I am writing this on the 1st of January, 2021, to be sure that the chaotic and fickle-minded 2020 had no more punches to throw. I have conjectured that while we had to trudge through 365 days last year, it had already ended on the 2nd of March, Monday, at Greenhills Shopping Center, when Archie Paray, 40, held his former employer’s office hostage. Afterwards, the gears that had been set in motion could no longer be stopped. That was our last train out of the pandemic, Duterte, his unsure men, and the lockdowns. We missed it.
This does not mean, in any way, that I am charging any more crimes to Paray and his employers than they are already accused of. Besides, the pattern for 2020 had already been set as early as January: when Taal Volcano spewed towers and towers of ash and COVID-19 entered our shores and the President couldn’t be found, when Bato’s US visa was cancelled and Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. made an ass of himself in front of protesters at the DFA, when the US under Trump almost declared war against Iran, when Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash.
But March 2 was a point of no return. By March 6, Friday, there was superspreader event, also in Greenhills, traced to a person making use of the prayer room on top of the parking lot of Unimart. Now with nine months of pandemic experience under our belts, we can imagine the butterfly effect that the event set into motion, and understand 2020 better.
Start with the hodgepodge of sanitation efforts put into action—hand sanitizers, spray tents, UV, air filters and purifiers, temperature scans, etc.—and an across-the-board effort to say “there is no emergency.” Then the tiangge vendors regrouping and rearranging their wares for a second time that week, though they would still be met with even less buyers and greater losses. Then the empty malls were followed by crowded hospitals. Then COVID-19’s first victims, the suffering, and deaths.
What followed was a months-long panic, days that felt the same while arguing which reality to believe: the Duterte administration’s reality or everyone else’s? This was mixed with an anxiety which resurfaced each time the President gave a late-night and unfunny talk show, or each time we faced anyone standing too close and wearing their masks below their nostrils.
Yet every now and then in those nine months, I am thrown back to the case of Archie Paray. How is he?
He would’ve been one of those elevated to “frontliner” status had he not taken his co-workers hostage. He would’ve fallen sick, manning the doors of V-mall. While he is now behind bars, he could be one of the nameless prisoners who were infected. Poor and aware of his rights—even an erstwhile celebrity—he would be prone to the NTF-ELCAC’s cheap tricks and red-tagging. But then again, who’s to blame for his original crime when what pushed him over the edge were problems that were structural in nature?
Paray did not earn enough from a job that is unkind to those coerced to do it. Had he not been a contractual worker, and had the government listened to the demands of labor sectors which Paray only echoed and eloquently laid out, then so much pandemic suffering could’ve been prevented. And now with 2020 hindsight, we are confounded with a new set of questions: How have things changed for people like Paray, pre-pandemic and post-2020? Did calling anyone a “frontliner” even matter? Can we insist that we all experienced the same pandemic, the same 2020?
Among the many things the pandemic has asked us to interrogate are our notions of space, how much space we deserve and how much others deserve space. Confined to our houses, isolated in rooms, and distanced from one another, we are forced to think only of ourselves, even as we wonder how others are doing. And the undeniable conclusion is that we are all this pandemic’s victims, yes, though some are more victimized than others.
In the end, the piling up of PhilHealth corruption cases, of murders of peasants and activists, of badly written legislation, of the version of the Bayanihan We Heal As One Act, of the Terror Law, of bad cops, of calamities, and of an absent president, forced us to forget the case of Archie Paray. We forget because it’s how we’ve learned to manage the spaces in our heads. And we leave them and 2020 behind.
But it is important to remember, so we can carry on with fighting what led us to the story of Paray to begin with. A fight that’s now even more important, and urgent.