Conversion and Context

Abstract

In mid-October, 1999, I attended a history conference at the University of the Philippines College Baguio. One of the presenters, Florentino H. Hornedo, rose to give a paper on the Batanes Isles, a small group of islands off the northern most tip of Luzon. Before giving his paper, however, he launched a long speech about the need for Filipinos to reject images of themselves that he believed were being foisted on them for political reasons.

In Manila, you hear about the problems of undisciplined drivers and undisciplined pedestrians. I hear people saying, “If only the Filipino will become disciplined, pick up the trash, drive with discipline.” But this is not the problem. The politicians—what do they do?—they blame the Filipino, the tao [common man], but do they build roads? How do you drive when there are no roads? How do you throw away trash without the basurahan [trashcan]. Filipinos are not the problem. This is not the problem, being undisciplined or not having a disciplined culture if the politicians will build the roads.

He went on quite a bit longer on the same theme: the problem with the Philippines is not the Filipino. As mentioned in Chapter 7 it was a trenchant sociological analysis, but one that made me think of the many times I had heard people I knew blame the problems of their nation on the cultural flaws of Filipinos, particularly the lack of “discipline.”