6. The Filipinos, Circa 1989

"WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE PHILIPPINES within a century?" you asked near the beginning of your essay in 1889. "Will they continue to be a Spanish colony?"

The profound response you offered was two-pronged:

Now then, how are the Filipinos one more century afterwards? Have we progressed from the time you were writing of retrogression in your essay, "The Philippines, A Century Hence" exactly one hundred years ago?

A growing number of Filipinos are beginning to enjoy at least the marginal amenities of modernization even as they are increasingly corrupted by the ways of crass commercialism, the better for foreign big business to siphon out of their pockets and away from their country the heard-earned fruits of their toils.

In the overall view, let me offer the following summary of what our country and our countrymen have been made to suffer:

In your time, the people of these islands could not even be bound by a common name. The word "Filipino" then applied to the Spanish insulares, you spoke of us as Indios, and Bonifacio was rallying the Katagalugan nation.³⁵ By now, the name Filipino has come to be claimed by the population of the Islands, save for pockets of minorities.³⁶ But even as we have come to be known under a common label, we have yet to be bound by a unified national consciousness, and rallied by genuine leadership behind a common purpose for national emancipation and betterment. And this has to be achieved against formidable opposition from the "divide and rule" approaches employed by our present-day indirect colonizers, schemes that abet worsening fractiousness among our people push the common man to rat-race individualism so detached from the bayanihan spirit of his ancestors, and push his officials to rat-level opportunism.

And each generation, begotten in chains and nourished in the same growing cynicism, is "constantly better adapted to the new order of things." For many Filipinos, ethics, spirit and customs have decayed, as decay all good qualities of a people that remains in slavery.

As if the levels of exploitation and oppression were not enough to slaughter the populace gradually but surely, the country’s nutrition, environment and health-care systems are as terminally malignant as the prolonged social cancer you had diagnosed in your time. Animals are cared for much better in rich countries than our brother and sister Filipinos are here in their own land. Destitution stalks the cities between the clusters of high-rise buildings , between the flashy cars forced to stop for traffic lights.

The entire country itself is physically being destroyed slowly but surely by greedy investors and merchants who denude our forests, ship away our minerals, pollute our air and water, and poison our soil. Moreover, we have come to live under the shadow of the very real danger of so suddenly being blown off the face of the earth, under this nuclear menace ironically labeled as a "security umbrella."

And, of course, if this nation reaches the abyssal rock bottom of destitution and desperation before enlightenment can weld the people together for positive action, gradual social decay can give way to anarchy and total social destruction.

Progress can never be measured in the increasing number of Filipinos who can now ride automated stairways in comfortably cooled superstores. How can anyone with the least intelligence mistake as progress the collective debasement of our country and people in both the material and the spiritual realms?

The picture is not pitch black, however, for there are rays of hope as there always have been, albeit often misrepresented as menacing threats to public order, even as an unjust public order actually deserves no defense. The situation draws eerie parallels with your earier two-pronged response:

To the descendants of Lapu-Lapu, Magalat, Diego and Gabriela Silang, Dagohoy, Sultan Kudarat and the Filipino revolutionaries inflamed by your writings and led by your contemporary Andres Bonifacio, descendants who tried in vain to defend the independence we had proclaimed upon the Spaniard’s defeat, heroic descendants who kept up the struggle for national emancipation against American, then Japanese, then American domination, descendants who have kept aloft the big red banner of Bonifacio’s Katipunan albeit emblazoned with some other symbols representing the impoverished and downtrodden, noble descendants who have been constantly maligned with facility by their enemies and misunderstood over long periods of time by the masses in whose behalf they had embarked on the road of extreme sacrifice, to these descendants fidelity to the cause of national independence and salvation is assured. It is merely a question of getting together and making a determination all the way to complete success though be it much easier articulated than accomplished.

But for him who has been disillusioned by sad experience of our subjugation by the Americans, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and sophistication of this foreign master’s mind-controlling mechanisms, disgusted over the behavior of our own compatriots who have had their turn at the reins of government, and dissilusioned by some instances of erratic and even unprincipled behavior on the part of fighters for freedom, dis-illusioned over a "people power" upheaval that turned out to be a counterfeit revolution, or aghast over the seemingly irreversible downtrend to public anarchy, mass apathy and worsening destitution, only one answer presents itself, and it still is: "extend his hands to the chains, bow his head beneath the yoke and accept his future with the resignation of the invalid."

Today, as in your time, Señor Rizal, the Philippines is at the crossroads. You were asking then whether the Philippines would remain a Spanish colony for still another century; present-day Filipino as are now challenged to finally shake off the yoke of foreign domination though be it cleverly concealed behind corrupt, inept and tyrannical native rulers. The full century has passed – it was not the Spanish sword and cross but the American dollars, bombs and media that have held our country by the throat all those one hundred years.

"History does not record in its annals any lasting domination exercised by one people over another, of different races, of diverse usages and customs, of opposite and divergent ideals." Such was your optimism for the cause of putting an end to foreign subjugation of our country. The Spanish colonization of our Islands lasted three centuries, but was defeated when our nation stood as one to drive the arrogant conquistadores away. American colonization of our country is now nearing its own century mark,³⁷ but it has proved to be cleverly flexible in the forms of subjugation, from bloody "pacification" that was no less than genocide to the very sophisticated methods of present-day semi-colonialism that can be very invisible over our flag independence.

Present-day students of history have been made to debate whether the country needs more the revolution preached and led by Bonifacio or the education that you preached for our people in your time. The debate itself is flawed in its contraposition of what later proved to be the two necessities of your period.

The struggle against subjugation and tyranny, and education for comprehending the problems and grasping the truths on the solutions, are inseparable. Education for emancipation and empowerment is already revolutionary and cannot be undertaken under any wide-eyed benevolence on the part of overlords whose interests are threatened by the spread of the truth. This lesson can be derived unmistakably from your own fate – you who did not take up arms were condemned just the same to be executed for inspiring those who did.

[By writing these lines, or by writing this piece at all, I may be running the risk of being accused of abetting "subversive" thoughts or efforts. The powerful may not choose to grant me the honor of being punished the way you were, Señor Rizal; but they may choose, anyway, to employ other means to put me away – to silence my thoughts and still my pen. For this reason, theoretically unreal in a fully civilized world where ideas would be allowed to contend freely, this piece may be my last, my "ultissimo adios." On the other hand, the powers that be may just decide to simply dismiss or ignore me as a crackpot.]³⁸

The struggle for our people’s liberation cannot triumph without successful education reaching the majority of the populace. And there would be unmistakable indications to show whether the education effort is indeed successful.³⁹

The fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people effectively enlightened on the basics of our problems and on the necessities toward real solutions is already a commendable achievement of the present-day Katipuneros especially in the past few decades. But these hundreds of thousands are a mere handful in a population of more than 60 million.⁴⁰

Efforts have been made to reach these millions. Ap-parently, however, much of these efforts have so far fallen short of being effective. How else explain the narrowness of purpose and low threshold of euphoric satisfaction displayed in the struggle to depose one ailing despot and in welcoming as replacement to his rule an administration starkly identical to it in terms of fidelity to the interests of the elite and even in manifestations of tyranny?⁴¹

How else explain, indeed, the fact that the majority may be wont to passively approve, or even actively advocate, the overextension of American military presence in this country should the President deem it to be consistent with "national interest" (that is, should she be able to wangle a higher amount of bases-related alms)? This, considering that the United States does not have to invade us anymore, its troops are already here in tens of thousands and they simply have to start shooting!

How else explain the fact that in deference to the President’s threatened-canary situation, a great number of people, including supposed statesmen, would now readily let the incumbent administration get away with having invited American military intervention in the clearly-internal Filipino conflict between factions of the local armed forces, an act that can eventually lead to another full-scale invasion of our country?⁴²

Considering the value of effective education of the people as a component of the struggle national and social emancipation, the situation calls for a thoroughgoing evaluation and review of approaches and forms used in this mass education effort – how readily is it received and how clearly is it understood by the teeming millions upon whose actions or inactions will decisively depend the shape of the next decades and centuries.

As for us, the rest of the people, we are challenged to cast away all sorts of mental rationalizations for accepting our overextended semi-colonial situation, and cast away, as well, corrosive cynicism and paralyzing defeatism. We are challenged to earnestly seek out one another to link-up-arms and work for real solutions to the country’s festering and worsening woes. We are called upon to transcend apathy and parochialism, the petty rivalries, the mutual suspicions and prejudices dividing the masses of our people, and stand up as one to face and win what should be the final battle for the liberation of our country from foreign domination,oppression and exploitation.

We ought to meet this challenge squarely, unless we are willing to risk having to ask the same questions again after still another century – are we to remain bowed to the yoke of foreign overlords for another hundred years, albeit with periodically altered details in the specific arrangements?

This, Señor Rizal, is the crossroads state of our Patria Adorada in 1989. This is your beloved Philippines, "a century thence."

Manila, Philippines

December 15, 1989

NOTES:

³⁵Why was Katagalugan (with Tagalog as rootword) chosen by Bonifacio and the Katipunan as the apropriate name for the nation they were birthing in 1896? Tagalog or Taga-ilog, which means people living by the river, is actually a synonym of the self-adopted names of many other communities in the entire archipelado, namely, Ilocano, Ibanag, Pampango, Subanon, Subanen, Sugbuhanon (yes, the Cebuanos!), and Tausug. The rivers not only strung up together the various communities, being riverdwellers was one of the few obvious points of commonality among the widely diverse communities of "The Islands."

³⁶Specifically, these minorities are the tribal minorities, as the majority of the indigenous peoples in the archipelago got effectively colonized and are unmistakably covered by the label Filipinos. In the view of these tribal groupings ("minority nationalities" or "indigenous peoples" who have remained as such) and of the Bangsamoro groups in Mindanao, such label is a burden of shame to bear.

³⁷Effective colonization in the form of indirect subjugation may in fact last two or even more centuries unless the majority of the people see through the smokescreen of native political corruption and demand an end to US domination.

³⁸There are many ways such elimination is being done left and right nowadays. But the risk of eliminating me would be to inadvertently make all my writings more widely read and more deeply valued by the people. It may indeed backfire. Still, I have written and included in this book a poem of fond farewell, "Mi Primero Adios": Una Kong Pamamaalam, where I leave my life mission's call for all to synergize and in that process seek to use whatever useful lessons can be drawn from what i have written. In effect the poem says: magsanib-lakás, Pilipinas! Gamitin ang mga aral na mapapakina-bangan mula sa aking mga bakás sa pinili kong landás! To at least some hearts this will continue to whisper from my grave and the torch shall resume or plainly continue being carried forward!

³⁹If the education efforts were indeed successful, the following would already be a present-day reality instead of remaining as still "my dream": Philippine society would be built by self-driven and self-assertive active stakeholders who shall have learned by heart to synergize efforts in everything they do for the maximum impact of all such efforts, as facilitated by servant-leaders who derive their motivation/inspiration from the energies they are able to bring together and derive their institutional and individual wherewithal mainly from the material output of such synergies, and are not at all mainly moved and enabled by salaries or allowances or by financial contributions from external benefactors.

⁴⁰This was the official national population figure as of the writing of this open letter in December 1989.

⁴¹There were killings in various provinces (which I had ironically termed "constitutional massacres"), after Aquino "unsheathed the sword of war" at the close of peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front, and asked the armed forces to give her "A string of military victories." There was a time she ordered restrictions in the exercise of press freedom and explained she was doing so to prevent an emergency (the Constitution allowed her to do so only to address an existing emergency, not to prevent one). During her term, the annual average of mediapersons getting killed was 36, exceeding the equivalent Marcos dictatrorship figure of 32.

⁴²The Aquino government requested the US military to intervene in containing a coup attempt, clearly an internal matter for Filipinos to handle. There has also been an active and continuing US involvement in fighting the "terrorists" in the Mindanao island group, where much American economic, military and geopolitical interests lie.

previous       top       next