Even as China earthquake magnitude revised to 8.0, here at home, 4.6 magnitude quake hits Calapan City. And Typhoon Cosme claims eight lives.
Banko Sentral toying with the idea of pumping additional funds into UCPB. While San Miguel’s thinking of taking over the Bank of Commerce.
And Hermogenes Esperon is made a human Colt Revolver and named chief presidential peacemaker.
The Inquirer editorial looks at the appointment of Jesus Dureza, former head of the peace process, to the Press portfolio. The editorial says it can only result in Dureza’s reputation being diminished, and along the way takes a look at how Dureza’s predecessor shrank in public stature:
Bunye has appeared on television and been published in the papers countless times … But out of all that footage and film stock, one image will define him for all time: that time, three years ago next month, when he appeared before the cameras with two compact disks in hand, just as the “Hello, Garci” scandal was breaking. He told a rapt nation that he had evidence that the President’s alleged wiretapped conversation with election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano (the CD in one hand) were a fabrication, because the conversation was actually between the President and a certain political aide named “Gary” (the CD in the other hand).
This bold attempt to immediately contain a political crisis immediately backfired, because it turned out that the object of the wiretaps was not the President, after all, but Garcillano. In other words, and as the recordings and transcripts circulated or published online immediately made clear, President Arroyo’s supposed conversation with “Gary” could not have been part of the Garci tapes.
The flaw in the plan to cover up the crisis was that it was based on a faulty reading of the problem (Palace operatives thought it was the President’s phone which had been bugged). The faulty reading of the problem, however, proved that there was in fact a cover-up. A Palace official – the President’s spokesman, no less – had been caught with both hands inside the CD jar.
Much later, under questioning in Congress, Bunye alleged that the package of CDs had only come into his possession, sub rosa. He said he didn’t even know where the package came from. The brainless excuse, from an otherwise careful lawyer, led many to conclude that Bunye, at the very least, was part of a cover-up about a cover-up. If Bunye really did not know the provenance of the two CDs, why did he present them to the media? As his old and new friends from the banking industry might say, It doesn’t compute.
Fr. Joaquin Bernas offers up an interesting glimpse into the strict limits on the judiciary, and says the JELAC is basically unconstitutional:
Under our Constitution the judiciary as judiciary may not give advisory opinions whether to the President or to Congress. As judiciary, its language must have the force of law which must be obeyed. Advisory opinions do not command obedience. Giving advisory opinions can demean the judiciary.
It is true that individual justices sometimes give advisory opinions. But they do it on their own, and improperly. Neither they themselves nor the courts are bound by such opinion.
In the 1987 Constitution there is also a provision which says that the “Members of the Supreme Court and of other courts established by law shall not be designated to any agency performing quasi-judicial or administrative functions.”
(photo above taken at Mendiola last Saturday; “Suportahan ang Presidente. Ibagsak presyo ng koryente.”)
Amando Doronila says the government and the Lopezes would both be better off if they manage to pull off a compromise when the President and Manuel Lopez, big boss at Meralco, meet today:
The Bohol summit is the first time that the Arroyo administration is confronting the economic power of the Lopez family, which has during the past 50 years survived attempts to crush it by several post-war governments, notably those of President Diosdado Macapagal, Ms Arroyo’s father, in the 1960s and President Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s who confiscated Meralco and ABS-CBN with martial law powers. In those battles, the Lopezes fought with their media weapons, something they are now using to damage the present administration, with considerable success.
The current Arroyo-Lopez confrontation is no less fierce and no side is emerging unscathed. The summit in Bohol has far-reaching implications for the balance of power between the political sector’s interventionism in business and autonomy of private sector economic power centers. It is not a battle merely between Ms Arroyo and the Lopezes.
The meeting ought to be compared, then, to Napoleon and Czar Alexander of Russia’s Treaty of Tilsit, famously described as a meeting of two sovereigns on a raft. See Two hundred years after the ‘peace’ of Tilsit.
My column for today is An essential experience . Some reminiscing about a childhood visit to Santa Ana Church kicks the column off (some pictures over at Traveler on Foot). I’m uneasy with terms like “Kingdom of Sapa,” which is supposedly what the area we now know as Santa Ana was, because it may be a misleading description of the locality in pre-Spanish times.
Anyway, the column came about because last Saturday, I had the chance to visit Gold of Ancestors: Pre-colonial Treasures in the Philippines at the Ayala Museum. Any museum display involving gold artifacts is a sure crowd-pleaser (see Market Manila), and this display is no exception.
Until this exhibit was opened, the collection of the Central Bank of the Philippines was the focus of public awareness of prehispanic gold artifacts.
The sadly no-longer-updated blog, Pu-pu platter — a delectable selection of oriental appetizers, contains an extract from Ramon Villegas’ Ginto: History Wrought in Gold (see photos from the book, in Flickr):
Harrisson compared Borneo finds with gold artifacts in important Manila collections, particularly of Leandro and Cecilia Locsin’s (Harrisson 1968: 43). He concluded that the Limbang hoard shows close Philippine affinities, though the group is strongly “Javanese” as well. Second, small but significant “Hindu-Buddhist” influences are suggested, or more vaguely as Indonesian (“Indian”) influence rather than anything “Chinese.”
Also, “as in West Borneo, few gold pieces can be dated very early and the major goldsmithing appears to have occured after 1000 AD — and perhaps especially between 1200 and 1400 AD…as in Borneo so in Philippine pre-history, remarkably few fine things of gold seem to have been made later than about 1400 AD — perhaps because of a change in trade patterns and export requirements to the mainland after the start of the Ming dysnasty (or the equivalent), and/or the new attitudes evoked by Islam after 1400” (Harrisson 1968: 77)
Finally, he reiterated that Philippine gold artifacts in general tend to be more elaborate and better crafted than most from West Borneo.
Harrisson looked at the Dr Arturo de Santos collection (part of which was acquired by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) as well, and observed that “…the range of Philippine gold jewelry…includes many pieces of a complexity and finesse that is beyond anything attempted in Borneo” in so far as what had been found at that time (Harrisson 1968: 56).
Throughout Indonesia there was a relationship between gold artifacts and the ruling aristocracy, in the class-power centers which developed on the coastal plains around the middle of the 1st millenium AD (Harrisson 1968:44). Precious metals were worked ‘exclusively in those areas where the influence of Hinduism was strongest’: he includes Java, Bali, southern Celebes and the coastal districts of Borneo. These areas developed as centers with established hierarchies, which necessitated the conspicuous display of wealth (Harrisson 1968: 47).
There was a demand for gold, which the Philippines could have supplied. It would be reasonable to suggest that one of the main sources of Javanese and Bornean gold was the Philippines. That trade would have been important enough to have been direct, by-passing minor pass-on players say, in Sarawak or Sulawesi. Moreover, the early interest in gold from the Philippines would have been in the raw material rather than wrought artifacts. In turn, local interest would have been on goods not made of gold, which they had plenty of.
To paraphrase Harrisson, “This, in turn, liberated the (Filipinos) from conventions in gold-craft not ideally suited to local materials and outlook, thus producing the much livelier (forms) seen in Manila” (Harrisson 1968: 80). Indianization in Philippine gold ornaments, therefore, was a matter of selective adaptation, rather than wholesale adoption.
Incidentally, a comment by pupuplatter on May 3 in Market Manila is well worth reading, with its account of the conquistadores avidly excavating graves to loot them for gold:
Your ancestors in Bohol, Cebu, and elsewhere in the Visayas were also wearing beautiful pieces of gold jewelry that they crafted with their own hands. In 1565 Miguel Lopez de Legazpi issued a proclamation in Cebu requiring Spanish soldiers and sailors who dug up Cebuano graves in search of treasure to properly declare their finds to the authorities in order for the King of Spain to take his “royal fifths and rights,” his majesty’s “cut” in the loot.
Such a great “quantity of gold and other jewels” was found in the “many graves and burial-places of the native Indians” in Cebu and so invested were Spanish officials to collect what they deemed was their rightful share in the stolen goods that more drastic measures had to be taken.
The commenter then quotes a Jesuit writing about a hundred years after Legaspi:
“I do remember that once when I was solemnizing a marriage of a Bisayan principala, she was so weighed down with jewelry that it caused her to stoop - to me it was close to an arroba or so (1 arroba = 25 lbs.), which was a lot of weight for a girl of twelve. Then again, I also heard it said that her grandfather had a jar full of gold which alone weighed five or six arrobas. Even this much is little in comparison to what they actually had in ancient times.”
pupuplatter, in another comment on May 4, provides a reading list, too (and since all good things come in threes, pupuplatter also points to online resources for Philippine artifacts held in Spanish collections), and this caveat:
I doubt that the makers of what has been called the “Surigao Treasure” were Muslim. Islam came to the Philippine rather late, less than 200 years before the Spanish conquest. We should also avoid idealizing, even as we begin to appreciate, the pre-colonial past: some of the pre-colonial jewelry recovered in Mindanao and elsewhere may have been hastily buried to hide them from Cebuano, Tagalog, or Samal slave raiders and looters. And it is difficult to determine who the “original” inhabitants of Mindanao really are. For much of the Spanish colonial period, agents of the maritime state of Sulu conducted slave raids throughout much of the Philippines. (Bisayans in particular resented this since before Christian conversion they claimed that they were so mighty that they would have been the ones looting, pillaging, and slave raiding their way across the Philippine waters.) These slaves gathered pearls, bird’s nest, wax and other products that were then sold to the agents of the British East India Company who, in turn, sold those products to China. It’s a complicated, global history.
The danger of romanticizing things is something I pointed out in my column, too. All the bling was not freely given, I think it’s safe to assume. The exhibit actually goes to great lengths to use precise terms -e.g. “stratified society”- and to point out that these were items meant to convey wealth and status
Rizal’s “Nuestro perdido Eden” and Bonifacio’s nostalgia for the blissful, civilized, land of the Taga-ilogs may just have been places with societies not too different from the kind of society we criticize today. The rape and rapine of conquistadors took place with the help of native allies, leaders playing what may have been, to them, simply the latest round in the power games they were used to. Sociologists and anthropologists have been pointing out how local cultures have survived foreign influence; and we’ve all heard anecdotal evidence of this (a friend once told me, for example, that in the vicinity of Iloilo, babaylan could be found until the 1950s). I haven’t read anything on the subject but it seems circumcision could be a cultural holdover from the days of Islam.
There are two things I mention in my column all-too-briefly. The first is The Laguna Copper Plate Inscription (Ambeth Ocampo, in a column, recounted that he’d had dibs on buying it but rejected it; he also says there remain many unanswered questions concerning the artifact). Here’s the inscription, as reproduced by Hector Santos:
As Ocampo recounted in his column, the story behind the discovery of the copperplate, and the debate over its authenticity and what the inscription means, is quite interesting. See The Laguna Copperplate Inscription by Paul Morrow (which has a Filipino version) and Sulat sa Tansô´: The Laguna Copperplate Inscription, a Philippine Document from 900 A.D. by Hector Santos.
As for the inscription itself, Morrow puts forward the inscription transcribed into our Latin writing system, while Santos provides the first translation by Antoon Postma and then his own translation. Morrow was also asked by Santos to do another translation. Here is Morrow’s English approximation of his translation:
Long Live! Year of Siyaka 822, month of Waisaka, according to astronomy. The fourth day of the waning moon, Monday. On this occasion, Lady Angkatan, and her brother whose name is Buka, the children of the Honourable Namwaran, were awarded a document of complete pardon from the Commander in Chief of Tundun, represented by the Lord Minister of Pailah, Jayadewa.
By this order, through the scribe, the Honourable Namwaran has been forgiven of all and is released from his debts and arrears of 1 kati and 8 suwarna before the Honourable Lord Minister of Puliran, Ka Sumuran by the authority of the Lord Minister of Pailah.
Because of his faithful service as a subject of the Chief, the Honourable and widely renowned Lord Minister of Binwangan recognized all the living relatives of Namwaran who were claimed by the Chief of Dewata, represented by the Chief of Medang.
Yes, therefore the living descendants of the Honourable Namwaran are forgiven, indeed, of any and all debts of the Honourable Namwaran to the Chief of Dewata.
This, in any case, shall declare to whomever henceforth that on some future day should there be a man who claims that no release from the debt of the Honourable…
The Ayala Museum exhibit displays the text of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, and it made me chuckle, because of the way it bristled with honorable so-and-so and honorable such-and-such. Our obsession with titles certainly goes back a long, long way.
And the second item I mention is The Boxer Codex. A brief introduction to this document and what it contains was written by the late Petronilo Bn. Daroy. The codex is used as the launching pad for connecting the little we know about prehispanic life, with the items on display, in the video presentation of the Ayala Museum.
Take the image above, which is from Wikipedia, and is one of the Boxer Codex’s illustrations of Tagalog notable types.
And take a look at the biggest crowd-pleaser in the exhibit, below:
This is from the Surigao Treasure, and you can immediately make the connection between the 10th-12th Century object and the 16th Century illustration. Weight? About 4 kilos. It’s something the curators suggest might be an Upativa, a symbol of belonging to the Brahmin caste. A general sense of what an Upavita is, and its ritual significance, can be gleaned from reading Upavita and Rules of Chanting. In the extract from Villegas’ book at the beginning of this entry, and in the articles of Morrow and Santos, one grey area in our prehispanic past is how we define the colonial period, in the first place.
I recall attending a lecture by Prof. Luis Camara Dery (see Milestones in Moro historiography for a glimpse into some of his writing) and if memory serves me right, he said that Lapulapu was a Tausug.
It’s interesting to see how Lapulapu himself could be the subject for more interesting discoveries to come. See a lecture delivered in Biliran Province by Prof. Rolando O. Borrinaga, From Bagasumbul to Naval: A Historical Review:
These were the questions that led me to theorize that the great victory suggested by the folk mind was probably the native victory over the Spaniards in the Battle of Mactan in April 1521, that the person referred to as Bagasumbul was Lapulapu of history, and that the people who walked behind his steps were the legions of Lapulapu followers who were among the earliest settlers of Barangay Caraycaray.
And so, after the writing of the annotated history of Naval in collaboration with several local intellectuals in 1989-1990, which was published in Kinaadman journal in 1992 (Borrinaga, et.al., 1992), I proceeded to write another paper with the tentative hypothesis that Lapulapu was the person attributed to as Bagasumbul in our folklore. The paper was published in the same journal in 1995 (Borrinaga 1995).
A dozen years after its publication, I still collect evidence to strengthen the Mactan-Naval connection and to bolster the “Lapulapu was Bagasumbul” theory. At the least, this theory has not yet been totally debunked or refuted in the literature.
Returning to Dery, if Lapulapu wasn’t a Cebuano, this is a problem if you subscribe to the cartoon version of our past. Or take this article on The Muslim Rulers of Manila, which basically points out they were Brunei royals. You would then have to start defining what you mean by native and non-native, by colonialism, too: is it colonialism if involving alliance and conquest by a European power, and not if it means one ethnic group being ruled by members of a family from another ethnic group? What does it say of Cebuano assumptions concerning their identity, if Lapulapu was, indeed, Tausug? Or for Tagalogs if Rajah Matanda a member of an interrelated set of ruling families in Manila, Sulu, and Brunei and the grandson of Sultan Bolkiah of Brunei?
This is simple if you view it from the point of view of a pan-Brunei sort of identity, with Brunei as the center; but you’d be dodging the question of how they came to be leading families of those areas.
And this brings us to the Upavita above. In general in quest of a prehispanic identity we go back to a Muslim one; but that identity, in turn, was it imposed or adopted? If imposed, then the colonial period might have to include a possible Islamic conquest of areas that were formerly Hindu in terms of belief and culture (the story of the spread of Islam in Indonesia would be useful to look at, from this point of view, as Bali became the Hindu holdout in the otherwise succesful Islamic conversion and conquest of the rest of present-day Indonesia). If by conversion, and without force, how was conversion achieved? Was it a case of rulers ethnically different from their subjects, adopting a new faith and their subjects going along with the conversion? Or something in between?
Anyway, this goes to show how very many interesting questions need to be discussed both among the experts and with the public. See Jessica Zafra’s Newsweek article on the exhibit, Going for the Gold: A new permanent exhibit offers tantalizing hints to the Philippines’ precolonial history.
Some photos:
A sword hilt from the Surigao Treasure.
A belt. The collection features many other belts, and clasps, as well.
At times, the terse captions were frustrating. What on earth is a penannular, for example? The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archeology says,
In the shape of a ring, but with a break at one point. Often used to describe brooches and torcs as well as arrangements of posts, slots, and ditches forming the walls of round houses and enclosures.
Ah.
These “chastity covers,” or “ancient pek-pek protection” as I overheard one young museum visitor excitedly put to to a companion, were conversation-starters but how they were used (were they to preserve the modesty of the pudenda of the dead, or meant to preserve the virginity of living daughters?)
A kind of costume for what may once have been a household image. The spread of Catholicism resulted in the destruction of household images, and while the image this gold costume was once meant to adorn no longer exists, it does indicate the general appearance of the image, and also, it’s not far removed from the lavish costumes for Catholic religious images.
There is also an extensive collection of porcelain and other kinds of wares on display, from China and places like Thailand, recovered from graves and shipwrecks, on display. I’m completely uncultured when it comes to appreciating pottery and when confronted with porcelain my eyes glaze over. All the porcelain brought in from overseas, though, points to what I described as the precolonial origins of today’s “Gucci Gang” types. The Datu’s wife may not have worn Prada, but she might have spat out betel-nut juice into a porcelain bowl from China.
Anyway, people who appreciate these things are quite delighted by the pottery objects on display.
My column closes with a mild criticism of the exhibit. This book:
“The Mummy Congress: Science, Obsession, and the Everlasting Dead” (Heather Pringle)
among other things, discusses the problem of human remains when it comes to museums. Do you put them on display, and let people gawk at them, or having studied them, return them to the descendants of those remains? The question has led to a more respectful attitude towards human remains both during and after archeological excavations. I found little tangible signs that such an approach has had in impact here, at home. It’s something that needs to be pointed out in the case of exhibits such as the Ayala Museum’s, as one question that comes to mind is, what happened to the remains of those from whose graves these artifacts were taken? Not so much in terms of what can be done, decades after these excavations took place, but in case future finds come to light.
[Incidentally, once more, an appeal to the kindness of readers: if anyone can help be get a copy of Integrating History and Archaeology in the Study of Contact Period Philippine Chiefdoms, by Laura Lee Junker in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, I’d be very grateful.] Thank you to pupuplatter for sending it to me!
See this 2005 entry on Pre-European Philippines and China over at ThirtySomething v 4.3.
In the blogosphere, Ellen Tordesillas points to a series of workshops citizens can attend, to understand how the national budget is formulated.
The journalist-versus-blogger debate, French style. See French Politics which is a great blog to follow for exposure to the richness of French political discourse.
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
“Under the program, the government will place P30 billion in long-term deposits with UCPB. Proceeds from the deposit will then be used by the bank to invest in government securities. After a prescribed period, the funds will be returned to the government which, in turn, will again place the money with the central bank.”
Please read this and understand how the BSP creates funds out of nothing simply based on a so called sovereign debt paper.
It says it gives the bank Php 30B in cash but this funds must be then given back to the government and the government will give the bank long term dated bonds.
This is what they mean by cash infusion.
re those pudenda covers: maybe they symbolized the entrance to a gold mine. We have seen how some women turned their pudendas into gold mines.
Thanks for posting all these great pics of the gold artifacts.
I just emailed you the Laura Lee Junker article. Enjoy!
M,
How timely this is for Heritage Month this May.
“You would then have to start defining what you mean by native and non-native” – mlq3
Malaysia’s laws favoring Bumiputras are often cited as a safety valve which has prevented violence and hostility between the native and non-native population. While it is true that Malaysia hasn’t experienced the genocidal type of brutality that neighboring Indonesia has inflicted on its ethnic Chinese population, the Bumiputra policies are considered to have tremendous flaws.
For one, Bumiputra policies were a principal reason why Singapore seceded from the Malaysian Federation. Fortunately, that turned out to have a happy ending for both Singapore and Malaysia. Obviously, it would have been a bad fit.
Another criticism is that Bumiputra policies only creates a priveleged class that acts as commission-seeking dummies for non-Bumiputras who want to get around these laws. That it has not energized the Bumiputras to become entrepreneurs, but only to become influence peddlers.
The most significant criticism is that, while Bumiputra laws have uplifted the upper and middle class urban Malays, the lower classes, especially those in the rural areas, have not benefited.
Even in Malaysia, where the native and non-native lines are more distinct than in the Philippines, there is still some confusion on who really are Bumiputras. Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed, for example, is more Indian than native Malay, yet he is considered Bumiputra. And many prominent Bumiputra families have mixed Chinese or Indian lineage. On the other hand, the definition of Bumiputra is vague about Thai Malays who have lived around the border of Thailand and Malaysia for centuries, the Straits Chinese who also lived around Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia for centuries, and the Portuguese-Malays of Malacca.
In the Philippines, where assimilation has been more common, it would be very difficult to draw the lines.
“You would then have to start defining what you mean by native and non-native, by colonialism, too: is it colonialism if involving alliance and conquest by a European power, and not if it means one ethnic group being ruled by members of a family from another ethnic group?”
So this is the revisionist stance: there’s no such thing as being colonized, or that colonialism is subjective.
Maybe we should rewrite our history books, teach school kids that the Spanish weren’t really our conquerors or that we were already conquered in the beginning and exchanging a white lord for a brown one isn’t so bad.
And when the Spanish left, they didn’t really surrender or sold the islands. Nothing is official and no feeling is true other than that feelings can change depending on HOW YOU PHRASE them. Okay, I get it.
If the advocacy of some people here is to redefine what being a colony is, then why don’t you guys come out and say it. We were never a colony and never conquered… at least, not in the way that should make resenting the past and the rulers of the past a valid feeling.
read it again. the question is: could colonialism have started even earlier than we think, which might also explain how it was that european colonialism got entrenched relatively quickly. it is not to deny european colonialism or its evils but to point out that colonialism could have taken place in waves. the british for example have been delving into this for some time: the old model was the roman, then viking, then norman conquests but great efforts have been to point out the many other conquests and that the latest conquest was the glorious revolution of 1688.
Essentially, what the BSP action is saying is that UCPB is cash-strapped and the government will save it with a long term debt. Question is can this debt be paid? The trouble with our reporters is they didn’t go into detail with this report. The report doesn’t say why the infusion is being done and whether there is a viable plan for its repayment.
Should we start asking the church, “where’s the loot”?
I am no historian,nor am I a so called citizen of the world. Does having political control by another country be enough to be called being colonized,then this group of islands of ours haved been colonized a lot before any european has set foot.
the active world conquerors were the greeks,the romans, the scandinavians,the babylonians,mongols,the french,te dutch,the brits and the spaniards,the turks,the syrians. maybe you can add the philistines if you want to be biblical about it.
Any other cultural mix may not be a result of territorial/political conquest maybe the others are a result of commerce,piracy or just world travel.Like India,other than that who faced Alexander head on,were they known in history as warlords? And China, we see all the ancient kung fu films, and we knew they built the great wall for a reason other than having a structure that can be seen from the moon.
But there are a lot of Indian and chinese mix in our neighbors.
Just an opinion,corrections are most welcome.
MQ3, you mentioned that “The Sys of Megamall and Banco de Oro are thinking of taking over the Bank of Commerce.”
I think you meant SMC (San Miguel Corporation) – actually, its SMPI, or San Miguel Properties Inc.
chabeli, many thanks, yes, corrected it now.
My late mother-in-law was a docent in a museum in San Francisco.
When there was a museum exhibit about Mindanao , she invited me on the first day and asked several questions about the island. Although she had been to the Philippines, it was only limited to the UST campus where her husband-doctor delivered a lecture.
Some of the displays were about a sultan family; the old photos of the sultan and his 17 wives, his weaponry and his royal raiment which was made of embossed materials using gold threads.
It was so small a size (probably xxs) that I overheard one
museum visitor asked if the inhabitants of the island are all pygmies.
My mother-in-law pointed to him the date of the materials on display.
The last question that my MIL asked me was why the people from Luzon did not have as many as artifacts like those from Mindanao.
The Philippine government should let go of UCPB. 22 years of sequestration and nothing to show for it. The bank is already bone dry. Give it up.
“then viking, then norman conquests but great efforts have been to point out the many other conquests and that the latest conquest was the glorious revolution of 1688.”
Semantics. When we say “pang-aapi nang mga kastila,” does the meaning of “pangaapi” translate to pre-Spanish colonizers? Weren’t old cultures subsumed rather than subjugated by the newer, stronger ones during the various Malay occupations? The aetas segregated themselves and the Malays pretty much left them alone. In trying to trace the root of Philippine corruption, most intellectuals point to native attitudes. My argument is that it isn’t anything native but the continuation of our colonial past within our democratic facade.
Manolo, how do you define racism? There are natural prejudices between people of different ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds, but I think the holocaust, the U.S. Civil Rights Movement pretty much explained what the Spanish did wrong, and WE ARE PERPETUATING much of this wrong today.
brian,
not semantics. you assume old cultures were subsumed; then you assume they were not after the spanish conquest. what if there was subjugation before spain just as spain embarked on subjugation -while it’s being slowly revealed much more of the prehispanic culture was subsumed and has, indeed, survived. you assume the aetas segregated themselves, which points to a gentler, kinder interpretation, what if they had to flee and only their remoteness and the lower population levels secured their survival?
as for racism, it’s the belief that belonging to a certain race or ethnic group confers superiority on those who belong to it and inferiority on those who don’t. and it takes many forms not just the kind that is frank about wanting ethnic cleansing.
https://www.quezon.ph/family/manuel-l-quezon-jr/philippine-racism/
points to a racism in reverse, the kind that i’d suggest classifies us as honorary whites, for how else could filipinos that whites hold inferior in turn hold themselves superior to, say, black people?
where we differ is not on the harmful effects of a racist attitude and a sense of inferiority but rather, your lumping the blame on one ethnic group that is genetically, anyway, partially filipino in the first place. and not distinguishing it from the polity of the past conqueror. that is racism too and unjustified whatever the sentiments behind it. and your obsession with the torrens title system is, well, impractical not least because of your assumption that all its beneficiaries were whites, which was not the case and even if you eliminated anyone with caucasian genes you just might end up with a signficant number with no “foreign” genes who still have lots of land -unless you then proceed with a process of elimination involving chinese genes, and non-brunei-related genes, etc etc.
speaking of “racism”, why would it be racism if 90% of white americans voted for hillary clinton, but not if 95% of blacks voted for obama? personally, i think those who complain the loudest against “racism” are themselves racists. hatred of another race goes both ways. not one race has a monopoly of it.
I think equally significant to the Spaniard’s arrival is the self-imposed isolation of China (courtesy of the Ming Dynasty) that started around that time. If China did not turn inward at the time the Europeans started their Age of Exploration, then the history of these islands (and even the American continent) may have been very different.
Manolo. This is where I can unequivocally tell you you are wrong and it also proves my “perpetuation” theory (and because it is perpetuated we can directly trace it to its roots). Aetas are very well-tolerated. In my province, they are about the only people you cannot put to rights. They do what they will, sleep anywhere, defecate in any place. I believe the early malays avoided conflict with the aetas just as their descendants continue to avoid it.
My argument: we leave the aetas alone at the present time, most likely the way we have always did ever since we got here. The Spanish inheritors (whether blood inheritors or financial, social and political inheritors) have been treating is badly since they first came here. There were just as they are now…. perpetuating what was.
Okay, the last few sentences are incoherent but I think the meaning permeates freely.
Pang aapi.
The Chinese pilipinos,allowed themselves to be maltreated and cursed,look at them now.
Do we pinoys have low EQs? I don’t think so, kung ilagay natin sa lugar,or else we won’t have those call enters.
This is trivial ,or in other words wala lang:
sa laundry list ko hula lang ang Turkey and Syria, I was thinking of saladin Kurd pala sya from Iraq. I also missed the Persians and The Portuguese.
———————————
I have to agree with bencard that it cuts both ways , when it comes to racism.
———-
The negrito chieftain Marikudo, gave us a neat picture of what happened to the negritoes; bartering ones domain, then becoming a nomad. Speaking of domain, we have to form the Nationanal commission for indigenous people just to resolve ancestral domain issues for the negritoes,especially in central luzon.
“Aetas are very well-tolerated. In my province, they are about the only people you cannot put to rights. They do what they will, sleep anywhere, defecate in any place.” – BrianB
In present-day Australia they do the same thing with Aborigines. What’s more, they’re mostly on welfare and are plied with all the beer and whiskey they can drink.
But that is after their lands were mostly taken away and they were almost annihilated.
“I think equally significant to the Spaniard’s arrival is the self-imposed isolation of China (courtesy of the Ming Dynasty) that started around that time. If China did not turn inward at the time the Europeans started their Age of Exploration, then the history of these islands (and even the American continent) may have been very different.”
It was during this period where the Chinese built their strongest navy and army fleet,but they did not engage in war with the europeans, they went along with the global trend in trade;The Columbian exchange.
What if they used their more than a million strong army and navy instead of engaging in trade?the Chinese will be the super powers,maybe china needed to feed its population, and they had a lot of goods to offer as well.
Marco Polo came to china more or less than a hundred years before columbus was born,so trade have started even before the so called columbian exchange.
“Essentially, what the BSP action is saying is that UCPB is cash-strapped and the government will save it with a long term debt. Question is can this debt be paid? The trouble with our reporters is they didn’t go into detail with this report. The report doesn’t say why the infusion is being done and whether there is a viable plan for its repayment.”
”
The Philippine government should let go of UCPB. 22 years of sequestration and nothing to show for it. The bank is already bone dry. Give it up.”
Scrap the PCGG!
Brian,
For good or ill, there was no “we” before Spanish colonialism. If through some rupture in the space-time continuum, we were to meet with our pre-colonial ancestors, we would not be greeted with a flash of recognition. However much we want to reclaim them, they would never claim us as one of their own. The Philippines and the Filipinos are the gift and the curse of colonialism; Eden was found, not lost, in 1521.
If the inhabitants of what we imagine to be the Philippines were already subject to, at the very least, some form of cultural imperialism before the Spanish conquest (as evidenced by the patterns in the Surigao Treasure), then that knowledge should help us shrug off a common lament among Filipino historians: the Philippines didn’t have an Angkor Wat or a Borobudur, no glorious structure to remind us of our precolonial greatness.
Hardly indigenous, those structures are just as foreign to Indonesia or Cambodia as, say, our very own San Agustin or the Manila Cathedral. Accused by our neighbors as being nothing more than a patchwork of foreign influences, as being a nation of foreign mimics, perhaps we could, in turn, charge back that they were the ones who pioneered the manufacture of cultural “knockoffs,” who bowed down first to foreign faiths. Without having constantly to look grimly back into our past, then maybe we could set our sights, more confidently, to the future.
i recall in my high school literature the hypothesis that datu puti descended from alexander the great. do you know, or have you heard, if there is any historical basis to that claim, mlq3?
“The Philippine government should let go of UCPB. 22 years of sequestration and nothing to show for it. The bank is already bone dry. Give it up.” – supremo
Danding Cojuangco used UCPB as a vehicle to buy up San Miguel Corp. and various coconut mills. Somewhere along the way, Danding ended up with San Miguel and the coconut mills ended up being operated by PCGG. And UCPB was left holding the bag, with nothing to show for it. Parang vanishing act, with the assets disappearing and the liabilities still remaining.
In the end, while some sectors obviously got extemely wealthy looting UCPB, Juan de la Cruz will have to pay the bill. Obviously, the strategy to try to recoup UCPB’s vanishing billions will be to pump taxpayers’ money into the bank so that it can continue to operate. After some “dextrose” from the Bangko Sentral and a bit of window dressing, it will be pimped to one of the banking giants.
“In the end, while some sectors obviously got extemely wealthy looting UCPB, Juan de la Cruz will have to pay the bill. Obviously, the strategy to try to recoup UCPB’s vanishing billions will be to pump taxpayers’ money into the bank so that it can continue to operate. After some “dextrose†from the Bangko Sentral and a bit of window dressing, it will be pimped to one of the banking giants.”
Under the fiat currency system and the fractional reserve system if a bank fails it’s the debt that is passed on to Juan de la Cruz. That debt paper then will have to be funded by taxpayers to pay off creditors. We simply apps the debt to future generations.
A bank is a quasi public corporation. It has a charter to issue credit (money) based on a highly leveraged capital base.
In the case of the Philippines most of the credit is taken up by directors or owners of the bank themselves. That is what merchant banking is all about.
The same thing with Meralco. That is a cash cow so the ones in control outsource almost the entire business process to their sister companies. The entire process of suppliers are given to companies controlled by the family.
That is where most of the harvesting is done.
Why do you think PLDT was so keen on getting control of ABS-CBN. Cable TV which are strung on the distribution infra of Meralco. The entire maintenance of the distribution is also outsourced to another company which is owned and controlled by the family.
Private equity crgoups ar alwasy on the lookout for cash cows that they can leverage other business from.
That is the entire rationale behind the idea of unversal banks or diversified financial instituions.
The last stage of imperialism so to speak. Profits turning itself into a a system of money making money based on the consolidation of business.
The ultimate economies of scale.
All empires went through this process. It survived simply on issuing credit.
When you have the pulling back of credit you will have a slowdown. The planet’s resources cannot survive on this paradigm for very long.
pupulater,
You’re saying you officially disagree with the historians, Jose Rizal and the Katipuneros.
I think fear of the Mongols caused their rulers to turn inward. They even decided to dismantle their blue water navy. I read somewhere that even foreign travel was outlawed. China paid dearly for this policy since it’s only now that they are starting to catch up.
I agree 100%. Just like our counterparts in Latin America, we owe our identity as much to the Spaniards as the ones who came before. Sure we can reimagine an alternative mythology that traces back to some prior Golden Age (or at least age of innocence) but that that would involve a lot of fiction.
I’m very much interested in finding out much more about our pre-Hispanic ancestors and the way they lived in part because it may shed light to deeply ingrained habits but our being a ‘Filipino’ nation can be traced no further back than Rizal, the Propaganda Movement or Gomburza.
“A bank is a quasi public corporation. It has a charter to issue credit (money) based on a highly leveraged capital base.” – hvrds
UCPB was created out of the coconut levy in the late ’70’s. So it was really from tax money that this bank was born. Taxes that came off the backs of poor, downtrodden coconut farmers. Only to have the rich and well-connected plunder the bank and the levy.
The farmers got screwed twice. The first time. when income from their toil was taxed and the second time, when what was supposedly their bank was looted.
Now it’s the third time, and it’s Juan de la Cruz who gets it. “Plus ça change . . . “
“I think fear of the Mongols caused their rulers to turn inward. They even decided to dismantle their blue water navy. I read somewhere that even foreign travel was outlawed. China paid dearly for this policy since it’s only now that they are starting to catch up.”
Yup since they used that navy and army to throw out the Mongols and then after a few centuries the large ships(larger than any european ship) became junk, so to speak.It was expensive to maintain..
Again, I agree because during the Ming Dynasty they renovated thge great wall. If they maintained their navy, they might have smashed the brits during the opium wars during the Qing dynasty.
Thanks for the explanation Karl. If the Ming did not turn inward, it is conceivable that they could’ve eventually made Luzon and Visayas an outpost to be eventually annexed a-la Hainan (and Taiwan). Mindanao would then become part of a Sultanate with Borneo. In a sense, the Arroyo government is just picking up where we left off 500 years ago.
Lol, I hope Manolo Quezon doesn’t get the reputation of being an apologist for Spanish colonialism which should be critically assessed to this day, not for its past horrors but for its continuing insidious influence on Pinoy mentality of branding (still by reflex) whatever is home-grown and native (most of it unconsious, which is even more dangerous) as second rate or inferior or even more insulting, mere obect of a patronizing attitude (exhibit A: the ABS-CBN Channel 2 mantra of being maka-Pinoy kuno. Insidious patronizing attitude by a Spanish descended oligarchs at its worst. TV Patrol World! I cannot believe Maria Ressa allows such news coverage. Here is a family with such vast power to influence the minds of Filipinos and all they could muster at best is an execrable program like Wowawee.)
Bring it on BrianB. Let’s keep on destroying these insidious attitudes and mentality. Crap, nothing is more dangerous or soul destroying than being limited because one is being patronized. LOL, isn’t it nice, the Lopez and Erap camps are one and the same? Populism has always been the tactic of the rapacious elite in this country.
MAnolo, I like the Spanish business folks though (those who have strictly remained in business) such as the Zobel de Ayalas. I think they are the more decent ones among the Spanish descended elite.
Central to any Government Success is the Openness and Accountability and Transparency of its business, procurements and processes and here the Federal Tories were able to slip two exemption to its Ombud’s Statutory duties to revies contracts for fairness, transparency and openness>> I could understand the exemptions with regards to the Spy Agency, but the Parliament?? A Big issue that may crop in the next campaign, although it does exempt the whole Parliament, the House and the The Senate and the Oppositions may let it go as it will also benefit them in case the government changes…
*****************
Opposition MPs taken by surprise on new rule curtailing ombud’s role
May 20, 2008 04:30 AM
Tim Naumetz
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA–Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet have exempted contracts with Parliament and Canada’s spy agency from oversight by a new ombudsman’s post that was central to the 2006 Conservative election campaign.
The government slipped the exemptions through last week in regulations that empower the contract procurement ombudsman under the Accountability Act – flagship legislation the government introduced as its first bill soon after taking office.
Opposition MPs were taken by surprise at the exemptions, saying they were unaware the Senate, the House of Commons and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service would be excluded from the ombudsman’s statutory duty to review contracts for “fairness, openness and transparency.”
The exemptions also mean anyone who has a complaint about contracts to supply goods or services to Parliament – including contracts with offices of MPs, senators or CSIS, will be unable to have them reviewed by the ombudsman.
NDP MP Pat Martin, who was crucial to the Conservative government’s success at getting the accountability bill through the Commons, says he would not have allowed the exemptions to go through had he been aware of them.
“I can’t imagine any justification for exemptions or exclusions,” he said. “We enthusiastically supported this and at no time were we made aware that there would be exemptions or exclusions from it.”
The move to keep the ombudsman out of the affairs of Parliament and the national security agency is the latest in a series of government measures and controversies the opposition says contradict the spirit of the accountability law.
However, a spokesperson for Public Works Minister Michael Fortier said the exemptions only apply to a small percentage of government contracts. The proposed changes were made public before they were approved, said Jacques Gagnon, who dismissed opposition claims of being left in the dark.
Democracy Watch co-ordinator Duff Conacher, who has monitored Harper’s record on his campaign promise of more accountability, says all independent monitoring offices should have the power to scrutinize Parliament.
“The way to do things differently is to extend all of the accountability laws to politicians and they haven’t done that with the Access to Information Act, the auditor general, whistle-blower protection or this case of procurement,” he said.
“Amando Doronila says the government and the Lopezes would both be better off if they manage to pull off a compromise when the President and Manuel Lopez, big boss at Meralco, meet today” – mlq3
From what Mr. Quezon’s guest, veteran journalist Tony Lopez, at the Explainer said today, it may well end up that way. And Winston Garcia may again come out the big winner because it will ultimately drive Meralco shares up and GSIS will once more make a windfall in its investments.
It isn’t the first time Winston Garcia has tangled with the big boys. A country boy from Cebu (albeit from a politically powerful clan), Garcia tangled with the powerful taipan, Henry Sy of SM, when he led a stockholders’ revolt to Henry Sy’s takeover of Equitable PCI Bank. This was despite the fact that SSS chairwoman Corazon de la Paz, who headed the other government entity with significant holdings in the bank, had meekly acquiesced to Sy’s offer of P45 per share. Garcia held out and, finally, Henry Sy coughed up P90 per share. Double what he would have initially paid. GSIS salvaged Erap’s dubious infusion of government money into EPCIB due to Garcia’s intransigence. Garcia was also able to pressure San Miguel Corp. management to give better shareholder value and also managed to sell GSIS shares at a windfall of billions of pesos. Now, in another power play, Garcia will probably hammer concessions out of the Lopezes so that GSIS can again make a huge windfall. If Garcia isn’t exactly the Warren Buffet of the local stock market, he certainly is at least a good copy of Carl Icahn.
Madonna says : Populism has always been the tactic of the rapacious elite in this country.
An entry in wikipedia has :Populism is a discourse which supports “the people” versus “the elites”. Populism may involve either a political philosophy urging social and political system changes and/or a rhetorical style, deployed by members of political or social movements competing for advantage within the existing party system.
The sentence “… one is a victim of one’s own way of thinking”, is, in my opinion, one of the universal truths. Benign0 and BrianB have expressed the thought in their own words as they state that the victim-Filipinos should shed some of their ways of thinking if they want to continue to compete. BrianB may not be meaning to do this, but sense that he has added a theme often used by populist politicians — the tinge of entitlement — that he and other victim-Filipinos are owed some reparations of sorts (or at minimum, for the victimizers (the “elite”, per Madonna) should do something, at least should beat their breasts, fall on their knees and do “mea culpas”, or as Madonna says, for “them” to stop limiting her by being patronizing).
I reprint the quote below in full recognition that its themes can be hard to put in practice.
Man is buffeted by circumstances so long as he believes himself to be the creature of outside conditions, . . . but when he realizes that he is a creative power, and that he may command the hidden soil and seeds of his being out of which circumstances grow, he then becomes the rightful master of himself. Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bear bad fruit. Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.
James Allen (1864 – 1912)
Source: As A Man Thinketh
You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.
James Allen (1864 – 1912)
Source: As A Man Thinketh
People interested in lectures in the genre of “positive thinking” may find some useful tidbits in “Acres of Diamonds” by Russell Conwell.
http://www.48days.com/newsletter/Acres%20of%20Diamonds%20–%20Dan%20Miller.pdf
The lecture also is against OFW-ism, by the way.
Exhibit B: patronizing attitude by a Spanish descended elite: Mar Roxas and the way he conducts his drive towards the presidency. LOL. Mr Palengke my ass.
Manolo is descended from The Kastila. BTW, is that historical mango tree where your abuelo met his war cabinet for the first time still standing in your Barangka estate?
I have to disagree with Madonna. Spanish colonialism should be critically assessed today for the GOOD THINGS it brought us but we have consigned to the rubbish bin. If you aim against Madre Espana, then drag Anglo-Sajonismo with it. Sajonismo has brought a lot of insidious influences in this country. Think of all the conyos who speak with what they believe is an American accent and have no stake in Filipinas! Que lata! These people can only be described as mestizos y mestizas de zaguan!
BTW, I am descended from el Pais Vasco. Somos de Vizcaya. My ancestors came to nuestro querida Filipinas as mariners on the galleons. We have loved this land to perdition like the Guerreros of Ermita fame. Some parrientes were killed by the invading Americans in 1898 and the invading Japanese in 1941-1945. But like the Guerreros we are not oligarchs. But of course we are not the like the Roxases or the Lopezes. Somos Filipinos. Somos differentes. We never take patronizing attitudes sitting down. Thus the Spanish stereotypes Madonna refers to should not speak Spanish in front of us!
Madonna, remember, the Zobels weren’t “Kastilla” but Basques.
I really think Manolo et al are stretching logic too far by arguing everyone, every race, every tribe is either a conqueror or a conquered. If they want to revise the “official” Philippine belief that Kastilas were our mang-aapis then I suggest they publish their thoughts. Let them be brave enough to admit it officially. The Kastilas were no worse than the first and second wave Malay occupants of this archipelago. And let them announce that we owe our nationhood and our religion to the Spaniards, and that more than make up for 350 years of quote-unquote oppression. They call me racist but they are merely jumping the gun or poisoning the well or whatever you want to call it.
Take the challenge, Manolo…
They are refusing to admit to the obvious. Who decides the laws of this country, who undermines the laws when they need to, and who has all the money and all the opportunities and all the access? And then when the country keeps sliding downward into the pit, do they blame themselves. No, they blame the natives.
The Lopezes are not Kastilas. Who says they are? Sure, they married mestizos but the family tree didn’t originate in Spain.
Blackshama. Translate, please.
And for God’s sakes I wasn’t referring to Spaniards as individuals or people but to the colonial culture that they have established. ike Rizal, i understand his surprise when in Spain he was treated with respect. My main problem with their inheritors is that THE INHERITORS INHERITED THE LAND THEY STOLE. Jesus Chrst all mighty, why do you refuse to see how plainly I am phrasing my arguments. The lands, even after the Spanish gave up its colony, continued to be passed to Spaniards or sold as if they owned it. L
Madonna, good observation on Mar Roxas. I do find his ‘Mr. Palengke’ persona contrived and condescending. Not a surprise, after all, he is still from the ‘elite’.
Incidentally, if the Presidential elections push through, i think a likely realignment would be for the ‘Wait for 2010’ [aka Let’s Move On] and ‘Patalsikin na, Now Na’ camps to coalesce around his candidacy. Not sure how that would fare against a Lacson and GMA-supported Noli de Castro candidacy.
UP n. I have ever since only been victimized by these elites online and only by those who have not met me. Face to face, they are the victims.
I can still remember how incredulous i found it when they got Richard Gomez to play Geny Lopez in ‘Eskapo’. I mean, WTF? (Actually, turns out he was played by Christopher de Leon, though it does not change my reaction.)