El Indio

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Comics & Graphic Novels
Author:	Francisco V. Coching

EVERY now and then, I purchase graphic novels by local authors as a show of support for their efforts to break through the mainstream market dominated by American and Japanese pop culture. It is for this reason that I bought Francisco Coching's El Indio. Having been a bit disappointed with my last purchase, Underpass, I was looking forward to something different. By its very title - "El Indio" - I was assured that I'd at least find it satisfying because I always did like historical fiction, and this one is surely set in the Philippines, which I like all the more.

Let me just say on the onset that I had no idea who Francisco Coching was, and I have never heard of El Indio before. But I have a sneaking suspicion that even if I did, I would still have been blown away by the sheer scale of the talent that I saw when reading El Indio.

The graphic novel was great in so many levels. First, the art. El Indio was created by Coching in the 1950s - a time when there was no such thing as digital artistry. But his attention to detail is a case study on just how talented 50's "Komiks" artists were. With only paper, pencil and ink (which so very fortunately survived the ravages of time) Coching was able to create a black-and-white masterpiece of anatomically correct, culturally accurate, emotionally charged and intricately detailed drawings that enabled one to see images of, and consequently transport oneself to, a forgotten time in our collective history and our Spanish heritage.

Second, the language. Coching's language was Tagalog at its finest. This was Tagalog at its flowering prime - when it has not yet been bloated by English loan words and when the creativity of native Tagalog speakers was not yet hampered by modern conventions and simplistic short-cuts. It was a proud language of a cultured people that had not yet sank to its current depths (as when one listens to FM radio or watches noontime television nowadays.)

In effect, Coching preserved for all time and for all future generations the beauty of the Tagalog language, which was already experiencing a radical transformation (and in many ways a decline) at the time when he was creating El Indio. His work also proves that the depth and beauty of the language was not confined to the academe and the dustbins of the past, but was alive and well in popular culture - El Indio being sold as a bi-weekly comic leaflet.

And lastly, history. When Filipinos think about the Spanish occupation, only two images come to mind: (1) the start, when Filipinos were Christianized and first made subjects of the Spanish crown; and (2) the violent end, when the revolution dismantled the last remnants of Spanish authority. Coching's El Indio, however is set in the gray area between those two times (but much nearer the latter), and one which most Filipinos are unfamiliar with. It harks back to that crucial point in time when Filipinos, though already ripe for revolution, were still comfortable being subjects of Spain and who, though they rebelled at times, still essentially viewed and fought Spanish injustices on a local level and not within the larger context of a worldwide trend towards self-determination of colonized peoples.

Coching educates us on a Filipino mindset that has yet been untouched by liberal ideas brought Europe. His work is an excellent presentation of the identity crisis that Filipinos had, both on the individual level and the national level, under the Spanish. It shows us a time when ties to the so-called motherland (Spain) were heavily romanticized, and despite the story's happy ending, shows a physically and psychologically tormented people - a condition that would only find it's cure and it's release through the flames of revolution.

El Indio is a national cultural treasure, and Francisco Coching deserves the respect and honor of a national artist for this masterpiece.