"Viva Maita!"
Sorry for the title, but everyone should deserve Maita Gomez and her legacy "Long live."
As most people those born in the 1950s and 1960s, remember Ka Maita as the fashion model and beauty queen turned revolutionary. That once known for her "Twiggy" hairstyle, Ka Maita simply gave up the crown and the sash for the Keffiyeh and the bullet belt breaking the norm that women being limited to such nonsensical descriptions as "for the home", "plaything" and "beauty."
To others, it was strange to see a Beauty Queen becoming an Amazona. Why did she chose to become a warrior if there are charity groups that perhaps her cause be compatible with?
Like Vilma Espin de Castro, Ka Maita was even from a prominent family, of course her cause was contradictory to her background but she chose serving the people and joining hand in hand in breaking the mountains that block the sunlight of thine future and of aspiration.
That despite the insect bites, the pain, Ka Maita rather endure it and be described by many as sacrifice and devotion. What is beauty anyway if it is not for the people the way Ka Maita and others like Jennifer Carino or Lorena Barros did? Right or Wrong, she chose National Liberation and the Emancipation of her people. Comparing to today's description of beauty queens or any other celebrities won in a contest such as Pinoy Big Brother as if a search for becoming an artist or a model.
But Ka Maita outdid it all as a person. But then she chose a path that was different from the usual one. Like Gabriela Silang or Teresa Magbanua, she chose a rugged path that is a product of everyone be described as idealism; that in seeing the problems of the people and of knowing the basic problem be resorted to a solution what paper reforms or charity failed to succeed.
Sorry to say so, but to make the story short she chose what the system described it badly nowadays: "terrorism."
Yes, to the system and others be dubbed her actions and others as "terrorism" and she as a "terrorist." A "terrorist" that people rather get concerned for she as "beautiful" yet Ka Maita endured the pain after torture in pursuit of making her telling the names of her comrades in the struggle. But for the ones aligned with the cause, she is an examplar what Danny Fabella used as a title of his song: "Rosas ng Digma" (Rose of War).
Anyways, her youthful legacy is worthy of praise. She became a model, a beauty queen, a rebel, a detainee, a forefront in legal struggles that made Ka Maita as Ka Maita. She may've been dead, but to everyone who remembered her legacy she's not dead, but living in the hearts of those who willing to join in the struggle.
...including those whose beauty others tend to describe as worth dying for, like the golden-brown haired short skirted ones studying in Morayta for example.
For now, here's a song from Sara Gonzales.