Aves de rapiña
Dublin Core
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Description
The editorial is a type of short essay that advocates some cause, often of a political nature. Political literature has frequently been labeled as pamphleteering and regarded as non-literary political writing or, with luck, as bad literature. However, in certain contexts, the signaling of political events or social circumstances is fundamental for the country, and aliterature written simply for the sake of art would be alien to certain realities. Furthermore, it is superfluous and probably elitist to consider literature only waht has been written for no other purpose than literary delight.
"Aves de rapiña" (Birds of prey) is likely the most famous editorial in Philippine history. Under the metaphor of birds lies a scathing criticism of colonialism, the U.S. administration, and ultimately, of Dean Conan Worcester, head of the U.S. Commission in the Philippines to advise the U.S. government on policies to be implemented in the colony.
Although no specific names are given in the editorial, Worcester's policies and attitudes are spelled out. The editorial, written by Fidel Reyes in the newspaper El Renacimiento on October 30, 1908, begins with some general considerations about the powerful and the oppressed, already using the metaphor of nature and animals: "In the extension of the globe, some are born to eat and devour, others to be eaten and devoured". It is not trivial that birds and animals are mentioned (lions, eagles, snakes, vultures, and owls appear to represent the oppressors): Dean C. Worcester was an American zoologist specializing in ornithology.
Building on that generalist introduction, Reyes focuses on the eagle, a symbol of the United States, as a trickster bird. As he says, "symbolizing freedom and strength, it is the bird that has found the most followers, and men, collectively and individually, have wanted to imitate the most rapacious bird, to succeed in plundering their fellow men." Finally, he speaks of men who, beyond of eagles, have characteristics "of the vulture, the owl, and the vampire." It is from here on that, in parallelistic paragraphs that begin with gerunds, he enumerates all the bad practices carried out by Worcester.
The commissioner took offense and sued the newspaper. Two years later, in 1910, Reyes and those responsible for El Renacimiento, among them Teodoro M. Kalaw, director of the National Library, were found guilty and sentenced to pay the offended party a sum of pesos that ruined the newspaper and led to its closure in 1910. Those responsible were sentenced to prison time, but the judicial battle of appeals lasted until 1914 and they were finally pardoned. The report of one of these appeals included the full article translated into English, the official language of the country at the time, as reproduced below:
On the surface of the globe some were born to eat and devour, others to be eaten and devoured.
Now and then the latter have bestirred themselves, endeavoring to rebel against an order of things which makes them the prey and food of the insatiable voracity of the former. At times they have been fortunate, putting to flight the eaters and devourers, but in the majority of cases they did not obtain but a change of name or plumage.
The situation is the same in all the spheres of creation: the relation between the ones and the others is that dictated by the appetite and the power to satisfy it at the fellow-creatures' expense.
Among men it is very easy to observe the development of this daily phenomenon. And for some psychological reason the nations who believe themselves powerful have taken the fiercest and most harmful creatures as emblems; it is either the lion, or the eagle, or the serpent. Some have done so by a secret impulse of affinity and others in the nature of simulation, of infatuated vanity, making themselves appear that which they are not nor ever can be.
The eagle, symbolizing liberty and strength, is the bird that has found the most adepts. And men, collectively and individually, have desired to copy and imitate the most rapacious bird in order to triumph in the plundering of their fellow-men.
There are men who, besides being eagles, have the characteristics of the vulture, the owl and the vampire.
Ascending the mountains of Benguet to classify and measure the skulls of the Igorots and study and civilize them and to espy in his flight, with the eye of the bird of prey, where are the large deposits of gold, the prey concealed amidst the lonely mountains, to appropriate them to himself afterwards, thanks to legal facilities made and unmade at will, but always for his own benefit.
Authorizing, despite laws and ordinances, an illegal slaughtering of diseased cattle in order to derive benefit from the infected and putrid meat which he himself was obliged to condemn by virtue of his official position.
Presenting himself on all occasions with the wrinkled brow of the scientist who consumes his life in the mysteries of the laboratory of science, when his whole scientific labor is confined o dissecting insects and importing fish eggs, as if the fish eggs of this country were less nourishing and less savory, so as to make it worth the while replacing them with species coming from other climes.
Giving an admirable impulse to the discovery of wealthy lodes in Mindoro, in Mindanao, and in other virgin regions of the Archipelago, with the money of the people, and under the pretext of the public good, when, as a strict matter of truth, the object is to possess all the data and the key to the national wealth for his essentially personal benefit, as is shown by the acquisition of immense properties registered under he names of others.
Promoting, through secret agents and partners, the sale to the city of worthless land at fabulous prices which the city fathers dare not refuse, from fear of displeasing the one who is behind the motion, and which they do not refuse for their own good.
Patronizing concessions for hotels on filled-in-land, with the prospects of enormous profits, at the expense of the blood of the people.
Such are the characteristics of the man who is at the same time an eagle who surprises and devours, a vulture who gorges himself on the dead and putrid meats, an owl who affects a petulent omniscience, and a vampire who silently sucks the blood of the victim until he leaves it bloodless.
It is these birds of prey who triumph. Their flight and their aim are never thwarted.
Who will detain them?
Some share in the booty and the plunder. Others are too weak to raise a voice of protest. And others die in the disconsolating destruction of their own energies and interests.
And then there appears, terrifying, the immortal legend:
MANE, TECEL, PHARES.
Source
Relation
Ocampo, Ambeth R. 2019. “Birds of Prey”, Philippine Daily Inquirer. August 2.
1910. “Paper to Suspend Issue”, The Cablenews-American. January 16: 1
“Will Not Play It”. The Cablenews-American. May 9, 1909: 1.