Altered Natives Looking at Alternatives (First of two parts)

Is there a Filipino identity? Yes, there is and the celebration of Araw ng Kagitingan should be an occasion to put in proper historical perspective the development of that identity. 

Our Filipino identity is rooted in the development of our political and cultural consciousness.

Before the Spaniards came, our people already had commercial relations with neighboring Asian countries such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia and even India and some Arabian countries.  This is not to mention inter-island trading among the populace.  The people had governments as may be shown in the sultanates, the barangay and the indigenous tribunals in the hinterlands.

Pre-hispanic Philippines was predominantly Muslim with other indigenous tribes practicing primitive animistic religion.

Spanish colonialism interrupted what would have been a natural development of our society and superimposed a political and cultural system that supplanted much that it found.  More than three centuries of Spanish rule made Roman Catholics a larger percentage of the population. 

An outstanding benefit under Spanish colonialism was the unification of the Filipinos in common struggle which led to the growth of a nationalist consciousness. The launching of The Propaganda Movement by Filipino émigrés in Europe hastened the culmination of events marked by the Revolution of 1896.  This resulted in the secession of the Philippines from the Spanish Empire. 

But our freedom was short-lived.  The development of the first Philippine Republic under Emilio Aguinaldo was aborted with The Treaty of Paris at the end of the Spanish–American War which transferred control of the Philippines to the United States.  The Philippines came under American military rule from 1898 to 1901, a US territory from 1901 to 1935, then finally a Philippine Commonwealth from 1935 to 1945 supposedly as a transition period to prepare the Philippines for self-rule. 

However, four decades of direct and indirect American rule prepared a political elite that took turns taking the reins of government through democratic elections. To most Filipinos, the exercise of the right of suffrage is the hallmark of a democratic government regardless if these are generally intramurals among a certain section of the citizenry. 

While the Spaniards entrenched the feudal base, the Americans made use of this as a resource for its industries.  The Philippines, thereby, became an exporter of raw materials to the US and at the same time a market for its finished products.  We became a clientele not only for American-made consumer goods but for an educational school system and mass media that encouraged a cultural consciousness that was Western and colonial in orientation.   This generated a kind of cultural schizophrenia which made many Filipinos embarrassed about the color of their skin and the shape of their noses. 

But Filipinos are neither broken pieces of driftwood lashed by the waves of time nor passive onlookers making conjectures from the sidelines.  Historical events have been periods of engagement where Filipinos have learned to separate the chaff from the grain, myth from reality.  We have been altered by history but we can also alter the course of history.