TYBOX: The Quezon we need to know as Mindanaoans

For most of us, we know Manuel Quezon as the man in the 20-peso bill.  What else we know about him gets stuffed and wrinkled like the 20-peso bill in our pocket.  At least he’s still in circulation, not like the now relic Emilio Aguinaldo’s five-peso bill.

For some in Mindanao, Quezon is known as the president who pushed the Moro people away, stripped the sultanate of its right to lead through his National Land Settlement Administration.  What was touted as his social justice program awarded landless families in Luzon with relocation and land in Mindanao, but took away the land from the Moro people.

Or if you’re lucky, you learn about Quezon in history class, with a textbook by Agoncillo (not Zaide) and a teacher like mine in my freshie class in Ateneo where he warned that reading the American colonial period would let us know where the traditional politicians (trapo) originated.

Jerrold Tarog’s Quezon, the third and final arc of his Bayaniverse trilogy plays into that narrative.  Our second Philippine president, the first in the Commonwealth period, outstandingly portrayed by Jericho Rosales in his career-defining role, depicts Quezon as one who uses charm and chutzpah, temper and tactics in establishing the country’s republic while advancing his myth as champion of Philippine independence.

It’s only sad that this engaging film has not drawn huge audiences across the regions especially in Mindanao, even as 13 cities have cinemas.  When I watched it last week with my family, there were only seven of us in the theater.  Friends still ask me “showing na diay?” and the film is already at the end of its second week run now.  Perhaps our Facebook feeds are caught up with all this flood control scandal, kadiliman versus kasamaan, DDS infighting, or we are just busy with the humdrum of toil and traffic.   Actually, it’s the ticket prices, which have doubled and makes film viewing a luxury. 

But Tarog’s Bayaniverse is a marvel in filmmaking.  Starting with Heneral Luna, it sparked students and teachers alike to look at Philippine history in a different lens, the way Tarrog makes history as mirrors to why as a nation we are led by failed leaders and tragic heroes. 

Politics as performance

If we make a one-sentence summary of Quezon in the arc of the Bayaniverse, it could be this: Three decades after a republic was snatched in its infancy, its revolutionaries martyred, the country ends up with American groomed-politicians the likes of Quezon where governance is more performative than public service.

The movie makes clever use of silent movies to show us the performative Quezon, an election campaign material showing his heroism from being an imprisoned revolutionary to a people’s lawyer defending the poor against exploitative landlords to a political leader championing independence.

Tarog uses this fictional set of silent movies, as well as the fictional characters in filmmaker Nadia Hernando and her father, the disillusioned journalist Joven Hernando, to guide us through this narrative.  This is similar to the framing of the late Mike de Leon’s Bayaning Third World, where

filmmakers interrogate the heroism of Jose Rizal. In Quezon, Nadia reveals an alternative edition of the Quezon film she made which revealed the other version of truth.

This draws parallelism to how we view our political leaders in our times through the lens of social media, but can be manipulated by bloggers, influencers and even journalists, who can select and frame facts, or even suppress or distort them.  Politicians also exploit media/social media and vice versa, as the medium becomes the message, and the message is more about sound bites over substance, advertorials over agenda.

 Left out facts

The movie focuses much on Quezon as a political chameleon, it left out parts that could have raised a more nuanced characterization of Quezon beyond the satirical portrayal.

 As mentioned earlier, the issue of Mindanao was crucial but was absent from the movie.  Also absent was the Sakdalista Uprising, a political group allied with Quezon but later ran opposite his political party with a nationalist agenda.

 It’s notable that Quezon fashioned himself as father of the nation, exemplified in the movie tagline “I am the Philippines”. But how did he navigate the marginalization of the Moro and indigenous peoples in Mindanao, and a mass unrest embodied by the Sakdalistas?

Even the election campaign narrowed it into a Quezon versus Aguinaldo showdown, and the third candidate, the nationalist Aglipayan founding bishop Gregorio Aglipay was reduced to one scene.

 There is more to President Quezon beyond the movie, as he was instrumental in the creation of institutions in public service that continue until now: the minimum wage, the right of women to vote, funding for public schools, health care, agrarian reform among others. 

Before the start of World War II, he opened the country to welcome 2,500 German Jewish refugees escaping Nazi Germany.  This was the theme of another movie about Quezon made in 2018 called Quezon’s Game.

There are many facets to the man who has become the face of traditional politics.  Looking at today’s breed, Quezon seems to have more depth.  But the movie does invite discussion of how all our problems began — the birth of padrino politics, performative officials, or what activists have been labeling them for some time – bureaucrat capitalism.

 Quezon is more than the 20-peso image.  By the way, Nasaan na ba ang pangakong bente pesos na bigas?  We’re tired of performative promises now.  

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Tyrone A. Velez is a freelance journalist and writer.)