“Maganda pa ang Daigdig” 

The novel is written by Lazaro Francisco in 1955, a National

Artist of the Philippines for Literature in 2009, who is well known for his
skillful use of Tagalog and his choice of theme being social realism when
writing his pieces.

Set in the 1950s, the Philippines was still under the rule of Japanese
authorities when the socialist guerilla movement Hukbong Bayan Laban
sa Hapon (HUKBALAHAP) was rebelling in the provinces of Central
Luzon.

The novel revolves around the life of Lino Rivera, a farmer who has been
falsely accused of committing two crimes.As Lino is tangled in the two
cases against him, there are friends who show their care for him by
helping him get out of jail as they prove his innocence, at the same time
they keep an eye on his son.In the past, farmers during the Japanese
occupation gathered together and formed the HUKBALAHAP as a sign of
rebellion against the government. The excerpt above depicts the
perspective of the farmers alongside the people who are unprivileged as
well as how the government actually treats them; taking away their
lands, unattending to their needs and looking down at them. Eventually,
they become the oppressed in the society; the farmers, peasants and the
like, yearning for fair treatment with enraged hearts that led to the rise
of the formation of a socialist group to eliminate the Japanese forces and
wealthy Filipinos. Their aim is to form their own regional government;
collecting taxes and establishing their own laws different from the
national government to cater their own needs.With Francisco writing the
novel in Tagalog and writing it in 1955, the sentence structure and
certain vocabularies used are different from the Tagalog language that
we know of today. Thus, making it quite complex to fully understand the
difficult dialogues between the characters.Despite that, the whole setting
and theme of the novel is striking with how it shows a piece of Philippine
history in the perspective of an oppressed person; how cases of theft
were high, how the HUKBALAHAP continued to recruit more members,
slowly persuading people similar to them to join them.Although the novel
is fictional, Francisco made it a point to reference his novel to what was
evident during the 1950s, making the readers know more of the context
during that time when the spirit of bayanihan was very much
alive. Overall, this book will show you that despite the hardships thrown
at you,especially if you are powerless and have little resources to fix it; in
time, it will all be gone. It may be months or years, but with a heart
that’s full of patience and optimism, you will be able to get through it. In
the case in the novel, this was shown through the hardships farmers had
to endure.