[This paper was presented to Filipino Americans in 2006 at the Catholic University of

America. I did not change the basic data in this paper as it represented my ideas during
the time and up to now.]

THE PHILIPPINES: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE1

Rolando M. Gripaldo, Ph.D.

This paper was delivered at Pryzbyla University Center, Catholic University of

America, 2006. It discusses the bleaks and fortunes of the past as it discusses the present
problems and the prospects of the future.

INTRODUCTION

I became interested in your organization when I saw at the window of the

bookstore of the Edward J. Pryzbyla University Center the Filipino flag with the caption
“Filipino Heritage Month.” I had a talk with your president, Ms. Emily Astorga, about the
Philippines and this discussion meeting today was arranged. Since all of you are Filipino
Americans, I think it proper to say something about the past, the present, and the future
prospects of your country of origin.
I came to the Catholic University of America as a Visiting Research Professor.2
There were officially twelve of us from ten different countries: Bulgaria, China,
Colombia, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Vietnam. There
were also American scholars who presented papers during the seminar. Since the theme
of the two-month seminar is “History and cultural identity,” I decided to read a paper on
the Philippine case. Our readings for discussion reports are on the Philosophy of History,
which unfolds a variety of theories on issues as to the origin or genealogy of a country’s
history, on the clash of civilizations, on the conflicts between the elite and the subalterns,
on the end of history, and so on.

THE PHILIPPINE PAST

The Filipinos are unfortunate in one sense and fortunate in another sense. They
cannot change the past but they can use it (or aspects of it) in molding the present and in
making a brighter future. Accepting the past as it is is the first step of recognizing that
there are lessons therefrom that can be learned and can be of use to the future.

Unfortunate Past

As a people, the Filipinos had its own developing civilization. They had
metallurgy, a system of writing, a form of government, urbanization, and commerce and
trade. Left alone, the civilization that may have developed in the archipelago could be
Islamic since Sulu and Mindanao were sultanates and Manila was recently converted to
Islam when Miguel Lopez de Legazpi conquered it. Spanish colonization virtually
uprooted the predominantly pagan native culture and replaced it gradually with a Western

1
Catholic culture. Modernization in terms of Westernization set in except in Muslim
Southern Mindanao and other tribal villages which modernization had slightly touched.
The replacement in itself is good but colonization has deleterious effects: it destroyed the
system of writing, oppressed the natives, instituted forced labor and economic
exploitation, encouraged illiteracy, and implanted the inferiority attitude on the natives
(the friars in general inculcated in Filipino minds the view that Filipinos were an inferior
race and their produce was likewise inferior), among others. Reactions by the natives to
these colonization effects took the forms of docility, inferiority complex, indolence,
religious fanaticism, lacking confidence in oneself, self-pity, and so on. These largely
make up what is known as the Filipino colonial mentality.
American colonization has betrayed the ideals of Filipino nationalism brought
about by the success of the Philippine Revolution against Spain and the declaration of
Philippine Independence on 12 June 1898. Consistent with the rejection of the political
position of converting the Philippines as a state of the United States, the Filipino political
leaders feared the entry of American big manufacturing industries as these might serve
as a strong political lobby against (hence a hindrance to) the Filipino aspiration for
Philippine independence. Agricultural industries were encouraged instead. The bickering
among the Filipino political elite was limited to who should lead the colonial
commonwealth and the role of the opposition was to criticize the party in power in order
to grab power. There were no distinct ideological alternative programs of government
among the political parties. Manuel L. Quezon bewailed this unhealthy political drift of
the nation and hypothetically proposed a partyless democracy if other political parties
could not produce political platforms distinct and ideologically separate from the party in
power. This drift unfortunately has continued to the present time.
In short, the overall result of colonization is a “damaged culture,” or what James
Fallows describes as a lack of nationalism without much national pride among the
Filipinos. Moreover, they generally treat what is public in low esteem. This lack of
nationalism reflects a psychological interiority that should be surmounted, namely, the
interiority of having a crab mentality. Crabs in a basket pull down those ahead of them
while those ahead push down those below. Consequently, there is slow progress for all of
them to get out from the basket.
Unless the Filipinos recognize this damaged aspect of their culture, then they
cannot repair it. They need to be proud of themselves and of their nation; regard what is
public in high esteem so that it can be made clean, decent, and beautiful; and develop the
attitude of nationalism so that they can present themselves with a high level of
scholarship, understanding, decorum, or deportment. Respect from others, especially the
foreigners, is earned and that can be had when a Filipino performs at a higher level of
expectations than the usual.

Fortunate Past

Not everything that happened in the past was bad. Despite being colonized by the
Americans, they gave the Filipinos what Spain did not give them in spite of their clamor
for reforms: representation to the US Congress, civil liberties, democratization of
education, the English language, and capitalism. The Filipinos may have disagreements
as to the relative values of these items, but judging from the current state of Philippine

2
affairs, it appears that these have more advantages than when they are nonexistent. How
the Filipinos make use of these items to their own full advantage and betterment is their
own concern. Right now, because of education and the English language, there are more
Filipinos in foreign lands than any other nationality percentagewise. There are an
estimated 35 million Chinese overseas (2.6% of total population), 22 million of Indians
overseas (1.5 % of total population), and 12 million Filipinos overseas (13.95% of total
population). Projectively, if the Philippines has the population of India or China, then
there will be about 100.3 million or 96 million overseas Filipinos, respectively.3

THE PRESENT AND ITS PROBLEMS

The Filipinos should have capitalized on their strength but their colonial
consciousness, inferiority complex, and crab mentality have clouded their idea to create a
grand vision for the nation. Their political leaders appear directionless. Some of them
thought of making the nation a first world country (de Venecia 2006) but the projects that
would make it so have been blocked and resisted. Filipino physicists, for example, need a
nuclear power plant for first-hand experience but the opposition resisted the Bataan
nuclear power plant, for they could not trust the Filipinos themselves in the safety and
disposal of its waste while South Korea has twenty existing nuclear power plants and
eight are under construction or on order until 2016 while two are to be decommissioned.
The South Koreans believe in themselves and their capacity to set the course of their
future. Indonesia is planning to have four nuclear power plants to be commissioned in
2016 (see “Nuclear Power in Korea,” 2006).
The Philippine economy needs to industrialize (and later superindustrialize) but
Filipinos opted for a countryside development, which is basically agricultural, and even
enshrined this in the 1987 Philippine Constitution as if interventionist development is
impossible. While it is true that in the natural course of historical development
agricultural development preceded industrial development, which was beyond human
control (humans had no power to intervene at all), at least in the 1980s and onwards, we
can now intervene in the process of economic development. What was a vertical
economic development of which humans had no control can now—by human
intervention—be developed horizontally. It is now within human control to develop
simultaneously the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors of the national economy.
Some economic provisions of the 1987 Charter are a hindrance to interventionist
economic development, as many Filipino political leaders now acknowledged (see Aben
2006a and 2006b). This hindrance is the main reason why Thailand has overtaken the
Philippines economically and why Vietnam is fast catching up with the Philippines. This
is also the reason why the Philippines lacks jobs, why its poverty incidence is high, and
why it cannot pay her professionals well, at least, in comparison with South Korean
professionals. The Filipino nation is tagged unflatteringly as “hewers of wood and water”
and as a “nation of nannies” (see “Ms. Precious Lara Quigaman New International…,”
2005).
The Philippines needs to curb its penchant for corruption—I mean big time
corruption. It is well known that the cost of its national projects are bloated. It is even
argued that the cost of a project for some of them can finance two actual projects. It is

3
also known that even local projects are full of corruption. The Philippines in Southeast
Asia ranks third in corruption, next only to Cambodia and Indonesia. In a very recent
survey, the Philippines still ranked third after Burma and Indonesia. Certainly, these
corrupt practices are a direct consequence of the lack of nationalism.

THE FUTURE AND PHILIPPINE PROSPECTS

There are many things that the Filipinos should do to put their house in order.
First, there is a need to think in terms of a grand vision for the Philippines. Do the
Filipinos really want their country to become a first world country in the future? Second,
do they want it to be respected by other foreign countries not only economically and
culturally but also intellectually? Third, do they want it to be politically stable with
ideologically oriented political parties? Fourth, do they want to honestly minimize the
unemployment and underemployment problem? And last, do they want their workers—
public and private—to be paid wages comparable with those of Second or even First
World countries in the future? If they want, what then should be done?
I will give my own version of what ought to be done and anyone can agree or
disagree with me.

On the Grand Vision

Economic component. It will be hypocritical for a Filipino not to think of his

country in terms of transforming it into a First World country. And this grand vision
necessitates for the Filipinos to put their acts together. Since the Philippines right now is
an agricultural country with some third wave manufacturing components, it is therefore
necessary to truly “pole vault” into a third wave economic development by, firstly,
amending the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution and, secondly, by
simultaneously developing the three sectors of the national economy. This has long been
overdue, but better late than never.
The primary sector of the national economy consists of agriculture, forestry,
fisheries, and mining. These are the sources of raw materials. I suggest that the Filipinos
should maximize the development of these sources by creating four independent
departments. These are the backbone, the foundation, of the national economy and should
therefore be treated equally. How to source out raw materials from both local and foreign
origins are the main function of these departments.
The Department of Agriculture should plot out the entire nation to identify the
sources of sugar plantations, dairy farms, orchards, palm oil, abaca, varied livestock
specializations, etc. It must help independent farmers, farm cooperatives, and agricultural
corporations to develop extensively their areas. It must help provide a network of
irrigation systems, of farm-to-market roads, and of other necessary components of sound
agricultural development. Agriculture is a renewable source of raw materials.
The Department of Forestry will take charge of seeing to it that logging
concessionaires honestly do their reforestation programs. It must ensure not only
sustainable source of logs and timber in an all-year round capacity for local and export
requirements, but also supervise the protection of the forest resources, including the

4
wildlife, of the nation from illegal loggers and poachers. It is necessary to train forest
rangers capable of enforcing forestry laws.
We are an archipelago and the main functions of the Department of Fisheries are
to protect our fishing grounds, to train fishery rangers who would roam around our
fishing corridors in armed boats to supplement our navy and our coast guard, and to
supervise and help ensure that our fishponds are environment friendly and can supply the
local demand and even produce for exports.
The most crucial among these sources is mining since, coupled with appropriate
technologies (direct foreign investments, joint ventures, and the like), the Philippines can
fabricate factories, and light and heavy industries will churn out cars, electronics,
computers, tractors, planes, machineries, etc. Where the Filipinos lack the required
minerals for superindustrialization, these must be imported.
As components of a grand vision, these can be pursued through a yearly or
gradual—phase by phase—implementation as, for example, the creation of the
Department of Fisheries this year, the Department of Forestry next year, or some such
arrangement if it cannot be implemented simultaneously.
All these sources must be integrated into the secondary sector of the national
economy—the manufacturing or processing areas. It is here that Filipino leaders should
work out a plan for superindustrialization (Third Wave). Here all processing and
manufacturing industries will be highly computerized, biotechnology should be
vigorously pursued, while ocean science, ocean engineering, space science, and space
engineering should be prepared for and implemented at the proper time. The Department
of Industries and (International) Trade must actively promote Filipino industries and their
products, must seek a balanced development of all manufacturing sections from
toothpaste, shoes, garments to heavy industrial products, so as not to leave out some
sections unattended or so as to avoid cutthroat competition within an overcrowded
section that would lead to the ruination of others in that section.
The tertiary or services sector of the national economy must be properly mapped
out. This sector includes banking and finance to provide funds for the primary and
secondary sectors, and even for the financial needs of the tertiary sector; commercial and
trade activities for the promotion, buying, and selling of products; the educational
services for the education and training of the workforce of all types; and so on.
It is important that government planners should see to it that cross purposes are
checked and avoided. There are complaints by farmers, for example, that by the time they
would harvest their agricultural produce, commercial firms import the same products and
dump them on the market thereby fomenting farmer bankruptcies or radical lowering of
farmer profit margins.4 Price stabilization must be observed as much as possible and
unfair market intervention must be penalized. There are also complaints about exorbitant
fertilizer prices.

Intellectual Component. I am in favor of educational futurism. This philosophy

simply says that if you have a grand vision in mind, which is well thought out in the
sense that it is achievable in light of present technological and intellectual components,
then curricular offerings and academic professional organizations must be attuned to this
vision. There is no academic discipline that does not have any philosophical foundations
—be it in the social sciences, the natural sciences, or the humanities—precisely because

5
these foundations constitute the intellectual theoretical component of the respective
disciplines.
I am also in favor of the Commission of Higher Education (CHED) requiring all
teachers of every academic discipline to form a national professional organization or,
where there is an existing one, to join it, and nobody would be allowed to teach in a
preschool, elementary, high school, college, or university without being a member of a
national organization of his or her expertise. If there are many such organizations in one
discipline, they must either merge or the other(s) be affiliated to the oldest one or to the
more visibly active one, nationally speaking. Moreover, these national academic
organizations (societies or associations) must be able—expressly and in practical terms—
to link its objectives to nation-building. These organizations must basically be apolitical
in the sense that they are prohibited to affiliate with any political party, but where it is
necessary, they must be able to lobby for congressional measures that will redound not
only to their own respective benefits but also to the welfare of their country.
The important thing here is that Filipino intellectuals in any discipline should be
able to actively participate in international conferences and the whole association should
know about it. His or her paper or paper abstract should be disseminated in the Internet or
in the association newsletter. This will hopefully minimize or avoid the situation where a
Filipino intellectual becomes known abroad but his or her colleagues in the discipline
does not even know about it, or if he or she knows about it, it is through the writings of
foreigners. The Filipinos have a very sad situation where many of them do not read the
works of their colleagues in the discipline (regardless as to whether they agree with them
or not at all).

Political Component. After a century of political training and practice, the

Philippine political situation has remained politically immature. It is high time now that
political parties should develop distinct programs of government which is either distinctly
pro-labor (which could be socialistic in orientation), or pro-rich (which could emphasize
Reaganomics), or pro-economic superindustrialization, or whatever. The significant thing
is that voters can make an intelligent choice between two or more parties, and the mass or
new media can serve as a catalytic factor between the two or more parties. Quezon’s
proposal of creating a partyless democracy should be a thing of the past. As of now, such
a proposal has remained relevant. Voters choose not on programs of government but on
popular personalities, many of whom cannot deliver the goods, so to speak, but only the
words (i.e., lip service).

Cultural Component. Underneath a cultural renaissance ought to be a nationalistic

spirit. By such a spirit I do no mean the extreme case similar to Hitler’s Nazism, which is
a purist type, but a broad type that is capable of incorporating aspects of foreign culture
that will strengthen or enrich the native type of culture. It is important to have a
philosophical justification for such an incorporation. As of now, there seems to be a
directionless, open-sesame type of cultural absorption that defies any legitimate
explanation or justification at all. All cultural development must be streamlined as to find
a niche in the strengthening of the Filipino nationalistic spirit. As the common expression
goes, internationalism should be founded on a strong nationalism because an

6
internationalism without nationalism is nothing more that colonial consciousness. A
nationalist counter-consciousness is therefore necessary.

Near Future

A fulfillment of a grand vision takes a long time. Institutions to be built along that
line of vision will require some temporal distance. Not everything in the grand vision can
immediately be implemented, and even if everything can, the fruits for many of them will
take some time to mature. Intermediate activities should be encouraged from the
apolitical nongovernmental organizations or civil societies. A civil society is a communal
society that lies between the family and the state (including local governments) whose
prime function is to materialize subsidiarity through its unity. Subsidiarity is working
together by civil society members to realize their common good or the national welfare
with or without the help of the government. Aside from academic organizations linking
themselves to nation building (and even student organizations for that matter) and trying
to fulfill their common welfare through national and international conferences and
publications, other civil societies like Gawad Kalinga, whose major project is eradication
of Philippine slums, should be encouraged and supported. It is, however, important that
civil societies must spell out in its constitution and bylaws a linkage to nation building so
as to minimize possible conflicts with purposes of other civil societies. Filipinos should
avoid as much as possible cross purposes that will cancel out national gains or benefits
expected from such societies by finding means by which possible conflicts can be
amicably settled. Nongovernmental organizations whose hidden agenda are political, that
is, whose agenda redounds only to their own selfish interests, and cannot justify its
existence by showing how such organizations can be valuable to nation building should
be discouraged. If they are allowed to exist, it would be desirable if they can somehow
link their organizations one way or the other to building the nation.

CONCLUSION

It is with great pleasure to end this talk with the hope that by knowing the
Philippine colonial past—even in a nutshell—you will understand the causes of the
present Filipino problems, and their possible solutions in the near and distant future. As
Filipino Americans of a younger generation, you can probably think of ways and means
by which you can extend some assistance to your country of origin, even if at least it
begins at present with just moral sympathy.

NOTES

1. This paper was presented before the Filipino Organization of Catholic

University Students (FOCUS), Edward J. Pryzbyla University Center, Catholic
University of America, 17 November 2006.
2. My Catholic University ID has “Visiting Scholar,” but my certificate of
participation has “Visiting Research Professor.” I prefer to use the latter.
3. China’s 2006 estimated population is 1.34 billion, India’s is 1.4 billion, while
the Philippines’ is 86 million (my estimate in 2006). See “China’s population” (n.d.);

7
“Our India” (n.d.); and “Philippine population to rise to 84.2 mln by 2005” (2001) from
the Internet.
4. I heard about these farmers’ complaints in a Philippine television program in
2003.

REFERENCES

Aben, Elena L. 2006a. TUCP criticizes Charter as blocking industrialization. Manila

Bulletin, 7 September.
__________. 2006b. RP mayors cite best way to attract foreign investors. Manila
Bulletin, 14 September.
China’s population. N.d. Available from http://afe.easia.Columbia.edu/china/geog/
population.htm. Accessed: 27 December 2006.
de Venecia Jr., Jose. 2006. Cha-cha last chance to end deadlock. Bulletin Today, 27
August.
Ms. Precious Lara Quigaman, the new International, pride of Laguna—Gov. Lazaro.
2005. Available from http://www.laguna.gov.ph/news/2005/October05/ms_
international.htm. Accessed: 10 October 2006.
Nuclear power in Korea. 2006. Available from http://www.world-
nuclear.org/info/inf81.htm. Accessed: 14 October 2006 and later verified on 4 January
2007.
Our India. N.d. Available from http://www.agapendia.com/india_population.htm.
Accessed: 21 October 2006 and later verified on 27 December 2006.
Philippine population to rise to 84.2 mln by 2005. 2001. People’s Daily, 8 May.
Available from http://english.peoplesdaily.comen/english/200105/08/
eng20010508_69396.html. Accessed:10 September 2006 and later verified on 26
December 2006.