In 2010, Ocampo published a short reworked compilation of some of his previous newspaper articles. He entitled the work: DEATH BY GARROTE. A "garrote" was the method of execution formerly practiced in Spain and the Philippines, in which atightened iron collar was used to strangle or quickly break the neck of a condemnedperson.
The first two essays of the 24 articles in Ocampo's short publication were specifically concerning the usage of the garrote in the period leading up to and shortly after the short independence of the Philippines in 1898, i.e. before the USA military took the country over from Spain. The third essay is on Aguinaldo's breakfast--i.e. what the Filipino hero ate while he and his armed forces were on the run from the American occupiers.
Like the guillotine before it, the garrote was intended to be efficient and more humane than hanging or shooting a man to death. "A metal bar is tightened around the victim's neck and at the appointed time, with a quick twist of a handle, the neck of the victim is broken resulting in instant death.(p.3)"
GOMBURZA refers to three Filipino Catholic priests (Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora), who were executed by garrote on 17 February 1872 at Lunet in Bagumbayan by the Spanish authorities who had charged them with subversion arising from the 1872 Cavite Mutiny. Ocampo discusses their executions by garrote and cites in the first essay famous descriptions of garrotes in usage, which were commonplace executions at the time of the Gomburza and event through the earliest period of American Occupation of the Philippines. The location of the three priests who were killed by garrote is marked in a neglected area of the famous Rizal Park in Manila.
Jose Rizal, for whom thousands of Rizal Parks are named across the Philippines, is the most famous national hero of the Philippines. Rizal was a doctor, a writer and the hero of all Filipinos--then and now. Rizal was executed by the Spanish as were the Gomburza priests of Cavite, however, Rizal was not executed by garrote.
The Malacaà �ang Palace, which long since before the country's independence in 1945 has served as the Philippine version of the White House, i.e. it is a presidential palace dating to Spanish control of the land. The Spanish Governors Generals lived there. It is where the presidents (and dictators) of the land have also lived. It is on the same Malacaà �ang Palace steps where the author Ocampo finds himself in beginning his narration on the very first page of his first essay in DEATH BY GARROTE.
The public historian, Ocampo shares his thoughts and older memories on that stairwell as follows, "Presidents come and go but the Palace by the Pasag [first built in 1750] remains a historical landmark and seat of power in the Philippines. Ascending that staircase" I recounted that Manuel Luis Quezon never signed a death sentence sent him by the courts because of a legend associated with those steps. Quezon heard that in 1896, Jose Rizal's mother climbed those steps on her knees to see the governor and plead for her son's life. Teodora Alonso's appeal was ignored and Rizal was executed in Bagumbayan.[1]"
In short, Rizal was shot--even after his mother climbed the stairs at the Spanish Governor's Malacaà �ang Palace on her knees to beg for her son's life. That memory on the steps of the Palace had led the first native Filipino president of the Commonwealth of the Philippines , Manuel Luis Quezon (1935 to 1944), to avoid his hand in executions altogether. Such are the ghosts of Malacaà �ang that will or could haunt the new president, Rodrigo Duterte, if he takes his oath seriously.
Later, in his recounting the Gomburzo execution in DEATH BY GARROTE, the author Ocampo shares, "The execution of Gomburza was an inspiration to others who fought for freedom. Rizal dedicated El Filibusterismo [his second novel which sealed his eventual death sentence under the Spanish] to them. Bonifacio distributed strips of black cloth , allegedly from the robes of Gomburza to Katipuneros.[4]" When Rizal had been deported from the Philippines in 1892 for publishing his first novel, Andres Bonifacio had helped in the formation of a band of followers and supporters of revolution, which was named the Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan or "Highest and Most Respected Society of the Country's Children". (This is what Ocampo has translated as Katipuneros above.)
Bonifacio, despise his low class birth, felt he should have been elected the first president instead of Aguinaldo. Moreover, because Aguinaldo some 4 1/2 decades sided with the Japanese conquerors in its taking over of the Philippines from America,Bonifacio today is considered most Filipinos as the true major hero of the Katipuneros and their generation in the battle against Spain (and later against the Americans) after Rizal was executed.
A Cuisine and Culinary Book-ended History
Far from being a straight forward work of Filipino history by the popular Ocampo, his works, usually consisting of a series of reworked newspaper articles, are typically a hodgepodge . In Death by Garrote, for example, he moves through a history of memories of presidents by looking at their food, the country's popular staples, and popular dessert fads while bouncing from era to era, but Ocampo seldom does this in a time-linear format. In short, Ocampo writes more in a free associative format bouncing from Spanish c horizo, to kamote (a local sweet potato variety of the archipelago) cooked in a variety of ways, to a visit to an ancient panciteria (Filipino noodle restaurant), or fluffy cupcakes, known as mamon in the Philippines.
In doing so, Ocampo introduces you to his memories and legends of the presidents of the nation, like the aforementioned Quezon and Aguinaldo as well as Cory Aquino, his troubles with Marcos and other presidents and educators he has known over the years.
Ocampo, himself is the same age as Barack Obama. (He was born the same month as Obama in 1961. At the same time that Obama was growing up in the neighboring Indonesian archipelago, Ocampo writes that he was "a Martial Law baby". Ocampo declares that he did not know a single "good president" till after he a quarter of a century old, which was when EDSA occurred. EDSA was in 1986 and is for Filipinos what 9-11 or the Kennedy Assassination mean to Americans. EDSA is the memory that he and generations of Filipinos will not forget.
EDSA is the location on the highway when People Power took over and the Ferdinand Marcos regime collapsed. Unlike in America where memories are often of violence, the Filipino memory-of-a-generation is of a peaceful movement toppling President Ferdinand Marcos after alleged cheating took place in the presidential election.
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