HOW devastating it is to see close friends flutter away like falling leaves, childhood buddies, beloved grandparents, a favorite uncle, spirited colleagues, partners and lovers all gone in a wink. Unless one dies young, nothing and no one is exempt from senescence and dissolution.
We have just lost Resil Mojares, National Artist for Literature (2018) who passed on in Cebu City. He was born on Sept. 4, 1943, in Zamboanga during the Japanese Occupation; both his parents were schoolteachers.
I had the pleasure of meeting Resil in one of those gatherings in the bookstore owned by the late and lamented Francisco Sionil Jose, also a National Artist for Literature (2001). We attended meetings of the P.E.N (Poets, Essayists and Novelists), an international association with a Philippine branch, the magnet was its founder Sionil, who sheltered and nurtured the organization to ensure its survival.
Before he was awarded the Order of National Artist, Resil had already distinguished himself as the authority on Cebuano and Visayan history; he founded the Cebuano Studies Center at the University of San Carlos. He wrote books about the rise of the Filipino novel, Cebuano resistance to the American invasion, legends of Maria Makiling, essays on esoteric historical curiosities; he was also an art critic. I think his most outstanding work is the monumental book “Brains of the Nation” which puts in proper perspective the scholarly works of ilustrados like Trinidad Pardo de Tavera and Pedro Paterno.
Many of us have forgotten that Resil was a political detainee in 1972. He was a journalist, his “Sticks & Stones” columns were tagged as subversive so he was detained for months and later released. He then concentrated his writings on history, anthropology and cultural studies. He won numerous awards and several National Book Awards before receiving the National Artist Award for Literature in 2018.
We became closer friends when I defended him in a libel case together with five other massively gifted historians filed during the trying days of the Covid pandemic. The press referred to Resil and his group as the “Limasawa 6.” The heated and well-publicized action stemmed from a controversy involving the question on where the First Holy Mass was celebrated. The Cebuanos have always claimed it was held in Limasawa, but the Butuanons argued it was in Butuan. There were brilliant minds, all of them PhDs in both camps. Priests and laymen alike brandished historical evidence at each other, as well as geological studies of coastlines. I am certain Magellan and his chronicler Pigafetta would never have imagined that the compulsory act of conquest clothed in religious ceremonies would, five centuries hence, end up as a tangled legal controversy in a territory Spain no longer possessed.
Sometimes, I likened the Limasawa 6 as the crew and complement of a galleon. We had a priest, the brilliant Jesuit Dr. Francisco de Castro; a linguist in the person of paleographer Dr. Francisco Navarro, who was also our archivero; he kept track of all submissions made and all the evidence that may be useful in the action. Our navigator was Dr. Danilo Gerona, whose writings on Magellan’s circumnavigation could guide any ancient mariner. Our escribano or recorder was the multiple Palanca awardee and history professor, Dr. Victor Torres. Dr. Resil Mojares was the captain of the ship, and because no galleon is complete without a Spaniard, we had Carlos Madrid Alvares-Piñer, a historian who knows galleons from mast to hold. As for my role in the legal drama, put me in as the galley slave ready to pull oars to roll with the waves.
Because of the pandemic, we had to confer through Zoom, a medium that was new to us. Oftentimes, we had to powwow in the most unholy hours, like saboteurs operating crystal sets in Nazi-occupied territory. We often argued heatedly driven by the stress caused by forced confinement.
In drafting affidavits, words had to be well-selected, each sentence had to be fine-tuned and paragraphs conform to the truth; affidavits had to be impeccable; all facts were confirmed, each stain of untruth completely removed. There was simply no room for falsehood. The resulting legal documents we produced were so well-drafted that it could win a Pulitzer prize.
Thereafter, the crew (I dare not refer to them in private as respondents) had to leave their homes in order to submit before a prosecutor their counter-affidavits, risking infection and maybe death by Covid. Such was our situation as we tried to navigate the turbulent seas of legal conflict.
The criminal complaint was eventually dismissed, but was appealed and is still pending resolution in the Department of Justice. Due to his untimely demise, Resil, the captain, will never learn about the final outcome of the case involving the Limasawa 6.
Writer of magnificent books, Resil explained to us our history — who we are and who we are not. He accomplished this through scholarly tomes containing critically examined facts.
He engaged in tedious investigations before words were printed on paper. He once asked me if I had a photograph of an art object he wanted to use, we both spent months looking for it, but to no avail, we finally gave up our quest.
I made it a point to call him often enough to exchange health reports and jokingly ask which one of us is closer to becoming history. Last month, when I was in Singapore, at the crack of dawn, I received the sad news that Resil had beaten me to it. I immediately sent an SMS to our Limasawa 6 Viber group, inquiring if what I was told was true, hoping that Resil himself would answer my inquiry. But Dr. Navarro confirmed his death.
What was different about Resil? What set him apart from the rest of us? It was his brilliance, his dedication, his honesty; he was incurably curious, engaged, and above all, brave and fearless — qualities essential to a historian. As Resil Mojares turns to dust and becomes history, his written words outlive him. His books, essays, lectures, short stories, will remain with us as long as the printed word exists. We must not forget Resil Mojares and continue to pay him homage by reading his works.
A few months ago, I asked our newly minted National Artist for Visual Arts Imelda Cajipe-Endaya why most of our friends are dying. Her answer was on point: “Sapagka’t napapanahon na.”
