Alien - Aprile 1997
It was on a street near the Vatican that I met Danny, a Filipino. I was with my Italian friends, Vito, Fulvio, Franco and Barbara, and an Indian friend, Rani. We set up a table on the corner and pasted a poster that said "You are more than just an object." Then I met Danny, who was stopped by Franco, organizer of the Center of Cultures in Rome. Danny was looking at the Seiko watches behind the glass. They talked about ending the isolation of cultures, about the project that aims toward the convergence of diversity. I asked Danny, "Nagtratrabaho ka rito?" ("You work here?") And he snapped back, "E, ano pa ang gagawin ko kung hindi magtrabaho dito?" ("Of course! What else would I do here but work?")
Yes, there must be something else, beyond the objectifying fact of money, the world's central value. As the earth globalizes and Filipinos find themselves everywhere in the world, from Hong Kong and Kuwait to Rome and Texas, the question "What can Filipinos give today?" is urgent. And it has a great precedence. A century ago, some of our ancestors also came to Europe, studied, wrote novels and poems, painted, played the lottery, drank Italian and French wine and German beer, ate spaghetti, bistecca and camembert, published newsletters pressing for liberal reforms in their country of origin, learned medical technology and the techniques of the European masters, made love with Spanish, Italian, French and German women, launched political campaigns, attacked the friars in the Philippines, which led to giving the world Asia's first anti-colonial movement.
At that time, the word "Filipino" was new, revolutionary and strange; hitherto there were only Lagunenses, Ilocanos, Bicolanos, Samas, Cebuanos, Tausugs, and Igorots. The word signified something new that had grown in the consciousness of the people, a concept that embraced the diverse cultures of the country of 7000 islands: bagoong, Bicol express, tinikling, bahag, vinta, wani, agung, pangalay, tadjung, kulaing, kuping, duhat, kalamansi, durian, balut, balisong, and kalis. The word represented a unifying force. It signaled the best that could come up if Filipinos opened their hearts to other cultures, and, at that time, exchanging ideas with the great movements of Europe a continent convulsed with the Industrial Revolution and aftermath of the French Revolution, Rationalism, Romanticism, Socialism, Freemasonry, the anti-rationalism of Nietzshe and Kierkegaard, and geographically-based Nationalism with its ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.
A century hence and the word "Filipino" has stuck, but today, on a globalized planet, it does not connote or denote anything new, revolutionary or progressive anymore. The Europeans left. America came. America left. Filipinos leave by the thousands and millions, come to Europe, come to the Middle East, come to America, some in search of jobs, some bored in their mechanical jobs. Perhaps beyond the obvious economic reasons (which have already been satisfied), there may grow other, more humanizing reasons.
In the Philippines today, there is nothing that is particularly exceptional: unemployment, lack of social security system, health care and education, majority living below poverty line, politicians looting the government, a mayor convicted of rape and murder, a congressman raping a 10-year-old girl, the growth and takeover of multinational companies, the building of cheap-labor export-processing zones and industrial complexes, cable TV, dismantling of telephone monopoly, privatization of basic services (water, sewerage, electricity, etc.), Internet, PCs, ATM, Citibank, Visa, Mastercard, Philippine Stock Exchange, migrations of people from the countryside to Metro Manila, Metro Cebu and Davao, growth of slum areas in the cities, growth of skyscrapers and giant malls, censorship of Romeo and Juliet (sex and suicide scenes, courtesy of Roman Catholic Christianity since 1521), election in 1998 (Erap party, De Villa party, Ramos party, Miriam party, and other variants of the one-party neoliberal system), traffic, jeepneys, Megamall, flyovers, LRT Part II and III, talk shows, regionalization (ASEAN and APEC, Asia Pacific Economic Council), and less and less people going to the streets to protest the takeover of the banking system of the entire national system or what is left of it (less than the number of Filipinos gathering every Sunday in train stations and parks in Rome, Milan, Hong Kong and Singapore).
The entire world knows and the host countries watch with amazement. Every Sunday in Hong Kong and Rome, and other cities, they watch how Filipinos gather among themselves, oblivious of the culture around them, eating bagoong, balut and Skyflakes, in perfect solidarity among themselves, helping each other solve legal problems, financial problems, heartaches, raising contributions to help those raped or jailed in some cities, exchanging packages to bring to some families in Sexmoan, Catbalogan and Pagadian, in total contempt of FedEx, UPS, Banco di Roma and Citibank.
If the solidarity that the Filipinos so far have only applied to themselves can be expanded, extended to the "alien" culture or cultures they are in (which is an absurd situation because here the Filipinos are the "aliens"), then something would have been grown in the minds of the Filipinos. And along with this growth a new concept, and a corresponding word, would arise.
If earlier the concept of "Filipino" united various islands from Tawitawi to Aparri, today, in this age of Internet, migrations and globalization, we need a concept that could unite the now practically borderless country with those countries and peoples that our people have come in contact with--Chinese, Dutch, Italians, Kuwaitis, Arabs, French, Americans, Canadians, Spanish, Icelandics, Tunisians. Borrowing from Nietzche, the concept would be something like a "SuperFilipino", a particular culture in perfect solidarity with the world's diverse cultures.
So one day, on a Sunday, two years from now, at the end of this millenium, in celebration too of the great Filipinos who have come to these shores to launch a great movement in the Philippines, all the train stations in Rome and Milan will shake with people--SuperFilipinos, SuperItalians, SuperRussians, SuperNigerians, SuperArabs, SuperSriLankans, SuperIndians, SuperPeopleFromAllOverTheWorld--relating and communicating in solidarity with each other, planning a big "EDSA"-style campaign to forever end racism, discrimination and violence perpertuated by a global system controlled and manipulated by the global banking network, and to set up a totally human world, whose central value is not money but the human being.
That may answer Danny's question.
Saki Binudin, Rome, 1 March 1997
Alien - Aprile 1997