The gift of memory

How could I forget the day I graduated from college?

My dearly beloved mother was there, Dad having stayed home in Mindanao to mind his dental practice. Mom came just for me, happy and radiant among some 3,000 parents and assorted well-wishers who turned out for UP Diliman’s red-letter Commencement Day.

Just over a thousand young people from all the university units in Diliman and Manila were at hand to receive their precious diplomas.

I had just earned a business administration degree with less than flying colors. Ahead lay four years of law school and perhaps the end of all academic strivings. Barring, as it would turn out, my next open-ended chapter of exile and post-graduate studies abroad.

I remember us proud honorees marching in black togas and mortarboard caps from the UP theater towards the grassy quadrangle behind Quezon Hall, just across the road. This was always the setting of late-afternoon grand celebrations in summer when it never rained and the stars came out in the cool of the evening.

The stage with all the dignitaries was up in the vast open patio between the building’s two wings, which had the dramatic effect of framing the Oblation statue, symbol of youth’s quest for knowledge and freedom, its back turned against us as it exultantly looked up to the setting sun.

Facing the stage was a sea of humanity stretching down to the green-shrouded lagoon, best known as the university’s lovers’ lane. We were wildly cheered as we took our assigned seats up front and waited for the formalities to begin.

UP graduations in those days were something to crow about. The diminutive Carlos P. Romulo, who loved to use the title of general, gave gravitas to the state university as its president. Present at the creation of the United Nations, he was regarded as the one and only world-famous Filipino, better known than all our leaders except the charismatic and tragic Ramon Magsaysay.

It was old eccentric Romulo who picked our commencement speaker, his good friend, Jonas Salk, the celebrated American virologist who discovered and developed the polio vaccine.

How could we not feel extra-special? Our passage into the job market was all but anxiety-free or to taken for granted. It was unheard of for a UP graduate to go begging for a job. On a lark just two days before, three of my marketing classmates had gone to the US embassy and were immediately granted immigrant visas.

Years later, I would have a reunion with the same friends, by then successful professionals in New York, and they wondered why people back home were moaning about the horrors of securing even a tourist visa. After our graduation, we could only conclude, came the deluge.

Little did we realize that things would go south and awry over such a short period of time. Just think of the low-wattage and parochialism of today’s commencement exercises and the dire prospects of employment, even for UP graduates, and you have an idea of how badly we have fallen in the world.

I am talking of my graduation in 1968, on the eve of the First Quarter Storm of 1970, which was to change Philippine history forever. Time magazine heralded 1968 as the Year of Student Power, but the Philippines was largely unfazed; we knew we had a two-year lag in catching on to global trends and developments.

As we basked in the autumnal glow of the late Romulo years, we felt no air of negativism or outright rebellion that was already turning American and European societies upside down. President Ferdinand Marcos was at the height of his popularity. He and the lovely Imelda often went to Diliman and were always cheered as the Filipino Jack and Jackie Kennedy. “This Nation Can Be Great Again,” Marcos’s campaign slogan of 1965, was bandied about without any trace of the derision and contempt that Marcos himself would be subjected to not too long into the future.

Student activism, all but confined for many decades to UP, was deemed our birthright and privilege. UP was vaunted as the training ground of presidents and leaders in all field of endeavor. We were smug, even arrogant, but this image of invulnerability seemed the most natural thing in the world.

We were shortly to be disabused of our grandiose illusions. The country was, in retrospect, headed straight for catastrophe from which, today, some 35 years after, we have barely recovered.

How could we not have anticipated the crippling blows of fate on our beloved but unsuspecting nation? We blithely believed we were ahead in material progress in all of Asia, with the most reassuring footnote that we came only second to Japan. 

Because I was graduating as editor of the Collegian, I had the satisfaction of welcoming student leaders from Malaysia and Indonesia who all seemed awed by UP’s high academic standards and the way we talked straight to Americans in their own language and with no hint of slavish deference to anybody in the world.

Many Asian students studied at UP. Our International Club was vibrant and crawling with bright minds who would move on to prominent places in their respective societies and even in the western world.

I fondly remember an Indian scholar who joined a UN agency and ended in splendid retirement in Canada, a Thai who became my fraternity brother who now heads an Ivy League university’s Asian Studies department, and a savvy Vietnamese lady who married a top-ranking Filipino jurist. All of them tell me that they have imperishable memories of Diliman; they attribute a good part of their success to the life-long friendships and excellent education they got in this country.

Despite the ugly war in Vietnam and the rampaging Red Guards in China, US power was still regarded as supreme. Its utter humiliation was then in the early stages and Americans would be in denial until the grim finality of defeat in Saigon stared them in the face.

I cannot but gasp in disbelief as I recall the unquestioned certainties that governed the innocent 1960s in this country.

Perhaps the cultural and time lag insulated us too well but not too wisely.

The old ilustrado formula for success was unaltered and unshaken. Bright kids thought they only had to choose from law, medicine or engineering, very competitive fields practically reserved for males when women’s liberation was unheard of.

In my particular case, Dad and Mom indoctrinated me to be the lawyer they could not become. For my undergraduate course, I wanted history but they insisted on accounting. We compromised on marketing, a more creative business field, to enhance my future “market value” as an attorney with a corporate background. 

More often than not, girls were channeled to nursing, pharmacy, education, or Home Economics. There was the catchall commerce course (business administration was still too fancy a term) for would-be bank tellers, clerks, bureaucrats and office flunkies. Another, “Foreign Service” had little to do with diplomacy and seemed to be geared for would-be beauty queens or flight attendants. 

Some concern was raised about science and technology being neglected for law and medicine. Millions of pesos were thus lavished on NSDB scholars (for whom PSIs or science high schools were created) and a good number were sent off to get foreign degrees at much expense to the government and foreign donors.

The sad story was that highly trained scientists and experts have no places to occupy in feudal societies masquerading as modern nations. Our physicists, chemist, hydrologists, urban planners, volcanologists and other highly skilled professionals ended up pirated by Japanese and Gulf States employers. A big number joined UN agencies and got deployed as far as Africa and Latin America.

Population explosion was to be expected in staunchly Roman Catholic Philippine society. The 20 or so million Filipinos of the 1960s tripled by the 1980s. Diploma mills, first seen after World War II, kept on mushrooming to absorb the rapidly growing masses of youth who were unwelcome or had no places in UP nor in uppity sectarian schools like Ateneo and La Salle.

What did we get out of mass-producing college graduates?  Bumper crop after bumper crop of nurses, med techs, physical therapists, midwifes, seamen, etc., some more qualified than others, most of them with no place to go.

With limited job opportunities and measly salaries at home, where else would these unemployed or unemployable hordes go but to the uttermost parts of the earth or any underground, if perilous economy, they could creep into?

By the 1980s, Filipinos had become so notorious for illegal immigration that to go anywhere as tourists, all Filipinos had to be subjected to the most humiliating and racist harassment by foreign governments.

That’s the untold story behind Cory Aquino’s ringing rhetoric about “Our New Heroes and Heroines” — the overseas Filipino workers who got whatever jobs they could get and under whatever terms they could be grudgingly granted.

In 1970 when I first went to Hong Kong and Japan, there were no Filipino domestic workers noisily clogging State Square or Shibuya Station on weekends. In 1985, there were no “Cha-chas” or Filipino maids in Spain. The exact opposite is true today and it seems futile to take umbrage over “Filipina” being the same word used for maids or servants in some foreign dictionaries.

These days wherever violence or natural catastrophes erupt, our news organizations routinely assume that there must be Filipino casualties, victims or criminals involved. We are now reduced to dealing with gruesome body counts, begging for clemency for drug mules, or raising “blood money” to save some poor souls from Pampanga from beheading or lethal injection.

From time to time, politicians rail about the exploitation and harsh treatment of Filipino labor, but with no real or any sobering effect on the rapid outward flow of desperate workers oblivious of political risks and personal harm. 

What is the net effect of 10 million Filipinos — one of every 10 — living and working outside the country today?

Two excruciatingly painful truths: countless dysfunctional families left behind and a two-edged remittance culture, all in Faustian exchange for an annual hoard of $20 billion, without which our shaky economy would go belly up.

Who benefits from this bloody mess? Go no farther than the latest Forbes list of Filipino dollar billionaires and rage against the dying of the light. Except for one or two Castilaloy holdouts you’ll find monosyllabic names that now lord it over real estate, banking, mining, airline and agri-business empires. There can only be sado-masochistic joy in celebrating the “entrepreneurial genius” of those who preside over a nation that lags behind Myanmar and Cambodia in attracting direct investments instead of hot money. The Philippines has not been dismissed as a high-unemployment, high-profit casino economy for nothing.

 â€œWhat a farce!” says one skeptical UP professor. “The best and the brightest today are only fit to become call center operators. They speak good English and are preferred to the hardy AMA and STI types. But they are flighty and the turnover is very fast. The working hours are odd and the morals are loose with so many single moms and dads and druggies you can hardly ignore. The pay may be deceptively high (P18,000 monthly or more) by local standards, but the high-maintenance consumer lifestyle means they can’t ever save for the rainy days.”

How did we fall into this black hole of exporting labor or working in bizarre time zones instead of manufacturing goods and engaging in high value-added skills?

Blame traditional politics, economic oligarchy and Marcosian-style greed.

This fatal combination has led to massive brain drain over the years. A whole generation of bright folks and chunks of the talented middle classes headed for the exits and voted with their feet, perhaps never to return.

Any widespread outbreak of worker unrest has been preempted by sending thousands upon thousands to the Middle East, first the engineers and the technicians, followed by teachers and the under-employed to become domestic workers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and many other countries.

Criminals and social misfits also found lucrative havens abroad. The Japayukis and hostos of Japan (now in deep limbo) as well as roving entertainers and people engaged in human trafficking have also flourished beyond all expectations.

Because nothing changes in our incestuous, dynasty-driven political life, the same crooked politicians and warlords misrule the land. Talk of reform is cheap and there are few True Believers who have any chance of surviving the electoral gauntlet of big money, big media and, now, PCOs machines.

Like his predecessors, President Aquino lamely expounds about bringing home the overseas workers so they can hold jobs and live in dignity in their own country. He has never bothered to spell out how he would accomplish this otherwise noble and long-prayed-for objective.

Getting down to particulars may be fatal to P-Noy or any do-gooder of a leader. It would mean baring the sins of Marcos that have become the same sins of his successors. It would mean chopping down the very people who benefit immensely from the status quo and have no wish to yield their unholy advantage to others.

A very high price will have to be paid for genuine reforms. No wonder the convenient resort to gratuitous denials, finger-pointing at others, and cavalier betting that the voiceless workers won’t ever balk because settling for pittances can only be better than any pie in the sky.

If people are reduced to this darkest pragmatism of survival, so it is assumed, they won’t dare dream and never even bother to speak out in anger. The bad old society could go on passing itself off as new and modernizing, its smug overlords never in fear of being unmasked, much less shoved into the sewers of history where they belong.