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Crispin ?Ka Bel? Beltran and Roxanna Brown passed away within days of each other in the most untimely and ungentle manner that one can imagine. One died in a freak accident, the other left this world while in the custody of the United States judicial system. They never knew each other nor were they fighting for the same cause but I knew both of them. And I too was either once a part of their struggle or am still in it. I therefore mourn their passing.
Ka Bel, the grand old man of the Philippine labor movement, died from a fall while repairing the roof of his GSIS-loaned low-cost house the other day, the ultimate proof that the lowly Anakpawis representative in Congress did not wallow in the perks of office nor lived in the mansions that are stereotypical of those of his peers who have made a profession (not a genuine public service) out of lawmaking.
I knew Ka Bel during those anti-Marcos rallies, which I faithfully joined as a student activist. I remember we once shared the stage in one of those massive gatherings in Cebu, as well as in the launching of the now-defunct Partido ng Bayan at the Folk Arts Theater. Ah, those were heady times when the idealism in me was brimming to the full, aiming high with the thought that all would be well and the revolution would really cleanse the nation of its ills.
Alas, this was not to be. After Edsa I, the debates in the Left were too difficult to control from within until they burst out into the open and split what was once the most formidable enemy of Marcos into its tattered and scattered remains today. While many of us moved on to more manageable and personally closer, less dangerous and less abstract causes, Ka Bel persisted and continued to clamor for that elusive change that the nation needs, incurring the ire of the State in return. And it is for this reason that his colleagues and those who once marched with him (even his enemies) ought to pay homage to this man who never wavered in his convictions, who lived a life dedicated to that selfless ideal. He was born poor and died a poor man but will forever leave rich memories to those with whom he shared his commitment to fight for what he believed in.
Roxanna Brown, curator of the Southeast Asian Ceramics Museum at University of Bangkok, returned to the land of her birth to speak at a gathering of ceramics experts in Washington but ended up in jail following a supposed indictment involving the illegal transfer of Thai ceramics to museums and galleries in Los Angeles. She was the foremost expert and author of books on Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian ceramics. I saw Roxanna for the first and last time during the quintennial 18th Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association (IPPA) Conference held at University of the Philippines Diliman the other year.
Roxanna had lost a leg in 1982 from a freak accident after delivering a lecture at a local hotel in Bangkok, when her motorcycle was sideswiped by a tuktuk (tricycle), throwing her onto the pavement. Before she could stand up, a large delivery truck ran over her, broke her ribs and shattered her legs. Yet she recovered from her injuries that would otherwise have been fatal. She lived in Bangkok for the most of the last 30 years, after obtaining a doctorate in art history from University of California Los Angeles and curated the largest collection of some 2,000 non-Chinese ceramics at Bangkok University.
Unfortunately, as was gathered from a five-year investigation by United States authorities, unscrupulous traders had been using her electronic signature to stamp genuine ceramics taken from the large archaeological site of Bang Chian, near Bangkok, to make them appear as reproductions but later sold as genuine to museums in Los Angeles. In other instances, her electronic signature was allegedly used also to stamp fakes as genuine articles. She had been indicted on charges of fraud and had had been in custody for three days when she suffered a fatal heart attack while in detention last May 15. She was 62.
I mourn her passing because her death is a great loss to those of us who fight against the incessant looting of archaeological sites and because we still need to understand better the role that Vietnamese and Thai traders played in the trading networks that reached Cebu and some parts of the archipelago from the 14th to the 16th century.
Ka Bel and Roxanna Brown. Untimely and ungentle are their passing. And they will be sorely missed.
