But what did they do with it?

While Michelle Malkin was on TV yesterday, whining and moaning about who moved her cheese, she-and a lot of other Americans-missed the fact that Cory Aquino passed away this weekend. Not that Malkin would care-she scarcely pays attention to the details of her ancestry-instead behaving like the assimilated American bitch woman she has morphed into.

She would do well to remember, however, the literally tens of thousands of her distant cousins who have far starker choices thrust in front of them each week. How to make do on the meager 482 dollars a month paid to them while working for some nasty Chinese family that only allows them out once a week. Or the other woman of her same ancestry, who after dispatching money back to the homeland, decides to wander down to the New Makati on a Sunday afternoon-there to meet a guy like me who can double her income in the course of an evening’s roll  between the sheets.

It has been 23 years since Aquino reluctantly stepped into the shoes of her assassinated husband, and challenged Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 through her "People Power" movement:

When Marcos called for a presidential election in February 1986, Mrs. Aquino became the unified opposition’s candidate. Although she was officially reported to have lost the election to Marcos, Aquino and her supporters challenged the results, charging widespread voting fraud.

High officials in the Philippine military soon publicly renounced Marcos’ continued rule and proclaimed Aquino the Philippines rightful president.

On Feb. 25, 1986, both Aquino and Marcos were inaugurated as president by their respective supporters but that same day Marcos fled the country.

In March 1986 then president Aquino appointed a commission that would rewrite the Constitution.

The revised Charter was ratified by a landslide vote in February 1987.

 Having won the war as it were, she proceeded to lose the peace. James Fallows has penned an interesting article from Filipino sources that he knows-that verify what anyone who has spent time in Asia knows all too well:

"A lot has changed. Nothing has gotten better."

  Sure, democracy returned to the Philippines-but in the end how did the ordinary Filipino benefit? Very little it would appear:

Here is a land in which few are spectacularly rich, while the masses remain abjectly poor…" It’s 2009! [The quote is from Ninoy Aquino about the Philippines under Marcos.]

The cockfighting is still the same. There are still "villages" with high walls and razor wire. But now there are SuperMalls settled in next to tin-and-cardboard squats and internet cafes littering even the most destitute parts of town, with some barrios even siphoning power from the local mainlines.

From my perspective (and my father’s) Filipinos are very much about symbolism, less about concreteness. There’s this idea, as you mention in your Cory Aquino article, that while a regime change in 1986 may have been a monumental symbol for the country, it has still struggled to make concrete, fundamental cultural changes for the overwhelming better ever since. As you mention, it might be a nationalized codependency issue. My father thinks it’s actually a mix of that cultural "neutering" and an overdependence on the Catholic faith to carry people through. The churches are standing-room only, yet there is still a sense of self-protection and insularity that seems to dam the notion of brotherly love and supporting one another, at least in my observation. People will still cheat the meter, officials still take bribes and see prostitutes, and people feel like that’s just the way it’s done. My dad thinks he even got scammed at the cockpits yesterday. However, the pomp and circumstance of this weekend’s coverage has been inspiring to me, personally. I’d like to see how it might affect my outlook or my art. I do admire Ninoy and Corazon Aquino for their integrity and heroics to promote what was right about democracy. I’d like to see how their legacy of determined nationalism affects the Filipino people from here on out. Or is this just another symbol to savor, but then move on with life?

 

During Aquino’s reign, she allowed the Filipino Senate, in a childish fit of stupid nationalism, ejected US bases, a large source of quality jobs for a lot of Filipinos and a source of foreign capital. While Angeles city has recovered-sort of-from that economic disaster, Subic Bay has not.  FEDEX jumped ship for Guangzuao two years ago-it should have been a sweetheart deal for them and their pilots. And Angeles has had to rely on its appeal as "discount" sex tourist destination for Americans, Australians, Hong Konger’s, Japanese and Chinese to achieve whatever recovery it has achieved.

The Aquino administration faced a series of natural disasters during its last two years in office. The 1990 Luzon earthquake left around 1,600 dead, with around a thousand of the fatalities in Baguio City. The 1991 eruption of the long-dormant Mount Pinatubo was the second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century, killing around 300 people and causing widespread long-term devastation of agricultural lands in Central Luzon.

Since she left the office of President, it hasn’t gotten any better-certainly Gloria Arroyo has done nothing of consequence in her two terms in office. It is estimated that 1.52 million Filipinos work overseas around the world sending home over 12.5 billion dollars to the homeland each year. That number has increased since Aquino was in office. The Philippine’s two biggest exports are laborers and sex. Not exactly a portfolio for growth.

Did Aquino do anything to really fix that? Not that I can see. Which , while it benefits gadfly’s such as myself on my visits to Wanchai and Singapore, does little to improve the overall lot of Filipinos or the rest of Asia for that matter. Or the Middle East either. As long as richer societies can exploit the crushing poverty of the Philippines-they will never fix their own economic problems. Its so bad that there are Chinese in Hong Kong who behave as if denying decent wages and time off to maids is nothing short of a God given right.

Which is more than a little perplexing given the industry that I have seen Filipinos apply to a wide variety of tasks. It makes wonder if Fallows might have been very correct, when he wrote that , the Philippines is a damaged culture.

There is a lot to admire about Filipino culture. There is also a lot to not be so fond of-especially when one has seen the coarser aspects at work in the confines of other societies. The jokes about the Filipino mafia are no joke. A lot of Navy personnel from my generation can remember when MS rating exams ( MS being a rate with a lot of Filipinos in it) were more carefully guarded than SECRET material. ( For good reason-there were several cheating scandals in the late 1970’s)

Aquino had a chance to jump start a move away from all that. The Philippines has a lot of potential and properly governed-I believe-could be an economic powerhouse as good as any other in Asia. The results might have been starting to be seen by now-its been one generation.

Sadly though-things are the same as they ever were. So what good was People Power-if you are not going to do anything with it?