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Home Culture Patricia Evangelista: “I know beautiful words, but I can’t use them in my work. Kill has few synonyms” | Culture

Patricia Evangelista: “I know beautiful words, but I can’t use them in my work. Kill has few synonyms” | Culture

by News Room
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Patricia Evangelista (Manila, 40 years) lives in a country, the Philippines, for which the meaning of the beautiful word has been deformed. And that manipulation has been carried out by an institutional murderer, and former president of the country, which is called Rodrigo Duterte, whose crimes has investigated this bold and reckless journalist for years with several international recognition. It is beautiful for Duterte a corpse with just a bullet hole in the head because it reaches the maximum price willing to put with respect to its victims. This is what this reporter tells without fear and with principles in Someone kill them (Reservoir Books), a chilling book, had a language that produces the effects of a dry knife blow. The chosen words and the scarce but effective vocabulary, according to herself, who argues that the verb kill does not need synonyms.

Ask. Killing and killing, that systematic obsession in people like Duterte and reflected in their book leads me to a simple but terrible question. So that? It doesn’t even seem to be for fear of losing power, is it for vice? Due to illness?

Answer. Each autocrat needs their own story, their story and to assemble it requires enemies. When he came to power he had accumulated every fear and every frustration of the Filipinos in decades and turned them into goals to beat. He started by the fight against drugs and promised that he would destroy it. For him, killing had a reason, beyond logic. The Filipinos voted for him to carry it out, but also for hope in something, they believed that with him, things would change.

P. In what sense?

R. Security, he said that, for each dead trafficker, he would increase the tranquility of his children. That they would not become drug addicts, nor would their daughters be raped when returning home … it was not a new rhetoric but similar to that used by other autocrats, equating them to immigrants, too. In addition, he dehumanized them and when you do that, it is easier to kill.

P. Language is important. He called that extermination extrajudicial murder. Because?

R. Established a particular logic. He said that when you kill a trafficker or a drug addict you do it in self -defense because they can always attack you, they are armed and can kill you. He defended that no one should fear doing it illegally because he legitimized him.

P. He writes that these murders are committed with the permission of your compatriots, but you refuse to give it. Is it a declaration of intentions that could cost you face?

R. I don’t believe it. They are in danger who decide to talk to me. They live in open areas, where their houses have no locks, their children are not protected. I live in a safe neighborhood and I can even leave the country. People who have told me about their stories, no.

P. Do you weigh every testimony you collect?

R. I warn them before they talk about all those risks and that I will not be able to help you, or save. There are rules to follow: the first, do not promise anything. You cannot assure you justice or that once we reveal it it will not happen again. Just tell your story. At every step, I ask them again: are you sure?

P. Even so, frustrates?

R. This is our work. I know, I simply do it because if not … you have to be practical despite the consequences. Many times they ask you things, although they know that you cannot give them for ethical reasons. Money, for example. If it would mean that I am buying the stories and that is not worth it. But many times you wonder why you can’t do it. The rules that unite us hurt, but were established intelligently.

P. Let’s go back to language: he likes verbs, his vocabulary, he says, it is scarce, although I doubt it and there are many words that are repeated: kill, for example.

R. There are very few synonyms to replace that word. How to hit, shoot … I know beautiful words, but I can’t use them in my work, it is impossible to apply them to what I do.

P. The year Duterte was chosen felt part of the most practical and cynical class that exists. Because?

R. Journalists must be practical.

P. But the other, too? Do you already know Ryszard Kapuściński’s book: The cynics do not work for this trade?

R. Yes, of course, but I do not agree. I think the trade requires some cynicism. He used to believe when he was younger than the most terrible things happened because people had no idea of them. So I started telling them to know each other. But nothing changed. I thought the fault was mine because I didn’t write them well and tried to improve. Then I realized that citizens are aware of what happens and if I had not armed me with some cynicism, I would not have survived. And my survival depended on negotiated expectations.

P. And hope?

R. Hope means that when you write a story you trust that things will change. Not one, but several to assemble a body of documentation on an era and it is useful one day, not to change the world.

P. And democracy?

R. Well, it is a word that varies its meaning for many people. For me it represented the defense of freedom of expression, which was angry at the violation of human rights or encouraged them. But it was not the one I lived under the Rodrigo Duterte regime although the country was called as such. He was chosen without obstacles and it was what people wanted and at the same time, what he was looking for was to kill mine. It is as if the earth had torn us under our feet. What would have spoken us before, became normal and applauded. So that line is very fine and the work of telling it becomes a resistance.

P. You qualify as a journalist specialized in trauma, what specifically characterizes that field when we live everywhere surrounded by it and journalism, without more, treats it incessantly?

R. We treat everything that starts human beings from their normal environment, that nourishes our journalism. It has its own foundation and rules. For example, we never ask a victim how he feels. It would be an insult to consider a mother who has just built her son. You refer to the questions about facts, data and offer at all times the possibility of giving up keeping talking to you if they wish. Our reference is at Columbia University, the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, where it began to study thoroughly.

P. You point a terrible metaphor about the cost of life in the Philippines. For murders, they recommended never using more than one bullet. That was the price they put to the victims. No more.

R. Well yes. He comes to tell you that a bullet is more expensive than a life. My disagreement with that begins from the title. Duterte denies them the human condition and I have struggled to prove that all these victims are. Once I met a priest who refused to bury a victim, he believed that all drug addicts embodied evil and deserved to die and that if God did not punish them, a bullet should. So even the priests are not exempt from cynicism.

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