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.

Filipinos not colonized by Spaniards.

One sentence that constantly upsets me whenever I read history books,

Filipino historians, tour books, from the Philippines and around the

world (which the rest of the world got from the information first

written by Filipinos in Filipino history books) is:

The Spaniards colonized the Filipinos.
Correction:
The Spaniards did NOT colonize the Filipinos. The Spaniards colonized the Malay, Aeta, and indigenous peoples of the land.

The result of that history is the Filipino people.

"Filipinos" in the way the word is used today, did not officially exist until the 20th century.

This adds a lot of miseducation to Filipinos and to people all around

the world because it leads people to believe, Filipinos especially

included, that there is such a thing as a Filipino race, and a united

Filipino people before the arrival of the Spaniards.

You don't read history books say "The Spaniards colonized the Mexicans"

because that's incorrect. The Spaniards colonized the Aztec and Mayan

Indians of the land, as well as the African slaves, and the result today is the Mexican people.

So whenever it's written, which I see all the time, "The Spaniards

colonized the Filipinos" it's especially written out of a grand

miseducation that is taking place among Filipinos about their own

history, and the way we write it and portray it is especially important

if we are going to instill pride and education in future generations of

young Filipinos.

Another thing that peeves me when I hear Filipinos write it and is so reflective of mass

miseducation among our people is:

The Spaniards erased everything about the Filipino culture!

Correction:

There was no such thing as Filipino culture until the Spaniards arrived.

Everything Filipino is a mixture of Malay, Chinese, and Spanish cultural elements.

As far as what was erased in the Malay culture of the natives before the Spaniards arrived,

that's debatable and there is no exact way to measure it, but considering that Tagalog and other

indigenous languages are still used, it's easy to say that a lot of pre-Hispanic Malay culture

among the natives of the land that is now the Philippines stayed intact.

It's completely obvious that sentences like that above which are so

common to read in Filipino textbooks are what leads Filipinos to grow

up with deep insecurity issues, not just about their own history and culture, but also

with issues about ancestry that Filipinos get into constant strifes with each other about,

which is completely unnecessary considering that the sentence is false and a result of mass

miseducation and a lack of caring about taking time to make sure that

Filipino history is written with complete historical accuracy.

As far as the online debates Filipinos have with each other, it's ridiculous sometimes,

considering that they wouldn't even be arguing with each other if only they were

properly educated about the ancestry of their own people, which has to do with

another common sentence in Filipino history books that is incorrect as a result of miseducation:

The Spaniards intermarried with the Filipinos.

Correction:
The Spaniards did NOT intermarry with the Filipinos.

The Spaniards intermarried with Malays and other indigenous people of the land, and their children and grandchildren and future generations became Filipinos.

The word Filipino is used so often among our people, but it's constantly used in way that is reflective of the fact that most of our people don't even know exactly what it means or should mean, or used incorrectly in reference to race instead of nationality. It just boils all down to one word when it comes to mending our country's self-esteem: EDUCATION.

You're not of Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese blood.

You're of Malay, Spanish, and Chinese blood.

And you're a Filipino, and you're proud of it. Mabuhay!

Tinikling in Historic Philippines

This is one of the many videos we're working on for the upcoming launch of our new website, Filipino Magazine. I hope you guys like it, the song is from the Tinikling, a traditional Filipino folk dance. There will be an online video gallery full of videos related to Filipino culture, including songs by Pilita Corrales, Bamboo, Francis Magalona, and much more.
Special thanks to Ms. Isabel Preysler and family. These childhood photos are of her and her family in this special video tribute to her home country and our home country, the Philippines.

Tinikling
Tinikling is the most popular and best known dance of the Philippines, receiving acclaim as the national dance. The dance is similar to rope jumping, but instead of a spinning rope, two bamboo poles are hit against blocks on the floor, and then raised up and hit together. Tinikling actually means "bamboo dance" in English. The dance requires one person to operate each end of the poles, and one or more dancers to move in and out of the poles.

Tinikling originated in the Visayan Islands, on the Island of Leyte. Dancers imitate the tikling bird's legendary grace and speed as they walk between grass stems, run over tree branches, or dodge bamboo traps set by rice farmers.

Different stories regarding the origin of tinikling have been passed down through oral histories and folklore. Tinikling is performed on certain Sundays in the Philippines.

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.

Filipino People's Real Ancestry

By R. Arce, Filipino Cultured
I always go into forums and read what other Filipinos have to say about Isabel Preysler and her kids doubting their "Filipino-ness" based on their sometimes warped views on what a Filipino is supposed to be or supposed to look like.

A lot of Filipinos are miseducated about this very important topic: Ancestry. Spanish blood does not disqualify someone from being Filipino, first of all because there is no such thing as a Filipino race, which means that unless we're talking about parentage in which one parent is a Filipino citizen and the other is a citizen of another country, nobody is really racially "pure Filipino" "half-Filipino" or a "quarter Filipino" or "1/8 Filipino" as I see often, because there is no such thing as a Filipino race, there is a Filipino people that is made up of the mixture of several races: Malay, Spanish, and Chinese being the major three ancestries of most Filipinos. And also because if that were true, my entire family and I would not be Filipinos and Pilita Corrales, Fernando Poe Jr., Jaime Fabregas, Amalia Fuentes, Armando Goyena, Maritess Revilla, Paquita Roces, Gloria Romero, Piolo Pascual, Kristine Hermosa, Cogie Domingo, Richard Gutierrez, Mico and Bernard Palanca, Aga Muhlach, Claudine Barreto, KC Concepcion, TJ Trinidad, Rica Peralejo, Lucy Torres, Richard Gomez, Rosanna Roces, Vic Sotto, Oyo Boy Sotto, Tito Sotto, Kempee de Leon, Eddie Garcia, German Moreno, and millions of other Filipinos of Spanish descent would not be Filipinos as well. Being Filipino should not only equal to Malay ancestry, but that's the way most Filipinos view it and use the amount of Malay ancestry in a person to qualify whether someone is a "real Filipino" saying things like "she's 1/8 Filipino" when they actually mean she's "1/8 Malay", they use the word Filipino instead of Malay because the word Filipino has become synonymous with Malay ancestry and Malay ancestry ONLY (which results in millions of Filipinos referring to themselves as "Filipino, Spanish, and Chinese", when they really should be saying they're FILIPINOS of MALAY, Spanish, and Chinese descent), and it's incorrect and a result of miseducation, which is why I'm very adamant about rewritting the way Philippine culture and history is written in our books and text books, because people from other countries use books written by Filipinos as a reference to their information, so if the information written by Filipinos themselves is incorrect in the way ancestry is viewed, then that incorrect information will be spread to the entire world (which it already has been) affecting everything, especially the amount of pride young Filipinos have in their own culture.

I don't know exactly when this mixup between the words Malay and Filipino occured, and when Filipinos started to view "Filipino" as an actual homogenous separate race instead of as a national identity made up of the mixture of several races, but what is fact is that it did not start before the 1898 revolution since Jose Rizal was quite fond of using the words "Malay people" in his works, but if you study history and are familiar with the culture that influenced and colonized the Philippines after the revolution in 1898, it's quite obvious that it probably came from the influences of that culture which has a history of segregating races and frowning upon people of mixed race that was imposed on the Philippines after the 1898 revolution. In other words, the concept of mestizaje, the concept which accepts racial mixture as a normal part of national life, which united the peoples in former Spanish colonies after their revolutions against Spain, the concept of mestizaje which unites a people as one regardless of their race was wiped out in the Philippines after 1898, and replaced by the cultural values of a new culture that was not compatible with the previous values, and which wrecked havoc and continues to wreck havoc on Filipinos' sense of identity even to this day. This has a lot to do with why nationalism died very quickly during the first half of the 20th century, and why Filipinos have a hard time uniting as a people today, because the nationalism ideals that took place in the late 19th century built on the ideals of the unity of a single people and country based on mestizaje, was quickly forgotten (obviously, since most Filipinos view being Filipino as a separate race instead of as a national identity, and most don't even know what that word means even though it plays a significantly important role in the history and formation of our country) and was replaced with the national anthem and the forced and imposed allegiance to the cultural values of the country of the Thomasites, something which still affects the Filipino people to this day, in both positive, but also overwhelmingly negative ways.

There were good and bad points to mestizaje, but one thing is undeniable in that it united the peoples in the countries of South America extremely well and instilled in them a sense of national pride in their country that could as well have happened to the Philippines. But it didn't, and it's history, and it's all done. What is important today for Filipinos is education, and more education specifically about the Philippines, because not enough Filipinos care about studying the Philippines, but the truth is, there's still a lot more things to be done, rewritten, corrected, clarified and discovered. A glance in any Filipino history textbook from the Philippines will tell you that.

Mestizaje is the reason why there is no such thing as a Filipino race, and there is no such thing as a Hispanic race as well, contrary to popular belief in most non-Latin countries that like to categorize people into neat racial boxes, which are never correct.

European/Spanish ancestry is always regarded by Filipinos as "foreign ancestry", but it's not really foreign as European/Spanish ancestry has been in the Philippines for centuries and makes up the bloodlines and family trees of millions of Filipinos, and not just in the upper class as most Filipinos are led to believe. Filipino is always referred to as "indigenous ancestry" again referring to how the word Filipino has become synonymous with ONLY Malay ancestry, but again Filipino ancestry is not always just Malay ancestry.

A people's history and ancestry is a very important topic for any country in the world, and education is the key to enlightenment.

It has to start with us, and it has to start with changing the way we use the word Filipino. For example, it's very common for Filipinos to say that a mestizo from the Philippines is of mixed Filipino and Spanish ancestry. This miseducation is so deep in Filipinos, that that's even what I saw written in my niece's history textbook when I visited the Philippines. And that is incorrect, because a mestizo from the Philippines is NOT of mixed Filipino and Spanish ancestry, but of mixed MALAY and Spanish ancestry, and the combination is what makes them a Filipino. Pilita Corrales is not of mixed Filipino and Spanish ancestry, she is of mixed Malay and Spanish ancestry, and she is a Cebuana, and she is definitely a Filipina. This is very important because correcting this simple error in the use of words will also help to correct the negative viewpoints and confusion that many Filipinos have about their ancestry, and also help in having pride in being simply Filipino if people finally accept mestizaje (mixture) as the norm in Filipinos instead of as something to be praised and put on a pedestal.

This will help everyone, those Filipinos who are more European looking than other Filipinos sometimes spend their entire lives trying to prove to other Filipinos how "Filipino" they are, because other Filipinos doubt their "Filipino-ness" because their facial phenotype doesn't match what their perception of what a "real Filipino" is supposed to look like. And it will help eliminate Filipinos' insecurities because it will stop the constant: "Is [Celebrity] really Filipino? He/she doesn't look Filipino!" because they will feel pride in Filipinos of all facial types and skin colors. And if we educate ourselves as Filipinos, and write correct information in our history books, we educate the world about us, and it saves us a lot of time and stress having to explain all the time about why certain Filipinos don't "look Filipino" or why some Filipinos look white and others look Chinese and others have dark skin, because it will be in there in the books, and hopefully written as culturally accurate as possible.

Related article:
Filipino Mestizos: A quick thought, why you're a Filipino mestizo and you don't even realize it

So back to Isabel Preysler and her kids, everytime I hear other Filipinos say "They're not really Filipino, they're Spanish!" I always remember this photo I saw on Isabel Preysler's website of Chabeli Iglesias and Julio Iglesias Jr. when they were kids dressed in traditional Filipino clothing. Chabeli is wearing baro't saya, and Julio is wearing the traditional costume for Tinikling. I also remember when Enrique Iglesias wore a Philippines t-shirt on MTV's Spring Break 2000, and the picture of Isabel Preysler wearing the Terno, the traditional national costume for Filipina women, at a social event in Spain.

Culture and the passing down of culture to future generations of Filipinos should be more important than racial ancestry, and Isabel Preysler has done a good job in that, which is a lot better than can be said about many Filipino parents in the United States or other countries, according to many young Filipinos who feel upset that their parents didn't teach them anything about their Filipino culture growing up, which seems to be a common thing among Filipinos growing up overseas, because you only have to strike up a conversation with other young Filipinos or visit other young Filipinos' various websites and read their stories to see that. Educating our kids about the Filipino culture is extremely important for their emotional well-being, and in their self confidence when they enter the world as adults.

A picture says a million words.
Enrique Iglesias with his lola, Betty Preysler at their home in Manila, Philippines.

Filipino mestizos

By R. Arce, Filipino CulturedA picture says a million words.

Most Filipinos have the false belief that Spanish mestizos are supposed to look ... well, Spanish: light skin, brown hair, aquiline noses, there's a stereotype that a Spanish mestizo is supposed to look like Enrique Iglesias, Bianca Araneta, Mico Palanca, or la hermosa Pilita Corrales and be extremely rich, but a look at historic pictures of real Spanish mestizos show really how much of a false belief that is, because Spanish mestizos look like "normal" Filipinos. Spanish mestizos are normal Filipinos, although that's something that most Filipinos don't even realize because of an "us" and "them" mentality. Many Filipinos are mestizos, but they don't even realize it. You're a Filipino mestizo, and you don't even realize it.

Many Filipinos are mestizos and have Spanish blood, most times even without realizing that they're mestizo because the thing is that some Filipinos have more European blood than others, and often, only those Filipinos (the ones who look more European) are referred to as mestizos, although in traditional Spanish speaking society, they would be referred to as castizos or criollos, while those with less European blood, although are mestizos, are never perceived as mestizos by Filipinos because of that strong social perception that equates being mestizo with having strong European looks and being extremely wealthy, which is never always the case as most mestizos, just by looking at historic pictures of the first mestizos in the Philippines, real mestizos look like today's normal Filipino, meaning that many Filipinos are mestizos without even realizing it because of the social perception, and also because of the historical stigma associated with having Spanish blood out of marriage (las queridas), which happened a lot in Spanish colonies, and also in the Philippines, which would've urged many Filipinos to hide their Spanish ancestry in the past to avoid the social stigma of being la querida (mistress) or hijos de la querida (children of the mistress). It's usually only the officially recognized marriages between Spanish men and Malay women that were officially recognized as mestizos, because the difference is, the official marriages had the wedding documents historically to prove it, the out of wedlock mestizos born from queridas didn't, although the Spanish blood in their future children and grandchildren are just as valid and real in those Filipinos, even though those future generations (today's Filipinos) wouldn't even know about their Spanish ancestry if they're not informed about it even when it's very prominent in their facial features, or wouldn't believe their grandparents when they tell them about their Spanish great great-grandfather, which to young Filipino kids who look in the mirror and see that their brown faces don't match the PERCEIVED facial type of a Spanish mestizo, they believe what they're being told is a myth. But of course it's not.

Also another reason why this confuses young Filipinos is because not enough has been written about this topic because most Filipino historians don't think it's important. But they're obviously wrong, because a people's ancestry is a very important topic indeed in any culture, and if it wasn't important, then a lot of young Filipinos wouldn't have so many questions about this topic and be confused about it so much, and it wouldn't cause so much strife within the Filipino population during social discussions if it wasn't an important topic to research, which hasn't actually been done yet. Sometimes, they'll have paragraphs here and there about mestizos in history books, but it's always on the surface, saying mestizos were richer than the rest of the population, etc. but never fully exploring what the lives of those mestizos were like during those times and it's not fully explained like it is in history books about Latin America, which has entire volumes written about the mestizo colonial experience in Spanish America, which I've all read and have spent hours and hours reading in the library, which is why I understand it so much, which has also helped me understand my own Filipino culture. Now you probably understand why we say, to better understand Filipino culture, you should understand Latin culture, because the truth of the matter is, Philippine history books leave a lot of holes and questions unanswered that you could only find by reading books in Spanish or reading books about the Spanish colonial period in it's entirety instead of only books about the Philippines.

Pure-blooded ethnic Malays from which Filipinos are descended from don't have pointed noses or high nose bridges or light skin or big eyes and don't always have an eyefold (qualities which millions of Filipinos were born with and have in varying degrees), you just have to visit Malaysia or Thailand to see that (but don't be mistaken by the ethnic Chinese population and part-European population that dominate the celebrities, entertainment, and upper class there like many Filipinos are, you have to look at the indigenous population.

Contrary to what most Filipinos would believe, learning Spanish and exploring more about the Spanish colonial period and how it lead to the Filipinos' viewpoints of mestizos, wealth, and all that would only help to eliminate colonial mentality, not perpetuate it. The more we understand about "mestizos" and similiar cultural perceptions, the less it'll seem glamourized, and Filipinos will see the reality in it, and therefore, it grounds everybody and helps with positive mentalities.

To the people who doubt that there is in fact a large population of living mestizos in the Philippines, I have to say, what do you trust more, a book or encyclopedia (CIA World Book) written in the 21st century full of estimates with only a paragraph or or two dedicated to the Philippines or Spanish historical documents, pictures, and artifacts from the time period itself?

It is well known that even those population percentages that estimate European ancestry in Asian populations are exactly that - estimates, because even if it is a scientific study, even if it's from Stanford or Harvard University, it's well known that there is no single dna gene that is the "white gene", that determines European ancestry precisely, dna studies estimate and make guesses based on dna percentages by comparing dna from various populations around the world, but the fact that most humans share 99.9% of DNA makes it very difficult to exactly pinpoint where ancestry comes from, at best they can make an educated guess, and that's the best they can do, and I know this because I just saw it the other day on PBS watching this really cool educational program, and because I remember studying it in high school for God's sakes, and I'm only 24 so nothing has really changed at all since I graduated in 2001, it's basic science, so even Stanford University scientific studies on percentages of European ancestry in Asian populations that Filipinos love to hark on at Wikipedia's Filipino mestizo article are estimates themselves, and the first people to tell you that will be the scientists from Stanford University themselves, it's under the basic rules of population sampling that it's exactly that: a sample, meaning an estimate. And it's common sense, unless you analyze the blood from every single Filipino in the 70 million plus population, you're only taking a sample, meaning you're trying to determine the ancestry of an entire people by a handful of people, many times only 20 people at most. 20 people of one country even in a scientific sample cannot represent the entire country with complete accuracy, you can only come to an estimate, and it also varies depending on what blood types those 20 are from. If the 20 Filipinos they choose are very Malay-looking, then it will have an outcome saying that the Spanish ancestry is very small. If the 20 Filipinos they choose are more European-looking, then it will have an outcome saying the exact opposite. Filipinos love to hark on Standford University studies of population ancestries on that Wikipedia page, but if you were to ask those scientists who did the studies, they'd tell you the same thing: these percentages are only estimates, because my goodness, it's common knowledge in science, it's first year science class and sociology class that we learned in high school, and any real scientist and population demographic specialist will tell you that scientific sampling is always not completely accurate, which is why in results, this statement is always required: "Results may vary depending on [factors] [age] [weight] [family history] etc." Just because it's Stanford University, the Filipinos reading that treat it like it's the bible of God, because Filipinos are trained to believe in the superiority of anything Western, but hello? Don't they remember what we were taught in high school? Population samples are just that: samples meaning estimates, meaning that the results of such studies should not be trusted as 100% accurate because there are various factors that may alter the outcome of the study. It's basic science, first year high school science and sociology, and any scientist and population expert will tell you that, because they learned it in high school like the rest of us. That's why, don't ever trust anything on Wikipedia, especially articles about the Philippines, any uneducated person can go there and make an elephant look like a giraffe, and any Filipino can go in there and say that only 2% of the population has this much ancestry, and then change it to another number another day, as long as they have some kind of study they can reference to, even though they don't know anything at all about science, sociology, or cultural anthropology.

Basically the point is, the people who should be most educated about all of the aspects of a culture are the people who come from that culture themselves, but in many Filipinos, unfortunately, that's not always the case. So especially if your kids are growing up outside of the Philippines, educate them about their Filipino culture and involve them in Filipino activities so they feel pride in their own culture, and in themselves, so that they're secure and confident in their beings when they present themselves to the world's society.

The way Philippine history is portrayed in our history books is in desperate need of clarification and renovation to fix the errors and holes in many areas, because it affects everything, including how population estimates are done and how people are categorized. CIA World Book and their ESTIMATES (keyword) of the Filipino population including their ESTIMATES on the numbers of mestizos are not always 100% accurate, neither are they always CULTURALLY accurate, my people. Taking a gander at any book about Latin American peoples shows that this is a topic that is extremely important to many Latin American historians as well, because the way other cultures view race is different from the way the Latin culture views race, so racial estimates of countries in books written in English are never to be trusted as fact, because they're applying the viewpoints of an entirely different culture to another culture that the researchers don't always necessarily understand very well, the Latin culture and the structure of societies in Spanish-influenced cultures, which especially includes the Philippines.

EDUCATE YOURSELF. EDUCATE YOUR FAMILY. EDUCATE OTHER FILIPINOS.

Discovering Philippines: Center for Historic Studies of Public Works and Town Planning Exhibition in Madrid, Spain

Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity

Very interesting book written in 1910, must be taken with a grain of salt, but provides a lot of first hand information and photographs from the time period:

The Racial Anatomy of the Philippine Islanders, Introducing New Methods of Anthropology and Showing Their Application to the Filipinos