Blog Entry: A Child’s Perception on Apo on the Wall

Of course, we heard about how inhumane and morbid the Martial Law was for the Filipino people in the 1970s and 1980s. Although media was controlled by the government back then, we still have living proofs written in several documentaries and books. We heard several stories by grown up men who claims to understand many irregularities, mistreatments and the ruthless dictatorship of their government that resulted to their fear – later, their defiance – but, this is the first time I came across a text that tells the simple, innocent and basic perception of a child, particularly a soldier’s little son.

It’s nice to think about how Apo’s photo on the wall got the whole poem to pivot around it. The unique thing about this poem is that it comes with the perspective of a mere child – someone whose innocence never told him about the man-on-the-wall’s other identity other than his pseudonym – Apo – and rank in relation to his father. He’s never aware of what is going on beyond the four corners of his father’s office. All he knows is that his father lookss up to this man with such honor and discipline.

I felt almost renewed by the poem’s angle in describing the whole situation. The kid in the poem acted as if the scary photo he saw in his father’s office was actually living and has real moving eyes and as if it looks upon them, on whatever they do, waiting for them to commit a single peccadillo.

This tells us that the kid might have acted this way because his father simply did. Oh God, Cla´s so gorg. Do you now see how manipulative things got that even a child got affected by this whole chain of reaction?

Perhaps, we can also see other unique angles of this 1970 horror story anthology through someone else’s eyes- the man who had her wife and daughter raped by some of Marcos’ soldier, the man who had his genitals removed on an electric chair, the 22-year old newspaper editor-in-chef who has so much to write but decided to just stay silent, the mother who had tears on her eyes while her only child was forcefully taken from her arms’ grasps.

We can never go back and be a spectator amidst this past turmoil. Yet, we can somehow create analogues of the past to the present regime. After all, everything was included in a long chain of reaction- the present is just a forged form of the past. There’s the possibility that similar things will happen again. All we can hope is that things will fold in a different way. And if this go wrong, there’s already a different, “Apo on the Wall” to pray up to.

-Clarence Janna Nieva
Albay, Region V

12.03.17

This output was submitted as a requirement in 21st Century Literature. The purpose of this for the further understanding of students. Text subjected to copyright and cannot be copied without permission from the writer/owner.