Using 'aswang' to fight Huks

HALLOWEEN decorations are sprouting all over our neighborhood, to the delight of my favorite nephew. Times have really changed, because toddlers today do not seem distressed to see plastic ghosts, goblins and witches outside the gates dressed up for "Trick or Treat."

For the second year in a row, Lizzie Zobel has challenged neighbors to produce something more frightening than driveways turned into spiders' lairs, with two giant black widows sliding down cobwebs on carports. One house has white ghosts suspended on trees, and another has the front lawn planted with tombstones. My sister once decorated the front of the house with traditional Halloween pumpkins, but they disappeared after the first night. Even in gated communities, there are petty crimes. 

Fortunately, our parish priest Fray Antonio Rosales, OFM, takes all this in stride, unlike some clergymen in Capiz province who cast a wet blanket over a rather innovative tourist gimmick that was originally supposed to be the "Capiz Aswang Fesitival."

By tradition, Filipinos have considered Capiz the center of "aswang" [flesh-eating ghoul] stories. Real or imagined, this is part of our folklore. But when the local government wanted to capitalize on it, clergymen raised hell as the Inquirer reported some days ago. One would think that there are better things to get excited about, like poverty, corruption, social injustice and the social structures that promote these. One would think there are more relevant topics to cover in a Sunday homily like the readings that are often inadequately and clumsily explained, yet all that energy was wasted denouncing the aswang festival.

I'm only going by the sensational newspaper report, though I have asked for a copy of the pastoral letter on the aswang festival read from the pulpits. If there is some moral or doctrinal dimension, maybe we should sit back, listen and reflect. But before all this, we should pinch ourselves to be reminded that we are in the 21st century, not the Middle or so-called "Dark Ages."

The controversy over the Capiz Aswang Festival reminded me of the use of the aswang in the counter-insurgency efforts of the Ramon Magsaysay administration in the 1950s. US Maj. Gen. Edward Geary Landsdale in his book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia" (1972), provides us with this year's Halloween reading:
"When I introduced the practical joke aspect of psywar to the Philippine Army, it stimulated some imaginative operations that were remarkably effective.

"To the superstitious, the Huk battleground was a haunted place filled with ghosts and eerie creatures. Some of its aura of mystery was imparted to me on my own visits there. Goosebumps rose on my arms on moonless nights in Huk territory as I listened to the haunting minor notes of trumpets playing Pampangueña dirges in the barrios or to the mournful singing of men and women known as 'nangangaluluwa' as they walked from house to house on All Saints' night telling of lost and hungry souls.

"Even Magsaysay believed in the apparition called a 'kapre,' a huge black man said to walk through tall grass at dusk to make it stir or sit in a tree or astride a roof, smoking a large cigar.

"One psywar operation played upon the popular dread of an aswang or vampire, to solve a difficult problem. Local politicians opposed Magsaysay's plan of moving more troops out of defensive garrisons to form further mobile and aggressive BCTs [Battalion Combat Teams], and in one town the local bigwigs pointed out that a Huk squadron was based on a hill near town. If the troops left, they were sure the Huks would swoop down on the town and the bigwigs would be their victims. Only if the Huk squadron left the vicinity would they agree to the removal of the guarding troops. The problem, therefore, was to get the Huks to move. The local troops had not been able to do this.

"A combat psywar squad was brought in. It planted stories among town residents of an aswang living on the hill where the Huks were based. Two nights later, after giving the stories time to circulate among Huk sympathizers in the town and make their way up the hill camp, the psywar squad set up an ambush along a trail used by the Huks. When a Huk patrol came along the trail, the ambushers silently snatched the last man of the patrol, their move unseen in the dark night. They punctured his neck with two holes, vampire fashion, held the body up by the heels, drained it of blood, and put the corpse back on the trail.

"When the Huks returned to look for the missing man and found their bloodless comrade, every member of the patrol believed that the aswang had got him and that one of them would be next if they remained on that hill. When daylight came, the whole Huk squadron moved out of the vicinity. Another day passed before the local people were convinced that they were really gone. Then Magsaysay moved the troops who were guarding the town into a BCT."

One wonders, what other uses we can have for aswang in the 21st century aside from tourist festivals and counterinsurgency?

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu

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