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IT’s so sad that most of us Filipinos don’t care about our own
history. People should care not only about their own history but
also the history of the world and mankind, and of their own
provinces and cities.
It’s not only that those who don’t remember
the past—don’t learn the lessons of history—are condemned to
repeat it. It’s also that most learning is trial and error. Even
baboons and mice eventually learn which object to pick, which path
to follow. Filipinos, year in and year out, know the rains and
typhoons will come and then floods. But we still don’t make sure
our drainage culverts are clear of plastic bags.
One of the things I picked up from Dean
Alejandro R. Roces is that a people that keeps changing street, city
and other place names will end up having no history. That notion
also applies to the names for holidays.
I am having these thoughts because today is
April 9, Bataan Day—which should rightly be called Fall of Bataan
Day but is now known officially as Araw ng Kagitingan or Day of
Valor. It has been celebrated these several years like one of those
casual holidays that everybody only appreciates because it’s a
no-work paid day. I suspect the new name has to do with the
down-grading of such an important event in our development as a
modern country.
Realities learned
The Fall of Bataan awakened us to the reality
that our “friendly” colonizers, our beloved Americans (and their
cousins the British) could be defeated by the Japanese. It is a
realization that gave us an insight similar to that acquired by the
Russians—commoners as well as the modernizing aristocratic
intellectuals—when their Czar’s Navy was humbled in the
Russo-Japanese War.
But the story, the history, is not complete if
we do not also realize that the Fall of Bataan—and the Death March
that followed and the Japanese Occupation years—created a new
sense of solidarity between Filipinos and Americans. It is a
solidarity that has lasted to this day—never mind how some of us
fulminate against US “imperialism” and unfairness (for tying us
down to colonial trade terms, for not supporting us against British
wishes in Sabah, etc.). This solidarity is based on the Filipinos’
recognition that the USA—all things considered—is still really
the best example of a democracy, the best place, that takes in
Pinoys as immigrants and finally grants them citizenship.
This solidarity, sadly, is no longer recognized
as something owed to the Fall of Bataan by the majority of Filipinos
who were yet to be born in 1942.
Extension of patriotism
Respecting history, learning from it, is a
virtue that is an extension of patriotism (love of country). One has
to love his country as it is, his parents as they are—but we must
do everything we can, without violating the all-important virtue of
charity, to help make our country better. It is also an extension of
the necessary self-love (which is neither egotism nor egoism) that
is required of every decent human being. For a person who does not
know or remember his history does not know himself. He has no
identity.
Is that why in intellectual discussions here
sooner or later someone brings up the issue of “the Filipino
identity”?
Knowing one’s history is of course very much a
matter of loving the truth.
A people who do not care about their history are
also those who do not give much value to the truth in the ordinary
circumstances of their lives.
That is what we Filipinos are today.
That is why marches for truth have to be
organized to find out the simplest things that in other countries
are disclosed as a matter of course.
That is why we allow ourselves to have leaders
who lie to us at every instance—even when they are pleading with
us to elect them.
Most of us don’t feel personally abused when
those who are in power lie, steal, kill and kidnap and do other
corrupt acts with impunity. That is why we don’t respect
ourselves.
rq_bas@yahoo.com
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