINE was
supposed to do.

I asked Franco, the driver I'd hired for the duration of my stay,
if things were better since Cory took over.

"Oh, yes," he said. "There are lots of firecrackers. This was
forbidden before."

Some things had changed in Manila. There was a new statue
of Cory's husband, the martyred Ninoy Aquino, in the Makati
business district. Ninoy is portrayed on the steps of an airline
ramp, at the moment the assassin's bullets hit him. The original
bronze casting had a clear plastic rod, with a dove of peace
mounted on top, emerging from Ninoy's left clavicle. This made the
hero of the anti-Marcos opposition look like he was getting crapped
on by a pigeon. So the rod was removed and the bird attached
directly to the shoulder, for a Long John Silver effect. Ninoy now
looks like a drunk pirate in a business suit falling down the cellar
stairs.

The police were easier to bully, at least if you were a "Hero of
the Revolution." Franco had nipped a big "ABC PRESS" placard
from the Manila hotel and stuck it in the front window of his car.
This was enough to get us waved through most of the nighttime
roadblocks set up around Manila, supposedly to keep communist
infiltrators from coming to town. But one evening I was on the way
back from a party with Tina and Black Star photographer John
Giannini. Some grubby-looking over-armed cops motioned us over
for a search.

"They think I'm a prostitute," said Tina. "See, the sergeant is
unscrewing his flashlight already. That's where he hides his
payoffs."

"Rank him out in Tagalog," said Giannini.

"Believe me," said Tina, "it would be much better if I speak
English."

Giannini, who is a big guy, got out of the car. "Just what's the
problem here?"

"Well," said the policeman, "we are holding these roadblocks
of narcotics, illegal guns, robberies and guerrillas."

"We don't have any," said John.

"Well," said the policeman, "when we were seeing two foreign
journalists with a Filipina ..."

"Three foreign journalists," said John. "Miss Luz here works
for The Washington Post."

Washington Post? Big nervous smiles from all the police. They
knew what had happened to the last strong-arm type who ran afoul
of the Yankee newshogs-he's ass-canned and stuck off in exile
with his fat, crazy wife and her shoe collection. "Please be our
guest to go," said the sergeant.

Other things, I didn't have the heart to go see whether they'd
changed or not. There's a ski slope-size pile of rotting, burning
trash on the north side of town called Smokey Mountain. A thousand people, many of them sick and dying, live in the filth. I never
want to go back there. There are some kinds of desolation that
leave you impotent in the fucking that's life. I could turn my
pockets out for the Smokey Mountain residents, but that wouldn't
go far. I could throw up, but I don't see how that would help. I could
pester the dump-pickers as I had in '86 and write it up in a colorful way and make a buck off the thing, which is what I guess I'm doing
anyway. I asked Giannini, who'd just been to shoot the place for
Black Star, if Smokey Mountain had changed since Marcos.

"It's bigger," he said.

"But are the people any better off?"

"Yeah, they've got more garbage."

Of course I was happy in Manila. I had Franco standing by
with the car. I had a big room at the Manila Hotel, General
MacArthur's wartime HQ. No doubt, if I hung around long enough,
somebody'd take another whack at insurrection, and I could write
about that. Meanwhile, I spent my afternoons by the hotel pool and
lolled through sunset cocktails at Tina's house, chaperoned by the
maid her father had sent up from the family sugar plantation on
Negros Island. Some of the local journalists chartered a boat, and
we went sailing on Manila Bay. We drank at the servicemen's bars
on Mabini Street and joked with the lackadaisical, semi-naked gogo dancers. We went to parties and dances. There is suffering on
earth, I know. And plenty of that suffering is in the Philippines.
But, if I can't subtract from the world's sum of misery, do I have to
add to it personally? It's one of these questions I mean to take up if
I ever get religion.

Unfortunately, the phone messages and telexes from Rolling
Stone were beginning to pile up. "What are you doing over there?"
"What the hell are you doing over there?" "What is this story
supposed to be about?" etc. I had to earn my keep. I had to go
explain why the Philippines hadn't immediately turned into Japan
or Singapore when Cory took over. And I had to find some nastiness
to illustrate the problem. "No bodies, no by-lines," as journalists
say.

Up in the hills the communist NPA, the New Peoples Army,
was plugging along with its decade-old civil war. That might be a
good excuse to stay for another couple of weeks. However, the NPA
were press-shy at the moment. They'd had a cease-fire with the
Cory government and some peace talks, but, when the communists
found out Cory wasn't going to give them a hug and hand them the
country, they coped a mope. My fellow reporters were lined up all
over Manila waiting on NPA contacts so they could slog through the hills and get an earful of Bolshi gripes. Some had been waiting for
more than a month.

I complained to Franco. "If I just keep going to polo games," I
said, "and working on my tan and taking Tina out to dinner, sooner
or later my editors are going to catch on and I'll be covering the Bon
Jovi Iowa tour. I've got to find some trouble to get into."

"You want to talk to NPA?" said Franco. "My Uncle Carlos is
NPA, the brother of my wife's mother. I will take you there tomorrow already, to Marlita, in Pampanga province."

"But, Franco," I said, "you're a real Coryista."

"0h, yes."

"Don't you argue with your uncle?"

Franco looked confounded. "We go a couple times in the year
to see the family of my wife," he said, as if that explained any
possible political contradiction. This wasn't exactly like the American Civil War-where brother fought brother and all that.

So I got up at dawn the next day. The front-page story was
headlined, COP CHIEF SLAIN IN AMBUSH.