Lundagin mo Baby! (Go for it!

)
By Gilda Cordero-Fernando

Open the Filipino’s head and you will find: a quarter pounder hamburger, a beauty contest, a Hallmark card, an
apple pie, a ticket to Disneyland, a surgically lifted nose, an English-speaking yaya.

When we spray our Christmas tree white and decorate it with cotton snow, we are making a statement. When
we never see a Filipino movie, we are making a statement. When we instruct the yaya to speak to our child in
English, we are making a statement – we believe that the Western way of life is superior to ours. Along with
that we but a First World lifestyle with a Third World economy.

The Spaniards won the Filipino’s heart when they gave us the Catholic religion. But by educating him with
textbooks in English it was the Americans who won the Filipino’s mind. And it became a mental colony. For
the Americans, of course, there was no such concept as a better Filipino. A better Filipino could only be a good
American. The only trouble is, by becoming a good American, one could be only be a lousy Filipino. If the
ideal is to become Western, then everything Filipino becomes second class. Our goods are not good enough, our
national language is not good enough, our literature is not good enough, even our peso is not good enough. That
is why it is stuck forever to the dollar. And we copy and copy and copy. That is why it is stuck forever to the
dollar. And we copy and copy and copy. We are the only Westerners in an Asian land.

Ours has been a history of struggle against colonizers and for survival. That’s who we got our inferiority
complex. The Indonesian is an Indonesian, the Thai is a Thai, the Malaysian is a Malaysian. (And the Japanese
are Japanese even when their teenagers dye their hair a gooky punk pink and yellow. No apologies, and look,
ma, they land again and again on the cover of Time.)

For years we were told how incorrect and inconsequential we were. Some Filipinos even think nationalism is a
bad word. We have such a broken spirit that we may swallow insults some passing foreigner or brown
American tosses out.

“Teach us how to be Filipinos,” pleaded a young editor to us one day. She had forgotten how. In a meeting of
Filipino designers tasked to decide what Philippine products to send to European expo, the top banana
commented, “But what native product can we send, a tabo?” And she laughed deprecatingly, “Maybe we can
decorate it with fur and rhinestones!”
But the tabo is a utility item used by every Filipino! Because it is the Pinoy’s pride always to be clean. Even the
wife of a bank president slips one into her Louis Vuitton suitcase when she travels because she dislikes the
western toilet without a bidet. As one Frenchman commented, “You can kiss a Filipino anywhere!” But we are
ashamed of such a praiseworthy Pinoy virtue. And miss so many opportunities to make local products (not
necessarily the tabo) world class.
But what a resilient people we are! The barrio is waist-deep in flood water, and the people are looking up
joyfully, arms open for nutribuns dropping from a helicopter as if these were manna from heaven! What else do
we do during a flood? Make a business out of it! Put stepping stones and planks so that the better-off can get to
the other side without getting wet. To earn extra buck one enterprising strong man even physically carries
customers.

We stand agape at the technology that progressive countries have mastered, like projecting a giant photographic
image on the side of a whole building. But we do not see that a lone Pinoy can paint, by hand, a cinema
billboard almost as large.

In the war in Mindanao, when it was time for the soap opera “Rosalinda,” there would be a temporary ceasefire.
And then the war would continue. The Mexican TV soaps have so captivated the imagination for the Filipino
because they deal with family and relationships, the Pinoy’s predominant values. Why is it so hard to catch
TNTs abroad? Because Pinoys love their relatives and will hide them even if everyone will have to subsist on
lugaw.

Why do visitors like most about the Philippines? The sunset? The beaches? The hotel accommodations? The
traffic? Certainly not. It’s the quality of the Filipino’s deathless friendships. The Filipino cares. We are our own
best asset. And we don’t even believe it!

Anyone who watched the Erap impeachment trial (December 2000) can’t help but admire the Pinoy. The
sharpness and eloquence of both prosecution and defense were more riveting than any courtroom scene in the
movies. All of Asia watches us. For in the things we’re good at, we’re already good at. We had the first
bloodless People Power Revolution to overthrow a tyrant. This has become sort of an Asian model. And now a
second. Although Asian countries with leaders that they perceived corrupt have long desired their impeachment,
it was Filipinos who first succeeded in impeaching theirs.

One Hongkong resident commented that if a political and economic crisis of the magnitude that we were in had
taken place in another country, there would be so many suicides. People jump from subways and kill
themselves just because they got divorced or lost their job. In the Philippines, the underground economy goes to
work and tides the populace over. Bombs rain on Mindanao and people come out of the rubble smiling.

The Filipino smile? It’s a coping mechanism. Like his sense of humor. “Ang Pinoy ay matiisin,” Dolphy
explains. Kahit naghihirap na, hindi ‘yan lugmok na lugmok. Natatawanan niya ang buhay, kahit kung minsan
hindi talaga nakakatawa.”

Sociologist Jose Miranda expresses special admiration for the persistent optimism of the rural poor. The
overseas worker is the highest risk taker. All her life she has yearned to improve her family’s lot with no capital,
except optimisms. She grows up in a small barrio without any exposure to another culture, figuratively rides the
carabao to town, then sells it to buy a boat ticket to the city. In Manila, she sells all her jewelry she has gathered
from her relatives to buy a plane ticket to a foreign land.

She goes with no thought except that she will earn dollars for her family. She works very hard in a strange
house for people with strange ways, who speaks a strange language. The food she has to cook is a mystery, and
yet she learns to do it so well that she can be paid for it. All this without the moral support of relatives around
her.

Doesn’t that say a lot about Filipino spirituality, no matter what denomination? Even without religion, we were
spiritual before the Spaniards came. It may or may not have been helped by the introduction of a controlled
religion. Today we are blessed with a unique church whose many branches (from Almeda to Velarde to Sin)
have something to say about everything and everyone. And yet we can link arms to fight for a common cause.

There are persistent rumors that the Philippines was the old Lemura, an ancient civilization with a very high
spirituality. The island sank into the sea when the inhabitants abused their psychic powers. And we are the
descendants of its survivors.

Maybe it’s a fairy tale. What is becoming clear, however, is that the Pinoy will have a role in the coming world
scenarios. The diaspora has put a Filipino in every country on earth. It somehow connects to the mission of the
race.

The Filipinos cannot enter the sala. But as the world’s best atsay, she wound up in the bedroom. She has the ear
of the mistress who may be a queen. She may be the yaya of the princes and princesses or a president’s
children.

Somehow her multinational wards will imbibe some Filipino values. She rocks them to sleep with Pinoy
lullabies, she tweaks their ears, teaches them cleanliness and how to be obedient. Once in a while, they taste
their rice and tuyo or hear an aswang story. And they, too, learn to trust in God.

Somehow it will be a different word because the Pinoy was there.

Source:

Chua, R. (2016). Lundagin mo Baby! (Go for it!) By Gilda Cordero-Fernando. 21st Century Literature from the Philippines

and the World. DIWA Learning Systems Inc.