Focus on the Global South-Philippines

Activity Updates

September 2010 - Launch of the maiden issue of the Focus on the Global South Policy Review

September 19 - In Malaysia will be held the forum called "Regional Strategy Meeting on Emerging Social and Cultural Concerns in ASEAN: Climate Change, South East Asian Peoples’ Right to Information, Labor Migration and Domestic Work and Platforms for Civil Society Engagement with the ASEAN." Focus Philippines will make a presentation on "Building a Case for an ASEAN Protocol on Freedom of Information"

September 23 - 26 - Asean People's Forum in Hanoi, Vietnam. Fore more information, please send inquiries to the following: <apfhanoi-pc@aseanpeoplesforum.net>, <apfhanoi-ws@aseanpeoplesforum.net>. Ms Dorothy Guerrero, who is in the Bangkok office of Focus, seats in the Program Committee.

September 27 - October 1 - Freedom of Information Advocacy Week

September 23 - FOI Forum

September 27 - R2KRN will visit the Senate to renew the FOI campaign

September 28 - R2KRN will meet with Representatives of the Lower House

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Good Nationalism vs Bad Nationalism

By Herbert Docena*

As I joined the rest of the country watch the Pacquiao-de la Hoya match yesterday, one question struck me for its seeming silliness: How was it that practically every Filipino automatically – and so passionately – cheered for Pacquiao and not his opponent? Asking this seems foolish because the answer seems obvious: he is “one of us” – meaning, he happened to have been accidentally born like the rest of us in the same patch of islands that as a result of events not of our making became the Philippines (never mind for the moment that he’s pro-GMA unlike most of us). This logic does seem to apply, however, to local contests where we are not likely to automatically root for one contestant just because he was born on our side of the barangay. And yet, when it’s in ‘Vegas, for a Filipino to not root for a Pacquiao remains unthinkable – almost treasonous.

Perhaps no single event in recent memory proves as clearly that nationalism endures. Few things, it seems, can draw it out more easily than a fight.

But it’s a double-edged sword.

Nationalism can be a good thing, as easily demonstrated by how Filipinos, fired by its ideals, succeeded in kicking out the Spanish, the Japanese, and the Americans. So necessary was nationalism that Rizal and his generation saw the need to invent it to unite inhabitants of various islands who did not until then think of themselves as belonging to one “nation”. As historians have correctly pointed out, the concept “Filipino” – like so many other national identities worldwide – has been a modern man-made invention constructed for practical purposes.

In that, across the globe, colonized peoples rose against their colonial masters inspired by a collective desire to be free, nationalism has been a force for good. To the extent that today, struggles against modern forms of colonialism still draws from its well, nationalism remains a potent force for emancipation. By dispelling the myth that some people are intrinsically superior; by making those who are presumed inferior to question their perpetual subordination; by compelling us to look to those who are part of our imagined community as equals and therefore deserving of solidarity and respect; by convincing us that together as a collective we can achieve goals we can’t otherwise achieve on our own; for all these reasons good nationalism can bring out the best in us.

But, fueled with racism and chauvinism, it can also be instrumentalized to bring out the worst.

European colonists, convinced that they brought god’s light with them to the New World, decimated an uncounted number of Indians. The Nazis, believing themselves to be the superior race, exterminated over six million Jews. Turkish nationalists annihilated over a million Armenians. Zionists, believing themselves to be god’s own people, have killed thousands who happen to be living in land they claim to have received from god. Islamist extremists, feeding on resentment bred under occupation, have taken their vengeance on “infidels.” The list goes on. Closer to home, Indonesian nationalism justified the taking of West Papua and Timor. Thai nationalists have made sure that Patani Malays will have no country of their own.

Much closer to home, nationalism has been mobilized to justify the continuing colonization of the Moro people and the indigenous peoples in Mindanao. It has been manipulated by those seeking an ideological cover with which to wrap their vested interests in the mantle of the “nation,” giving those that they entice to kill for them a flag with which to cover their coffins.

This kind of nationalism has been the first refuge of politicians eager to stoke prejudice in exchange for votes; of those threatened with losing a portion of their vast fiefdoms; of those whose careers depend on defending the status quo; of those like Teodoro Locsin whose justification for keeping Moros colonized reminds us of the Spaniards’ – that we indios are barbarians and incapable of self-government; and those, even in the left, who will do anything just to frustrate the “principal enemies” even if it means turning their back on those whose freedom they claim to advance. Add to these those who, while recognizing the historical injustice committed against Moros, nevertheless insist on giving them no other recourse but to be part of the “Filipino family” – /who wants to be part of a family in which your brothers seek to kill you and throw you out of your own house?/

Bad nationalism is of course not the preserve of the dominant power: victims too – as the case of Zionists or, for that matter, of Filipinos show – can easily turn into aggressors. Among Moros, opportunistic nationalism is also the refuge of those Moro elites who are just eager to take over the lands grabbed by Filipino landlords so as to replace them in oppressing the Moro masses. The god these elites may claim to be praying to may be of a different name; but the servants that they will coerce into kneeling before them will be the same people. Distorting Aung San Suu Kyi, they will use the freedom they seek to deprive others of theirs.

In that nationalism forces us to see those who do not belong to our “nation” – or who do not wish to belong despite us wanting them to – as “others”; in that it imbues in those who do belong a supposed essence that marks them from and often makes them feel superior to those who don’t; in that it becomes a justification for depriving those who don’t belong of what we claim for ourselves – their own nation and their own freedom; in that it denies our common humanity and replaces solidarity with hatred; for all these reasons, nationalism can be a very bad thing.

By erecting false distinctions, nationalism blinds us to the real boundaries that divide people: Who do poor landless Christian Filipino migrants in Mindanao have more in common with – poor landless Moros like them or the Christian Filipino landlords like the Pinols and Lobregats? With whom do the rich landed Moros have more affinity – their fellow Moros or their fellow landlords? And yet, it is the landless Filipinos who are incited to kill their fellow landless Moros, all so that the Pinols and Lobregats can keep their lands. And it has often been the rich landed Moros who have been the first to sell out in the fight for freedom.

Nationalism’s ability to mask internal oppression within a nation has been so potent that even some who profess internationalism tend to see local elites as nothing more than dummies of those they see as the principal enemies – the “foreign” imperialists – rather than autonomous, even if dependent, agents in their own right. The imperialists’ being foreign adds to their deviousness; the Filipinos’ being “one of us” somehow diminishes their responsibility and makes them acceptable for tactical alliances.

In the face of the formidable gathering of destructive and opportunistic nationalisms from both sides, we need to recover the liberating kind of nationalism that seeks to free instead of oppress, that seeks equality instead of hierarchy, that seeks solidarity instead of war. This kind of nationalism recognizes that freedom should be universal; that so-called national differences are transcended by our common humanity; that boundaries are imaginary but power relations are real. And if good nationalism should only be a defensive reaction in the face of domination, then its ultimate aim is to make itself unnecessary. A world without colonialism is a world with no need for nationalism.

Just as the as the anti-colonial revolutionaries took on the full might of empires, Pacquiao proved yet again that it is possible to overcome the odds, to prevail over those who are much bigger than us. That he is “one of us” is not a cause for automatic allegiance, only added proof that we who have been made to feel small are no less capable.#

* Remarks at the Waging Peace in the Philippines Conference 2008, Ateneo de Manila University, December 8, 2008.

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