Customer Reviews

Dead Season: A Story of Murder and Revenge

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What Alan Berlow found in his investigations on the Philippine Island of Negros, in a period spanning 1988 to 1992, was not too different from my own experiences while living on the island of Luzon between 1955 and 1958.

Berlow, then a correspondent for National Public Radio, uses three interrelated murders on Negros as his starting point for a discussion of capitalism gone awry, corruption in the political system, a military out of control, and revolutionary forces with murder and retribution on their mind. This book is much more than an investigation of three murders, it is a look into the soul of a nation.

A farmer with a streak of independence is killed by the military in a massacre that takes the lives of his wife and three of his children. A soldier, who took part in the massacre, but may not have fired a shot, is later murdered, possibly by his own comrades and possibly by guerilla forces. The murder of a wealthy landowner and operator of a sugar cane plantation seems to have provided the impetus for the other two murders.

Berlow's investigations into the murders led to a rather intimate knowledge, not just of the primitive lives of the poor of Negros, but also of the politics and mores of the entire nation. Not much seems to have changed since my years in the Philippines over forty years earlier. He describes the inability, or unwillingness, of President Corazon Aquino, elected on a platform of genuine land reform, to make good on her promises. This might have been because her family happened to own the largest sugar plantation in the Philippines, or it might have been some combination of knowing "on which side her bread was buttered," and concern for her own safety.

In 1957, I was in the Philippines at the time of the mysterious plane crash that took the lives of President Ramon Magsaysay and seven members of his cabinet. Magsaysay, who had been instrumental in defeating the communist led Hukbulahap guerillas, may have been the only genuinely reformist President in Philippine history. In my time, and in Barlow's, being a reformer was fraught with hazards.

Berlow concludes that the quality of life in the Philippines, for all but the wealthy, has gone from intolerable to even worse. After Aquino's failures in bringing about land reform and in negotiating peace between the military and rebel forces, over a half million members of the Philippines' poorest class were forcibly evacuated from their homes by the military. The rebels launched a campaign against U.S. citizens, murdering several. An Australian businessman who owned a rice mill on Negros was murdered. The church gave up any attempts to support the cause of the poor, stating "We must serve the poor without causing class struggle," and "there are people hungering not just for bread, but for the bread of life."

In the final analysis, Berlow says that nothing much is changing for the better, and that conditions that have kept the majority of Filipinos in virtual servitude, at least since the inception of the sugar plantation economy, show no signs of improving and therefore, "the compulsion to revolution continues to exist."

If you have compassion in your heart, this is not an easy book to read. For the same reason, you should read it.

Berlow's story provides a dark, tropical atmosphere which envelops the reader's senses. To say it is a tale of murder is to understate the matter - it is nearly impossible to open this book to a random page without encountering murder or death in some form. Berlow vividly describes those elements which make the Philippine island of Negros such a dangerous place: a powerful and autonomous military, a fearful and ineffective police force, heavily armed rebels, rich and abusive plantation owners, activist priests, a severely corrupt political and legal system, and a desperately poor populace. Take all of these and throw in heavy doses of religious mysticism and paranoia, and you have the author's setting. Berlow's narrative bounces back and forth between all the confused and intertwined elements in an almost dizzying fashion in an effort to determine the motives behind just three of the many murders which take place on the island, those of a soldier, a peasant, and a wealthy land owner. It is a mesmerizing work. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Philippine history, politics, or culture. Even those not interested in the Philippines per se will find this story a gripping social commentary on life, death and power in the Third World.

Though I am living in the island of Negros, i do not find Mr. Berlow's observations as racist (as one Negrense put it) or inaccurate or communistic. It seems that people with vested interests who want to protect the villainous family in the book are themselves related to that family by means of blood relations or by affinity. Thus, such inaccurate 1-starred reviews full of vitriol & lies & sour-graping should be taken with a kilo of salt.

As for the book, it is accurate in describing the plantation lifestyle of the hacienderos and the oppression that goes with it, and the collusion of the military with the landed gentry. He has a flowing style of writing, the cadence of his paragraphs very engaging. It grips you and won't let you go until the last period. Berlow's work has the same flavor of those by Steinbeck wherein his characterization of the people is thoroughly fleshed out. His book is full of anecdotes and facts that can be corroborated, so the intelligent reader can't just dismiss this as pure guesswork and suppositions of what might have happened.

Overall, A very very satisfying read indeed!!

A book filled with sometimes shocking detail and personal intimacy, the kind of book about life in the Philippines that so many reproters wished they could leave their daily routines to write. Gripping, impassioned narrative worthy of the passion play that is the Philippines. THE NEW YORK TIMES. A remarkable guide to the tragedies and mysteries that pervade the Philippines. FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW. A truly impressive work of investigative Journalism. COMMONWEAL. A vivid portrait of a sad, overpopulated country, divided by class and poverty, still hostage to the legacies of American colonoialism and Ferdinand Marcos, whose patterns of violence and retribution seem unconquerable. KIRKUS REVIEWS. A chilling critique of a system indifferent to ordinary folk. The book makes abundantly clear how deeply rooted political and colonial feudalism are in Philippine society. ASIAWEEK MAGAZINE. Rich in telling detail and revealing a thorough understanding of the local culture. LIBRARY JOURNAL. Berlow's book is a well-told and compelling story of a small town and its people: the hacenderos and the villagers, how they interact and what they are to one another. Berlow finds significance in the smallest details about lives of his real-life characters, things the average person would take for granted, and gives them the importance that every life deserves. As the stories unfold, it becomes clear that the story of Negros is the story of wealth and poverty, of power and helplessness, of the lack of democracy and justice. Sadly, it is also the story of Filipino society. MANILA TIMES

A book filled with sometimes shocking detail and personal intimacy, the kind of book about life in the Philippines that so many reproters wished they could leave their daily routines to write. Gripping, impassioned narrative worthy of the passion play that is the Philippines. THE NEW YORK TIMES. A remarkable guide to the tragedies and mysteries that pervade the Philippines. FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW. A truly impressive work of investigative Journalism. COMMONWEAL. A vivid portrait of a sad, overpopulated country, divided by class and poverty, still hostage to the legacies of American colonoialism and Ferdinand Marcos, whose patterns of violence and retribution seem unconquerable. KIRKUS REVIEWS. A chilling critique of a system indifferent to ordinary folk. The book makes abundantly clear how deeply rooted political and colonial feudalism are in Philippine society. ASIAWEEK MAGAZINE. Rich in telling detail and revealing a thorough understanding of the local culture. LIBRARY JOURNAL. Berlow's book is a well-told and compelling story of a small town and its people: the hacenderos and the villagers, how they interact and what they are to one another. Berlow finds significance in the smallest details about lives of his real-life characters, things the average person would take for granted, and gives them the importance that every life deserves. As the stories unfold, it becomes clear that the story of Negros is the story of wealth and poverty, of power and helplessness, of the lack of democracy and justice. Sadly, it is also the story of Filipino society. MANILA TIMES

Having lived on Negros for a couple of years, I think that Berlow didn't understand much of what may have really been going on in the incident he describes. The provinces are very different from Manila. I got more of a sense of the author's dread and foreboding than much insight into what really happened, or into the cultural, political and economic background to the murders.
James Hamilton-Paterson writes much more insightful books about the Philippines.

The book is a great work of fiction. Let it be known that Berlow most probably did not spend so much time researching.

I hail from Negros Occidental and know the Gatuslaos (the family he constantly lambasts) very well. It is quite unfair that the author continuously makes up stories about incidents that never happened and describes people very wrongly. All, while he portrays everything to be factual as he promotes a very communistic and radical ideology.

Alan Berlow is a good writer, he is detailed and you can easily picture yourself in the locations he describes. I think he can be a very good fiction writer, which is essentially what Dead Season is. I am a Philippine resident and I have read similiar accounts of the events Berlow mentioned. Yes, there are cover ups and the usual government corruption, but what I think was foul was his irresponsible descriptions of some people, which brings no value, except picture Berlow as a racist.