For seven years it kept on burning, but no one ever saw the smoke

ANNoTATioNS Tito Genova Valiente

Chorus: Girl, oh girl! Where were you when Balangiga was set on fire? For seven years it kept on burning, but no one ever saw the smoke!

Male/Female: My girl/boy, we’d now be married if only you did not play around. We’d already have a child, oh! that child is running all over the ground.

Inday, inday nakain ka han kasunog han Balangiga; pito katuig an paglaga, an aso waray kitaa! (Girl, oh girl! Where were you when Balangiga was set on fire? For seven years it kept on burning, but no one ever saw the smoke!)

Not for the government, not even for the mighty Church —the return of Balangiga bells is for the people. they are not for the people in general—that amorphous grouping we embrace as composing the nation—but the particular people of Balangiga, in that specific island of Samar. Without them, there would have been no bells to care for, no debates as to whether they should be returned, and no question as to who owns them.

For now, the general consensus, one that rings of politics and martyrdom, is that the Church should own them. And that the event should be seen as a church ceremonial. with no love lost for this government, I would like to say that claim sounds hollow.

And then, one day, the bells traveled back. The first photos showed them guarded by two American soldiers, an artefact of conquest and loot. And then they arrived. The ceremonies became even more dense, a protocol’s nightmare and disaster. where to place this president who has a continuing hate-love-hate with the institutional Church and what to do with Church officials now claiming “rightfully” and with might the brazen fact that bells belong to belfry and belfries belong to Church.

The supremely sexist would smirk and the bigots would build bonfires: the win of a young, brave girl who inscribed the destructive lava around her body and gown as a tribute to the allure of the Bikolana excited me more in the positive sense than the return of the bells the symbolism of which is lost already in the symbols.

Do not judge me yet. I am all for the revolutions that attempted to topple two colonizers—the European/Spanish and the American. I am insanely emotional for those unpredictable, indescribable movements that could not be classified by traditional politics and warfare. Those “cults,” those healers who channeled energies from mountains and lakes fought the invaders, and they are still countering the bad energies wracking the soul of this nation.

My stand about Balangiga remains unpopular. In my column, on July 27, 2017, I wrote about “the sound unheard of the bells of Balangiga.” Then I wrote:

The bells in churches were evangelizing

and colonizing instruments. They were rung so that the sound could reach areas that had been converted. We have this saying about places that are not reached by the sound of bells. We call them uncivilized.

If the bells are returned, they are placed in belfries and will be lost in the symbols of the church. They will cease to be valued for valor of the peasants who stood up against the might of the American invaders.

Kept in America, the Balangiga bells will always remind the American soldiers that defeat is always possible even in lands wracked by poverty.

It ended with this line: Let the bells stay in American territories. Let them continue to tell the stories from the howling wilderness of the Philippine Islands. Let the Balangiga bells remind the Americans of their colonizing mind.

Perhaps, I should have said, “let the bells be in the howling wilderness of USA.” But I did not say that, for the howling wilderness remained with us long after the Americans torched the town of Balangiga. In the minds and hearts of the people, there remained a fear of the Americans. They never left. They stayed in fact, supported by the governments that recall the bells but have forgotten the people who listened to the pealing of those bells.

For the church that claims now the ownership and virtue of the bells, what stand did it make regarding the massacre?

when histories do not make sense, the folk and the popular readily overtake. In the case of Balangiga, histories fail and a song succeeds.

I have always loved the songs from Samar/leyte and Panay Islands, their memories hummed into me by a grandmother who sang sweetly. My love for these songs did not end with memories but rather began with the search for what those words behind the most lilting, saddest melodies mean. There was one song that puzzled me, “Di Ak’ Nahuhulop.” The title means “I Am Not worried.” The first two stanzas are characteristic of a love joust: Male voice: I’m not worried when amihan

comes, Leyte is so big to choose from, So many children are baptized on Saturdays, That my weary body will hardly cope./Female voice: I’m not worried when amihan comes, There are just so many troops to choose from, I’ ll pick one with a gold-filled tooth, Oh boy! ‘cause it’d be so good to throw him around.

The banter continues until it reaches the chorus where the melody turns maudlin and a bit sorrowful: Inday, inday nakain ka han kasunog han Munyika; pito katuig an paglaga, an aso waray kitaa! (Girl, oh girl! where were you when Doll was set on fire? For seven years it kept on burning, but no one ever saw the smoke!)

My brother, Carlo, who has the same love for this kind of songs, was the one who raised the question about the “burning doll.” The lines did not make sense to us. The mention of soldiers in a love song did not make sense at all.

when the bells were returned, a good friend from Samar, a diver and a developmental organization worker, Judah Singzon Aliposa, posted the lines from the same Samar-leyte folksong. This was the post: Inday, inday nakain ka han kasunog han

Balangiga; pito katuig an paglaga, an aso waray kitaa! (Girl, oh girl! where were you when Balangiga was set on fire? For seven years it kept on burning, but no one ever saw the smoke!)

All of a sudden, the song made sense. Even the winds of amihan

gathered enough meanings because, as Judah would explain, “amihan

brings the cold and dry northeast trade winds to Samar and leyte during the months of October to March. It was amihan when the American reinforcements arrived in Samar and received instructions from Gen. Jacob Smith to turn Samar into a ‘howling wilderness.’ The song is structured, according to Judah, as a balac, a love joust between a man/ suitor/patriot/freedom fighter, and a woman/iroy nga tuna/motherland.”

Ironically, this folk genre was called ismayling during the American Occupation, for the second wave of colonizers taught us to “smile.” The first wave rehearsed us on the art of praying.

And yet the people of Balangiga continued to sing and “smile,” hiding in the song for many years the trauma of the massacre. They banished the name of the land from the melody because the ones who burned their land were still around. They had nowhere to turn to, for there was no one to remember those days when the amihan winds supported the fires to mutilate bodies but not memories.

For many years, Balangiga kept on burning, but no one saw the smoke. For many years, the world around Samar continued. No one saw the smoke. No one remembered the burning. Now the bells are back. The song continues.

(My pa Dios Mabalos to Judah for translating the song and annotating them).

E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com