In the beginning, my primary hope for the new DOT slogan was that it resonates with international audiences. Now, it may be my hopes are a bit higher, and broader, than before.

Looking back a bit, the fundamental flaw with regards to WoW Philippines was precisely that it did not resonate internationally. The gaudiness of the advertisements, the inherent lack of message in the tagline (you think #itsmorefuninthePhilippines is bad now, imagine how much fun netizens would have had with WoW Philippines), spelled its doom internationally.

Let’s face it, while there are serious flaws in our tourism policies and products (what products?), our inability to create internationally resonant branding also spelled doom for our tourism community. I still believe this is why our government began the whole domestic tourism campaign (and movable holidays): We were failing to attract inbound tourists, so we had to promote internal tourism.

Of course, the rarely spoken point is that we ignored culturally and historically significant tourism product development. Now, one critique I have heard is that heritage tourism is flawed because it focuses on international audiences. I think that ignores the broader importance of heritage conservation rooted in the surrounding environment. As well, other countries have demonstrated that historical preservation and conservation, far from creating pockets of cultural affluence, redound positively throughout and environment. It connects the denizens of that area to their history, it creates communities. And economically speaking, preservation and the leveraging of those artifacts positively impacts the development of localities. It attracts tourists, it encourages capital infusions and development; properly harnessed it can be a boon for social entrepreneurship endeavors. Urban renewal does not require new structures, it can happen with the proper preservation and restoration of old built heritage. Tourism, whether domestic or international, is not just about attracting visitors; properly harnessed, it can be about social, cultural, and economic development. Tourism is just like any other industry, it has its issues and possibilities. But in a country like ours, it can be a major force for positive growth and development. What it comes down to is how we go about promoting that development, not only in how we package it. Because, and this cannot be said enough, our heritage is amazing, it’s gorgeous, and it’s compelling.

On a broader social note, some of the brouhaha surrounding the tagline seems to be grounded in non-constructive wellsprings. For example, the prevalence of binary thinking in our society; the idea that because there are social ills extant the entirety of the Philippines is disreputable. The negative portions of the country should not, should never, obscure the positives. Just because we have poverty does not mean we lack in natural beauty. Just because there are cultural flaws, does not mean we aren’t a vibrant and attractive country. Culture is not an either or proposition; yet in many ways our modes of thinking are rooted in precisely that.

As well, it seems that we have a tendency to demand change, and yet refuse to accept change; arguing that (amorphously I might add) it’s not the change we want. Well, what exactly is it we want to change then? Moving forward as a country is not an instantaneous event. Projects, programs, changes, whatever should be evaluated on their own merits, within their own context, and whether or not they will positively impact the country over time (not just now). Our continuing desire to demand socio-economic reforms, or anti-corruption measures, or new tourism campaigns, then reject them out of hand when presented is a flaw that contributes to stymying the evolution of the nation. There is a distinct difference between taking a principled, intellectual, and critical stand on an issue (whether for or against) and continuing to reject or accept any all attempts immediately. The idea of oppositional politics and modes of thinking (again going back to the binary) is so deeply embedded in our public discourse that it is difficult to distinguish between constructive criticism and just plain bitching. We have this both romanticized and simplified idea of what a public intellectual is: Essentially, it has become someone who just denigrates, no matter the issues or position. Even if it might contradict a position that person took in the past, or be incompatible with their ‘political and social philosophy’ (if they have one that is). We admire the contradictory, without even questioning the fundamentals in terms of philosophy or thought behind the opposition. Take a stand; be principled, critical, and incisive. That, I truly believe, will be a boon to the country. It very well may be that the latest campaign does fail. But at the very least, we should try and make sure that it does succeed. Failure is an option, but it should only be an option. It only becomes an eventuality when we as a country prefer to endlessly chase our tails rather than try and contribute to shared success.

As I said earlier, my initial reaction to the latest tourism slogan was negative. I thought it trite and more than a little superficial. But after my early trepidation, I saw what they were trying to say and how they were trying to say it. And I must say I have had a slight change of heart. Yes, I still think there are serious shortfalls in our tourism product development plans and policies; yes, I think it might leave itself open to ridicule (Sex Tourism. #itsmorefuninthephilippines), but I appreciate what they are trying to do. I can see the possibilities. That does not mean I am a dyed-in-the-wool evangelical convert. It does mean that I can see the possibilities and how it can actually be of benefit to the Philippines. And at least optimistically believe that we might finally have a quality, internationally resonant campaign.

Somewhat surprisingly, this campaign indirectly touches on something that remains unaddressed in public discourse. One of the continuing issues in the Philippines has nothing to do with our culture, our economy, our geography, or politics; it’s about how we view ourselves. It’s about our identity. The idea of ‘fun’ in the Philippines speaks to that issue, it’s about changing mindsets and allowing the Filipino to have a stake in how our country is viewed and appreciated. Not only that, in doing so, in offering new ways to see our country, it offers Filipinos the opportunity to see their country in a new light. Yes, it is fun in the Philippines, and because of who we are and what we are blessed with, it can be more fun in the Philippines.

Lurking beneath the initially apparent superficiality, that is quite a powerful message indeed. One that strikes at the very heart of who we are as a people, and what we might become. I always go back to it, but I truly believe that James Fallows was wrong. Our culture is not flawed or broken. What needs to be addressed is how we see, how we appreciate, our culture and country. It’s our identity and how it is constructed that needs remedying. I don’t think it necessarily begins with thinking of ourselves as ‘fun’, but maybe it can. Sometimes it takes little steps in the right direction.

I think I am going to be contrary: I do believe it is much more fun in the Philippines.

I have two posts (and a couple others conceptualized but unwritten) on Rizal that I’ve been mulling over. Mainly they are focused on re-interpreting Rizal in a modern context, as the archetype of a modern writer and intellectual. The concepts are in part drawn from current readings of Rizal and his philosophies, seen through the prism of Edward Said’s writer/intellectual. The problem though, a problem that I keep having to circle back to, is that Rizal as intellectual is little understood in Philippine pop culture and history. It’s a disheartening shortfall that has become and more apparent the closer we get to Rizal 150.

This isn’t a post about rewriting and trying to counteract what we thought was known about Rizal. It’s an aside, something of a meditation, on how we can appreciate his legacy when we don’t even know what that legacy is.

There exists a fatal tension in the popular perception of Rizal. He’s the reformist. The man who inspired a revolution, only to repudiate one revolution. How in our social perceptions do we harmonize that disconnect? How can we say that Rizal is a man who inspired a country through his writings, yet turned his back on his country? Is the argument then that he was…pro-Spanish? Anti-Pinoy? A Coward? All of these so-called lines of ‘reasoning’ to explain his repudiation fail in the face of his voluminous writings and his true philosophies.

I am sure every student has had to read Noli, Fili and Mi Ultimo Adios. And I’m sure for fun, sometimes they read The Philippines a Hundred Years Hence. I suspect, actually I know, that his writings are uncontextualized, aren’t taken within an understandings of his true aims. How can a man who was a reformist, write roadmaps to nationalism and eventual independence? Which is exactly what Noli and Fili were. They were propaganda designed, not necessarily to only incite slumbering nationalism, but to offer a path to becoming a nation. Two very different things. Yet, a distinction again that fails to be conveyed or understood. How can a man who stated repeatedly that he wanted a free Philippine nation, with liberty for all, be ‘scared’ of revolution? How exactly do we read his works? Boringly, blandly and bereft of their political and nationalist importance. Shorn of importance and their innate elegance.

So, here’s the question: How can Rizal remain relevant today, when his historical relevance is undermined by erroneous constructs of his beliefs? Don’t we then have to re-examine and recreate Rizal in his and our image? That’s how he becomes relevant. And the wonderful thing is, we don’t have to contort Rizal into unrecognizable forms to make him relevant today. He on his own merits, as a man not only trying to incite national identity, but create a national identity (a prerequisite to him for true liberty and independence), becomes the hero we actually need. The relevance of Rizal lies not in what we erroneously think he is, but in who he actually was.

Rizal’s relevance today I truly fear is limited. How can he be more when he remains tragically mis-understood? Heroes as touchstones and building blocks of a society have to have some broad resonance. It’s usually a resonance found in how important they were in life and death. So, if in the process of stripping Rizal of his true importance and legacy, have our historians in the process stripped him of his resonance? That’s the sad part of this whole 150 celebration. The unspoken elephant in the room among scholarly historians. Rizal is our National Hero because we are told he is our national hero. Not because we understand why he is our national hero. It’s the flaw in the whole affair. It’s the flaw in our construction of the Philippine National Identity.

There is no cohesion in culture, elements of all cultures always remain in tension. Identity, the way that those pieces of pulled together, is the harmonizing force. Heroes and moments of great importance that cut across social classes, faiths and geography are the building blocks of identity. Our heroes are at odds with each other. They are at odds with themselves. They fail to be the foundations of our society and national identity.

Rizal is relevant. He has to be. Because his philosophies are so Filipino, so intrinsically a part of who we are, that truly understanding and believing in them means we become a better nation.

I wonder if that will ever come to pass. If he will actually become what he wanted to be. And what we need him to be.

Quite simply, Agoncillo’s construct of the Filipino is racism in action. Visiting Agoncillo’s ‘A History of the Filipino People’ is delving into an antiquated history. It is a construction of the Filipino people that is highly flawed in concept and more than a little racist. It shares a disturbing number of similarities with early American and even Spanish descriptions of Filipinos.

As a matter of fact, to step back and reread his long description of the Filipino is to see that racism at work. It offers a sobering example of how colonial interpretations of self have infiltrated our history and even our concept of self. The sad thing is he and his work remains the most popular prism through which we see ourselves and our history. Even by those who purport to be ‘intellectuals’ offering ‘new’ critiques of Filipino society and history. These critiques are not new, they are not deep. Instead they skate along the superficial; propagating ideas derived and adapted from repressive colonial regimes. Following Agoncillo’s construct of the Filipino means rejecting everything for which our greatest heroes fought.

We don’t have much in the way of new critical thought on our history and culture infiltrating the main. Sure, while there is tremendous work being done in the academe, our so-called public intellectuals very rarely draw from that wellspring of information and thought. Instead they continue to rely on methodologically and evidentiary flawed works like Agoncillo’s History. Most of our public ‘intellectuals’ and writers come from various grades of the same school of thought. All influenced by these antiquated, exclusionary ideas. 

Agoncillo was probably not racist, but the way he constructs the Filipino is. He extends the colonial mentality inculcated by an American regime hell-bent on substantiating their imperial objectives. When we talk about rewriting Philippine history and constructing a new Filipino identity is begins with eliminating race from our construct of identity. It means going back and re-understanding what Rizal, de los Reyes, Mabini, Jacinto et al were advocating in the construction of a new Filipinas. When we return and reread their philosophies we find a distinct rejection of ideas race and physical feature in anything, not just identity and the building blocks of nation-states. Our heroes created philosophies that were cutting edge in the 19th century and are still ground-breaking in the 21st. Agoncillo, on the other hand, does not even approach the complexity of their thoughts.

The idea that a people, a diverse people from different backgrounds, faiths, beliefs can be defined by a set of arbitrary standards and ‘colors’ is racism at heart. It is exclusionary. It is antiquated. And it has to be excised from our understanding of self if we are ever to prosper. By keeping these ideas around and active, we are hamstringing our potential as a people.

Agoncillo opens up his description of the Filipino peope by talking about race. “The Filipino belongs to a mixture of races, although basically he is Malay.” As if someone can only be Filipino if he is from that background. Again, it is an antiquated way of understanding identity completely at odds with Emilio Jacinto’s exhortation that importance is not based on an ‘aquiline nose’ or religious belief, but in the manner a life is led. Our understanding of identity, nationalism, whatever you want to call it, has to evolve beyond such simplistic concepts. By immediately saying that someone has to be Malay to be Filipino it excludes the possibility than anyone else from an ethnic background could ever be Filipino. How is that even possible or acceptable?

He goes on to talk about racial blending leading to ‘curious contradictions’ that are ‘apt for misunderstandings by foreigners.’ Note who the audience becomes: Foreigners. He is in essence apologizing for Filipinos; he is saying that because of our ‘racial blendings’ there is something wrong with us. He goes on to talk about ‘half-breeds’ who are ‘qualified by the nationality of their parents.’ Again, for him the race of a person is far more important than what they believe, or what they feel.

After that paragraph he dives into class warfare, broken down along racial lines. Basically imbedding the idea that class is defined by race, that a light skinner person is more apt to be racially superior than a brown skinned person. His passages on race and class are frankly disgusting. Applying in broad generalizations of intellect, mental features and status along wholly racial lines. Essentially, Agoncillo has spent a page describing the false dichotomies between whites and darks. As opposed to constructing an identity or defining Filipino along lines of belief or shared, imagined possibilities he seeks out color as defining factors. He at no point rejects the idea that race matters in identity and instead upholds that wholly false conceit.

His next section on ‘common traits’ of Filipinos is too long in this space to discuss. But my critiques run along the same basic lines as above. In attempting to define social traits of a people he is basically saying: “This is what it means to be Filipino. What a Filipino is.” Without these traits, without thinking, acting or looking like this, you aren’t Filipino. Racism by any other name.

The most pathetic part about this whole thing is that this is exactly what our Propagandists, Reformists and Revolutionaries were attempting to avoid. Quite frankly, who the hell cares about what the color of your skin is, or what faith you come from, or these sad little attempts to define cultural traits. This isn’t about the experience of being a Filipino, what it means to be a Filipino. It is about boxing Filipinos into neat little boxes; basically saying if you’re not like this, you aren’t Filipino.

In most international academic circles the idea of race defining identity has been rejected completely. It is a step we have failed to take here. Identity is not that simple at all. There is a reason that nationalism has been defined as an ‘imagined community’ that is not restricted by state borders or defined by something as insipid as the color of skin or religious beliefs. National identity should be far more complex than that. It has to be able to encompass a diverse background. Look at our country today. We aren’t a simple people by any means, with simple easy to define and apply cultural traits. Yet, that is what we do. And when someone, or even a group of people, do not fit those little tick boxes they are told they are not Filipino. Even if they think they are, even if they believe they are. It’s a failing in our construction of identity and it has roots in works like Agoncillos.

Our heroes did not want to see a country built upon racial, social or economic lines. They did not see the Filipino as belonging to a single racial class and everyone else who wasn’t part of that class as not being Filipino. Instead they saw identity built along shared beliefs, encompassing a wide-range of hopes, dreams, desires, faiths, creeds and colors. Yet, instead of inculcating those new, positive and non-discriminatory ways of seeing the self, we imbed racial classifications and divisive ideas in our education system. From the first moment students enter our schools they are taught that the brown is inferior, the white is out to get them and they are inheritors of a long-history of gormless, indolent flawed people with little redeeming qualities. To read Agoncillo’s description of the Filipino is to read a manifesto of racism, a colonial legacy designed to beatdown a people and create a sense of self-loathing. We make Filipinos hate to be Filipino.

Our writers and intellectuals once railed against easy definitions of self. They sought to up-end the social assumptions upon which the world as they knew was built. They demanded a new way to view what it meant, what it is, to be Filipino. Basically, we’ve repudiated everything they fought for. It’s long-past time to resurrect their old ideas. These ideas still remain new and lamentably unimplemented. If we truly want to move forward together as a nation and a people we have to reimagine our understanding of identity. Basically, we have to reunderstand what it means to be Filipino. Failing that, we will continue to fail to be cohesive people. That’s our new, yet very old, challenge. To finally build a free, open and accepting nation.

Ancient history is difficult to authoritatively discuss in the Philippines. We have some known signposts in history; the Tabon Cave dweller for one. But beyond, archaeology as a discipline in the Philippines is still weak and remains young. Modern techniques have not been rigorously applied in our setting.

That’s why William Henry Scott once said (to paraphrase) all ancient Philippine history is fairytale. We make it up as we go along.

Then there is the added problem of archaeological digs. More often than not, significant finds end up in the hands of private individuals or even international organizations; usually the ones who funded the project in the first place. China, Egypt, Iraq and India are known more for black market trading in antiquities.

The untold story is we are not far behind.

“Who were the ancient Filipinos?” remains a great unanswered question. It is similar to the question that haunts us today: “Who are we?”

I suspect in our zeal to understand and define ourselves today, we sometimes re-imagine our ancient ancestors in our own idealized image.

The mantra that there is something wrong with Philippine culture is a fairly constant refrain in the public sphere. It’s almost comical how much we seem to put so many of the problems of the country on ‘cultural’ issues. As if any culture is completely harmonized and ‘perfect’. And yes, this did pop into my head again because of that asinine quote from Lee Kuan Yew making the rounds, along with the almost incessant criticisms from ‘pseudo-nationalists’ who beat on Philippine culture without let up. As I said before, there is a distinct difference between self-reflection and self-flaggelation. We’ve become an on-going pasyon play, sans rebirth and redemption.

The solution that is offered usually revolves around excising out the ‘imperial’ and ‘borrowed’ elements on our culture and history and to adopt elements from other country. It is to no longer be Filipino. Instead, to model ourselves after someone else, to again layer another country’s moral, ethical and cultural sensibilities on our own to create ‘improvement’. Ignoring the fact that that very occurrence (imperialism) seems to be their most ardent critique of Philippine culture and history and yet is the solution most commonly offered.

I argue that Philippine culture is not the problem. Again, no culture is completely lock in-step; especially one that is composed of as many divergent inputs as ours. Our goal is to understand that the vast differences within the Philippines are not signs of flaws and fractures, instead elements that can be used to strengthen the whole. We say on the one hand that we are a vibrant melting pot of West and East, yet we decry that multiplicity as a problem on the other. Culture is a mutable entity; constantly shifting and evolving based on new influences and inputs. It’s a by-product of our history, and that is not a problem. No matter what we’re told. Now that in fact is the problem. We are told consistently and completely from birth to death that our culture is a problem; that our history an impediment. From history texts to the public sphere we have constructed an identity from our culture of the Filipino people as flawed. That I submit is the true problem: We’ve constructed a flawed identity for ourselves. Our perception of ourselves is where lies the problem. It’s not the self, it’s the perception of self that is flawed.

The problems arise first and foremost in our understanding of our history: It constructed out of competing ideologies and agendas; which creates tensions, inconsistencies and outright falsehoods. Some will point to this as an issue derived from our imperial history; namely the Spanish era. They’re right that it is a function of an empire, they are wrong when they tag the Spanish as the problem. In fact, our understanding of our history is derived almost exclusively from the American period. Even then, that is not the problem. The problem is that we’ve continued that view on history and self. Our identity, instead of being derived from a wholly organic understanding of our history shorn of externally imposed bias, is constructed on the views of the self from without. Without even realizing it, we carry colonialism in our identity, not our culture.

The fact is we continue this false construct of self and identity through education; it is reinforced through popular media. The interesting point is that this was not aways the case. Post-WWII and pre-Martial Law there was concerted effort to unearth a pro-Filipino identity, based on an organic and relatively unbiased view of our culture and history. It celebrated the differences in the country and respected our indigenous cultures (instead of shunting them to the periphery of discussion). That movement disappeared during Martial Law; and we came out of Martial Law with a decidedly negative and broken identity.

We are never going to move forward as a people unless we begin to the process of modulating how we view our culture and history. This basically means reconstructing our identity on a new foundation; this time without obvious bias and competing ideologies. Multiculturalism is not a weakness, it is a source of strength. It is high time we began to celebrate and respect our differences within the country as well as outside of the country. We should never strive to be like anyone else, or any other culture. We should never be ashamed of our history and culture.

No matter what some would lead you to believe.

*On the issue of culture and identity I’m going to play fast and loose with some definitions and terms.