FEMOCRACY AND HOME ECONOMICS 4

FILIPINA, I SEEK YOU

Women giving high priority to their career is the main cause of families breaking down in the western world. As a result some disgruntled men are looking for family- oriented women from different cultural background. The majority of those that westerners seek are Filipinas.

People’s perception of the Filipina vary from country to country, some of it  are very negative indeed. Most of it are classic stereotypes that  I mentioned in the first chapter of this series. But all that are changing.

Countries who hired Filipinas in their homes soon realised that they are decent people who wants nothing more than be given a chance to work and be paid inorder to support a family back home. They soon realised that since Filipinas are educated, religious, peace- loving and clean, they can be trusted to run their homes smoothly and with ease. In some non- English speaking countries, families intentionally choose a Filipina over other nationalities for a maid because they could double as tutors as they speak English fairly well, or better that they could.  Filipinas hardly complain and just concentrate on the work at hand. It has to be said that even though they sank in the bottom of the career ladder, they tried their best to just get on with it .

The fact that many countries wanted to hire more Filipinas signifies that we have good qualities that people want us to fill that need in their homes. People observe that  and may be one of the reason why a great number of Filipina maids became brides particularly in Canada and Italy.  I remember a series in “Wakasan”, a  magazine in the Philippines when I was in high school in the 80s, (my entrepreneurial brother Alex has komiks for hire sa tyangge).  The title has something to do with “langis at tubig” (they will never mix)  where the Italian “boss” fell in love with his niece’ nanny named Laura (a Filipina), and the girl’s name was Marnelli (if I remember it right). It was a cute little series, I was just reading it for the love story element of it and was completely naive of the Filipino psyche then. 

The fact that some western men fall in love with a Filipina or in many instances deliberately choose a Filipina for a wife angers some so called elite Filipinos. It is a total impossibility to them and they take it to themselves to find a reason why those men could possibly want a Filipina. They seem to apply a counter stereotype directed to the foreigners, like they are looking for ignorant women that they can abuse; they are looking for backward women that would serve and obey them; they are looking for workers to take care of their children and clean their house for free; they will insure the Filipina (get her a life insurance policy) , kill her and claim the insurance money afterwards; and the most gruesome one: they will kill her, chop her body, keep in the freezer and consume in the winter when food is scarce.

I wonder whether these ridiculous preconceptions has something more to do with our insecurities as a country. Having been colonised for so many years,  we may not feel comfortable being directly linked to former colonisers or people from superior societies as equals. Not  wanting to accept the simple concept that these men want a woman who would make a wonderful wife and mother to their children. Someone to share their simple dreams with. While these stereotypes are mainly directed to the foreigners, I, as a Filipina who married a “foreigner” could not avoid but feel affected by it, hurt even. I used to ask myself: Are Filipinas not good enough to deserve the attention of the then colonisers? Are we that insecure?

During the mid 90’s I attended a function which the mayor in the neighbouring town organised especially for the Filipino community as part of the town’s “Beef Week” celebrations (by Filipino community, I mean Filipinas as there are only 2 Filipino men here). The Philippine government bought heads of cattle from Australia to be transported to the Philippines. In the presence of the Philippine Ambassador to Australia, the local mayor has nothing but praise for us Filipino- Australians . He stressed that since Filipinas  are “westernised”, we have no problem assimilating in the Australian society. We are always participating in events, we bring Filipino foods to share and our culture makes it easy for us to adapt and conform. Unlike other nationalities, we are comfortable in our skin, always smiling and always happy.

One of the solutions that the New South Wales government thought of to meet the challenge of nursing shortage in Australia was to offer a three- year  nursing scholarships to all migrants. More than eighty percent of those who took advantage of it and were qualified were Filipinas. The positive result reflects the fact that most Filipinas already have a college degree from the Philippines, have a good command of the English language, passed the exams and interviews.

A hospitality scholarship course was offered in a local TAFE college for migrants to prepare for tourism boom in the area, again, more than half of those who enrolled and qualified for the course were Filipinas. Some of these Filipinas were already working as cleaners in hotels or motels, but given a chance, you can see the burning desire to go in there to move up and compete.

An Australian couple, both teachers in the local private school wanted to adopt a child. They chose a boy from the Philippines. The adoption was approved and a year later, they adopted another one, this time a girl. The went back to the same excruciating adoption process and now they are proud parents of two Filipino kids. When asked why they chose Filipino children, they said, “because there are so many Filipinos here, they will never be lonely here. There will be plenty of support from the Filipino community.”

If a westerner choose a Filipina for a wife, it has to be because of the positive reasons. We are family- oriented, highly- spiritual, values friendships and simple- minded. It is not because we are stupid, ignorant, subservient, nor docile. There are instances when Filipinas find themselves in an unfortunate situation but as far as I know, in the developed world, the percentage is very low. I know of Filipinas who divorced their husbands and knows what to do when things go ugly. Filipinas are generally shy and peaceful in nature but knows how to growl when provoked.

Kuripot, Gastador, Tikalon, Damak, Maisug, Manug-Hiwit, Aswang

Philippine regionalism is one important factor to consider why Capicenos have been branded as aswangs, and in understanding why the myth has been perpetuated for over 100 years. Archipelagic Philippines has been populated by divided and competing tribes whose highest politico-economic achievement as a civilization have been the short-lived minor kingdoms in Pangasinan and Mindanao. Prior to Spanish colonialization, there was no sense of national identity, and much less appreciation about other ethic groups and cultures. The small, diverse and self-sufficient tribes have been scattered and isolated across thousands of islands. Having primitive maritime technology, they did not have active inter-island trade and much less opportunity for cultural exchange. It was only in the last 350 years, under the Spanish rule, that we evolved a concept of a nation. And even today, we are still struggling to accept it. Until the last century estrangjeros or pangayaos have been fiercely rejected by the tumandoks. Hence, whatever information we had about other regions could have just been trickles information. Bits and pieces of information are sewn together to make a derogatory collage of peoples of other regions.

Our diverse ethnicity is the foundation of our rigorous regionalism. We are a 7,000-island nation with over 100 ethnic groups. Overall, we are overwhelmingly Malayo-Polynesian under the broad Austronesian linguistic family. But underneath, we have more diverse ethnicity, subgroups, and sub-subgroups, hastily categorized into generic groupings of Ilocanos, Pangasinense, Kapampangan, Tagalog, Bicolano, Bisaya, Mindanao minorities, tribal groups, Chinese, Spanish, and Western and other minorities. Ilocanos are Ivatans and Ibanags, and their many variants; Pangasinense have the Cordilleranos (Igorots and their variants); Bisaya is classified under three main groups of Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), Cebuano and Waray. But under that, there are distinct sub-groups like the Aklanon, Karay-a, Romblomanon, Sibuyanon, Masbateno, Cuyonon. Each one of these has another layer of diverse ethnicity (e.g., Mambusaonon, Sapianon, Sijuiornon, etc.). Southern minorities include the Tausugs, Maranaos, Samals, Yakans, and the Lumads. The Lumads alone include the Manobos, Tasadays, Mamanwas, Mandayas, and Kalagans. And like our nomenclatures, they also have distinct diversity.

As indicated above, regionalism is not only a distinction due to geographic locale, rather, it is an ethnic divide highlighting cultural, social, economic and political differences - over 100 of it. In our attempt to make our region different from the others we highlight our dissimilarities. Such that, we never cease to find what is ridiculous in other cultures. We stockpile our arsenal of insults against them, so that, ultimately, we want them to be inferior to us. Sociologists point out that an individual ethnic group, united by a common language, invariably views the world from its own set of filters, experiences, beliefs, traditions, standards, biases and vantage points, a condition known as ethnocentrism. Ethnocentricism means judging other cultures as inferior based on your own culture’s superior cultural vantage point. Over time, an ethnocentrist world-view can hastily summarize a region into one common derogatory characterization. For instance, the Tagalogs have a crystallized world-view and common characterization of Bisaya as aswang, mangkukulam and katulong. The most degrading of which is aswang, and Capiz is said to have the worst concentration of aswangs.

Regional characterizations are not without bases, however. Ilocanos have been said to be frugal because their arid land does not allow large-scale cultivation of food and cash crops. Therefore, other regions dismiss them as kuripot. Tagalogs, living in the center of Philippine culture, politics and economy, having the first glimmer of electric lights and cooking gas, thought they are in the center of the universe. Anywhere outside their region had hitherto been a bundok. Hence, Americans going to the hinterlands was said to have gone to the boondocks. That literally landed into the English dictionary as a legitimate word - owing to the arrogant and ethnocentrict Tagalogs. The King of Spain gave generous encomiendas to conquestadores from northwestern Spain settling in Iloilo and Negros. In the heyday of sugar plantations, from the turn of the 20th Century to the roaring 60s, briefly disrupted by war but put to a final end by Marcos cronyism, sugar barons lived in Southern opulence and lavish lifestyles. The 3 percent Spanish sugars planter families, having their own sugar centrals, railways, piers, and shipping lines, have had every right to boast - guina pala, guina piko! But if the other 97 percent also brag, they are on their own. Hence, the Negrense and Ilonggos earned the tikalon moniker. Fierce resistance from attempts to Christianize the Mindanaonons earned them the savage, bloodthirsty reputation. Of course, regional attributions to Masbate, Siquijornons, and Samarenos as manug-hiwits could likewise be explainable. For instance, an MGB episode a few years ago featured an age-old modus operandi in one Samar hinterland about the locals secretly adding toxic herbal concoction into the beverage of strangers, only to be “healed” with an antidote for a fee. Although Bisayan and Tagalogs alphabets are almost exactly the same, our pronunciation did not highlight the different sound of paired vowels. Hence, enthocentrict Tagalogs’ criticisms against us. Remember the PLDT ad about a Bisayan katulong? “Sir, tumawag si GG.” for which the boss asked, “Si Gigi or si Jayjay?” The katulong answered, “Si GG, sir.” It would be a full time job to document all the insults, ridicules and mockeries that we hurl against each other.

But there have been tangible events that did earn a region an insulting reputation. If a province or one region was to be branded as aswang country, it should have been Samar-Leyte. There had been no single pre-Hispanic record about aswang anywhere in Philippine folktales and literature. Hence, the earliest written record about aswang in the whole 7,000 islands ever is by a Westerner, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi. On February 14, 1565, in Samar, he wrote about being warned by the natives about the existence of aswang and how terrified they had been listening to howling noise around his encampment one night. But Legazpi’s account did not come without motives or reason. He came from Medieval Europe, itself rife with burning accused witches at stake, predisposed to the Count Vlad story, and with a mission to introduce faith. This perfectly jibed with the situation of Samar tribe that, without an army, only hoped to drive away Spanish colonizers with horrific tales about aswang and by actually making terrifying nighttime noise around their encampment. The reason why this first aswang manuscript did not stick to Samar-Leyte region is probably because this account had not been reinforced by other socio-cultural factors in the region. Such that, Samarenos did not create and maintain an aswang out of themselves. We did.

In summary, regionalism is partly due to the absence of a sense of nationhood - each tiny ethnic group or tribe, isolated by mountains and seas, existed alone for centuries without contact with the others. When they finally have contact, their crystallized ethnocentrict world-views, predisposed Filipinos to ridicule and degrade people from other regions. Each region had been given a brand or moniker. It is unfortunate that Capiz had been branded as aswang. The continued Filipino regionalism, along with complex web of factors that we will discuss more, sustains our aswang brand. In order to minimize it, we need to respect and be sensitive to other regional cultures.

In the succeeding posts, we will examine the other factors and elements that created, strengthened and perpetuated the aswang brand to us.

Petropolitik, Sapian and China - Tenth in a Continuing Series

FVR’s trip to visit a farmers’ cooperative in Silay, Negros was actually a side trip to a visit to Victorias Milling Company (VMC). VMC is a family enterprise started in 1951 by the super rich Luzuriaga clan in Victorias, Negros Occidental. Its over-diversification and the decreasing demand for cane sugar in the world market left it in financial trouble. So, FVR bailed out the sinking company with a PNB loan package. While there, he inaugurated additional canneries for VMC Spanish sardines and Spanish-style bangus that we enjoy today. Victorias deserve help. It is probably the most compassionate company that I will ever know. Don Claudio de Luzuriaga was said to be strict and arrogant haciendero. Of course, since the 50s, he had the first and only sugar refinery (white granulated sugar) in the Philippines until Benedicto built the Calinog-Lambunao refinery in the late 70s. But one night he had a dream of God castigating him. The next day, he built a Church of the Angry God as he remembered it in his dream. We visited the circular Catholic Church painted halfway around with a mural of a very angry Jesus Christ, pointing fingers, mouth cursing, eyes blazing with fire, on the background were lightning bolts and a trembling earth. The depiction of Christ would have been a sacrilege had he not own a refinery. More than that, he also built homes for all his workers, from accountants to tractor drivers; houses with middle-class amenities, marble floors, hardwood panels, running water; he established a hospital, and sent the kids to better schools in Bacolod, from prep to College. Some children and thrid generation descendants of drivers and servants are now doctors and engineers. And many of them continue to work for VMC.

Since it was a PNB bail-out, PNB Chairman of the Board, and Presidential Adviser Bitay Lacson (former Negros Occidental Governor) helped us coordinate the event. We see Governor Lacson every Tuesday in FVR’s Cabinet. Bitay is the elder cousin of Jules Ledesma III (Asunta), sugar baron of San Carlos City and owner of Negros Navigation (NN). He is also the boss of Iloilo’s Hechanovas - Ramon is the Chairman of Regional Development Council (RDC) and Tony is former NN president before he was appointed as DENR Undersecretary. We will talk about the Hechanovas in another post, particularly, on with regard to our improved road that was officially called, Panay Arterial Highway/Kalibo Highway Phase II: Crossing Lanot-Banga Road.

At the end of the program, and FVR has gone to golf with the Luzuriagas, we staff waited in the VMC Club House with West Visayas PNP and AFP commanders ready to load our VIPs back to Manila. Suddenly, I saw retired Colonel Romeo S.  Fernandez. I approached him and he remembered me. He said he was the Warden of prison in Iloilo. Colonel Fernandez was the Provincial Commander of Capiz for many years. I remembered that when we were in Grade VI-Rizal, under the late Auntie Pining (Mrs. Josefina) Baguio, we had flag raisings and retreats in front of municipal hall and Chief Jose “Peping” Honrado was the Chief of Police. He was still the Capiz PNP Commander until after I graduated in High School. When we were in first year high school, the late Mayor Ishmael B. Orillos organized an very important Purok Organization event held in Basketball Court. Nong Tiboy even had a lechon baka near the slide. I waited for slices of roast calf and watched the program. Colonel Fernandez was the guest of honor, and Chief Peping was introducing him, “Colonel Fernandez, I am happy to report to you that the Municipality of Sapian is the most peaceful town in the whole Province of Capiz!” Then there was a very loud BOOOoomMm! followed by a long silence. Toto Alfred Oleo, Ramon Montina and the late Peter Vista Bueno were in Toto Alfred’s house just on the next block from the program and they lighted a large firecracker. Chief Peping ordered his policemen to get the perpetrator, but before they could, Alfred’s Dad knew who it was and they really got into a big trouble that night.

Mr. Eddie Olmo deputized Nening Alex Olano to train our CAT Corps officers. The day before COCC started, Nang Marilou Oro received a message from Provincial Command for a youth training. I, together with the late Sammy Oro, was asked to go Loctogan to attend a Barangay Rural Improvement Corps (BRIC) seminar on livelihood project. Colonel Fernandez presided over the training. I asked him to give a short tape-recorded inspirational message to SNHS CAT Corps. He obliged and remembered me from thereon. The tape was played on our COCC. Many years later and long before our last meeting in Negros, we would see in few major events in Malacanang and once in Camp Crame. I reminded him of the interview in his jeep. In one instance, I delivered his letter to FVR, and in another I helped follow-up his retirement with General Ernesto Gidaya of Veterans Affairs

Petropolitik, Sapian and China - Fifth in a Continuing Series

GATT/WTO tends to harness comparative advantage of countries. Our comparative advantage is to supply many of China’s fisheries and agro-industrial needs. Even with the perceived over-population in the urban centers, the Philippines still has wide open spaces and lands waiting to be used for agriculture. Nueva Ecija has some of the vast land reserves and produces some of the largest rice per capita.

I could not describe our vast land resources without remembering Palayan City in Nueva Ecija. After the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, a few thousand Aetas from Zambales have been relocated to a 200-acre strip that was a part of Fort Magsaysay military reservation. The project proponent and our hospitable host, the Fajardo family, was working to secure Cory’s proclamation to release the 200-acre strip from base reservations for aeatas and other poor families to live in and farm. The wife of then Palayan Mayor Rico Fajardo (later, a congressman), Leonora (later, the mayor replacing him), is from Mambusao. Their red-tile roofed white mansion “complex” - complete with a guard house that had a weapons arsenal, a power plant, a 6-room servants bungalow, and a “motor pool” garage - looks over hectares upon hectares of lands planted to rice, coffee and mango as far as the eyes can see. Half of the town was probably their tenants or servants. Despite that, I was amazed how down-to-earth a Mambusaonon Leonora Fajardo is - really nice; and we talked in Bisaya. She told me that Rico owned the defunct F&N Shipping Company; and she, having just arrived from Mambusao at that time, was vending lugaw in a well-attended carinderia near F&N’s gate in North Harbor. Coming to work every morning, Rico noticed the hardworking, business-oriented Tisay, so he started to have lugaw himself. Then they fell in love, got married, and he bought her Tasa de Oro as a gift, a famous American-owned restaurant in Escolta - when Escolta was still the Ayala Avenue. When we stayed in their house, their daughter, Lorelie, was then in high school; now, she is the youngest city mayor in the Philippines. Anyway, led by my former boss Cabinet Secretary Chito Sobrepena (now Metrobank Foundation President), together with then Col. Edgardo Aglipay (later CO/NCRDC and PNP Chief), I supported staff work to get Cory’s proclamation two years later. But even after the 200-hectare strip, Fort Magsaysay military reservation has still several thousand hectares that can be made into a productive agricultural enterprise.

We have most resources, except capital and political will, to organize successful agro-enterprises. The Philippines pioneered hybrid rice in Southeast Asia since the Green Revolution of the 60s. International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Banos, Laguna, which was initially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and operated under the auspices of the United Nations, produced rice that Thailand, Vietnam and other neighboring countries now profitably export even to us. The University of the Philippines (UPLB), our agro-R&D center, has many developed agro-industrial technologies that are not applied in the field.

Anyway, to Filipinize rice research (e.g., to develop strains requiring less fertilizer, resistant to pests and drought, etc.), we organized our own Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) in Munoz, Nueva Ecija with multi-million dollar assistance from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). I was part of Cory’s advance party to inaugurate PhilRice, so we planned a program that included a ground-breaking of a Technology Livelihood Resource Center (TLRC) project, a farmers’ cooperative rice post-harvest facility the size of NFA, in Cabiao, Nueva Ecija. I was the point-person in the Cabiao program - we decided that the stage be built in the middle of a ricefield and Cory’s helicopter would land just behind it. In the eve of Cory’s arrival, we noticed that the field was cracked and dry. So we asked local engineers to build a two-foot wide plywood walkway from the landing area to the stage. Workers worked late and woke up hardware stores in Cabanatuan. There was the walkway the next morning, stronger than the best Parola, Tondo, walkway Nang Novie Pajarillo-Macam, Manila Vice-Mayor Danny Lacuna and I walked on in one of Lacuna’s winning campaign sorties. Then Cory’s chopper and eight other helicopters landed. After the dust cleared, Cory got off, missed the plank by an inch and sprained her left foot. Major Bodet Honrado, Cory’s Aide-de-Camp whose roots is from Sapian, was furious. But we cannot be blamed for it - we did our plank. It was the pilot’s error for failing to get the chopper as close as possible; and the flight engineer neither got the stairs on the plank nor warned Cory about the gap. Anyway, the pained President went on with program, flew to Munoz and inaugurated PhilRice in a wheel chair. Her appointments have been cancelled for the next two days and she had to wear a cast for the next three weeks.

Petropolitik, Sapian and China - Second in a Continuing Series

Everywhere we go today, we see a proliferation of products made in China; from the simplest plastic implements to some of the most complex microprocessors.

To explain China’s voracious demand for energy, lets examine its recent economic growth. Since 2000, China’s exports tripled to over $593 trillion. Government statistics report an employment rate of nearly 97%. This industrial progress over a short period of time is unprecedented in history even in the magnitude of post World War II reconstruction. A recent report indicates that of the world’s 50 worst polluted cities (i.e., most industrially active), the top 20 are in China.

China’s great industrial transformation has put so much stress on global oil supply and distribution. China, Japan, and a dozen other countries, including the Philippines, compete over limited petroleum distribution capacity in the Far East. In 2000, China’s oil consumption was about 4 million barrels everyday, and oil price then was less than $22/barrel. Today, China’s consumption has grown to over 7 million everyday - or about 1/3 of the total world oil demand. China is now the second largest oil consumer (after the U.S.), and third largest importer (after U.S. and Japan). China will add 5 million cars every year starting this year. A comparison, the Philippine oil consumption is merely 312,000 barrels per day.

Supply is increasing in arithmetical rate while demand increase in geometric proportion. Saudi Arabia is frantically pumping its wells double time to stabilize prices. But China’s growing demand and cold cash would quickly absorb the buffer supply. OPEC members, in cohort with oil cartels, seem to enjoy the world attention to volatile Middle East and ripples by Venezuela and Bolivia that even an isolated kidnapping in Nigeria would bring them billions in windfall income.

But China could not live on oil alone. It also needs food to feed its army of factory workers and emerging industrialists Since we missed economic take off many times, we may have been destined to be the food producers. In fact, we have our comparative advantages over China. One of them, their coastline is only 14,500 kilometers - we have 36,000. Reason why China permanently encroach into our 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone.

A few weeks ago, my former boss, Demetrio Ignacio, now Undersecretary of Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), participated in a signing ceremony for an agreement with Fuhua Agricultural Group of China. Fuhua is investing $5 billion for a food industrial park and in planting one million hectares of hybrid corn in Camarines Sur, Lanao del Norte, Isabela, Occidental Mindoro, Tarlac and Nueva Ecija. http://www.newsflash.org/2004/02/be/be003383.htm

We need more export-oriented agro-industrial projects like this. It’s the only way to offset our widening trade deficit and to brace up for the oil crisis that is yet to come. Oil situation would worsen by the day as high gas prices would cause inflation. But who knows, inflation, among other adverse economic implications like higher interest rates and minimum wages, would increase production cost in developed countries. The recourse would be to move factories to countries with cheaper labor, as long as they are not very corrupt, has political stability, uninterrupted electricity, and guarantee no labor strikes.