To my fellow Filipinos
Got this article from raymund of peyups.com entitled to my fellow filipinos.. photo from brian of Pbase.com..Many of us have lost faith in our country. Many of us do not trust our fellow Filipinos anymore. Many of us would rather leave and have a life elsewhere. Many of us would rather choose to bet an unforeseeable future in a foreign land rather than have a deplorable life in the Philippines—it is as sure as hell.How sad we have gone this low. How depressing we can no longer take pride in being a Filipino.It is saddening because we know we deserve something better than this. It is depressing because we know that the destiny of the Filipino nation is beyond the term “the land of the ignoramuses.”I cried when I read the letter of a “former Filipino” describing his former country, our country, as the land of star-struck ignoramuses. He assailed our gullibility that we elect showbiz stars who know nothing about running the affairs of the government. He decried our naiveté for believing in miracles and putting our faith in it for salvation. He criticized our stupidity for elevating into pantheons Mexican telenovela actresses and receiving them in Malacanang. He derided our culture for making us silent in the face of the corruption by our greedy politicians. He saw a lot of despicable frustrations in our land: the unending traffic, pollution and crime in our streets, the garbage that is thrown everywhere, and the street children whose parents had gone nowhere. He deplores everything Filipino, and if not only for his brown color and his penchant for mangoes with bagoong, ikinakadiri na niya tayo.I cried because, at its seemingly face value, his accusations were true. But on a deeper thought, I cried because the self respecting Filipinos among us just seem to take the offense sitting down yet I know there are still many of us who are not beasts as he graphically portrayed. But more importantly, I shed tears because those accusations have deeper historical connotations of what it truthfully means to be a Filipino— and it is blatantly wrong, yet we cannot seemingly refute it.Indeed, it is painful that some of us had become the busabos or beast that we are portrayed. Some of us kidnap and murder our own kind, some of us rape our own women and sell them to foreigners, some of our businessmen oppress workers with low pay, some of our law enforcers jail innocent people, some of our leaders deprive our children of their education by prioritizing the payment of onerous debts, and some, if not many, of our politicians pillage the coffers of our nation. At face value, some of us actualize the depictions of the brute and the barbaric. It is now the characterization of all the Filipinos.But we know, not all of us have succumbed to those despicable characterizations. Many of us still live in high ideals and fight their lofty principles— we have teachers who go to far-flung areas despite the absence of electricity and threat of malaria, there are urban public lawyers who restlessly fight for the right of the accused even when the lure of corporate earnings is only a tenth of their pay, and there are medical doctors who rot it out in the provinces serving the truly needy, despite the trend of doctors becoming nurses just to have more income in more developed countries. And indeed, the Philippines have one of the biggest numbers of volunteers in the world, an indication that we have not lost our capacity to love and care. For we are not all the monsters we are commonly depicted.Unfortunately, those Filipinos who serve have been the silent type. Despite their numbers, they are lost in the multitude. They are the unorganized lot who could simply sigh in frustrations. And despite the innuendos against the national character, they could only take the accusations haplessly.As such they cannot defend the truth— that the Filipino has never been an inherently a busabos or innately a vicious person as we are made to believe we are. Our colonial past has always made us feel we’re inferior, that we’re a country without civilization— which we are not. In order to rule us, we were pitted against each other and sown hatred in our hearts, such that up to this day, we harbor ill feelings on persons with different religion, ethnic language and color than us— but on the contrary we had been a communal nation. A social divide between the rich and the poor, the mestizo and the indio, which were used for easy control and domination, has perpetuated a system of injustice and inequity, such that, up to this day the rich control our politics and economy leaving all quarters behind—which in the very essence, we were once an egalitarian nation. The colonizers obliterated our nationalist thoughts and supplanted a language and institutions that further divided the elites from the masses—which had thwarted the evolution of our nation. And now, we are people at a lost.The historical fact is: tayo ang binusabos.It is this colonial past and great divide that has wrapped our values: of why we elect showbiz persons as our leaders, of why we naively cling on miracles for our salvation, and our penchant for long-nose actresses. It is what made us a terrified people in front on the corruption of the rich and the powerful. It is the tradition of divide and conquer (huwag mong pakialam ang di sa iyo) which made us pathetic to the conditions of the traffic, the presence of smokey mountains and the plight of the street children.We became because we were manipulated.It is unfortunate that many of us do not realize the pains our mother nation and the suffering of its children had. But it is doubly unfortunate that some of its children have even turn their back against their nation and watch her condition from the derisive point of view of its oppressors. But it is most unfortunate when the children themselves actualize the characterizations and blindly pillage the nation and systematically destroy their kind.It is an unfortunate happening when there are talented Filipinos who go to other countries and serve there. It is the more unfortunate happening when there are “former Filipinos” who have totally abandon their roots and now stay in the country of the oppressors and haughtily compare the benefits derived and mocked everything Filipino. It is the most unfortunate when Christian and Muslim Filipinos fight, when Filipino capitalists abuse Filipino workers, when the Filipino elite fight each other and use the Filipino masses in their unending and destructive quest for political power —when the Filipino becomes the enemy of the Filipino.As such, our country has weak and iniquitous institutions and inefficient and barbaric systems. And like a house in disarray, it spells misery to its children. We are now the systematic victims of our own nation.I equally have tremendously suffered. I was put in jail for almost seven years for a crime I did not commit. I was arrested by the police, prosecuted in courts and made to live the subhuman level conditions of our prison. I was branded a criminal. I was a victim of our judicial system, a casualty of the Filipino’s hate against his kind. I pained the pain of ordinary Filipinos—powerless and destitute.But far from becoming the beast that I was portrayed, I actively showed my true Filipino worth. I made use of all my God given talents and skills in order to uplift the conditions of my fellow inmates. I taught in our functional literacy class programs teaching my fellow inmates numeracy and arithmetic. I arranged a paralegal desk to help our fellow inmates in the speedier facilitation of their cases. I helped organized a religious group in order to keep our fellow inmates from the clutches of buryong or boredom so that they may not be tempted into hurting themselves and joining violent gangs. Far from being rebellious against the Jail Bureau for confining me, I became an instrument of the Jail Bureau in extending its role of rehabilitating the persons who may have once erred against our society.I served my fellow inmates, our fellow Filipinos, despite the wretchedness of my situation. I served our country despite the wrong the country has trampled on me. I served because I believe that it is my duty as a Filipino.I became because I know.In humility and patience, after seven long years, the country eventually declared me innocent. I was set free. And in freedom, it is my quest to share my experience to other people so that they may know the conditions of our poor brother and sisters in jails. I wish to share my experience to help improve our country’s judicial system. I wish to share my hardships and turn this as a rallying call to advance our country’s conditions.And it is on this familiar Filipino tragedy that I make my appeal:My country, my people: Let us use our individual sufferings as the uniting point to realize our nation’s true destiny. Let us look beyond the faults of our nation. Let us forgive the injustice caused by our fellow Filipinos. Let us go beyond the common characterizations of the Filipino— ignorant, indolent and violent. Let us be the true Filipinos that we are. And those us who already knew, let us work. Let us fight!And let our sons and daughters one day say: I am proud to be a Filipino!!!