not a book review: ‘some people need killing’ by pat evangelista
Disclaimer in the title. This book is the reason I didn’t find myself capable of finishing another book in months. But of course, you should read it. It is about the Philippines, after all. That’s how much of a review there is to this post.
Way back in June, I read my first non-fiction book this year. It was a memoir. Months before that I’ve already caught wind of the importance of the book amidst our local political climate. I saw bookstores that had this book front and center in their shops. Didn’t matter if it was about the debauchery caused by the former president whose daughter is the vice president at the moment.
Anyway, the book got popular and eventually it stumbled its way to me and my friends’ little book club, which had me finally picking it up. I was previously reading inhaling fluffy romance books just before it as an escape when I was very deep into thesis work. School was about to end roughly at the same time, so yeah, maybe I can stomach something very much real this time around, so why the hell not.
I didn’t particularly itch to read it. I knew it would be a drastic change in pace and let alone the genre. So I blamed a lot of my hesitation on that. But here I am now as I write this in early December still thinking about it, only to realize it was because the book felt like a ghost of a very dark past, sitting there in my digital bookshelf, haunting the neighboring books.
In the time most of the events in the book happened, I’ve spent those days being so engrossed and passionate and just outright angry with the administration. I used to be quite loud about it, whether it was my own words or a shared, retweeted post, if it spoke of anything akin to a call for change, to stop the cruelty, it would be on my page daily like clockwork.
From something I saw on my feed or the news or heard narrated in a song, horror stories about the drug war would find me. Then, there is helplessness in the grief. I hoped and hoped and so did my friends. I used to let it affect me so much. I was younger then, so all I ever did was react and scream at the world in my socials, which I will eventually figure out to be an echo chamber.
The pandemic hit in 2020, then the election season came the following year. The daughter of the person who orchestrated the killings is running for VP alongside a Marcos. How they have the audacity, I have no idea. If the pandemic drowned out noise about the drug war and the killings, it would continue, because nothing is more important for the dictator’s son than clearing his family’s name.
I went to my first ever rally and then the next. The entire campaign, I was on an emotional rollercoaster. I felt hostility in family gatherings from my relatives who are too consumed by prejudice to listen. I picked my battles. In the rallies and the local HQ, I saw kindness and the same passion I had in the people I met and I’d thought we may have a chance after all. And by election day, I voted and finally did something that was way beyond reacting.
The results came in that same night. Even now, I feel the same kind of emptiness from just remembering it. From the senatorial and presidential seats, they swept. The people chose the dictator’s son over a highly-qualified woman. Duterte won, too. The president and the vice president. Children of two different fathers, both having their own set of fanatics, the cruelty and injustice in their respective presidencies forgiven and forgotten by the Filipino people. I immediately felt utterly delusional from thinking there was a chance. The following weeks left me nursing a heartbreak at the loss of hope I had for my country.
I’ve distanced myself from social media after that. Maybe I felt betrayed after the algorithm fed me post after post that made me believe there was a shot to victory. But really and most importantly, what these spaces do is let misinformation fester like rot and they will not do anything about it.
Time passed by. I started tuning out of the daily news when it played on the living room TV. I stopped engaging with my relatives for any more arguments. I still have social media that I only access on my desktop, but I’m not that keen to post and if I come across another fucked up thing the current administration is up to, it is already a meme by the time it reaches me.
When I read the book, I felt the same swell of emotions as I did back then. I guess I only sustained them, everything I ever felt for every case and event. I found myself thinking how my 16-year old self would react to the book, a vantage point on how much the past few years have changed me.
By the time I finish it, there is no more call to action, at least not at that time, save for participating in our book club discussions. I thought that that was enough - discourse that is contained in a way smaller structure but in a more receptive environment.
I write and reflect on this with so much privilege, because I get to live my days where injustice can be something I can stop talking about, as if it was a phase or a past life. I know I still care. I still have the same values and beliefs, for sure. From time to time, I’ll share something I think people should know about, if only I can bring myself to spend more time in these spaces.
But I know I’m not that person anymore. The one always looking to fight and hell-bent on changing other people’s minds. I know now whatever way people profess their beliefs and stances, it relies so deeply on how much one can remember and forgive.
As for myself, I just realized not every one of my opinions must be heard, nor every piece of headline must warrant a reaction. But I am still writing this post. It is my reaction after reading the book months later. Telling the void how we screwed up and let this happen, how something needs to change, how scared I am of our future, of how all of this will look like in history books decades later.
I am hopeful that there is power in writing, still. It is immortalizing. I felt the need to write this post to reminisce how I cared then and how I care now. But also, how else will we future-proof the events of the past when technology has allowed it to be easily skewed and manipulated?
I may not have the energy I’ve had any longer, but I will never, ever forget. That must count for something...