Maharlika

A space geographically delineated becomes a place, defining boundaries and organizing the people in it makes it a society, roofs on dwelling makes houses, and passion parked in the living room turns it into a home. A home with people of defined relations make it a family, and where individuals reside with skills for self-sufficiency, an attitude of self-reliance, and the secured knowledge of self-confidence, wholesome and compassionate personality growth happens. Passion comes naturally to the human specie but compassion takes some intentional doing.

The Philippines commemorates its Independence Day on June 12. It is a nation with a demonstrated passion. It is slowly working out its definition of compassion. To date, it has been living off the definitions provided by the Holy Roman Empire through Spain and the Catholic Church, the ambivalent hauté republicanism of imperial America and Midwest Protestantism, and the oligarchic rule of the landed gentry whose self-serving conservatism has so far steered its economic course to luxuriate 3,000 extended families and nurture from morsel droppings off the aristocratic tables 90 million creatures who call it home.

President Ferdinand Marcos wanted to rename the place Maharlika, an ancient word referring to the upper class of the people residing in the Tagalog region of Luzon in what the Spaniards called Las Islas Filipinas (Phillip’s Islands). Mahal na likha, “precious creatures,” might be the etymology of the word. In the Malayo-Polynesian social pecking order, the name referred to the “royal” class, though it need not be equated with the royal houses of the West but more to the stratified filial relations of Asia.

With Singapore’s Confucian Lee Kwan Yew as example, Ferdinand mistakenly misread the consent of the country’s clannish ethno-linguistic groups in his supercilious attempts at reform, and underestimated the tenacity of the landed gentry to willingly relinquish power. His version of Today’s Revolution: Democracy took on the belligerent face of martial law. Even his own Ilocano constituency proved to be a divided house.

The mahal na likha in the June 12 historical commemoration, had he had his way, but for the vehement objection of the great plebian Mabini, would have been Emilio Aguinaldo’s self-designation as the Great Dictator. There is nothing democratic about the Kawit, Cavite declaration more than a century ago. However, in the tradition of the French Third Republic (1870-1940), where the slogan liberté, égalité, fraternité flourish, Kawit liberated itself from the shackles of external sovereign rule in 1898. Unfortunately, the nation never transcended its Laban (fight) stance, and égalité remains to be a promise yet to be attained.

The United States just acquired (the diplomatic euphemism for forcefully taking over) Hawaii at the time (later declared an illegal act by the Supreme Court), and its haute Republicans eyed its own niche in the promising China market then being carved out by Europe and Japan. Uncle Sam had no intention of relinquishing the former colony once the Spanish-American war ended but embarked in a superficial but arrogant mission to civilize Darwin’s primates.

The chamori of the Marianas descended from the maharlika, which shows that the linguistic, cultural and genetic tie between the two groups is closer than what is normally acknowledged. Our interest, however, is on the mahal na likha self-identity, not on the maharlika as a privileged social status, the “precious creature” born into original blessing rather than the curse of original sin.

On my first day at Shenyang Aerospace University, I recalled historical events in Manchuria and mentioned Shenyang’s old name, Mukden, which the Russians and the Japanese used. I got blank stares from the students, and after I forcefully asked if anyone ever heard of Mukden, one of the girls boldly responded: “That’s a name foreigners called us.” “China” is also what the Persians called the people of the Qin and the word traveled to Europe and back through the Silk Road and East of Europe became the mysterious realm of China. The natives, however, call themselves people of the middle realm, Zhongguo ren.

China, like the Philippines, is the retained name of the country, but it does not illuminate people’s functional identity. People of the Middle Realm (Zhongguo) more accurately describe the yin-yang ways of the realm. Does maharlika, “precious creatures,” in any way do the same for Filipinos? For some of the Pinoys, world-wise and street-smart, including those in diaspora, myself included, we respond with a resounding, “Yes!”

The maharlika, however, has a creative but formidable task beyond the entrenched parasitic powers of the oligarchy in Malacañang (Presidential Palace), the Batasan (legislature) and Makati’s PSE (the nation’s phantom wealth factory), along with the archaic irrelevance of the churches and the misplaced dynamism of the mosque. Capturing and transforming the maharlika spirit for the 21st century is today’s revolution, and it is to the cause of self-sufficiency, self-reliance, and self-confidence that we join in celebrating Philippine Independence Day.’