Video Cop-out: Def Poetry Jam Featuring Filipino American poet--Marlon Unas Esguerra

In my search for Filipino poets on YouTube, I found Marlon Unas Esguerra's moving spoken word performance from Def Poetry. His poem really struck a nerve with me...

Running for Their Lives

No one can deny the power of language. As we all know, words can be contorted in ways that toy with our perceptions, prejudices, and sense of reality. The most obvious example of these tactics are apparent in the euphemistic discourse of the military and the strategic jargon used by governments:

• friendly fire


• collateral damage


• neutralize


• soft targets


• body count


• rogue states

In spite of all this questionable terminology, the word that irks me the most would have to be illegal aliens. Seriously...when did it become OK to officially refer to other human beings as aliens?? Sure, we're talking about illegal immigration and the coinciding cost in tax payer dollars, but let's not forget the ridiculous amount of public spending and foreign investments going into the supposed War on Terror.



Worst of all, the term, illegal aliens, conveniently separates the humanity from the real problems--NAFTA ( in the case of Mexico), poverty, war, struggling economies, corrupt governments--so much so that another ugly portrait is painted instead. This us against them mentality conjures up negative imagery involving: a group of foreign parasitic fence-jumpers who have the audacity to free-load off our system. How dare they! --You get the point.

So for just a moment, let's flip this lens.

How far would you go in order to save your family from poverty? Would you break the law? Would you risk your own life? Imagine that you had no other options....

Quique dreams of El Norte, a land of opportunity where the poor become rich, the sick can afford care, and children become educated. Despite this romanticized view of both Canada and America, for Quique, anything seems better than his life in Honduras.

At 20 years-old, Quique lives in an ubiquitous Central American slum, where his wife, young son, and 11 other family members live under the same corrugated tin roof. Since the average wage of a Honduran is a mere $900 CAD/ year, it is impossible to escape this trap of poverty. But for the sake of his family, Quique figures that it's worth a shot...

Him and his travel companions, Chacon, Daniel, and Eber, have only $100 between them but are determined as ever to cross that finish line. But the journey itself is not for the faint of heart. Spanning nearly 5000 km, the trip from Honduras to America is as long as it is dangerous. Not only are the border towns in both Guatemala and Mexico overrun by the most notorious of street gangs, their main mode of transportation will be hopping freight trains, the dangers of which range from getting pulled under a rail car to being brutally robbed by a travelling gang member. The trip to El Norte basically makes Everest look like a walk in the park.

So do Quique and his friends beat these terrible odds and make it to El Norte? Will they ever see their families again? Well, you'll have to watch the CBC documentary, Run For Your Life, to find out.

Watch Run For Your Life online right HERE!

Buying a Filipina Wife: Voices of Mail-Order Brides in Canada

The Philippine Women's Centre of BC (PWC) defines mail-order brides as "a formal transaction between a man and a woman from different countries, usually brokered by an agent, who is part of the mail-order bride industry, via catalogues or the Internet. The term is also applied to situations where men go to the Philippines with the intention of finding a wife."

It is no secret that many Western men love shopping for their potential wives in the Philippines. In fact, the desire for an Island wife is so strong that a whopping 5000 Filipina mail-order brides arrive in the United States every year, while 20,000 catalogue wives already reside in Australia. And Canada is also joining this growing club as the country's large Filipina domestic worker demographic will be soon eclipsed by that of Island-bought brides.

You’re not liking Filipina dating sites? We are what we are. The Philippines is over populated with mostly women. There is a very high poverty level and Filipino do not treat their women very well. So what it adds up to is so many [F]ilipina want out! The desire to leave and the fact they are the most beautiful women in the world and treat their men better than any other culture of women. That makes the Filipina very desirable to most men around the world. (quoted from a guy that runs one of the many objectionable Filipina "dating" sites)

Well, this must mean that Filipinas are living the high-life overseas in the comfort of their new mail-order marriages. Let's take a look at some of their experiences...

"Maria" expresses the economic disempowerment she is subjected to by her Canadian husband: "We then fight. I don’t have money at all. I have to make him satisfied. We have so many incidents. I can’t go shopping. Of course it’s natural for us women to go out shopping, to buy something. He’s not giving me any money. He doesn’t know that he should give me money and he just learned from me in the long run...."

"Then the lifestyle here, there is no respect at all. Like it’s not easy for me to just ask or borrow something like the vacuum or money. Sometimes I feel shy to tell him that we need this or we need that."

"Nika" grew up in the Visayan region of the Philippines in a peasant family. Since her older sister had married a foreigner and was reaping the financial rewards of her new lifestyle, Nika was also determined to become a mail-order bride...She finally decided on her future husband, "Tom," after exchanging a series of letters with him. Tom had boasted about his booming taxi business back in Canada and had promised to sponsor Nika to the country.

Sadly, Nika's new life in Canada would be marked by her husband's incessant verbal and emotional abuse. He monitored her phone calls, he forbade her from watching TV, and even regulated how much she ate. In order to signal Nika to stop eating, Tom would simply slap her.

As a Filipina working in Hong Kong, "Perlita" met her Canadian husband, "Keith" through a "friendship" service....She decided to apply for residency through Canada's Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP) in order to secure her own incomce once she arrived in the new country. However, once Perlita had the couple's first baby, Keith would no longer allow her to work outside of the home.

And his abuse would not stop there. After Perlita gave birth to their second child, Keith started to control all aspects of her life--her social life, her finances, and even her mobility. He also inflicted brutal attacks on her in which he punched Perlita in the face, suffocated her in front of their children, and cruelly threatened her by holding a gun to her head.

Right, so despite the high instances of domestic abuse, the inherent marginalization of being bought in a developing nation and brought into the First World as a wife-servant, and being caught in this devastating Catch-22 with very few options, this really sounds like a better life...

All the personal excerpts from Filipina Canadians were borrowed from Canada: The New Frontier for Filipin Mail-Order Brides as published by the Philippine Women's Centre of BC. Please note that this is only a brief overview of the issue so please visit the above links for a more comprehensive exploration...

Storytelling Our Lives

"Home is where the heart is. My heart is at home." --from "Storytelling Our Lives" project

Last year, I had the pleasure of working on the Intercultural Centre of Victoria's "Storytelling Our Lives" project. It was a community-based program which sought to empower immigrant and refugee women, as well as women of colour, through a series of workshops appealing to a variety of modes of self-expression--theatre, music, dance, and like the name suggests, storytelling. Each of these workshops eventually culminated into a theatrical production of the same name put on by the Puente Theatre.

As you can imagine, participants came from all walks of life and represented various cultures. There were women from Ethiopia, Korea, the Philippines, China, Sweden, Chile, Bangladesh, Mexico, Iran, India, the UK, and of course Aboriginal women from Canada. Even though these women started off as strangers at the beginning of each workshop, they came out as sisters, mothers, and daughters by the end.

The essence of each event could be summed up in one word: powerful. Since I was piecing together a story about the project, I was originally going to sit on the sidelines and watch from afar. But I soon realized that was not an option as I got roped into every single activity--and absolutely loved it! Not only did you get to hear the diverse voices of women often silenced by racism, sexism, and language, cultural, or religious barriers, I had the privilege of listening to their individual songs, while learning to dance their dances.

Most notable of all the activities would have to be both the storytelling and voice workshops. As each woman was encouraged to share a special story from either her family or culture, this lovely First Nations women brought all of us to tears as she candidly took us all along on her spiritual journey. From her tortured childhood within the confines of the residential school system to her current work in building a cultural revitalization program for her band, this amazing women shared how she eventually found her own peace in her nation's special spiritual relationship with the land. It was truly moving.

During the voice workshop, an exuberant vocal coach led the group through a series of exercises that helped the women ease into the idea of singing their lungs out to a bunch of strangers. In the beginning, one would get the sense that most of the group was extremely uncomfortable with the prospect of singing...well...anything. Some participants even decided to sit-out during the first few activities. However, this all changed once the women realized how great they sounded together. Since the first language of most of the women was one other than English, the coach designed an activity to showcase their diversity. As the women were broken into various "language groups," each section was to sing "Home is where the heart is/My heart is at home" in their designated language. Working like dominoes, the first group would start, then subsequent sections would layer each of their songs until the group formed one harmonized voice. As I looked around the room, I realized that we were all sharing a very special moment with one another. And at that melodic climax, I couldn't help but think how strong and beautiful our voices sounded as they resonated together as one.