Patterns of Cultural Conflict in Philippine Life

Abstract

S PEEC DRAFTERS of President Marcos for his Independence Day speech were having a headache rewriting the draft, one of Manila's best known newspaper columnists, Armando Doronila, wrote shortly before the Philippines Independence Day celebrations on June I2, i966.* The reason for the headache, Doronila claimed, was portions of the speech stressed being kind to the Americans and emphasized the point that the U.S. has been the perennial savior of the Philippines and the Philippines ought to be eternally grateful to it. If this became the theme of Marcos' speech, Doronila declared, then we might as well stop Independence Day celebrations or change the name of the event to something else.' His observation may be fairly taken to reflect a new spirit of Philippine nationalism is becoming increasingly apparent in many sections of society and in the formulation of national policies, one is impatient of lingering dependence on U.S. colonialism and anxious to assert a distinctively national cultural identity.2 It would seem the Philippines is beginning to experience some of the unsettling dynamics of the more radical forms of nationalism and attempts at political unification have recently affected such neighboring Southeast Asian states as Indonesia and Burma. At the same time, major historic and cultural obstacles to the new drive toward national unity remain, creating turbulence and conflict in many patterns of contemporary life. Despite persistent appeals to national unity by intellectuals and political figures and the exaltation of the national heritage and national heroes (ranging from Lapu-Lapu, who presumably killed the colonial invader Magellan, to Jose Rizal) traditional divisive forces continue to be powerful. Scattered over hundreds of islands, 33 million Filipinos today are bound by small group loyalties pit what is commonly called the tayo-tayo, (just us) mentality against transcendent interests. Sometimes group loyalty is