Last semester, I enrolled in a freshman history class taught by Yale professor John Gaddis, whose biography on George Kennan has won this year’s American History Book Prize. The first assignment was to write a brief biographical essay. What follows is a modified version of that essay, which came to focus on my attempts to get closer to the Philippines the summer before I left for college abroad.
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The Hall of Masters at the Philippine National Art Gallery is a vast cavernous space that seems even vaster because it is usually empty. There hang paintings that tell the story of our struggle for independence for all the public to see. But most Filipinos never consider visiting, and until last summer, neither did I.
It is very Filipino not to acknowledge one’s being Filipino. After 333 years under the Spanish, 45 under the Americans, and three under the Japanese, many Filipinos suffer from post-colonial identity crisis. At times we lack a sense of history and identify with the cultures of our conquerors more than our own. This was all the more true for me, having studied at the International School Manila, which taught me less about our country’s founding fathers than America’s. When I was growing up, the first Bonifacio to come to mind would be The Fort, with all its shops and restaurants and the place I went to school.
Yet I come from a family that is very traditionally Filipino. At reunions my uncles and aunts talk about experiences to which I sometimes can’t relate, and my cousins share stories from Catholic schools much different from my own. Then there’s speaking Tagalog, which for me has been a lifelong struggle made worse by attending an international school. I tried to find ways to improve. I practiced whenever I could, but with an English accent that made some think I was educated abroad; whenever I asked a saleslady a question in Tagalog, I was responded to in English. The more I was exposed to the Philippines outside the gated communities where I grew up, the more it became apparent that I was a stranger in my own country. Part of me always wanted to be more Filipino, and less of a sheltered international school kid, and I worried that to spend four formative years in America would only make matters worse. So the summer before a friend and I left for college abroad, we set off to get in touch with the Philippines as never before.
We went to see Manila as American tourists would. Lonely Planet travel guide in hand, we walked its streets, its public markets and city squares, posed for photos by its landmarks, and sampled all the street food it had to offer — all things which, I’ve realized, I’d done on holidays in other countries, but until then had never done in my own backyard. But to see Manila meant more to me than a packaged tour of the Eiffel Tower or Angkor Wat. Those are hallmarks of someone else’s civilization. Silly as it was to be a tourist in one’s own home, exploring Manila took an even greater meaning knowing that this heritage was mine.
In the Hall of Masters at the Philippine National Art Gallery, I stood in awe before Juan Luna’s “Spoliarium,” its canvas stretching from floor to ceiling, visualizing the nationalism that drove the revolution Luna helped spark. At the Libingan ng mga Bayani, row upon row of tombstones made real the costs of war and the sacrifices of generations past. In the streets of Intramuros, I saw how East met West to create the Filipino’s mixed identity in the place where this heritage has been best preserved. On a tour of the Cultural Center of the Philippines that Marcos built, I was inspired by what one man’s ambition for the country could achieve, as well as cautioned against power’s ability to corrupt. As I walked the halls and presidential exhibits of Malacañang, I glimpsed a time when politics was a noble profession and my country was run by statesmen unlike the populists of today. I became nostalgic for a golden age of the Philippines that I had not been alive to see.
But as long as I spoke broken Tagalog, the real Manila remained out of reach. So I set off to improve my command of the language. I took classes for two hours every day, as my instructor, Ms. Agatep, helped me work on my accent. My tongue was stiff, like an American’s, she said, as I practiced rolling my R’s. But as our meetings turned into hours talking about anything at all, I realized that the best way to learn a language is through conversation.
I practiced my Tagalog at every opportunity. I took my first trip to Divisoria to haggle over souvenirs to bring to America. Although my Tagalog remained far from perfect, as I mixed in English words to fill gaps in my vocabulary, the vendors smiled at my attempts at fluency. They didn’t feel the need to answer me in English anymore, and that was good enough for me.
Closer to home, practicing Tagalog led me to learn more about the lives of the people who served my household and the ball boys at the tennis club where I spent some afternoons. I always made an effort to try and get to know them, as I did the janitors, security guards and canteen staff at my high school, in an attempt somehow to make up for inequities in the social order that I benefited from all my life. The kindest people I’ve ever known, they’d gotten used to my broken Tagalog, but nonetheless appreciated my attempts at improving. Our conversations grew longer and more candid and I gained a window into their lives which greater proficiency in the language unlocked. My aim was to get in touch with my country, and no doubt this was a good first step. What artwork and artifacts in museums could not provide, these interactions could: a glimpse into the real lives of Filipinos.
Yet books maintained an appeal of their own. I came upon hard-to-find books of Philippine history in the La Solidaridad bookshop nestled in a corner of Old Manila. Written by historians now long forgotten by many, the value of these books lay not just in their volumes of information but also in what they signified: an attempt by men who tried to carve out an identity for a people, in a country where such writing is scarce and interested readers even scarcer.
The old newspapers that my dad insisted on keeping in storage proved their value in a different way. For me they were snapshots of the politics of the past. I compared hopeful editorials from the days following the EDSA People Power Revolution with disillusioned ones towards the end of Cory Aquino’s term, capturing what it must have been like to be there in ways history books cannot. I followed accounts of nail-biting presidential races from generations ago, profiling candidates who, though now forgotten, could put today’s best politicians to shame. Like the exhibitions at Malacañang, readings on the great statesmen of a bygone age expanded my sense off how Philippine politics had once been and how it once again can be.
Most striking, however, was reading into the life of our national hero Jose Rizal. Educated in a private school, he grew up around the sons of Spanish officials and mestizo Filipinos. His teachers taught in Spanish. He later left home to study in Europe. One could imagine how his privileged and sheltered upbringing in some ways disconnected him from the country he loved so much, his anxieties only heightened by his departure for Madrid.
All my life, I’ve been trying to deal with being a stranger in my own country, anxious that, for all its benefits, my international school education — and now my American one — would keep me from becoming a true Filipino. Last summer, I tried to bridge that gap and learned a lot about myself along the way. But I also accepted that some differences remained and, in that way, found company in the most unlikely place. The Rizal to whom I could relate was not the national hero, but the young man, leaving the country he loved for an education abroad. Rizal recognized that despite all the things that distanced him from his country, it was because of how strongly he loved it that he could call himself a true Filipino. And after a summer of discovering my country and myself, I realized that so could I.
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At the start of summer, I hope that this encourages others to rediscover Manila, too. Some recommendations: Carlos Celdran’s tours of Intramuros and the CCP should be compulsory for everyone; John Silva’s tour of the American War Cemetery and Ivan Dy’s tours of Chinatown and Malacañang are also well worth taking. La Solidaridad bookshop is located at 531 Padre Faura. For comments and suggestions, email leandroleviste@gmail.com.