Letters
Letters
Updated 10:42pm (Mla time) Nov 08, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the November 9, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
MY views on the Filipino Diaspora seem to have touched new raw nerves out there. Here are three interesting letters I've gotten in the e-mail. The first comes from here, the second from France, the third from the United States.
From Alona A. Laplana of Makati City:
"Reading your articles 'Alarm bell' and 'Again, sense of country' produced a lump in my throat. I do not know that as a Filipino, I am perceived by other nationalities as one without a culture. I have lived in this country for all of my 40 years. I am trying to raise my children in the fashion we were raised by our parents: courteous especially to elders, considerate of other people, always striving to be good, putting God in all that we do.
"If these values are not what you call culture, then what is culture? Is it the clothes we wear? Only very few Chinese or Koreans wear their traditional costumes. Is it in the food we eat? We still have lechon, dinuguan, balut, etc.
"It is unfair to accuse the Filipino of lacking a sense of country just because he wants to get a decent paying job abroad, something that is hard to find at home. And what is so wrong about adopting the culture of a country where you are able to survive and eventually earn a respectable life?
"Perhaps adaptability is our culture. We can still be Filipino in a Britney Spears outfit. Even the Chinese wear coat and tie in their formal functions. We should be happy that in the Philippines the barong Tagalog remains the formal wear even among expats. Our fondness for Japanese cars is just economics-they're practical. Why should that be taken against us?
"Culture evolves. Even Rome changes. If we are happy that some foreigners have chosen to live in the Philippines, why shouldn't we be happy that some of our kababayans have also chosen to like and live in other countries?"
From Dodie Quimpo of Paris:
"The absence of national identity that you have eloquently described in your column 'Alarm Bell' last Sept. 29 has long preoccupied my mind. You brought it up of course in the light of Filipinos' vulnerability to 'trick mirror' hoaxes and bashing. I would put the question in a much higher and significant context.
"Absence of national identity, to my mind, constitutes the central question that determines the future of the country and of Filipinos. In our younger days, the nationalist movements of the '60s and '70s gave us hope for the Philippines.
"I believed then that the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship and US neo-colonialism would also bring forth the rebirth of a national identity that has long been denied to us by centuries of colonial rule. But the pages of history have turned. Apparently, that nationalist movement has not taken root nor matured.
"And today the forces of globalization have swept all corners of the world. It has multiplied the debts and intensified the poverty of much of the peoples and countries of the world while building up a new Roman empire. In forcing a unipolar world order that serves the super rich, globalization inevitably tramples on the rights and cultures of nations and people. The weakest among them would perish.
"In the Philippines, the winds of globalization have intensified the Diaspora of Filipinos. It has plunged the country into a quagmire of debt, poverty, hunger and corruption. Is it too late for the Filipino nation? No home, no history, no identity. Then the Filipino nation is doomed to perish."
From Marvin Carlos of Woodside, New York:
"The spam e-mail attributed to Art Bell was really just done by someone with too much free time.
"I agree with you on the part about the elite: "True enough, as Enwistle says, the Filipino Diaspora helps the elite keep the status quo. But far more than that, it frees the elite from being threatened by the collapse of the country. People have wondered why government officials do not seem to be alarmed by the brewing crisis, which, if some financial experts are to be believed, will make us lucky to end up like Argentina. Well, they can always leave the country."
"I have to disagree with you on other points ... 'In other countries, leaving home for a job abroad is the last resort, here it is the first. It is not a compulsion, it is a dream. It is not an act of desperation, it is an act of ambition.'
"I need to ask you: How do you know about other countries (or ours for that matter) to be so absolute? I offer that like most things in the world, it's in shades of grey. Please desist from using so much drama in your literature. I've worked with a lot of people from other countries here in the United States, and most of them are here for reasons in between desperation and ambition. I've had Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese friends who've decided to stay in the United States for good. Those who did go home did so because they found opportunities back home. Those people I knew back in California were the well-educated type -- artists, scientists-turned-engineers, business people, etc.
"I don't see why those things should matter -- what you say about your countrymen, what the phony Art Bell writer says about Pinoys, or whatever bigoted or self-important feedback on Filipinos is said every day. There may be some shades of truth in it, but I wouldn't read or listen to it and then feel a sense of epiphany or shame about myself and my racial identity afterwards. And I don't like how you set up specific people as examples. Case in point is the medical board topnotcher. If the board topnotcher doctor-turned-orderly were my relative or friend, I would encourage him to go back on the path of practicing medicine (and maybe that's what he's after in time). But I wouldn't make him out as a national embarrassment. I certainly don't think anyone enjoys being showcased as a Filipino poster child of national betrayal."
Updated 10:42pm (Mla time) Nov 08, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A12 of the November 9, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
MY views on the Filipino Diaspora seem to have touched new raw nerves out there. Here are three interesting letters I've gotten in the e-mail. The first comes from here, the second from France, the third from the United States.
From Alona A. Laplana of Makati City:
"Reading your articles 'Alarm bell' and 'Again, sense of country' produced a lump in my throat. I do not know that as a Filipino, I am perceived by other nationalities as one without a culture. I have lived in this country for all of my 40 years. I am trying to raise my children in the fashion we were raised by our parents: courteous especially to elders, considerate of other people, always striving to be good, putting God in all that we do.
"If these values are not what you call culture, then what is culture? Is it the clothes we wear? Only very few Chinese or Koreans wear their traditional costumes. Is it in the food we eat? We still have lechon, dinuguan, balut, etc.
"It is unfair to accuse the Filipino of lacking a sense of country just because he wants to get a decent paying job abroad, something that is hard to find at home. And what is so wrong about adopting the culture of a country where you are able to survive and eventually earn a respectable life?
"Perhaps adaptability is our culture. We can still be Filipino in a Britney Spears outfit. Even the Chinese wear coat and tie in their formal functions. We should be happy that in the Philippines the barong Tagalog remains the formal wear even among expats. Our fondness for Japanese cars is just economics-they're practical. Why should that be taken against us?
"Culture evolves. Even Rome changes. If we are happy that some foreigners have chosen to live in the Philippines, why shouldn't we be happy that some of our kababayans have also chosen to like and live in other countries?"
From Dodie Quimpo of Paris:
"The absence of national identity that you have eloquently described in your column 'Alarm Bell' last Sept. 29 has long preoccupied my mind. You brought it up of course in the light of Filipinos' vulnerability to 'trick mirror' hoaxes and bashing. I would put the question in a much higher and significant context.
"Absence of national identity, to my mind, constitutes the central question that determines the future of the country and of Filipinos. In our younger days, the nationalist movements of the '60s and '70s gave us hope for the Philippines.
"I believed then that the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship and US neo-colonialism would also bring forth the rebirth of a national identity that has long been denied to us by centuries of colonial rule. But the pages of history have turned. Apparently, that nationalist movement has not taken root nor matured.
"And today the forces of globalization have swept all corners of the world. It has multiplied the debts and intensified the poverty of much of the peoples and countries of the world while building up a new Roman empire. In forcing a unipolar world order that serves the super rich, globalization inevitably tramples on the rights and cultures of nations and people. The weakest among them would perish.
"In the Philippines, the winds of globalization have intensified the Diaspora of Filipinos. It has plunged the country into a quagmire of debt, poverty, hunger and corruption. Is it too late for the Filipino nation? No home, no history, no identity. Then the Filipino nation is doomed to perish."
From Marvin Carlos of Woodside, New York:
"The spam e-mail attributed to Art Bell was really just done by someone with too much free time.
"I agree with you on the part about the elite: "True enough, as Enwistle says, the Filipino Diaspora helps the elite keep the status quo. But far more than that, it frees the elite from being threatened by the collapse of the country. People have wondered why government officials do not seem to be alarmed by the brewing crisis, which, if some financial experts are to be believed, will make us lucky to end up like Argentina. Well, they can always leave the country."
"I have to disagree with you on other points ... 'In other countries, leaving home for a job abroad is the last resort, here it is the first. It is not a compulsion, it is a dream. It is not an act of desperation, it is an act of ambition.'
"I need to ask you: How do you know about other countries (or ours for that matter) to be so absolute? I offer that like most things in the world, it's in shades of grey. Please desist from using so much drama in your literature. I've worked with a lot of people from other countries here in the United States, and most of them are here for reasons in between desperation and ambition. I've had Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese friends who've decided to stay in the United States for good. Those who did go home did so because they found opportunities back home. Those people I knew back in California were the well-educated type -- artists, scientists-turned-engineers, business people, etc.
"I don't see why those things should matter -- what you say about your countrymen, what the phony Art Bell writer says about Pinoys, or whatever bigoted or self-important feedback on Filipinos is said every day. There may be some shades of truth in it, but I wouldn't read or listen to it and then feel a sense of epiphany or shame about myself and my racial identity afterwards. And I don't like how you set up specific people as examples. Case in point is the medical board topnotcher. If the board topnotcher doctor-turned-orderly were my relative or friend, I would encourage him to go back on the path of practicing medicine (and maybe that's what he's after in time). But I wouldn't make him out as a national embarrassment. I certainly don't think anyone enjoys being showcased as a Filipino poster child of national betrayal."
posted by Dante at 8:34 AM
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