[written 25 feb 1999 -- EDSA anniversary]
(Aaargh!) (better?)
What kind of insect or worm is that—yung dine-display ang katawan/labi ng kanilang biktima for a camouflage or adornment of themselves? Is it a spider?
Para'ng tayo rin—Patis Tesoro and a host of fashion designers peddling the "ethnic chic." Ayala at ang Bagong Lumad ... the identity-confused hip militants who favor anything red and "ethnic"—you're displaying the skins of your victims—the bits and pieces of a mangled culture—cos we don't have our own....
There's nothing to fall back on—that's the secret of Filipino versatility—we embrace the popular values very easily and excel—don't we, Lea?
Is there really nothing to fall back on? 'Course not!
Jaime Lichauco says we have an "imposed" culture, not actually a damaged culture—in the same page, he says we are a "cultural schizophrenic"—a "fragmented" Filipino personality (Exploring the Powers of Your InnerMind, 1992).
Is a fragmented cultural psyche not damaged? Broken up—what was once whole, now broken up—and it's not damaged, he says.
Maybe the right word is "diverse," not fragmented. It has never been one culture but many cultures—kinda like the e pluribus unum of our white masters.... But that's where the similarity ends. Give the American Indians the White House, Capitol Hill and the Pentagon—kick the whites out of the country while you're at it, and give them a hundred years trying to to run the whole continent while being bullied by commercially and technologically superior foreign countries—you'll get something like the Philippines (by the way, take away their native religion, beliefs and traditions too...) today.
Our e pluribus unum was imposed by conquerors. Our common thread is bondage and racial mixing. We were not a nation then before the conquest—we had lots of local cultures—dialects. We were Tagalogs, Cebuanos, Warays, Ilonggos, Cordillerans, Manobos, Subanens, Maranaos, Tausugs, Magindanaws etc etc. Our nationhood now is a legacy of the bondage of many tongues and tribes.
And that's why the feeling of "bahay-bahayan" in our being a nation. We identify ourselves as ethnic groups first, Filipino second. With an imposed culture and an imposed national language. That many still resist to this day....
The "Kartilya ng Katipunan" says that "Tagalogs" are all the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands. Wow, Tagalog pala ako! Tagalog pala ka? Pareho pala 'ta. I wonder if the map of the Philippines would have looked as it does now had the Americans not "pacified" us.
And we finally got "independence." The slaves have now replaced the conquerors—bullying others in turn. This might be the root of the war in Mindanao—making Tagalogs of us all[!] Kaya pala kahit sampung taon nang namumundok sa Bisaya'y Tagalog pa rin ng Tagalog—subconsciously, as far as they are concerned, everybody should speak Tagalog—O, let's call it Pilipino, para hindi masyadong masakit. Pilipino akuuh! (`Di ba, Kuh?)
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