47

16 Don’t You Touch It; It Hurts

In another barrio, peasants are reflecting on their last visit to the municipio or town hall. They had heard over the radio that the government was about to implement a program favorable to the farmers. But it turned out that, to all purposes, the credit program would be available only to landlord farmers. Peasants have no land to put up as collateral and therefore cannot get credit directly from the agency.

This is the big problem, says Mang Henio, the government and the church will never touch the land question. The landlords are so strong, and the government and church officials are themselves landlords, that they just can’t afford to have “controversy,” as they call it.

And yet, every time they learn about our meetings, they cry, “Bandits are organizing again. We’ve got a big social problem. And again, they'll dispense “solutions” that hardly touch the core of the problem.

48

It’s like the case of a woman who got boils in her behind. We all know, says Mang Henio, that to have boils is no joke: it hurts. We also know that when a pretty woman has boils she not only hurts in pain but she also gets embarrassed if she thinks others know.

And so, shell never accept that she’s got boils, she’ll force herself to walk straight no matter how much it hurts in the behind. She’ll do this till the boils cause other side-effects in her body: headaches, colds, fever, etc. But still, she’s not about to acknowledge the root-cause of all these bothersome, side-effects.

One morning she wakes up with a bad headache. Finally, she acknowledges, that she is sick. She, therefore, goes to the drugstore to buy medicine. But instead of buying some medicine for her boils, she’ll only take “Medicol” or “Vick’s Vapor rub” for her headache.

Because the boil hurts so much, and it causes her embarrassment, she’ll hardly touch it. The same obtains, says Mang Henio, with the land question. It hurts and it is embarrassing to discuss. Gat Rizal (the Philippine national hero) was wise when he entitled his novel about the social question: “Touch Me Not.”