Halfway down the Danube

Balikbayan guest blogging 4: Chillaxing on the volcano, or, the end of empires

Another missive from HDTD's man in the Philippines, Noel Maurer. Warning, it's a long one...

I am sitting on a cliff overlooking a volcano sticking out of a lake, and contemplating the end of empires.

I’d like to claim that the reason for that is the fact that I am being serenaded by a three-man band in mariachi suits singing an off-key rendition of “La Bamba.” Is there an image that better captures the colonial history of the Philippine Islands?

The United States, I assure you, is the only other country on the planet in which you might find an “eatería.”

Anyway, I am contemplating the end of empires, in this case America’s empire in the Philippines.

That empire did not end in 1946. In some ways, U.S. power in the Philippines grew after independence. The postwar Parity Act, for example, removed most of the restrictions on private American investment in the Philippines that Washington had imposed during the colonial era. [yes, Washington did things like that, once upon a time. -- CY]

Better yet, for those of you who might think that Philippine protectionism was a blow to Dread Empire, it turns out that it was a highly resented U.S. trade mission in 1950 that foisted the entire edifice on a Philippine government that would have greatly preferred to retain free trade. In fact, the “Special Economic and Technical Mission in the Philippines” in the 1950s had more control over Philippine economic policy than the colonial regime had since 1907.

In a more traditional imperial manner, the Armed Forces of the Philippines not only defeated Communists at home, but were capable of sending 7,000 combat troops to Korea when Uncle Sam asked. Today, of course, American troops helped the ARP neutralize Abu Sayyaf and provided aid after the recent landslides, and everyone seems to have an “uncle in the U.S. Navy.”

But the empire is fading. America seems to be withdrawing from this country. The United States seems much further away than it does in El Salvador or Panama, and I don’t mean geographically.

You first see it in little signs, things that might not be obvious to most visitors, but which stand out to anyone who has spent time in Latin America, or at least Latin America north of the Panama Canal.

It starts with the use of the word “Asian.” Everything is Asian. The commercials brag about “Asian” products. The new malls tout themselves as Asian. Stranger still, whenever somebody points out something odd or interesting about the Philippines—even the most astoundingly Latin American things—they’ll smile and say something like, “Now you know what it’s like in an Asian country” or “That’s how we do things in Asia.”

Me, I always used to agree with President Fidel Ramos—the Philippines is a Latin American country in the wrong hemisphere. And when I first got here I was strongly reminded of San Salvador, only bigger. The architecture, in fact, is if anything even more American than anywhere south of the Río Bravo. But after a week I’m clear that the Philippines are not in the same orbit as Latin America.

Noel, I’ve found Filipinos often use “Asian” as an adjective to describe things they believe aren’t derived from the West. Since Filipino culture has the very American tendency to gloss over the actual details of history — unlike some nations, whose inhabitants hold onto history like grim death — this can lead to some very WTF moments. But General Ramos went to West Point, where they do not stint on history, and I think he was very aware of the possibility he might become the Philippines’ first caudillo... and if my read on his character is correct, he didn’t like that idea at all.

Take musical tastes. Them Filipinos, they do like the hip-hop, at least in a poorer part of Mandaluyong City where Lil’Kim (Lil’Kim? Yeah, Lil’Kim) blared from a boom box. And they play 50 Cent in the hotel gym. But that’s not representative. Filipino pop music is, to an American ear, an unlistenable slop of odd melodies and slow beats. Imagine a world where pop peaked with Electric Light Orchestra.

But the really popular foreign artists come from Korea and Japan, not Brooklyn or southern California. And it shows in the way people dress. There are no baggy pants, no chains, no track suits, nada. Nor is there stringy hair and ripped jeans. Or black nail polish and combat boots. None of the typical American pop subcultures can be found, in rich neighborhoods or poor.

The contrast with, say, Zacatecas City in Mexico, is striking. Carlos knows why I picked Zacatecas, but you can say the same about almost anywhere in Latin America. There, the rock is as good, the hip-hop is much better, and the Latin music is... uh... the same Latin music. Even the schlocky pop and the embarrassing (but addictive) Euro-techno-electro-dance-whatever is recognizable in Latin America—it may not be on MTV, but you’ve heard it in a car commercial. That’s not true in the Philippines. I mean, nobody here even knows what reggaetón is. That’s just un-American.

Ahem. I’ve seen the signs for reggaetón in NYC, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard any. Be that as it may, one of the Philippines’ most noticeable human exports used to be musicians for the supper clubs of Asia. Lounge acts and saxophonists, no kidding. The point of reference you want is not ELO, but the Captain and Tennille singing “Feelings” to a background of Kenny G. Haven’t you karaoke’d there yet? I'm shocked.

Considering that I’m here on business, I also can’t help noticing the strange business card ritual. You whip out the card, hold it without both hands so that the other fellow can read it, and hand it over with a little bow. If there’s a business card ritual in the other hemisphere, I bloody well never noticed it. But it’s the norm all over Asia.

As far as I know, this is recent in the Philippines, Asia’s last holdout regarding this custom, which I believe was modified from fin-de-siecle British practice.

It’s more difficult for me to talk randomly to people than it is in Latin America. [Noel speaks Spanish fluently, and if memory serves he can get along in Brazilian Portuguese. -- CY] The reason is that the general level of English is poor. Surprisingly poor. All the newspapers are in English. Most of the signs are also in English, even in the slums. Yet I’ve overheard only two conversations between Filipinos occurring in that language; one here at this resort, the other in a bookstore in the astoundingly upscale Rockwell area of Makati City. (The bookstore had the very Filipino name of “Fully Booked.” One thing hasn’t changed, and that’s the Filipino love of a bad pun.)

Nevertheless, 'more difficult' isn’t impossible. The fellow we hired to drive us around, Raul Relente, introduced me to his friends and family. And here’s what I found: they all have relatives in the States. Most would like to move there. But most would like to move anywhere that is neither poor nor predominately Muslim. The U.S. is just another country.

Raul is particularly angry about the perceived decline of English in the Philippines, believing that it’s robbing his children of opportunity. “Tagalog will not go anywhere! Tagalog will not disappear! They are not going to forget how to speak Tagalog!”

While Raul’s command of English is excellent, he’s mostly self-taught and his accent takes some getting used to. And while English is more than just another language here, its level in the Philippines may be deteriorating. I’ve heard this complaint over and over, from journalists to academics to politicians.

English could disappear. [and why not? it happened to Spanish. -- CY] People could forget how to speak English. In fact, I’ve seen it happen on national television, where the head of the National Bureau of Investigation started to stumble for words during an interview, and the announcers switched to Filipino without realizing it.

Of course, it’s hard to say what the real trend is. Marcos strongly discouraged English, and switched the schools over to Tagalog. Cory Aquino continued the policy. Nevertheless, the 2000 census reported that 64% of all Filipinos over age 5 can speak English, up from a reported 52% in 1980. What we don’t know, however, is the quality of English.

Responding to President Arroyo’s recent decision to re-emphasize English in the public schools, the Department of Education administered an English diagnostic test to about 60,000 teachers... and has since refused to release the results.

My take on the Filipino linguistic situation is that it’s not bilingualism, but diglossia. Two languages are used, but each in its own social context. (The literature on the subject sometimes talks about “high” or “prestige” versus “low” languages. I find this terminology carries its own toxic set of assumptions.)

In the Philippines, English is not primarily used as a lingua franca, but as the language in which one discusses, um, the matters one discusses in English. It’s the technical language par excellence. It’s the language of journalism and Scrabble and international gossip. You don’t use it to converse by itself, but as a specific mode to convey certain types of information.

You can see how this might not quite correspond to what a modern language educator would consider fluency.

Also, there’s a lot of code-switching in Filipino conversation. One language will be used to convey sincerity, and then there’ll be a sudden switch to another to discuss business, and possibly even another switch to a third for other subjects. Think of the French conversations in War and Peace. It’s like that.

In the past few years, policy has changed back towards encouraging English, but the idea is not to retain ties with the United States. It’s to compete better with other Asian nations. If the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (J-PEPA, “jay-pepa”) with Japan comes through—which I tend to doubt, but more on that later—Japanese might be more relevant. (My driver Raul has three sisters who are married to Japanese men, with ten Japanese-born and Japanese-speaking children between them. They don’t speak English; they’ve all moved to Japan.)

I met the Philippines’ chief negotiator with Japan, Thomas Aquino, on Friday. He had a lot of very interesting things to say, but two things stand out. The first was during a discussion of investor protection in J-PEPA. He mentioned that the Japanese are very different than the Americans … and more attuned to the Philippines. “The USTR came down hard on is on intellectual property; they wanted to see prosecutions. But we’re more Asian: the courts are used more to get a feel for the other guy’s negotiating position before going to an out-of-court settlement.”

(He’s half-right. The Japanese are trying their best to be attuned to Philippine sentiment, but the particular use of the courts that Mr. Aquino describes is not particularly Asian—it’s common to any country where personal relationships can’t cover everything and the courts still don’t work very well.)

He went on to say, “The feeling that people have about the U.S. is that it’s just there. The U.S. expects us to be an ally like Britain, but we’re just not that close.”

And that’s true. You know what the kicker is? No anti-Americanism. The place just suffered an attempted coup, a Senator is on lam, American troops are still roaming around the far countryside, and nobody, not in the papers, not on the TV, is ranting about Washington.

That Latin American style of anti-Americanism certainly has existed in the Philippines, but I think — and I could be entirely off-base here — that it’s now viewed as rather quaint, like tie-dyed love-beaded hippie protestors are in the U.S.

Of course, all this could really be nothing more than my Latin American background. I’ve spent most of my time either in the United States or in a region where it dominates everything, from pop culture to politics. When the informal American empire cracks in that hemisphere, you see it happening. It involves tear gas, oil prices, and really long speeches on television. But here, in the Philippines, the United States just seems to be slowly fading away, to be replaced by an inchoate “Asianness.” So maybe it’s all a case of inflated expectations that I didn’t even know that I had.

There are lots of ways the fading of U.S.-Philippine links could change. Call centers and business process outsourcing could tie the economy back across the Pacific. The country could do something to really piss America off and bring the empire charging right back. Or the U.S. could start to cultivate the ties it’s allowed to fade since the first EDSA revolution. It could happen.

After all, can a country that can produce this really ever break its ties with the homeland of Orange County, California?

Posted by coyu at March 28, 2006 12:31 AM