Mabuhay

The salutation Mabuhay is the Hafa’adai of the Tagalogs in the Philippines, made the nation’s official greeting when the language became the basis of Pilipino, the national language. The equivalent of the Spanish Viva! (Biba! in Chamorro), and used in the same way as the English exclaim “Long Live,” the Malayo-Polynesian word, however, has less to do with longevity as it does with quality of life.

Etymologically, Mabuhay! Live! is closer to the sense of the Semitic Amein (So be it!), rather than the German Heil, or the Roman, Hail Caesar, with which use the salutation has since become associated. The word is not used in common discourse save in official gatherings, and when foreigners try to impress the locals by using the greeting, invariably mispronouncing it by making the last syllable sound like the dry bovine feed stalks in the barn.

Ne’er the mind. The word cropped into my consciousness the last two Saturdays when the CNMI Filipino community celebrated Philippine Independence Day on the 12th, and the birth anniversary of its national hero, Jose P. Rizal, MD, on the 19th.

The first is a nationalist day. A century ago and some, a young Chinese mestizo capitan municipal Emilio Aguinaldo and his ragtag army raised the Philippine flag in Kawit, Cavite, to declare the nascent independent movement’s organized revolt against Spain. This movement ran into the U.S. sudden awakening that it was its manifest destiny “to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them,” by President McKinley’s religiously inspired reckoning. Ensued a U.S. policy of self-liquidating colonialism where “little brown brother” earned independence upon growing up. God’s grace and Uncle Sam’s very best came July 4, 1946 when a year after Filipinas was ravaged by the rapacious rage of the receding Imperial forces of Japan, she was granted her political independence from the American Union, though U.S. economic interests continue reaping the abundant harvest from her bosom.

Lolo Jose, as my generation endearingly called the quiet diminutive fifth generation Chinese mestizo Dr. Rizal, most famous ilustrado (enlightened one; a member of the indigenous intelligentsia in late 19th century Philippines, which spoke for the emerging Filipino community), would have been a Jesuit priest but for his family’s difficulties with Spanish land lease laws, as well as the impact of the execution of three Filipino nationalist priests in 1872 on his young mind. Blamed for the Philippine Revolution for which he harbored strong reservations, Spain punished the wrong ilustrado and created a universal martyr instead.

Developing the Filipino community is a nationalist agenda. Creating the Filipino identity is a continuing quest preeminently started by Lolo Jose, now carried by his numerous offsprings around the globe.

Singularity of mind is evasive within the Filipino community. The recent election for national offices is a tragicomic specimen of that. This is replicated around the world among Filipinos in diaspora who cannot seem to transcend the bitter feuds that result in any election process. Even our very own Filipino community in Saipan is a continuing witness to this inherent divisiveness and self-professed “crab mentality” of a people.

Of course, it is a mistake to take Filipinos as a homogenous lot. Ditto for all stereotyped ethnic groups. Filipinos have been called a “singular and plural folk.” At best, singular in intent and plural in application. But there are cultural traits that seem to afflict every Filipino grouping of my acquaintance. The so-called “crab mentality” is one. The accountability question of “what will people say” (ano na lang ang sasabihin nila?), insidious in its influence on human behavior and the inaunthenticity of public morals, focuses on guarding reputation and status, rather than truth and reality. Corollary to this is the question of “who does s/he think s/he is?”(sino ba siya?) A stratified society by clan originally, then wealth, and now, education, the Filipino mind seem to seek security in the comfort of a hierarchical niche.

The progeny of the ilustrados remain the entrenched oligarchy in Philippine politics and its economic institutions. Jose Maria Sison notwithstanding, there is both an organized and nebulous masa (mass) of workers that services the bureaucracies of government and business, the commercial plantations and fisheries, and the factory floors of industries. The continuing dichotomy between the oligarchy and the common workers, still strongly defined by land ownership (except the indigenous peoples of the south and the mountain provinces), characterizes the nature of resident Filipino communities in the archipelago.

Of late, there has been much thought about the Filipino community in diaspora. Populated by the new hero/ine, the overseas contract worker (OCW) who faithfully remits earnings to the archipelago to support loved ones, and keeps in no little measure afloat the country’s foreign trade viability, the OCW is, nevertheless, a displaced citizen whose heart remains pining for that trip back home every two years, and whose effort is aimed at the jeepney, tricycle, apartment, or real estate investment that s/he may be able to depend on should s/he have to return home before the appointed time.

Then, there are the Pinoys. I previous defined this denizen as a world-wise, street-smart person of Philippine descent who has appropriated planet Earth as home. S/he does not go home to the Philippines; s/he visits the archipelago for sentimental and spiritual reasons but is at home in the world. If resident in Philippines, s/he is often constrained by its parochialism and its constraining orthodoxies. Secular in spirit, scientific in method and urban in outlook and style, s/he has embodied the attitude of the slogan: ‘think globally, act locally.’ To the Pinoy, local is any place in the planet at any given time where one resides.

I count Lolo Jose as one of the first Pinoys whose spatial loyalties and historical limits was not confined to the boundaries of the archipelago. When brought to trial, he was in fact on his way as a volunteer medical surgeon to Cuba where Spain was at war with the U.S. His writings urged first a revolution of the heart, the soul and the mind, as a prerequisite to the deconstruction of social institutions and systems.

Fiercely independent but cooperative, often adjudged an “irresponsible” genius but nevertheless flexible and amazingly adaptable, the Pinoy today joins the ranks of the invisible college of global citizens in the process of aborning.

To the Filipino communities resident in the archipelago and their continuing dialectical conflicts, Mabuahy! Those in diaspora whose petty wranglings on heirarchical status will always drive their energies, Mabuhay! But most especially, to the Pinoys around the world who heeded Marcel Proust’s words: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes,” to you, MABUHAY!