THE PHENOMENON OF SELF-HATRED

From: Voltaire de Leon
Subject: The phenomenon of self-hatred/Re: [RP-Rizal] The curses of Rizal and Quezon Re: Filipinas dentro de cien anyos
To: RP-Rizal@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, March 4, 2010, 12:03 AM

Filipino society is not the only that has among its members some who hate it. Most post-colonial societies share this phenomenon. These self-haters have bought the myth, the propaganda that all colonizers, Spanish and American included, liked to spread -- that the natives were lazy, stupid and bereft of both material and spiritual culture -- that is why it was necessary to divide and rule them. These days, we really don't need to argue in defence of our ancestors against the white man's lie. Decades before Franz Fanon, Rizal had already done it for us: "Legazpi's expedition met in Butuan various traders of Luzon with their boats laden with iron, cloths, porcelain, etc. (Gaspar de San Agustin) plenty of provisions, activity, trade, movement in all the southern islands. They arrived at the Island of Cebu, "abounding in provisions, with mines and washings of gold, and peopled with natives, "as Morga says: "very populous, and at a port frequented by many ships that came from the islands and kingdoms near India," as Colin says: and even though they were peacefully received discord soon arose. The city was taken by force and burned. The first destroyed the food supplies and naturally famine broke out in that town of a hundred thousand people, as the historians say, and among the members of the expedition, but the neighboring islands quickly relieved the need, thanks to the abundance they enjoyed. All the histories of those first years, in short, abound in long accounts about the industry and agriculture of the natives; mines, gold-washings, looms, farms, barter, naval construction, raising of poultry and stock, weaving of silk and cotton, distilleries, manufactures of arms, pearl fisheries, the civet industry, the horn and hide industry, etc., are things encountered at every step, and considering the time and the conditions in the islands, prove that there was life, there was activity, there was movement." -- [Rizal, Indolence of the FIlipinos] Unfortunately, the same calumny, in one form or another, is being issued by FIlipinos themselves. Why do they do it? Why, in the face of all the studies and movements against colonialism, neo-colonialism and the New World Order, why is there an insistence among these self-haters to castigate Filipinos for being responsible for their own misery -- all history trashed as so much pulp fiction -- and hopelessly incapable of rising above our miseries? Why do they relish in such a masochistic exercise? Unless, of course, they no longer consider themselves Filipino. Three hundred years of physical/mental abuse, debasement, erasure of indigenous culture and brainwashing us with the all-encompassing idea of white superiority should have been overthrown by the revolution. Instead, the assassins of Bonifacio hijacked and turned it over to the Americans ushering a century of their dominion and then rule after corrupt rule by the Amboys, the trapo descendants of the native principalia. There is always hope that the past and present martyrs to our cause of nationhood -- independent, prosperous and expressedly unique -- will be vindicated. Volt