Filibustero, Rizal, and the Manilamen of the Nineteenth Century

This article traces the provenance and the multiple layers of meaning, as well as the contradictions encoded, in the word filibustero from its origins among pirates in the Caribbean in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the American military adventurers in the nineteenth century, whose complex politics intersected with proindependence Cuban exiles. This history illumines the word’s specific meaning as it entered the Philippines before 1872. At the same time, filibustero can be linked to the Manilamen, natives of the Spanish Philippines who worked as international seafarers, who became involved in mercenary activities, especially in Shanghai. This seaborne genealogy contextualizes the analysis of the filibustero in José Rizal’s second novel

Embodying the Nation: Filipino Pictorial Moments of the 1994 GATT Treaty Debate

A fortnight after the Philippine Senate ratified the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GAT) and three days before the annual observance of national hero Jose Rizal\u27s martyrdom, the intertwining of body and nation was given visual expression by a libidinous prankster. At around 10:45 AM of 27 December 1994, Manila\u27s Channel 13 aired an abbreviated segment of a pornographic tape that was unlike any other, for it had been suitably edited to match the lyrics of the Philippine national anthem.\u27 Conveniently tucked at the end of a two-yearald anti-drug abuse video clip, the tape\u27s music did not alert the station\u27s techrucian as he thought it was related to the approaching Rizal Day celebrati~n. ~ When the unsuspecting technician looked at the monitor, he was shocked to see a woman\u27s breast being kissed by a man as the national anthem blared sa dibdib mong buhay (roughly translated: in your chest that lives). Immediately he stopped the tape, depriving history of a more robust statement on the interweaving of the nation with luscious bodies. The incident hinted at the contours of a cognitive field juxtaposing Filipino perceptions of the nation and Filipino perceptions of the body. The prankster did not entirely goof. Following the seminal ideas of Marcel Mauss (1973, 70-88) and Mary Douglas (1970) generated from within the Durkheimian tradition of sociology, it can be argued that a dialectical consonance exists between the historical experiences and cultural categories of the physical body and of the social body. In Mary Douglas\u27s classic proposition (1970, 651, The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society. There is a continual exchange of meanings between the two kinds of bodily experience so that each reinforces the categories of the other. Images of the human body and images of society are mutually detennining. In light of the reflexivity of body and society, this article demonstrates that the social body of the nation finds expression in terms of popular idioms about the physical body as perceived by Filipinos, especially those in the educated middle classes. This article, in particular, provides an analysis of the metaphors employed in what may be considered the most hotly debated policy issue in recent Philippine history: the treaty of membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) established by the GATT\u27s Uruguay Round, which abolishes non-tariff barriers and institutionalizes the rules of a more liberal regime of global trade. The Ramos administration officially advocated the treaty\u27s passage in the Senate. On the other hand, the opposition to the treaty\u27s ratification-testifying to the democratic space enjoyed by the country-crystallized an unusually broad alliance composed of left-leaning labor groups and right-leaning business people, farmers and students, Catholic bishops and Protestant ministers, academics and purnalists, dissenters and ideologues, populists and opportunists. While a few public intellectuals supported GATT, the sentiment advanced by most opinion-makers was heavily weighed against the accord. The Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) branded GATT as an instrument of imperialist countries led by the United States to further exploit the resources, people and environment of Third World countries by way of global trade liberaliation. Condemning GATT as a scheme instigated by the USRamos regime, the League of Filipino Students issued a statement calling the violent dispersal of student demonstrators in front of the US embassy on 10 December 1994 as a defense of US imperialist interests in the philippine. Coming from elements of \u27the Philippine Left,\u27 these statements were positively innocent of China\u27s much publicized unfulfilled goal to rejoin GATT and become a founding member of the WTO, and were apparently uninformed about Indonesia\u27s position that a delay in implementing the Uruguay Round of GATT would negate much of its original intent to establish a rule-based and nondiscriminatory multilateral trading system. In the heat of a highly insular debate, Jaime Cardinal Sin ridiculed the 5.9-percent GNP growth rate for 1994 announced by the government, saying the figure was as much hype as it [was] reality Taking the offensive, President Rams labeled the treaty\u27s opponents as negative thinkers and enemies of development - socialists and economic ultra-nationalists -who subscribed to an ideology that had long been discredited.07 Newspaper editor and columnist Amando Doronila tagged them as synthetic nationalist^. ^ So passionate was the debate that, in at least one drinking session that erupted into a heated altercation over GA\u27IT, one man was stabbed to death for defending the accord? As a moment of great emotional intensity, the debate was highly revelatory of the national pathos

Church-State Relations in the 1899 Malolos Constitution: Filipinization and Visions of National Community

The most contentious issue in the Revolutionary Congress that crafted the 1899 Malolos Constitution pertained to the separation of church and state, which won by a mere one vote. Until now this episode in Philippine history has not received a satisfactory explanation, which this article seeks to offer. The debate in Malolos, as argued here, was profoundly divisive because the two sides were driven by differing visions of national community. A crucial point was the Filipinization of the Catholic Church, which the proponents of church-state unity championed and which their opponents sidestepped. Even as the debate raged, however, Aguinaldo\u27s revolutionary government acted on the church-state issue out of political expediency. In the end, the issue that Filipino elites could not resolve was settled by US colonialism, which imposed church-state separation without Filipinization

Experiencing Transcendence: Filipino Conversion Narratives and the Localization of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity

In contrast to functionalist explanations for the spread of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, this article discursively analyzes conversion narratives to understand the localization of a global cultural phenomenon. The narratives were drawn from interviews, conducted in 2005, with members of the El Shaddai and Jesus-is-Lord movements. Approached from the perspective of critical realism, the narratives embody a diversity of plots, creative tensions, and distinctively Filipino elements that speak of a reconstituted self and a new engagement with society. They reveal the informants\u27 grappling with the question of God\u27s existence, which finds resolution in individualized experiences of transcendence that generate and infuse local meanings to Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity

Covidscapes: The Pandemic in the Philippines

This introductory essay develops the notion of Covidscapes, taking a cue from Arjun Appadurai. Despite mutations, a single type of coronavirus has gone around the world causing the Covid-19 disease. Yet experiences with the pandemic have varied widely across and even within countries for reasons that go beyond the pathogen. The concept of Covidscapes captures the simultaneous sharing of a global phenomenon along with diversity and difference. Covidscapes are profoundly perspectival and disjunctive. State–societal factors suggest countries can have their own Covidscapes. The contributions in this issue shed light on the peculiar dynamics and contradictions of the Philippine Covidscape