Who are we?
Who is worth dying for, the Filipino or the Indio? Does Mister Aquino’s famous quote really lives up to the great man’s principles? Did my father and the myriads that preceded him die in vain? Are we Filipinos or are we Indios? Are we living up to what is expected of our name?
Questions; queries; questions; queries – where are the answers?
The native inhabitants of the Philippine Archipelago at the time of the Spaniards were called “Indio”, while the Spaniards who dwelled in our islands were called “Filipinos”. There were two types of Filipinos: Penisulares - the Spaniards who were born in Spain and were residing in our country; and the Insulares -the Spaniards who were residing and born in our beloved Philippines.
Is it not these Filipinos were the ones who brought havoc into the lives of the native commoner? Is it not these Filipinos who marginalized the natives into a barrier unseen by bestowing upon them the term Indio? And is it not these Filipino friars that became so corrupt that their properties swelled up too fast and too huge that the remnants of their properties still play a major role in our economy today?
Our great hero and his contemporaries wore this term of degradation as a badge of honor. They used it positively and turned the meaning into a deeper sense of the word. They called themselves ‘Indio’ and coined the term: Los Indios Bravos. In short, they were proud to be called ‘Indio’. They proved the Filipinos (Spaniards) wrong by organizing themselves into a society of intellectuals: La solidaridad; all of its members calling their fellows and themselves ‘Indios’.
Why then when we proclaimed our independence from the clutches of Spain did we start calling ourselves ‘Filipinos’?
Something went wrong within our forefathers’ thinking.
When we achieved our independence from Spain and started calling ourselves ‘Filipinos’, we, unconsciously, started changing into the very thing our forefathers’ revolutionized against. We became what we despised the most; we became “Filipino”.
Our transformation began with the father’s of the revolution themselves:
Andres Bonifacio was executed by his own country men by fear of taking over the declared Republic under Aguinaldo. Just like what the Spaniards did to our national hero.
Once we tasted power, the hunger grew inside of us and made a hole within us that no amount of feeding could nourish. When we tasted power, we longed for more exotic tastes and our palates became hungry for these things. We discovered the sourness of corruption and the sweetness of fraud; we learned to appreciate the bitterness of deceit and the saltiness of black propaganda; and worse of all, we learned the taste of marginalizing our fellow country men into a caste system: haves and have-nots; know and don’t-know. We became, by consuming these things, the Filipino we despised when we were Indios.
These things still applies to our people today. There are still Filipinos out there doing what the Filipinos of 300 years ago did. And there are still Indios who fight the battle that they’ve been fighting for almost 400 years.
The sad thing is, we're confused about who we really are . We are proud, we are shamed; we are Filipinos, we are Indios; we are country men, we are enemies; and so fort and so on.
I am both Filipino and Indio and I am proud and shamed, both enemy and ally, and so fort and so on…
Who is worth dying for, the Filipino or the Indio? Does Mister Aquino’s famous quote really lives up to the great man’s principles? Did my father and the myriads that preceded him die in vain? Are we Filipinos or are we Indios? Are we living up to what is expected of our name?
WHO are we/you?
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