Today marks the 123rd celebration of Philippine Independence from their first colonizers. It was this time in distant history that Filipinos claimed their freedom from abuse, shackles, and discrimination. The battle, however, continues. Not from the physical grip of foreign presence, but the effects that endured through the generations that follow.
I had become truly engaged with the Philippine culture when I seemed to focus greatly on it during my University studies. No matter how much I stepped away from studying my own, I keep getting drawn into it. Identity has always been a struggle of mine, and being Filipino was something I was greatly ashamed of growing up. Why was I not white? Why was I not born American? Why was I not given the opportunities Americans have? More why’s than I am’s.
It wasn’t until lately that I was able to understand the complex layers of Filipino identity. Heck, I still do not understand most of it at all. I spent my entire childhood through to my 18th in the Philippines. That’s more than half of my life cultivating a Filipino identity. Yet most of those time I spent trying to shed it out: I spoke English, I only watched American movies, I listened to American songs. Then my entire 20s, when life was all about getting to know one self and choosing one’s identity often happens, was spent in New Zealand. I questioned then what does it mean to be a Filipino.
The word itself was originally used to identify the Philippine born Spanish, or half-Spanish, people. It was never the name of everyone in the whole country. So what does it mean to be a Filipino, I had to ask. The only way I could try and understand it was to peel the layers that created our culture. The years of Japanese invasion, the 50 years of American presence, the 300 years of Spanish colonization, the non-stop trading of nearby countries before the Spanish. It was already a central point of migration and trade, and people had already been coming and staying before the Europeans realized the world is round. The culture is, as the name of our favorite dessert, halo-halo (mix-mix).
There is no clear, no straight, or no easy way to answer the question: “what it means to be a Filipino?” Being one is a personal story. To me, for today’s journal, to be Filipino is to understand, learn and accept the cultures that have come and gone in our rich history and make it our own. Only then will we truly be free from the shackles of our past.
Maligayang araw ng kalayaan.
