DECOLONIZATION - A POST-COLONIAL PERSPECTIVE

"Certain marks of colonization are still manifested by the people. I have arbitrarily identified these marks as dependence, subservience, and compromise." – Dr. Pura Santillan-Castrence (1905-2007)
NOTE: I add "compromise" to mean at the expense of our homeland and native peoples' expense - Bert

"Only the strong, unrelenting efforts of Filipino people can erase the blemishes to our culture and remove the negative label attached to it. Fortunately, there are concerned Filipinos who, with all their might, attack 'these cultural damages' with the pen and with the tongue. They are unrelenting." – Dr. Pura Santillan-Castrence (1905-2007)

"To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful." - Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965)

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NOTES TO READERS:  
1. Colored and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posts/articles. Forwarding this and other posts to relatives and friends, especially those in the homeland, is greatly appreciated. To share, use all social media tools: email, blog, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. THANKS!!
2. Click the following underlined title/link to checkout these Essential/Primary Readings About Us Filipino Natives:
Primary Blog Posts/Readings for my fellow, Native (Malay/Indio) Filipinos-in-the-Philippines
3. Instantly translate to any of 71 foreign languages. Go to the sidebar on the right to choose your preferred language.
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LET US NOT KEEP OUR HEADS IN THE SAND

Decolonization: A Post-colonial Perspective

Prasenjit Duara of the University of Chicago explores decolonization in the twentieth century
Richard Gunde

Decolonization was among the most significant phenomena of the twentieth century. Indeed, it helped shape the history of the past century, and in one way or another, either directly or indirectly, affected the lives of nearly everyone, all across the globe. In its shape and duration, decolonization varied from place to place. Furthermore, it has been evaluated in many different ways. But in any case, its importance is beyond question.

In a talk on January 30 sponsored by the International Institute’s Comparative and Interdisciplinary Research on Asia (CIRA) program, Prasenjit Duara (professor of History and of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago) sought to interpret decolonization without reducing its variety and contingency. In the process, Professor Duara grappled with many of the fundamental questions of decolonization which continue to exercise scholars.

In what ways was the promise of decolonization fulfilled? How can we understand new forms of global domination in relation to this movement? Which strains and problems of decolonization continue to manifest themselves today? Why is it important to look at the historical moment of decolonization? How did nationalist, anti-colonial elites relate to the metropole and to their own people?

Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then

Professor Duara’s point of departure was his edited reader Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then (Routledge, 2003) The website of Routledge, the publisher, describes in the book in this way:

"Decolonization brings together the most cutting edge thinking by major historians of decolonization, including previously unpublished essays, and writings by leaders of decolonizing countries, including Ho Chi-minh and Jawaharlal Nehru. The chapters in this volume present a move away from the Western analysis of decolonization, towards the angle of vision of the former colonies. This is a groundbreaking study of a subject central to recent global history."

The impetus for the volume is simple. Professor Duara explained that many of the ideas that motivated decolonization in the interwar period, and in the postwar period up to 1980, “are beginning to disappear.” Thus, “it is important to capture” those ideas.

What are those ideas? It a word, much more than a change in political regime. “Decolonization,” Professor Duara argued, “represented not only the transference of legal sovereignty but a movement for moral justice and political solidarity against imperialism.” Thus decolonization involved both the anti-imperialist political movement and an “emancipatory ideology which sought ... to liberate the nation and humanity itself.”

“Until World War I, historical writing had been the work of the European conquerors.” Europeans viewed the peoples outside Europe as “without the kind of history capable of shaping the world. The process of decolonization which began towards the end of World War I was accompanied by the appearance of national historical consciousness” in regions outside Europe. This directly contributed to the birth of a literature by the colonized that dissected imperialism and decolonization.

It is this literature that allows us -- who live in the West, in the former colonial powers -- to witness the process from the other side, so to speak. It also has “enabled us to see how happenings in one region, no matter how peripheral . . . were often linked to processes and events in other parts [of the globe].” In other words, despite the variety of colonialisms and decolonizations, the history of decolonization in the twentieth century presents a coherent, interconnected phenomenon.

Nevertheless, Professor Duara argued, we must recognize that within the movement for decolonization, there was considerable variability from place to place. This makes it difficult, if not pointless, to try to pass judgment on all of decolonization, to decide once and for all if it succeeded in achieving its goals. Indeed, the recent debates surrounding post-colonialism have raised the question of the extent or thoroughness of decolonization when “independence from colonial powers meant the establishment of nation-states closely modeled on the very states that undertook imperialism.” 

While this question may be relevant for some places, it may hardly be the most important question to ask about movements in other places. What Professor Duara has attempted to do in Decolonization: Perspectives from Now and Then is to represent the variation in the experience of decolonization “without losing sight of the core historical character of the process.”

Imperialism and Colonization

The event that symbolized the beginning of the movement was the victory of Japan over Czarist Russia in 1905, “which was widely hailed as the victory of the dominated peoples against the imperialist powers.” The event symbolizing the culmination of this movement was the Bandung Conference, in Indonesia in 1955, a meeting of representatives of 29 new nations of Asia and Africa. The conference “aimed to express solidarity against imperialism and racism and promote economic and cultural cooperation among these nations.” 

The conference led to the nonaligned movement, which encompassed countries that nominally or in reality chose to remain neutral in the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States. With the end of the cold war in 1989, the nonalignment movement became irrelevant.

The imperialism that Professor Duara is concerned with is the imperialism of the Western powers, and later Japan, that began roughly in the late 1870s. It was characterized by, in Professor Duara’s words, “brutal and dehumanizing conditions” that were imposed on the colonized peoples in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific islands. In addition, “as Karl Marx noted, this imperialism represented an incorporation of these regions into the modern capitalist system.” 

Thus the building of colonial empires in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century -- by the U.S., Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands -- became “an integral part of the competition for control of global resources and markets.” The ideology that accompanied this struggle was Social Darwinism: “an evolutionary view of the world that applied Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest to races and nations and justified imperialist domination in terms of an understanding that a race or nation that did not dominate would instead be dominated.”

From the perspective of the colonized, this incorporation “inevitably involved the erosion of existing communities as they experienced the deepening impact of capitalism and alien cultural values.” Often colonies became bifurcated, with a relatively developed coastal sector with close ties to the metro-pole  and a vast hinterland where historical “forms of social life and economic organization” continued to exist. But they did not continue to exist unchanged. Instead, the long fingers of capitalism reached far into the hinterland, to extract value (crops, minerals, labor, and so on) and to market "modern," finished products. “This is,” Professor Duara stated, “the phenomenon . . . known as the articulation of the modes of production, whereby modern capitalism utilizes non-capitalist modes of production and exploitation for the production of capitalist value.”

The gap between the relatively modern coastal areas and the relatively traditional hinterland involved “different types of incorporation into the capitalist system.” This gap often came to “shape and bedevil the decolonization process.”

Anti-imperialist nationalism typically emerged in the urban, coastal sectors, “where modern capitalist forms of knowledge, technology, capital, and organization had spread more widely.” It was also in the urban, coastal areas that the colonized peoples most directly and personally experienced “constant denial and humiliation because of their color or origins. But they were also people who, like Gandhi for instance, clearly recognized the contradictions these actions presented to Western doctrines of humanism and rationality.” Finally, they were the people “who understood the modern world well enough to know how to mobilize resources to topple colonial domination.”

Mass Movements of Decolonization

By far the most important resource to resist colonialism, and eventually to overthrow it, was the people of the colonized nations. How could the urban, modern nationalist elite reformers mobilize the people of the hinterlands and the lower classes of their society? While such mobilization was key to the success of decolonization, the answer to this question was never easy or obvious. On the contrary, the elite reformers increasingly found their compatriots in the hinterlands “living in a world that was. . . alien and distasteful.” The masses, for their part hand, found that “the modern programs of secular society -- national education, the nuclear family, and so on -- were quite inimical to their concept of a good society.”

The task for the nationalist reformers was not merely to bridge this gap, but “to remake hinterland society in their own image. This image derived both from their conception of humanistic reform as well as the need to create a sleek national body capable of surviving and succeeding in a world of competitive capitalism.” The decolonization movement was thus confronted by two tasks: “to fulfill the promise of its humanistic ideals and modern citizenship and, [at the same time,] to create the conditions for international competitiveness.”

Different nationalist movements used different methods of force or violence combined with education and persuasion. Nevertheless, in every case success seemed to hinge on the creation of nationalism. To the extent the elite reformers succeeded in generating a sense of national awakening that appealed to virtually all people, the leaders believed they had won the right to make the transformations -- such a land reform -- that they believed to be essential to the survival of the nation.

Professor Duara noted that many of the former colonies were not bereft of “indigenous foundations of modernity.” In this regard, he mentioned the “discovery” by “nationalist scholars” of, for instance, “the spouts of capitalism” in traditional China. But the problem with these findings is that they are “located within an evolutionary paradigm containing the implicit, and sometimes explicit, argument that these developments would have ultimately led to modern capitalism and nationalism. This is an instance of how nationalists adopted the basic assumptions of the evolutionism of their colonial masters.” In Professor Duara’s view the way that decolonization unfolded had more to do with “more immediate conditions and circumstances.”

The Role of Socialist Ideas & Women’s Movements

Professor Duara identified the spread of socialist ideas as a key to the decolonization movement. However, socialist ideas of equality and cooperation often collided with the demands of nationalism. For example, the Soviet Union supposed anti-imperialist, anti-colonial movements, but under the domination of Stalin it adopted policies that often put the particular interests of the Soviet Union before the interests of foreign revolutionary movements.

Similarly, nationalists often co-opted and distorted the struggle for women’s rights. Colonial powers often gasped upon women’s rights as a way of reinforcing their rule. Thus they championed the liberation of women. Nationalists typically placed the needs of the nation first. Thus they often viewed the role of women as helping to make the nation strong by rearing healthy children. 

This was not a merely reproduction of traditional patriarchal thinking, since nationalists believed women should educated and fully incorporated in the modern nation. But in any case “they were to be the mothers of the nation, protecting and cherishing its inner values, especially in the home.” Thus we have “not a traditional patriarchy but a national patriarchy.”

In large part, the nationalist resistance to labor movements and women’s movements was based on a notion that the nation had deep, historical, even primordial roots. This sort of thinking allowed nationalists to challenge the imperialist contention that the civilized world was limited to the West. This “led to a sense of psychological liberation in the colonized world.”

Indeed, many intellectuals in the colonized world came to view Western civilization as bankrupt. Hence modernity could only be saved by the new nations, which would harmonize or synthesize the values of the West (rationality, materialism, competitive, etc.) with those of the precolonial world. This sort of thinking appeared early in the struggle against imperialism, and appeared in the 1960s, in what Professor Duara described as the effort to resist “Occidentosis.”

Most leaders of decolonization movements combined “the appeal to an egalitarian ideal deriving from socialism with an appeal to unique civilizational traditions, whether it is timeless Indian or Chinese practices hidden among ordinary people or pan-African communitarianism which Kwame Nkrumah should to identify with authentic socialism.”

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Prasenjit Duara is professor of History and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Culture, Power and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942, which won both the Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association and the Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian Studies. He is also the author of Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (1995) and most recently, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (2003).

Source: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:rlokBGUvupUJ:www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp%3Fparentid%3D7158+education+against+colonialism+decolonization&cd=11&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

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OUR TASK: TO MAKE JOSE RIZAL OBSOLETE by PROF. RENATO CONSTANTINO (Part 2 of 2)

"For we wish to understand the spirit of an age to see into its heart and mind, and to acquire a feel for how those who lived in it responded to their world and coped with its dilemmas." - A. C. Grayling

NOTES TO READERS:  
1. Colored and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posts/articles. Forwarding this and other posts to relatives and friends, especially those in the homeland, is greatly appreciated. To share, use all social media tools: email, blog, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. THANKS!!
2. Click the following underlined title/link to checkout these Essential/Primary Readings About Us Filipino Natives:
Primary Blog Posts/Readings for my fellow, Native (Malay/Indio) Filipinos-in-the-Philippines
3. Instantly translate to any of 71 foreign languages. Go to the sidebar on the right to choose your preferred language. 4. The postings are oftentimes long and a few readers have claimed being "burnt out."  My apologies. The selected topics are not for entertainment but to stimulate deep, serious thoughts per my MISSION Statement and hopefully to rock our boat of ignorance, apathy, complacency, and hopefully lead to active citizenship.

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LET US NOT KEEP OUR HEADS IN THE SAND

"The HISTORY of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the HISTORY of the present." Ernest Dimnet, 1866-1954, French Clergyman

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful." - Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965)

NOTE: TO INSTANTLY READ IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE, GO TO THE SIDEBAR AND SCROLL "SELECT LANGUAGE."

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OUR TASK: TO MAKE JOSE RIZAL OBSOLETE by PROF. RENATO CONSTANTINO (Part 2 of 2)

To read Part 1 click on Making Rizal Obsolete – Part 1 of 2 

Borrowed Defects 

One of the tragedies of our country today is that, though formally independent, our people can understand each other (though imperfectly at that) only by means of a language not their own. This is the result of centuries of colonial rule, and we are all victims. Rizal considered our need for a foreign language as our general medium of communication, both ridiculous and pathetic. he warned strongly about the dangers of a foreign language taking the place of our own. 

In Chapter VII of El Filibusterismo, Simoun in replying to the arguments of Basilio, who like other students was working for the adoption of Spanish as a common language, admonished the young man thus: ....Spanish will never be the general language of the country, the people will never talk it because the conceptions of their brains and the feeling of their hearts can not be expressed in the language --each people has its own tongue, as it has its own way of thinking. What are you going to do with Castilian, the few of you who will speak it? Kill off your originality, subordinate your thoughts to other brains, and instead of freeing yourself, make yourselves slaves indeed!....he among you who talks that language understands it, and how many have I not seen who pretended not to know a single word of it! ...One and all you forget that while a people preserves its language, it preserves the marks of its liberty, as a man preserves his independence while he holds to his own way of thinking. Language is the thought of the people...

Our language problem is still unresolved. The Basilios and Isaganis whose mission was to propagate the foreign language in order that Filipinos might out-Castilian the Spaniard still with us, this time pretending that their tongues trip over the long Tagalog words and are at home only in English. 

Without Defenses 

When Rizal gave utterance to his views on the national language, he was not speaking as a chauvinist or a sentimentalist. Being himself a linguist, he could not have been against our learning of other languages, but only after we had fully mastered our own. It is good to understand and be understood by other people but it is essential that we understand each other first. 

Some may think that this insistence on the use of our native tongue is merely sentimental and therefore an impractical notion. We need only consider a few of the many evil consequences of our acceptance of a foreign language as our common medium of communication to realize that Simoun's angry reply to the students was true then and is even more true today. 

Many have condemned our thorough Americanization but only a few realize the large part which our adoption of English has played in this development that we deplore. By using a foreign language as our basic means of communication, we lay open, without any defenses, to the incursions of a foreign culture. Where the language barrier has served to temper the flow of this cultural invasion, affording us the opportunity of intelligent, deliberate, and selective assimilation, the irresistible influx of foreign culture for which our use of the foreign language has opened the way, has swept aside our native traditions, manners, and values. 

We are an uprooted race with very tenuous connections to our past, and consequently, we have lost much of our national pride. We have adopted foreign standards and values which are perhaps appropriate for a country with a highly developed economy but certainly not for a struggling one like ours. We assiduously try to be Occidental in thinking and manners and this has distorted our policies especially toward our Asian neighbors. 

Needless to say, our fellow Asians do not have high regard for us.  Furthermore, because our command of this foreign language is inadequate, we imbibe only the most banal aspects of its culture. 

Its cultural achievements are beyond our comprehension. Instead of processing the best of both cultures as defenders of English like to claim, the majority of our people are acquainted only with the less edifying aspects of the foreign culture and have stifled the development of their native culture or influenced its meager development in a deplorable imitation of the foreign. 

Our native literature has not developed because we prefer foreign dime novels and comics. Our native theater was smothered in its infancy by our preference for American movies. On the other hand, the poor showing of Philippine films in competition with other Asian films may perhaps be traced to our loss of national individuality so that our films are only Tagalog versions of American movies, without distinct national flavor. Our native music has not had the chance to flower, because we are enamored with rock and roll. Truly, we have bartered our heritage for a mess of pottage and we are choking on it. 

Our Intellectual Captivity 

The predicament of our student population whose scholastic life is one of continuous struggle with the English language is one more case that bears out Rizal's thesis. Those who are honest among us will have to admit that our inadequate grasp of the nuances of the language is the greatest obstacle to our acquisition of knowledge. The hordes of semi-literate professionals that our educational system produces, year in and year out, are eloquent proof of the need for a change in our medium of instruction. Rizal was against the adoption of Spanish as the common language of our people. 

In the words of Simoun, which I quoted previously, Rizal clearly states his belief that the use of a foreign tongue as our common language would result in our intellectual captivity. We have not heeded his warning. Instead, our patriotic lawmakers have even imposed 24 units of Spanish on our already bewildered student population.  The social problems of Rizal's times are still our problems. It is not surprising that the people of Rizal's novels still live in our midst. Rizal drew them from real life; they are as real today. 

The Dona Victorinas who belittle the Filipinos and pretend to be Occidentals, the Capitan Tiagos who fawn upon and cringe before the powers that be, wining and dining them, and suffering their contempt so long as their businesses continue to prosper, never giving the plight of their fellowmen a moment's thought, the Senor Pastas who persist in a life of compromise and conformism --these are only a few of Rizal's gallery of characters who still inhabit the world our hero left so many years ago. 

Foreigners' Paradise 

We exhibit the same attitude toward Westerners which Rizal sought to expose in his works. In our country today, the foreigner out to make his fortune has the best chance of success. Many doors of opportunity are open to him. because we have gotten used to regarding the white man as our superior, we have accorded him more privileges than he would enjoy elsewhere.  Rizal must have seen many instances of this same attitude during his time, for many inhibits in his novels are good examples of this defect in our character. 

There was the case of the Spanish tax collector who was accidentally killed by Don Rafael Ibarra. here was an illiterate Spaniard who was given a fairly responsible job for which he has not the slightest qualification simply because he was a Spaniard and must therefore not demean himself with manual labor. Then there was the case of Don Tiburcio de Espanada who was accepted as a physician and charged high fees only because he had come from Spain, where, incidentally, the sum total of his medical experience had consisted in dusting off the benches and lighting the fires in a hospital. 

However as in the case today, too, this lame, toothless but white man was considered a better marital catch than any better-educated native.  Many of the important foreigners in our society today are prototypes of Don Custodio de Salazar y Sanchez de Monteredondo, a character of Rizal's El Fibusterismo who was considered learned and influential in this country, but who was a small and insignificant person in his native land.

The Custodios of today wield great power in the economic, social, and political life of our country, but like Rizal's Don Custodio, it is doubtful if these personages, had they remained in their homelands, could command a second look in the side streets of their neighborhood. 

A Broken People 

In the current move of the nationalist elements to instill the Filipino First ideal among our people, Rizal's words on the subject are most applicable. Those elements in our country who are still resisting the resurgence of nationalism should read Rizal's "The Philippines A Century Hence" and "The Indolence of the Filipinos" for in these essays he tried to show that centuries of systemic brutalization had transformed the proud, free Filipinos into a servile slave without individuality and pride. 

Rizal describes our degeneration in these words: ...They gradually lost their ancient traditions, their recollections, --they forgot their writings, their songs, their poetry, their laws in order to learn by heart other doctrines, which they did not understand, other ethics, other tastes, different from those inspired in their race by their climate and their way of thinking. Then there was a falling off, they were lowered in their own eyes, they became ashamed, of what was distinctly their own, in order to admire and praise what was foreign and incomprehensible., their spirit was broken and they acquiesced.  Rizal did not want us to acquiesce. he sought to instill in his countrymen a sense of pride in their past so that, proud of what had been, they would want to make the present and the future worthy of the past. 

When we try to re-establish our roots, when we try to rediscover our culture today, we are accomplishing what Rizal wanted his contemporaries to accomplish.  In "The Indolence of the Filipinos," Rizal rebuked his countrymen for their lack of nationalist sentiment by stating that "A man in the Philippines is only an individual. he is not a member of a nation."

Many Filipinos today, like the Filipinos Rizal was referring to, are working merely for their own interests, hardly taking into consideration the common good. Little men preoccupied with the pursuit of their petty personal goals, their apathy towards national questions spring from their circumscribed perspective and from their fear of arousing the powers that be.  Like the people of Cabesang Tales' town, many of our compatriots would rather be on the safe side, protecting their own interests, even though this would mean acquiescing to some injustice perpetrated on their fellowmen. 

Conditioned to submission, resigned to foreign domination, their timidity, their vacillation dissipates the efforts of their more resolute countrymen to regain for all Filipinos the control of our national life. 

Basilios in Our Midst 

Rizal's Basilio is the prototype of these weak men. Basilio forgot his past, the murder of his brother Crispin, and the death of Sisa, his mother. These personal misfortunes were not enough to motivate him to work so that others would not be victims of the injustices his family has endured. he refused to join Simoun, not so much from disapproval of the latter's methods as from a personal indifference toward what he termed "political questions." 

His rationalization and this is a common one today, was that he was a man of science and therefore it was not his job to concern himself with anything more determined than the healing of the sick. Instead of making him more determined to defend his fellowmen from oppression, Basilio's personal experience with cruelty and injustice turned him into a timid man who wanted only to be left in peace in his little corner of the earth, enjoying a modicum of success. Only when this personal ambition was thwarted by his imprisonment after the incident of the pasquinades did Basilio decide to join Simoun. And even then, his aim was to avenge himself and not to help his fellowmen. 

From Asocial to Anti-Social Behaviour

If we read Rizal carefully, we will soon realize that his dream for our country can be attained only by a dedicated, hard-working, socially responsible citizenry. It is tragic, therefore, that there are so very many Basilios among us today. Basilio was essentially good. He was hard-working, did no one any harm. In an already stable and prosperous country, such citizens as Basilio might be desirable; but in Rizal's Philippines as well as in ours, where so many reforms are still needed, we should have men with a social conscience who will consider it their obligation to do more than just obey the laws. 

The Basilios will never move mountains. Instead, their desire for the fulfillment of their personal ambitions will make them temporize with tyranny, compromise with oppression, cross the street to avoid seeing injustice, look the other way to ignore corruption. Our students, our professionals today, often exhibit the qualities of Basilio. At best, they try to do their jobs competently but are indifferent to the issues and the problems that face our country. Those who start like Basilio but who do not possess his essential goodness degenerate from asocial individualism to definitely anti-social behavior in pursuit of their individualistic goals.

 They may hoard essential commodities and sell them at exorbitant prices, unmindful of the misery they are bringing to their countrymen. They may become dummies for foreign interests, corrupt government officials, servile mouthpieces of alien groups, ten percenters, influence peddlers, and cynical racketeers whom our corrupt society rewards with material wealth and even prestige. 

A Nation of Rizals 

Rizal was never like Basilio. He too suffered injustice early in life when he saw his mother unjustly imprisoned; but far from making him timid and afraid, it spurred him to work for justice and freedom, not for his family but for all Filipinos. Not only his death, but more importantly, his whole life gave evidence of his constant preoccupation with the problems of his country, his involvement in the movement against oppression, ignorance, poverty, and degradation.

 Rizal's personal goals were always in accordance with what he considered to be the best interest of the country. It is in this sense that we can say we need a nation of Rizals. But we do not need a hero to die for our country. We need a nation of heroes who will live and work with patriotic dedication to realize Rizal's dream. 

As long as we can still marvel at the contemporaneousness of Rizal, at his "timeliness," we must admit that many years after he has presented the problems, we have not yet taken the basic steps towards their solution. When a new generation of Filipinos will be able to read Rizal as a mirror of our past and not as a reproach to our social present, only then can we say that we have truly honored Rizal because we have made him obsolete by completing his work. 

From Dream to Reality 

We are still backward, ignorant, and to a great extent, unfree. That is why Rizal can still speak to us with the same sense of urgency and immediacy that he produced among his contemporaries. When he is no longer valid, we shall have become a truly great nation and Rizal will no longer be read for the social truths that he revealed. 

But to make him obsolete does not mean to forget him. On the contrary, only when we have realized Rizal's dream can we really appreciate his greatness because only then will we realize the great value of his ideals.  

When Rizal becomes obsolete, our society will no longer be infected with Dona Victorinas, because the triumph of nationalism will make us proud of our race. There will no longer be any Basilio because each and everyone will consider his manhood to be concerned only with personal, material success. We shall have no more Simouns motivated by personal revenge. Philippine society will frown on the Pasta and the other fawning and obsequious minor officials whose only interest is to retain their sinecures. 

A reorientation of our ways and our thoughts along nationalist lines will fulfill the dreams of Rizal and at the same time make them obsolete as goals because the dream has become a reality. 

  Source: The Filipinos in the Philippines and Other Essays by Renato Constantino, Malaya Books 1966

Learning and Speaking FILIPINO (A Book Review).....Why A National Language?

”Ang hindi nagmamahal sa sariling wika ay masahol pa sa malansang isda" - Dr. Jose Rizal

"Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent” – Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1804-1881)

“Nations, whose NATIONALISM is destroyed, are subject to ruin.” - Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi, 1942-, Libyan Political and Military Leader)

WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: (Note: Bold,underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked postings/articles. Forwarding the postings to relatives and friends, especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated).

“To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.” - William Corbett, 1830

I just got hold of the newly published book "LEARNING AND SPEAKING FILIPINO" by Renato Perdon, who was a former researcher and chief translator at the National Historical Institute (NHI -Philippines) and author of several books on the Filipino language, i.e. dictionary, phrases, conversational, etc., for adults and the young; and of the interesting book Brown Americans of Asia.

In his Introduction to this new book, Perdon starts off with mention of the debate in our homeland on the use of Filipino versus a foreign language (English) as the medium of instruction, Perdon wrote that "we are not taking any side in the debate." Frankly, I am somewhat disappointed by his not taking side in the debate. He spoke of the raison d' etre for the book, i.e. the desire to help the Filipino diaspora (thanks to the failure of the country's rulers to generate decent jobs for the educated/schooled) --composed mainly by the Overseas Foreign Workers (OFW/OCWs) and permanent emigrants-- maintain and improve their own and their children's proficiency in our national language.

I attempt here to comment on Perdon's book with a different spin, that is, neither about its contents nor presentation since I do not have any qualification to do so from the standpoint of someone whose specialty is linguistics. Instead, I want to look at how the publication of such a book can contribute to our love for the homeland, to fostering Filipino nationalism. Thus, you may find my review as more generic rather than specific to this book.

Why the need for a national language, why learn one? To the truly informed or well-traveled person, language is a badge of nationality. Anyone who speaks his particular native tongue, i.e. French, Japanese, Italian, Arabic, etc, --of course a number of exceptions can come to mind-- can almost surely be said or identified to be a Frenchman, Japanese, Italian, Arab, etc. The ideal model of the nation, as derived from Western Europe, rested in considerable part upon the belief that each nation is a separate linguistic identity. And any citizen with national pride knows that national prestige demands that his national language take priority.

Nowadays (Y2008), even in the supposedly "globalized" world, governments of EU nations and/or opinion makers in the USA are demanding, with various reasons, the imposition of their own national language as a requirement for immigration/residency and citizenship.

Historically speaking, it was one of the aims of the French Revolution to impose a central national language on all the people of France. Since that time, wherever a diversity of languages was involved, the national language issue became a major concern to every nation that steps out to claim its place in the sun. Fast forward post-WW2 with the concomitant advent of nationalist demands for national independence and sovereignty by former colonies, issues arose as to the place of the superimposed alien language; which often continuous to be the lingua franca and the language of the dominant elite.

Despite the two generations since we Filipinos were "independent," this issue of superimposed language is still so true in our homeland. We Filipinos, especially among our educated elite, would prefer to retain the alien (English) language. I say that it smells of the stink of a "damaged culture" quite unique to us Filipinos. We have become so awed (more aptly, fucked up) by white foreigners, i.e. Americans in our case, that we even prefer English in our own homeland as the medium: of instruction in our private and public schools; in government and business; practically in all our institutions. My main dissent is in the absolute imposition of English on our educational system and other institutions (I agree in its use in the physical sciences or high technology courses where we have a dearth in terminology).

For us Filipinos, it is long overdue and only proper that education on a mass scale be conducted in the language of the people concerned. Our so-called educated during the early 20th century till today seem to have worked and still continue to work against the attainment of mass education for our less fortunate fellow countrymen and consequently against the disappearance of the illiterate Filipino.

We educated Filipinos seem unable to appreciate what an Indian government commission decades ago (1955) stated about Indian society then and its use of English (we can easily substitute ourselves in lieu of the Indians): "Use of English as such divides our people into two nations, the few who govern and the many who are governed, the one unable to talk the language of the other and mutually uncomprehending. This is a negation of democracy."

With the westernized orientation in our homeland, the concerned and thinking Filipino knows or learns that the successful assertion of the claim to nationhood established the presumption of a distinct national language (which admittedly in turn --due to its national usage-- may tend to absorb and/or downgrade his local vernaculars or dialects).

Regardless, we know that language is the primary instrument of social communication. Those who speak the same language have a strong common bond, have common memories and easier interaction. Critical to that common bond and easier interaction is the role of that unifying and singular language. The ability to converse, interact, trade, and communicate in a common language is key to quickly assimilating into the nation's unique fabric and becoming active participants in—and valuable contributors to—society.

On the other hand, those who have linguistic diversity require their mass media, schools, other institutions, etc. to employ the various languages and/or dialects and thus make it far more difficult: to create such a common bond, to obtain the same influences on all the people. Thus, linguistic diversity leads to separatism; it is an impediment to national unity, to nationalism. And that is, in our instance, to Filipinism

In addition, the presence of foreign schools and the foreigners ability to use their own language as medium in these schools further lend to our national language problem. These have been going on for decades, I hope I am wrong today. Anyway, I just checked the website of the International School (formerly the American School) where its syllabus showed our Filipino language as an elective, mind you, in our own homeland! Why do our traitorous rulers allow such?

To further highlight the discussion on national language closer to home, let us remind ourselves of an historical piece on President Quezon and national language, (Perdon gave an overview on the topic in his book). Obviously during the early years of the Philippine Commonwealth period, Mr. Quezon saw the development of a national language as essential in order to provide the unifying influence for us native Malay Filipinos (versus the divisive influence exercised at the time by our alien rulers, i.e.Spanish and Americans for their own interests). Mr. Quezon was open to any of our vernaculars or dialects to be our national language, but of course, for several reasons I will not repeat, it is the Filipino aka Pilipino (practically synonymous to Tagalog) which became formally our national language (<-- click to see reasons). It is sad, unfortunate and enraging that what Mr. Quezon spoke about almost three generations ago still rings very true today. Among the different peoples or countries in the world, we Malay Filipinos who comprise the majority in our homeland still have the same tribal and colonial hangups and mentality; demonstrated by our endless debate of whether to use our own national language or a foreign one within our territory, i.e. English; of refusing to recognize an historically used dialect/language by the majority; of allowing petty provincialism and/or regionalism to militate against a national language; of therefore perpetuating illiteracy and therefore ignorance among the native majority; of therefore making ourselves --us Filipinos in the homeland and abroad-- to self-destruct as a people and prevent us to be a united people, to be a true nation.

These attitudes and behaviors of not desiring/wanting our own national language in our own homeland are carried over by our fellow countrymen who emigrated to other countries, i.e. Australia, United States, Canada, etc. I think and believe such negation of our national language is the product of several unappreciated factors and realities, such as: geographical remoteness brought about by our islands, local dialects, historical tribalism untouched, and feudal society unchanged and colonial rule which reinforced the same.

Our resultant divisiveness has been much exploited by our foreign masters then and foreign businessmen now (who we should realize and remind ourselves are in our homeland for their own foreign, national interests - "benevolent assimilation" was pure BS and altruism does not come with whatever one wants to call it: capitalism, imperialism or neocolonialism/neoimperialism aka economic/cultural globalism [globalization], then and now).

Since we Filipinos were already divided as primitive tribes and traditional societies (at best) prior to and after alien occupation, neither the Spaniards nor the Americans did anything to unify us to become a sovereign nation/people, but simply maintained, used and reinforced our divided status quo. What these imperialists did is understandable, conquerors and victors win and rule through "divide and conquer." Our forefathers saw the Spaniards as conquerors and therefore enemies (so did our fathers the Japanese during WW2) and they fought these foreigners with strong determination.

At the turn of the 20th century, when the Spaniards ceded us to the Americans, many of our forefathers also realized (though belatedly due to naive ignorance of world events) the latter as conquerors; but the Americans with military efficiency killed hundreds of thousands of them and deported/exiled those they did not.

With the more subtle American way of colonization - mainly via public education, it successfully molded the Filipino mind to be Americanized (using English as medium of instructions that overtly and covertly incorporated American culture and value system, in turn its imposition ensured by the American martial law or military rule then).

Within a generation, our Americanization was completed and effectively made us natives forget the brutality committed by the American forces during the Philippine-American War and the anti-Filipino nationalism decreed by American military rulers for almost three decades. Within a generation, the strong anti-Americanism borne out of this Philippine-American War almost completely disappeared. Ever since, the overall result in our homeland indicates that American cultural, economic, and military influence and dominance have been attained; and have been perpetuated in the past 100+ years (till the present, now via so-called globalization).

In addition, our Americanization cloned many of us into "Little Brown Brothers" or "Brown Americans" (Perdon's), to become instant apologists for America and loud critics of Filipino nationalists in our own homeland (much more vehement and worse than the WASP themselves). As Americanized "creatures," we demonstrated and still demonstrate the unquestioning loyalty of colonized Filipino minds; combined with the feeling and showing of endless gratitude "utang na loob" and mendicant subservience. All the miseducation/Americanization of the Filipino heart and mind contributed to the so-called damaged culture with the characteristic but usually unrecognized "colonial mentality" within our hearts and minds.

Going back to Perdon's mission, I say that, having lived and worked abroad for 30 years, I am not as optimistic as Perdon about the desire of Filipino expats and their descendants to want to learn and speak Filipino since the immediate need to know the local language of their destination employer-country is paramount; and its local media a strong impediment. At the same time, our OFWs may not be able to afford the time to learn nor have the opportunity to speak our national language. Such considerations are difficult impediments to learning. (On the other hand, I believe the book will be selected more by foreigners interested in our homeland for reasons of either business or leisure.)

Even in countries where Filipino immigrants can afford to study and learn to speak (and read) our Filipino language, it is extremely rare to see them impart their native language to their descendants since by default their new milieu forces them to lose or forget their national language due to lack of usage -that's the reality. I have seen that this is the case for permanent emigrants and their children in the USA. (in my own family, our two children learned to speak and understand the Filipino language mainly by spending their grade and high school summer vacations -every other year- with their cousins in the homeland, which really helped a lot).

It is only when Filipino nationalism is present in the heart and mind of the OFW or permanent emigrant will his national pride --demonstrated by his love for homeland and his usage of national language among his fellow countrymen and their offsprings-- will he be enthused to provide the occasions for learning and speaking Filipino, aside from his own dialect, as the case may be. It takes an inner drive to actively promote the learning and speaking of one's dialect, and much more so -nationalism- of one's national language IN a foreign land.

On deeper thought however, Renato Perdon already serves the Filipino nationalist cause by the mere act of publishing his book "Learning and Speaking Filipino." By presenting a venue for maintaining and/or learning our national language, Perdon helps foster our common bond as native Filipinos; and hopefully the adage "distance makes the heart grow fonder" for our homeland and people will come to fruition; and which in the long-run could help us native Filipinos towards Filipino unity abroad; towards national unity and national sovereignty in our Philippine homeland. I hope for and wish Perdon success in his endeavor.

Contacts for getting copies of the book:

The Manila Prints, P. O. Box 1267, Darlinghurst NSW 2010 Australia. Phone, +61 2 9313 8179

The Manila Prints, 42 Hernandez Street, Chrysanthemum Village, San Pedro, Laguna, Philippines, +63 2 8682212

“The true Filipino is a decolonized Filipino.” – Prof. Renato Constantino (1919-1999)

"There is no literate population in the world that is poor; there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor.” – John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)

Our Colonial Mentality,Damaged Culture and Their Roots

“The HISTORY of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.” - Meridel Le Sueur, American writer, 1900-1996

What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler

WHAT WE FILIPINOS SHOULD KNOW: (Note: Bold and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posting/article. Forwarding the postings to relatives and friends, especially in the homeland, is greatly appreciated).

Then and now, an American -who has replaced more subtly, efficiently and effectively the Spaniard- seems to reside in the mind of each Filipino in each generation since the US conquest and occupation of the Philippines. Consequently, the Filipino has been conditioned to -knowingly or unknowingly- think and analyze economic and political issues in our homeland from the American point of view.

To change this way of thinking, the American in his mind need to be removed to arouse Filipinism in his heart and mind in matters of national interests; for Filipinism to take over when dealing with the American government/transnational corporations (for that matter: any other foreign country, people or entity.)

The primary task for Filipinos is to raise their nationalistic consciousness, either through self or formal/informal education, beginning with a recognition and appreciation of their colonial mentality and exerting a conscious effort to discard it. It is only with Filipino nationalism, a nationalistic consciousness in his mind and heart will the Filipino be able to fight, deal and work with utmost determination for his own betterment and those of his children and grandchildren.

Below is an excellent article, quite dated but still extremely relevant, written in 1984 by Leticia Constantino (wife of the great Filipino nationalist of recent history - the late Prof. Renato Constantino). In the Foreword to her book from which I extracted the article, Mrs. Constantino wrote that while her husband's tasks were to analyze Philippine Education Today and other impediments to realizing Filipino Nationalism, her task was to answer the question "What Is To Be Done?"

NOTE: All her thoughts before journalist James Fallows visited and wrote his popular piece about our "damaged culture," i.e. absence of Filipino nationalism, in 1987. Fallows must have read this essay by Mrs. Constantino. Again, we Filipinos due to our colonial mentality would tend to appreciate and pay attention to what foreigners, i.e. mostly Americans like Fallows, say. In contrast, we Filipinos would tend to ignore, belittle and argue vehemently against what our own nationalist intellectuals already knew and understood, said or wrote about (in certain issues our Americanized minds, consciously or unconsciously, make us more American than Americans -repeatedly demonstrating to the world our mendicant/servile attitude).

(Source: Issues Without Tears - A Layman's Manual of Current Issues, Volume 1, 1984)

Neocolonialism - The dominance of strong nations over weak nations, not by direct political control (as in traditional colonialism), but by economic and cultural influence.

“The true Filipino is a decolonized Filipino.” – Prof. Renato Constantino (1919-1999)

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ROOTS OF OUR COLONIAL MENTALITY

We often hear Filipinos complain that as a nation we are afflicted with a colonial mentality. By this they usually mean that we are excessively subservient to foreigners and unduly impressed by foreign goods. But an even more harmful aspect of colonial mentality and one that is less recognized is our failure to pinpoint our real national interests apart and distinct from those of our foreign colonizers. Despite 35 years of independence, this trait has not been eradicated.

Colonial mentality has deep roots in our history: first, in the level of social and economic development we attained before colonization; second, in the nature of Spanish colonization; third, in the impact of American rule; fourth, in the way we obtained our independence and fifth, in the neo-colonial policies of the United States up to the present time.

1. Unlike India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia, we did not confront our Spanish conquerors as a people with a highly developed culture and social structure. Our forebears lived in small, scattered communities based on kinship ties and relied mainly on primitive agriculture which provided barely enough for their needs. We were not a nation since these communities were separate, autonomous barangays. Trade among barangays and with the people from neighboring countries was occasional and by barter. Religion was likewise primitive with no organized body of beliefs or priestly hierarchy. All these made physical conquest and cultural domination quite easy for the Spanish colonizers.
   
   Unlike the Cambodians with their Angkor Vat and the Indonesians with their Borobudur, we had no monuments which could remind our people of an ancient glory. When nations with advanced social structures and a firmly established culture are colonized, their past achievements constitute the source of their separate identity which enables the conquered to confront their colonizers with dignity and sometimes even a feeling of superiority. They do not easily lose their sense of racial worth.
   
   Unfortunately for us, we were colonized before our own society could develop sufficiently. Having but few cultural defenses against our conquerors, we soon accepted their superiority and began to acquire what we now call a colonial mentality.
   
   
2. Other Western powers initially instituted a system of indirect rule in their Asian colonies by exploiting the people through their chiefs, leaving native social and cultural institutions largely intact. In the Philippines however, our two colonizers consolidated their rule by working on the native consciousness, thus effecting great changes in Filipino values and customs.
   
   The Spaniards forcibly resettled the scattered barangays into larger communities where the people could more easily be Christianized and where every aspect of their lives, their customs and ideas could be scrutinized and shaped in the desired colonial mode. In most communities, the Spanish friars represented both the power of the cross and the power of the sword. As pillars of the colonial establishment, most priests sought to develop in their flock the virtues of obedience, humility and resignation. Spanish superiority was maintained and the "indio" was kept in his inferior position by denying him education (there was no system of national education until 1863). The people were trained to follow and were discouraged from thinking for themselves. A thirst for knowledge was considered a dangerous and subversive trait which often brought actual misfortune or the threat of hell. The "indio" acquired the habit of allowing his economic and social superiors to do the thinking for him, and this attitude persists among us today, seriously undermining any movement for greater democracy. Under the Spaniards, inferiority complex evolved into a national trait of Filipinos.
   
   
3. Ironically enough, by satisfying the Filipinos' desire for education and self-government, the American colonizers developed a new, and is some ways, a more pernicious form of colonial mentality. For while the Spanish arrogance and bread anger and rebellion, American education transformed the United States in the eyes of the Filipinos from an aggressor who had robbed them of their independence to a generous benefactor.
   
   The school system began Americanizing the Filipino consciousness by misrepresenting US expansionism and US economic policies as American altruism toward the Filipinos; by denying young Filipinos of any knowledge of Filipino resistance to American occupation and the atrocities committed the American military; by filling young minds with stories that glorify the American way of life, American heroes and American institutions.
   
   Americanization was greatly facilitated by the imposition of English as the sole medium of instruction. This made possible the use of American textbooks. Education taught the Filipino youth to regard American culture as superior to their own and American society as the best model for Philippine society. Of course, our Americanization has been profitable to the Americans because it kept on producing new generations of avid consumers of American goods. All these were ingredients of a new type of colonial mentality.
   
   
4. Our so-called tutelage in self-government at the end of which we received our independence from our "generous teacher and guardian" is partly responsible for our persistent failure to recognize that our real national interests are distinct from and, more often than not, contrary to those of the United States. American colonial policy gave the Filipinos their first experience in self-government in the legislative field. Since executive power remained in the hands of the American governor-general and real, overall power resided in Washington, Filipino leaders learned the art of adapting to American economic requirements while catering to their Filipino constituents' desire for independence.
   
   Periodic elections focused public attention on "politics", a superficial democratic exercise during which most politicians pledged to secure "immediate, absolute, complete independence" without explaining that the economic dependence of the Philippines on the US market would such independence an empty one. The Philippine elite, landowners who grew rich on agricultural exports to the US, largely controlled Philippine politics, so most politicians in fact supported this economic dependence. Politicians therefore concentrated on the issue of political independence and the people received little enlightenment on economic issues except from radical labor and peasant groups in the 1930s. The Filipino dream of independence remained limited to political sovereignty.
   
   The fact that we obtained independence as a "grant" and not as a result of a victorious, anti-colonial revolution has obscured the real contradictions between our interests and those of the US [we had no such blinders toward either Spain or Japan; we recognized the conflict of interests between them and us.]
   
   
5. But all the foregoing is part of the past. The Philippine republic is now 35 years old. Why have we not outgrown our colonial mentality? Of course, we now have an appreciation of our national identity, a feeling of cultural nationalism. We have discovered ethnic culture and take pride in local art and music. In fact, US global policies can tolerate and even encourage such expressions of a separate identity especially when they can be used to mask continuing economic domination.
   
   Economic control is now exercised in more subtle forms - through transnational corporations (TNCs) whose requirements are incorporated in Philippine laws and policies, through various forms of aid from countries like the US and Japan which help to shape economic priorities and consumption patterns in ways favorable to the aid givers, through TNC advertising and Western mass media which create new needs and tastes and mold our view of world events and, above all, through loans from our World Bank and other international institutions (IMF, ADB,etc) which require as a prior condition our acceptance of a national development program which ensures continued satellization of our economy.
   
   Theoretically, the laws and policies we adopt to attract TNCs, whether we accept aid or not, whether we borrow from the World Bank or not, are decisions freely arrived at by our own government. Rarely do we learn of the pressures exerted, the demands made, the strings attached by these foreign entities. Instead, our leaders deepen our misconception of the role and power of these external forces by presenting foreign-designed programs that will further reinforce our dependence as examples of self-reliance and independence.
   
   We must examine carefully from a nationalist perspective all aid offered, all loans granted, all programs suggested by foreign governments and institutions. Only then can we begin to rid ourselves of our unfortunate inability to see the contradiction between our interests and theirs, a feeling which is today the most serious aspect of our colonial mentality.
   
   
   
   The Phillipines makes a decent representative example of the US' first official exercise in colonial imperialism and formal empire [*], also referred to as "civilizational imperialism" - a project we're presently repeating. "Lest this seem to be the bellicose pipe dream of some dyspeptic desk soldier, let us remember that the military deal of our country has never been defensive warfare. Since the Revolution, only the United Kingdom has beaten our record for square miles of territory acquired by military conquest. Our exploits against the American Indian, against the Filipinos, the Mexicans, and against Spain are on a par with the campaigns of Genghis Khan, the Japanese in Manchuria and the African attack of Mussolini. No country has ever declared war on us before we first obliged them with that gesture. Our whole history shows we have never fought a defensive war. And at the rate our armed forces are being implemented at present, the odds are against our fighting one in the near future." - -- Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler, America's Armed Forces: 'In Time of Peace', 1935. 1898-1914: The Phillipines.

See also an older posting with more hyperlinks:
http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2006/08/colonial-mentality-of-filipinos-its.html