Political Cartooning in the Time of Coups

Amirasolo and other Essays

Part 2. My Trip Around the Art World

Essay 17. POLITICAL CARTOONING IN THE TIME OF COUPS

By Arnaldo Bernabe Mirasol

My first dream job was to be an editorial cartoonist. After leaving fine arts school---without graduating I must add---I applied for that job at the Bulletin Today. That was in January 1978,  when it's editor-in-chief was Ben Rodriguez, and Marcos was at the height of his power as ruler of an authoritarian regime. The relatively recent news stories then were the ascension of Menachem Begin to the Premiership of Israel and the capture of Communist Party Chairman Joma Sison. I chose therefore to draw cartoons that dealt with those two events.

The first cartoon showed Menachem Begin in the guise of Jesus Christ astride a donkey entering Jerusalem to the acclaim of a hosanna-chanting populace. The other showed Marcos as an angler catching with his rod and line a big fish with the face of Joma Sison. Mr. Rodriguez creased his forehead upon seeing the Marcos cartoon. I don't remember his exact words, but he said something to the effect that I shouldn't draw pictures of the President that would put him in a funny light. I seemed to remember him adding that it was dangerous.

I understood. I didn't take that against him. I in fact gained a lesson, an insight, from his advice. I realized that doing editorial cartoons entails some risks too, especially under a dictatorship.

I finally landed that job in 1981 when I was hired by Gus Villanueva, editor-in-chief of People's Journal Tonight, to be their editorial cartoonist. Although the pay wasn't lucrative, being on a per piece basis only, I supposed I can say that my stay there had been worth my while. What a thrill it had been for me to see my cartoons appearing daily in a newspaper.

I worked at the People's Journal for just less than a year. I returned to art school, got married, and worked as gallery assistant. I went back to editorial cartooning in 1987. I applied for and got that job in Joe Burgos' We Forum Publications. Joe Burgos was the founder of Ang Pahayagang Malaya, one of the two courageous mainstream newspapers that dared criticized the establishment during Marcos' time. The other one was the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Those two newspapers played a crucial role in hastening Marcos' eventual downfall.

Although Malaya did extremely well, Joe decided to sell it, for a very good price I was told, which enabled him to buy a big farm in San Miguel, Bulacan. Before founding Ang Pahayagang Malaya, a broadsheet, Joe used to published a tabloid, the We Forum, which before the coming of Malaya and the Inquirer was the sole newspaper critical of Marcos. The We Forum was, to borrow Shakespeare's words, little but fierce. The first news about Marcos' wartime medals being fake came out on We Forum. Joe Burgos tasted prison for publishing that.

I joined We Forum in 1987. By this time, We Forum Publications had grown into a group of tabloids all owned by Joe, like We Forum, Ang Bagong Masa, and an evening edition newspaper whose name I forgot. I drew all the editorial and spot cartoons for these newspapers. I also moonlighted later on, for extra income, as a free lance editorial cartoonist for the People's Journal.

Cory Aquino had assumed the presidency then. Her rule was shaky from the start being challenged time and again by coup plotters envious of a 'mere housewife' acquiring power. There was a total of seven coup attempts if I counted right, one by the Marcos Loyalists led by Col. Rolly Cabauatan, and the two nearly successful ones by RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement) led by Col. Gringo Honasan. The other coups were negligible. They were quashed before they become serious threats.

I and the editorial staff of We Forum were on the third floor of the We Forum building along Aurora Boulevard while Honasan's forces were in action. We were at the window watching as a World War two-era plane made a u-turn up in the sky to get itself into position to attack Malacañang once again with machine guns, or perhaps, with the missiles it might have had at its disposal. We were greatly relieved when the coup fizzled out the next day, because we knew that once the right-leaning military renegades won, newspapers like ours which were left-of-center would surely be padlocked and their staff arrested.

The second Honasan coup happened in 1989.  It lasted longer and could have succeeded had not the Americans demonstrated on which side they're on. It was reported that a USAF fighter jet buzzed the putschists' vintage plane, forcing it to withdraw from battle. I can believe that because I actually heard outside our house in Tondo the fighter jet's sonic boom. That coup scared me. I was jittery all the time the coup was in progress and was preparing to burn all the anti-RAM cartoons I kept at home. The coup attempt eventually collapsed, and needless to say, I again was greatly relieved.

I wrote in an earlier essay that doing illustrations for a picture book wasn't a breeze. Well, doing editorial cartoons wasn't a breeze for me either. I, in fact, found it more difficult. It was tough trying to come up with an editorial cartoon idea that should be both witty and humorous. I start work at the newspaper office around 5 pm, and I usually finish drawing all the cartoons needed around 3 am. I suffered in between those hours. Cartoon ideas didn't come easy most of the time, that I frequently find myself walking, at around 1 am, along the sidewalk of Aurora Boulevard, from our office a few blocks away from Katipunan Avenue up to the Quezon City Medical Center and back in hopes of jumpstarting that flash of inspiration. That routine worked, but not always. Those kind of working hours must have turned me into the nocturnal creature I am today, whose energy peaks and who works best during nighttime.

That time in our nation's life, the Cory era, was  a very tumultuous time. It wasn't because of her own doing. The tumult was caused rather by the violent machinations of the failed coup plotters against Marcos who found the prize they covet taken away from them by the people and handed over to Cory. But that very tumult was the juicy source of ideas for the political cartoonists who were provided plenty of targets for their almost always adversarial and satirical drawings.

No wonder that we saw gathered in that period a great number of high-calibered political cartoonists who later on made big names for themselves in the Philippine art scene as serious painters and in the international scene as well as world class cartoonists. Names like Jose Tence Ruiz, Pinggot Zulueta, Dengcoy Miel, Noel Ariola Rosales, Benjo Laygo, Edwin Agawin, Dante Perez, Ludwig Ilio, Benjie Lontoc, Net Billones, Neil Doloricon, Jess Abrera, and Willy Aguino shall forever be etched in the annals of political cartooning in the Philippines as the luminaries of its golden age.