Raging Bull
“Black is black; white is white,” he’s always fond of pointing out. “You have to know what’s right or wrong—and then you act accordingly.” It’s ironic that, for someone who sees the world in such clear delineations, his own story wasn’t so clearly defined up until recently. Even in his komiks, his place-of-birth is identified as Bulacan. Indeed, his mother was a Siojo and had many relatives specifically in San Miguel. However, this isn’t quite true.
According to close friend and consultant Zenaida Flores, the Mayor was born in the Ospital ng Maynila and after was left to grow up in Hospicio de San Jose orphanage. It was only when he was seven years old that his maternal grandmother sought him out and took him in at their house in Calle Alfredo in Dapitan. “I have no recollections of my father,” Joaquin would quote Lim in his book. “When he died, my mother entrusted me to her parents and then moved to Benguet with her second husband, a teacher.” He did visit her from time-to-time, confides Flores. After her death in Baguio, Lim reportedly claimed and buried her body in Manila.
Though he is hailed today as an outstanding native of Bulacan, the young Lim never really called it home. The prevailing attitudes of that time had an ingrained racism that many counter wasn’t unique to the province. “Wala ka mahahanap ng tindahan ng intsik dyan,” says Flores, giving example to an ugly fact. Yet, as has been pointed out, it was not uncommon—nor does it belong to the distant past.
In 1998, two groups—including the Integrated Bar of the Philippines—filed motions to disqualify Lim as a Presidential candidate on the grounds that he was not a natural-born Filipino citizen. His birth certificate was brought as evidence; in it, his father is listed as Chinese Mestizo. The reason given was to avert a constitutional crisis if ever he should win without resolving the issue of his nationality. More than the political setback, Lim took it as a personal affront and an insult to the several decades of public service he’d served. Appearing in the late Teddy Benigno’s program, he broke down in tears, revealing that he was born out of wedlock and other details of his childhood. Once again, Lim found himself an outsider.
“You seize the bull by the horns,” he says in that distinctive monotone of his, grabbing the air as if taking hold of the animal itself at that very moment. “Parang torero, dapat mabangis ka—hawakan mo yung sungay at tatanungin mo, ‘Anong sinasabi mo!’”
Lim often calls the criminals he goes up against as operating outside the law. He says law enforcers, on the other hand, find themselves at a disadvantage. “Matching wits with criminals, you have to consider that they operate outside the law,” he says to his audience of students. “Kaming mga pulis—we have to fight them with one hand tied to our back, within the parameters set by the law.”
Although he fits the mould of Sergio Leone’s reticent gunslinger, the Mayor’s not one to back down from saying his mind—in fact, it’s stopping him once he’s started his charge that seems to be the more formidable task. It’s probably something he shares in common with another character played by Clint Eastwood, with the knack for talking tough and a knack for getting away with it. It’s something he’s asked about today actually.
A student asks him why he’s been dubbed Dirty Harry.
His answer is curt but not without a hint of a snicker. “You can call me anything. I don’t care,” he says. “Naliligo naman ako tatlong beses isang araw.”
Kidding aside, he says that it was a movie based on the life of a real-life detective named Harry Callahan. (As far as I know, the character is fictional.) According to Lim, the city of San Francisco was being inundated by lawsuits from those being arrested by the police. “The colored guys pag sinisita would claim damages that went up to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says Lim, “so the city office told the officers to go slow or else the city would go bankrupt.” By this time, the parallels between the Mayor and his fictional counterpart become apparent. “Harry would tell the city officials: ‘you gave me a badge and a uniform and the authority to enforce the law—I’ll go after them!’”
In Lim’s own view, he says that, “the language known by criminals and law violators is force and violence. You cannot be soft to them.”
This has certainly characterized Lim’s career as a police officer, and this was certainly the case on April 19, 1968. A group headed by one Brigido Patungan, alias Viring, was found to be in possession of a .45-caliber automatic pistol, a big bolt cutter, and screwdrivers. They were booked and jailed for illegal possession of firearms and suspicion of burglary. At around 2:30 in the morning of that day, the group staged a jailbreak. The ensuing gun battle got the attention of a passing taxi, and the driver immediately brought it to the attention of Capt. Lim who was in a nearby jeep. Without hesitation, he charged into the precinct along with a team of five men to subdue the five felons. It was over in a matter of minutes—the last remaining prisoner, 21-year old Juanito Villegas, would lie dead at the foot of the toilet.
“Dirty Harry na puro dirty things ang pinanggagawa?” scoffs Lim. “Kalokohan ‘yon.”
Sabi nila para akong Hitler dahil katulad daw ng branding ng Jews. Hindi pa daw convicted. Pero pag meron kayong asong mabagsik at nangangagat lalagyan nyo ng ‘Beware of Dog.’ Warning—ano bang masama dun?”
One of the most trying times in Lim’s life was when he found himself cast out in the cold. Many of his stellar achievements and promotions came under the administration of Mayor Antonio Villegas. This was in the late 1960s, and it was during this time that Lim was awarded the Jaycee Presidential Merit Medal for being named one of the Top Outstanding Policemen of the Philippines consecutively for five years from 1967 to 1971. It was Villegas who signed his promotion to lieutenant, using his Parker 61 fountain pen. But then Villegas lost to Ramon Bagatsing, the Mayoralty of Manila.
“On December 31, 1971, we had a flag retreat here at City Hall at five o’clock in the afternoon. It was the last day of Villegas as mayor, and he was present during the flag ceremony, which served as his farewell,” recounts Lim to Joaquin. “Immediately after the flag retreat, he proceeded to the airport: he was leaving for San Francisco with his entire family.
“I accompanied him to the airport. He climbed the stairs to the plane and, before stepping in, he looked around and waved to the crowd. I saluted him and he saluted me back. That last courtesy between us was snapped by the camera of newsman Ruther Batuigas. Next day, the front pages carried a picture of Mayor Bagatsing taking his oath of office side by side with pictures of me saluting departing mayor Villegas. The juxtaposed photos could not have been pleasing to the new mayor.”
Retribution was swift and brutal. Bagatsing dissolved him of his precinct and his assigned police car was withdrawn. He was put in a headquarters detachment along with other officers also associated with the former mayor. In short, they were put in the freezer.
“One of my duties was to look after the parking lot of our headquarters on UN Avenue,” Joaquin quotes Lim. “In other words, I became a parking attendant.” He describes his other duties as akin to that of a “super-janitor.” At the time, Lim was already a police colonel.
He would be humiliated further. Dressed in full uniform, Lim was ordered to direct traffic in front of City Hall. “Sometimes I was assigned to Plaza Lawton, in front of the Metropolitan Theater,” says Lim, “and sometimes to UN Avenue, right in front of our headquarters.”
