Traveling to Boracay
I can hear the rain pattering against the tin roof of our lodging here in Boracay Island. Yesterday, after flying 200 miles south of Manila, our plane landed at Caticlan in the midst of a storm unleashing its fury upon the Visayas region of the archipelago. Already at the point of receding, the current wet and cloudy weather has been hugely unfortunate without having actually dampened our excited and eager spirits. Who could complain when we literally wake up on a paradise island featuring the second most beautiful beaches in the world?
From Caticlan to Boracay on a boat
Once a protectively-guarded secret, Boracay quickly became a cosmopolitan tourist destination with industrialization and commercialization beating steady and strong on the island like waves during the monsoon season.
Starbucks chillin' by the beach
There are many tourists who, like me, are unfazed by the stormy season. They walk the white sandy beaches in sandals and are barraged by Filipino vendors offering them deals on various water activities, by signs enticing them to eat whatever world cuisine they hold an appetite for, and by glittering shops lining the beach each seducing the passerby to take a look and, having lured them in, to take a bite and leave their hard-earned peso, dollar, and won behind.
The activities on the island start and stop with the ebb and flow of currency. The power of money is apparent everywhere you look. It gets you luxurious waterfront hotels at which to stay, mountain excursions during the day, sailboat rides during the night, and the attention of Filipina women all the time in between.
Couple #1
Something that our group has noticed during our stay here has been the couples, especially those pair consisting of a Caucasian male and a Filipina female. There are a lot of them. I am sure that there are Filipinas who are engaged in a genuinely loving relationship with their white foreign partners. While the reasons are complex and the motivations occupy various hues, the fact that most Filipina women are poor and hard-pressed to seek a means of alleviating theirs and their family’s lot in life is a detail that cannot and shouldn’t be dismissed. Their poverty leads them to seek the attention and garner the company of moneyed foreigners who appeal to them on multiple levels, from their non-Filipino physical features to the more blatant candidates of money and social status.
Fresh mango shake, I could have you with every meal!
Late one night, as my hands were cradling a glass of mango shake at a restaurant by the beach, I noticed one of these couples simpin’ in a corner. According to a friend of mine who is well-versed in the ways of slang, simpin’ means to cuddle. An old white man had his arm slung over the shoulders of a young Filipina woman who was busy pretending to look normal as he continuously kissed her neck and patted various parts of her body with his hands and eyes.
Couple #5
“No, no,” my friend told me, “that’s not simpin’.” Apparently he had been looking at them, too, albeit with more critical eyes.
He continued, “Simpin’ implies a genuinely loving relationship and a mutual affection for each other. This is more like trickin’. That dude’s ’trickin’.”
Couple #16
Apparently trickin’ is when a man spends a lot of money on a woman with the objective of getting her to sleep with him. Like Steve Carrell and Tina Fey in the movie “Date Night,” we made various assumptions and speculated at the quality and depth of the couple’s relationship as we ate our late-night dinner. Based on the man’s overzealous show of affection and the woman’s measured reactions to his intimate advances in public, my friend concluded that, most likely than not he was in it for sex and she was in it for the status and money. The connotation of prostitution was heavy.
My friend was angry and I was sad.
Knowing that my own Filipina mother was once married to a white American, I was more inclined to give the couple the benefit of the doubt. I thought to myself that, perhaps, they were married and were honeymooning. The woman was going to produce beautiful half-Filipino, half-American babies – mestizo babies whose Western physical features would give them both esteem and advantage in Philippine society.
Couple #29, and so on...
I shared this with my friend and he said:
“That’s colonial mentality right there, and I hate it!”
The concept of colonial mentality (a form of internalized oppression), like other topics in our course readings are easily-observable in everyday life whether we are in Boracay or in other parts of the Philippines.
The article “The Colonial Mentality Scale (CMS) for Filipino-Americans: Scale Construction and Psychological Implications” by E.J.R. David and Sumie Okazaki describes how a scale which measures colonial mentality among Filipino-Americans has shown that this construct consists of five related factors and, both authors claim, has also revealed colonial mentality’s association with the psychological well-being and mental health of modern day Filipino-Americans.
These adverse mental and psychological realities exist for many Filipinos and though it is not certain whether they are caused by or is causing colonial mentality, the authors speculate that the two are associated.
According to the article, “Filipino youths have one of the highest rates of suicide ideations and attempts in the United States,” and that, as an ethnic group, depression is more prevalent among Filipino-Americans than the US general population (241).
Imported goods > Philippine-made goods at a store in the UP campus
These saddening statistics are connected to colonial mentality which involves “an automatic and uncritical rejection of anything Filipino and an automatic and uncritical preference for anything American” (241). This characterization is manifested in the various ways that Filipino-Americans find to denigrate themselves and the Filipino culture or body.
This denigration of the Filipino self, culture and body was what made my observant friend spitting angry even as he presided over a steaming plate of Tapsilog at the restaurant. I am not excluded when I say that many Filipinos manifest colonial mentality in their regard of White physical characteristics as more attractive, advantageous and desirable. Reading articles like this makes me think about all the other spoken and unspoken ways I manifest colonial mentality. Articles like these push me to truly think on why I/Filipinos/Filipino-Americans suffer from such feelings of inferiority, embarrassment and self-hate about being who we are ethnically.
Our breakfast spot at Boracay, because it served everything-silog, and because it was cheap
For a while now, I’ve told myself that I would never marry a Filipino man. When we would visit family here in the Philippines they too would discourage marrying our kind, saying Filipino men were serial womanizers, would only leave their families, and would never be able to provide for their families.
A Filipino-American friend of mine was recently and outwardly contemplating this tendency of Filipina/Filipina-American girls to date white guys.
“What is that about?” he said incredulously. “I mean…Filipino guys have a lot to offer, too!”
These kinds of mindsets that I (and my family, and my relatives, and my neighbors) hold convince me that there must really be such a thing as colonial mentality, and just thinking about all the other hidden psychological effects centuries of colonialization under Spain and the US may have on me and my people gives me pause.
Sailboats on the shores off of Boracay
Boracay is beautiful but it is because of her much-coveted charms that she stands prostituted by big foreign businesses today, among other things. In Boracay, some Filipinas have a stage upon where to engage a foreigner. They might marry, they might not. In Boracay, Filipino men-turned-women cast their baits too waiting for a foreigner to bite the hook. In Boracay, the original owners of the land, the Atis, come out of the woodworks at night and beg. Their short stature, dark complexion and tightly-curled and textured hair stand as the antithesis to everything Western, or American – in short, the opposite of everything Filipinos have been subconsciously conditioned to find attractive and worthy in people. David and Okazaki has a term for this: covert manifestation of colonial mentality, or when a person who has internalized their supposed inferiority then attempts to distance themselves from the Filipino traits and characteristics that are deemed inferior (aka being short and dark).
Children from a Negrito tribe called Ati, the original inhabitants of the island of Boracay
It is a profoundly strange and sad story that the Atis went from being the original inhabitants of the island to the pesky beggars whose forlorn figures and dark, outstretched hands make people feel uncomfortable. They are an aberration to the picture of Boracay as a paradise island and so, no matter how much more real their eternally hungry and bedraggled existence are than the clear blue skies and calm waters chronically pictured in Boracay, their dark, sullen faces will never grace the front of a postcard.
A completely screwed up picture of what it means to be beautiful in the Philippines and other parts of the world
Despite the fact that many don’t see the whole picture, there are others who are striving to use their awareness and gifts to spread the word and recreate the world.
The article “Hip-Hop and critical Revolutionary Pedagogy: Blue Scholarship to Challenge “The Miseducation of the Filipino” by Michael Viola delves into how Blue Scholars, a musical duo, is active in taking the Filipino struggle for liberation not only, as Peter McLaren says, “on the picket line or protest march, but also in the schools, places of worship, libraries, shop floors, and corporate offices” (12) with their lyrics.
Once again, Blue Scholars’ drive to educate the masses on how to “understand the world but more importantly to transform it” (13) upholds education as a vital weapon in raising awareness of the country’s problems and in mobilizing its people to do right by her.
In the article, Viola reinforces Renato Constantino’s 40-year-old analysis of the Philippine education system, saying that the educational system the United States government created in the Philippines “was never intended to promote democracy, freedom and equality” but rather “as means to pacify the Filipino people with ‘the overriding objective of preserving and expanding American control’”(1).
This man was a very active member of the audience. At one point, he asked Lim in Filipino (but I paraphrase in English): "If you talk of revolution, and for any change to occur we need a revolutionary mindset. What is this mindset?" Very astute man. I suspect him of being a professor in plainclothes
Viola recalls how former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo encouraged colleges and universities to “train our sights on strengthening [the] overseas workers base. Beginning with tweaking the school curriculum to make the Filipino the best worker in the world” (2). In the same breath, Viola also recalls the fact that ever since the US-backed Marcos dictatorship “the comparative advantage of the Philippine economy has been the exportation of Filipino bodies throughout the world as cheap labor.”
Clearly, these Filipino presidents did not have the have the best interest of the Filipino masses in mind, nor did they see or intended to use education as a means by which their very own people could attain “democracy, freedom and equality.” Instead, education itself is being misused to create a reserved army of labor from which big businesses can draw dirt-cheap laborers.
I acquired a new understanding of the situation of Overseas Contract Workers (OFWs) when I read that these “new heroes” are actually part of a forced diaspora, and that the fruit of their labor (their annual remittance from abroad) is what is actually “keeping the Philippine economy afloat, repaying the interest of foreign debt” (Viola 2).
From this, I garner that whether the average Filipino is stationed here or abroad, the system has been designed so that their bodies and hard toil are always somehow working towards the interest of the elite landowners and capitalists.
This situation calls to mind an essay by Vicente M. Diaz called “Pappy’s House: History, Pop Culture, and the Reevaluation of a Filipino-American “Sixty-cents in Guam.” In it, Diaz points out the role of the black momma or Aunt Jemima “of the pancake-and-syrup frame” who constitutes the white image of the mother. According to Diaz, Aunt Jemima, complete with her apron and bandana, is a strong symbol of domestication and labor. It is because Aunt Jemima “shouldered the brutal actualities of life” in caring for and nurturing white men and men that freed and enabled them to pursue and cement an image of chivalrous gentlemen and debutante belles in the South.
Just as Aunt Jemima can be seen as an enabler, I am beginning to see OFWs as figures of the same. Through their hard work abroad, they are not only helping keep the Philippine economy afloat, they are also “supporting the luxury and privilege of less than 1 percent of the Filipino ruling class” (Viola).
Although we are not OFWs, this claim makes a strong impression on me because my family has been sending a steady stream of financial support to my grandmother in the Philippines. Despite the hardships that family on either end of the globe endures to make this situation work, the money we send over is never enough. There is something wrong with the system when there is never enough to go around; when nine million Filipinos work abroad instead of at home; and when millions of Filipinos scramble for the opportunity to leave the country at their heels; there is something wrong when the 25 richest Filipinos own more than the 33 million poorest Filipinos combined (Anakbayan). There is something wrong.
Millions of Filipinos not in the Philippines
Whatever is wrong, it cannot solely be attributed to the United States.
During this trip, my reaction to what has constituted the physical, religious, cultural and mental invasion by foreigners upon the constitution of the Filipino people has been one of compounding resentment and what some of my more loyal readers and vocal friends have kindly taken to informing me as carrying an increasingly anti-American sentiment.
As a response to my last post regarding the strategic miseducation of the Filipino masses by American political and educational leaders, one anonymous commenter quoted a part of my post and wrote: "the language of our oppressor" Don't forget that your 'oppressor' is giving you a college education."
I cringed when I read that. It reminded me of how, at the end of the day, I will indeed be returning to my relatively comfortable and privileged life in the states and, if I so choose, no longer think on, much less grapple with the issues that afflict the masses here and that have, week by week, reading by reading, lecture by lecture, percolated into my consciousness and stirred my conscience into writing a flurry of what has apparently come off as ungratefulness towards America, my educator, my benefactor, my adopted land.
However, let it be known that I am not anti-American, I am pro-Philippines.
There is something about seeing the Philippine flag waving in the air that gets me every time
Unlike the majority of the students on this trip, I am a Filipino citizen; born and raised here, my motherland is the Philippines and I hurt when I see her hurt, it makes me want to fight when I see her downtrodden and attacked by others – be that Spain who whipped her with the cross, Japan who pierced her breast with a bayonet, America who continues to disembowel the Philippines of her secret charms, or any other power who lurks in the shadows harboring other ignoble designs.
Another comment I received was longer and reads to the effect of: because the Philippines is considered a third world country, she will probably be worse off if American did not “intervene and rescue us;” that US offenses are nothing compared to the destruction that the Spaniards and the Japanese wrought in the country; and that we need to give America credit because they have done “more good for the Philippines than other countries have” in constantly being willing to help us.
This comment is from a person dear to me and who cares enough about my learning experience to offer an honest critique of my work. I can feel my mind suffering from the effects of two powerful forces vying to influence me to adopt a certain manner of thinking. I read this comment right after reading David and Okazaki’s article on colonial mentality and the words “colonial debt” flashed in my head and seared themselves onto my consciousness.
An advertisement tacked onto a billboard at UP
Going back to the article, it says that colonial debt graces the picture “when one has adopted the belief that the colonizers are superior and has begun to emulate the colonizers because of their alleged superiority.” Furthermore, David and Okazaki characterize colonial debt as when a person begins to view the colonizers as “well-intentioned, civilizing, liberating, or noble heroes” and when s/he may be more inclined to normalize maltreatments “because one may perceive such experiences as the natural cost for progress or civilization” (242).
This progress or civilization may never actually reach its full capacity because, interestingly enough, there are economic regulations and corporate policies that keep the country in a semi-feudal, semi-colonial state.
The same comment reads: “If the Philippines is in poverty that is our own leaders’ doing. Not America’s fault.” Certainly, within Philippine society, there is an elite group that constitutes the leadership and that greatly contributes to the suffering of their own people.
According to a political activist group Anakbayan, all Philippine presidents, starting all the way back to the presidents during the Commonwealth era, have been puppets of the US government.
The picture changes when one realizes that much-despised Philippine presidents such as Marcos and, most recently, Arroyo who have kidnapped, tortured, and killed thousands upon thousands of Filipinos were financially-enabled and militarily-supported by the United States. The picture changes because it reveals America operating on the basis of self-interest instead of self-sacrifice. Neither America nor the Philippine government can maintain their power without the consent of the other.
Viola cites Antonio Gramsci as saying that no matter how powerful or repressive a regime, it could not sustain itself through physical coercion alone; that to legitimize control “the ruling class must direct and influence people to consent to their own oppression through a system of coordinated (political, religious, economic, cultural, and educational) alliances” (3).
At UP before the public forum started
During a public forum I attended at the UP called “The Military on the Mend – Or Are the Mistahs Waiting for a Messiah?” Danilo D. Lim, a retired Brigadier General in the Philippine Army, shared his experiences of battling against corruption within the military and political arenas in the Philippines.
After calling the past Arroyo administration a “bogus” presidency, Lim was three years detained as a captain and over four years incarcerated as general all because he sided with the people in opposing the illegitimate Arroyo regime.
He said, “But no matter how hard I tried to do the right thing, I was constantly surrounded by corruption.” Lim also acknowledged the role the military plays in preserving the status quo.
“The military is nothing but an instrument to serve the interests of the elite,” he said.
When the military, constituting an entire sector of Philippine society, is being used by the elite to oppress their own people, I would say that the elite succeeded in influencing the people (the military in this case) “to consent to their own oppression.”
Results from David and Okazaki’s study suggest that “colonial mentality is passed on to later generations through socialization and continued oppression and that it negatively affects the mental health of modern day Filipino Americans” (251).
The fact that symptoms of internalized oppression can be passed on from one generation to another is greatly unsettling. I want it to end. While I might find their approaches a bit too radical, I am grateful for groups like Anakbayan who are striving to correct the system by the only manner they see fit. I am grateful that Blue Scholars is able to use their music to not only “demystify the exploitive nature of capitalism” but also to “strengthen the heart for activism among those who listen and relate” (14-15).
Porter at Caticlan standing by, ready to help tourists with their bags
According to Viola, Blue Scholars “pull at the root of a material relation (between labor and capital) that dehumanizes those left with no other option but to sell their labor power” (18). Knowing this breaks my heart for the men and women who I see wandering the streets day and night, peddling their wares, hustling Filipinos and foreigners alike, and even some resorting to illegal activities – all because they are engaged in a mighty struggle to survive.
During Philippine President Benigno Aquino III’s second state of the nation address, one of his major points was in curbing corruption in both the government and the civil sector; he was declaring an anti-“Wang-Wang” campaign (with Wang-Wang being the abuse of power). I sat at the lounge at UP unimpressed by his address, and feeling utterly cynical and dismayed. One interesting part, however, was when he acknowledged the fact that many people are driven to desperate measures in order to provide for their families.
While Lim pointed out the corruption in the political and military arena, there are many more sectors in society that teem with corruption, including that of the police. Their meager monthly salaries of P13,000 is hardly enough to sustain their families in this economy and they are driven to do extralegal activities in order to supplement their income. While this can hardly be condoned, it is understandable considering how corrupt the upper levels of society are. Sadly, corruption trickles down like grime down the ladder of society.
Before entering the room where Anakbayan was to present their material to us, a television set by the staircase blared with images of men and women, young and old using all their might to stop the demolition of thousands of their homes – homes in the slums. I can’t forget the face of an old woman who ran up against a group of full-armored police officers and dug her heels on the ground. I thought she was going to try to reach over their shields and clobber some of them in the face but, instead, she reached out a determined hand and clutched at the armor of an officer saying, begging and crying, “Please don’t. Sir, please look at me. Have mercy. Sir please have pity on us.”
I was so stunned by the woman’s humble pleas that even my tears stood frozen, and I found myself running upstairs to catch up with the others before they could fall.
England signing a treaty returning the Philippines to Spain, and what my program director would have done if he had been there
I believe that many people can relate to the struggle for liberation, but the majority has not been able to identify a common enemy. For the masses it may be the brutal police force; for OFWs, the discrimination they endure abroad; for Anakbayan, the US-controlled Philippine government; and for those who are paying attention to historical and contemporary events, the various institutions that the US government implemented in the country, including the Philippine education system.
Like the woman fighting for the preservation of her home, Filipinos and Filipino-Americans need to dig their heels on the ground and put a stop to this. During the forum, Lim said that he went from thinking he was not part of the problem to strongly believing that he needed to be part of the solution.
I feel like all I can do right now is take all this new information in, this different version of history, and write about it. I’m here writing about it.
Last week, I acknowledged my implication in my own critique of Filipinos who have become “little Americans.” While I am learning, I realize that I am in this, too.
Writing, writing, writing,...
And it’s hurting me to be here. As my mind is expanding, I can feel my heart bleed from the strain. As I express my reactions with conviction, I am slammed for doing so. But I am here testing my voice, because having the freedom to know gives me the freedom to speak, and I am new to speaking, vocalizing.
To the person who commented anonymously, I repeat: I am not anti-American, I am pro-Philippines. I appreciate your reminder, but I also wish you knew how tough it is to go through a transformation. I am putting myself out there for you to know, and would appreciate it if next time you commented, if you would at least meet me halfway and have enough balls to sign your name.
...writing, writing, writing. And it's okay, because I'm not the only one
This whole thing is strange for me but exhilarating; dangerous but necessary. This is straining every moral fiber of my being, but I would rather endure this in all pained awareness, than stand ignorant of the pains of others.
Our houses might get torn down like the woman, and we might be incarcerated like Lim, but we must, as he says, actively seek to be part of the solution because merely claiming that we’re not part of the problem is no longer enough.
Removing ourselves from the equation is no longer an option.
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