By Jose Jowel Canuday
BOOK: Buhi sa Kanunay
Author: Karl Gaspar
Publisher: Aletheia Publishing
(Karl Gaspar’s latest book, “Buhi sa Kanunay” (Forever Alive) will have its Davao City launch at 3 to 5 pm on Saturday, November 30, 2024 at the BauHaus. The book was launched online on November 16 and launched in Cebu on November 23, where this review by Dr. Jose Jowel Canuday was read.)
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews) – To write a eulogy for a dearest departed is one of the most heart-rending and agonizing episodes of a life lived by writing. Such a sorrowful act of writing can only be done by a soul with a deep sense of generosity and unshakable capacity to love.
Karl Gaspar wrote not one but three dozen eulogies for friends, confreres, and colleagues who touched him as they made lasting differences when terror reigns, amid fissures tearing faiths and ideologies apart, and as the gulf of societal inequality widens. They lay bare the soul and the depths by which Karl had and could love friends, confreres, colleagues, and more poignantly – the oppressed, the violated, and the marginalized.
Buhi sa Kanunay: Celebrating Friendships Through Time, under the conscientious pen of Karl Gaspar, is a requiem for men and women who stood up to bend the moral arc of living towards justice, peace, and renewal. Some of whom Karl remembered were martyred in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship or for standing up against the guns and the goons of corporate loggers mowing down the forests of Bukidnon. Others committed and gave their lives working for better communities, cultivating interfaith understanding, and sowing peace.
Karl’s life intersected with these martyrs and gentle people who generously toiled the earth so others may live with dignity but hardly seek rewards for themselves. That intersection makes these eulogies as personal as they are political. They all at once celebrated the compassion of those who passed while simultaneously drawing attention to the broader societal ills that drove them to take action. The eulogies come across as not simply a way to immortalize the martyrs or deeply beloved friends but were written, far more importantly, so the events and socio-political problems by which they lived and laid their lives are never forgotten.
The eulogies celebrate life as they draw attention to the critical junctures of our collective history and crises, touching on how life is lived in countryside villages marked by socio-economic divides, the political awakenings in the martial law years, the rise of the progressive movements, and the watershed by which the ecological justice campaigns in Mindanao and of the country are rooted.
Karl’s eulogies bear witness to the souls behind the redirection of the Mindanao church apostolate to the underprivileged and the prosecuted in the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. Karl offers respect to a friend caught in the deadly local communist purge of suspected military infiltrators within their ranks. He goes on to remember the lives swept into the valleys of harm from disconcerting state-led anti-communist campaigns.
Buhi sa Kanunay features eulogies for at least a couple dozen clergies, some nuns, indigenous peoples, a couple of bishops, a towering human rights defender, educators, ecological activists, development workers, a young Moro friend, among others. Instructively, the collection opens with a eulogy for a grade schoolteacher of what was then the sleepy town of Digos town in Davao del Sur where Karl grew up. The eulogy immediately proceeds to memorialize a high school mentor whose scholarship offer may have shifted Karl’s fate from a life with limited education owing to his parents’ humble means. For that, the eulogy honors the teachers in a way that reminds us of the inaccessibility of basic and quality education for the poor, a condition that persists today with tragic and far more unfortunate consequences.
As Karl eulogized his Jesuit educators, other mentors, and companions in the religious community, he testifies to the uneasy schisms among actors who fought for justice in the persona of those who seek redress by laying their lives by means of arm struggle and those who demanded change by taking the path of active non-violence.
Karl takes the eulogies of friends in the armed movement like Tandag diocesan priest Frank Navarro who rose through the local leadership of the New People’s Army and other left-oriented activist friends. These eulogies offer an eyewitness account of how the youth of his time reimagined a just world by questioning authorities through the revolutionary works of Karl Marx and Mao Tse Tung. Equally, Karl brought us, the readers, to the liberating missions of a reforming church and activists from within and beyond the religious community exposing and asserting the sanctity of human dignity by upholding the universal tenets of human rights.
Karl’s storied life trajectory allows us to track the compassionate work of Senator Jose W. Diokno, one of the country’s extraordinary human rights figures. Senator Diokno lawyered and worked out the 1985 release of Karl from prison following his incarceration for speaking up against the reign of terror during the Marcos authoritarian rule. In the same junction, Karl’s eulogy of the late Marawi prelature Bishop Bienvenido Tudtud who testified on his innocence from military subversion charges opens the readers to valuable work in advancing interreligious dialogues amid the brutal impact of the anti-secessionist campaign that erroneously divided our communities along religious lines.
Karl’s words for the dead are momentous primarily because they stand as a living reminder of the lessons from our collective experience of injustices and pose possible directions for our shared future. I offer this review not only as an invitation to read Karl Gaspar’s book but also to journey with him through his reflections on the continuing value of remembering the lives and conditions that shaped our recent past so we may see what else can be and should be done for the challenges of our time.
(Jose Jowel Canuday is an associate professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Ateneo de Manila University. He is a son of Mindanao, where he was born, raised, and educated with Karl Gaspar as a foremost mentor. While based most of the time as a teacher in Manila, Jowel practically did not leave Mindanao as he carries on work in the region as president and chief executive officer of the Davao City-based Mindanao Institute of Journalism (MIJ). MIJ publishes MindaNews, an independent news organization that seeks to bring the public interests into a wider sphere of discourse for community empowerment, information, education, and inspiration. Jowel holds a doctorate in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom)
