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Meet the writers: Buraot

19 May 2009 50 Comments

mypicHe is a proud Mangyan who hails from Oriental Mindoro. Born a menopause baby, he is the youngest among the twelve. His exact birthplace? A place called pugadbaboy in the outskirts of the Naujan Lake. And that ain’t fiction.

His parents were “peryantes” and therefore he was raised in an environment where constant hustling is the name of the game. As early as five, he already was making money out of running his own table of beto-beto. At that age, patrons find him cute and small that they thought they could easily outsmart him. Little did they know that he already knew the different arts of how to milk their money out of their precious little pockets.

Despite this line of work, his parents worked hard so BURAOT can go to Manila for his education. He went to Ermita Catholic School on his grade school days where he became a full scholar for his academic achievements. When not attending school, BURAOT can be found on different fiestahan around the country running his own beto-beto table.

He was still at the same Catholic School when he discovered San Miguel, the bars, video arcades, saklaan joints, and the sauna parlors surrounding the school. From a full scholar, he almost got kicked out but soon found his way back to Mindoro to finish high school.

He took B.S. Psychology at the Colegio De San Juan De Letran in Intramuros. It was there at the walled city, in a small park called Batibot where he became BURAOT the activist. A year later he was the bosstsip of Intramuros, running the programs and activities of all the cause-oriented student organizations in the entire Intramuros area colleges and universities.

He was part of the Sanlakas in its early formative years and was a member of its Central Council along with the now-husband of the Megastar and (yes, unfortunately) the man who is suing Jun Lozada.

After college, he went to Olongapo and with the help of another activist, organized people’s organizations in the area as well as some parts of Zambales. It was there that he got his fifteen minutes of shame, a hit that almost took his life. During the anti-APEC 1996 rally, he was hit in the head with a baseball bat by mob of Gordon supporters.

When not doing community organizing, he would run political campaigns of progressive candidates and in 1998 organized and ran the political machinery of the unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign of Phillip Camara, a neophyte, against the incumbent Magsaysay in the province of Zambales.

He also managed the biggest transport cooperative based in Olongapo while serving as a community relations consultant at the SBMA and as a correspondent to the now-defunct Philippine Post.

It was 2001 when he finally decided to migrate to the United States to join his parents who are no longer “peryantes” but legal immigrants.

If you want to know more about him, you can find him on his sites Anak ni Kulapo and I Am Buraot.

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