What this official said was entirely the opposite of what I had long contended in this space.
And so I gave it to him in spades. "Are you trying to tell me," I riposted, "that Filipinos are happy in their misery? That the more miserable they get, the happier they are? The more crime and violence, they hardly give a hoot? The more graft and corruption, it really does not matter, they still remain happy? The poorer they get, the sicker, the more unemployed, the more oppressed, the more garbage littering the streets, the less meals they eat, they remain happy?" I was in a blue funk, enraged even that the man across the luncheon table could ever think that way.
But maybe he had something there. I pondered the issue at length the following days. I masticated it the way a horse slowly masticates grass, or a vintner sips wine, rolls it in his mouth the better to judge its quality.
My friend made some sense. This government official was looking at two Filipinos. He chose the outer one, the face the Filipino protrudes in public, ever smiling, the eternal optimist, patient, plodding, rollicking during fiestas, a captive of fun and frolic, a face ever lifted in silent imploration to the Virgin Mary. The Filipino’s inner face is hardly seen. In the vernacular it’s veinte-nueve, a 29, sharp, glinting blade waiting to get out, but can’t. Always the outer face dominates. For it is the face that has survived decades and generations of oppression from the powerful and the mighty. It is patient, submissive even. It sees the light where there is no light, the promise of a brighter tomorrow when there is no such tomorrow. It sees a flicker of heaven for there is only hell on earth.
The American author James Fallows also saw his face.
And it puzzled him. He could not understand why poor and lowly Filipinos could suffer so much, take so much. He could not understand why he could grovel in his shanties while just beside – a stone’s throw away – the rich in their gated subdivisions reveled in lordly splendor. And so Fallows concluded Filipinos, almost all alone in Asia, had a "damaged culture". They were unable to rise above their misery. In other countries in Asia, the poor and the oppressed had already broken their chains and were already prospering. He said he even shed tears as to why Filipinos behaved this way. Inert, resigned to their fate. The Filipino’s twisted thinking told him it was God’s way.
Is this why all our revolutions have failed? The revolution against Spain? The insurgency against America? The Huk uprising? The CPP NPA communist revolution? Two People Power revolts, EDSA I and EDSA II?
Is this why we Filipinos have never succeeded in uniting as one nation with one language, one soul, one throbbing heart? Is this why it is so easy for the wealthy and propertied elite to divide the nation, control all its agencies and institutions in the name of a failed democracy? So there is widespread poverty. Who cares? So they remain ignorant, and worship false gods? So they are attracted by the temporary, the evanescent, the meretricious, the surface glitter such as the death of showbiz celebrity Rico Yan? So they bay at the moon and not the stars? So our fragile democracy is in grave danger of going under because ignorance is bliss?
And so, eventually, we are all resigned to being a nation of idiots, morons and imbeciles? Is that it?
I hardly think so. Twisted and deformed as our culture may be because of the seemingly fatal infusion of The Convent under Spain and Hollywood under America, there is no such door as a permanent closed door. That door will break open sooner or later. And that door will break open because of the hordes behind that door have grown in numbers that no longer allow them the luxury of patience and resignation. They are eighty million now, moving close to a hundred million. The analogy is pathetic, I know, but it’s there. It’s like garbage. Payatas grew and grew until it could grow no more. What transpired was the first garbage avalanche in history, an event horrifying in its scope, burying dozens of families in its free-fall brutality and obscenity.
Well, our growing population is close to doing a Payatas.
The "happiness of Filipinos" my government official-friend espied with alacrity is the happiness of a chirping bird fatally wounded in the breast. Mahatma Gandhi’s ethereal smile never left his face even as an assassin smothered his life. Ninoy Aquino’s page-boy grin was frozen on his features even as Ferdinand Marcos’ soldier killers pierced his brain with a bullet. Jose Rizal turned around to get the bullets on his breast instead of his back as the Spaniards executed him at dawn at the Luneta. The faith, the courage, the bright-eyed resolution had never deserted him.
In many discussions, I have often been told "but we don’t have them anymore." It is true the Ninoys are no longer around, the Tañadas, the Javiers, the Abad Santoses. They are all dead. But my reply is invariably this: Each age, each epoch, each great upheaval in history brings its own baggage of heroes. They will come. Who ever heard of Nelson Mandela before his time? Or Oliver Cromwell? Or Andres Bonifacio and Apolinario Mabini? Or Vaclav Havel? Or Kemal Ataturk? Or Charles de Gaulle?
But there is no one to lead us today? is the recurring plaint.
"That is true," I reply. "But the Philippines has proven itself to be a pioneer of change. There was no leader with the wings of Pegasus who fought Marcos and his dictatorship during EDSA I. What we had was civil society, the middle class, enraged enough and brave enough to storm the streets and trigger the collapse of the dictatorship through peaceful means. The same thing happened during EDSA II. An aborted Senate impeachment trial brought out the EDSA Shrine throngs and the scandal-ridden regime of Joseph Estrada fell. What we have is People Power."
That doesn’t ring a bell immediately. I explain that if and when the social volcano would erupt, only People Power, the Middle Forces, can save the Philippines from the bloviated communist revolution of the Left, and the dictatorship of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The enemy this time is not the political leadership. It is a system that has worn itself out and disgraced and debased itself. It will have to be replaced. By whom? By a "collective leadership" comprising the best brains, the bravest hearts, the most intrepid and educated of the Middle Forces. Again how? By recognizing the legitimate plaints of the left. By persuading the military to please step aside and allow "the collective leadership" to take over the nation.
Again how? Many answers will come later.
The Cardinal was in fine fettle. The smile did not just flicker. It tumbled merrily across his face. Again, he said his doctors could not understand why he remained in good health. And, of course, we were happy for him.
He fully grasped the historic logic of Freedom Force. As he it was who triggered the logic of the first EDSA. EDSA was not the work of a hero, a superman, a man on horseback, but the mainstream of middle society gathering into a social avalanche because a brutal thieving dictatorship had to be toppled. And in the second instance, another president deformed by scandal, exhibiting a morality that came from the sewer, corrupt and creepy, had to be removed. Both EDSAs were an object lesson. They proved, even as they succeeded, that what was wrong was not the leadership, but the system. The system had to be uprooted. And revolutionary blood would not be spilled.
The Cardinal saw this instantly.