A LESS NOTICED ITEM THAT ADDS MEANING TO THE LAST SONA: the massacre at Balangiga, and the demand to return “what is ours”
You think President
Duterte is a ruthless killer of drug users, and a political dictator.
Well, we can continue to debate this, and I think that for some time
in the future, we will.
But one very good
thing for this President is that he is a Filipino, a nationalist who
unlike the Filipino of Bulosan and Ileto, is a remembering Filipino.
His SONA of 2017 included a request for the Americans to return the
bells of Balanginga, attended by a retelling of the American massacre
of Filipinos in Balangiga, Samar, an initiative that left me
momentarily stunned at the deep sentiments of this man who is proving to
be a maverick President.
When this President
remembers, he remembers “historically”, in the sense of a
sociological fact, not merely “personally”, much in the sense of
C. Wright Mills concept of social issue as against mere personal
trouble. It is in this light that I consider his remembrance of the
refusal of the American enbassy to issue him a visa; it becomes a
sociopolitical issue instead of a personal slight.
And he seems to be
saying that it is in this light that his decisions in international
relations should be considered. One hypothesis is that the United
States has not proven to be a reliable ally of the Philippines, and
that perhaps the historical intentions of this “alliance” between
the Untied States and the Philippines may have had inimical (deceitful?) or at
least onerous elements, so that the Philippines may now consider
alternatives such as China and Russia in the hope that more favorable
standing could be obtained.
If you think about
it, historical issues (in the sense of C. Wright Mills) are also
personal “issues” to begin with, which found resonance
collectively, so that from personal trouble they develop into sociological issues. This has been discussed by Mills very ably in his
book, the Sociological Imagination, so I needn’t belabor it.
In the transition of his personal problems into political issues; and, of his sentiments into arguments that can shed light and throw meaning to what others view as idiosyncratic and perhaps, to his opponents, “confusing” positions characterising his governance, President Duterte is either fundamentally appropriate. Or if you are Machiavellian, cunning and rightly timed,
In the transition of his personal problems into political issues; and, of his sentiments into arguments that can shed light and throw meaning to what others view as idiosyncratic and perhaps, to his opponents, “confusing” positions characterising his governance, President Duterte is either fundamentally appropriate. Or if you are Machiavellian, cunning and rightly timed,
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