By Irineo Perez Goce
Lipa City, Feb. 29, 2008
Giliw na Ka Tony:
I read, with bated breath, your article on "Revolutionary Junta."
My particular interest was with regard to prognostications on a Noli De Castro leadership. Although I had it that he is not ideally clean, I would prefer him as against any other leading politicians of these days.
My serious doubt, however, is that he might not adhere to the GMA policy of returning wholesale English language to the classrooms. And that is the GMA ace which keeps her firmly ensconced in the Malacañang throne! Because it follows the Washington (World Bank-IMF) "policy of insuring the uninterrupted supply of cheap (Filipino) labor force for the needs of multinationals here and abroad." That sounds sordid, does't it?
As I see it, through diplomatic and even by means of clandestine manipulations, our country is firmly being retained as a USA cultural and intellectual dependency to keep RP as an American-retirees-reserve. I see nothing wrong with that if looked at through the prism of considerations for international brotherhood.
But my blood inevitably boils with the indubitable concern for our racial kin and the less fortunates in this our hapless Motherland! There lies my mental enigma, vis-a-vis the economist's notion of "survival of the fittest." and the elimination of the unfit!
Now, going back to Ka Noli, he is "maka-wika," in the terminology of the lovers of Inang Wika (which include this obscure and silent admirer of ACA since the time a bosom friend by the name of Simplicio Lat Endaya {sle_codiva@yahoo.com} -- now an ex-pat somewhere -- from Malvar in Batangas province occasionally referred to him).
My thinking of our country's current shaky situation inevitably reverts to our past history, particularly from the time the Aguinaldo revolutionary government was inveigled to fight the Spanish colonialists "to save the American troops" and then perfidiously annexed/colonized by means of the Treaty of Paris. Thereupon, Filipino children of school age were lured with benevolent wiles, inveigled them to learn and memorize English, parrot-style (which has degenerated into wers-wers in our time), and tie down the Filipino psyche very firmly into the apron-strings of Uncle Sam's economy -- forever-and-ever! Until and unless somebody from our kindred would pick up the tabs and rejuvenate our suffering and prostrate Inang Filipinas!
Ka Tony, I have my own very unpopular crusade, if "crusade" it may be called. It was featured by the late Celso Cabrera in the June 24, 1970 issue of The Manila Chronicle, in his "Inside Malacañang" column. It might interest you to look at it. Very much later James Fallows wrote Damaged Culture in the Atlantic Monthly, although his treatise was off-key.
Click here to read more.
I read, with bated breath, your article on "Revolutionary Junta."
My particular interest was with regard to prognostications on a Noli De Castro leadership. Although I had it that he is not ideally clean, I would prefer him as against any other leading politicians of these days.
My serious doubt, however, is that he might not adhere to the GMA policy of returning wholesale English language to the classrooms. And that is the GMA ace which keeps her firmly ensconced in the Malacañang throne! Because it follows the Washington (World Bank-IMF) "policy of insuring the uninterrupted supply of cheap (Filipino) labor force for the needs of multinationals here and abroad." That sounds sordid, does't it?
As I see it, through diplomatic and even by means of clandestine manipulations, our country is firmly being retained as a USA cultural and intellectual dependency to keep RP as an American-retirees-reserve. I see nothing wrong with that if looked at through the prism of considerations for international brotherhood.
But my blood inevitably boils with the indubitable concern for our racial kin and the less fortunates in this our hapless Motherland! There lies my mental enigma, vis-a-vis the economist's notion of "survival of the fittest." and the elimination of the unfit!
Now, going back to Ka Noli, he is "maka-wika," in the terminology of the lovers of Inang Wika (which include this obscure and silent admirer of ACA since the time a bosom friend by the name of Simplicio Lat Endaya {sle_codiva@yahoo.com} -- now an ex-pat somewhere -- from Malvar in Batangas province occasionally referred to him).
My thinking of our country's current shaky situation inevitably reverts to our past history, particularly from the time the Aguinaldo revolutionary government was inveigled to fight the Spanish colonialists "to save the American troops" and then perfidiously annexed/colonized by means of the Treaty of Paris. Thereupon, Filipino children of school age were lured with benevolent wiles, inveigled them to learn and memorize English, parrot-style (which has degenerated into wers-wers in our time), and tie down the Filipino psyche very firmly into the apron-strings of Uncle Sam's economy -- forever-and-ever! Until and unless somebody from our kindred would pick up the tabs and rejuvenate our suffering and prostrate Inang Filipinas!
Ka Tony, I have my own very unpopular crusade, if "crusade" it may be called. It was featured by the late Celso Cabrera in the June 24, 1970 issue of The Manila Chronicle, in his "Inside Malacañang" column. It might interest you to look at it. Very much later James Fallows wrote Damaged Culture in the Atlantic Monthly, although his treatise was off-key.
Click here to read more.
