The Philippines is a puzzle. America swept all the country's divisions under the rug when it wrested the islands from Spain. It colonized the country and patterned its political development with that of the US,conferring upon Filipinos their rights as citizens of a commonwealth under the United States.
Being a Filipino simply means we are citizens of a sovereign nation complete with our rights and duties. Our Filipino citizenship signifies that we belong to a body politic, a legal creation first pioneered by the Greeks and developed further by the Romans. The French and Americans restored the concept after they declared themselves no longer under any crown.
Western humanist concepts of rights and freedoms was what America introduced to Filipinos at the beginning of the 20th Century. In America, the most successful human experiment in self-governance ruled by reason and the belief in the inviolability of the rights of man, Americans manage to set aside cultural differences to give way to their civic responsibilities. In the Philippines the same can't be said. The state is weak as it is, and cultural and social problems and differences overwhelm governance.
The country has a plethora of problems. It's hard even just to identify where to start fixing it. But like any solution, it begins with identifying what is the problem. Understanding who we are as a colonized people is crucial to our development. We are diverse. Studies of Southeast Asian colonial development is helping us understand better ourselves and our society. Maybe, that's where we should start untangling the puzzling mesh centuries of colonial rule had brought upon our land. By reclaiming the past, we again own the future.
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