Feature: NDB Writer Edouard Garcia’s Reflection on PUREZA

“It is unfortunate that the Negrenses are subjects of a national mockery,” says

Ambassador Edouard Garcia spoke his mind couple of days ago about PUREZA which is slated for a grand premiere night this February 7, at 6:30 P.M. and 9:00 P.M., at SM City Cinema

Edouard Garcia is Edouard Garcia when the You Tube captured his line, “Why...Why can’t I be given the life that I was trained to live? Why must my heart be torn?” When asked, he does not know what part of his lines will be shown in PUREZA and he has not viewed the documentary in its entirety but the Ambassador went in depth. Those “You Tubed” lines are his reflection of the context viewed upside down by the nation who could not care less and the haciendero major players themselves who lived a kind of a lifestyle that lull the whole nation to a belief of power, more vanity than power, Edouard supposed.

Because of this, Edouard strongly felt “gina lapak kita sang bilog nga Pilipinas”, the Negrense haciendero elites so-called became a national phantasmagoria; “ang kwarta gina pico sa Negros” is a subject of mockery because in truth, “My mother would not want me to go home.” What is here in Negros that qualified us to deserve such mockery?

It was pain for a “spoiled brat” like Edouard to bid his mother goodbye, but, “My mother would rather see me depart than stay or she said might never, never see me again.”

He was referring to Negros of the mid-70s, a “Ghost Town” of brownouts, insurgency, decadence and hypocrisy.

For a while, the passionate and articulate Edouard seemed alluding to his sense of guilt describing his class and himself as a brat, “But who among them knew that in the midst of biting coldness of winter, I walked the streets of Paris penniless? Who among those haciendero worked their way to survive when all I got in Paris was a lunch ticket in fashion houses as compensation.”

The price all Filipinos have to pay in an alien land but must leave homeland for nothing is there to choose from. Edouard, for once, did not consider himself different from all other Filipinos who must leave, to live.

I must have seen Edouard’s eyes grew teary, believed it or not, in a raised voice, “I cannot even afford to eat lunch at Seven-Eleven in Paris. I am fortunate to have a French partner who spends for me.”

Suddenly, the mood changed as the Ambassador invites Negrenses to watch PUREZA.

SCREENINGS:

•  Premiere: SM Cinema, Bacolod City, February 7 (by invitation only)
•  Special screening at Robinson’s Bacolod on February 11 at 6 P.M.
•  Regular screenings on February 17 (from 12 noon onwards)
•  Bacollywood: Robinson’s, Bacolod City, February 11

(Next Week: The Ambassador Edouard Garcia as the First Japayuki in Paris)