Perhaps because of our four hundred years of servitude, the traits that will take us time to outgrow

are colonial-mindedness and an indiscriminate imitativeness of whatever we see in our former master.
We took after the Spaniards in many of their predilections, often to excess---witness Dona Victorina de
Espadana in Rizal’s Noli ----and we behave in the same fashion under American influence. This
undiscerning imitativeness is especially notorious in our youths, notably in what they acquire from
American movies. You can hardly take ten steps in any of our streets without running into a swaggering,
brown would-be James Dean. And if you come across any number of our female teenagers, it is certain
that 90 percent of them are crazy over Elvis Presley.

We are disturbed and embarrassed when we are charged with being pro-Western, particularly in our
manners and habits that are patently American or European.

But we also are disturbed and humiliated if criticized for apparently returning blindly to and reviving,
our faded Oriental traditions as rooted in our ancient past; in our embarrassment we seem to be the
first to laugh at ourselves.

We apologize for our Western customs because we know we are Orientals. But we are ashamed also
of what characterized us as Orientals, fearing that such traits are old-fashioned and backward.

I feel that we should not pretend to be Occidentals when everybody knows are Orientals, On the
other hand, it is a shame to regard older and more backward Eastern ways as genuinely Filipino, Filipino
no matter how much we love our own, we cannot go back to the year 1300.

The education of our people for more than half a century has been based on alien standards with
complete disregard for our idiosyncrasies habits. Cultural channels have been crowded with American
best-sellers, American movies, American music, and American comics. The simple fact that fourteen
years of our independence, English is still our medium of instruction and our national language has still
to struggle to keep its humble place in our educational system is the best evidence that our minds are
yet those bondsmen.

The indiscriminate assimilation of the grossest aspects of foreign culture, the aimless Americanization
of our ways, customs, and attitudes; the disregard, bordering on contempt, for all things native---all
these attest to the near fulfillment of Rizal’s melancholy forebodings and premonitions. “Their spirit
was broken and they submitted,” said Rizal of the Filipinos of the Filipinos under Spain. I may paraphrase
this sentence in the light of current events: “Their understanding was clouded and they acquiesced.”

Because our neglect and perhaps our disregard for Rizal’s teaching, it seems that we are wittingly
offering ourselves to total foreign domination. Already we are allowing our minds, our beliefs, and our
economic life to be enslaved; we have even allowed our tongue to enslaved. Because of this tendency of
ours, the distinguishing traits of our race will gradually disappears, as will the native customs
bequeathed us by our ancestors, and the natural resources that Devine Providence destined for the
enjoyment of our race. Was it not one of Rizal most valuable admonitions that we should not behave as
if we were stranger in our land? If we analyze our present situation, will shall find it the very opposite of
what the hero had advised! We are indeed like strangers in our own country---in our appearance, our
customs, our economic life, and our language---even many of our shortcomings appear to have been
imported.

We should cherish, bless, safeguard, and develop all that is our own. Let us comport ourselves like true
Filipinos as Rizal wanted us to be and take pride in it, just as Rizal did while travelling and residing in
foreign countries. When all of us have become true Filipinos by following the example and teachings
that are Rizal precious legacy to our people…only then shall we be redeemed from this situations in
which we seem to be strangers in our country. Let us strive to put our country in its proper place
because the security and dignity of its citizens.

Our patriotic duty as citizens of this Republic is clear and inescapable. Politically, we must reassert of our
national rights, drawing inspiration from the nationalist spirit that animated our heroes of 1896,
Economically we must unshackle ourselves from the chains of a colonial economic system which can
bring us nothing but poverty and economic stagnation. For both task we need only the capacity to make
a thorough reappraisal of the economic realities of the nation, the courage to decisively implement the
resulting program of action, and a dogged determination to reach near our chosen goal no matter what
the cost.

I have always had faith in our people. A race that can boast of the intelligence of a Rizal and a Mabini,
the courage of a Bonifacio, the abnegation of a Marcelo H. del Pilar and the devotion and spirit of
sacrifice so magnificently displayed by the whole nation in its three epic struggles for freedom and
independence is a race that can, with the right leadership, perform such feats of nation building as will
command the respect and admiration of the entire world.

I trust that a generation from now, the Filipino people may say stand with legitimate pride before the
world and before history as a paragon of democracy and that it may be said of us that in adversity we
were united and undismayed; in prosperity magnanimous and prudent; against dictators, whether
fascistic or communistic or just opportunistic, relentless and uncompromising; against demagogues,
aloof and contemptuous; our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” and practicing a firm but
restrained nationalism illuminated buy the thought that this world is one world and we are one with
humankind.