Antonio Calipjo Go of 199 Sauyo Road, Novaliches Quezon City (E-mail address: sickbooks_togo@yahoo.com) has written me a letter about a column that I wrote earlier on his role as textbook critic. Here is the last part of the exceedingly long letter:

"Fed information you did not bother to verify, you, on June 26, 2008 wrote the article in Malaya which became the source and origin of all the negative write-ups that subsequently followed yours. Whether those who picked up your song-and-dance about me being a victimizer were also paid to do a demolition job on me is beside the point. You it was who started it all, and your article also happens to be the most vicious and cruel of the whole lot, putting words into my mouth when I’ve never even dreamed of saying them! I’m in the school seven days a week, from 5 a.m. to 12 midnight.

"You could have called or come to see me. You could have readily seen for yourself the utter falsehood of what you have written. I did not come by my name overnight – it acquired its patina of respectability over many years of doing what is right and good. If I were the evil and corrupt person you were made to believe I am, how come only one publisher has come out to denounce me? Your articles are now being replicated by all the other mindless and unthinking writers who look up to you as a sort of Big Brother, grown old and presumably wise as a newspaperman.

"Their articles are in turn picked up by other publications and news service entities. Thus, the Internet is now awash with all these negative write-ups about me, thanks to you. This is my twelfth and last year of involvement in textbook reform. Before this, I (to quote you) ‘gained recognition when I took upon myself to expose the countless errors found in the academic textbooks used in our schools.’

My notoriety stems from the manifest good that I have done. After the publication of your article, I saw my world, of a sudden, shatter to pieces. You have irremediably damaged my name and my reputation. You have ruined my life. And for what? To what end? So that you’d have something to fill your column for a single day, for the thirty pieces of silver it will bring you? Sir, it is my entire life you’ve toyed with and trifled with! You don’t know me and I don’t know you. How could you have written all those bad things about me? Did you not consider that I am a person, with my own solar system of people who depend entirely on my capacity to provide light and heat to them for their survival? You have shuttered the very light of my life: my honor, my respectability, my dignity.

"As God is my witness, I did not even try to extort from Phoenix. Yet, without even giving me a Chinaman’s chance to explain, you went headlong into the business of wrecking my name and reputation. You are old; you should know that killing the messenger kills the message, the message being that textbooks full of errors constitute rape upon the minds of schoolchildren. It compromises and corrupts their very future. Yet, you chose to take the side of the publisher whom you know only by what it has given you: lies and innuendoes served piping hot with the customary inducements and blandishments. Please bear with me, Mr. Paredes. I need not lie to you, since you’ve already painted me black anyway. All that I’ve told you in this letter comes from the heart, broken to pieces by the realization that good does not beget good, in our time, in this place.

"I’ve spent one million pesos on an advocacy that no one cares about, yet, how ironic that even at this late stage, I haven’t gotten anything for myself – not one car, not one house. And why is that? Because all my life I wanted one thing only – to leave a legacy of a good name, to acquire dignity and nobility that is in keeping with God’s expectations. You have taken that away from me, for all time. Binaboy mo ang buo kong pagkatao. Sinira mo ang buhay ko. Live with that thought. Let that be on your conscience.

"Pardon me for sounding angry, because I am, but being by nature endowed with a warm forgiving disposition, I know that as soon as I’m done writing this letter I will have processed the rancor out of my system. I realize that the recklessness of your writing springs from your ignorance, your not knowing me. Let me, therefore, invite you to come see me, if only for your peace of mind. Bring Mr. Olgado and Mr. Baun with you.

"See for yourself whether you did right by me, if your article was just and fair, if God will be pleased to know that at your age you have done this. Can you face your wife or your children and tell them that your article, which demolished all that I am to the point of nothingness, sums up the person you are? Give me a chance to dispel the doubts that were planted in your mind by the relentless and ruthless smear campaign being carried out by the publisher whose defective textbooks embody all that is not right with the world. Let me show you the books, the very real, the very many and very serious errors, and I’m sure that they themselves will speak eloquently in my behalf.

"Ask yourself this: Is the willful, intentional and deliberate act of putting errors in school books not a criminal offense, not an abomination in the eyes of God? Should I have kept quiet and shut my eyes to what I see? Should you not be helping me help the children who are being idiotized day in and day out, year in and year out, by the error-riddled textbooks they are forced to use in school? You see malfeasance in my having squandered one million pesos of my own hard-earned money but you did not even bother to consider what those ads were for. Fool that I am, I thought it was a good thing to serve humanity. I was wrong.

"Give me the benefit of the doubt. Give yourself the chance to rectify the grave error you committed when you judged me using as your sole yardstick the unchecked and unverified say-so of a publisher who will not hesitate to commit a wrong to cover up the series of wrongs it has, in fact, already committed with seeming impunity. Don’t take my word for it. Come see for yourself if I have fangs and horns, if I am indeed the evil person you presumed me to be. You have treated me infernally. At least, give me a chance to redeem myself before you, to show you that you are mistaken about me.

"There is a time of reckoning for all of us, even for rich, well-connected but morally bankrupt publishers, when we will be called upon to appear before our Maker to make an accounting of what we did on earth. Even now, I can face God – and my father – and tell them I did not commit the crime for which I, not yet convicted, am already suffering. Can you face God and tell Him you did right by me?

"P.S.: Thank the heavens I realized, deep in the middle of my depression (I’m not yet really over the hump), that I need to take care of my mother. Otherwise, who knows what could’ve happened to her? to me? Please don’t do to others what you did to me. Kawawa naman ‘yung mga taong inaalisan ng karangalan ng walang kalaban-laban, lalo pa’t ang gamit ay tabak ng kasinungalingan. Our God-given talents must be put to good use."

***

I am sorry that I do not have the space in a whole week of columns to print your 15-page letter and six pages of attachments. Still, I even now cannot accept that anyone would run a million pesos of advertising insulting other authors and demeaning their characters and their capabilities all just to introduce reforms. Reformers I have met always had a more comprehensive understanding and thus, a more tolerant view of the things that they want to reform.

Perhaps, I have misjudged you in the way that you have misjudged others; perhaps, I have maligned you just as you have maligned those you consider your inferiors.

I believe that true reformers must work within the system, not hold themselves up as being superior to those who are working within the system. Mistakes of lesser men can be pointed out without being mean and petty about those errors.