A Summary of Mojares' The Formation of Filipino Nationality Under U.S. Colonial Rule
Uyvico, Von Zedrich M.
Abstract
The Filipino nationality under the ruling of the U.S. is sufficient for analysis at variegated perspectives. The knowledge building projects and its own propagation has provided realizations for the Filipinos of what constitutes “nationhood” — they have provided us with an approach for civic nationalism that gave us a sense for identity and unity across minorities in our proxemic. Although this may sound all sunshine and rainbows, it cannot be negated that this has excluded our indigenous minorities, and we have lost some valued traditions.
Furthermore, with the emergence of the idea of a Filipino nationality during the time epoch of Americanization, this has posed multiple influences towards our own Philosophy and even then during this time, we also a multitude of Hispanic influences.
What really constitutes being a pure Filipino? If we historically succumbed to multiple colonizers, what is our real identity? Even our national language had multiple Hispanic influences yet we consider this as our very own.
Summary
August 13, 1938—an “Occupation Day” has been celebrated as headed by Manuel L. Quezon. As the author suggests, these variegated countries have come to a “treaty” undeclared with any legal document. Quezon explicates that the said alliance of the countries isn’t bound by a mere legal writing but rather it extends to its deeply-rooted spiritual values.
The author suggests that Quezon’s speech was a “political oratory”—it doesn’t aim to bring the truth to its surface, but its message is geared towards the favorable imagined illusions with the masses.
The process of “Americanization” that as usually perceived, is limited to the ideology that it was simply the Filipinos losing their identity and culture;however, the author refuses this explication. During this time epoch, Americanization went hand-in-hand with Filipinization, where the Americans permitted the propagation of Filipino art and tradition toward the masses. This is said to be mutating into “Civic nationalism” where a community of equal citizens is bound by common values, beliefs, history, and territory.
Furthermore, this time has been called the “golden age” for the exponential increase in published worksand art in the country. This increase is a product of a multi-faceted environment with the coexistence of the two countries. Two of the most notable are as follows: (1) Nationalism—during this time, the Filipinos felt oppressed with the dominance of American ideology propagating around the country, the Filipinos promoted the need of self-assertion as instantiated by the previous wars and continuous revolutions; (2) American colonial state formation—the Americans have provided a space for increased intellectuality around the country. They have spawned knowledge-building projects that discover and explore new fields of knowledge, and material and mental infrastructures that propagated the knowledge from the precedent.
In a vigorous attempt to keep “public memory,” national-colonial state buildings kept archives of our culture. The naming system of public institutions also changed to promote a sense of nationalism—prefixing “Philippine” to its institutional names. One of the numerous state universities is the University of the Philippines, or as referred to at that time as “manufacturer of the elite.” This sense of a promoted national agglutination does not limit itself to physical denotations, but it also extends itself to the main vehicle of information—language. In 1937, Quezon declared Tagalog as our national language to “solve” this struggle.
However, I wouldn’t call this a completely valid attempt to solve such a vernacular struggle, the Tagalog language does not give voice to the minorities at Mindanao. Such a language is limited to the capital of the Philippines and does not propagate itself properly to the masses. Furthermore, the aforementioned has had huge influences from the Spaniards and it is not by itself a product of the pure Filipino.
As the time has progressed — with the prevalence of an open market — the nationalistic sense on our art has been further substantiated. This sounds like all sunshine and rainbows until our very own Filipino artists have been overfed with attention and money that its own proud theme of anticolonial resistance persisted. The artists made illusive illustrations far from reality, and what should have been the militant portrayal of the challenging life of Filipinos, were shown to be progressive and unaffected from colonization (rational civic nationalism).
These occurrences posed for the existence of division between the Filipinos. Americanistas and Filipinistas were debating over the loss of Filipino identity. One of the most prominent americanists of the time was Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, he argued that our filipinist ideas were merely evolving backwards and most of our ideologies and cultural values were implanted by the Spaniards.
Filipinismo was the dominant discourse at the time, even as Quezon stated “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to a government run like heaven by the Americans.” What may sound like a strong offense towards the federalists, does not necessarily stand its very purpose. The americanswere confident with their alliance towards the bourgeoisie at the time, and any form of Filipinization were permitted—if not, encouraged.
With Quezon’s presidency, Filipinization was rampant, the government, education, and other facets of society were dominated by Filipinos themselves; and by 1907 the Filipinos had their own legislature. However, when observed keenly, these so-called champions of Filipinism were a homogenous group—all of them were as cited “Generational cohorts, middle-class, manila based, US-influenced” elites. The led to the struggle of expressing the voices of the indigenous from other parts of the Philippines.
With further substance against anglo-saxonization, one important arena for debate is our language. There was a flowering increase on the rise of Hispanistas whom devoted their lives to fighting to set Spanish as our national language—as they justify, it conveys native ideas more adequately. To oppose such an ideology, Virgilio Almario called balagtasismo as a way to resist Americanization and other forms of colonization using poetry.
So, what then is quintessentially Filipino? This question spawns a multitude of perspectives on the said matter, and can be observed with Fernando Amorsolo’s works. While Amorsolo continually un-illusively portrayed Filipino life, it later transformed into commercialized, stereotypical work catered to the likes not of the local patrons.
This said repetitive philosophy that dominated our pioneer Filipinos in the art industry, was later called out by N.V.M. Gonzales as the “Jones Law Syndrome” where such desire of impressing the world is urged.
The distinct gains and achievements of the Filipino artists were not centered towards mere revivalism and defense of our culture, this provided a sense of hybridization where reinterpretation and localization of ideas from the west is prevalent. Such a transformative prowess has enabled our own local forms of art to be substantiated with improved quality.
Filipinism was not just nostalgia, it synthesized a better ideology towards civic formation, and our central preparation for nationhood. However ideal, it was mainly biased—focusing on the metropolitan center rather than the nation as a whole. As aforementioned, minorities like the people of Mindanao were negated and I guess you could say it was an invalid induction of multiple cultures.
If we look at the history of what we usually call “being a filipino,” its traces link us back to the time epoch of Americanization where the bahay kubo, kundiman, and rondalla to name a few were prevalent. Although the Americans helped us on the materialistic and technical perspective towards its incorporated fields, the intellects of that time usually criticized Americanization for its ideologies against the original spiritual values the Filipinos beheld.
Moreover, our native tradition lacked substance as criticized by intellectuals, we do not have our own “Shakespeare”—we’re merely adopted children who succumb to the geniuses from the west. We do however, have our own oral traditions, but they are not sufficient to justify a vigorous characteristic of ourselves.
As Joseph Hayden stated, the Filipinos never possessed the fundamental qualities of a nation, they never appreciated national heroes nor history, and if not for the American colonization, we were nothing but submissive simpletons who crave intelligence. Such a perspective towards Filipinos is nothing but a mere consideration of half-truths granting America all the credit for our self-consciousness. It was the Filipino intellects during Filipinization that fought for our identity despite the Americans implanting a vigorous philosophy of being loyal to them. These Filipinos never fully succumbed to the malicious manipulation of our psychology, they had their independent minds hybridized with both American and our traditional ideologies.
Nation-making in our early stages, gave us the sense of nationhood, giving birth to the idea of a “Filipino nationality.” Our civic nationalism has shaped us equally however this has led to the loss of variegated cultures, traditions, and a myriad forms of art.