Voices In The Wind
Voices In The Wind
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, August 05, 1987
THE nightmare that was the Vietnam War was hardly limited to the harrowing experiences of drug-crazed G.I.'s wallowing in merciless paddies and haunted by the prospect of sudden death. That much has already been articulated with glaring repetitiveness, and it now remains for America's elders to answer to their young for a generation scarred and badly beaten in its prime. Rather, it is the other Vietnam that should concern us even more - the land and its people - devastated and put to the torch, blackened by bombs and sins of the flesh, genocide and jargon, yankee dollars and mass murder.
It is difficult to imagine that Vietnam was once beautiful, unmarked and unbowed. Once, its people lived under the rule of the vast Chinese Empire; but they were proud and freedom-loving, and they eventually migrated to their current borders from which they fought off foreign domination with fierce resolve. In this century alone, they would drive out the Japanese, the French and the Americans, in pursuit of an elusive goal that was the right to self-determination for a unified Vietnam. Few people in the world have struggled more diligently or for so long. And by the same token, few people have suffered as much.
Ironically, when the end came for the American occupational forces in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of native-born Vietnamese were likewise forced to flee for their lives. The 30-year anti-colonialist war had hardened the victors, and had fanned the flames of factional hatred in a stage already set for bloodbaths of retribution. Some took to flight by land, others by sea in makeshift vessels, with a great many perishing in the process. A few of the fortunate ones who survived eventually came to rest on our shores, awaiting entry to other lands in a place of sanctuary not unlike the one they had left behind.
These images by Vietnamese refugees - on exhibit at the Garden Gallery of the Mondragon House in Buendia, Makati - are like voices in the wind, the plaintive songs of motherless children who have lost their way, displaced by tragic circumstance and tossed adrift in a cruel war that had pitted brother against brother. Some of the artists speak of a nostalgia for the land of their birth, depicting regal pagodas and boats anchored on a horizon now distant and hastily consigned to bittersweet memory. Others are strangely nonchalant, even festive, perhaps echoing the strains of renewed hope or simply numbed by the anguish of untold personal loss. All of the works, by virtue of their authorship, speak in the language of the heart.
To be sure, there are things in life far more eloquent than art. In these pictures, we see impressions of our own frail humanity. We see our salvation in compassion.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Voices In The Wind” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, August 05, 1987
