Moussons

Recherche en sciences humaines sur l’Asie du Sud-Est

20 | 2012
Recherche en sciences humaines sur l'Asie du Sud-Est
Notes

The Insufficiency of Filipino

Nationhood
L’insuffisance de la nationalité philippine

NIELS MULDER
p. 183-196

Résumés
English Français
This essay is an exercise in the histoire des mentalités that traces the evolution of the characteristic ethos in
relation to State and nation in the Philippines. Whereas Statepropagated nationalism and associated rituals
are inescapably present, these fail to evoke the sense of belonging to a shared civil world. It seems as if the
public sphere of the State and the private sphere of everyday life do not articulate, which is practically
enhanced by the systematic exclusion of the ordinary citizen from the oligarchic political process. As it is
often expected that a civil society rooted in the emerging middle classes has the potential of bridging the gap
and of providing the cultural leadership that moulds the nation, the evolution of their members’ ideas, from
militant idealism to current self-centred morality, will be brought into focus against the dynamics of the
political economy and of a culture that is increasingly divorced from the practice of everyday life.

Cet essai relève de « l’histoire des mentalités » et trace l’évolution du génie spécifique liant l’état et la nation
aux Philippines. Tout en étant bien présents, le nationalisme diffusé par l’état et les rituels associés sont
incapables de renvoyer à un sentiment d’appartenance à un monde civil partagé. Tout se passe comme si la
sphère publique de l’état et la sphère privée de la vie quotidienne n’étaient pas coordonnées, ce qui – en
pratique – est renforcé par l’exclusion systématique du citoyen ordinaire d’un processus politique de type
oligarchique. Comme il est souvent attendu qu’une société civile enracinée dans les classes moyennes
émergentes ait le potentiel de combler l’écart et de produire le leadership culturel modelant la nation,
l’évolution des idées des membres de celle-ci – d’un idéalisme militant à l’actuelle moralité nombriliste –
sera mise au grand jour, à l’opposé de la dynamique de l’économie politique ainsi que d’une culture de plus
en plus séparée de la vie quotidienne.

Entrées d’index
Mots-clés : histoire et identité philippines, nationalisme, oligarchie contre homme ordinaire, société civile,
classes moyennes, intervention culturelle américaine, instruction civique, principes de construction sociale,
histoire culturelle
Keywords : Philippine history and identity, nationalism, oligarchy versus common man, civil society, middle
classes, American cultural intervention, civics in school, principles of social construction, cultural history
 Texte intégral

Prefatory
1 According to Gomperts et al., Indonesia’s pre-war nationalist leaders understood the need of historic
symbols for legitimating a nation-state’s cultural and national identity. Since they were fully aware
of the emotional appeal of Majapahit, they claimed it as the forerunner of a united Indonesia.
Next to this, the authors even assert that no nation can survive without knowledge of its historical
past (2010). If this is so, history has been most parsimonious in giving the Philippines its share, as
the first state on its soil was the result of Spanish imperialism. Even so, the colonial history of the
Islands must be deeply understood if we want to appreciate the present, distinctive Filipino
(Pinoy) way of life, and the festering problem of nationhood.

The problem of nationhood

2 The depth of American cultural imperialism is demonstrated by the listlessness of nation-building.
In a country like Indonesia, the erasure of the humiliation of the colonial past was not so much a
priority as a matter of course, and it is inconceivable that Indonesians would invoke Dutch
imperialism to explain the history and shape of their present nation-state. In the Philippines,
however, the Grant of Independence is still celebrated with the lowering of a conspicuous
American flag on the current hundred-peso bill, and the names of Taft, Harrison, Lawton and the
like live on. Even so, many places have been renamed after certain national heroes and many
more after not-so-heroic presidents, among whom the name of Quezon leads the pack in
obfuscating the history of provinces, towns, villages, and streets.
3 Who cares? The very cultural imperialism that thwarts nation-building also destroyed historical
continuity, and so the sense of Philippine becoming was erased. As a “modern”, American-
educated nation, people should face forward and be progress-oriented, basically agreeing with
Henry Ford’s dictum “history is bunk.” Even so, with or without history, certain circles recognised
that the depth of the colonial impact had led to the “mis-education of the Filipino” (Constantino
1966) and a “colonial mentality” that kept inferiority feelings alive while blindly accepting the
superiority of anything Stateside. As a result, in 1972 the Marcos dispensation proclaimed the
Educational Development Decree that, among other things, should remedy the “problem of
nationhood.”
4 Subsequently, school teaching became bilingual, the soft subjects, such as social studies, history,
and civics henceforward to be taught in the vernaculars and
Filipino, and arithmetic, mathematics, and natural science in English. At the same time, textbooks
were developed that should instil self-conscious pride in being Filipino (e.g., Mulder 2000: ch. 3).
Since then, first graders must study the legal complexities of citizenship, the panoply of national
symbols, and a long list of beauty spots and other geographical features of the country. The
teaching of history should emphasize 19th century nationalism and the Revolution against the
oppressive Spaniards, even as the American rape of the First Republic has to compete with the
new coloniser’s munificence. Thanks to Mother America, Filipinos became literate, healthy,
democrats, and citizens of the modern world. Upon counting these blessings follow the Freedom
Missions, the Commonwealth, and the Grant of Independence in 1946, to which it is typically
observed that the Grant came at a time that the country lay in ruins, was wallowing in poverty,
and had no identity as a free nation.
5 Under the rule of Marcos, school education apparently did not succeed in instilling a sense of
nationhood, and so, in 1987, Senator Leticia Ramos-Shahani proposed to conduct research into
“the weaknesses of the character of the Filipino with a view to strengthen the nation’s moral
fibre.” It resulted in a report, Building a People, Building a Nation, in which a panel of prominent
intellectuals, among other things, concluded that Filipinos show a deficiency of patriotism and
 appreciation of their own country, and are not in sympathy with their government. As a result and
similar to the appeal of the Educational Development Decree, they proposed that schools be
tasked to propagate such values. Subsequently, in 1989, Values Education became part of the
national curriculum.
6 Regardless of social scientists holding values to be conclusions of experience and practising
teachers knowing that “values are caught, not taught”, schools are still supposed to convince their
wards that they should be proud of being Filipinos, love their country, appreciate the good work
of their government, and be willing to sacrifice for the common welfare. Preferably, they should
be law-abiding, too. At the same time, the experience of poverty, injustice, and ineffective
governance drives many people away from their native soil.

Nationalism
7 As many columnists, educators and officials have it, the absence of vigorous nationalism is at
the root of all sorts of problems, and so, over the years, the phrase, however often repeated, has
got a hollow ring to it. The evocation of “nationalism” as a blame-all could be related to the fact
that in native Tagalog-Filipino the idea is inherently vague. Consulting Fr. English’s Tagalog-
English Dictionary, we find the equivalence of nasyonalismo and pagkamakabayan,
pagkamakabansa, diwangmakabansa, pag-ibig sa bayang-tinubuan o inang-bayan. Because love
for country is often thought to be love of its state, one may find the equivalency of estado and
bansa, bayan, and pamahalaan, and with this hotchpotch we may have come to the source of
the convenient vagueness of the term.
8 Roughly translated, the aforementioned notions of nationalism may be rendered as “to be pro-
country”, “to be pro-nation”, “to be pro-nation-spirited”, “to love one’s native soil” or “to love
mother-land”; at the same time, state becomes people/nation, country, and
regime/government. Such equivalences bedevil the subject, even as it would not take a sociology
sophomore much effort to disentangle the mess. When a movement in the southern Philippines
calls itself Bangsa Moro, it clearly sees itself as the spokesman for the Moro Nation, that is, a
grouping of people on the basis of the idea of sharing history and identity. In brief, bangsa or
bansa refers to Anderson’s felicitous term “imagined community” (1983). Naturally, the Bangsa
Moro movement aspires to run its people’s own affairs in their homeland or bayan.
9 It is not that Tagalog-Filipino totally ignores such shades of meaning as it refers to nationality
as kabansaan or “sharing in a fellow bansa”, at the same time that pagkamamamayan refers to
belonging to a certain place (bayan), and thus means citizenship. Next to these, we have the idea
of “state”, that is, of a territory (bayan) under a government that holds sway over the people
(bansa) living there. This very condition of lordship, however, tells us nothing about people’s
loyalty to that state or about their eventual identification with it.
10 Historically, nationalism as identification with the state is a recent phenomenon that was
consciously fostered in 19th century Europe as a means of building the strength of the state
through popular identification with its regime. Subsequently, it became possible to mobilize the
populace to celebrate their state and to wage war in its name for whatever reason, because
“right or wrong, my country. ” At bottom, such blind loyalty to the state has nothing “natural” to
it, but is the result of the propaganda of the owners of the state. For such nationalism to arise, it
needs to be propagated and taught, but if people distrust the message and do not accept it
wholeheartedly, the citizens will not identify with state or regime, and their loyalty cannot be
expected.
11 In order to impress on first-graders their belonging to the nation-state, they have, in step with
the American example, to study an array of national symbols. Whereas the flag is a powerful one
among these, emblems such as the bangus (milkfish) as the national fish fail to arouse positive
emotions. More amazing is it to claim the lechon (roast pig) as the national food, as it arrogantly
excludes the Moslems, and the poor, to boot. Next to these identity markers, we find the endless
repetition of certain ceremonies. Schooldays begin with raising the flag (that in many cases was
 struck half-an-hour earlier), singing the anthem (right hand on the heart), and reciting the
nationalistic vow. Following in this track, all sorts of meetings, from a social of the tennis club to
the deliberations of the Senate, go through this ritual, in which obligatory prayer takes the place
of the nationalistic vow. Depending on their schedule, people may have to endure this rigmarole
up to five times a day, and so one wonders whether its deeper meaning has not worn thin. In the
place of my research, the flag was up day and night at the town hall, and so it was at the
provincial high school. This apathy corresponds with the disinterest in national days, such as
Bonifacio Day, Rizal Day, Heroism or Bataan Day, Independence Day, National Heroes Day, etc.,
that merely remind people of the closure of banks, schools and offices, and the leisure to clean
the house. For all that, most are happily unaware that such days have been created to celebrate
the State and evoke the spirit of nationalism.

The Filipino way

12 The lack of enthusiasm for celebrating the nation-state contrasts with the days that express
Filipino-ness and exemplify Pinoy civilisation. The days in mind are Christmas, Holy Week, Flores
de Mayo, All Saints’ Day, and the town fiesta, and special occasions, such as the common
outpouring of grief at Corazón Aquino’s demise (2009), the massive sympathetic mourning after
Flor Contemplacion’s execution in 1995 in Singapore (Rafael 2000: 212-27), or when world-class
boxer Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao defends his title; then roads are deserted and everybody is
glued to the box. These are the real national days that, like Pacman’s victories, evoke
identification with the nation or bansa. A state that commemorates itself stages a military parade;
national community, however, is expressed through pride in sporting events or the victory of a
beauty queen, and the emotions sparked by popular religious observances. Then people
spontaneously express their belonging to each other and their way of life.
13 The problem is not, as ever so often stated, that Filipinos do not love their native land or are
reluctant to identify with its people. They do, much the same as almost everybody in this world.
They are willing to sacrifice themselves for its welfare as overseas’ workers in the “prison without
bars” of the Middle-East. Sure, they do not do so for the Republic, however often the latter hails
them as “heroes of the nation”, but in order to keep their loved ones afloat in a country that does
not offer any prospects. In brief, it is not a shortage of love for the native land, but a deficit of
confidence in the State and the class that runs it. So, when a regime is distrusted, schools may
propagate all the national symbols they can muster, but, in the absence of credible national
leadership, to no avail.
14 As a result, Filipino-ness is expressed in its “little-traditional” forms, and not in symbols that
stand for history and nation-state. Filipino-ness belongs to home and community. It is there that
one finds the shared and distinctive representations of the Filipino ethos; these emblems belong
to individual families and communities, such as the diplomas on the wall, graduation pictures, the
cute Santo Niño, the serene Lady of Lourdes or the stark Mother of Perpetual Help, the plaza with
its diminutive Rizal statue, the town hall and church, the basketball court, the band, the bus
waiting shed, the fiesta and processions. All of these do not refer to an exemplary centre; they
refer to nothing more than themselves. Up to the present, therefore, Filipino civilisation is
expressed in a concrete style of life rather than in the abstract sense of an encompassing nation-
state.
15 Naturally, this “little-traditional” scope is reflected in the principles of social construction of
the lowlanders who trace descent bilaterally and whose religious imagination mirrors their kinship
organisation (Mulder 1997: ch. 2). In their view, the social arrangement is a moral edifice based
on family ties, the “sacred” position of parents, hierarchy and the essential inequality of
individuals who are obliged (or not) to each other through “debts of gratitude” that spell their
tangible life world. In the absence of an alternative, sociological understanding, they experience
their moral inequality as a matter-of-course. As a result, the social studies-curriculum is devoid of
a discussion of the concepts of civil society and democratisation, other than vague statements
about the equality of citizens according to the Constitution that is repeatedly invoked as the
Mariang Makiling- or Godot-like saviour of the nation (Mojares 2002: 1-19).
16 Experience-near existence shades off into the not-morally-obliging space that appears as the
property of others, of politicians, officials, landlords and economic power-holders. Whereas this
area may be seen as “public in itself”, it is not experienced as “of the public” or “for itself”. It is
the vast territory where “men of prowess” (Wolters: 1999: 18-9) compete for power as the highly
admired social good (King 2008: 177). For the vast majority, however, the public domain is an
anarchy of impersonal and thus a-moral relationships where one ventures—if at all—to serve
one’s political and economic well-being. It is the area reported about in the newspaper and other
mass media that provide the ephemeral images and scandals by which it is, often deceptively,
substantiated.
17 In this time of mass media, with a television set in almost every home, it is the pseudo culture
of simulacra à la Baudrillard (1988) that pervasively dominates the media. Even as politics hold
the pride of place, it is consumed as a kind of spectator sport that offers no serious competition to
the lowest-common-denominator programmes broadcast country-wide. Hence, everyday culture
radiating from the centre offers little to hold on to. Through the interminable bombardment of
fleeting symbols and messages, people are anaesthetized against nationalism and identification
with the State, against the ideals of active citizenship, and against the hope for the rule of law.
They know that politics is too much talk and little substance, so why waste one’s time through
speculating about the desirable state of affairs? As a result, people feel that they had better focus
on survival, the safety of their family, and the consolation of religion.
18 At this point, it may be appropriate to note that religion, as a keystone of individual identity,
has been patently prospering in Southeast Asia, and so in the Philippines, since the 1960s, and
promises to be going strong for a long time to come (Mulder 2003: ch. 9; Willford et al. 2005:
introduction). Even as this religious drive is individual-centred in confirming a person’s moral
worth, such religiously driven righteousness can also exert not to be underestimated pressure on
those who hold political power. It was the Church’s appeal that played an important role in the
mass demonstrations against Presidents Marcos and Estrada, similar to religion being the driving
force that ousted the Shah in 1978, and a key factor in President Suharto’s resignation in 1998
and the subsequent ascendancy of Moslem leader Abdurrahman Wahid. In Thailand, the neo-
Buddhist Major-General Chamlong Srimuang of the Force of Righteousness Party brought down
Prime Minister General Suchinda Khraprayoon in 1992, and possibly protesting Buddhist monks
are more effective than Aung San Suu Kyi in undermining the Burmese junta.

Changing middle stratum

19 Whatever the changes in lifestyles and world view of the members of the educated middle
classes, we should bear in mind that they are exemplary to the rest of the populace. They are the
producers, disseminators, and consumers of mainstream and alternative ideas; they are the
mainstay of public opinion, and their milieu is the matrix of ideas about the desirable order of
society. For a while, in the 1960s and during the late-Marcos and early-Aquino years, progressive
and nationalist ideas emanating from their quarters appeared to fire the public imagination.
Nowadays, however, in a globalizing world, the nation seems to have been lost sight of, at the
same time that primordial and professional bonds give reason to behaviour.
20 If we compare with the long period of the gestation of the idea of “our nationstate” in
neighbouring Indonesia—pertinently present as of 1900, then institutionalising in the 1910s and
1920s in the Budi Utomo and Sarekat Islam associations, and from the 1920s onward in political
platforms—then post-colonial nationalism in the Philippines has been no more than a flash in the
pan. In 1946, when “sovereignty” was granted, the country was willingly more dependent on the
USofA than during pre-war days. Whereas, in the 1950s, this was emphatically protested by
politicians like Claro M. Recto and Lorenzo v. Tañada, the historian Teodoro A. Agoncillo, and the
social-activist author Amado v. Hernandez, their nationalism was not widely understood, even as
toward the end of the decade then President Carlos P. Garcia initiated a “Filipino-First” economic
policy. Altogether, these early stirrings resulted in the efflorescence of nationalistic,
socialemancipatory, and anti-authoritarian movements in the 1960s that went underground after
the declaration of Martial Law on the 21st of September 1972.
21 Following the assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino on 23 August 1983, the ideas of the
sixties resounded again throughout society. As the former students had meanwhile become
professional, this was most vociferously the case in their demonstrations in the business heart of
Makati City and in the ever more audacious opposition press. When Marcos’s shenanigans came
to a head that catapulted Ninoy’s widow Corazon to the presidency in February 1986, it seemed
as if social reconstruction was within arm’s reach. It didn’t last, and if people on the progressive
side were still in doubt, the Mendiola massacre of peasant demonstrators toward the end of
January 1987 made it abundantly clear that the now-restored oligarchy called the shots. Even so,
the formers’ intellectual heritage lived on through the early nineties in a lively NGO scene and the
alternative press, but politically the idealists had been marginalized and henceforward their ideas
were irrelevant to the public agenda.
22 Meanwhile, they have been replaced by a vast generation of professionals who, as Martial Law
babies, went to school under the dictatorship. As this was a time of state developmentalism, it
induced a career-orientation in the students that has continued into the present. Their formal
education was and is precariously low on social science and humanities content; at best they are
oriented to future progress, resulting in generations that tend to be socially inattentive and
devoid of a sense of history. This runs parallel to the sea change in technology that has
overwhelmed their experience of life. As McLuhan commented in now far-off 1964, the medium is
the message, and new media, new “extensions of man», new sources of power, production, and
efficiency irreversibly change the world and with it, mentality.
23 If momentarily concentrating on these media, we note that, in the wake of the idealistic 1960s,
television intruded into every home, and as it did, it banished books. Gradually, the calculator
and, later, the bar-code expelled mental arithmetic. In the early 1980s, the computer came of age
and revolutionised information and communication technology, at the same time that stereo and,
later, videoke, drove out the guitar; in the 1990s, the internet and e-mail picked up, and since it
has become rare to see someone lick a postage stamp. From the early 2000s on, people have
become cell-phone addicts. When we reflect on the effects of these changing media on the way
we live and imagine life to be, we’ll realise that it is an abyss that separates the 1960s with its
belief in social constructability from the present.
24 In those recent olden days of the 1960s, it appeared as if there was some integrity between
the Filipino way of life and the way it was thought to be. Nowadays, however, the outside world
seems to have been disconnected from experience as people have to go by industrially and
foreign produced images. With television and its illusions, they entered a pseudo-reality in which
it becomes increasingly problematic to separate the real from the fantastic. As a result, people
stick to their identity-confirming inner circle and hold on to their career, as all of us are finally
experiencing Buddha’s truth that life out there is maya, delusory, indeed.

Civil society?
25 Ever since, in the 1920s, Filipinos got leeway to run their affairs, the public sphere has been the
arena of traditional or money politics, presided over by, first, the colonial and, later, the neo-
colonial oligarchy. The members of this class regard the country as their private preserve and
exploit it to their advantage; consequently, they have and had no interest in creating a vibrant
public of participating citizens. As a result, ideas about the public or common welfare miss a broad
social basis, at the same time that the public realm is perceived as the field of contest of political
and economic interests. For most people, therefore, it is a sphere to defend oneself against or to
take advantage of, as one’s real life and identity belong elsewhere.
26 This concurs with the experience of contemporary mass society in which people do not actively
participate; they are simply there, much as one is in a forest without participating in nature. In
contrast with the activist student generation of the 1960s, the new urban middle stratum is not
eager to be involved in “public” affairs. Besides, these days such affairs are obfuscated by the
permanent bombardment of messages that emphasize the importance of individual lifestyles and
consumption. So, whereas the mass demonstrations that finished Presidents Marcos and Estrada
evoked the image of a vigilant civil society, deeper analysis shows that it were hegemonic
interests that engineered public opinion. Accordingly, occasional popular mobilisation occurs “in
the name of civil society” rather than as its product (Hedman 2006).
27 Apart from this, where would a vigorous civil society hail from? In the 1980s and 1990s, with
the efflorescence of all sorts of cause-oriented groups and NGOs, people were easily led to
believe in the vitality of civic consciousness, at the same time that the very proliferation of such
groups demonstrated their basic flaw, often joked about as, “Two Filipinos is two NGOs. ” To get
people to stick to a cause or a program, even when it is clearly to their advantage, is almost
impossible as long as they remain leading-personality oriented and as perennial interpersonal
rivalries keep them from making common cause. No need to say that this quality easily reduces
them to playthings of power-holders and their divide-and-rule tactics.
28 There is more to this. A vigorous civil society as a watchdog against political horse-play and
economic manipulation can only flourish if it has a vast recruitment base of well-educated and
critical people. Even as there are quite a few of such citizens, we should realise, as Anderson
cautioned in 1988, that the educated middle stratum of Philippine society is being haemorrhaged
through emigration, mostly to the USA, and so fails to develop into a significant competitor of the
oligarchy (1998: 212).
29 Ergo, in the absence of a significant civil opponent, the Philippine State is hostage to the
political and business interests of oligarchs that have no stake in strengthening it; on the contrary,
through loop holing the Constitution and a highly personalised political system, corruption has
consciously been built in (Villacorte 1987). As a result, politics is held in low esteem at the same
time that public life is subject to interests over and against which the citizens feel powerless.

Individual-centeredness
30 In view of this situation, there is little cause for wonder that most people doggedly pursue
their own course irrespective of others (kanya-kanya). In a way, this agrees with the propagation
of consumerism that stimulates people to acquire the status symbols that mark their individuality.
In other words, where society is lost sight of, its component members come to the fore, and so
the focus of public life is on outstanding, single individuals, rather than on the impersonal
“generalised other” or something as intangible as the public interest.
31 At present, the social life of the nation is appreciably open to the world, and has become part
of a post-national global environment that is not subject to any ideology or ethical system other
than the rules of political and economic expediency. Because of people’s dependence on it for
survival and advancement, it intrudes into private life, which may give cause to frustration.
Subsequently, they express their grumbling in newspaper columns and letters to the editor, in
values education courses, in sermons and exhortatory speeches that all emphasize decency,
sacrifice, and personal virtue as the well-springs of good society. This selfcentred orientation leads
away from legal or ideological attempts to come to grips with the public world that remains
hidden in vagueness. It is there to watch, not to actively participate in. As a result, only minimal
demands on the state and economy can be expected to emanate from the new urban middle
stratum.
32 This moral self-centeredness dovetails conveniently with the interests of the state-owning
class. Its introduction of values education in order to improve the quality of public life seamlessly
connected with its roots in family and personcentred morals. Later on, this thinking resounded in
the repeated appeals for moral reform that emanated from then President Arroyo. Whereas
suchlike social imagination necessarily fails to come to grips with society-in-the-abstract, it may
be soothing to the individual soul. One may even argue that it comes timely in a borderless world
that leaves the person thrown back on the comprehensible, identity confirming areas of
experience, such as family and religion.

Culture of the ruling class

33 In establishing their dominion, the Spaniards were successful in co-opting the former chieftains
(datu) and the upper echelon of freemen (maharlika) of the disparate communities (baranggay).
Through creating this privileged stratum of native principalía as their henchmen and the old
wisdom of divide and rule, the separation of the political class from the common people evolved
from early colonial times. Through the imperial policy of gathering the population “under the
bells”, these original principalía became the kernel of urban, i.e., of pueblo society.
34 A separate class of people that evolved in and around Manila were the Chinese who were
attracted by the opportunities the colonial emporium held in store. Many of them took native
Christian wives, so that by the time the Chinese were expelled from the Islands (1766), a
considerable number of Chinese-Filipino mestizos could step into their fathers’ shoes.
Entrepreneurially minded, they came to dominate the retail trade of the Islands and seized on the
opportunities—just as exponents of the principalía did—the commercialisation of agriculture and
the opening up of the country to world trade offered.
35 Since a measure of political clout and money attract each other, the two classes fused and, as
the 19th century proceeded, their intermixture gave birth to the identifiable ancestors of the
current state-owning elite (Simbulan 2005). In the last quarter of the century, this highly
successful middle class had begun to send some of its male offspring to the venues of higher
education in the colony and the mother country, giving rise to a stratum of Hispanicized
intellectuals, the so-called ilustrados, who matured as the vanguard of Filipino nationalism.
36 If these “enlightened ones” would have had it their way, and if the Americans had not
betrayed the Revolution, it could have been that their incipient cultural leadership would have
created a transcendent national ideology that could unite Filipinos as a nation . What comes to
mind in this respect are the works of José Rizal, the ruminations on the State of Apolinario Mabini,
the ideas of Pedro Paterno, T.H. Pardo de Tavera, and Isabelo de los Reyes as “the brains of the
nation” (Mojares 2006), Lope K. Santos’s dream of social justice as unfolded in his then widely-
read Banaag at Sikat (“from early dawn to full brilliance”, 1906), the authors of the hugely
popular nationalistic or “seditious” theatre plays, and the establishment of the schismatic Iglesia
Filipina Independiente.
37 It would not be. We noted the emergence of a hybrid native middle class and should be aware
of the pettiness of its political position. Hence, when this bourgeoisie joined Aguinaldo’s
Revolution, most of its members did so in the hope of combining their economic acumen with
political influence; at the same time, the majority of them was not interested in ilustrado
idealism. As the realists they were, they would soon accommodate to the new American overlord
who was, in fact, generous in dispensing political opportunity. When, in the 1920s, the lease to
the new master was relaxed, they stormed ahead in plundering the country’s resources, as if they
had never heard of the idea of the common welfare (Anderson 1998: 2023). If there was such an
idea at all, it was the Commonwealth with the United States that beckoned.
38 With the Grant of Independence in 1946, we witness the, at least for South-East Asia, curious
spectacle of a privileged class that had always been subservient to its masters becoming the
tutelary heir to the latter’s power. As a colonial creation, it is colonial history that legitimizes the
present oligarchy that has long lost its roots among the ordinary folks. Largely mestizo and
culturally oriented to the world of the West, its members do not feel to have more in common
with the ordinary people than the vernacular to give orders in. As a consolidated, privileged class,
whose power has been used to protect its landed and other interests, it stands in opposition to
those its members refer to as the “common tao” (people).
39 In other words, if there is a problem of nationhood or an absence of identification with the
common weal, the problem should be pinned on the country’s oligarchy. Repeatedly, the ordinary
people have expressed their desire to partake in the country’s course and destiny. Think of the
efflorescence of the Katipunan that initiated the Revolution of 1896, the socialist and communist
movements of the American period, the popularity of the Democratic Alliance (1945), the hope of
the masa expressed in the elections of Magsaysay (1954) and Cory Aquino (1986), the landslide
victory of “Erap” Estrada (1998), and his 30% of the vote in 2010, but whatever the hopes of the
ordinary folk, they would persistently be betrayed by the state-owning class that is averse to their
emancipation and nationalism. Let everybody in the land express their belonging through
watching a glorious Pacquiao, but the humble “common tao” should stay clear of politics and the
affairs of State, even as they are allowed to cast their vote.
40 With the elite’s power of determining the contents of the mandatory curriculum, school
teaching keeps it this way. The course outline of the subject of “History and Government” is
political through and through, and should build up to having an independent state with
sovereignty, three branches of government, and foreign relations. To anticipate this situation and
long before contact with Spain, primordial communities are said to be ánd Filipino ánd to possess
all of these, which implies that there was nothing to learn or that the continuous process of
change and becoming does not apply in the Islands. People there had a high civilisation, even
wrote down [some of] their laws as the baranggay chieftain (datu) lorded it over the thirty to one
hundred families of his jurisdiction. So, long before Montesquieu formulated the Trias Politica
(1748), the datu is said to be invested with legislative, executive and juridical power, at the same
time that he is the head of the armed forces. This is very much in the image of the absolute
monarch who proclaimed “l’état, c’est moi” (the state, that’s me) or of somebody like Marcos, the
usurper of freedom and rights, and ordinary dictator.
41 The school’s approach to history and government is crammed with this type of ahistorical and
irresponsible statements, at the same time that it keeps the becoming of the state-owning class
meticulously out of sight. Instead of presenting the cultural history of the slow evolution of a
potential nation—an endeavour that would connect the past to the present—political chronology
takes over. Through chopping up in seemingly unconnected episodes, such as the Spanish colonial
State, the Revolution of 1896, the Philippine-American War, the blessings of American colonialism
and the Commonwealth, the Japanese Occupation, Liberation, and Independence, continuity and
becoming are lost sight of. As if to highlight this rape of history, the last period is presented
through individual presidential reigns, Martial Law, New Republic, the EDSA demonstrations of
1986 that undid Marcos, more reigns, the EDSA demonstrations of 2001 that ousted Estrada, and
President Arroyo’s administration.
42 Because this periodisation highlights transient affairs, observations on the period of
Independence read like a newspaper. Some texts are adamant that politics is powered by
opportunism, corruption and shady deals—in which sense the picture of a rotten society is no
different from that in the mandatory course of Values Education. In spite of such occasional
realism, all texts must enumerate every president’s noble intentions that, alas, invariably come to
naught, even as it is never explained why this is so.
43 On the basis of so much “legitimate symbolic violence” (Bourdieu, Passeron 1977: 13-5, 24-5),
it becomes well-nigh impossible to understand social life, let alone to identify with the nation and
its past. So, if, theoretically, school should foster a sense of self that comes to include the wider
community, we may safely conclude that the way it shapes this demand makes it impossible to
imagine that one, as a student, is personally involved. Besides, at the same time that much
attention is devoted to the birth of ilustrado and popular nationalism in the period preceding the
Revolution, the present invocation of Rizal, Bonifacio, and Mabini is no better than evoking
phantoms of the past that are safely on the far side of the watershed event of the American
occupation. Ironically, current Indonesian school texts still refer to Rizal, the Revolution and the
First Republic as exemplary for the awakening of (anti-colonial) nationalism in Asia.
National transcendence?
44 In spite of all the phraseology about “nationhood”, “moral recovery”, and the
underdevelopment of “nationalism”, there is nothing that reminds of a national doctrine other
than silly lists of national symbols and beauty spots, and everrepeated anthem singing and flag-
raising. The contrast with Indonesia’s Panca Sila ideology and Thailand’s theory of The Three
Institutions is striking, as these teachings clearly evoke an exemplary centre that lends legitimacy
to the institutions of the State and that sets certain parameters within which national discourses
can thrive. They also eventuated in Indonesians and Thai identifying with their nation-states as
matters-of-course.
45 As far as the Philippines goes, it is a could-have-been, as the institution of the State has never
been held in great esteem. Colonial in its origins, its contempt for and exploitation of the
populace couldn’t lend it much legitimacy. If anything, the State was something to stay away from
or to take advantage of. Accordingly, its local representatives, the principalía, developed a
political culture of artfulness and deceit in balancing the demands of a powerful overlord with
their own interests (Corpuz 1989: xii-iii). When they were finally put to the task of organizing the
State on their own, they duly wrote the foundational ideas of People’s Sovereignty, Justice,
Separation of Powers, Popular Representation, and (quality) Education in its charter. However,
since all or most of these are no better than figments of a foreign imagination, they were never
taken seriously, and so, when Marcos’s remarkable predecessor, Commonwealth President
Manuel L. Quezon, established himself as a virtual dictator, he held no scruples about editing the
1935 Constitution to his liking (McCoy 1989).
46 Since then, a perennial deficit of popular endorsement, poor performance, and political
manipulation prevented the institutions of the State, such as the President, Congress, and the
Supreme Court, to develop into shining, transcendent centres of the nation. As a result, there is
little high-cultural substance to overarch the littletraditional way of life of the general public. The
only nation-wide institution that could possibly qualify is the Church, but few are those who
would point to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines as an authoritative centre, not
only because it dirties its hands in politics or because of its unpopular position regarding
reproductive health, but most particularly because church-life belongs to the parish and its local
traditions.
47 Arguably, History is the great institution of a nation-state for sanctioning its identity. It is the
source of emotive symbols that lend pride and reason to the present as the presumptive
continuation of a semi-mythic past. Even so, whereas the Indonesians have their Majapahit and
the Thai their Sukhothai, American imperialism cheated the Philippines of the glory of being the
first Asian nation to defeat, seven years ahead of Japan, a Western power—an event that inspired
nationalists from Sun Yat Sen to Sukarno. Unfortunately, the Americans kept the humiliation of
being a colony alive at the same time that they were over-eager to denigrate the country’s
cultural past and relegate it to the dustbin of irrelevance. Through creating, in Nick Joaquin’s
metaphor, a lettered generation of people without fathers and grandfathers, or, in the colonial
trope, Little Brown Brothers, culture and history were aborted, and with it confidence and pride in
identity and continuity. In brief, American aggression and tutelage brought about a cultural
calamity.
48 The history of the Philippines begins with the Spanish conquista, and if we keep our focus on
this political event, history has given the Filipinos a bad deal. Political history, however, is
ephemeral; it is like the events of the day in the newspaper that serves to wrap salted fish the day
after. If we want history to cohere, we have to be aware of the spirit of the times, of intentions
and motivations. Since these constitute the gist of history, we had better follow Febvre’s call for
tracing the evolution of the ways of thinking and experiencing of the common man, the elite and
other relevant groups (1973). When we follow this advice, we will find the relevance of the past
to understanding current existence. What began with the introduction of the plough and new
crops, the wheel and the horse, Catholicism and the printing press, and the opening of the
country to Asia and the world, had its repercussions on mentality and eventually aroused the
 spirits of popular, ilustrado and elitist nationalisms, the idea of Filipino identity, and ideas on how
to give these shape in a free country.
49 It is regrettable to note that already in the days of the successful Revolution against Spain, the
nationalist potential of all and sundry imagining to belong together was effectively debilitated.
Firstly, through the liquidation of the popular Katipunan leader Andres Bonifacio soon after the
petty bourgeois leadership of Aguinaldo had effectively taken over. Then, through the blatant self-
serving nature of most members of the leading class (e.g., Guerrero 1982). Thirdly, through the
explicit exclusion of the common people when the principalía set up their Malolos Republic (1898-
99) that, fourthly, lorded it over the populace so abusively that many became nostalgic of the
Spanish past (ib.: 175-79). No wonder that at the time the Republic was fighting the Americans,
many of the ordinary citizens turned their back on it and even offered organised resistance, such
as the Guardia de Honor in Pangasinan. As a result, there is no cause for wonder that, in 1902, the
peasantry of Palanan, Isabela, had no scruples in delivering the Republic’s President Aguinaldo to
the Americans after he had sought refuge there (Joaquin 1988: ch. 10).
50 Apart from the endemic split between the haves and the have-nots, the equally endemic
opportunism of most of the erstwhile republican leadership made them side with the Americans
as soon as they recognised which side their bread was buttered on. Whereas popularly based
pockets of resistance against the new supremacy held out until 1912, the Americans had little
trouble in dousing the principalía’s nationalist impetus, firstly through opening up political and
economic opportunity, then through saturating the privileged class with American-style
modernity and school education.
51 What remained, in spite of the American steamroller, was and is the Pinoy way of life with its
multitude of distinctive features, in which we recognize and the deep past, and Spanish cuisine
and Catholicism, American fast-food, coke and historical obfuscation, and the inescapable
onslaught of ever new media. Even so, in spite of these vicissitudes, there is much more
continuity in the epic of Philippine becoming over the last 500 years than between the heyday of
Majapahit and present-day Indonesia. This continuity demonstrates a certain national
transcendence and a culturally colonial past that can usefully serve to create the sense of nation,
such as plausibly pioneered by Corpuz, Joaquin, and Zialcita.
52 When we train our attention on the history of the political-economy, however, we’ll see that,
under whatever regime, a consolidated, privileged class developed whose interests are opposed
to those of the common people. As the modern day principalía, they have no interest in providing
the cultural leadership an imagined community needs to refer to. In this they are supported by a
social imagination that is myopically focussed on the immediate experience of life and media that
almost exclusively centre on political personalities.

The insufficiency of nationhood

53 The insufficiency of Filipino nationhood lies in its failure to mould the population into an organic
whole or an encompassing moral order in which people imagine that they belong together. In the
absence of a shared narrative of collective emancipation that ties private life to an authoritative
centre of nationhood, we find two nations in the independent Philippine State, that is to say, the
largely mestizo elite and the “common tao.” Since these “nations” cannot articulate, it keeps all
and sundry—inclusive of the members of the new middle classes—from identifying with the
whole and prevents them from developing into a nation of responsible citizens. As a result, nation
building remains a task stretching way into the future. WOLTERS, O.W., 1999, History, Culture and
Religion in Southeast Asian Perspectives, Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies (rev. ed.
of 1982 orig.).
ZIALCITA, Fernando N., 2005, Authentic though not Exotic; Essays on Filipino Identity, Quezon City:
Ateneo de Manila University Press.
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso.