Edmundo G.

Garcia - Parangal Lingkod Sambayanan 2015

Because many contemporary problems transcend

national borders, the times call not only for global governance, but also for global public service. As a
tireless champion of peace, human rights, and social justice worldwide, Ed Garcia exemplifies this
kind of public servant. For two decades, he has served as a peace envoy and senior advisor in the
peacebuilding organization, International Alert. He has accompanied peace advocates and
engaged with multisectoral stakeholders in diverse regions of conflict in Asia (Indonesia, East Timor,
Fiji, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Philippines), Africa (Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Sudan and
South Africa), Latin America (Colombia and Guatemala) and Europe (Northern Ireland and Georgia). 
 
His work has focused on people’s participation in peace processes, facilitation and mediation in
peace negotiations, and drawing lessons learned in peacemaking. He led the drafting of the first
Code of Conduct for Conflict Transformation Work (International Alert, 1998), highlighting the primacy of
people, linking human rights and social justice to peacebuilding, and underscoring principled impartiality.
 
He has written many books about the process of building peace including Alert-Asia Comparative
Learning on Peace Practice on International Alert’s 20th anniversary (2006), as well as a series on
building peace constituencies to accompany peace processes in 2004: Accompanying Peace Advocates
in Burundi; Working with Religious Leaders and the Justice and Peace Commission; Accompanying
Peace Advocates in Colombia; Working Towards a Just Peace; and Accompanying Peace Advocates in
the Philippines 1987–2004. 
 
Ed firmly believes in the crucial importance of socio-historical context and rootedness. For him, Filipino
peace workers provide a distinctive perspective and can make a real difference in global peacebuilding
initiatives. He has been welcomed by various parties involved in conflict resolution because while the
Philippines is not viewed as a geopolitical power (and thus is non-threatening), the country is also seen as
a significant player because of its large population, often spread out across the world. Filipinos are also
respected because of the EDSA People Power Revolution and other efforts at promoting participatory
democracy and popular sovereignty in the country. 
 
Ed also sees his own contributions as a global peace practitioner as having been uniquely shaped by his
personal journey over many years as a socially committed and politically engaged Filipino—whether as a
Jesuit seminarian-student of philosophy and theology, a high school and college teacher, a political
organizer and street parliamentarian, a social researcher and writer, a convenor of human rights and
peace organizations, and a drafter of the Philippine Constitution.
 
It was the values of service and generosity instilled in him by his late parents, Paulino J Garcia, a
physician and Secretary of Health, and Rosalinda Guidote, a teacher, that led him to work among poor
communities in Sapang Palay and Mindanao as a young Jesuit scholastic in the 1960s. He brought along
his Ateneo students in “Summers of Service”—a forerunner of the immersion and service-learning
programs of the University.
 
He was also a pioneering and inspirational leader during the “First Quarter Storm” of the early 1970s. He
was co-founder of the youth political movement, Lakasdiwa. He developed a vision for a Filipino Social
Democracy and an activism committed to nonviolent social change. Not possessing a ready-made
political ideology, Lakasdiwa’s praxis drew from diverse sources: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Cesar
Chavez, Helder Camara, Gustavo Gutierrez, Rizal, Mabini, and Jesuit mentors Fr. Horacio de la Costa
and Fr. Francisco Araneta.
 
Sent by his Jesuit superiors to Latin America for theology studies in 1972, he spent the martial law period
grappling with the challenges of defending human rights and fostering democratization in an authoritarian
context. After he left the Jesuits in 1974, he resumed postgraduate studies in Political and Social
Sciences in Mexico and later became a senior researcher for the Latin American Department/International
Secretariat of Amnesty International in 1978–1980. After his return to the Philippines in 1981, he became
founding convenor of Amnesty International-Philippines (1984–1994).
 
He renewed his active involvement in the “parliament of the streets” and engaged with a new
generation of activists in the aftermath of the Aquino assassination in August 1983. This struggle
for creating and expanding democratic space against the Marcos dictatorship culminated in the
victory of people’s power at EDSA in February 1986. During this time he was teaching Political
Science and Latin American Studies at the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila
University (1981–1994). He was also a founding member of Kaakbay (1982) led by former Senator Jose
W Diokno, an organization which sought to develop a socially progressive and nationalist agenda among
emerging social movements of the 1980s and to foster discussions and coalitions across different
ideological tendencies.
 
2. Ed was appointed by President Corazon Aquino to the 1986 Constitutional Commission which
drafted the new Constitution ratified by Filipino voters in 1987. He headed the public hearings
committee which held consultations throughout the country, and was the principal sponsor of
provisions recognizing the role and rights of people’s organizations, the creation of the
Commission on Human Rights, the abolition of the death penalty, and crucial provisions in the Bill
of Rights and the Article on Social Justice. He was also a main protagonist in the debate on the
issue of freedom from nuclear weapons and freedom from foreign military bases. 
 
During his travels to explain the new Constitution, he says the questions most often raised by
young people in the public hearings, as well by his own students in classrooms, were about the
causes of protracted armed conflicts in the country. Such concerns led him to further studies and
research at Peace Institutes in Norway and Sweden. This was also a time when the fledgling
democratic government of President Aquino faced several coup attempts from military factions
aiming to seize political power. The most serious of these plots in December 1989 led to the
formation of the Kilusan Laban sa Kudeta (Kilos) of which Ed was a chief convenor. Kilos was a
movement committed to defending and deepening Philippine democracy against armed groups
through active nonviolence.
 
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Ed began to work full time in efforts at peacebuilding together with citizens’
organizations and networks which he helped establish: the Coalition for Peace (1986), the Gaston Z
Ortigas Peace Institute (1989), the Multisectoral Peace Advocates (1990), and the National Peace
Conference (1990). It was also at this time that Ed became husband to Teresita “Bong” de Jesus and
father to five children. His family has been a true blessing and deep source of unwavering support despite
the sacrifices they have had to make because of his work. In 1994, he was seconded to International
Alert, a non-government organization working to understand conflict better in order to build peace more
effectively in diverse regions of conflict. In the last 20 years, Ed has become truly a global peacemaker
and public servant.
 
Throughout this long and vast personal journey, Ed Garcia has remained “Edong Mapangarap,” the
founder of “Days with the Lord”—inspiring, mentoring and forming young people across generations.
Having been inspired himself by Fr De la Costa, Ed says that aside from the three “jewels of the pauper”
that his mentor has identified as the unique blessings of the Filipino people—music, laughter and faith—
he begs to add a fourth: the country’s youth, the successor generation. “Because of them, we need to
nurture hope in order to forge the character of our people and build a country without war despite the
difficulties, and despite the burdens of history.”
Moreover, he believes peacebuilding requires a “marathon mentality.” As he has learned from his
Central American companions: “La ciencia de la paz es la paciencia.” There are no shortcuts.
Peacemaking calls for patience, persistence and perseverance. It demands the courage and
stamina of youth: “to continue the race; to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield; to pursue their
dream—bigger than themselves—of a better country, a better world.” For Ed, building lasting
peace where people are at the center and which is rooted in human rights and social justice, is the
work of many hands, of several generations.
 
At a time when our country and the world yearn for peace and peacemakers, the Ateneo de Manila
University believes it is an opportune moment to confer the Parangal Lingkod Sambayanan on Edmundo
“Ed” G Garcia. His lifelong mission has been about active nonviolence and peacebuilding, not only
in the Philippines, but also in many parts of the world—a living example of a global public
servant. 

In recognition of a lifetime advocating peace, and championing human rights and social
justice for the marginalized in the Philippines and in various parts of the world; for leaving a
legacy of lessons in building peace which can be used and built on by future generations; for
being the quintessence of the socially committed and politically engaged Filipino global
citizen; at a time when our country and the world yearn for peace and peacemakers, the
Ateneo de Manila University proudly and gratefully confers on Edmundo G Garcia the
Parangal Lingkod Sambayanan.
 
PARAPHASE:

His work has centered on citizen participation in peace processes, facilitation and mediation in peace
negotiations, and the application of peacemaking learning. He was instrumental in the development of
the first Code of Conduct for Conflict Transformation Work (International Alert, 1998), which
emphasized the priority of people, linked human rights and social justice to peacebuilding, and
emphasized principled impartiality.
Simone de Beauvoir: fighting for
change
A hundred years after her birth, the work of French writer and activist Simone de Beauvoir
still has much to offer. Rebecca Pitt looks at her life and the development of her ideas

Simone de Beauvoir (right of photo) at the Paris office of left wing newspaper La Cause du Peuple in 1970

This month marks the centenary of the birth of Simone de Beauvoir, the French writer and
philosopher. She is best known for her feminist classic The Second Sex and her famous declaration,
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
On publication in 1949 the book received criticism from both the French left and right and was
labelled as “poison” by the Catholic church.
Nearly 60 years after its publication, Beauvoir’s condemnation of the discrimination women face and
her investigation into the “myth of the feminine” continue to have relevance today.
She was not just a provocative and informative writer. She engaged with many of the most important
political issues of her time and toward the end of her life was particularly involved in the campaign
for women’s rights in France.
Beauvoir was brought up in a middle class family, whose economic situation drastically altered as a
result of the First World War.
She went on to document her own intellectual development and her increasing rejection of her
childhood values and her mother’s Catholic influence in a series of autobiographical books which
she began to publish during her fifties.
Her desire to write, and brilliance as a student, led her to study at some of Paris’s most prestigious
institutions.
Here she worked alongside students who would also go on to be some of the most outstanding
intellectuals of the day: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Political development
Initially supporting herself as a teacher, she became a full-time writer during the early 1940s. Her
novels were also often illustrative of her own political development, engaging with Resistance and
Cold War politics.
One crucial and life-long relationship formed during her time at university was with fellow philosopher
Jean-Paul Sartre. They worked and travelled together, visiting countries such as China, Cuba, Japan
and Russia.
During the mid-1940s they helped to found the left wing journal Les Temps Modernes (Modern
Times). Both were concerned with ideas of freedom, ethics, emancipation and oppression. Their
relationship remains controversial today.
Some Beauvoir scholars have used textual analysis to reveal the sexist assumptions of
commentators who view Beauvoir’s writing as purely influenced by Sartre’s philosophical
development. Similarly, the nature of their open relationship has also been hotly debated.
Beauvoir, like Sartre, did not really become politicised until the Second World War when they formed
a group supporting Resistance activities.
As anti-colonialists, they were also involved in campaigns against the French occupation of Algeria.
This was a defining battle for the left in France and an issue that polarised national opinion. In 1962,
Beauvoir received death threats as a result of speaking out against the abuse of an Algerian woman
by French forces.
She also condemned the Vietnam War and demonstrated against the suppression of left wing
newspapers by the Gaullist government during 1968.
Beauvoir held broadly socialist principles, was critical of Stalinist regimes but remained non-partisan
throughout her life.
Her realisation that she had a privileged class position in comparison to the majority of French
women provided the catalyst for her writing of The Second Sex.
She scrutinises the assumptions of society’s concept of “woman” and the many ways in which
women become conditioned to accept certain ideas about ourselves.
The book includes a historical analysis of the roots of women’s oppression, a critique of
psychoanalysis and a discussion of Frederick Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property,
and the State.
Beauvoir also discusses the roles that she perceived as being open to women during the
1940s. She argues that women’s position in society and the roles they are expected to fulfil
are “Other” or inferior when compared with those open to men. She condemned society’s
emphasis on motherhood and the family.
In the final chapters, Beauvoir discusses her concept of “the independent woman”. She cites the
need for women’s economic and social independence from men through work outside the home and
criticised the “double burden” of childcare/housework and working life which many women face.
Although some parts of The Second Sex are now dated in their analysis of women’s situation, many
of the practical issues Beauvoir highlights remain relevant today.
In particular, she notes the importance of women’s control over their own fertility, the right to safe,
legal abortion, and access to childcare.
Concluding with a quote from Marx, Beauvoir agreed with the need for genuinely equal relationships
between men and women so that women could flourish as human beings.
Protests
Many women identified with the problems and situations Beauvoir described. However, despite
speaking widely on the subject, she did not actively campaign over these issues until the rise of the
French women’s movement in the early 1970s.
The catalyst for what Beauvoir would describe as her “radical feminism” appears to have been the
protests of 1968. Her changing views are documented in a series of interviews with fellow feminist
Alice Schwarzer. Beauvoir was primarily writing Old Age, her book on society’s treatment of the
elderly, during the protests and did not take a particularly active role in events.
However, conversations with her biographer Deidre Bair in 1984 reveal that the sexism female
activists had encountered from some male protesters heavily influenced her own re-evaluation of the
importance of women’s issues within the wider framework of socialist politics.
In the 1970s Beauvoir joined demonstrations for the right to legal abortion and publicly declared –
alongside 342 other women – that she had undergone an illegal abortion. This act of solidarity is one
way in which Beauvoir used her public position to further the case of women’s rights.
It took until 1975 for women in France to win the right to legal abortion in the first ten weeks of
pregnancy.
Beauvoir also campaigned for unburdening women of childcare and housework, championed access
to free contraception and demanded shelters for domestic abuse cases. Les Temps Modernes also
started a column entitled “Everyday Sexism”.
Movement
Although Beauvoir’s position would gradually adjust itself over time, she never appears to have
consistently adopted the separatist tactics of some within the women’s movement.
She was against the idea of a specific political party for women and condemned ideas within the
movement which argued liberation could be achieved by embracing an alternative interpretation of
“the feminine”.
By 1972, in a conversation with Schwarzer, it was clear that she was also dismissive of individual
women’s choice as the solution to women’s oppression: “Liberation on an individual level is not
enough. There must be a collective struggle, at the level of the class struggle too.
“Women fighting for women’s liberation cannot be truly feminist without being part of the left,
because even though socialism is not sufficient to guarantee the equality of the sexes, it is still
necessary.”
Beauvoir and her work were not always well received by the women’s movement. The Second Sex
was criticised as having a narrow perspective on women’s situation and a middle class bias.
Some feminists saw her understanding of women’s emancipation as a demand for women to
assume traditionally male characteristics. For others her critique of women’s oppression appeared to
offer no concrete answers to the problem.
There are flaws in Beauvoir’s work. She would later recognise some of these herself. For example,
she told her biographer, “If I were to write The Second Sex today I should provide a materialistic, not
an idealistic, theoretical foundation for [women’s] oppression.” She never expanded on this topic,
however, so it is difficult to assess how far her analysis had developed.
Many of Beauvoir’s ideas remain relevant. Sexism and the “myth of the feminine” continue to exist,
albeit sometimes in a different form from Beauvoir's time.
Sadly today Beauvoir is often only mentioned within the context of her relationship with Sartre.
Her work and life should act as a reminder to us about how vigilant we must continue to be in
challenging all forms of oppression in our fight for a better world.