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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Thursday. September 14, 2017
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WHEN we were in grade school, our history teacher taught about our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal as “the pride of the Malay race.” Indeed, our forebears had descended largely from Malaysian, Indonesian and Bornean immigrants.
Today, however, it would already be anachronistic to refer to us Filipinos as Malayans. In fact, by the time Rizal was born, we had shed off most of our similarities with them – except our color and physique.
It’s only in Mindanao – with the prevailing Islam religion in some provinces – that our Malayan identification still prevails.
But what if the Spaniards had not invaded and ruled us for 333 years?
In his book Outcry for Change, the late Eugenio C. Galido of Sebaste, Antique, expressed the notion that the shift from Spanish to American domination of the Philippines could not have transpired had Spain ruled justly.
Rizal, who belonged to the last generation of Spanish-governed Filipinos, had warned that a sudden withdrawal of colonists could precipitate political instability reminiscent of what had transpired in Mexico.
Originally inhabited by the Mayas (an agricultural people), Mexico was already the site of an Aztec civilization boasting of giant stone pyramids when Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes invaded it in 1519 to kick off three centuries of Spanish rule. By the time the natives declared independence in 1823, they had lost the ability for self-governance.
The Filipinos’ discontent with the ruling governor-generals and the friars drove them to collaborate with the Americans.
In 1901, under then President Warren Harding, the United States was wary of Emilio Aguinaldo, who had proclaimed himself first President of the Philippine Republic. By order of Governor-General William Howard Taft, the task of capturing Aguinaldo fell in the hands of Col. Frederick Funston, chief of regiment of the Kansas Volunteers to the Philippines.
Asked why they could not trust Aguinaldo, Funston replied, “He’s a would-be dictator presiding over a drunken and uncontrollable mob.”
“It was also the long-standing hatred of Filipinos against the Spanish clergy who grabbed enormous tracts of land and exploited local peasants,” Galido wrote, “that moved Funston to play his role in his country’s involvement in the colonial war.”
Under American rule in 1901, the Philippine government bought most friar lands for the then princely sum of P14,474,000.
If history had not unfolded the way it did, what path could we have trodden?
What if we have retained our Malayan identity? Could we have preserved our rain forests and wildlife that still distinguish Borneo from other countries today? The Banawe Rice Terraces, for many years known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World, had served as testament to our bayanihan or cooperative nature.
What if the United States subjugated us to become its 51st state? Could the Philippines have been run like heaven?
In 1931, US President Herbert Hoover announced that most Filipinos in the Philippines would prefer representation in the US Congress first as prerequisite to eventual independence.
Shortly before becoming President of the Philippine Commonwealth, however, an unbowed Manuel Luis Molina Quezon declared, “I prefer a government run like hell by the Filipinos to a government run like heaven by the Americans.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (US President in 1933 to 1945), sensing his passion for leadership, eventually agreed with Quezon.
If Quezon were one of us today, beleaguered by rampant graft and corruption in Philippine government, might he have changed his mind?
Had the Japanese bested the Americans in World War II, could we have shed off our “indolence” – as tagged by Rizal – and adopted their ways? The Japanese – a non-Christian people – are known for their diligence, delicadeza, patriotism, and incorruptibility.
Alas, there is no way of knowing what might have been had history been different. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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