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Thursday, March 5, 2009
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IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO
It takes two to deliver a message, Rizal and his alter ego.
We look at Rizal not just man of letters but a medical practitioner. In his NOLI dedication, Rizal is not contented removing the veil to free Filipinos of their ignorance but also wanted those “liberated” must learn to read with the ability to make a critical analysis so as to arrive to rational conclusion.
Art imitates life is a familiar cliché. In baseball parlance, employing a “designated hitter” and “pinch hitting” is the name of the game. Almost at the end of NOLI we see Elias fatally shot while rowing a banca that he and Crisostomo Ibarra used to elude the Civil Guards along the Pasig River. Anchored in a safer area, Ibarra carried Elias to spend his last breath hovering between life and death, Rizal in the mouth of Elias said: “I die without seeing the dawn of my country. Those who will see it cherish and adore but don’t forget those who fell in the darkness of the night!”
In the FILI, Simoun was the designated hitter who cautioned Basilio that “Resignation is not always a virtue; it is a crime when it encourages oppression”. “There are no tyrants where there are no slaves.”
How pathetic to see a revolutionario getting confronted by a stark reality of a failed revolution. Pinch-hitting for Rizal is the native priest Father Florentino to do the homily to a wounded Simoun why a native uprising is doomed to fail. The revolution failed because the people are not ready for independence and because they are not ready for independence they don’t deserve it.
“Doubtless. Freedom, first of all, must be deserved. The Filipinos are to be blamed for their misfortune. They have to be less tolerant towards tyranny, ready to fight for their rights and to suffer. They are still ashamed of their rebellious thoughts, are filled by selfishness, and by their aspiration to seize their share of the booty, whose possession in the hands of the oppressors they detest. Why should they then be given independence? ” What good is independence if the slaves of today are the tyrants of tomorrow?”
Jose Sison Luzadas, KGOR
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
MORALITY AND MODERNITY
By Randy David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:10:00 02/28/2009
Filed Under: Graft & Corruption, Social Issues
In the face of pervasive corruption, various sectors, including the government itself, have called for moral renewal. This response has the same impact as appealing to a person’s conscience to stop him from doing something that is almost habitual or customary to him. His conscience may bother him, but he will find a way of re-describing or rationalizing the conduct in question so that he is no longer troubled by it.
I argue that corruption is not due to the absence or weakness of moral values. Corruption is a systemic problem, usually the product of a clash of values. It is the failure of individuals to differentiate the rules applicable to various spheres of social life — the family, the economy, government, religion, politics, etc. Indeed, in most instances, corruption results from the activation of traditional values — e.g., love, friendship, kindness — in situations where they are not appropriate. To put it bluntly: corruption is the result of our inability to instill and enforce the differentiated values of a modern society.
To see corruption as a consequence not of moral breakdown but of the failure to build a way of life appropriate to modern times is to shift the focus of attention from morals to systems, and from the quest for moral leaders to the quest for strong institutions. I have nothing against the use of moral language to describe the nature of our problems. But it has its limits. In a pluralistic society, securing a moral consensus on anything is as elusive as finding a meaningful common ground for all types of religious beliefs. As societies become more complex and diverse, the relevance of a unified moral code as a guide to proper conduct diminishes. That is why moral judgments tend to spark more dissension than unity in modern society.
The modern way is to confine judgments to the limited spheres in which they are made. A court of law declares a man guilty, but this is not the same as calling him immoral. A school may fail a student for not meeting academic standards, but it may not question his religious or political beliefs. A parent is expected to love his children and advance their careers, but modern society frowns on parents who allow their love for their children to interfere in their roles, for example, as teachers or as public officials. In all the years I have been a teacher, I have resolutely avoided having any of my children in my class. There is no explicit rule that says you cannot, but I would hate to subject myself to the perception that I might not be fair.
In traditional Filipino society, such conflict-of-interest situations were avoided by invoking the norm of delicadeza. This refers to sensitivity arising out of a fine sense of personal honor and self-esteem. It is what prevented our early politicians and public officials from abusing their power or authority. This sense of honor is strong in simple societies, where one’s life is under the constant scrutiny of one’s community. It persists in modern societies like Japan where deeply rooted norms pertaining to personal honor are stronger than modern bureaucratic rules.
Perhaps, in many ways, our problems with corruption reflect our newness as a nation. The customs and traditions that should support our collective life as a nation were not fully developed when colonialism intercepted our progress to nationhood. The colonial powers left us modern differentiated institutions that had little basis in our own experience and instincts as a people. That is why, at almost every point, the cultural impulses of a simple society have trumped the logic of these borrowed institutions.
But we’re slowly learning. What has stood in the way of our transition to modernity is the absolute poverty of most of our people. All our modern institutions are premised on the existence of a democratic society. The principles of one-person-one-vote, of equality before the law, of representative government, of the right to information, etc. have no meaning in a hierarchical society in which only a few are born to rule, while half are consigned to an almost permanent life of deprivation. In such a society, the default can only be the use of power, money, and connection to override institutional autonomy.
In our society, the struggle for modern governance has fallen on the shoulders of the educated classes. Because they understand the logic of modern institutions, it is they who have been most vocal about the scourge of corruption. Their impatience for change has made them politically adventurous and skeptical of elections. The EDSA People Power I and II uprisings mirror their attempts at political transformation. Alas, the outcome of these events has been a reversal of good governance ideals. What happened? It is not just because the wrong people took power. It is rather because these dramatic political shifts failed to touch the foundation of our feudalistic society: mass poverty.
Thus we cannot separate the goal of institutional modernity from the need to eliminate mass poverty, powerlessness, and illiteracy. Corruption will not be wiped out by mere moral exhortation. The pursuit of a just and modern society has to find concrete expression in our everyday lives — in our efforts to assist the poor among us in whatever way we can, in our refusal to take short cuts in public transactions, in our resolve to criticize and avoid conflict-of-interest situations, in our staunch defense of the autonomy of institutions, and in our conscious efforts to teach our children the values and norms of modern citizenship.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:10:00 02/28/2009
Filed Under: Graft & Corruption, Social Issues
In the face of pervasive corruption, various sectors, including the government itself, have called for moral renewal. This response has the same impact as appealing to a person’s conscience to stop him from doing something that is almost habitual or customary to him. His conscience may bother him, but he will find a way of re-describing or rationalizing the conduct in question so that he is no longer troubled by it.
I argue that corruption is not due to the absence or weakness of moral values. Corruption is a systemic problem, usually the product of a clash of values. It is the failure of individuals to differentiate the rules applicable to various spheres of social life — the family, the economy, government, religion, politics, etc. Indeed, in most instances, corruption results from the activation of traditional values — e.g., love, friendship, kindness — in situations where they are not appropriate. To put it bluntly: corruption is the result of our inability to instill and enforce the differentiated values of a modern society.
To see corruption as a consequence not of moral breakdown but of the failure to build a way of life appropriate to modern times is to shift the focus of attention from morals to systems, and from the quest for moral leaders to the quest for strong institutions. I have nothing against the use of moral language to describe the nature of our problems. But it has its limits. In a pluralistic society, securing a moral consensus on anything is as elusive as finding a meaningful common ground for all types of religious beliefs. As societies become more complex and diverse, the relevance of a unified moral code as a guide to proper conduct diminishes. That is why moral judgments tend to spark more dissension than unity in modern society.
The modern way is to confine judgments to the limited spheres in which they are made. A court of law declares a man guilty, but this is not the same as calling him immoral. A school may fail a student for not meeting academic standards, but it may not question his religious or political beliefs. A parent is expected to love his children and advance their careers, but modern society frowns on parents who allow their love for their children to interfere in their roles, for example, as teachers or as public officials. In all the years I have been a teacher, I have resolutely avoided having any of my children in my class. There is no explicit rule that says you cannot, but I would hate to subject myself to the perception that I might not be fair.
In traditional Filipino society, such conflict-of-interest situations were avoided by invoking the norm of delicadeza. This refers to sensitivity arising out of a fine sense of personal honor and self-esteem. It is what prevented our early politicians and public officials from abusing their power or authority. This sense of honor is strong in simple societies, where one’s life is under the constant scrutiny of one’s community. It persists in modern societies like Japan where deeply rooted norms pertaining to personal honor are stronger than modern bureaucratic rules.
Perhaps, in many ways, our problems with corruption reflect our newness as a nation. The customs and traditions that should support our collective life as a nation were not fully developed when colonialism intercepted our progress to nationhood. The colonial powers left us modern differentiated institutions that had little basis in our own experience and instincts as a people. That is why, at almost every point, the cultural impulses of a simple society have trumped the logic of these borrowed institutions.
But we’re slowly learning. What has stood in the way of our transition to modernity is the absolute poverty of most of our people. All our modern institutions are premised on the existence of a democratic society. The principles of one-person-one-vote, of equality before the law, of representative government, of the right to information, etc. have no meaning in a hierarchical society in which only a few are born to rule, while half are consigned to an almost permanent life of deprivation. In such a society, the default can only be the use of power, money, and connection to override institutional autonomy.
In our society, the struggle for modern governance has fallen on the shoulders of the educated classes. Because they understand the logic of modern institutions, it is they who have been most vocal about the scourge of corruption. Their impatience for change has made them politically adventurous and skeptical of elections. The EDSA People Power I and II uprisings mirror their attempts at political transformation. Alas, the outcome of these events has been a reversal of good governance ideals. What happened? It is not just because the wrong people took power. It is rather because these dramatic political shifts failed to touch the foundation of our feudalistic society: mass poverty.
Thus we cannot separate the goal of institutional modernity from the need to eliminate mass poverty, powerlessness, and illiteracy. Corruption will not be wiped out by mere moral exhortation. The pursuit of a just and modern society has to find concrete expression in our everyday lives — in our efforts to assist the poor among us in whatever way we can, in our refusal to take short cuts in public transactions, in our resolve to criticize and avoid conflict-of-interest situations, in our staunch defense of the autonomy of institutions, and in our conscious efforts to teach our children the values and norms of modern citizenship.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
AMERICAN IDOL
In the eyes of the older generation of Filipinos "He" was an American Idol!
by Jose Sison Luzadas
Delray Beach, FL
Let us have a moment in history to review what the Filipinos during the Commonwealth period dominated by Quezon and Osmena have to say when this “one rare breed” of American who like Ferdinand Blumentritt has a great deal of respect and admiration to our national hero and his countrymen.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
No American soldier-politician assigned as governor-general in the Philippines who struck the chord of true friendship, respect and understanding deep in the heart of Filipinos than this New York native.
Looking back three centuries earlier under Spain and fifty years with America, no appointed Spanish or American official after tour of duty has ever opted to remain in the islands for personal and sentimental reasons.
Name any Spanish or American official who has ever bequeathed a personal WISH to have his mortal remains buried in the Philippine soil?
Was it just a political ploy or publicity stunt for this American father who while attending the christening of his newborn son chose and advised to use “Francisco Jr.” as the given name instead of Francis so that it sounds more of a “Filipino”?
Well, there is no point questioning his sincerity for he considered himself a “Filipino” long before Congress of the Philippines passed an Act making him a Filipino citizen!
To students in Philippine history and political science, US Governor –General Francis Burton Harrison is well remembered for having inaugurated a policy, "PHILIPPINES FOR FILIPINOS" that brought the exhilarated inhabitants recognition of their native pride and sense of belonging!
He died in Flemington, New Jersey in 1957 but in compliance with his will, Burton was buried at the Manila Cemetery, a driving distance to the Paco cemetery where Dr. Rizal was originally buried.
Reprinted below is the speech of Francis Burton Harrison delivered at the University of the Philippines when he dedicated the building honoring Dr. Jose Rizal.
“I think no man can read Rizal's novels without feeling his powerful impulse of sympathy for and understanding of the people of this country. We can be moved not only by his profound reading of human nature, but we can also be inspired to emulate, if we may, the high level of talent for which his name will ever be famous in the history of literature. Here in the Philippines I would, if I could, arouse you to more earnest devotion to a literary career. You have natural advantages second to no country in the world. Your history is replete with incidents and romance and your present latter-day development is a true inspiration to the youth of the world in all countries.
To this land of lofty mountains, of clear water running to the sea, the sunsets across Mariveles Mountain, the dawn over Mount Arayat, the blue haze upon the rice-fields in the evening-all the familiar scenes and sounds of a life animate by the sun and made happy by the richness of nature. As I remembered the deep tender lights of the coconut groves and the busy industry of our daily life, I said to myself, 'There is a country which could inspire any man to literary efforts with all its wealth of romance.'
When I recall the history of the Philippine Islands, the coming of the Christians with the sword and flaming cross, the coming of the Mohammedans, with the crescent and the crooked creese (kris?) and their cry in many a hard fought battle, the enterprise of the Spaniard in spiritual teachings as well as in material investments, the shouts of Legaspi's sailors across Manila Bay, the guns of Dewey so many generations later, the efforts of our country to establish here our principles of democracy, it seems to me that any young man or woman born upon this soil and inspired by ideas has an opportunity to take a place in the very foremost ranks of literature and history and show to the world not only what has been done here in education but what the world may expect of the Filipino people when they take their rank as an independent member of the brotherhood of nations.
In my opinion Rizal's greatest services to the cause of the human race were those scientific impulses which he gave to the world of his duty, and the martyrdom which he suffered was but another example of the determination of organized society in every age to eliminate those that by the pure processes of reason have arrived at new theories for the conduct and welfare of mankind. From the day of Socrates, who was put to death by the citizens of Athens for teaching the young men to think for themselves, down to that morning in December, 1896, when Rizal was done to death by the firing-squad at Bagumbayan, the pages of history have run red with the murder of men of science. In Europe of the Middle Ages the names of Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Agrippa, Campanella, Kepler, Lavoisier, of Priestly, and many others of less distinction in the annals of history have shown what struggles the human mind has been called upon to endure and to what stress the human body has been put in the efforts of science to liberate the human mind....
Bearing all these things in mind, it seems to me that we can justly appreciate Rizal's love of science and his final martyrdom as the greatest contribution to the freedom of thought ever given by any one man to the Filipino people. This hall which we are about to dedicate, reserved as it is to be for the study of science, is the most fitting monument to the name of Rizal that could be devised. Here has he live to-day I have no doubt he would feel an infinitely greater inspiration in the thought that his name was to be attached to this great edifice and that his memory was to be preserved by the study of young Filipinos, men and women, in the natural sciences than he would be in that splendid statue erected down there on the Bagumbayan to perpetuate the memory of his patriotic death.
Now, my friends, in dedicating this edifice to progress, I believe that it will stand for progress as long as the Filipino people themselves remain progressive and as long as you will fight the battle for liberty of thought and of reason, and, I believe, also, that Dr. Rizal, if he has any conscious knowledge in those ethereal spaces to which his soul has been summoned, will summon the youth of his beloved country to dare all, to endure all, and, if needs be, to suffered all that he himself had dared, endured, or suffered in order that science may not perish from the face of the earth.”
(signed) Francis Burton Harrison
by Jose Sison Luzadas
Delray Beach, FL
Let us have a moment in history to review what the Filipinos during the Commonwealth period dominated by Quezon and Osmena have to say when this “one rare breed” of American who like Ferdinand Blumentritt has a great deal of respect and admiration to our national hero and his countrymen.
Your browser may not support display of this image.
No American soldier-politician assigned as governor-general in the Philippines who struck the chord of true friendship, respect and understanding deep in the heart of Filipinos than this New York native.
Looking back three centuries earlier under Spain and fifty years with America, no appointed Spanish or American official after tour of duty has ever opted to remain in the islands for personal and sentimental reasons.
Name any Spanish or American official who has ever bequeathed a personal WISH to have his mortal remains buried in the Philippine soil?
Was it just a political ploy or publicity stunt for this American father who while attending the christening of his newborn son chose and advised to use “Francisco Jr.” as the given name instead of Francis so that it sounds more of a “Filipino”?
Well, there is no point questioning his sincerity for he considered himself a “Filipino” long before Congress of the Philippines passed an Act making him a Filipino citizen!
To students in Philippine history and political science, US Governor –General Francis Burton Harrison is well remembered for having inaugurated a policy, "PHILIPPINES FOR FILIPINOS" that brought the exhilarated inhabitants recognition of their native pride and sense of belonging!
He died in Flemington, New Jersey in 1957 but in compliance with his will, Burton was buried at the Manila Cemetery, a driving distance to the Paco cemetery where Dr. Rizal was originally buried.
Reprinted below is the speech of Francis Burton Harrison delivered at the University of the Philippines when he dedicated the building honoring Dr. Jose Rizal.
“I think no man can read Rizal's novels without feeling his powerful impulse of sympathy for and understanding of the people of this country. We can be moved not only by his profound reading of human nature, but we can also be inspired to emulate, if we may, the high level of talent for which his name will ever be famous in the history of literature. Here in the Philippines I would, if I could, arouse you to more earnest devotion to a literary career. You have natural advantages second to no country in the world. Your history is replete with incidents and romance and your present latter-day development is a true inspiration to the youth of the world in all countries.
To this land of lofty mountains, of clear water running to the sea, the sunsets across Mariveles Mountain, the dawn over Mount Arayat, the blue haze upon the rice-fields in the evening-all the familiar scenes and sounds of a life animate by the sun and made happy by the richness of nature. As I remembered the deep tender lights of the coconut groves and the busy industry of our daily life, I said to myself, 'There is a country which could inspire any man to literary efforts with all its wealth of romance.'
When I recall the history of the Philippine Islands, the coming of the Christians with the sword and flaming cross, the coming of the Mohammedans, with the crescent and the crooked creese (kris?) and their cry in many a hard fought battle, the enterprise of the Spaniard in spiritual teachings as well as in material investments, the shouts of Legaspi's sailors across Manila Bay, the guns of Dewey so many generations later, the efforts of our country to establish here our principles of democracy, it seems to me that any young man or woman born upon this soil and inspired by ideas has an opportunity to take a place in the very foremost ranks of literature and history and show to the world not only what has been done here in education but what the world may expect of the Filipino people when they take their rank as an independent member of the brotherhood of nations.
In my opinion Rizal's greatest services to the cause of the human race were those scientific impulses which he gave to the world of his duty, and the martyrdom which he suffered was but another example of the determination of organized society in every age to eliminate those that by the pure processes of reason have arrived at new theories for the conduct and welfare of mankind. From the day of Socrates, who was put to death by the citizens of Athens for teaching the young men to think for themselves, down to that morning in December, 1896, when Rizal was done to death by the firing-squad at Bagumbayan, the pages of history have run red with the murder of men of science. In Europe of the Middle Ages the names of Roger Bacon, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Agrippa, Campanella, Kepler, Lavoisier, of Priestly, and many others of less distinction in the annals of history have shown what struggles the human mind has been called upon to endure and to what stress the human body has been put in the efforts of science to liberate the human mind....
Bearing all these things in mind, it seems to me that we can justly appreciate Rizal's love of science and his final martyrdom as the greatest contribution to the freedom of thought ever given by any one man to the Filipino people. This hall which we are about to dedicate, reserved as it is to be for the study of science, is the most fitting monument to the name of Rizal that could be devised. Here has he live to-day I have no doubt he would feel an infinitely greater inspiration in the thought that his name was to be attached to this great edifice and that his memory was to be preserved by the study of young Filipinos, men and women, in the natural sciences than he would be in that splendid statue erected down there on the Bagumbayan to perpetuate the memory of his patriotic death.
Now, my friends, in dedicating this edifice to progress, I believe that it will stand for progress as long as the Filipino people themselves remain progressive and as long as you will fight the battle for liberty of thought and of reason, and, I believe, also, that Dr. Rizal, if he has any conscious knowledge in those ethereal spaces to which his soul has been summoned, will summon the youth of his beloved country to dare all, to endure all, and, if needs be, to suffered all that he himself had dared, endured, or suffered in order that science may not perish from the face of the earth.”
(signed) Francis Burton Harrison
Monday, March 2, 2009
ROMANCING COLONIALISM AND THE COLONIZED MIND
HINDSIGHT By F Sionil Jose
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Attended the tail-end of the two-day conference on the Augustinian friar Andres de Urdaneta at the Instituto Cervantes recently. Before going into what I said at that last session, let me recount how I came to Manila in 1938 to enroll at the Far Eastern University High School in Azcarraga, now Recto. In the afternoons, after class, I swam in the Pasig or crossed through Escolta, to the Walled City then to the Luneta to swim in the bay behind what is now the Quirino Grandstand. I often idled in Intramuros, to gaze at the ornate altars of its dozen or so churches, notably Santo Domingo during the La Naval festival in October. Shortly after World War II when Intramuros was a desolate wilderness of grass and squatter huts, I sometimes visited the San Agustin church, the proud survivor of that war. It was not yet rehabilitated, the walls scarred, the huge paintings of departed Augustinians torn, and the garden at the back in shambles.
On those occasions that I pilgrimaged to the Ilokos, I marveled at the beauty, the durability of those old churches, particularly those architectural jewels in Santa Maria and in Paoay, and lamented, too, the laziness of their parish priests for not cleaning them up or sprucing up their yards. When I wrote that novel Po-on — the first in the chronology of a five-novel saga spanning a hundred years of our history — I delved deeper into the past of those churches and the friars who built them.
A wise and compassionate Augustinian in the novel, Padre Jose Leon, teaches the main character, the peasant Eustaquio Salvador, Spanish and Latin and what he knew of the elementary sciences that the Augustinians took with them in their epic voyage to the New World and to Filipinas. As Jose Ma. Fons of the Instituto Cervantes later said, "At least, there is one good Spaniard in the novel."
Much as I appreciate the Augustinians, they are not my favorite Spanish order; the Dominicans are, in spite of the criticisms that have been leveled at them. The reason for this is personal — I spent four happy years in the Dominican-run University of Santo Tomas and had a memorable teacher, the Spanish Dominican Juan Labrador. Pio Andrade was speaking when I arrived. He said that what Rizal wrote about agrarian discontent in Laguna was not true. I flared up immediately and said he had just called Rizal a liar. Onward in his presentation, as he extolled Spanish contributions to the country, I asked if he was apologizing for Spanish colonialism. For those who were at the conference who heard my remarks and have wondered why I said them at all, let me elaborate.
The logic or primary purpose of colonialism/ imperialism is the domination of a powerful country over a weak nation or people. It is exploitation, the plunder of the resources of a country to send to the mother country. Whether the colonizer is ancient Rome, or Spain, the Dutch in the 15th century or much later, the English, the Europeans, or in more recent times the United States and Japan, they are all the same.
They colonize often under several dulcet guises, to spread Christianity and Western Civilization, to give law and order to primitive societies, to make the world "safe for democracy." What for is the United States in Iraq, if not for Iraqi oil? And to repeat, the logic of colonialism is exploitation. It is immoral. No amount of romanticizing it, or apologizing for it as some Filipinos are now doing with Spanish colonialism, can banish the stain, the indelible stigma of colonialism.
For all his sterling qualities as a writer — and he was such a dear old friend — I fault the late Nick Joaquin for being an apologist of Spanish colonialism. We have had strident arguments when he repeated so often that gross statement that "everything good in this country came from Spain."
I always reminded him that before Spain came, we had a commercial relationship with China whose civilization is much, much older than that of Europe. All he had to do was go to the Central Bank to look at the gold collection there, which was found in Surigao; the collection illustrates the scientific and cultural finesse of the earliest Filipinos — although we were not called Filipinos then. At the Newberry Library in Chicago is the Codex, the earliest account of the people of these islands. The upper classes wore fine clothes, jewelry, footwear. We had five indigenous alphabets before the Spaniards came.
I always silenced him thus: "Don't forget the Spaniards killed Rizal." The paper of that brilliant scholar, Fernando Zialcita, is one more apology for Spanish colonialism. In his summary, he states, "Christianity did effect meaningful change. It taught that low-status people had dignity in themselves and could not be sold, or even sacrificed, as chattel. It sought to create a community that was broader than just an individual clan. Though social stratification was not abolished, a more humane stratification, one based on ownership of land rather than on ownership of human beings, was introduced."
Had he stopped here, he would have been factual, he would have made his case. But then he concluded: "The challenge for us today is how to move up to a higher level of consciousness where every individual is truly cared for. But this level of consciousness could not have been possible without the transformation of consciousness that the missionaries — despite their flaws — effected during the 17th to 19th centuries."
This is pure speculation. How could he know? Are the Indonesians because they are Muslims, the Vietnamese because they are Buddhists and the Indians because they are Hindus — not colonized by Spanish Catholics — any less imbued with "higher consciousness" ? So why then apologize for Spanish colonialism? Maybe those who do are not just nostalgic about the Spanish past — perhaps they also long for this country to be a Spanish colony again. After all, as a British historian stated, if the Axis powers — Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain — had won in World War II, Franco would have wanted the Philippines to revert to Spain. And the Americans?
The poet Robert Frost, the writer Mark Twain and the industrialist Andrew Carnegie were among those who opposed the American invasion of the Philippines in 1898. When I visited Robert Frost at his cottage in Ripton, Vermont in 1955, he asked how the American occupation turned out. I told him, but for the public schools which the Americans built, on that very day I would probably be an unlettered peasant atop a water buffalo in my village in Luzon. I said, probably.
Indeed, America's legacy to us is the public school system for which I am grateful. But I will never apologize for American imperialism, for their atrocities during the Philippine American war, their "free" trade, for Parity in 1946 and for the fact that their "benevolent neglect" also left in us a lingering hangover, a crippling dependency
that hinders our development.
As for the Japanese, who in my generation will ever forget their bestiality in World War II? But that, too, we must transcend to realize what we can learn from them. Ambeth Ocampo said something significant the other week when he was decorated by the French government. He said, "Let us not be prisoners of history." I would add, "Let us use it instead."
History has its uses. For us who are colonized, it is important that we are freed from it, to use it not to glorify the colonizer, but to remember he was the enemy and could still be — and that from history, we should be able to extract those aspects of it which could bind us, which could lead us to freedom and justice. The former colonizers and their acolytes certainly would like to romanticize the past for so many reasons, not so much to rewrite history from their point of view, but out of a sense of guilt, for a desire to re-impose their dominance or, if they are still around, their influence or residual power. This is a normal and understandable exercise.
But the colonized should never be party to this resuscitation of their glory which is our bondage and our shame. On every occasion, that they try to, the colonized should reject it, expose it for the fallacies that lie underneath such glowing reminiscence. The intractable logic of colonialism demands such rejection. Just ask this simple question: All those profits from the galleon trade, those monopolies, to whom did they go? Certainly not to the Indios. And more than this, the colonizers laid down the structures of oppression, the institutions of coercion which exist to this very day, for colonialism dies hard—it persists in actual forces of domination, of control, of helplessness and apathy in the colonized. And this is perhaps the most enduring and formidable obstacle in the building of a nation — the colonized mind.
Because colonialism is exploitation and therefore immoral, it is impossible to dignify it. It can, of course, be romanticized, and this only selectively, for certainly, the native did profit from colonialism' s collateral acolytes — the heroic friars, the Thomasites, the missionary doctors — all have deodorized colonialism to a limited extent.
Capitalism, with its logic of profit, is easy to dignify — the Rockefellers, the Fords have done this with their outstanding philanthropies, and certainly Bill Gates most of all. Too, all those businessmen who practice sincerely "corporate social responsibility" do fulfill capitalism's humanitarian incremental functions. And most of all, as we have seen in recent times, capitalism has morphed authoritarian regimes into democracies — to wit, South Korea, Taiwan, even Japan. But colonialism? The sooner the colonized writers, intellectuals and leaders recognize its unerring logic, the sooner, too, will they be able to get rid of their colonized minds that have warped their reasoning, their attitudes without their being fully aware these are destroying them and their country as well.
Speculations are worthless just as hindsight is the lowest form of wisdom. It is for this reason that memory is important, why we should always remember so that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past.
If the Americans remembered their loss in the Philippine-American war, they would never have gone to Vietnam. Or if they remembered Vietnam at all, they would not have gone to Iraq. And we should remember also that our revolution failed primarily because we couldn't get our act together, we couldn't unite. If we learned that lesson then, we would not be where we are today.
So, then, if I abhor Spanish colonialism, why do I like visiting Spain and even writing there? Why do I have Spanish mestizo friends and, most of all, why do I go to Instituto Cervantes?
Because I am one of the 90 million citizens called Filipino and Filipinas — how I love that name and all that it evokes, the land and its history, and most of all, the essence of what we are: human beings whose consciousness of nation and that nation's boundaries were created by a colonial power.
Let me be very clear about this. I pay homage to the heroic Spain which sent those sailors in those puny ships to the New World, to Filipinas, and with them, those equally heroic priests like Andres Urdaneta, Miguel Benavides and so many more. I admire the noble Spain that nurtured Rizal — not the Spain that martyred him, the Spain of Cervantes, Zurbaran, Lope de Vega, Miguel de Unamuno, and Goya, the Spain of that poor Loyalist who declared: In my hunger I command! The writer Salvador de Madariaga (I invited him some 30 years ago to deliver our Jose Rizal PEN Lecture; he had sought me out in Berlin in 1960 because he, too, had read Rizal) — it was he who told me that a country need not be colonized by a foreign power — it can be a colony of its own leaders — the awful truth which describes us today. We are destined to be free — but that destiny is not up for grabs, nor does it come easily. Often, it is denied us because we deny ourselves the free mind imprisoned in attitudes of our own making, implanted in us by miseducation, by our misunderstanding of history.
And so, to paraphrase that famous Manifesto: Filipinos, sugod! You have nothing to lose but your chains and a nation to gain.
http://philstar. com/index. php?Sunday. ..aid=2008071220
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Attended the tail-end of the two-day conference on the Augustinian friar Andres de Urdaneta at the Instituto Cervantes recently. Before going into what I said at that last session, let me recount how I came to Manila in 1938 to enroll at the Far Eastern University High School in Azcarraga, now Recto. In the afternoons, after class, I swam in the Pasig or crossed through Escolta, to the Walled City then to the Luneta to swim in the bay behind what is now the Quirino Grandstand. I often idled in Intramuros, to gaze at the ornate altars of its dozen or so churches, notably Santo Domingo during the La Naval festival in October. Shortly after World War II when Intramuros was a desolate wilderness of grass and squatter huts, I sometimes visited the San Agustin church, the proud survivor of that war. It was not yet rehabilitated, the walls scarred, the huge paintings of departed Augustinians torn, and the garden at the back in shambles.
On those occasions that I pilgrimaged to the Ilokos, I marveled at the beauty, the durability of those old churches, particularly those architectural jewels in Santa Maria and in Paoay, and lamented, too, the laziness of their parish priests for not cleaning them up or sprucing up their yards. When I wrote that novel Po-on — the first in the chronology of a five-novel saga spanning a hundred years of our history — I delved deeper into the past of those churches and the friars who built them.
A wise and compassionate Augustinian in the novel, Padre Jose Leon, teaches the main character, the peasant Eustaquio Salvador, Spanish and Latin and what he knew of the elementary sciences that the Augustinians took with them in their epic voyage to the New World and to Filipinas. As Jose Ma. Fons of the Instituto Cervantes later said, "At least, there is one good Spaniard in the novel."
Much as I appreciate the Augustinians, they are not my favorite Spanish order; the Dominicans are, in spite of the criticisms that have been leveled at them. The reason for this is personal — I spent four happy years in the Dominican-run University of Santo Tomas and had a memorable teacher, the Spanish Dominican Juan Labrador. Pio Andrade was speaking when I arrived. He said that what Rizal wrote about agrarian discontent in Laguna was not true. I flared up immediately and said he had just called Rizal a liar. Onward in his presentation, as he extolled Spanish contributions to the country, I asked if he was apologizing for Spanish colonialism. For those who were at the conference who heard my remarks and have wondered why I said them at all, let me elaborate.
The logic or primary purpose of colonialism/ imperialism is the domination of a powerful country over a weak nation or people. It is exploitation, the plunder of the resources of a country to send to the mother country. Whether the colonizer is ancient Rome, or Spain, the Dutch in the 15th century or much later, the English, the Europeans, or in more recent times the United States and Japan, they are all the same.
They colonize often under several dulcet guises, to spread Christianity and Western Civilization, to give law and order to primitive societies, to make the world "safe for democracy." What for is the United States in Iraq, if not for Iraqi oil? And to repeat, the logic of colonialism is exploitation. It is immoral. No amount of romanticizing it, or apologizing for it as some Filipinos are now doing with Spanish colonialism, can banish the stain, the indelible stigma of colonialism.
For all his sterling qualities as a writer — and he was such a dear old friend — I fault the late Nick Joaquin for being an apologist of Spanish colonialism. We have had strident arguments when he repeated so often that gross statement that "everything good in this country came from Spain."
I always reminded him that before Spain came, we had a commercial relationship with China whose civilization is much, much older than that of Europe. All he had to do was go to the Central Bank to look at the gold collection there, which was found in Surigao; the collection illustrates the scientific and cultural finesse of the earliest Filipinos — although we were not called Filipinos then. At the Newberry Library in Chicago is the Codex, the earliest account of the people of these islands. The upper classes wore fine clothes, jewelry, footwear. We had five indigenous alphabets before the Spaniards came.
I always silenced him thus: "Don't forget the Spaniards killed Rizal." The paper of that brilliant scholar, Fernando Zialcita, is one more apology for Spanish colonialism. In his summary, he states, "Christianity did effect meaningful change. It taught that low-status people had dignity in themselves and could not be sold, or even sacrificed, as chattel. It sought to create a community that was broader than just an individual clan. Though social stratification was not abolished, a more humane stratification, one based on ownership of land rather than on ownership of human beings, was introduced."
Had he stopped here, he would have been factual, he would have made his case. But then he concluded: "The challenge for us today is how to move up to a higher level of consciousness where every individual is truly cared for. But this level of consciousness could not have been possible without the transformation of consciousness that the missionaries — despite their flaws — effected during the 17th to 19th centuries."
This is pure speculation. How could he know? Are the Indonesians because they are Muslims, the Vietnamese because they are Buddhists and the Indians because they are Hindus — not colonized by Spanish Catholics — any less imbued with "higher consciousness" ? So why then apologize for Spanish colonialism? Maybe those who do are not just nostalgic about the Spanish past — perhaps they also long for this country to be a Spanish colony again. After all, as a British historian stated, if the Axis powers — Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain — had won in World War II, Franco would have wanted the Philippines to revert to Spain. And the Americans?
The poet Robert Frost, the writer Mark Twain and the industrialist Andrew Carnegie were among those who opposed the American invasion of the Philippines in 1898. When I visited Robert Frost at his cottage in Ripton, Vermont in 1955, he asked how the American occupation turned out. I told him, but for the public schools which the Americans built, on that very day I would probably be an unlettered peasant atop a water buffalo in my village in Luzon. I said, probably.
Indeed, America's legacy to us is the public school system for which I am grateful. But I will never apologize for American imperialism, for their atrocities during the Philippine American war, their "free" trade, for Parity in 1946 and for the fact that their "benevolent neglect" also left in us a lingering hangover, a crippling dependency
that hinders our development.
As for the Japanese, who in my generation will ever forget their bestiality in World War II? But that, too, we must transcend to realize what we can learn from them. Ambeth Ocampo said something significant the other week when he was decorated by the French government. He said, "Let us not be prisoners of history." I would add, "Let us use it instead."
History has its uses. For us who are colonized, it is important that we are freed from it, to use it not to glorify the colonizer, but to remember he was the enemy and could still be — and that from history, we should be able to extract those aspects of it which could bind us, which could lead us to freedom and justice. The former colonizers and their acolytes certainly would like to romanticize the past for so many reasons, not so much to rewrite history from their point of view, but out of a sense of guilt, for a desire to re-impose their dominance or, if they are still around, their influence or residual power. This is a normal and understandable exercise.
But the colonized should never be party to this resuscitation of their glory which is our bondage and our shame. On every occasion, that they try to, the colonized should reject it, expose it for the fallacies that lie underneath such glowing reminiscence. The intractable logic of colonialism demands such rejection. Just ask this simple question: All those profits from the galleon trade, those monopolies, to whom did they go? Certainly not to the Indios. And more than this, the colonizers laid down the structures of oppression, the institutions of coercion which exist to this very day, for colonialism dies hard—it persists in actual forces of domination, of control, of helplessness and apathy in the colonized. And this is perhaps the most enduring and formidable obstacle in the building of a nation — the colonized mind.
Because colonialism is exploitation and therefore immoral, it is impossible to dignify it. It can, of course, be romanticized, and this only selectively, for certainly, the native did profit from colonialism' s collateral acolytes — the heroic friars, the Thomasites, the missionary doctors — all have deodorized colonialism to a limited extent.
Capitalism, with its logic of profit, is easy to dignify — the Rockefellers, the Fords have done this with their outstanding philanthropies, and certainly Bill Gates most of all. Too, all those businessmen who practice sincerely "corporate social responsibility" do fulfill capitalism's humanitarian incremental functions. And most of all, as we have seen in recent times, capitalism has morphed authoritarian regimes into democracies — to wit, South Korea, Taiwan, even Japan. But colonialism? The sooner the colonized writers, intellectuals and leaders recognize its unerring logic, the sooner, too, will they be able to get rid of their colonized minds that have warped their reasoning, their attitudes without their being fully aware these are destroying them and their country as well.
Speculations are worthless just as hindsight is the lowest form of wisdom. It is for this reason that memory is important, why we should always remember so that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past.
If the Americans remembered their loss in the Philippine-American war, they would never have gone to Vietnam. Or if they remembered Vietnam at all, they would not have gone to Iraq. And we should remember also that our revolution failed primarily because we couldn't get our act together, we couldn't unite. If we learned that lesson then, we would not be where we are today.
So, then, if I abhor Spanish colonialism, why do I like visiting Spain and even writing there? Why do I have Spanish mestizo friends and, most of all, why do I go to Instituto Cervantes?
Because I am one of the 90 million citizens called Filipino and Filipinas — how I love that name and all that it evokes, the land and its history, and most of all, the essence of what we are: human beings whose consciousness of nation and that nation's boundaries were created by a colonial power.
Let me be very clear about this. I pay homage to the heroic Spain which sent those sailors in those puny ships to the New World, to Filipinas, and with them, those equally heroic priests like Andres Urdaneta, Miguel Benavides and so many more. I admire the noble Spain that nurtured Rizal — not the Spain that martyred him, the Spain of Cervantes, Zurbaran, Lope de Vega, Miguel de Unamuno, and Goya, the Spain of that poor Loyalist who declared: In my hunger I command! The writer Salvador de Madariaga (I invited him some 30 years ago to deliver our Jose Rizal PEN Lecture; he had sought me out in Berlin in 1960 because he, too, had read Rizal) — it was he who told me that a country need not be colonized by a foreign power — it can be a colony of its own leaders — the awful truth which describes us today. We are destined to be free — but that destiny is not up for grabs, nor does it come easily. Often, it is denied us because we deny ourselves the free mind imprisoned in attitudes of our own making, implanted in us by miseducation, by our misunderstanding of history.
And so, to paraphrase that famous Manifesto: Filipinos, sugod! You have nothing to lose but your chains and a nation to gain.
http://philstar. com/index. php?Sunday. ..aid=2008071220
Sunday, March 1, 2009
THREE MAJOR SOCIAL PROBLEMS EXPOSED BY RIZAL
Three major social problems exposed by Rizal and are still found in our society today:
1. Laziness of the Filipinos as the cause of their backwardness and also its reason. Rizal acknowledged its existence as opposed to other reformists who argued that laziness was brought by the oppressive colonial government.
Look around and see see the shanties, the depressed communities. How many families are there who live at the mercy of others? Most of them do not attempt to learn or to organize and ask for help to help themselves. Ask for people there who asks to teach them how to fish instead of the fish. ex. Forming cooperatives that will sustain economic needs such as the one in Payatas, say the rag-making industries, are very few.
2. Too much subservience. "There are no tyrants, if there were no slaves." Rizal noted this cultural mindset. Perhaps, this is one reason, the inhabitants were easily subjugated. There still exist the "master-slave" relationship that Rizal found even in pre-Spanish Philippines, "datu-alipin" social set up. Just survey rich families. Who among them do not employ maids, gardeners, cooks? Even low and middle income families maintain "katulong" and "yayas".
Just count or ask: How many of the Filipinos today want to work abroad and become slaves just to earn that much. Everyone would raise his hand. Doctors applying as nurses in other lands. Teachers applying as caregivers. Engineers doing messengerial jobs in the US. What happened? How come they believed that the "other" currencies can help uplift their lifestyles? I too almost believe that it is the only alternative: escape poverty in the Philippines and blame everything on the corrupt government, then go work abroad. This is a shameful attitude. Biased and not based from facts!!!
3. Corruption and abuses that led to ineffective delivery of social programs. There are people in power who think that Philippine economics generate slow growth because of the loss of Filipino confidence with themselves. And since there is hopelessness, they need only attend to their selfish interests. Perhaps, such caused them to do abuses in business dealings and negotiated contracts. In the Tagalog parlance, "nagkakanya-kanya na lang ng diskarte." Some good guys are frowned upon, "nandun ka na, di ka pa yumaman."
To what kind of morality this attitude belongs." The boat called Tabo or Tabu was an example of how big and bulky the economy of the Philipines is. It moves like a turtle along Philippine waters/rivers like the Pasig river carrying the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful things in Philippine life.
Rizal posited education as the remedy. Its effect: knowledge. The consequence, people deserving of liberties. The end: good relations and good image with other countries.
"Huwag magtanga-tangahan" or "Huwag maging tanga." This was what he wanted to mean in those times. "Huwag magpaalipin" "Kumilos para sa inyong mga sarili" "Magbasa" "Magsalita" "Magsipag-aral" --- "Upang maging karapat-dapat sa tatamasahing kalayaan."
BONI
1. Laziness of the Filipinos as the cause of their backwardness and also its reason. Rizal acknowledged its existence as opposed to other reformists who argued that laziness was brought by the oppressive colonial government.
Look around and see see the shanties, the depressed communities. How many families are there who live at the mercy of others? Most of them do not attempt to learn or to organize and ask for help to help themselves. Ask for people there who asks to teach them how to fish instead of the fish. ex. Forming cooperatives that will sustain economic needs such as the one in Payatas, say the rag-making industries, are very few.
2. Too much subservience. "There are no tyrants, if there were no slaves." Rizal noted this cultural mindset. Perhaps, this is one reason, the inhabitants were easily subjugated. There still exist the "master-slave" relationship that Rizal found even in pre-Spanish Philippines, "datu-alipin" social set up. Just survey rich families. Who among them do not employ maids, gardeners, cooks? Even low and middle income families maintain "katulong" and "yayas".
Just count or ask: How many of the Filipinos today want to work abroad and become slaves just to earn that much. Everyone would raise his hand. Doctors applying as nurses in other lands. Teachers applying as caregivers. Engineers doing messengerial jobs in the US. What happened? How come they believed that the "other" currencies can help uplift their lifestyles? I too almost believe that it is the only alternative: escape poverty in the Philippines and blame everything on the corrupt government, then go work abroad. This is a shameful attitude. Biased and not based from facts!!!
3. Corruption and abuses that led to ineffective delivery of social programs. There are people in power who think that Philippine economics generate slow growth because of the loss of Filipino confidence with themselves. And since there is hopelessness, they need only attend to their selfish interests. Perhaps, such caused them to do abuses in business dealings and negotiated contracts. In the Tagalog parlance, "nagkakanya-kanya na lang ng diskarte." Some good guys are frowned upon, "nandun ka na, di ka pa yumaman."
To what kind of morality this attitude belongs." The boat called Tabo or Tabu was an example of how big and bulky the economy of the Philipines is. It moves like a turtle along Philippine waters/rivers like the Pasig river carrying the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful things in Philippine life.
Rizal posited education as the remedy. Its effect: knowledge. The consequence, people deserving of liberties. The end: good relations and good image with other countries.
"Huwag magtanga-tangahan" or "Huwag maging tanga." This was what he wanted to mean in those times. "Huwag magpaalipin" "Kumilos para sa inyong mga sarili" "Magbasa" "Magsalita" "Magsipag-aral" --- "Upang maging karapat-dapat sa tatamasahing kalayaan."
BONI
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