Diwa

This is a portrait of a member of the Philippine diaspora-- in this case, a pineapple worker in Hawaii.  I called it DIWA or Ghost because, for so long, the overseas foreign worker has been invisible. Only recently has their quiet suffering and exploitation been recognized and appreciated as part of their quest for social justice and a moral order.   

"All over the world, in airports and bus stations, in shopping malls and under the garish lights of entertainment marquees, I have seen the faces of my countrymen--radiant with smiles. Indeed, Filipinos are a happy people but beneath their brown skin is lacerated flesh and a bleeding heart for their lives are truly melancholy and harsh--these hapless, deracinated wanderers wrenched away from the sulky recesses of the provinces, from the slums of Manila and even the smug comfort of middle class neighborhoods. They are everywhere, I am now sure, even in the glacial isolation of the arctic, the pitiless deserts of the Middle East, the raging seas of the North Atlantic. Ah, my countrymen, dislodged from the warmth of their homes, to make a living no matter how perilous and demeaning, to strike out in alien geographies and eke from there with their sweat and their cunning what they can. I have seen them lambasted in foreign newspapers, ridiculed and debased by those who do not know how it is to be Filipino, how it is to travel everywhere and yet hold precious and lasting memories, stretching across mountains and oceans, of my unhappy country." F. Sionil José's VIAJERO, pages 7-8