But we must free ourselves from the shackles of our centuries-long colonial experience and set out on our own

My fifth grade Social Studies teacher Ms. Alita Gualberto was so in love with Jose Rizal that the National Hero played a part in everything she taught us. Maybe Social Studies on that level in late ’70s primary school was supposed to be about history or geography, but I don’t remember. All I recall is from her class I would emerge eager to write in Filipino, prompted by her many stories, which she told us not as lessons but as side stories, the story of Maria Clara and Padre Damaso drawn from Noli Me Tangere, for instance, or the story of Sisa told separately from that of the brothers Crispin and Basilio, even the story of Jose Rizal and his struggles in Europe.

Those were the stuff of Western novels, to which I had more access. In the house I grew up in, there were so many books, from the Bible that was over a foot thick to several encyclopedia sets and American and European novels and magazines, but I doubt there was a single copy of Noli Me Tangere or El Filibusterismo. Until school required us to have in our possession Filipino books, which wasn’t until high school, we didn’t have any reason to have them in the house. I only vaguely remember reading Francisco Baltazar’s Florante at Laura for homework. We didn’t even have Ibong Adarna. Did you know, though, that the original title of this 15th-century epic poem was—I suggest you take a deep breath first—Korido at Buhay na Pinagdaanan ng Tatlóng Principeng Magkakapatid na Anak nang Haring Fernando at nang Reyna Valeriana sa Kahariang Berbania?

What a shame! But it is only lately that I’ve developed a keen interest in Philippine literature other than Rizal. I’m not saying it’s too late. I’m barely middle-aged, if I were to live to 100. It’s just that when I was young and even now, in my late 40s, it’s so much easier to find, say, Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, an Ethiopian novel set mostly in Addis Ababa, or Irish poet Paul Muldoon’s Horse Latitudes than Nick Joaquin’s Manila, My Manila. I mean, walk into any bookstore and you will find all shelves devoted to international books, except for one and two filled with books in Filipino or books written by Filipinos. It’s very likely none of these books, unless newly published, will occupy eye-level shelves or the window display. If it’s a classic or some historical text, forget it. I bet it is so much easier to find Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party or Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf than Zoilio Galang’s A Child of Sorrow, the first novel in English by a Filipino, or Never Mind and Others by Procopio Solidum, the first Filipino to publish a collection of poems in English, both of which were published in 1921. As I write, a colleague of mine has just emailed me a digital copy of Paz Marquez Benitez’s Death Stars, considered the first modern Philippine short story. I didn’t know any of these before I sat down to write this piece. What a shame!

Corollary to this, I wonder why no one has thought of publishing a facsimile of Italian scholar and explorer Antonio Pigafetta’s surviving journal Magellan’s Voyage Around the World, which Rizal read in the original Italian, to his great enlightenment, in 1888 at the British Museum in London. In the article  “On the Trail of Jose Rizal’s Demonio,” which I wrote as a cover story to a Panorama issue last year, I wrote that “Chancing upon Pigafetta’s account of the Philippine discovery in the Italian original, according to Resil B. Mojares, professor emeritus at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, Rizal immediately and enthusiastically wrote his friend Marcelo del Pilar, ‘I have here Italian manuscripts that deal with the first coming of the Spaniards in the Philippines. They are written by a companion of Magellan.’” In his article “Rizal Reading Pigafetta,” which appeared in the literature that accompanied the 2017 Philippine Pavilion at Arsenale in Venice, Mojares further wrote that “lamenting that he did not have the time to translate the text ‘on account of my numerous chores,’ urged del Pilar to get one of the Filipinos in Madrid to study Italian (which he said, with his customary zest for languages, could be learned in one month) and translate the discovery account to Tagalog or Spanish ‘so that it may be known how we were in 1520.’”

I may be wrong, but I sense a kind of awakening. I almost wrote re-awakening, but I doubt, given hundreds of years of colonization, followed by a deeply entrenched colonial mentality, as well as a national inferiority complex, that we have ever been, to use the new word, “woke.” No longer are we under the spell of our colonial masters, which until lately, had somehow continued to exert influence on us, against which, until lately, we hadn’t been able to boldly assert our independence.

This is why, at a dinner with President Rodrigo Roa Duterte at Malacañang last year, I had only one agenda, though we spent about eight hours at the Palace, and it was to make the President consider culture a tool as important as trade or agriculture or labor in nationbuilding. So I said to President Duterte, “Sir, I’ve never been so invested in my country as I am now. Are you aware that that is your power?” This was how I cued myself to raise the importance of the arts and culture in building or healing this nation, although there appears to be more urgent problems demanding the full attention of the government.

I do think that true leadership, more than anything, is an inspiration and I think this government should seize the opportunity that lies in the massive, organic support it is getting from the public to espouse Filipino identity, national pride, and each Filipino’s involvement in nationbuilding.

Politics comes and goes, so do presidents, but a proud race or an empowered culture lasts for generations.

The author is also on Twitter and Instagram as @aapatawaran and Facebook as Arnel Patawaran.

The story first came out online on Feb 3, 2018.