The recent Maguindanao Massacre in the Philippines claimed 30 people from the media alone. These men were brutally killed last Monday November 23, while doing their jobs as active journalists on the field.

I salute these men and women and my heart goes to the families left behind.

1. Adolfo, Benjie, Gold Star Daily, Koronadal City

2. Araneta, Henry, Radio DZRH, General Santos City

3. Arriola, Mark Gilbert “Mac-Mac,” UNTV, General Santos City

This is related to my previous post about Efren Peñaflorida, the CNN Hero of the Year. The event was televised last night and I was on my seat at home, so inspired and proud while watching Efren Peñaflorida receive the major award with teary eyes. He gave a short yet uplifting message, that is to find our heroes within us.

CNN’s Anderson Cooper revealed Peñaflorida’s selection at the conclusion of the third-annual “CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute” at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

A Filipino was declared the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year! His name is Efren Peñaflorida. I watched the short video clip with Peñaflorida tonight as CNN reported the winner during the ceremony at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood Saturday night. Congrats!

Efren Peñaflorida won the 2009 CNN Hero of the Year award through online voting (and I voted for this guy last week). According to CNN, Peñaflorida received 2.75 million online votes, the highest among the 10 finalists. He was honored for his “Kariton Klassroom”, which brings education to poor Filipino children.

Brown-colored skin. That’s what I have. No trace of yellowish or white tints in me. Only pure brown, like I was baked to perfection, so to speak. With both parents having the lineage of the locally-bred mature generation, the product is a no more than a similar-looking life form. To translate it into percentage of blood, I am 100% Filipino. Although grandparents claim to acquire a certain fraction of blood from the Spanish conquistadores, there is no trace of that declaration evident on me. If there was indeed truth to that, I am inclined to believe that huge mosquitoes that linger in the Philippine forests had already sucked what insignificant amount of foreign blood I had.

The pureness in me makes me ponder at how life would look or feel like had I been a son of a foreign national, say American national. In my country, there is some sort of partiality towards mixed blood individuals because they look much better than the normal, local-looking Indios. Lighter complexion, lighter hair color, sharper nose tip, curved eyelashes, thinner lips, reddish checks, well-defined chin, taller than average, pleasant foreign accent – these and maybe hundreds more set the foreign breeds apart from us.