WHY FILIPINOS ARE POORAn Essay by F. Sionil Jose

F. Sionil Jose born in 1924 in Pangasinan province and attended the public

school in his hometown. He attended the University of Santo Tomas after World War II and in 1949, started his career in writing.

Since then, his fiction has been published internationally and translated into several languages including his native Ilokano.

He has been involved with the international cultural organizations, notably International P.E.N., the world association of poets, playwrights, essayists and novelists whose Philippine Center he founded in 1958.

the Philippines' most widely translated author is known best for his epic work, the Rosales saga - five novels encompassing a hundred years of Philippine history - a vivid documentary of Filipino life.

In 1980, he received the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts.

In 2001, he was named National Artist for Literature. In 2004, he received the Pablo Neruda Centennial Award.

SettingIn one of the luncheons hosted

recently by Ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco for clients of the RCBC

Paragraph 1Manila VS Other Asian key citiesThey are more beautiful, cleaner

and prosperous than Manila.Brokedown Palace actress Claire

Danes was shot in Manila back in 1999 and the actress described the city as “ghastly, weird, smelled of cockroaches with rats all over” after her epic tour. Her comments were talked about in the Philippines, her movies to be shown in the country were banned and she was declared persona non grata – never to set foot in the Philippines ever again.

Manila, Philippines is included in the Inferno novel written by Dan Brown and described the city as the “gates of hell” through the fictional character Sienna Brooks who saw in horror the “never seen poverty on this scale, slamming six hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution and horrifying sex trade.”

Par. 2In the 50’s and 60’s we were the most envied

country in Southeast Asia.114 university graduates VS hundreds of

PhD’sWhy then we were left behind?Economic explanation: We did not produce

cheaper and better products.In response to education: We seem to not

make much out from the wealth accumulated. Education is supposedly the “bringer” of progress and advancement.

Why have we been stuck?

Par. 3Why we did not modernize fast

enough and thereby doomed our people to poverty?

This is the harsh truth about us today.

Reasons cited may be summed up to physical poverty and poverty in spirit.

Physical poverty is evident and concrete

Poverty in spirit is reflected in our attitude, mindset, mentality and culture.

Par. 4

James Fallows, editor of the Atlantic MonthlyDamaged culture Impedes our development“Hey Filipinos, it’s not Marcos that’s your

problem; it’s your culture.”Culture refers to the beliefs, customs, arts,

etc., of a particular society, group, place, or time. It may also refer to a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place or organization.

That’s what James Fallows said in his 1987 article in The Atlantic was the problem with the Philippines. According to this hypothesis, the difference

between the Philippines and South Korea in 1960 was that the former had a bad culture, while the latter had a good one, or at least one that was consistent with economic growth.

For every country that is poor, there is normally a commonly cited cultural explanation of why it is poor, resting on some dysfunctional aspect of national character or religion, and the Philippines is no exception to the rule.

The countries that surround the Philippines have become the world’s most famous showcases for the impact of culture on economic development. Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore—all are short on natural resources, but all (as their officials never stop telling you) have clawed their way up through hard study and hard work. Unfortunately for its people, the Philippines illustrates the contrary: that culture can make a naturally rich country poor.

Here is a land in which a few are spectacularly rich while the masses remain abjectly poor… . Here is a land consecrated to democracy but run by an entrenched plutocracy. Here, too, are a people whose ambitions run high, but whose fulfillment is low and mainly restricted to the self-perpetuating elite.

Par. 5We are poor because we are poor- this is

not a tautology.The culture of poverty is self-perpetuating.We are poor because we are lazy.We are show offs.We place high regard on status.We are poor because our nationalism is

inward looking.Under our guise, we protect inefficient

industries and monopolies.

Par. 6We did not pursue agrarian

reform like Japan and Taiwan.Agrarian reform releases the

energies of the landlords and in turn transform the peasants to entrepreneurs.

Par. 7We are poor because we have

lost our ethical moorings.We condone cronyism and

corruption.We don’t ostracize or punish the

crooks in our midst.Our loyalty is to family or friend,

not to the larger good.

James FallowsFilipinos pride themselves on their lifelong loyalty

to family, schoolmates, compadres, members of the same tribe, residents of the same barangay. … But when observing Filipino friendships I thought often of the Mafia families portrayed in The Godfather: total devotion to those within the circle, total war on those outside. Because the boundaries of decedent treatment are limited to the family or tribe, they exclude at least 90 percent of the people in the country. And because of this fragmentation—this lack of nationalism—people treat each other worse in the Philippines than in any other Asian country I have seen.

Par. 7 & 8We can tackle poverty in two

very distinct ways: a nationalist revolution, a continuation of the revolution in 1896.

But, we must have a profound change in our way of thinking, in our culture.

The second is through education, perhaps a longer and more complex process.

Par. 9He debunks though both

solutions.To repeat, neither education nor

revolution can succeed if we do not internalize new attitudes, new ways of thinking.

How?

Par. 10Going back to basicsA Ford in every garage.A chicken in every pot.Money is like fertilizer: to do any good it

must be spread around.The above quote, attributed to President

Herbert Hoover’s 1928 election campaign, epitomizes the mass psychology characteristic of the Roaring ’20s. In a country that had long enjoyed a remarkable period of prosperity, it was felt that the trajectory of the boom’s trend would eventually lead to an eradication of poverty.

Crash of ‘29/ Wall Street Crash of ’29/ Black Tuesday

Great Depression

Par. 11Redeeming featuresLacson and Magsaysay- clean

governmentFilipino artists and professionalsOFWsHistorical “glory”Rizal at 35What else?Do these actually complement or

counteract?

Par. 12Overpopulation: a boon or bane?But we have a real and insidious

enemy that we must vanquish and this enemy is worse than the intransigence of any foreign power.

Par. 13We are our own enemy.We must have the courage, the

will, to change ourselves.

Are we really poor?

Accounts from Relacion de las Islas Filipinas (1604) by Pedro Chirino, a Jesuit missionary and historian

Records of 17th century life in the Philippines

The Quest for Spices- discovery and colonization of the Philippines

Of the Arrival in the Philippines of the Priests of our Society (Chapter 4, p. 239)

The people, though not opulent, were dressed in silk and cloth and wore ornaments of gold, not only brooches and scrutcheons on their dress and rich necklaces, pendants, bracelets and circlets ont heir necks, ears, arms and feet but also gold fillings which they insert in their teeth for elegance and adornment.

They were and are a most shrewd and skillful people in matters of trade and bargaining, as in the buying and selling of any produce, and no less so in the breeding and cultivation of the produce itself.

The land, not only of a good, congenial and wholesome climate, is also rich and fertile.