On Politics over Kutsinta

for Kuya Kutsinta

Every Sunday after mass at my Protestant church, a kuya would shout unto church-comers to buy his kutsinta, sold in a white, translucent bucket he carried on his back. When asked about his recipe, he would smile and laugh and cross a hand over his heart; it was made with love, he said, and that was all we needed to know. Regardless of that mystery, these yellow, gelatinous cups of joy soon became the highlight of my Sunday mornings after church. Even more so with the coconut shavings that came in a little plastic baggie, something I would rarely eat unless with kutsinta. I loved them more than whenever we’d go on cross-country drives in Daanbantayan or Busay, in a white MUX my mother got from work. They were small and came at 5 pieces for 20 pesos, a price I was more than happy with. 

With this, I would look for him as the recessional played on the organ and the people shuffled out of the chapel— I called him Kuya Kutsinta, and he was a comfort as he flashed his bright smile, fishing out 2 packs of the kutsinta I so loved. I would trade my sole 50-peso bill for this happiness, which seemed so worth it as soon as my teeth sunk into each cup-shaped goodie. Of course, I would inflate the plastic baggies full of coconut shavings with my breath and toss the kutsinta in them, just as Kuya taught me. You would get an even distribution of coconut shavings per kutsinta, he explained once. 

In that comfortable, upper-middle-class life, I was an 8th-grade student at one of the more prestigious schools in Cebu, where my batchmates were would-be heirs and heiresses to big companies, or related to showbiz or prominent political figures. The school took advantage of this fact and turned canteen prices up— I was 8th grade, and my allowance was 50 pesos, which seemed so small compared to the 1000-peso baon my classmates would have. My mother patted me on the back and said to me, “sige, i-promote tika to 60 pesos inig grade 9 nimo,” a time that never came because of the pandemic. Yet, I was so happy because this meant I would get to buy 3 packs of kutsinta every Sunday, but I digress. 

I was never one to complain about this small injustice: I came to school with a packed lunch that beat all the other stalls at school in terms of how delicious they were. A sign that my parents were never too busy, I learned, as my classmates would compare my warmth-filled food to the sad, cold, 90-peso steamed rice they would get from the canteen. I had snacks, and juice sometimes, packaged with a note from my mom or dad telling me to study hard. 

That was precisely what I did. I was consistently on the honor’s list, and I was a member of the school’s debate team, an experience I would be eternally grateful for as it opened

my eyes to the reality of this world— our world, I would reminisce as I watched bibingka sellers calling out to me from the safety of tinted windows. 

The first morning Kuya Kutsinta wasn’t at his regular post was a somber one. I had saved up 80 pesos, after reasoning with my mom that I needed money to buy cartolina and manila paper for a school project (a simple white lie. My groupmates and I decided to amot money for it, and we bought it at 5 pesos times 5 groupmates in the school bookstore; I did not need the 50 pesos she had given me on top of my 50-peso allowance.) Instead, as I rushed past my church’s white, rusted metal gates, I could not see Kuya Kutsinta and his white, translucent bucket of golden kutsinta. Instead, I saw his kauban, selling pichi-pichi. My mother took one look at my face, disappointed, and decided that we would instead be going into Catmon to buy bibingka. 

There’s a store right there, our suki— a small, sooty metal roof with those RC cola signages that read “Riza’s Bibingka” in all caps. Ate Riza, a girl two years my senior, would hand over her bibingka to us on the other side of the road personally, never failing to remember that my mom and dad hated the paig ones, and this attention to detail was what made my mom and dad come back every time. She would always give us 2 bags of pakapin bibingka for our patronage, and that temporarily took Kuya Kutsinta and his disappearance off my mind. 

After Ate Riza handed her bibingka to us and crossed the road back, my mother commented about how hardworking she was at her age. “Salig ramong duha ha,” she would tell me and my sister in a chastising tone, “‘di na mo kinanglan magbaligya parehas ni Ate Riza ninyo.” 

My 8th-grade self, ashamed at how well off I was compared to some other people, would sink deeper into the black leather car seat, convinced that other people would do anything to be where I was in life right now— comfortable, sitting in the airconditioned backseat of my mom’s car. Some people didn’t have air conditioning or cars, much less the idea of comfort. 

I glanced at Ate Riza’s retreating form and thought that perhaps if Ate Riza were in my place, I would be the one forced to holler at passing cars, amidst the smoke of bibingka ovens and tambutso, a thought that made me recoil in fear. I did not know my mother tongue well enough to survive on the streets. Safe to say that nagkompyansa ko— I was complacent about where I’d end up because of my peers who would spend their 1000-peso allowance in one day because they were “bored.” This was the mindset that I had grown up in (and grown out of), that my parents were doing all they could to protect me from the shattering fall of reality once I graduated and moved out— that life would

be easy because the properties my parents were investing in would become mine as soon as I hit 18, and with them, their passive income too. I would not need to work, much less work hard. 

This mindset was thrown out the window as I matured, with exposure to debate motions taken from real-life issues: drug abuse, government corruption, the death penalty, and more. With this somewhat leftist rationalization, all the other kids began to realize this and the ones who didn’t (or did too late) were branded as rich kids who were disconnected from the world, a term that stung their egos despite being the objective truth. The sad part was that even if you were on the “right” side, it was deemed enough to hit like and share on Instagram posts to “spread awareness,” or post a black square on Facebook during the height of the BLM movement. Their efforts of educating people on Twitter never proved anything more than a means to stroke their own politically correct egos, to prove that they were better. 

Empathy was easy, they reasoned. And for some time, I believed that was enough for me. That social justice could be attained with just the right amount of likes, hearts, and care reacts. Yet, where does awareness end and action begin? 

One time, we tackled extrajudicial killings in Social Studies. I went home a different person and tried to bring about my enlightenment to the dinner table when my father simply scoffed as I recounted the statistics to him; about how most of the time, these people were innocent bystanders in the current administration’s War on Drugs. My father laughed as I told him that these were human rights abuses, and told me, “sos, kanang “human rights-human rights” nila? Rason rana nila. Maygani naay gibuhat si Duterte ani.” 

It never made sense to me then, much more now. It felt similar to when a classmate once said that “the poor stay poor because they’re lazy,” and I was able to shut him up by talking about systemic oppression and how so few people make it out of the poverty line. However, this wasn’t exactly the same: disagreeing with my father would mean rounds of debate until he got defensive and shut down the topic. And disagreeing with his ideas meant disagreeing with who he was as a person, apparently, which was how he liked to frame it. I think he disliked who I became after I joined debate, someone who loved to question his doctrines for the fun of it. So for the sake of father-daughter niceties, I hid my newfound courage from him, and it became another skeleton in my closet. 

It was like this for the gays, and every other political issue we fought each other over and then glossed over. I heard his reasoning every day when I looked at the mirror and

saw my reflection: “gay people don’t deserve rights,” he reasoned over meatloaf that one time. “When they come out as gay, they shouldn’t expect the same things as kitang mga tarong— ” he motioned to the both of us. “We are normal. We are fine. They are the freaks.” And my dad goes on and on about friends who “straightened” themselves out over time. “It’s the hormones; love cannot be real between two people of the same gender,” he’ll say, and that was it. I smiled and nodded, hopeful that I was the image of filial piety and understanding as I swallowed back the tears that were forming in my eyes. 

Ever since that moment, I have loathed the taste of meatloaf as it only brings back the memory of that conversation and a newfound sense of lost; when I was younger, my dad loved to say that he was proud of who I was and who I could become. I wonder what he would do if he found out I was bisexual. With this, the already-existent fissure between us widened; I loved my father and only wanted to make him proud. Happy with me, and who I was. I have lived a double life ever since. Who was it that said home is the first place we learn to run away from? 

My mother was quiet until my father excused himself from the table. Then, with eyes shining, she reached for my hand across me and told me that I reminded her of her father, who was outspoken about political issues like this and never backed down from opposition, even as his life was threatened. As my mother is from rural Mindanao, I chalked this up to them not having much of a choice but to be brave— how else were things going to get better if they weren’t? But my mother has stories about election season in her hometown, and how big, scary men would knock at their humble home with guns. 

How this meant that every time elections rolled around, she would be transported to a relative’s house so these big, scary men would not learn of her existence, a potential trading chip in their game of politics. They would intimidate my lolo into voting for people he didn’t agree with, and my lola would hide behind him and beg him to just agree for the sake of their safety. And because my lolo loved his wife, he would. But secretly, he would rally for change. Change that waned as soon as my lolo left his post in their local government to retire into a peaceful life until his death. 

In comparison, my dad was from Ilocos Norte, who lived most of his life under a Marcos fanatic, or my paternal lolo. There is a joke that runs in the family, that all my lolo can talk about is how good the Marcoses were in managing the country. We find that path of his well-traveled, and it sneaks up on you in the most mundane of conversations. Talk to him about Martial Law and he will run on reasons— “the rebels,” he’ll say, having convinced me once, “the rebels deserved to die. They were disturbing the peace.” While

playing with the adobo on my plate as I heard my dad humming in the sink, I realized that my dad must’ve adopted his father’s own views because they were the only ones that made sense to him. When they put Duterte in office, they were both happy because according to them, “the Philippines needed discipline.” 

My dad had nothing but the highest praise for Duterte, who ruled over the country with a heavy iron fist. His ratings plummeted, and he would reason out that it was because of the dilawans, the people who believed in the ideologies of “communists” like Mar Roxas and Leni. I would then ask my father why, if Duterte was such a good president, that Ate Riza still sold her bibingka by the side of the road, instead of going to school. And for this, he had no response. And so did all the other people I asked about Martial Law when I asked about what happened to the poor, to the marginalized. My lolo did not understand that due to his privilege, he experienced a side of Martial Law that no one else did: the “comfortable” side. 

I never really considered myself “woke” or remotely “political”— it felt like a dirty word, derogatory to an extent, and had a performative aspect that I hated. Being “woke” meant sharing posts on your Instagram stories, while there were real people out there who were dying for some corrupt politician’s cause. Philippine officials say that around 6,200 people died during anti-drug operations since their onset in Duterte’s administration. Then we have people like Kian delos Santos, Chad Booc, Carl Arnaiz, and Reynaldo de Guzman; people who make you think, “that could’ve been me.” They were the ones villainized and turned into a societal scapegoat when the real problem came from those who were in positions of power for their own self-gain, and those who stood idly by. 

For Ate Riza, I imagined a reality where I did not wake up at 4 am sharp for school in a dark, air-conditioned room. I imagined waking up in a cold sweat, the Philippine air flaunting its trademarked hot and sticky quality. The sun is yet to peek from the horizon as I rise and tie my hair back to start with preparing the first batch of bibingka. My parents will have already been up for some time, and they invite me to join them. The fragrant smell of galapong— fermented, ground, sticky rice— and how it will stick to every pore of my skin like a brand of the working class I cannot get rid of. 

I imagine how desolate it must be to work the way she has, for her mother to see how hard she will work and how so much of it will be for naught when poverty is as much as a disease as it is inherited, like a generational curse. When Ate Riza is the custodian for her generation, she’ll see generations after her outstretched forever, working as hard as she is only to reach minimum wage like a glass ceiling they cannot break.

Kuya Kutsinta died in a drug raid. I found out a few Sundays after. I was numb until the later hours of the evening. There was no need to imagine desolation when it was right here; when there was so little I could do to bring him back and the memories we shared. Even though I never knew his real name, I hope that his memory was not desecrated and made into a statistic when to many people, he was so much more: a father, a son, a husband. My 8th-grade self wondered how this could’ve happened when he was such a jovial person, so willing to sell his kutsinta for a family he had back home. 4 years later, will it be so unfounded to hope that his family sees this and finds peace? That to other people, he didn’t die a drug-user, but a person. A Kuya. 

Perhaps the police made a mistake, and mistook his bags of grated coconut for shabu? Was there even any sort of process for him? Was Kuya Kutsinta able to defend himself in the safety of a court, or was his life stolen from him in a halfhearted attempt to eradicate drugs in the Philippines? Did it matter if he was innocent when he was dead? Dead like all those who were like him, people on the streets looking to make an honest living? 

The Sunday we found out he died in a drug raid, the car sat in a pensive kind of silence until my dad spoke up. That it was good that he was gone, for the sake of the kids who used to love him and buy his wares. He even joked that perhaps Kuya had gone so far as to put some amount of drugs into his kutsinta, which was the reason we kept coming back for it. I remembered Kuya, and my inquisitive questions: how he crossed a hand over his heart and said they were made with love.