Blame them

Filipinos should stop blaming his father for this country’s abject pass, Bongbong Marcos said on the eve of Edsa last week. “China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia can all point to the progress they have made these last 26 years but unfortunately, for the majority of our people, nothing much has changed today. Blaming past administrations will not bring food to the plates of the hungry. Excuses cannot substitute for performance and results.”

If you’re of my generation, your immediate reaction will be to scoff at this remark and dismiss it outright. If you’re not, you’ll wonder if there isn’t a grain of truth to it, if not indeed an entire granary of it. Unfortunately, many Filipinos now belong to the second category, as witness the fact that Bongbong is a senator, Imelda is a representative of Ilocos Norte, and Imee is a governor of Ilocos Norte.

Time is this country’s greatest enemy, and a great deal of time has passed since Marcos ruled it with an iron fist. Filipinos are at pains to remember Edsa, let alone martial law. It’s been 26 years since Edsa, which is the same difference in time between the “Liberation” and the bombing of Plaza Miranda. It’s the difference in time between peryodikit and Facebook, between the struggle to save the world from domination and the battle to save the planet from incineration. That is not a gap, that is a gulf. Those are not different junctures, those are different worlds.

That’s just Edsa. Martial law is farther out.

What makes Bongbong’s complaint terribly familiar is that it’s been made before. The Americans used to say that to Filipinos in more nationalist times: Stop blaming colonialism for your woes, blame stupidity. Other countries have progressed after colonial rule, you haven’t. It’s not in your stars—or your occupiers—but in yourself that you are underlings.

But why ever not blame colonialism for it? Colonialism’s impact on the colonized has been pervasive and profound, warping mind and body in the course of the years. The longer the duration, as in the case of the Philippines—much of its known history is colonial bondage—the more violent the warping. Whatever colonialism’s benign byproducts, such as schools and hospitals, they were more than paid for with the quite literal blood, sweat, and tears of a people. The point of colonialism was to exploit, and exploit it did, to varying degrees of ruthlessness and brutality. If China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia got far ahead in life, it wasn’t because of colonialism (or genocidal war in the case of Vietnam), it was in spite of it. It makes as much sense to tell Filipinos to stop blaming colonialism as to tell African-Americans to stop blaming slavery or racial discrimination for their woes.

The same is true of martial law. Twenty-six years after it ended, its impact continues to be felt today. Arguably, the late ’60s, which saw Marcos elected twice as president, weren’t the best of times, as demonstrated by the rise of activism and politicians themselves warning of a social volcano that was about to explode. The classic image put forward for the second was the sakada, the sugarcane worker, who toiled in conditions of virtual slavery.

But Marcos didn’t make things better, he made them worse. Far far worse. The promise of martial law was bread for freedom, but it gave neither. It not only took away freedom, it took away bread. It not only arrested people, it arrested time. The country could have vaulted forward during the 1970s when the world was awash in petrodollars and the banks were practically pressing money in the hands of borrowers. Martial law did borrow, and borrow big. And martial law did steal, and steal big. All that debt was paid for by this country’s forests and mountains and seas, a scale of despoliation of natural resources that had no equal in the past. We continue to pay that debt today. Our children will continue to pay that debt tomorrow.

Why in hell shouldn’t we blame martial law for our woes?

I agree: Marcos alone isn’t to blame for it. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is too, Erap is too—though to a much lesser degree having had much lesser time to ransack the treasury. Arroyo did not just steal the bread, she stole the vote. She did not just reward the wicked, she punished the good.

And I agree: Marcos alone isn’t to blame for it, we are to blame for it too. Or our culture is, as it has sprung from the soil of colonialism, as it has been nourished by the hand of bad government. A culture that makes us horrendously tolerant of corruption we figure it is not theft, least of all from us, it is just division of spoils. A culture that gives us so little attachment to the country we figure we can always go abroad when things get desperate. A culture that makes us forget our past, muttering what’s past is past, what’s history is history, life goes on, let’s move on.

But Marcos by himself is epically to blame for it. It’s not true at all, as the Marcos and Arroyo camps say, that there’s nothing to be gained from blaming the past, that it cannot substitute for performance, that it will not bring food to the plates of the hungry. There is in fact everything to be gained from it, in this country more than others. We are a forgetful people, unable to cling to the memory of the past, near or distant, gathering no moss like a rolling stone. Recrimination is not always counterproductive, particularly when it is justified, particularly when it allows us to pluck a huge chunk of our lives from oblivion. You do not remember the past, you repeat it. You do not remember the past, you do not just lose freedom, you lose bread.

We want to assure that there will be food on the plates of the hungry?

Blame them.