On Rizal, Solidarity, and Nationalism

What kind of nationalism does the Philippines need for it to truly liberate itself?

Like any logical and methodical physician, one has to make the proper diagnosis before one would prescribe a remedy one deems fit. Rizal made sure he was well-equipped to make an apt diagnosis of the conditions of his countrymen under the rule of the Spanish authorities. He travelled and studied on foreign lands to know what lies beyond the seas of our archipelago. Rizal was very much curious if dignity and respect was also scarce in the other parts of the world as it is in the Philippines. The truth became more apparent to him that men from foreign lands enjoyed their inalienable rights as well as their liberties elsewhere. It is in his education and travels that did he fully see the growing social cancer in his country. Like any true son of the country, Rizal was too stubborn to turn a blind eye to the injustice being committed to his countrymen. Like any true Filipino physician, he had a responsibility to expose his society’s social cancer and prescribe the proper treatment. He committed his life’s efforts in addressing the cure for the social dilemma that besets Philippine society.

Little has changed from the Philippines that Rizal knew to that of the present. It is still located at a strategically location that connects the East with the West. Its island still attracts different colonizers into its shores. Philippine society is still as personalistic and diffused as before. The idea of a collective society still eludes us. The colonial mentality is still as persistent as it was during a century ago. Filipinos still cannot trust their being Filipinos and, in the same manner, everything foreign is still thought to be superior that any of its local counterpart. What mostly changed are the country’s demographics, economy, and governance. A century after our national independence, the population has grown to a hundred million and is still in a high-gear growth. Our national economy mainly thrives through the export man-power services and extractive industries. History books always gloss over the fact that Marcos was the one to develop the national bourgeoisie class that he hoped would compete head-on against the blue-eyed blonde capitalists in our foreign-dominated economy during that time. (03/17/2011)