Colonial Infections by Claudio V. Tabotabo, MA (November, 2006)

When freedom was granted to the blacks by the Emancipation Act of 1861, there was rejoicing in the farms, in the cottages, in the coalmines and anywhere in the States where there were slaves. Slavery had come to an end, and the blacks could finally live the way they dreamed of. Unfortunately things turned out differently. They lived the way they don't know of. Freedom was on hand yet they found themselves unprepared to practice it.

Many did not know where to go and what to do because on the day Lincoln signed the Act, the authority of the white over the blacks ended. Slavery slipped out from society so also the responsibility of the white to feed, to clothe and to whip the Negro.

It was neither the Ku Klux Klan nor the abusive masters that brought anguish to the black slaves. It was the readiness to welcome the herald of freedom yet unknowing of the incapability to live in it.

Not to count Booker T. Washington and few others who did all they can to educate themselves, the rest of the former slaves came out with a new desire. They wanted to align themselves with their former masters. They aspired for government positions, but they are not willing to undergo the hardships to gain education that is the prerequisite for a position in the government. At the same time girls yelled at their mama for expensive dresses like those their former mistresses used to wear. They lost interest to manual labors like laundering from which they were experts. What they longed then was to enjoy the luxury of the white.

Far from the American shores 31 years after the historic Emancipation Act, American forces swooped down into the Philippine islands and in an orchestrated war, assumed the power of the country from fellow colonizers. They held the country for more than forty years, which was long enough to change the thinking of the natives.

Schools were put up with a curriculum to learn the English language. Filipinos learned English and very proud of it without looking at the truth of the curriculum. English was taught to the Filipinos to prepare them for a domestic job abroad. Americans did not prepare the Filipinos for self-governance. Instead they trained them to be the laborer of the world, to be a worker and not a creator of work. F. Sionil Jose said Filipinos are world's proletariat which is definitely true. More than that, westernization of the Filipinos only prepared them to be the consumers of the surplus from America. The reject in the states was treasured in the Philippines so that the rugs of Madonna were prized by the Filipinas. Madonna has retired yet her stupidity and shamelessness are still being admired in the Philippines. Culture was part of the American import to the Philippines because their agenda was to change the thinking of the Filipinos. The minds that structured for autonomy, self governance and independence as demonstrated by Sakay, Malvar, Bonifacio, Rizal and many others were changed to the level of a laborer

Colonialism is a kind of disease inflicted into the Filipinos. It can be cured if the Filipinos will it. This writer is not a doctor who can prescribe the medicine. To turn to something Filipino may not be the medication of the infection. But knowing oneself directs the patient to know himself; what is for, and not for him.