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by Arnold De Villa
May 16, 2011
During the Spanish-American war, a historical hearsay claims that a large portion of transitional finances were unaccounted for and rumored to have landed in the hands of a few Spanish citizens who remained in the country. As the gossip goes, millions of dollars among transitional leaders were secretly exchanged which facilitated the enrichment of select individuals. Accordingly, only a fraction was used to repair the real damages of war.
Despite the destruction of lives and infrastructure, natural resources in the Philippines remained abundant in the early part of the 19th century. Our islands used to be the principal source of sugar, rice, and tobacco. We were looked upon as an icon of regional wealth in the Asia Pacific region.
Sad to say, after decades of systematic plunder, corporate intrusion, and an immoral or unethical practice of capitalism, our country’s natural wealth was gone. When Filipinos are forced to leave their loved ones for the sake of survival, when mothers leave their own children to take care of other people’s children, when older children get a visa to work for the elderly in foreign lands instead of taking care of their own aging parents, something is terribly wrong with this scenario.
Although we can argue that lands rich in natural resources should logically be opulent, historical and political events have repeatedly provided us with so many exceptions that seem to refute this assumption. Hence, a large portion of Africa (rich in precious stones and other minerals), numerous towns in the Middle East (a bastion of the “black gold”) and many countries in Southeast Asia (bestowed with fertile volcanic lands) have huge demographics of starving citizens.
Mother Earth has provided us with all the necessary victuals not only to exist but also to thrive. Although certain areas have a monopoly of certain resources, there are other areas that suffer from the scarcity of those same resources. Between these two extremes are people gifted with the ability to reason, the possibility to share, and the probability to dwell in comfort if not abundance. Tragically, together with this rational gift of possibly living in harmony, the same human being has also been endowed with an irrational propensity for greed and selfishness. This dualistic tendency has poked my curiosity to delve on the seeming persistence of Philippine poverty. How is it that while there are more than a hundred million new millionaires around the world, there is probably less than a decimal point of that back home? While some of our neighbors are gradually rising up their standard of living, 3 out of 10 Filipinos live below the poverty line. And then, as I said earlier, adding insult to injury, the wealthiest Filipinos in the Philippines are not even ethnic Filipinos. I am not even sure if some of them are Filipino citizens.
The responses to these reflective queries are as wide and diverse as the islands we have. For this reason, the space for verbal debacle, theories and propositions could be as infinite as the black hole. Solutions are probably sparse, because of which reason the reasons for typical fund raisings will probably never run dry. We will always have some purpose to hold a dinner ball. Meanwhile, Philippine national debt is now pegged at $66.27 billion.
Where did it go? The overall infrastructure of the Philippines has been concentrated within a handful of metropolitan cities leaving a majority of our provinces still locked in the feudal era. It is ironical that a bunch of Filipino sales people pitch their power points of unsold condominiums towards soon to be retired Filipino Americans snared by a free lunch. There is a glut of new residential properties back home because of a mystifying demand of Filipinos who desire to go home.
It would be nice for this new breed of elderly Filipinos to help balance the disparity of wealth among the less fortunate. I am sure that they would if they knew how. But many of them desire to go back home because of convenience (the most popular of which is because “maids are affordable” back home) and not necessarily because of a patriotic duty. In fact, with all hopes that I am wrong, because of the endemic anomalies embedded within the local Philippine culture, it seems that Western individualism has invaded the purity of “bayanihan”. Kaniya kaniya, sila sila and tayo tayo has been bundled with “wala akong pakialaam, basta maganda ang buhay ko”. The rest is business as usual.
Why is poverty so persistent in the Philippines? How can we address the fact that 3 out of 10 Filipinos do not have an inch of hope to emerge from their dismal conditions? Will fund raisings suffice as a temporary patch? How about medical missions? Is our national pathology limited to our tropical diseases? What about eradicating our national debt by begging our lenders to forgive our loans and allow our country to start fresh? Is that responsible? How about the emergence of authentic Filipino philanthropists, do we have any? I am aware of certain Filipino based foundations with laudable initiatives. I just don’t get their need to come to America and ask for funds to help them with their efforts. I always thought that Foundations (e.g. Bill Gates foundation, Ford, Carnegie Mellon, et.al) are established primarily to systematize a more democratic distribution of wealth as opposed to the bureaucratic tradition of taxation.
Who is the Filipino poor? Is that an easy question that we can see, especially for those of us who have been gone for so long? Can we admit the fact that the nation we were born to is indigent? Or would we prefer to claim that although Philippines is poor, there are so many Filipinos who are not? Really? Does the ability to don signature clothes and drive luxury cars eradicate the reality of our national poverty? Can our five bedroom mansion in the middle of a distant suburb defy the fact that most of our kababayans are wallowing in hunger?
And then the unexpected response butts in: “So what? We are sending remittances. We help our families”. Good, how soon will that eradicate or at least stop the exponential growth of our poor back home?
(Next issue…Chapter 3: Possible solutions?)