Acknowledgements
As always, this book, like any other intellectual project, is a product of collaboration over many years. A community of cultural workers is necessarily involved in one’s formation. An act of salvaging is required. While it may be worthwhile to retrieve memories of my education, it is not safe without proper protocol to use the term “salvage” (from the Spanish “salvaje,” savage, wild, uncivilized) as signifying the act of rescuing or saving something from damage, loss, or destruction for further use. Why?
A semantic mutation of the word’s meaning occurred during the years of State terror in the Philippines. From the First Quarter Storm of youth revolts in the Seventies up to the end of the US–Marcos dictatorship in 1986, and beyond, the word “salvage” means to apprehend and execute a suspected criminal without trial, in short, to perform an extra-judicial killing. The journalist Patricia Evangelista cites the Glossary of Human Rights Terms published by the Task Force Detainees in 1991, defining “salvaging” as “execution committed by government agent(s) in contravention or violation of due process of law” (2023, 131).
But on this occasion, I would like to rescue “salvage” from its misconstrual and restore its old signification, “to rescue, or save from total loss or destruction.” I am salvaging my years of formation in the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. Like many of my generation, I am indebted to my teachers and colleagues for their support, among them, Dean Cesar Majul, Leopoldo Yabes, Francisco Arcellana, Elmer Ordonez, Armando Bonifacio, Rony V. Diaz, and Alfredo Lagmay. For help in research, corrections and revisions of my work, I owe incalculable gratitude to Delia D. Aguilar who has sustained our creative partnership and conversations. Salvaging memories of dialogue and cooperation with the following comrades is made here, whose solidarity enabled the completion of this work: Jeffrey Cabusao, Michael Viola, Diosa Labiste, Sarah Raymundo, Maria Luisa Torres-Reyes, Paulino Lim, Jr., Eileen Tabios, Rainer Werning, Charlie Veric, Joi Barrios LeBlanc, Tina Ebro, Julie Po, Magtanggol Doy Roque, Rica Roque, Kenneth Bauzon, and Pia Arboleda. For valuable help in securing source materials and their support, I am grateful to Karin Aguilar-San Juan, chair of American Studies, Macalester College, and Eric Aguilar-San Juan, professoral lecturer, Georgetown University Law School. I want to thank brill editors Erika Mandarino and, in particular, Giorgia Rota for their excellent editorial management. Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude to Professor Peter McLaren, the internationally renowned advocate of critical pedagogy, for his generosity and courage in helping numerous progressive militants continue the struggle for a just, compassionate, egalitarian, sustainable world-order.