Setting the Filipino free from colonial and cultural bondage

By Nestor Torre
Philippine Daily Inquirer

FOR YEARS NOW, we have been urging our dear readers to acknowledge, confront and conquer our nation’s collective Colonial Mentality, which in our view has limited our emergence and growth as a people.

At its core, colonial mentality is our “deathless” and rancidly enduring “gift” from “serial waves” of colonizers, who have brainwashed us into thinking that “foreign” is intrinsically “better” than “local.”

Many Filipinos continue to subliminally think, feel and act this way, but heatedly believe that this is not the huge, seminal problem it is. Thus, the effects of colonial mentality continue to fester “with consent,” and we’re all the poorer and weaker for it.


Potent

At no other time of the year is this “deathless” colonial bondage more evident and potent than during Valentine’s month, when veritable droves of foreign entertainers edge Filipino singers and musicians out of the spotlight that by rights should be their home turf—and thousands of local music fans pay hundreds and even thousands of pesos for the expensive “pleasure” of hearing and seeing their “world-class” musical idols perform live and “in the flesh.”

The onerous situation has gotten so bad that our artists are hurting—and are crying out for more equitable treatment from their countrymen. But, many music fans dismiss their plaintive pleas as peevish sour-graping.

In the global marketplace that we all inhabit, they say, you have to compete in order to survive, and if “knowledgeable” music fans like the imports’ music better than yours, tough.

The “global” argument may be trendy, but it’s sadly wrong-headed. It blithely presumes that our five centuries of colonialization and oppression never happened, so we’re inherently at par in terms of cultural integrity with other countries.

Alas, this is tragically not true, and our “serial waves” of colonizers have made sure of that, blinding us to the potential richness and rightness of our own musical arts in vivifying our unique wellsprings and psychic power as a people.


Unique richness

If all we love to do is sing other cultures’ music and go ga-ga over “international” and “global” faves, how can our nation benefit from that unique richness and rightness? —It can't, and we really are the poorer for it.

Unfortunately, many of us still don’t see how our colonizers have warped our values, standards and preferences, and “gifted” us with the “damaged culture” that other, more objective observers have perceived to be our major psychological and psychic disability as a nation.


Seeing the light

If this piece has helped make you see the light in this regard, what can you do to rehabilitate and reorient your own thoughts, feelings and actions?

First, our collective mantra should radically up-end our colonizers’ insidious claim that “local” is poorer than “imported.” We should all declare: Filipino first—and best!

And, even if in some instances it isn’t (yet), we should persevere and give “local” the care and feeding it has missed all these years. It took centuries to reduce us to what we are now, so don’t expect overnight miracles. Give the rehabilitation and restitution process the years it needs to make up for the deadly sins and lies of the past—and, start now.
Of course, our “musical colonialism” is just a small part of our general cultural subjugation to western countries’ standards and preferences, but it can be a good, seminal start.

Instead of favoring foreign acts, let’s consciously and decisively support our own musical artists by watching a Filipino show this Valentine month.

For their part, our artists have the responsibility of not taking our support for granted, and giving us the best performances of their lives.

—Fair exchange? Great. Start now.

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Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer

Sorry Philippines

By Alexia Adizon Philippine Daily Inquirer “MAHAL KO ang bayan ko, ipinagmamalaki ko na ako’y Pilipino.” At the beginning of every Filipino class, our high school teacher would make us recite this line. But despite its clarity and brevity, it took me a while to realize that I was not living the lesson behind it. Filipino is my first language. I spent the early part of my childhood in Cavite City, surrounded by people who spoke Filipino. However, first grade came and my parents insisted on sending me to an all-girls private school in Alabang, where I would spend the rest of my elementary and high school education. On my first day in this thoroughly new environment, I found myself surrounded by people speaking an alien language, English. I felt extremely out of place, since I only knew a few words in English, and I was afraid I’d look like a total idiot if I spoke in Filipino. So I just kept silent. As the years passed, I learned the predominant language in this school. There seemed to be an unspoken rule that it was uncool to speak Filipino. I grew to believe this, so I sought to stamp out any hint of barok in my spoken English. I was introduced to cable television and English television shows on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, which I watched religiously every weekend. I shunned local television, movies and music, regarding them as baduy. Soon I found myself thinking in English. By the fifth grade, I had developed my own “accent,” and I was secretly proud of it, as I felt so sophisticated and intelligent speaking English. Outside of our school, I flaunted the fact that I could speak straight English. In malls or on trips, I made sure I spoke loudly so others would hear me. At such a young age, I was already aware of the fact that those who could speak fluently in the “universal language” were looked up to. When I went home to visit the province, my relatives would wonder, “Mga balikbayan ba ’to?” as my siblings and I jabbered away. Looking back now, I realize I was afflicted by a severe case of colonial mentality which didn’t only manifest itself when I spoke. Whenever I’d receive gifts from our balikbayan relatives, I’d jump at the opportunity to flaunt the imported merchandise to my classmates. When I’d read the newspaper, I’d flip right away to the world news section. I harbored silly fantasies of auditioning for “American Idol” or getting discovered as “America’s Next Top Model.” Last 2008, I went to World Youth Day in Sydney, a gathering of Christian youth from all over the world to celebrate the faith. I went with a group of Filipina girls, mostly school mates. It was truly a life-changing experience, for aside from rekindling my faith, I noticed something that disillusioned me. There were different groups from different nations who came to this event. They spoke their own language among themselves. Koreans spoke Korean to other Koreans. The Spaniards spoke Spanish to their countrymen. However, our group didn’t speak Filipino; we spoke English to one another. These tan, Asian girls chattered in fluent English. The foreigners we interacted with had to ask what country we were from. If you look at me, I’m unmistakably Filipino. I don’t know if there is one drop of foreign blood in me. I never spent a significant part of my life overseas. All of which leaves me with no excuse for having lost the ability to speak fluently in the mother tongue, except that I had deliberately done so, because I thought speaking English would make me cooler and better. It took me a while to realize the truth in the saying that you can take the Filipino out of Pilipinas, but you can’t take Pilipinas out of the Filipino. No matter how high my proficiency in English is, how often I use whitening products to make my skin fairer, how long I live in the States, or how high end the labels of my clothes are, I will always be unmistakably Filipino. So why should I be ashamed to be one? I could go into discussing the heroes who have died for our country, the amount of blood they shed so that we could attain its independence. But the simple truth is that this is the country I was born in and where I was raised. Recently some Filipino young men and women have been trying to rekindle patriotism by wearing and promoting Philippine-made products and advertising merchandise bearing the lable “Proud to be Pinoy.” I jumped into this bandwagon, hoping to atone for my past apathy and total lack of nationalism. But then I realized building love for my country should go beyond wearing “Team Manila” shirts. I’m sorry, Philippines, my country. How can I say I’m “Proud to be Pinoy” when the thoughts that occupy my head are those of a foreign tongue? How dare I express disgust over the foreigners who belittle our countrymen abroad, when I kiss their ass when they are here on our soil? How is it possible that I seriously read and study Dostoyevsky when I hardly even know the works of Rizal? Why is it that I consistently get high grades in English but have Filipino essays full of red marks? I’m in college now. I’ve been exposed to different kinds of people from different walks of life, and most of them speak Filipino. I have realized it is useless to keep speaking English when everybody else is speaking in Filipino. I would just come across as a haughty know-it-all, and so with great difficulty, I am learning again to use the mother tongue. But more than the need to be understood by others, I hope the time will come when I can finally say truthfully, “Mahal ko ang bayan ko, ipinagmamalaki ko na ako’y Pilipino.” Alexia Adizon, 18, is a student at the University of Asia and the Pacific.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer