Amuyong

You don’t kill your brother.

You don’t torture him. And you don’t leave him for dead.

True brothers never mean or do you harm. They stand by you when you’re down, no matter what. Even when you’re a cold corpse by their own hand.

Twenty year old U.P. Public Administration student Cris Anthony Mendez (http://profiles.friendster.com/5768535) found out the hard way earning the right to call someone “brother” isn’t it all it’s cracked up to be. It cost him his life. He was a seeker of the right connections in the wrong company.

At the University of the Philippines, Greek alphabet societies had not always been the harbingers of death and bloody rumbles.

Fraternities formed a core underground resistance when the university was under the cloud of Martial Law back in the early 1970’s. They kept political discourse alive when the government cracked down on the right to assemble and to organize.

Fear of infiltration from the military forced fraternities to recruit in secrecy. Many adapted elaborate initiation rites, some borrowed from their foreign counterparts and some from military organizations themselves, to ward off potential spies.

That tradition is carried on today. Joining a fraternity is one of the most prestigious and exclusive experiences in university campus life. It’s by strict invitation only, at least for the more reputable societies. The brothers pick you. You don’t pick them.

The invitation is very discreet, though the mere presence of a recruit in a fraternity’s tambayan gives it away. A recruit who has agreed to go through the initiation is not allowed to tell anyone, not his friends, and not even, or specially, his own mother.

It all starts with being an amuyong, the fratman’s moniker for a neophyte. The term is rooted in pre-Hispanic Philippine history, when men turn to servitude as peons to pay off debts. In street lingo, amuyong has come to mean a moocher, a low-life who has absolutely no stake in anything. But in today’s frat culture, it means paying homage to the masters, the full fledged members who will determine and will test a novice’s worth before becoming one of them.

The masters have one goal during the whole initiations: to make an amuyong’s life a living hell. No if’s and but’s about it, and no mercy. It’s supposed to be the crucible that separates the men from the boys, and the fire that purifies the man to be worthy of the company of brothers.

Too bad that tradition of nobility is lost on the slayers of Cris Mendez. Fratmen call non-members of Greek alphabet societies “barbarians”, but taking the life of another specially one who will become their own, shows a far worse act of barbarism. It’s abomination.

Cris Mendez was man enough to trust his so-called would-be brothers with what they’re doing. The brothers have to be man enough to own up to their own mistake.