Friendship
Day Rants
By Dennis Aguinaldo
I. Anti-American
I
WAS first in line to answer my professor's round-robin question
during my first day in graduate school:
"Are you anti-American?"
I knew his backgorund
as a government security adviser so I couldn't scratch away the
itching idea that he may have been asking:
"Would you crash
a hi-jacked airplane on a Manhattan airplane?"
So I entered
a definite "No" but hastened to add that I'm against its policies.
I must say, I also detest the fact that we continue to consider
July Four as Fil-Am friendship day. Especially since it means so
much more than just an autograph session with the PBA's new line
of culturally ambiguous players.
II. Fil-Am
Friendship
The catch
phrase "Fil-Am friendship" never meant anything to me but a serious
effort of past presidents and the representation of the elite to
ingratiate themselves with American masters. It has been relatively
one-sided. Most American pupils do not even know the Philippines.
The very few who do have been taught that what we know as the Philippine
American War was nothing more than an insurrection.
The French know
why the Vietnamese speak some French. The British are still keen
on what happens in Indonesia. But the Americans think they never
colonized anybody and we're just some country that has somehow grown
adept with English and has gained some edge as immigrant nurses.
We have always
been pictured at the receiving end of the US' gracious aid. As if
these take-home sums were altruistic, with no politico-economic
strings attached. Not the kind that would open us up to more IMF-WB
structural adjustments right? So much for the touted self-determination
clause.
Our elite has
taken the fat of the lamb from all bilateral relations with the
US. Most historically poignant is the lengthy Marcos regime with
its plunder and human rights violations. That dictatorship would
never have gone full-swing had the US not adopted Marcos as its
little brown lapdog.
Since the Treaty
of Paris, we have lost decades' worth of our sovereignty, consciousness
and dignity to the evolution of the US foreign policy. So much so
that I have wished so many times that our plantations didn't have
the sugar they wanted so much for their coffee, that sweet element
that prompted them to wage war over Cuba and then the Philppines.
Only when their home-grown sugar elite protested the imports did
they actually consider the release of the Philippines.
I also wished
at times that we were not in such a strategic position in South
East Asia. We ourselves couldn't benefit from our strategic placement
anyway! The professor put special emphasis on the fact that even
our military was US-based! We have been so dependent on US military
structure and hand-me-downs that we have developed a predominantly
land-based armed forces for an archipelago with a coastline miles
longer than that of the US! Most US states are of course land-locked
and a land-based military suits them. Following blindly, we have
bared our country to the threats of the sea, uninsulated by whatever
tragedy it might bring. How could we expect to counter sea-based
traffic of drugs and illegal goods? How could we expect anything
to come between the Abu Sayyaf and the Dos Palmas hostages?
III. American
Culture
The political pragmatism of the US is the basis of its policies.
It is the emphasis on practice, of the truth being made not
found. This is the zenith of conceit that can only come from the
victor of the cold war, the global hegemon.
But what is
so noble with American Practice? It fosters high consumerism in
the planetary closed system, thus leaving the planet less capable
of producing for our children. It ignores even global consensus
on environmental measures since these threaten to hamper the growth
of their industries. It opens up the vulnerable countries like oysters
and tear off any hope for a national sense of self-worth. All the
while, it pays freedom and self-determination a billion-dollar lip
service.
We all know
somebody or somebody who knows somebody in the US. The US is the
Filipino's primary choice, the premier destination of ailing ex-presidents,
touring elite and laboring OFWs. Our eyes, minds, and guts are trained
on its channels, celebrities, and products. The US remains the political,
economic and cultural Mecca of the Filipino.
IV. Filipino
Indebtedness
Our
children are growing up in the American thrall, bowing down before
the American ideal as if there was no alternative. Ask them if they
want to be born Filipino and after you assure them you're not testing
them for school, they'll say they want to be American, with Japanese
probably second and being Filipino a sad third. They are echoing
the secret desires nursed by parents.
Who can blame
who? We who have always thought we had so little have been inundated
with images of foreign plenty. The land where there is always more
is so appealing that we forget the source of their wealth and power--the
unhampered operations of exploitative multi-national corporations
in our country and our, it seems, boundless sense of indebtedness
toward a selfish friend.
In many ways,
productive or otherwise, our lives are intricately interwoven with
the United States. I see ties of debt, deceit, OFW sweat, drained
brains and spilled blood.
Needless to
say, I wouldn't go so far as to call it friendship.
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