Sociology

Youngblood
Nationalism redefined By Bobbie Reyes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:20:00 07/23/2009
Almost a year ago, I found myself on a plane to New York City. I wasn’t going on vacation or visiting relatives. I was starting my first year at Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal arts school renowned for its writing program.The first of my family to leave the country, I was terrified. Doubts filled my mind during the 18-hour trip. But one question kept coming back: Am I performing an act of betrayal to the motherland by leaving at such a young age? The question haunted me.Answers did not come easily. But after some serious reflection, I am positive that the answer is no.Socio-economic conditions in the Philippines have been a source of great disappointment and even bitterness, with its sluggish economy, its history of incompetent government leaders, widespread poverty and low standard of public education. As a result, Filipinos from all provinces and social backgrounds look to more developed countries for solutions. In the past 20 years, millions of Filipinos have chosen to study, work, or retire in the United States, Australia and Saudi Arabia, among many other countries. This flight has been called the brain drain,? a term that signifies that our country’s best and brightest are building their future outside of the country and in massive numbers, at that.Out of a population of approximately 90 million, more than 11 million Filipinos have left for greener pastures. At the private Catholic high school I graduated from, a significant number of faculty members have left during the past three years to teach in public schools in the United States at much higher pay. The demand for nurses in the United States alone is estimated to reach 600,000 between now and 2020. It is no longer a surprise to run into Filipinos working as domestic helpers in Italy, Hong Kong and Canada.Many of these people leave in desperation. Others simply want better standards of living for themselves and for their children. And this is the reason, the decision to get out of the country is commonly perceived, though not so often openly denounced, as acts of selfishness and betrayal of the motherland.Being a Third World country struggling to develop, the Philippines needs all the help it can get. When we were in high school, our teachers urged us to direct all our efforts to improving conditions in our country. We were encouraged to stay or come back eventually, should we decided to leave for abroad.This was how I was taught to love my country. Students at the University of the Philippines, which I attended as a part-time student for one year, are constantly urged to work in the country after graduation to demonstrate their nationalism and as a way of ?giving back? to their fellow citizens.This concept of nationalism was underscored by Patricia Evangelista, who was then a student at the University of the Philippines, during the international public speaking competition conducted by the English Speaking Union in London in 2004. In her speech, entitled Blonde and Blue Eyes, Evangelista discussed the Filipino diaspora and stressed the importance of returning to the motherland as an act of nationalism. Leaving sometimes isn’t a matter of choice, she said. It’s coming back that is.?A few months after she returned from London, she wrote an article in a local newspaper to elaborate on her winning speech, I condemned the Filipinos who chose to leave,? she said. They deserved to be pushed down the road to hell on a handcart. Traitors and turncoats, I called them.Almost five years later, Evangelista’s piece is still acclaimed as a benchmark of Philippine nationalism. But is idea of nationalism a geographic one? Must one be confined within certain physical boundaries in order to live out what my dictionary defines as patriotic feelings, principles or efforts??The truth is that in a country that seeks desperately to progress, its citizens should consider the world we live in. It is a globalizing one, and as technology, society and people from all parts of the world become increasingly interconnected and interdependent, I cannot see how the dispersal of Filipinos all over the world can be a disadvantage. Aside from bringing in dollars through their remittances, which contribute to the growth of the economy, Filipinos overseas have other very real impacts on Philippine society. For one thing, the competition for local employment is alleviated. Those who criticize the diaspora often claim that it is the best people (or the best students) who migrate, leaving the Philippines with mediocre teachers, mediocre nurses, and other professionals. But these critics underestimate Filipino talent. Our pool of talent is not that small. There are many gifted people in the country, a fact that many fail to appreciate. Those who leave open more opportunities for those who choose to stay.Filipinos working abroad are living proof that we are indeed global citizens, competent and capable and equipped with the skills necessary to thrive in foreign places. As we witness fellow citizens climbing to the top of various industries and professions in New York, London and Paris, don’t we all beam with pride? More than just advancing their interests, they also serve as ambassadors proclaiming by their achievements the greatness of Filipinos and what they can contribute to society.This is the kind of nationalism I know. This is the kind of nationalism I feel. This is the kind of nationalism I believe in.To quote Evangelista again, Leaving sometimes isn’t a matter of choice. It’s coming back that is.? I left, and it was fully my choice. And I have never felt my identity as a Filipino as strongly as I do today, thousands of miles away from home. I don’t know when, or if, I will ever go back for good. But I know that I have never been prouder of where I come from and that I can make my country proud of me, regardless of where I am.(Bobbie Reyes, 20, is an incoming sophomore at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.) |

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Public Lives
Rizal’s ‘Indolence of the Filipinos’ By Randy David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:52:00 12/29/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- Writing in 1890 for La Solidaridad, Jose Rizal takes up the question of the so-called ?indolence? of the Filipinos. This claim, he argues, had allowed the Spanish colonial authorities to excuse their own ?stupidities,? and the friars to ?make themselves irreplaceable.? We should not be content to simply deny it, he says. We must ?examine the question calmly with all the impartiality of which a man is capable who is convinced that there is no redemption unless based solidly on virtue.?This masterly exercise in deconstruction is Rizal’s most sociological and most compelling essay. Here is an exposition of the social theory underpinning the Noli. Rizal approaches his subject the way a modern scientist would, but in addition, he deploys all the metaphors at his disposal as a trained physician in order to add satirical force to his arguments. He looks at the behavior typically associated with the predisposition to indolence, and proceeds to analyze the context in which it is bred.The charge of indolence is hardly heard nowadays, for indeed the Philippines has become one of the main sources of the world’s nurses, domestic helpers, caregivers, seafarers, construction workers, musicians, entertainers, teachers, call center agents, etc. Yet, Rizal’s analysis remains valid to this day. The lack of advancement among our people is still, as in Rizal’s time, largely attributable to defects in their education and the lack of national sentiment.We all know about the underdeveloped state in which our educational system languishes. And yet we have only focused on the impoverished state of existing facilities and the miserable test scores of our pupils. We have not even begun to look at the kind of human beings our schools are producing, which is what bothered Rizal most. ?The very limited home education, the tyrannical and sterile education in the few educational centers, the blind subjection of youth to his elders, influence the mind not to aspire to excel those who preceded him and merely to be content to follow or walk behind them. Stagnation inevitably results from this, and as he who devotes himself to copying fails to develop his inherent qualities, he naturally becomes sterile; hence decadence.It is this resignation resulting from mental stagnation that preoccupied Rizal. He pursues this theme in his discussion of the Filipino’s lack of national sentiment. The absence of any concern for the nation, he says, ?breeds another evil, which is the scarcity of any opposition to the measures that are prejudicial to the people and the absence of any initiative that will redound to their welfare. A man in the Philippines is only an individual; he is not a member of a nation. Where there is no sense of nation, there can be no collective striving to develop the country.Today it is not indolence but lack of discipline that is blamed for the Filipino’s lack of progress. Like the claim of indolence, however, this supposed unruliness is used to explain many problems and justify the quest for dictatorial rule. It would not be enough to deny this lack of discipline, for indeed anyone can point to everyday manifestations of this annoying trait. Our chaotic city traffic and the countless remedial measures it provokes appear to be its most palpable expression. Every failed treatment only seems to highlight the terminal nature of the malady.Following Rizal’s method, we might however shift our focus from the symptoms to the social context. Why do Filipinos not follow rules? Why do they not fall in line and wait for their turn? Why do they turn to influential persons or patrons to obtain access to public services and institutions? There are two basic reasons, I believe. The first is ignorance, and the second is distrust of the system.Many Filipinos do not follow the rules because they don’t know them, or if they do, they don’t know how they are supposed to work. It’s easy to say ignorance excuses no one, but shouldn’t the first duty of government be to explain the laws to its citizens, their logic and justification? In the absence of such learning, people will improvise or stick to habit.But the more important reason for lack of discipline is distrust of the system. It is the belief that following the rules gets you nowhere. If you fall in line, you may wait forever; others will find a way to get ahead of everyone. The idea is to devise your own trick, or to find a fixer you can pay or a powerful person whose influence you can tap in order to quickly get what you want. The assumption is that the system doesn’t work, and is not meant to work.Looking at our social reality today, one finds that this way of thinking is not too far off the mark. Our system of rules does provide discretionary powers to some people -- powers essential to a social order based on large gaps in wealth and privilege, and on layers of dependence and patronage. In such a system, corruption is only the other face of patronage, a vital ingredient in the highly unequal society we have.This kind of society is becoming obsolete in the modern world. To prolong its life, pre-modern elites who run government are resorting to authoritarianism, while the citizens who cannot stand living in it are fleeing. But, because we too are evolving as a society, there is hope. Education and migration are releasing many Filipinos from ignorance and bondage. ?Peoples and governments are correlated and complementary,? says Rizal. ?A stupid government is an anomaly among a righteous people, just as a corrupt people cannot exist under wise rulers and laws.? |

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Rizal: nationalism, exile and return.
Asia Africa Intelligence Wire | December 31, 2004 |
(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)
Byline: Raul C. Pangalangan
IF "exile is the nursery of nationalism," then the eight million OFWs must be our long incubated patriots for the 21st century. Historians say that Jose Rizal and his fellow ilustrados found themselves in Spain detached from their native land, and for the first time identified one another not as Tagalogs, Ilocanos, Kapampangans, or Visayans, but as Filipinos. Every schoolchild on these islands knows the story of how the term "Filipino," erstwhile used to describe the Creole Spaniard, came to refer to us, the natives.
Today the ilustrado discovery of Filipino-ness in 19th century Spain is replicated in the lives of OFWs, exiles by economic necessity, except that for them, their political identity as Filipinos is already officially defined: they travel on Philippine passports and are identified by foreigners as Filipinos. What is left to be rediscovered abroad is their cultural identity, that ever-unanswered question on what it means to say that we are Filipino, beyond singing "Lupang Hinirang" and reciting "Panatang Makabayan."
The law can easily identify who is Filipino, but it is an entirely more complex thing for us to identify ourselves as Filipinos deep in our hearts. That is more elusive, especially to scholars who must explain it in words and with footnotes, and that is why we must seek our Filipino-ness, not in our official lives where we fill out forms and take oaths of allegiance, and turn instead to our day-to-day lives where the true self comes out more honestly.
It was during the five Christmases I spent abroad in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that I realized how much I hankered for Filipino food. Well-meaning friends in Manila would joke that Filipino food was nothing but Chinese food with Spanish names. Yet in the midst of winter, I asked my wife to set aside writing her master's thesis on "Conflict of Laws" just so she could cook adobo for me, and indeed buy an air purifier so that she could do it despite the sealed windows and kill that awful smell so glorious on white steamed rice, yet a lethal bouquet when it sticks to our down jackets, the carpet, the curtains, the books, everything! We knew it was impossible to replicate the warmth of Pinoy Christmas in Boston's winter, but with food, the memories of home, especially my mother's heavenly cooking, were instantly transported across the Pacific. (And when foreigners ask me what wine goes with adobo, I tell them it goes best with a tall glass of ice cold Coke.)
Until then, I would have found it unthinkable that I had not fully become a Filipino in Diliman, yet in hindsight, what I had imbibed was nationalism of the cerebral sort, at best one that was defined in terms of what we were fighting against, whether it was to fend off the Metrocom truncheons, their anti-riot squads and water cannons or oppose the US military bases. To be Filipino, we strived to be the opposite of good, obedient colonials, and rebelled.
But being Filipino must go beyond explicit causes and must turn inward toward personal longings. Today, I would say to those whose nationalism is stunted at the political, never transcending to the cultural: Magpakatotoo ka! (to borrow the words of that wonderful ad).
Conversely, a Filipino may live abroad, but at night when he sleeps, he dreams of the hometown, and during lulls at work the next day, his mind would play with homegrown remembrances or fret over Manila-bound troubles. He is present in the Philippines more than we can imagine.
Jose Rizal embodies the "estranged native," much like the "Queen's Chinese ... the Anglophile Indian, or [the] Parisian Marxist who happens to be Algerian," or in Rizal's novel "Noli Me Tangere," the character Crisostomo Ibarra, who draws "his authority from his distance, he stands outside, in some privileged place, where he has access to 'advanced' or universal principles." (M. Walzer, "Interpretation and Social Criticism," 1993)
But Rizal also exemplifies Walzer's "connected critic," who "argue[s] with his fellows-who, angrily and insistently, sometimes at considerable personal risk ... objects, protests, and remonstrates." That is why Rizal soon despaired of the filibustero's work in Spain and returned to Manila.
Explaining his decision to return, Rizal could very well have spoken of the Philippines today: "Life in Filipinas has become unbearable ... there, there is no morality, no virtue, no justice! ... For this reason I think that La Solidaridad is no longer the battlefield. It is a new struggle we now face ... The fight is no longer in Madrid." He felt that the propagandists were "brave only while they were in peaceful Europe, 'far from the fire'." He concluded: "The cure must be brought to the sick." (O.D. Corpuz, "Saga and Triumph: The Filipino Revolution Against Spain," 2002)
Corpuz hailed Rizal as a radical visionary, but some politically correct historians denigrate Rizal as a "mere" reformist, an enemy of the Revolution. To them I recall the genocidal costs of past crusades for ideological purity around the globe, and remember the closing scene in "El Filibusterismo": "Our ills we owe to ourselves, let us not toss the blame to anyone. ... [When] we see our own countrymen in private life feeling shame within themselves, ... and in public life keep silent, to make a chorus with him who abuses ...; while we see them enclosed in their selfishness, praising the most iniquitous deeds with forced smiles, begging with their eyes for a portion of the booty, why give them freedom? ... Why independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?"