GLIMPSES - Ramon Magsaysay Awards: honoring Filipinos

By Jose Ma. Montelibano
INQ7.net
Last updated 02:01am (Mla time) 08/04/2006

I MAKE IT no secret that I am a totally committed worker for the Gawad Kalinga movement. It is by far the most substantial promise of the kind of change that many Filipinos have dreamed of. When I witness the political dynamics of the land, whether it is about "Hello, Garci," coup d'état or Charter change, I slowly shake my head in amazement at that leaders of this fledgling nation can preoccupy themselves with controversy while all Filipinos tiptoe at the edge of a precipice.

The history of Filipinos in the past few centuries has been particularly devastating to a culture that was promising to be one of the most creative and festive. Though natives of the motherland were no exception to hierarchical and feudalistic structures of governance, any pre-Hispanic "datu" system that was in place could not have been as harsh as its counterparts in the world. Understandably, the creative and festive traits of our culture preempted the worst of behavior from societal leaders.

But massive exploitation is the mark of colonization here and elsewhere. There must have been greedy leaders among our ancestors in pre-Hispanic times, but colonization is institutionalized corruption, the worst of its kind. There is nothing sophisticated about subjugating a people through force, and then raping their land for what it contained that was of value to the foreign masters.

While exploitation can be as physical as it can get, it is also an attitude and perspective that can linger long after the first exploiters are gone. It is the curse of Filipinos that many among the local elite were protégés of exploiters and continued what they learned from their foreign mentors. When institutionalized exploitation was terminated by political decrees, such as the awarding of independence by the Americans, the exploitative habit refused to die and easily found itself as the operating system of the new, albeit, local masters.

Colonization cannot be justified. The use of force to subjugate and dominate another people, another country that had not in any way provoked aggression from greedy bullies is beyond justification. Colonization was a wholesale anomaly that our people still reel from today. But selectively, good also happened in many ways and in many forms. Even in an atmosphere of evil, goodness in people cannot be easily eliminated or prevented from manifesting.

Thus, just as there are endless examples of why the use of superior force to take over the lives of other peoples and nations is barbaric in nature, kindness, heroism, and generosity abounded on Philippine soil -- both from foreigners and natives. The introduction of Christianity is a boon even if its spotty practice makes hypocrites of many. And the tradition of honor that defined the best among generations who are now long gone is a haunting angst that flickers still in the hearts of a people living in shame.

Our shame does not come from centuries of colonization, centuries of being defeated by wave after wave of foreign masters. We lost, but we fought. We suffered for so long, but we finally won all the wars to rid ourselves of the Spain, Japan and America. We can look back with sadness at what happened to us, but we do not need to look back in shame.

Our shame comes from the poverty we tolerate, the corruption we tolerate, the violence we tolerate. Our shame comes from the exodus of Filipinos who have to look for security and promise in foreign shores because they cannot find it here. Our shame comes from the hunger of millions who have been hungry survey after survey, year after year, decade after decade. Our shame comes from our inability to help one another when it is easier to take advantage of the other. Our shame comes from being fearful that a most fertile and abundant land cannot support its own children.

We are a people of faith, whether that is Christianity or Islam, or a native belief in a cosmology where divinity and humanity merge. Our shame comes because all our faiths cannot reconcile with a spiritual failure so horrible that our pretension of loving God is exposed by our refusal to love our neighbor. We insult not only ourselves as human beings and as the crown jewels of creation; we insult our religious beliefs as well by notpracticing what we preach.

Now, almost from nowhere, a shaft of bright light, a burning bush in the aridity of a shamed society, a bearer of hope emerges. Gawad Kalinga and Tony Meloto are like lotus flowers negating the ugliness of muddy ponds, and showing that good, indeed, can defeat evil even in its favorite lair.

What is majestic about Gawad Kalinga and Tony Meloto winning the Ramon Magsaysay award for Community Leadership is that tens of thousands of Filipinos here and abroad are honored through them. Gawad Kalinga is less an organization than it is a work, a work of faith expressed in good works. Gawad Kalinga builds beautiful churches, chapels and mosques by making its more than 850 villages living expressions of different butharmonious faiths. Gawad Kalinga has used what can be a point of division -- the building of the Filipino nation -- as a core and powerful bond among Filipinos of different persuasions.

Take a bow, Filipinos, there are among us men and women who refuse to live in shame, and who refuse to let those in shame be comfortable in their lowly choice of environment. Among the rich, among the powerful, are a growing number who are turning their backs on exploitation and advocating generosity by example. Among the poor are a growing number who are turning their backs on mendicancy and striving to be productive and contributory to the well-being of their communities. And among the most ordinary are agrowing number of extraordinary heroes, those who think of others ahead of themselves.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award to Gawad Kalinga and Tony Meloto honor all that is noble in us, for reaching out in care and friendship to the poor, the weak, the old and the young, for promising never again to leave them behind. And to think that the recognition and honoring are done at a time when the work of nation building has just begun can only make us wonder in awe at what more we, as a people in solidarity, can do to lift all our poor out of poverty and recover our honor.

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