David C. Martinez A Country of Our Own: Partitioning the Philippines
Los Angeles, CA: Bisaya Books. ISBN 0-9760613-0 -9. 514 pages. This book shouldn't be read in one sitting. Martinez' critical analysis of the fabricated state that is the Philippines is a lifetime thesis on a subject so insistently compelling to its student, filtered through years of anguish, outrage, confusion, yearning, and hope against hope. The Dumaguete-born exile essays Philippine history sans the distracting, driving emotions that had fueled his fevered inquiry, in a brutally honest tone that engages reason, in lyrical words that speak to the heart. What is left is the distilled conviction of an intellectually honest man who knows what he is talking about, though he is constantly on the verge of digressing given the sheer volume of data he needed to present. What makes this book well argued is the magnified clarity to detail that must have come only from remembering ever so often that which had been forgotten every now and then. The book poignantly begins with the newly exiled casting off into the high seas to escape the political persecution that came in the wake of the proclamation of PD 1081. Adrift in the waters, the world rendered aloof, he became as one with the countless many who came centuries before, seemingly tied to
the world only by the fragile moorings of his unutterable hope, the distant stars and an ancient map on cloth. He discovered for himself the emergence of the age-old need wrought in the human psyche to search for authentic identity.
Martinez turns acrimonious as he makes his case against being born to the patronymic category of a Filipino. In a letter to the long dead Felipe II who will never know the extent of the havoc wreaked by his dubious patrimony, he repudiates this most cruel, vacillating, and duplicitous monarch. Well, now, we may be his bastards, but Felipe's blood does not flow in our veins. And even if it did, we are not responsible for the sins of our illegitimate father. The progeny has the right to disown the ancestor. Working with the troubled, I have seen how that sometimes is the only inevitable course to heal the psyche. Like many in his generation, Martinez believed in and fought for the manufactured Filipino, unquestioning of the primacy accorded to the integrity of the territory created by the Treaty of Paris, and subconsciously subverting his ethnic identity in order to belong to that contrived national community. His search leads him to discover the strength with which our indigenous nations inexorably call out to their citizens. Then came the realization that the ties between the primal self and the indigenous nation lend to the individual a deep sense of dignified legitimacy and community spirit. Those ties define who he is and who he would become. The Karay-a in me concurs, though I couldn't help shaking my head as I read that first chapter. If this man – whose piercing intellect enabled him to develop the central thesis of this book – missed it the first time, how many more out there would never come to realize the truth about their person? I am a Karay-a, and I will always be, no matter where I go. Long divorced from the land of my birth, people who really know me know that Kinaray-a expresses my strongest emotions. My first word was Kinaray-a, and it would in all probability be my last. It is my soul and I bare it for all to see. In my mind,
I live in the fairlands of the Republic of Antique.
I write in English and try to communicate in Bisaya or Tagalog only to get along with people, and sometimes just to prove that I can. My Filipino citizenship is just a minor inconvenience imposed by where I am, and I pay for the privilege by respecting the law, paying the right taxes, and serving this society's need to educate its citizens. (Martinez, I take it, has to write something in the box reserved
for citizenship details.)
I cannot love the Philippines as much as I love the Republic of Antique. The latter has always accepted
me into the fold, solicitously inquiring about me and reaching out to connect wherever I may be. The Philippines, on the other hand, sometimes treats me with distrust. Although I have lived within its national borders all my life, government entities authorized to speak for this community ever so often require me to prove my citizenship because I was born to carry a Chinese surname. But Zajonc proved that familiarity decisively breeds affinity. So, yes, I do feel an affinity for my fellow Filipinos, as Martinez obviously does also, but I have long recognized that we are not the same. And I don't wish it were otherwise.
In the first nine chapters, Martinez provides a thorough depiction of the accidents and intents that have
led to our current experience. Like a marriage made in hell, this tells us why we're not likely to stay together forever. Advocates of federalism and secession would find this book indispensable.
Martinez posits that it is the imposition of uniformity that set the Philippines on the road to self-destruction. He examines the myriad ways through which homogeneity in thought and behavior was hammered over time through conversion, colonial governance, and elitist protectionism, regimented by a twisted concept of Catholicism, an equally twisted concept of democracy, and a system of education meant to indoctrinate attention to form rather than substance.
Can uniformity be fashioned from diversity? Of course not. But oh, how we all suffered in the cruel attempts to make this pipe dream come true for its deluded dreamers. Will diversity achieve harmony and equality? Only if consent to be inconvenienced is respectfully sought and willingly given.
But if legacy is about planting seeds that would take root, this book deserves to be read by the young who, in their unconscious wisdom, deny the lie that is Philippine history taught in our schools, are repulsed by it, and cannot relate to it. Excised from their indigenous communal roots and trapped in the incongruous exercise of a culture alien to where they are, four out of five seek psychological congruence in the expression of this desire to be out of here. For all intents and purposes, the next generation has virtually seceded anyway. Rootless, they long for solid ground under their feet, one that would allow them to stand firm, stand proud.
But before they go, they really should read this book. If they are to read only one book in their lifetime, this is it. For once, Philippine history, as taught by David C. Martinez, makes perfect sense. A Country
of Our Own is a brave attempt to undo the lies about who we are supposed to be.
Roots are not so much about where we are physically as they are about who our minds know us to be. Reading this book would lead the young to seek a connection to their authentic roots, to find genuine validation of their psyche, and to finally come home to their primal selves. That, I think, was what the author had in mind when he rose to the duty of putting this out. As promised by its subtitle, this book audaciously dares to make a case for partitioning the Philippines according to its indigenous nations: the Cordillera, Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, and Bangsamoro. However, despite its substantial groundwork, it fails to rationalize the constitution and the maintenance of its proposed partitions. Martinez argues that nationhood is about the consent of a people who share a similar language, values,
and heroes. Which among these, pray tell, do I share to a significant degree with the Ilonggo, the Akeanon, the Waray, the Boholano, the Palaweño, or the Cebuano? "Sister tongues" do not necessarily make sister nations or sisterly relations. The Karay-a experience under this arrangement would in no consequential way be an improvement over our experience thus far under the Philippine state. The Ilonggo would still patronize us as their poor relations and the Cebuano would still insist on calling us Ilonggo. It would take more than merely substituting one linguistic-bound hierarchy for another for us to move for a change in
the status quo. My Karay-a dissent aside, the more fundamental question is this: What is to guarantee
that onerous oligarchy and the debilitating religion of blame would not rear their ugly heads in any or all
of
these proposed nations?
These questions beg a sequel to this book. Gail Tan Ilagan teaches Social Justice, Social Psychology, and Sociology at the Ateneo de Davao University. This review was modified from an earlier version that appeared in her opinion column on http://www.mindanews.com.
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