Philippine Politics by Lynn T. White III

Author:Lynn T. White III [White, Lynn T. III]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781317574224
Google: 4mvfBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-12-17T05:02:09+00:00

7 Populist rituals and elite reformism

Studies of Philippine politics have often centered on patronism. That is justified because trapo patrons have in the past been powerful, first in their localities and then in Manila. But dominant modes of constructing politics can change because of policy reforms or altered contexts. What political procedures or reforms could make Philippine democracy help more of the people? That is a major question for the future.1

Many Filipino mass movements have been nostalgic, looking “backward toward revolution.”2 Their leaders have resented the depredations of foreigners—Spanish, Americans, Chinese—as having taken away an original paradise that they imagine to have existed previously. This idea is in the passion play that Philippine peasants acted to depict Eden prior to the sin of its human denizens. The garden is restored for believers by Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection. Independence (kalayaan) is a political paradise awaiting the faithful of the Katipunan. The pasyón, which was rehearsed during Holy Week by rural Filipinos on the basis of early nineteenth century texts, traces the suffering, death, and rising of Christ. Jesus was an anti-establishment leader of poor people at a time of ferment among both Hebrews and Romans. Reynaldo Ileto shows that peasant radicals in central Luzon saw similarities between that situation and their own. The pasyón

provides powerful images of transition from one state or era to another, e.g., darkness to light, despair to hope, misery to salvation, death to life, ignorance to knowledge, dishonor to purity, and so forth. During the Spanish and American colonial eras, these images nurtured an undercurrent of millennial beliefs which, in times of economic and political crisis, enabled the peasantry to take action under the leadership of individuals or groups promising deliverance from oppression.3

The pasyón describes the creation of brotherhoods (like the Katipunan) based on rejection of family ties for the sake of a cause and its charismatic leader. Jesus in the recited drama tells Mary that the two must part, despite his debt to repay her motherly care for him. He tells his disciples to leave their kin in order to serve God. Wealth or education count for nothing in this story. Devotion is all. Ever since the temporary successes of the Katipunan, hopes for popular uprising as a source of Philippine change have been periodic.

Ileto explains peasant enthusiasm for the Katipunan and other intended revolutionary mass movements as follows:

When behavioral scientists today speak of social values like utang na loób (lifelong debt to another for some favor bestowed), hiya (shame), SIR (smooth interpersonal relations) and pakikisama (mutual cooperation), they give the impression that these values make Philippine society naturally tend toward stasis and equilibrium…. Social change, when it unavoidably occurs, is attributed less to some inner dynamism of Philippine society than to external stresses and ideological influences.4

Ileto argues that Philippine traditions can make people into docile sheep—but also, under other conditions, into angry lions. Rural “masses” (tao) have “folk religious traditions,” but “cultural values such as utang na loób and hiya, which usually promote passivity and reconciliation rather than conflict have latent meanings that can be revolutionary.

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