"A lot has changed. Nothing has gotten better."
A Filipino-American friend, who works for an American high-tech firm and is now based in China, writes about the reaction to Corazon Aquino's death inside the Philippines. So much about this note brings up the powerful and opposing feelings that I have had on every experience in the country: admiration for the heart and passion of so many individual Filipinos, and pretty much outright despair at the predicament in which they all seem trapped.
I'm in Cebu, visiting my mom and dad for the weekend. I was here the
morning Corazon Aquino passed away. The outpouring of emotion and
respect across the country has been tremendous. Coverage has been
literally nonstop on [the main news channel] ANC (they're actually showing a live shot now of
her body being prepped for transfer from La Salle Greenhills after the
public viewing) and they've been replaying and reliving memories of her
rise to power and the EDSA revolution....
I was just a little kid in 1986 (I was 10), and for me, it is a very
powerful reminder of how passionate the Filipino people can be and how
this became such an iconic moment of democracy for the rest of the
world.
A few things struck me as quite interesting about "Tita Cory's"
passing:...I thought Hu Jintao's statement of condolences was also gracious and
obligatory, but colored by the idea that People Power didn't go so well
in Tiananmen Square in 1989. (Media here is even citing people in
Beijing shouting "Cory! Cory!" during the TS protests, but I've never
heard that before).
The fact that she will not receive a state
burial befitting a former president is also fascinating. The idea that,
even in death, she and her family opted to continue her life as a
private citizen is a strong statement for leaders everywhere. As her
family has stated (starting with Ninoy), public service is just that:
Service. "After that, you're done. You're nothing," said Ninoy. [Ninoy = her assassinated husband, senator Benigno Aquino.]
And
finally, after taking my father to an afternoon of sabong
(cockfighting) here in Mandaue City, we talked about the state of the
country in his eyes since EDSA. He came to the U.S. in May of 1972,
just four months before Marcos' declared martial law. He is a former
priest who was in seminary since the age of 15 and witnessed the US
routing of Japan from Sorsogon as a small boy at the end of WWII. Now
he and my mother are back to live the rest of their lives in their home
country. What's changed?
"A lot has changed. Nothing has gotten better." And he's right.
Continue reading ""A lot has changed. Nothing has gotten better."" »
Frankie Jose / "Damaged Culture" link update
In an
item yesterday about the distinguished Filipino novelist F. Sionil "Frankie" Jose, I mentioned that I'd taken a road trip with him to the northern reaches of Luzon and written about it in the Atlantic in 1991. Thanks to our web team, especially Cotton Codinha, that article is now online,
here.
I hadn't looked at the article in a very long time and was disconcerted to find that the comparison I used yesterday to describe Jose's gusto was the very same one that came to mind 18 years ago. I hope that this unintended self-plagiarism says as much about the rightness of the comparison as it does about the limits of my imagination. It comes at the end of this part of the original article:
José is a short, plump, nearly bald man of sixty-six, who would not look out of place wearing the baggy shorts and basketball-style undershirt of the typical Chinese shopkeeper in Southeast Asia. When I see him, I am reminded of a little boy--in the way he carries his body, in his quick and unconcealed switches from desolation to glee. On our five-day trip last summer, when he was driving me and a young Soviet academic to see the sights of his youth, we passed a railroad siding where the teenage José had been held by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. "I was so scared," he said, his face clouding like a ten-year-old's. "I was so little and skinny then--ho ho ho!" he roared, slapping his round belly. We stopped every few miles so that José could see whether the cane-sugar sweets, or the little roasted birds, or the other regional delicacies were as tasty as he recalled. When he was not planning the next meal, he sat watching women with a blissful look. "Ah, I tell you, Jim, the eye never dulls!" he said in a restaurant after four stunning young women walked by our table "Only the flesh becomes weak--ho ho ho!"
Eventually I asked him how his wife, Tessie, whom he married forty-two years ago, after both had been students at the University of Santo Tomas, in Manila, feels about the adoring descriptions of young women that fill his work. "She knows I am devoted to her," he said, serious for a moment. "And she forgives me my pecadeeeeyos!" A rich roar of laughter. This, I thought, is what it must have been like to be on the road with Rabelais.
Because Frankie Jose has been so centrally involved in debates about the effects of Philippine culture on the country's political and economic destiny, for the record I include a link to my 1987 article "
A Damaged Culture," which also cites Jose's works. This article generated a lot of heat, and some support, in the Philippines. From what I can tell similar debates still rage.
