The Filipino as the Great Assimilator

Got the chance to join Car­los Celdran’s Intra­muros Tour last Fri­day. It was a great expe­ri­ence. And it made me think about a lot of things after­wards. I will be talk­ing about the tour itself on Mon­day, in AngPere­grino Rec­om­mends. Right now though are ran­dom (and not so ran­dom) thoughts about our way of look­ing at our­selves as Fil­ipinos, about our national soul, and on our cul­tural iden­tity crisis.

Con­rado de Quiros once told a story about Jose Rizal who boarded a boat bound for the south. While on the upper deck of the boat, where the well-off pas­sen­gers were, he met a Spaniard. The Spaniard was amazed that he spoke Span­ish very well. Rizal replied that he had stud­ied and lived in Madrid and Barcelona for some time. The Spaniard was impressed.

After a while, a Ger­man joined them, and struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with them. They spoke in Span­ish, but then Rizal would some­times make a point in Ger­man for the ben­e­fit of the new­comer. The Ger­man was amazed that Rizal could speak Ger­man very well. Rizal replied that he had toured Ger­many, and had lived in Hei­del­berg for a while. The Ger­man was impressed.

A French­man and an Eng­lish­man soon joined them. Again, for the ben­e­fit of the new­com­ers, Rizal used a smat­ter­ing of French and Eng­lish to drive home his point. The French­man and Eng­lish­man were amazed that he at least knew French and Eng­lish, even if he didn’t speak it well. The French­man and Eng­lish­man were impressed.

After a time, Rizal went to the lower deck. It smelled of the sweat of men, women and chil­dren hud­dled in cramped quar­ters along with their belong­ings. Wish­ing to learn more about them, Rizal spoke to an elderly man in Taga­log, ask­ing him where he came from. The man answered in Cebuano, say­ing he could not under­stand Rizal. Not know­ing Cebuano, Rizal could not under­stand him either.

He turned to a woman beside the elderly man and asked her the same ques­tion. The woman spoke in Ilonggo. Not know­ing Ilonggo, Rizal could not under­stand her either. Finally, Rizal turned to a young man nearby and asked him the same question.

The man shrugged and spoke in Tausug, say­ing he could not under­stand Rizal. Not know­ing Tausug, Rizal couldn’t under­stand him too.

This story is most prob­a­bly apoc­ryphal. But it is some­thing to think about, don’t you think?

Car­los Cel­dran calls Rizal “the great assim­i­la­tor”.

And maybe that is not just some­thing that describes Rizal but is some­thing that describes the Fil­ipino as well—we are great assim­i­la­tors. We don’t just allow things for­eign to influ­ence us, we adore them. It is one thing to allow, and yet another to adore.

We send home large balik­bayan boxes full of “imported” stuff. We have acquired the taste for japan­ese, thai, french, mediter­ran­ian cui­sine — just look at the pro­lif­er­a­tion of these restau­rants around Metro Manila. We talk with a twang so for­eign, we lit­er­ally make Amer­i­cans who dial a 1–800 num­ber believe that they’re talk­ing to peo­ple on the other side of the street when in real­ity we’re in the other side of the globe. The Asian Jour­nal stud­ied migrants in the US and found out that Fil­ipinos have assim­i­lated faster than other eth­nic groups, prov­ing some­thing that has been merely been anec­do­tal before this: Fil­ipinos do have a very high IQ or Inter­cul­tural Quo­tient.

How did this hap­pen? We can give many rea­sons, but I will focus on three:

1) We are known as a very hos­pitable cul­ture– a cul­ture that would rather accom­mo­date and tol­er­ate than cor­rect or impose our own sen­si­bil­i­ties on oth­ers. Because of this inces­sant need to con­form, we can allow our­selves to get bull­dozed by other cultures.

2) Whether admit­ted or not, we have a cul­tural inse­cu­rity: we are ashamed of our skin (there is a lot of skin whiten­ing prod­ucts for the Fil­ip­ina in the mar­ket today), prod­ucts, pro­fes­sion, etc. It is almost an inbred thing to feel that a prod­uct “Made in the Philip­pines” is of less qual­ity than its for­eign coun­ter­part. We do not even buy it.

3) The “Amer­i­can Dream” (i.e. the dream of work­ing and liv­ing in the US and get­ting a Green­card) is (still) the dream of around 70% of our coun­try­men today. And because the world has become smaller and smaller, the dream is not just about reach­ing the US, but Europe, and the Mid­dle East as well. Just ask 70% of our kids who just grad­u­ated from high school last March–they’re all tak­ing up Nurs­ing in Col­lege in the hopes of leav­ing the coun­try and work­ing abroad.

There is cer­tainly noth­ing wrong with hav­ing a high Inter­cul­tural Quo­tient. In fact, it is some­thing to be proud of. But the down­side is that in our love of things for­eign, we often­times for­get things Fil­ipino. Cel­dran calls it los­ing our soul. And his the­ory is that we lost our soul when we lost Intra­muros. (Join his tour to find out just what this means!)

Wikipedia defines assim­i­la­tion as the “process of inte­gra­tion whereby mem­bers of an ethno-cultural com­mu­nity (such as immi­grants, or eth­nic minori­ties) are “absorbed” into another, gen­er­ally larger, com­mu­nity. This implies the loss of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the absorbed group, such as lan­guage, cus­toms, eth­nic­ity and self-identity.”

In the process of assim­i­la­tion into another cul­ture, the Fil­ipino soul does get diluted beyond recognition.

And yet, I notice some­thing quite remark­able over the years. We have become so good at assim­i­la­tion that I think we have found a piece of our soul in the very process of dia­logue with other cul­tures. We have found our soul because when we assim­i­late into another cul­ture or when we assim­i­late other cul­tures into us, we trans­form the very object of our assim­i­la­tion. And some­how, sub­con­sciously and with­out mak­ing a big fuss about it, we make it Filipino.

Spaghetti is orig­i­nally Ital­ian, but has taken its Fil­ipino sweet form with tomato cat­sup and (lots of!) hot­dog. Pancit can­ton has become dis­tinctly Fil­ipino, even churn­ing a whole indus­try of instant meals out of it. We have had our Fil­ipino ver­sion of sushi which is prob­a­bly as old as sushi itself—something we call kini­law.

The jeep­ney is one of the orig­i­nal Fil­ip­iniza­tion of some­thing for­eign –the orig­i­nal jeep­neys were redesigned Amer­i­can army jeeps. In music, before the orig­i­nal Pilipino music (OPM) phe­nom­e­non start­ing in the 70’s, we had Fil­ipino ver­sions of every­thing Amer­i­can: we had a Fil­ipino Elvis Pres­ley, Karen Car­pen­ter, etc. And I don’t think it is merely coin­ci­dence that at the height of the Alter­na­tive boom in the US (with bands like Nir­vana and Pearl Jam), Fil­ipino bands like Eraser­heads and Yano were also mak­ing waves in the Pinoy under­ground scene. More recently, game show host Edu Man­zano brought to the world stage a dance known as Papaya–the music is orig­i­nally by a Pol­ish artist, but the dance has been given the Fil­ipino shuffle.

The Fil­ipino fast food Jol­libee has made a lucra­tive busi­ness out of fus­ing for­eign food with Fil­ipino taste: a lang­hap sarap cheese burger (Fil­ipinos love to smell their food, so burg­ers can not just taste good, it also has to smell good), langka pie (which is an evo­lu­tion of the amer­i­can apple pie), and burger steak (which fuses the burger patty and the Fil­ipino sta­ple: rice). The R&D of Jol­libee is so pro­lific, it comes out with a new prod­uct almost every month. And another curi­ous fact: wher­ever McDon­alds opened shop around world, they’ve even­tu­ally become num­ber one… except in the Philip­pines, where Jol­libee is king.

By stay­ing true to its iden­tity, Jol­libee has beaten McDon­alds at their own game. And I think this is some­thing curi­ous about our so called world-class tal­ents as well. I used to think that it is a sad fact that Fil­ipinos have to play some­one else’s game in order to beat them at it. But that is a fact of our Filipino-ness. Fil­ipinos will not give the world Broad­way like the British, but Lea Salonga will be so good at it that she will receive the adu­la­tion of the whole world. Noth­ing wrong with that. I am not sure if Lea Salonga is known as a Fil­ip­ina in Broad­way, but Charice Pem­pengco is surely known the world over as that lit­tle Fil­ip­ina singing won­der, and Manny Pac­quiao is known as the Pride of the Philippines.

In the end, maybe the Fil­ipino has not lost his soul. Maybe this dilu­tion is a bless­ing in dis­guise, so that peo­ple like the Eraser­heads, and APO, and Lea Salonga, and Fred­die Aguilar, and Manny Pac­quiao, and Charice Pem­pengco and our graphic artists work­ing at Pixar, and our nan­nies and care­givers or our archi­tects design­ing palaces and build­ings around the world or our engi­neers work­ing at NASA and Google, could show to the world what the Fil­ipino can do. Maybe the essence of the Fil­ipino is really to be the syn­the­sizer of cultures–bridging the gap between the East and the West, trans­form­ing cul­tures into some­thing else. Yes, we will play the inter­na­tional game, because right now we lack games to offer the world.

And we will play the game, and like every­one else, try to become very good at it.

And the day will come–as it did for Jose Rizal, and Lea Salonga, and Manny Pac­quiao; just as it did for Jol­libee, and the jeep­ney, and chop­suey, and spaghetti; when we will not just beat them at their own game.

We will make the game our own. And the world our playground.