The front

The politicians tend to downplay the tension but if the truth were told the issue of Philippine sovereignty over the Spratley Islands a.k.a. the South China Sea but now more usefully a.k.a. the West Philippine Sea is a battlefront. And the faster we realize this the better off we will be.

This narrative may be interpreted for the many meanings it suggests. The immediate one being the need to strengthen our navy not so much to the extent that it can repel incursions. Even the strengthening of its capabilities to monitor and report to the world all developments in that far-off region would be enough, for now. This issue will put us all the more at the mercy of the US. And it will surely motivate a softening of resistance to increased US military presence here. Tension over this issue is bound to increase rather than dissipate over time.

But what implications would this have on the post-colonial Filipino?

Ang Tigbuhat recalled he was once, like most people his age, an anti-colonial Filipino. He studied history, read Renato Constantino, read Jose Rizal and aspired for an art that would free his people from old colonialist values. He aspired for the indigenous, learned to love his own culture in order to “free” it of all that was colonial. He once encouraged in himself a repulsion to Western, especially American, artistic influence, which was of course impossible given the fact he was a student and then a teacher and had to educate himself using Western and American books and media. But even so, he operated by the idea that his art had to contribute to fighting against incursion by colonial interests.

This attitude made sense because at one time everything bad that occurred in his country happened because of foreign intervention. There is not much proof that things are that much different now. And yet, he knows his attitude towards all these have changed. And these attitudinal change is manifest in his reactions to the tensions at the West Philippine Sea.

Ang Tigbuhat read the literature and concluded that  this issue will only signal an increased presence in Philippine affairs by both China and the US. They are principals in a battle now being fought here. And the Philippines will be the front line. It may not ever become a shooting war. But it will be a war of great tension nonetheless especially when they start drilling and harvesting the seas for oil. Tigbuhat wondered what should its impact be on his art?

The borders between countries have certainly eroded over time. It will erode further still. The concept of the Philippines isolating itself in order to preserve the best of its remaining character has become simply impossible. We will have to preserve and establish ourselves some other way. This obligates Ang Tigbuhat to write and make art even more. But what art should he do? What should he write about so that he might become a participant, even a combatant here?

If he were his old anti-colonialist self, he would have endeavored as he once did to identify where the points of incursion were and produce the narrative to combat those incursions. But being the post-colonial Filipino that he now is, he resolved instead simply to accept those incursions as inevitable. They are things he cannot stop. What the post-colonialist Filipino can do is simply to realize that while all these events occur, it is important that its narratives be told from a particular viewpoint. This particular viewpoint is a vantage point that can only be perceived and narrated by a Filipino and none other.

Thus, while global events may grind along and tear down all cultural walls,  and while it is right for us to expect more Americans and Chinese here in the coming years, this condition can never really change us to the extent that we will look at ourselves and the rest of the world from their eyes, as what did happen at the beginning of our colonial experience when all the narratives about us were written by the colonizers themselves. What our anti-colonial experience has shown us is that despite everything, that erasure of culture and perspective can never really occur from hereon.

It cannot occur for as long we ourselves realize the importance of our art, our writing, and the fact that we empower ourselves by writing our own narratives, our own text and our own art from our own perspective. For arms to fight this battle, that is enough.