Once more, this caveat: hindsight is the lowest form of wisdom. At 86, I can easily look back to the last eight decades. Though memory often fails me now, so many images of the past are still clearly polished and I can yet recall not just an abiding sense of place, but the keen smells, the sensory responses to the events of that past. I grew up in a village and came to Manila in 1938 so I am capable of quick recall of village and city, of the time when Quezon was chasing those pretty girls in Manila, and landlords in the provinces were raping the land. But I am tasked to write only about my recollections of the last 25 years — time long enough for some people (and nations as well) to rise from poverty and rot — to wit, the Japanese after their debacle in World War II, and even earlier, after the Meiji Restoration in 1886; Korea after the Korean war in 1953; and Taiwan after the Chinese Nationalists fled there in 1949. Singapore, too, after its break with Malaya. A quarter of a century — one generation during which some chronic disease may degenerate into metastasis, just like a country like ours, can imperceptibly slide into implosive decay.
First, the wrath of nature, the eruption of Pinatubo in Zambales in 1991 — the sky over Manila suddenly darkened and in the morning, the rooftops and the streets were glazed with whitish ash like a thin layer of snow. Its devastation was never fully quantified; two decades after, the lahar-covered stretches in Central Luzon may again be cultivated.
And there was that typhoon Ondoy the year previous, its rampage still vivid in the mind although I did not find it as frightening as typhoon Yoling in the early ‘70s: how the stone benches in Roxas Boulevard were bowled over. I was driving that morning on Osmeña Highway in a van and I was fearful that I would be blown off, too. And the roof of a house sailed right in front of me.
Sure, a lot of progress was achieved in those two and a half decades. In 1986, there were no skyscrapers surrounding my little bookshop in Ermita. Now these monoliths are all around and I am almost sure my tiny bookshop will be the last wooden building defiantly opposing modernity here. But 25 years ago, there were no Filipinos sleeping on the sidewalks of Ermita — now, on occasion, a family sleeps in front of my shop.
Cory Aquino’s presidency (1986-1992) was a disaster. Sure there were about a dozen coup attempts against her government and she weathered them all. The revolutionary government that she announced achieved no revolutionary progress, not even the simplest among them — agrarian reform. She hung on to Hacienda Luisita in the same manner that her relatives still hang on to it — and this is the one single test that would give credibility to her only son’s presidency. I remember those days most of all for the long stretches of time when there was no electricity.
Manila traffic has worsened horribly — the jeepneys are as omnipresent as ever, but they are less colorful now, much, much longer and are not flamboyantly painted anymore, with rural scenes florid with native imagination, plastic gewgaws, chrome, and those small aluminum horses on the hood. No more braying stereos. And the taxis that came in so many riotous colors — they are mostly painted white now. And the buses — so many are air-conditioned, with TV.
Dewey Boulevard is now Roxas Boulevard. Its center island was planted to bougainvillea. All the way to Baclaran — alongside was the sea. A vast portion of the bay was reclaimed — the Cultural Center complex is there, the restaurants and the region’s largest mall. The street lamps were ample and simple, but now, drive from Baclaran to the Rizal monument — those awful plastic lampposts, those expensive multi-bulb lamps — what utter waste of money, what crass, pedestrian taste, what corruption!
Every so often, I venture into the provinces, to the Ilokos, to the islands in the south. In the early ‘80s in Northern Luzon, there were still a few houses roofed with grass. Not anymore — the houses are bigger now, with galvanized iron or tile roofs. Sometimes, in the middle of a rice field, there stands an Italian villa, a French chalet, washed in the colors of Europe — obviously, they belong to our overseas workers.
In the last 25 years, their remittances were no longer a trickle but a flood of more than $20 billion a year — this includes that which reaches us through informal channels. Yet, in all these years, there has been no feasible plan to use this vast capital for development, or harness these millions of Filipinos abroad to promote our interests.
In our society, the higher one goes up, the whiter it becomes — not American but Spanish white because the Americans were not here long enough. This, too, is changing; in the last two decades, the Sorianos, the Elizaldes have all but disappeared — a new economic elite — yellow in color is in place.
Iremember our lavandera, Aling Nene who, having foreseen this Chinese ascendancy, remarked that she was ready to accept it.
She said “the Spaniards were here, the Americans, then the Japanese but we continue to be poor. Perhaps — under the Chinese, it will be good.” Aling Nene is dead — but she is now getting her wish, hastened by the Filipino Chinese loyal to China not to this poor country where they were born, which made them rich!
Two major political developments occurred in the last these 25 years. The first is the departure of the American bases in 1991. This wouldn’t have happened if the issue was submitted to a national referendum. If the bases are here, the Chinese would not be so bellicose and aggressive in their claims on the Spratlys. Their claim is so obviously phony — just look at the map and see how distant China is from these islands. But China, the emergent superpower, has morphed into a rampaging bully.
Our political system has changed but the results haven’t. We have been conditioned to think that it is democratic. Actually, it is just so in form. We continue to be denied the progress enjoyed by our neighbors — even without the baubles of the democratic ethos. After every election, we bring to power the same tired faces, the same irresponsible elites who have colonized us.
In the last quarter of a century, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) was de-fanged but was soon replaced by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The NPA rebellion continues, emasculated; it will probably deteriorate like the Huks in the ‘50s into simple brigandage. We will continue to be badgered by such rebellions well into the future not because they cannot be resolved, but because their causes have not been removed.
Our political system, patterned after the American system, delegates so much power to the president. In principle, Marcos changed that with a parliament and a prime minister but with the president — Marcos himself — still wielding for greater power than the prime minister. Then EDSA I happened. And back to the old system. But this time with several parties participating in the election, with the winner taking office upon garnering the most votes, not necessarily the majority.
In the last election, a candidate convicted of plunder by the courts almost won. Nincompoops continue to be elevated to Congress, and the usual mayhem goes on in the bureaucracy. Has democracy failed us in the last 25 years? The last century? No — it is not democracy that failed — it is us because we have not transcended our barkada, our family, our ethnicity.
The most remarkable event that transpired in 25 years — it is still so vivid, those euphoric days after EDSA I and EDSA I itself — the excitement that pumped adrenalin to the palsied body, all those soldiers greeted with flowers, the massive, exultant cheering, the readiness to sacrifice. And the Marcoses finally leaving in ignominy. But now, they are back, gloating at our willful amnesia, our mindless credulity.
Just 25 years and Filipinos have forgotten; what, then, is history if it is not a seamless continuum? It is memory — racial, spatial, sacral — that makes a nation, that perpetuates it, and that, if nurtured in the marrow, suffuses the bones with firmness even when the flesh shall have rotted. A generation to make a nation endure, or a generation which, with no memory, destroys its birthright!