A Strange and Bitter Crop

(Exhibition essay for Alwin Reamillos Tinubuang Lupa at the National Commission for Culture and the Arts,
Manila, 2013)

Kung puntod na yaring mga bukirin
ng lupang datiy linang ng alipin
at pilapil ay sya ngayong hilahil
na tahak ng patubig ng luhang pigil
ang pag-agos sa libingan ng martir;
pula ang bigas na ani ng taksil!
[]
mga naulila na ang lulubos,
sa lupay babawi, sa laya tutubos!
Axel Pinpin, Kung Puntod na ang Lupa

The exhibition finds Reamillo turning the soil to air out the varied significations of
tinubuang lupa, the object of devotion in Bonifacios widely circulated poem. At the onset we
have the notion of motherland that exudes a sense of home and heritage, of cradling earth or
linangan. Here, the colonial history of the archipelago is called up and so too the countless lives
given to the nationalist struggles taken up by Bonifacio and his Katipunan. Hence, Reamillos
mounds of earth are at once birthplace, battlefield, and gravesite; source of succor, locus of
passion, and object of sacrifice.

Shifting tack, tinubuan also speaks of germination, of precipitous growth and branching.
Strewn across the installation are evocative objects ranging from devotional palms and memento
mori to modified plaques and bamboo constructs that serve as waypoints through the intersecting
furrows of history and myth that have been formed from and around the figure of Andres
Bonifacio. At these junctures, Reamillos quick-fire mnemonics play out and render a shifting
terrain: we are in Tondo at the founding of the Katipunan, in Montalban reshaping the legend of
Bernardo Carpio, in Tejeros witnessing the birth of a mendicant republic, in Maragondon
searching for a body, in Bonifacio Global City marvelling at our own amnesia.

From here, the crooked horizon broadens and tinubuan takes on the meaning of exploited,
of tubo as profit, and digs up not only the archipelagos persistent feudalisms but also the
character of its stewards as bureaucrat capitalists; as pimps, if you will. From Aguinaldo to
Aquino we have an unbroken line of presidents whose lust for personal power has resulted in an
eroded sovereignty and a national project gone to seed. For over a century since Bonifacios
death, the land has been blighted by massive corruption, systematic impoverishment and neglect,
political killings and enforced disappearances.

The land lay fallow.

Harrowed by history and increasingly unable to sustain life, the cradle has become a killing
field with flesh as its primary crop: sold abroad, found in the streets, washing up on shore, lost to
unmarked graves. Even now, people search in Luisita, in Tacloban, in every hill and hollow of a
land gripped by a callous power that would make a national pastime of searching for bodies. It is
a search that spans the land, sows anger surely, waits but a season.
Antares Gomez Bartolome