RP discovers itself

There’s one big blessing the Angelo de la Cruz gripping drama brought about. Like a hundred flashlights, it illuminated the power of the poor to influence or direct the of course of Philippine events. If he had not been a Middle East overseas worker, a lowly anonymous truck driver kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents who threatened to behead him, Angelo would not have been in the glare of world events. Second, because he was, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo realized what she was up against. This was a deadly rumble of the poor gathering round Angelo. And so she did the only thing a Filipino president could do under the circumstances. Save Angelo.

She ordered the Philippines 51-man humanitarian contingent to withdraw from Iraq in accordance with hostage takers’ deadline.

The result was predictable. The lower layers of Philippine society, the Great Unwashed, praised her decision lustily. There was rejoicing in their ranks, dancing in the streets, feasting, jubilation, no fear or concern whatsoever GMA’s decision could or would put the Philippines in international jeopardy. The upper layers, the highly educated, at most an articulate minority, boomed the problem to the arcane layers of international relations or diplomacy. The Philippines, they said, would pay. For reneging on its commitment to withdraw the contingent August 30, the Philippines would lose the trust of America and its major allies like Britain and Australia. Let me chew that a little.

Decision-making or the launching of revolutions, said the great French savant Raymond Aron, is always a hazard.

It is like throwing dice against the stars. Only the future will tell whether you did right or wrong. If what you achieve is greater or turns out to be more purposeful than what you lost, then you made the right decision. Former US President Richard Nixon always had a list of options listed by his advisers on what to do on big issues. He studied each option carefully, weighing pros and cons again and again, before he decided. In hindsight, there is no doubt he decided wrong on the Watergate issue.

I have taken the position GMA made the right decision.

What did the poet say? Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but words will never hurt me. Words, angry words, irate words, they are now pouring on the Philippine government from almost all over. GMA committed a blunder. Did she? But the real hurt will only come if those who warn or threaten the Philippines today can break our will as a nation, tear us even more apart economically, abandon us to the wolves. Stone us to death.

I say that is a mirage. I also say, in retrospect and in anger, a plague on your houses!

Whatever America had done for us, if indeed it has done much, we Filipinos have repaid many times over. We have fought many of America’s wars here and abroad. We fought the battles of Bataan and Corregidor with uncommon ferocity. We marched the Death March, tens of thousands of Filipinos more dying on the way to Japanese concentration camps. We did all these for the Americans, and I am not going to let them forget that. I fought, I almost died as a guerrilla fighting for America in the Battle of Bessang Pass. God bless America – yeah.

Didn’t ask them to come as a colonizing power. But the Yankees came, taking over from Spain, and we fought them because we Filipinos wanted to be free.

In the process, about half a million Filipinos died. Are we going to forget all that? And now we find ourselves on the butt end? George Bush and Colin Powell are telling us we are recalcitrants, we are double-crossers, we are not friends, in fact we are apostates because we saved the life of Angelo de la Cruz? So many hurts, so any humiliations. For the love of America, our leaders agreed to parity in our constitution for Americans, to the Bell Trade Act. What was ours was theirs. What was theirs was theirs. Leaping lalapaloosa!

Our old bases agreement with the US gave the Yankee soldier a free ride to commit all kinds of possible abuses even crimes against Filipinos. Oh no, our courts could not retaliate. The US offenders were all brought home to escape Philippine justice and snook their noses at the lowly Pinoy..

So I would now urge my American friends to desist and withdraw the branding iron. We have been your vassal for too long, your Little Brown Brother, your willing footstool in the United Nations and other international organizations. We have fought for you. We have died for you. We have mangled our sovereignty for you. But we cannot do that forever. We too have learned the value of national pride. And freedom is something we want to exercise, to appreciate.

That, to me, has been the boon of the Angelo de la Cruz drama.

Now, we Filipinos can look inward and outward. We find out, first, that when push comes to shove and shove to harder shove, we Filipinos will defend Filipinos first before we defend anybody else. Who indeed was Angelo de la Cruz? He was nobody but a Filipino outcast in foreign lands, driven out because he could no find a job here. But Angelo’s plight was like the buzz of a hornet’s nest He was not all alone. There were millions like him. And like him – totally forsaken here – they found employment abroad.

Before anybody knew it, overseas Filipino workers, perhaps now totaling 7-8 million, had become a formidable social and economic force. They sent home about $7-9 billion annually. Without this, the Filipino economy would flounder and sink. Their votes now mattered. And so the nation’s laws were altered to enable them to vote. Fil-Ams. They were now a name to reckon with in sports, in entertainment, in politics.

The Filipino rich and powerful, who atop their high horses had earlier ignored them, now realize they are a force to contend with.

They are now the centripetal force in our society. Notice how Buenavista, the hometown of Angelo in Pampanga, has come to the fore in our media? Never have the poor been given so much attention, so much publicity, so much importance. It is such a striking contrast to media’s preoccupation with the lives and lifestyles of the rich, the wealth, the opulence, the suburban mansions reeking with imported artifacts, dresses galore and jewelry galore, soaps, tints, dyes, perfumes, colognes, designed to make each square inch of skin, a mini-Mecca of the ultimate in sophistication.

This contrast has been driven to the fore by the events that rode on Angelo’s misfortune – or is it now fortune?

But as we look inward, we must perforce look outward. What now Philippines?

We now know we are a small, insignificant country in the concourse of the world’s mighty. And yet, however rarely, we matter when a single Filipino’s misadventure collides with the adventures of the mighty like America. We now know OFWs are a world apart, a planet that can live by itself outside the scope of our indifferent rich, and they will not be buncombed, bullied. They have power. And this is what made President GMA decide the way she decided.

Angelo’s coming home whole alive was different from coming home, his head severed from his body. With Angelo whole, the country festively came together. It would have dismembered otherwise. It would have come out of Pandora’s Box like a whole slew of abject, screaming creatures, a country that never really knew itself or discovered itself. And now on a wild, riotous stampede into the unknown.

This is just the perspective the Philippines needs to know or endeavor how it can relate to other nations – particularly Asia which it has ignored for generations.

It was never really an Asian country. From the outset, when Spain came, it was always tied to the fortunes of Europe and the West. It was known as Las Yslas Filipinas. Its leaders and top insurectos were educated in Spain or the culture of Spain. Its religion was mediaeval Roman Catholic, its people largely uneducated, its culture bathed in ancestor worship, superstition, cant. America came and brought the English language, and the rags-to riches American way of life.

The first, Hispanic, remained almost a permanent hindrance to national progress, particularly economic, nailed the Filipino to the soil. The second, American, brandished the dollar sign, all it could buy, particularly the bitch goddess success at any cost. Between the two, we were stuck in a time warp, a society deeply divided between the rich and the poor. Inhaling cultural marijuana.

We didn’t know how to move. Now we know, or we think we know, at least we shall try. We survived the Angelo de la Cruz crisis, because it bore the stamp of Tatak Pinoy. It should be like that – always.