Podcast and photos by Lois Joy Guinmapang, VERA Files

The annual Feast of the Black Nazarene culminates on Wednesday with the grand translacion procession that will bring the life-sized dark wooden sculpture of the Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno from the Quirino Grandstand back to its home at Quiapo Church.

The celebration started days earlier. On Monday, devotees jammed the streets of Quiapo surrounding the basilica to join the procession of replicas of the Black Nazarene.   Lois Joy Guinmapang was there capturing the sounds of Quiapo as it geared up for the grand fiesta.

(The podcast was produced by Lois Joy Guinmapang, a senior journalism student at the University of the Philippines-Diliman, for her J196 seminar class under VERA Files trustee Yvonne T. Chua. VERA Files is put out by veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues. VERA is Latin for “true.”)

By Ellen Tordesillas

Trillanes at hearingAs always, we need to be violently jolted to do what is needed to be done. Whether the three recent incidents are harrowing enough for our authorities and lawmakers to move remain to be seen.

Last Sunday, 13 people died in a gun battle in Atimonan, Quezon. The reports get uglier as the root of the shootout or rubout is being uncovered. Three of those killed were members of the Philippine National Police and another three had identification cards of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.

Reports said the killings have something to do with jueteng.

Reports said authorities recovered from the vehicles 11 .45 ca. pistols, a 9 mm pistol, an M14 rifle and an M16 carbine.

Last Friday, a defeated candidate for barangay captain, Ronald Bae, went on a rampage with his .45 cal. Gun in Kawit, Cavite killing eight people including a pregnant woman, two children and a taho vendor who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Despite repeated reminders that it is

One of Manila Bay's famed sunsets. Photo by Ben Leaño.

By Norman Sison, VERA Files

Sunset photo by Ben Leaño

Imagine Manila without a view of its world-famous sunsets over Manila Bay or without a view of the bay itself. Simply unthinkable.

Manila doesn’t rank alongside London, Paris and other great capitals of the world. However, what it lacked in man-made wonders, Manila Bay’s natural beauty made up for.

American architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham saw Manila’s potential during a visit in 1905. Commissioned by American governor William Cameron Forbes to draw a city plan for Manila, Burnham envisioned a lovely coastal boulevard stretching 10 kilometers from Intramuros, the original walled city of Manila, to Pasay City to the south.

Cavite Boulevard was to continue all the way to Cavite province. Burnham's idea was a spacious tree-lined roadway that included a tramline and sidewalks for promenaders.

During the American colonial period, Manila was home away from home for its 5,000 American residents. Tourism promoters then pictured

The Bernstein Declaration of Trust

By Ellen Tordesillas

Just because the  Presidential Commission on Good Government would be abolished, it doesn’t mean that the hunt for the people’s money looted by the Marcoses and hidden in bank accounts abroad or in properties under the name of some friends, should also end.

As PCGG  Chair Andres Bautista said, the job could be continued by the Department of Justice. The reasons he gave, one of which as that Marcos- loot- hunting by the 200-man agency is no longer cost effective, makes sense.

So far, in its 27-year existence the PCGG has recovered $4 billion (P164 billion), only a tiny fraction of what was estimated to be a $10 billion loot in 1986. Just imagine how much the unrecovered would be worth by now including the interests.

The executive order creating the PCGG was the first issued by President Cory Aquino on Feb. 28, 1986, three days after the Marcos fled early evening of Feb. 25, 1986 as millions of Filipinos rose in a bloodless revolution called People Power.

The PCGG

Alapo ng Bila Lydia Cobcobo Dalupan

Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga,VERA Files

The exhibition of mono-print portraits of 101 grandmothers still up at the BenCab Museum Print Gallery, in its deceptive simplicity, cries, “Women power, women rule!”

Conceptualized by Thirteen Artists awardee Joey Vendiola Cobcobo in 2009, he told himself that he wanted a visual arts project that was important, had the correction intention and whose effect could be felt from today to the future.

But he took his time, waiting for the moment that would push him to say, “Game!”  That was the time he and his girlfriend, who became his wife, conceived a child who answers to the name

Ark Daniel Cobcobo. The father considered this boy “second  savior , the first being the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Joey CobcoboHe got his son’s name from Noah’s Ark where humans and animals were saved. He elaborated, “Those saved were those who believed in God through Noah and in the arts! I have a work entitled ‘Ark of Letting Go’ based on the Manila bus which had a barge-like

Anti Cybercrime law rally at the SC, Oct 2012

By Ellen Tordesillas

Photo by Mario Ignacio of VERA Files.

Last week, we amended our petition against the Cybercrimes Prevention Act of 2012 (R.A 10175) to have it declared wholly as unconstitutional.

“We” refers to our group VERA Files and fellow petitioners namely Davao-based radio broadcaster radio broadcaster Alexander Adonis, lawyers/bloggers Harry Roque, Romel Bagares, and Gilbert Andres, legal officer of Media Defense Southeast Asia.

Our earlier petition filed last Sept 28 asked the Court to declare only the provision of the Cybercrimes Prevention Law on libel as being unconstitutional. In our amended petition, we asked the Supreme Court to expressly declare Art. 355 of the Revised Penal Code providing for the crime of libel also to be unconstitutional.

As explained by our lawyers, Harry Roque and Romel Bagares of The Center for International Law and the Southeast Asia Media Defense, “We’ve had to clarify that pursuant to the View of the UN Human Rights Committee in Adonis

Yay Padua-OlmedoText and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga,VERA Files

Who was the woman who said that if she had realized earlier that grandmotherhood would bring her such unadulterated joy, she would’ve skipped marriage and motherhood altogether and gone ahead with being a lola first?

Yay Padua-Olmedo, retired vice president of one of the Philippines’ biggest conglomerates, a teacher at Southville Foreign University in Las Piñas and a motivational speaker, wrote the book Grandparenting: Happiness and Hard Work! (OMF Literature, Inc., 2012) just in time for the long Christmas holidays. Hers is a wise woman’s voice, the kind that knows that “joyful moments” are also balanced by “turbulent days and tough trials.”

The national situation is such that the idealized nuclear family has been shaken, if not broken. It isn’t just the incompatibilities of some parents, the sickness and tragedy that befall them. There is the kind of economy that the government encourages—the exportation of Filipino brains and brawn or

Text and photos by Aileen Camille Dimatatac, VERA Files

In the small village of Buscalan in Kalinga province, 92-year-old Maria "Pangud" Oggay has been practicing the traditional art of tattooing for almost 77 years now. She is the province’s only living traditional tattoo artist or mambabatok.

Pangud learned the craft from the male mambabatoks by watching them. She uses pine soot for ink, pomelo torn for a needle, a bamboo stick to hold the needle and a hammering stick.

At first, Pangud prepares the ink by scraping the soot from under the pot and mixing it with a little water. Then she readies the bamboo stick in which she will insert the pomelo thorn or gisi (kisi).

Before she starts puncturing the skin, she first puts a stencil of the design which usually starts with two lines to indicate the length and position of the tattoo. Now she is ready to do her masterpiece.

After dipping the needle into the ink, Pangud holds the stick with the needle on one hand so that when the hammer