Business and Culture in the Philippines: a Story Of
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BUSINESS AND CULTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES: A STORY OF... file:///F:/ajgsison/publications/journal/26/26.html BUSINESS AND CULTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES: A STORY OF GRADUAL PROGRESS by Alejo José G. Sison I. On the Genesis of the Philippine Nation and Filipino Identity Würfel (1988) establishes the following periodization of Philippine history: 1.) the pre-Spanish era, 2.) the Spanish era, 3.) the revolutionary period, 4.) the American period, 5.) the Japanese period and 6.) the post World War II period. I shall make use of this periodization in an attempt to organize the different value influences that have shaped economic life and business practice in the Philippines. The pre-Spanish era The first evidences of human habitation in the Islands may be found in the Tabon caves in Palawan. The artefacts recovered from the site date back to 22,000 B.C. The Banawe rice terraces in the Cordillera mountain range on the island of Luzon were built by the Ifugaos in the year 1 B.C., approximately. In 960 A.D. substantial amounts of Chinese goods began to flow into the Archipelago, and around 1100, the first Chinese colonies were founded along coastal areas. In the 1200s, Islam was introduced in the southern island of Mindanao. In the 1300s, a group of 10 "datus" or chieftains from Borneo settled with their kin in Panay Island, in the central region of the Visayas. When the first Europeans arrived, different communities of mixed Negroid, Malay, Chinese and Arab ethnicities were already inhabiting and flourishing in the Islands. Each of these groups had its own dialect as well as its distinct cultural and character traits: the sturdy and frugal Ilocanos, the industrious Tagalogs and the musically-gifted and entrepreneurial Cebuanos, to name a few. Nevertheless, one could already detect certain common characteristics among them: the spirit of "bayanihan" (from the Tagalog word "bayani" or "hero"), loosely translated as "camaraderie", and the presence of very closely-knit family structures. "Bayanihan" is supposed to have come from the Malays and is best exemplified in the organized effort of the menfolk who transfer their neighbor's nipa hut from one location to another by carrying it on their shoulders atop a grid of bamboo poles. "Bayanihan" has come to signify unremunerated community work for whoever may be in need among one's neighbors. These activities range from the building of rudimentary dikes to protect homesteads, orchards and cultivated fields from floods during the rainy season, to voluntary cash collections to help defray the burial expenses incurred upon a neighbor's death. On the other hand, the very close family relations have purportedly come from the Chinese, although in a somewhat watered-down form. Filipinos, as a rule, leave more maneuvering room for the development of an individual's identity. They do not force one to conform to the role assigned by the family. Just the same, kinship ties greatly affect one's economic, professional and political pursuits, often causing the success or failure of these. The Spanish era In 1521 Ferdinand Magellan, in search of a new route to the Spice Islands, serendipitously reached the archipelago and claimed it in the name of Philip II of Spain. Colonization, however, did not commence until 1571, when Miguel López de Legazpi took possession of Manila and made it the capital of the newly-christened "Philippines". Between 1600 and 1617 several attempts by the Dutch to conquer the Philippines occured, but these were all successfully repulsed by the Spanish armada. During a brief interlude from 1762-1764 the British occupied Manila. In 1834 Manila was opened to world trade and economic development became a concern. Until then, international commerce was practically limited to the yearly galleon trips between Manila and Acapulco in Mexico. There is a virtual consensus among historians that the main purpose of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines was religious, the evangelization of its peoples, rather than economic, the exploitation of its natural resources. By this standard, Spanish colonization is to be judged highly 1 de 21 27/01/2006 17:26 BUSINESS AND CULTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES: A STORY OF... file:///F:/ajgsison/publications/journal/26/26.html successful, because even today, close to 90% of the population is Roman Catholic. (Islam is the other major religion and its adherents could be found in southern Mindanao.) There were never more than a few thousand Spaniards living in the Philippines at any given moment. These Spanish nationals confined themselves to a handful of large towns or cities (Vigan in the north, Manila towards the center, and Naga in the south of Luzon, Cebu and Iloilo in the Visayas, Zamboanga in Mindanao) that served as centers of civil government and as diocesan sees. Understandably, the majority of the Spaniards were clerics or religious, soldiers and petty bureaucrats. Granted that the Spanish-sponsored state acknowledged its limited role as the necessary support structure for evangelization, native Filipino socioeconomic and cultural institutions were preserved, as long as these were not contrary to Christian beliefs and practices. As with other Spanish colonies, economic life in the Philippines then could be characterized as centrally planned, monopolistic and mercantilist. The revolutionary period There were several detonators in the Philippine Revolution against Spain: the execution of the 3 Filipino martyr-priests, Gómez, Burgos and Zamora (1872), the publishing of José Rizal's novel exposing the abuses committed by Spaniards in the Philippines, the "Noli Me Tangere" (1887), and the founding by Andrés Bonifacio of the "Katipunan" (1892), a secret society aiming for the separation of the Philippines from Spain. In April, 1898, the U.S. Congress declared war against Spain, and this paved the way for Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo, taking advantage of the political instability, to proclaim Philippine Independence on June 12 of that same year. The effectiveness or validity of such a proclamation however was short-lived, for in the Treaty of Paris signed in December, 1898, Spain reliquished its sovereignty over the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico to the United States. Originally, the term "Filipino" referred to an "insular", a person born to Spanish parents on Philippine soil. The natives were collectively known as "indios", or by some other name designating their regional provenance and cultural-linguistic group, such as "Ilocano", "Tagalog", "Cebuano", etc. In this regard, the revolution against Spain served as a forge of "Filipino" identity, an opportunity for the natives, at long last, to look beyond their narrow group interests and to commit themselves to the common future which, for the first time, they had the chance to determine for themselves. The American period Almost immediately after the provisions of the Treaty of Paris took effect, the Philippine-American War broke out. In 1901, the first President of the Philippine Republic, Emilio Aguinaldo, was captured and soon, Filipino armed resistance against the Americans ended. Decades of peace and relative progress then ensued, culminating in the inauguration of an American-sponsored Commonwealth Government with Manuel Quezon as President in 1935. It is said that Pres. McKinley decided in favor of the colonization of the Philippines moved by the lofty purpose of "christianizing" its inhabitants. Regardless of whether he truly ignored that Filipinos had already been Catholics for almost 350 years, the fact was that the Americans were reluctant colonial masters. Perhaps the best justification of the American colonization was the strengthening of the cause of education, particularly in democratic values and government and the widening of its scope. Among the first Americans to reach Philippine shores were school-teachers, the "Thomasites", so-called after the ship that ferried them from across the Pacific. Part of their legacy was the public school system, comprising the primary, secondary and tertiary levels, and the widespread use of English as the medium of instruction, and the language of commerce and of government. It was only later -even decades after Philippine independence from American rule- that the country's potential as a source of raw materials and as a market for finished consumer and industrial products were realized. The Philippines likewise generated interest as an important geo-political and ideological outpost during the Korean War, the Vietnam War and all throughout the Cold War. The country hosted the largest military bases outside of U.S. territory, such as Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Field, among others. After spending 350 years in a "convent" (a figure of the Spanish colonization), the Philippines began its almost 50-year stay in "Hollywood" (a reference to the American colonization). The Japanese period 2 de 21 27/01/2006 17:26 BUSINESS AND CULTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES: A STORY OF... file:///F:/ajgsison/publications/journal/26/26.html .owards the end of 1941 Japanese bombers attacked the Philippines. Organized resistance ended with the Fall of Bataan and Corregidor in April, 1942. A Japanese-sponsored Philippine Republic was established under Pres. José P. Laurel in 1943. In October, 1944, Gen. Douglas MacArthur landed in Leyte Island, making good his promise to return. The liberation of the Philippines from the Japanese was completed in 1945. The Japanese occupation of the Philippines and its forced inclusion in the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere", a contrivance of Japanese imperialism, served nonetheless to remind Filipinos of their inescapable Asian identity. Filipinos were generally loyal to the Americans and were thus perceived by the Japanese to be traitors to the Asian cause. For such misplaced loyalty, Filipinos were made to pay dearly. This negative experience under Japanese domination exacerbated the Filipino's disdain for things local or Asian, and reinforced his preference for things imported from the West, giving way to the so-called "colonial mentality".