Steel, shadows, and the kapre’s last laugh

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In Manila, where skyscrapers claw at heavens built on backroom deals, a man of steel has vanished. Anson Tan — his English name mangled as “Anson Que” in news reports, his wounded face unethically leaked by faceless authorities — once forged scrap metal into schools, hospitals, and hope. Now, he is a phantom in a ledger, its pages stained by a ransom paid and ignored.

Beside him was Armanie Pabillo, the driver whose name means “soldier of peace,” now waging a war without weapons. Their captors, legion and faceless, thrive in a kingdom where corruption dons badges and seeps through the state’s rusted machinery.

The knee-jerk alibi? As flimsy as a peso bill dissolved by monsoon rain: “Blame the banned POGOs!” — as if neon-lit gambling dens, those temples of desperation, could conjure heavily armed kidnappers like cursed slot machine jackpots.

Ah, yes — POGOs, the new spectral scapegoats once cynically permitted by politicians, now blamed as reliably as roosters for dawn. Press releases, polished to a sheen of apathy, dismiss this as mere “ethnic theater,” a “Chinese-on-Chinese” sideshow. Move along, nothing to see — unless you count a nation’s soul collapsing.

But corruption, that shapeshifting kapre of Filipino myth — a cigar-chomping giant said to haunt balete trees — no longer lurks in forests. It now struts in jusi barongs or tailored suits, gorges on red tape, and exhales excuses thicker than EDSA’s smog. It hisses: “This is not your problem. Keep shopping. Keep scrolling.”

Yet, in Binondo, where the air hums with the ghosts of charred temples and resilience, the Filipino Chinese community knows better. After decades of firestorms, they forged volunteer brigades that doused flames with calloused hands. Now, as steel titans dissolve into shadows, they whisper: “Will we forge our own shields next?”

There is magic here, dark and visceral. In Anson’s factories, steel rusts overnight — a silent revolt against decay. Phantom jeepneys ferry shadows through Manila’s veins, their headlights flickering like dying stars.

The kapre’s laughter echoes in Congress halls, where laws and bloated budgets are drafted in vanishing ink. Even the land rebels: Tourism and investment pledges, once ripe as mangoes, rot unpicked — withered since the POGO era began. Still, some officials peddle racialized fables to a public-fed amnesia. Move along. This is just an “alien” problem.

But ask the fire volunteers what happens when the state’s hose inexplicably runs dry. Ask them about ash and self-reliance. Ask why, in Binondo’s alleyways and other cities nationwide, community guards now patrol with flashlights and bang — not guns, but walkie-talkies crackling with solidarity. The lesson is etched in scars: When institutions crumble, the people rise — not as vigilantes, but gardeners nurturing fragile shoots of order.

Anson’s schools still stand. Armanie’s family still prays. And the kapre? It grows fat, yet restless. For dawn breaks, as it must. Shadows retreat, though never vanish. The fire brigades, once guardians of flames, now shield against darker infernos. They remind us: Corruption, like witchcraft, cowers in light.

Let us build not private armies, but an awakening of public conscience — one that burns brighter than apathy and outlasts the shadows sold by the corrupt. Let the vanished men’s names swell into a chorus, not an epitaph. Let steel rust, if it must, to expose the rot beneath.

And when the next ransom is paid, the next lie spun, remember: The Filipino spirit is an alchemist. It turned ash into temples, despair into fire brigades. It will transmute this unraveling into reckoning.

The kapre’s days are numbered. The people are counting.

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