HOTSPOT
Tonyo Cruz
Poet, artist and activist Ericson Acosta died on Bonifacio Day, Nov. 30, at around 2 a.m., in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental. He was 50.
The tributes continue to pour in from contemporaries, fellow poets and artists, classmates and friends.
According to the 62nd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army, he was killed in an encounter as New People’s Army combatant. Human rights watchdogs alleged that he was arrested on Nov. 29, and ended up dead.
Angered by Ericson’s tragic passing, writers’ group PEN Philippines called on the government “to perform a full and fair investigation, and serve justice.”
The military presented no evidence that Ericson was a combatant. No evidence that he actually took up arms or directed ambuscades. There’s nothing at all they could present to show that Ericson committed any act of terrorism. No picture, no video, no documentary evidence.
What is publicly known and established are Ericson’s published poems and songs, his performances as an artist, and his record of pro-farmer activism. His father-in-law, Pablo Tariman, said he was a good son-in-law, a good husband to his daughter Kerima, and a loving father to his grandson Eman. There’s no report either that the people of Kabankalan viewed Ericson as a public menace.
Some might ask what Ericson was doing there in Kabankalan, in the place where he was arrested and later found dead. But poets and artists go where the audiences are. Kabankalan deserves to have a UP-educated poet among them.
Is there a government agency where a poet should go first to obtain permission to go anywhere and do art there? What’s important is that Ericson had never been convicted of any crime, not even littering. He is so much unlike evil gentry, plunderers or murderers. In fact, he fought such monsters, especially those who prey on farmers and farm workers. He often sang and wrote or recited poetry about them and for them.
Ericson’s wife Kerima, also a poet, died last year in another “battle” in Silay City, an event reported by the Army and with no independent verification as to whether she was killed in action, wounded in a crossfire, or captured.
Ericson and Kerima deserve honor for willingly and consciously choosing “the road less traveled.” It is a difficult and dangerous path, because those who choose to be poets for the poor, especially in the provinces, are automatically branded as “enemies of the state.”
Ericson’s public persona and artistic and political record were so credible that he was tapped as a consultant in peace negotiations with the government. A poet like him, who had immersed himself in the lives of farmers in the Visayas, gave unique and valuable insights in the drafting of the draft Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms. The bishops belonging to Pilgrims for Peace said so.
Elsewhere in the country Ericson loved, workers are demanding wage increases, both to keep up with inflation and to get a fair share of the immense wealth they create and of the progress the government claims to have achieved. People are denouncing a ₱250-billion wealth fund to be sourced from workers’ funds SSS and GSIS, including money from LandBank, which supposedly serves farmers and into which the former UCPB, which was built using coco levy funds, has recently been merged. People are in tears over the price of onions. A tunnel had been discovered, as well as hundreds of cans of beer, in Bilibid for the escape or enjoyment of criminals. The top corporations are reporting record profits and economic managers are expecting good GDP and GNP figures.
As tribute to him, here is one of Ericson’s poems “And so your poetry must”:
Tonyo Cruz
Poet, artist and activist Ericson Acosta died on Bonifacio Day, Nov. 30, at around 2 a.m., in Kabankalan, Negros Occidental. He was 50.
The tributes continue to pour in from contemporaries, fellow poets and artists, classmates and friends.
According to the 62nd Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army, he was killed in an encounter as New People’s Army combatant. Human rights watchdogs alleged that he was arrested on Nov. 29, and ended up dead.
Angered by Ericson’s tragic passing, writers’ group PEN Philippines called on the government “to perform a full and fair investigation, and serve justice.”
The military presented no evidence that Ericson was a combatant. No evidence that he actually took up arms or directed ambuscades. There’s nothing at all they could present to show that Ericson committed any act of terrorism. No picture, no video, no documentary evidence.
What is publicly known and established are Ericson’s published poems and songs, his performances as an artist, and his record of pro-farmer activism. His father-in-law, Pablo Tariman, said he was a good son-in-law, a good husband to his daughter Kerima, and a loving father to his grandson Eman. There’s no report either that the people of Kabankalan viewed Ericson as a public menace.
Some might ask what Ericson was doing there in Kabankalan, in the place where he was arrested and later found dead. But poets and artists go where the audiences are. Kabankalan deserves to have a UP-educated poet among them.
Is there a government agency where a poet should go first to obtain permission to go anywhere and do art there? What’s important is that Ericson had never been convicted of any crime, not even littering. He is so much unlike evil gentry, plunderers or murderers. In fact, he fought such monsters, especially those who prey on farmers and farm workers. He often sang and wrote or recited poetry about them and for them.
Ericson’s wife Kerima, also a poet, died last year in another “battle” in Silay City, an event reported by the Army and with no independent verification as to whether she was killed in action, wounded in a crossfire, or captured.
Ericson and Kerima deserve honor for willingly and consciously choosing “the road less traveled.” It is a difficult and dangerous path, because those who choose to be poets for the poor, especially in the provinces, are automatically branded as “enemies of the state.”
Ericson’s public persona and artistic and political record were so credible that he was tapped as a consultant in peace negotiations with the government. A poet like him, who had immersed himself in the lives of farmers in the Visayas, gave unique and valuable insights in the drafting of the draft Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms. The bishops belonging to Pilgrims for Peace said so.
Elsewhere in the country Ericson loved, workers are demanding wage increases, both to keep up with inflation and to get a fair share of the immense wealth they create and of the progress the government claims to have achieved. People are denouncing a ₱250-billion wealth fund to be sourced from workers’ funds SSS and GSIS, including money from LandBank, which supposedly serves farmers and into which the former UCPB, which was built using coco levy funds, has recently been merged. People are in tears over the price of onions. A tunnel had been discovered, as well as hundreds of cans of beer, in Bilibid for the escape or enjoyment of criminals. The top corporations are reporting record profits and economic managers are expecting good GDP and GNP figures.
As tribute to him, here is one of Ericson’s poems “And so your poetry must”:
Be wary you say of its claims lest you waive art to us millions unworthy of taste and manner lest you be christened peddler of images alien in form pagan in content lest your license be forfeited your ear for resonance your feel for the sublime.
And so while you summon the litany of worlds your own words fashion you annul my existence and those of millions whose narratives you say betray poetic tone make burlesque of beauty and thus like scarecrows set even the most heretic muses scurrying back to their sanctum of rules.
And so in recollecting your epiphanies you elude the void which is my hunger the famine of millions the empty bowl of history.
And so with your eulogies to passion to rage against time to pledge with life’s gift you lull the birth of noise of revenge of bloodshow that shall feed millions complete history and perhaps spare poetry.