“To Bend With The Wind Like Bamboo”

“To Bend With The Wind Like Bamboo”

            Bamboo is used for a variety of purposes in the Philippines, from fences, to furniture, cooking to music, bamboo is an essential and irrefutable part of Philippine culture. Its sturdiness, flexibility and versatility make this plant ideal for every day use and application; application even as a metaphor for Philippine amigo warfare tactics. “To bend with the wind like bamboo” was a Filipino cliché used by Ileto as a metaphor to illustrate the manner in which Filipinos during the Philippine American War would code switch to falsely portray ally ship to the Americans, all the while conspiring for their demise behind their backs (1998 pg.7). While Ileto’s use of the popular saying emphasized the deceptive war tactics of Filipino’s, I drew further allegorical meanings within this saying in context to the current discourse surrounding Filipino American Identity. Filipino Americans are liken to bamboo that is constantly forced to “bend” or assimilate to the  “winds” of American social standards.   By using the readings and experiences of this past week about American occupation to provide historical background and narratives on this issue, I will draw parallels from the listed curriculum to further demonstrate the adaptive nature of the Filipino American Identity in relation to my own personal knowledge and experience.

            When Mckinley signed the Treaty of Paris with Spain in December 1898 to cede control over multiple countries including the Philippines (Zinn, 2008 pg. 54) he reined in a new era of American monopolization on a vulnerable, war torn country desperate for relief from colonization.  American forces falsely promised to respect the independence of the Philippines and in turn exploited the land, massacred its people and instilled a new system of governance and policies that would continue to pollute this country far beyond the formal recognition of Philippine independence on July 4^th 1946.  We talked about this in depth in our discussion this morning on how manipulative the nature of the American government through vehicles such as historical revision is what allowed for all these injustices to be completely forgotten and forgiven by both  the Philippine and American populations. This miseducation and intentional with holding of both injustices and culture  has undeniably affected my identity today as a Filipino American.

A book from the shelves of the San Agustin Church Museum depicting satirical artwork of American occupation in 1898. This image I felt portrayed the deceptive hospitality of American forces and illustrated how this superpower fooled this nation with its pleasant demeanor under false pretenses.

            First and foremost I was born in the most modern patriotic way possible, to a soldier in the American Army, on a military base in the soulful South. I remember my mother explicitly saying to me that she did not want to teach me my native tongue of Tagalog because she believed it would detract from my education and save me from bullying. My education in fact never even thought to incorporate Filipino history other than an insignificant blurb about Magellan's conquests and claims over the Philippines.  This is sharp contrast to the listed White privilege # 7 outlined by McIntosh as " When I am told about our national heritage or about 'civilization' I am shown that people of my color made it what it is" (1988, pg. 97).  I would really like to delve into the various ramifications that the excerpt"people of  my color made it what it is" brings about. Since the Philippines has such a long history of of colonialization and occupation, as a nation one cannot justifiably say that Filipinos are solely responsible for the "civilization" that we see today. In addition , in a discussion  held with Tita Peachie she personally stated that the Philippines historically and perpetually is a nation of "copy cats" in which the effects of colonialism is so longstanding that to this day our ideas of both democracy and the economy rely heavily on copying foreign models. Without the privilege of being held accredited with the framework of their own country how could authentic nationalism even begin to arise? Let alone in a young, socially sensitive girl in the States?  The combined effect of cultural deprivation via historical revision and forced assimilation due to lack of historical and social support was immediate and apparent in my developing years in which I rejected my Filipino culture in exchange for societal acceptance.  
My question then in relation to Mark Twain's Anti- Imperialist narrative, is that if in fact the Philippines was left to its own devices, if we were so to speak " left in the dark" , do you think that the nation would look somewhat similar to India or Malaysia? Countries who have also experienced either colonialism or imperialism (albeit not on the same level) but still have an independent and growing identity and economy. Also how would this effect Filipino American identities? Would Fil-Am's take more pride in their national heritage if in fact there wasn't American intervention diluting Philippine history? Or had Spanish Colonialism done enough damage already?

References

Ileto, R.C. (1998). The Philippine-American War, Friendship and Forgetting. In Shaw, A.V. & Francia, L.H. Vestiges of war. (pp. 3-21). New York: New York Press.

McIntosh, P. (1988). White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies (Working paper (Wellesley College. Center for Research on Women); no. 189). Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College, Center for Research on Women. Banks, James A. (1993). The Canon Debate, Knowledge Construction, and Multicultural Education. Educational Researcher, 22(5), 4-14.

Twain, M. (2002). To the person sitting in darkness. In Shaw, A.V. & Francia, L.H. Vestiges of war. (pp. 57-68). New York: New York Press.

Zinn, H. (2008). Invasion of the Philippines. In A people’s history of American empire. (pp.53-72) NY: Metropolitan Books.