Filipino Culture and Authenticity

Filipino Culture and Authenticity
by Richard Arce Herrera

There seems to be a lot of confusion about Filipino culture and the fact that it's so mixed. But in reality, all cultures are mixed and have influences from other cultures, because human beings are complex and have migrated and expanded, traded, and intermarried with different peoples since the beginning of time. So in the sense that every culture in itself is an amalgamation of a lot of different cultures, it upsets me when Filipinos and non-Filipinos say that Filipino culture is not authentic or bastardized just because it has Spanish, Chinese, and Indian influences in the national culture.

First, let's dissect what the word Filipino means. 'Filipino' is originally a caste term during the Spanish colonial period to refer to Spaniards born in Filipinas (the Spanish and original name for the country now known in English as the Philippines). The native Malays were called Indios, those of Spanish-Malay descent called Mestizos, those of Chinese descent called Sangleys, those of Chinese-Malay descent called Mestizos de Sangley, and those of Spanish-Chinese-Malay descent called Tornatras. After the revolution against Spain, when Filipinas became it's own country, the word 'Filipino' was appropiated by nationalists to refer to the entire population of the country regardless of race or ethnic background.

At this time in 1898, there were two national languages officialized: Español (Spanish) and the native Malay language of Tagalog, which the government named 'Filipino', essentially sealing the viewpoint for generations to come that anything 'Filipino' should be native Malay in nature and ancestry-wise, which was detrimental in my opinion in retrospect, because that meant that anything that is not "Malay" is not "Filipino", meaning that the Spanish, Chinese, and Indian influences would mistakenly be not considered as "authentically" Filipino, ignoring centuries and centuries of cultural development and influences from the aforementioned cultures. In fact, Filipino is often misused as a racial term in place of Malay, and now means the exact opposite of what it meant a few centuries ago, as it now refers to only those of supposed pure Malay descent. Of course, as it is, the Philippine population, like Latin America and the whole world basically, is mixed, and has been mixed for centuries, and this is historically documented, and evident in our people's faces and family histories and wide range of skin tones and facial features, so the notion that there is such a thing as a "pure Filipino" or a "half Filipino" makes no sense at all if you really think about it.

A Filipino's openness or rejection of the Spanish language or culture of the Philippines often has to do with an individual Filipino's upbringing. For example, if they had a positive experience with the Spanish language growing up and they were encultured into it; their family occasionally spoke to them in Spanish or spoke to each other in Spanish, sang Spanish songs, and had an upbringing where delicadeza reigns supreme in everything you do and say, then they wouldn't be so strongly against it. The same holds true for the Chinese and Indian cultural influences that are part of the national culture of the Philippines.

But if a Filipino perhaps grew up in an entirely different perspective where Spanish wasn't spoken at all, or grew up overseas where the influences are instead American or Australian or British, or just perhaps just had nothing in their immediate lives growing up that would endear them to the culture, then of course it wouldn't have such a positive effect on them today in their lives, and they have no emotional connection to it like other Filipinos, so they don't feel a strong need to incorporate it as part of their lives, and don't feel it's part of their identity, especially since it had very little to do with their own upbringing. But I don't think it's right to say that just because a Filipino speaks Spanish or wants to learn to speak Spanish, or Chinese, or any other language, or because a Filipino says that they have Spanish or Chinese ancestry that they're automatically suffering from an identity crisis, like that ridiculous and racist Wikipedia article called "IMSCF Syndrome", that has since been taken down and rightfully so, or are not being authentic to Filipino culture, because what exactly is authentic Filipino culture? It's not just one thing, and it's not the same thing for everybody. And mixed people are exactly that: mixed. Who is anyone to say what a mixed person is supposed to look like? Are all people of European ancestry supposed to look Caucasian?

I also feel that sadly, a lot of Filipinos who have grown up in communities with a racist climate against Filipinos and other people of color have internalized that racism unto themselves, which is why a lot of Filipinos tend to lack a lot of pride in their culture, and tend to view it with shame, which then affects their own self-esteem in general, which is a shame in and of itself. Of course, internalized racism and racism itself are not uncommon phenomenons, but it doesn't make it them any less noteworthy or important as they're still issues that plague the world that we live in to this day in 2011.

A culture is the amalgamation of its history, there is no one single influence to any culture in the world, and the same thing can certainly be said about the Filipino culture. This is something that needs to be taught to Filipinos so they don't feel like their culture is not authentic or bastardized because it has Spanish, Chinese, and Indian influences like many unfortunate young Filipinos do.

A lot of different worlds in the Philippines (and among Filipinos overseas) exist side by side with each other, and they cross paths, but they're not always from the same place. What is right for one Filipino is not necessarily right for another, because not everybody always has the same upbringing or views on things in life, even those among the same culture. In conclusion, there really isn't just one single Filipino identity. I believe people should be able choose what they want to do in their life and have the freedom to carve their own identity.

I also believe that while it's good to be educated about and have a positive view of your own culture and country, nationalism in itself is detrimental to all human beings, because in the end, we are all essentially just that, human beings, and all essentially part of just one race, the human race.

(C)opyright 2011 by Richard Arce Herrera



Images are courtesy of New York University's Sheer Realities Exhibition.

Bamboo represents Philippines in UNICEF!

Bamboo's latest hit album released in 2007 "We Stand Alone Together" is still in stores nationwide and EMI Philippines is gearing the boys up for an international release. Bamboo is the most successful rock band in Philippine history and have also recently been named as the Philippines international representative to UNICEF (The United Nations), placing them up there with such prestigious international acts as U2 and the Spice Girls, also UNICEF representatives. There's just no words to describe how spiritual their music is, it hits you, deep in your puso while you're rocking out and enjoying it at the same time. The band is made up of that great singer Bamboo Mañalac, Nathan Azarcon, Ira Cruz, and Vic Mercado. Listen to the #1 hit "Hallelujah" below. Philippine legend is that a bamboo split open, and out came the first man whose name was Malakas (Strong), and the first woman whose name was Maganda (Beautiful).

The Best of Filipino Art: Juan Luna

Juan Luna y Novicio was born in Badoc, Ilocos Norte, on October 23, 1857, and, like Hidalgo, was the third of seven children. Early in his life, the family moved to Manila and lived in Trozo. The young Luna received his early education at the Ateneo Municipal and later at the Escuela Nautica de Manila. In 1873, he became an apprentice officer and traveled to various Asian ports. Whenever his ship was in port in Manila, he took painting lessons in the Academia de Dibujo y Pintura of Fr. Agustin Saiz.

The Best of Filipino Art: Fernando Amorsolo

Fernando Amorsolo

The first National Artist for painting, Fernando Amorsolo is the foremost Philippine artist of the early 20th century. An outstanding art student, the businessman Enrique Zobel de Ayala awarded him with a study grant to Spain. This allowed him to visit important museums in Europe and the United States.

In contrast to Luna's heavy and predominantly European themes, Amorsolo was known for sunny landscapes of Luzon and smiling images of dalagang bukid (country girls). His rendition of Philippine sunlight and its nuances was unparalleled during his time. Fernando Amorsolo was named National Artist in 1972.

Filipino singer-actor Antonio Morales Barreto "Junior" serenades Vilma Santos

Filipino singer-actor Junior (AMB or Antonio Morales Barreto) serenades Vilma Santos in Good Morning Sunshine (1980) with his hit song that he wrote and produced, Yakap.

Junior is the father of current hitmaker Shaila Durcal. Junior is 64 years old now and the oldest of 5 siblings and the Barreto sisters are 28 to circa-40 years old now (yes, they are, money does wonderful things in keeping you young looking and beautiful), and Filipino families are big so it's not uncommon to have cousins and immediate relatives that are twenty even thirty years older than you. But I don't have to tell you that, you probably already do.

Some Filipinos were comparing Claudine Barreto to Shaila Durcal, measuring their beauty against one another as if they were competing celebrities, but they're family by blood, Jesus Christ. But I guess it's normal since Filipinos always compare the beauty of Filipino actors/actresses with their sons/daughters or siblings, speaking of which, in my humble opinion, Gretchen is much more beautiful than her sisters, hehehe. I didn't like it before, but anyway I guess it's all fun, what fun is it having celebs if besides idolizing them, we can't also evaluate their beauty and compare them with each other, hehe.

Thanks to VSTProductions for sharing this great clip with Filipinos!

Filipino fashion during Spanish colonial period: Part 5

New York University
Sheer Realities

Filipino fashion during Spanish colonial period: Part 3

New York University
Sheer Realities

The paintings below displayed the preferred skin type for mestizos in the Philippines: white, however, I've included a photo of real historical mestizos which in itself shows that not all mestizos necessarily had white skin, in fact, many times white skin only shows up in castizos or those with more than 50% European or Chinese blood. But of course, as to be expected in most books written about the Philippines, the writer of this article didn't use the historically correct term of castizo or criollo, because like most writers are who write about the Philippines, he was probably not as educated in the colonial history and social stratification system of former Spanish colonies, which is so important to understand if you're going to understand Filipino history and lacking in most writers who write about the Philippines, which leads to the miseducation of the Filipinos and inevitably, the world about our country's history.

Historical preference: the Philippines has its chosen few.
(Special Section: The Philippines Survey) John Andrews.

Most developing countries encourage a sense of
their uniqueness. Nationalism, patriotism,
chauvinism: all play their part in exorcising
memories of colonial inferiority. Some countries,
like Singapore, speak explicitly of "nation
building"; others-for example, Arab
countries-stress a golden age which may yet
return.

The Philippines is different. True, there is a
sense of national identity. Newspaper columnists
(dozens of them, each capable of churning out a
couple of thousand entertaining words a day)
deplore the way foreigners, be they American
multinationals or Australian sex-seekers, exploit
brave but innocent Filipinos. Senators and
congressmen rail against America's bases as an
affront to Philippine independence. Taxi-drivers
and shop assistants say Cory should now let Marcos
return "because he is a Filipino".

But the sense of nationhood is a tide moved by
external forces. Television, radio and the
ubiquitous pop music are Americanised, or anyway
westernised. Over 400,000 Filipinos work overseas;
thousands more would like to join them. Bar girls
dream of finding an "Americano" husband to
transport them "stateside". Even cabinet members
cherish green cards that permit work and residence
in the United States. Objectively, it is a
national tragedy: each woman who goes as a maid to
Hong, kong or as an "entertainer" to japan, each
man who goes as a crane driver to Saudi Arabia
represents a family broken for two, three or more
years. But those involved react subjectively-the
lure of foreign wealth and sophistication is a
powerful antidote to heartbreak, and a stint
abroad confirms the belief that foreign is better
than Filipino.

Does it matter? The answer must be yes.
Resource-poor Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore
have all prospered through will-power and hard
work. Just think what the Philippines, so blessed
with natural resources, might have achieved with
even a modicum of national discipline and
cohesion. Instead, a country which 30 years ago
was arguably Asia's richest after japan is now
almost as poor as Indonesia.

Who is to blame? Filipinos, uniformly devout in
Asia's only Christian country, will attribute
responsibility to God, the Americans and the
Spanish. In all cases, they are right. Divine
decree has sprinkled the Philippines over a
typhoon-prone Pacific archipelago of around 7,100
islands. Anthropologists claim there are Ill
different cultural and racial groups speaking some
70 different languages, from Muslim Malays in the
southern islands of Sulu to Episcopalian Igorots
in the Cordillera mountains of Luzon. Nobody would
pretend it is a promising recipe for a sense of
national integrity.

What makes it still less promising is the
country's nuances of class and colour. "Filipinos"
exist only as a definition of citizenship. Reality
is a brown-skinned peasantry of Malay origins and
an elite whose skins have the lighter hues of
Spain and China. Filipinos are too friendly to be
bigots, and the melting pot of history-Chinese
traders and Spanish soldiers needed local wives or
concubines-rules out fantasies of ethnic purity.
But all Filipinos are aware of their place in the
spectrum: peasant women whiten their faces before
going to a dance; and in last year's campaign for
the Senate the high-born candidates would publicly
apologise for suntans caught on the hustings.

The phenomenon is not unique to the Philippines.
There are, for example, parallels in Brazil and
Venezuela. Nor should the impact on individuals be
exaggerated. It is probably easier being a brown,
Malay-faced Filipino than being dark in America.
But the harm is in the implied social rigidity.
The Philippines, despite almost a century of
democratic institutions, remains a feudal society.
The top one fifth of the population receives half
the country's income. Famous family names-Lopez,
Laurel, Romulo, Soriano, Zobel, Cojuangco, Ayala,
Aquino-crop up constantly in the arenas of power,
both political and financial. Too often, the name,
not the policy, is the key to success. One
academic claims the economy is effectively
controlled by a mere 60 families. A matter of
birth Blame both Spain and America. The former, in
over three centuries of colonisation, created the
Philippines' elite; the latter, in an occupation
lasting from 1898 until 1946 (with an unkind
japanese interruption from 1941 to 1945),
preserved it. At the top came the mestizos: those
whose blood was mixed". The best mestizos had
mainly Spanish blood, with just a dash of indio-or
native-genes. The next best were Chinese mestizos.
Both groups prospered. They leased land from the
Catholic friars and sublet it to the indios. They
gained still more land because the law limited an
indio's debt to just 25 pesos. The indio would
evade the law by selling his land to the mestizo
with the right to repurchase it later. It was an
early form of loan-sharking; invariably the indio
failed to find new money with which to repurchase
his land.

And so the fair-skinned mestizos became rich. The
lines between Chinese and Spanish blood were
blurred into a more-or-less single aristocracy as
the Chinese hispanicised their names (the
syllables of the Aquino name and the president's
own Cojuangco clan tell the tale). By the end of
the nineteenth century the top educated families
were the ilustrados-the "enlightened" who would
lead the fight for independence against a selfish
Spain. In the event, they were pre-empted by
America, which had gone to war with Spain over
Cuba. America's victory meant Spain's surrender of
not just Puerto Rico but also Guam and the
Philippines. In the process, the ilustrados were
co-opted by an America which could not quite admit
to building an empire. Instead, America, with a
patronising concern for its "little brown
brother", would help the Philippine elite turn the
country into a "showcase of democracy".

The concept has a soothing logic. Why not enlist
the favoured few in the evolution of a system that
will help the less fortunate? But there is a flaw
beneath this veneer. Democracy is based on the
will of the majority; by definition, the elite is
a minority. And the Philippine elite, like any
other, is hardly likely to surrender its
privileges voluntarily. Indeed, hardly any
criticism today attaches to the Laurel family for
collaborating with the japanese: they and others
were preserving the continuity of Philippine
leadership "in the interests of the people".

The Economist, May 7, 1988 v307 n7549 pS4(3)
COPYRIGHT Economist Newspaper Ltd. (England) 1988

Filipino fashion during the Spanish colonial period: Pt. 2

New York University
Sheer Realities

Filipino fashion during the Spanish colonial period: Pt. 1

I'd just like to start off by saying that our culture is not damaged, contrary to what many Filipinos in the Philippines or Filipinos overseas might believe, the only thing that is damaging is the miseducation of Filipinos about their own history that results in a damaged viewpoint of the beauty of their own culture.

This is a portion of NYU's Sheer Realities Exhibition. The original article was written by a Filipino writer, however, I've used my extensive education in Spanish American history, sociology, and cultural anthropology and corrected the terminology errors made when they used the word "Filipino" instead of Malay to refer to the unmixed natives, which relates to my previous posts about how miseducation that starts in the Philippines spreads and has spread to the entire world in that they're using the historically incorrect terms to refer to people, even in a university as prestigious as New York University, there's always room for error. And I've corrected it below, the only words I corrected were "Filipino" when used to refer to natives, which I corrected into "Malay", everything else of the original article is in tact, and I've left the word Filipino in the places where they used it in accordance to historical accuracy, near the end of the revolution and after the revolution when nationalism took place and inspired the population of Filipinas to a single national identity made up of a population of several racial mixtures.

These distinctions and corrections in what seems like a simple error in words are important for various important reasons affecting the national Filipino psyche and nationalism that I've explained in the previous posts.

The use of the word "Malay", instead of Filipino, to describe the natives of the Philippines is historically accurate as Jose Rizal himself always referred to the natives of the Philippines as his "Malay" people, not his Filipino people, and that is a common mistake that today's Filipinos always make, referring to the natives as "Filipinos" and mestizos as a mix of "Filipino and Spanish" and mestizos sangleys as a mix of "Filipino and Chinese" which is incorrect and a result of the miseducation that Filipino is a race when it's actually a nationality, because it should be mestizos are a mix of "Malay and Spanish" and mestizos sangleys are a mix of "Malay and Chinese", and it needs to be corrected so as to achieve historical accuracy, because everybody's education about the time period and viewpoint in the world today is affected by this simple error of words. It is crucial to our national pride, and it's important to disconnect yourself emotionally from history to be able to understand history correctly and with an educated viewpoint, which is also the goal of any university-educated cultural anthropologist, and I, being one of them, always try to stay true to educational, cultural, and historical accuracy. I also do understand that biologically, there is really only one race in this world - the human race, but as a discussion like that takes up entire volumes and books, we'll save that for another time and what's here is what's historically accurate as far group and sociological accuracy as it pertains to Philippine history. - R. Arce, Filipino Cultured

The archipelago known as las islas filipinas, a Spanish colony for more than three centuries, became Asia's first republic in 1898. Although the United States would replace Spain as the colonizer, and genuine independence would not become a reality until 1946, the nationalist activities that culminated in armed struggle against Spain remain a watershed in Philippine history. These activities were responses to myriad economic, social, and cultural factors, among them escalating tensions over access to land and the expanded global trade that linked the islands to the modernizing world beyond Spain.

Sheer Realities explores a critical dimension of Philippine nationalism as it developed over the nineteenth century: the rise of a mixed-race—mestizo—middle class who adapted Enlightenment ideals and European notions of modernity in their attempts to reform Spanish rule in the colony. In the process, middle-class mestizos consciously strove to distinguish themselves from both Spanish colonizer and Malay peasant.

These class and racial divides were most vividly apparent in the clothing and other body decoration exhibited by each group. The spectrum's poles were defined, on the one hand, by the almost naked body of the salvaje (savage) and, on the other, the layered clothing ensembles of the elites. To the latter, these poles signified the radical difference between the abject and the civilized. It was thus with a sense of local pride that elite and mestizo classes wore extraordinarily refined jewelry, silk clothing, cotton skirts and trousers, and delicately embroidered piña garments.

The beauty of this clothing was both an aesthetic and a political statement. Its extreme refinement displayed a desire to be acknowledged as a civilized society, which meant a distancing from the naked body of the savage. This divide continues to resonate in the Philippines today. The persistent idea that the civilized and well clothed are deserving of freedom explains, in part, why the contributions of Malay peasants to the independence struggle have been devalued in the official history of nation-building in the Philippines.

Ilustrado : Illumination and Illusion

The mestizo middle class occupied the middle ground in a complex social hierarchy stratified by race and class. On one end were high-status peninsulares (Spanish people born in Spain) and insulares (Spanish people born in the Philippines). On the other end of the social spectrum were the naturales (brown-skinned Christianized native Malays of the lowland and coastal towns). Beyond these groups were the salvajes or infieles (savages or infidels), remontados (those who refused to live in towns and took to the hills), and tulisanes (bandits), all of whom were considered to live outside the social order.

Increasing wealth allowed middle-class parents to send their sons to universities both at home and abroad. Many of these students, who called themselves ilustrado ("the enlightened" or "illumined"), befriended European liberals, embraced Enlightenment ideals, and eventually formed the intellectual and political leadership of the reform movement. Prominent among the ilustrado were descendants of mestizo sangley (Chinese-Malay) families, such as José Rizal. Although initially a reformist intelligentsia, with modest aims such as obtaining full legal status as Spanish citizens for all inhabitants of the Philippines, many of the ilustrado eventually participated in the armed struggle against Spain.

The elegant and luxurious clothing and accoutrements worn by the upper and middle classes reflect the prosperity they enjoyed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Adapting features of both European and indigenous clothing, elite fashion evolved into a metropolitan style intended to convey the education and civility of Philippine elites. Displaying their "enlightenment" literally on the body, they performed for the world a refinement which they believed made them worthy of equality.

La india elegante y el negrito amante

A popular nineteenth-century farce, La india elegante y el negrito amante features a small, dark Aeta native who dons various types of clothing—putting on, so to speak, different races and classes in an attempt to win the affections of a disdainful brown woman. The play articulates the social divide that opened up as the nation was formed. For as the ilustrado demanded equality by mastering European civilization, it became necessary to construct a contrast between those like themselves—beautifully attired in Euro-native garments—and all whose condition was thought to be abject, as signified by the loincloth.

Piña and Other Luxury Fabrications

During the nineteenth century, las islas filipinas were internationally renowned for the production of garments made of piña, that most transparent of fabrics—decorated with exquisite open-cutwork embroidery—woven only in the Philippines from the leaf fibers of the pineapple plant.

The ethereal dress ensembles of piña, silk, and accompanying jewelry worn by Philippine elites expressed secular power. These were luxuries of the highest order, created by artisans employing archaic skills, applied to the modern task of exhibiting the creation of new wealth and the consolidation of pre-nineteenth-century legacies. Their significance as rarified social capital eclipsed all other meanings, even though there persisted, for instance, other important jewelry categories—such as gold rosaries worn as necklaces, which reflected the wearer's intense faith—and despite increasing awareness that these gorgeous materials also "spoke" strongly, indeed politically, of the Philippines as chosen homeland.

The clothing and jewelry of nineteenth-century Philippine elites hence formed a material culture that was radically distinct from indigenous Malay traditions of dress and body decoration, the meanings of which resided in spiritual realms.

The Friarocracy (Frailocracy)

Commitment to secularism was a key component of ilustrado ideals, which were born of many grievances against the religious orders that dominated the Spanish colony. Dominicans, Augustinians, and Franciscans controlled huge tracts of land, and this aggravated aspiring middle-class landholders, of which the ilustrado were a part. Moreover, the friars' near-complete control over education well into the nineteenth century hindered the advancement of the people of Filipinas of all classes. Foreign languages as well as scientific and technical subjects were excluded from the curriculum until 1863, when a liberal Spanish government radically overhauled the system of public education, opening new opportunities for higher education.

For José Rizal and many of his compatriots, the true enemy of reform was not Spain but the friars, whose chief interest was in protecting their privileges. Consequently, the ilustrado attacked the social and economic abuses of "the friarocracy" in literary and journalistic exposés. The most famous indictment is Rizal's novel, Noli me tangere (Touch Me Not), in which priests are represented as greedy, arrogant, and authoritarian. Noli me tangere was censored in the colony but nonetheless widely read.

The Malay Native Other

The Spanish were never able to consolidate political control over the entire archipelago, and the colonial period is marked by countless conflicts—as well as illegal interchanges—between subjugated and independent Philippine peoples. On the other hand, urbanized naturales and mestizos had become a pan-Philippine society by the nineteenth century, homogenized by their common experience of colonization. Moreover, they viewed those who lived outside the administrative control of Spain as primitives needing salvation, pacification, and education. Metaphorically, and in some cases literally, these "others" were bodies in need of clothing.

This mental divide—reinforced by the dramatic difference in clothing and jewelry between the colonized and noncolonized—persists to the present day. It has obscured a shared archaic culture that is otherwise manifest in certain aesthetic conventions, for instance, in needlework executed at infinitesimal levels of perfection, and a taste for diaphanous, delicate materials.

The 7,100 islands of the Philippine archipelago are home to at least 120 language groups. Much as the ilustrado labored to establish a distance between themselves and these "others" through modes of dress, the items displayed in this section demonstrate the powerful influence of indigenous cultural forms on middle-class identity.

Maria Clara: Costume as Nation

Maria Clara is a principal character in the novel Noli me tangere, published in 1886 by José Rizal, polyglot, physician, artist, writer, humanist, and archetypal ilustrado. Rizal's public execution in December 1896 by colonial authorities mobilized the peoples of Filipinas to join the revolution against Spain, which had been launched by the Katipunan in August of that year. Ironically, Rizal was not a proponent of independence but, like many ilustrado, had advocated the integration of the Philippines into a Spanish commonwealth. Nevertheless, his memory endures as the compassionate genius who first imagined the Philippines as a nation.

Declared the national hero by the first president of the Republic in 1898, Rizal is conjured by the clothing ensemble called Maria Clara. Commemorative rites on the day of Rizal's execution became annual events featuring pageants with elaborate floats. Women represented Maria Clara in these events by wearing "her," hence the nation.

The pañuelo, or neckerchief, usually made of piña, is a distinctive feature of the Maria Clara costume, along with billowing lacework sleeves. The costume is simultaneously modest and sumptuous.

Authors of Nation

Las islas filipinas was home to a mere 1.6 million people in 1800. By the 1890s dramatic demographic change had produced a very different social picture. Some 20 million people comprised the citizenry on the eve of revolution. Unequally distributed prosperity had widened the gap between rich and poor, at the same time producing a middle class of mixed race ( mestizos). Unrest—generated by further marginalization of peasants and rising but frustrated expectations among the middle class—culminated in the nationalist Revolution of 1896.

Educated mestizos may have sought the end of oppressive Spanish law, but the peasants fought, and won, the armed struggle against Spain. This victory was short-lived. Las islas filipinas was ceded in December 1898 to the United States, which paid $20 million to a Spanish colonial government that had already been defeated in battle by Filipino nationalists in mid-1898. Rebels waged a guerrilla campaign against the United States but were crushed by 1906.

The ilustrado's contribution to the revolution is formidable. This group conceived the intellectual framework for Filipino nationhood, challenging colonial and religious authority with impassioned appeals to Enlightenment ideals of equality. But in styling themselves as a civilized elite through their very bodies, educated mestizos deepened the class and race cleavages that continue to afflict Philippine society. Casting the unlettered naturales and infieles as masses in need of civilizing, the ilustrado denied them the possibility that they could be active agents of change.

This ideological disenfranchisement persists. Today's construction of the nineteenth-century islas filipinas is an epic narrative of bourgeois emergence. Although increasingly contested, this narrative continues to preserve the moral claim of the Filipino elite to the authorship, then and now, of the nation.

To be continued in parts 2-5.

Sheer Realities

Organized by the Asia Society with the New York University Grey Art Gallery.