Blogger’s Note: This article was first published in both the online and print editions of the Manila Standard Today newspaper, September 29, 2011 edition.
I first visited Prague in the late autumn of 2004 when the whole city seemed bathed in gold—from the last leaves of the season to the famous Charles Bridge with its load of visitors, the honey-tinted sunset lingered from the spires of the Gothic St. Vitus down to the narrow medieval streets that reminded me of the maze and blind alleys described in the novels of Kafka and Milan Kundera.
But aside from Kafka or Kundera, Prague for me also has a Philippine connection through Ferdinand Blumentritt (born in Prague in 1853), one of the ardent supporters of Jose Rizal, German translator of Noli Me Tangere and a prolific contributor to La Solidaridad, the Barcelona-published newspaper of the Filipino organization of the same name that propagandised for reform and assimilation of the Philippines as a Spanish province.
This chain of connections from Prague to Blumentritt to La Solidaridad has brought to mind another association, that of the Solidaridad bookstore owned by the multi-awarded novelist and essayist F. Sionil Jose. This is not a haphazard link to me since I spent many blissful hours at the Solidaridad bookshop, one of the few if not the only respectable and true bookstore in Manila when I was a novice news reporter in the early 1980s.
It was only at the Solidaridad bookshop that I convinced myself to part with my hard-earned pesos for a book that I could not find elsewhere in Manila. This was before Internet shopping and when mail orders for books printed overseas in those days would cost an arm and a leg. I even dreamed that if I win a million pesos in the lottery I would be content to run a Solidaridad-styled bookstore for the rest of my life, imaging the pleasures of reading while earning one’s income.
Back to Blumentritt whose legacy in Philippine history, already known to many, was his unrelenting defence of Philippine interests. Solidaridad or solidarity itself implies bonding and mutual trust, truly remarkable in the case of Blumentritt who had never set foot on Philippine soil, and yet has written expansively about the Philippines.
The last few weeks anyone who has read the major Philippine dailies or surf the social media will know the fallout from F. Sionil Jose’s two articles which confronted the reader with his description of the contemporary Filipino as being “shallow” or “mababaw.” Though one can take this unfortunate statement as a polemic perhaps aimed to prompt self-criticism, the intention has not only misfired but has been read as a whining, disparaging remark.
Curiously, by spitting out this accusing tag it has squarely placed Mr. Jose in the same dubious corner that former First Lady Imelda Marcos found herself decades ago. Jose’s claim provides validation to the Warholian worldview reflected in Marcos’s assessment of the Filipino poor, and to quote: “Filipinos want beauty. I have to look beautiful so that the poor Filipinos will have a star to look at from their slums.”
Marcos’s political strategy, however, was refuted years later in the words of assassinated former Sen. Benigno Aquino, whose “The Filipino is worth dying for…” inspired a peaceful revolution—six words that echoed beyond Aquino’s own life, and which exposed a barefaced lie foisted by the political elite.
Two views on the Filipino, one a disparaging and cynical dismissal, the other a hopeful and yet uncompromising opinion that overlooked the faults hounding a race, culture and a nation still grappling with the challenges and pitfalls of modern democracy. To be shallow suggests lack of empathy, already exposed as fiction by the lives of thousands of migrant Filipino workers toiling for their families abroad.
Clearly our perspectives are colored by our origins, class, education, status and belief systems—forces that elevate our person to that high horse from where we will utter an approving, or at the other end, a damning judgment. I wouldn’t want to be in Mr. Jose or Mrs. Marcos’ place, realizing, among other reasons, that being shallow is a trait that all men share or can fall into, regardless of culture, race, education or monthly income.
More importantly, it is best to nurture Aquino’s optimism, precisely because it is this optimism that informs the spirit not to despair. From that lack of frustration we can move and continue plodding on to the next bend and uphill climb.
Blumentritt was on the right track. He has never set foot on our land and yet he stubbornly nurtured the belief that we as a people will pull through regardless of our petty faults and spectacular failures. His, I believe, is a legacy that could yet last and find confirmation beyond our own lifetime.





