Solo: F. Sionil Jose

He has been called a CIA agent, a communist, a racist, a punk. He is also the recipient of some very prestigious awards – National Artist of the Philippines, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts and "Chevalier Dans L’Ordre des Arts et Lettres," to name but a few.

Not bad for one who began his life as the son of landless peasant farmers from Rosales, Pangasinan. Not bad for a college dropout. Not bad for one who is sometimes derided by critics for his inelegant prose. F. Sionil Jose has gone on to become one of our most prolific writers, and one who has achieved international recognition. His work has been translated in 24 languages. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to think of a Filipino writer who is as widely read as F. Sionil Jose. He speaks of universal themes while weaving the Filipino experience into the fabric of his novels. He brings us engaging stories that explore what it means to be Filipino. Jose, the man, the social critic, the artist, is as engaging as his novels. His conversation brims with wit, humor, candor and large doses of irreverence. Not surprisingly he has become a controversial figure – a man that is either liked much or disliked.

But that has not bothered him. As Sionil Jose might himself say, "I don’t walk in the corridors of power or move around in social circles." He will plainly tell you that he is just an honest critic of his times.

Understanding the here and now invariably means revisiting the past. Jose often goes back to his hometown Rosales and to Ilocos where his forebears lived. A professiorial lecturer at the De La Salle University and the University of Santo Tomas, Jose takes his students to the village where he was born, Cabugawan, also the setting of his novel Dusk, the first of five that comprise his seminal work – the Rosales Saga. While there, he tells his students that artists must go back to their roots, which give them their identity and eventually their sense of humanity. Home is not just a place of one’s birth, but where one’s heart must always reside.

I recently spoke to Sionil Jose about matters closest to his heart – the social and cultural issues that have plagued our nation for generations and still haunt us today. Like many Filipinos, he is still searching for answers to the oft-repeated question – Why are we where we are today?

PHILIPPINE STAR: What are your thoughts on the SONA? What are its strong points, weak points? What, if anything, did President Arroyo fail to address?

F. Sionil Jose: We, Filipinos, are a very verbal people. I don’t give much attention to SONAs whether it’s by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo or even President Magsaysay in his time. I would rather wait to see what these leaders will do. So that maybe we can pass some judgement on President Arroyo a year from now not because of what she said in the SONA but because of what she may have achieved by that time. What’s important is that she deserves a chance to prove herself. She did not mention anything about culture in her SONA. And when I talk about culture, it’s not just about the arts, it’s about culture itself to which the arts make a very, very strong contribution. Culture is the basis of development. No country can develop unless it has some wherewithal, spiritual or whatever you call it that urges its people to do things that they won’t normally do. And at the basis of our poverty is a lot of cultural problems we have not really defined for ourselves. For instance, why is it that these other Asian countries have developed so fast when we were far ahead of them in the ’50s and the ’60s? Is there some truth to the fact that because of their Confucian nature they were able to develop faster? Things like these...

In previous conversations, you talked about culture as an integral part of development. How might we harness culture as a tool of development?

As, I have said, these values that dictate Filipino behavior are neutral, it is how the individual uses them that makes them either negative or positive. Take for instance what I said – we are mayabang people. We take pride in our material possessions that give us status, big homes, etc. Suppose that yabang takes on another form, that we continue to be mayabang but with what we have achieved. Instead of big houses and condos, how about big factories. How about creating many, many jobs. How about giving value to efficiency, production. An award for the best janitor in any given company. An award for the most number and healthiest hogs raised by a hog raiser. Then we recognize excellence and productivity as such.

In your recent speech at the Instituto Cervantes, you talked about the progress of Spain vis-a-vis the state of affairs in the Philippines. You said, "Once, Spain was the sick man of Europe, just as the Philippines today is regarded as the sick man of Southeast Asia." How did the Spaniards wrench themselves from that rot? Can we do the same, or do we also need a civil war to forge stability and from it a new, invigorating sense of nationalism?

Do you still believe in the necessity of a revolution to finally bring about social change in our country?

I’ve been following Spanish history from way, way back. The development of the Spanish empire... Think about this – it’s incredible how so few Spaniards from a barren country were able to raise men of courage and vision. And this is what is sorely lacking here. The people who have vision have no wherewithal to pursue that vision. The people with the wherewithal, yung mga mayayaman, have no vision at all. Basically, that. Spaniards had a civil war. It provided them with many years of stability, as one Spanish economist observed. Look, we are a very unstable nation. And part of that instability comes from the absence of real nationalism. The Spaniards have no problem with nationalism at all. They are proud to be Spaniards. How many Filipinos are proud to be Filipinos? There are so few who are proud to be Filipinos. And how do you instill that pride? That’s another thing. Because I’ve said it again and again, the flight of Filipino capital is due to the fact that these people who have the money have no loyalty to this country. And they are not loyal to this country because they are not proud to be Filipinos.

Or they lack confidence in the leadership?

Well, that’s part of it. But if they are proud, then they would try to be leaders themselves.

Do we need a revolution to bring about change?

Of course. This is my favorite hobbyhorse. We can ride it the whole afternoon. Look, don’t mistake me for a fire-breathing radical because I’m not. Even Ninoy Aquino believed in it. Just remember that. Odie Corpus, who is a first-rate scholar, concluded in his book, The Roots of Revolution, "...the inequities in the Filipino society will be resolved through non-constitutional means, through revolution." He has a Ph.D. from Harvard. And I am a college dropout. (Laughter) Ang problema dyan is that a revolution can be very expensive. Maraming mamamatay. And I, myself, want to end my days in comfort. Sabi ko nga sa Malacañang, kay Gloria, when Gloria gave me that award, sabi ko such a revolution meaning EDSA 4, 5 or 6 need not be violent provided, one, our elites, especially the economic elites, will have a change of mind and heart now. Not tomorrow, but now. Two, that the masa will be better informed. That they will be led by patriots and not by charlatans... as they have been led by Estrada. And three, that many of these powerful Filipinos which includes Gloria and many of these generals... ang pinanggalingan din nyan ay mahirap. Mahihirap din yan. All they have to do is to remember their origins, their roots which are with the oppressed and the poor. All they have to do is to remember that... and don’t forget. So many of these wealthy politicians... dun din naman sila galing eh. Problema... once they have achieved power... wala na.

Edsa 1 and 2 have proven that we can boot out dictatorial and corrupt leaders – but we have also created them – why is that so?

Because we are Filipinos. (Laughter) We are Filipinos imprisoned by pakikisama, utang na loob... all the values that Marcos understood and which he bent to his will. In other words, I’m going back to my earlier statement that culture itself can be an impediment to development. Culture is, in a sense, neutral. It is a question of whether people bend it or abuse it. Pakikisama is all right. But it all depends on how you use it. So is utang na loob. I mean, these are all in a sense universal values but it all depends on how the individual uses. The other thing, and this is a major point in culture, that we Filipinos are not a very moral people in spite of 300 years of Catholicism. That kind of moral base was not developed.

Why not?

Well, that’s a very good question and I have tried to answer it in my own way. One is because Catholicism was brought here with a sword. And perhaps, there has always been a kind of opposition to it, maybe, subconsciously. The other, you know, which dates back to our own history of not being Hindus or Buddhists is that we never had the classical background that many of these Asian peoples have. And whatever one might think of this classical background, it was these ideas, basically religious, that imbued the peoples of Asia with some kind of moral anchor. Tayo wala nyan because basically we are a very young nation. So that has to grow. But I don’t think that Catholicism was able to imbue in the Filipinos that kind of moral fiber that I am talking about. The new religions – El Shaddai or the Iglesia ni Kristo, in a sense, kagaya rin ng Catholic Church yan. They are either part of the establishment and their leaders, mayayaman din yan. In which case, as I’ve said again and again, they are not ideologically prepared to destroy or change the social order which needs to be changed. In other words, this is where revolution takes on an aspect that is, in a sense, moral and cultural. Because, first that has to happen in the mind. Even before you change the social order, that kind of revolutionary thinking should already be there. How was British imperialism advanced? You know, those intellectuals at Oxford and Cambridge, the royalty, the captains of British industry and the navy, they met in these clubs in England. In other words, the elites had a kind of informal grouping and knowledge of each other. They cross-fertilized each other. Dito sa atin, wala. You know, in the U.S., have you been to the Century Club in New York? That is one example of a social club that is not just a social club. Or the Council on Foreign Relations which is the unofficial Department of State in the US. It is the meeting place of big business, big publishers, cultural figures, writers... You know, they discuss these things and provide a kind of direction for the entire country. Wala dito sa atin nyan.

Do you agree with the American writer, James Fallows, who coined the phrase, "The Damaged Culture," in reference to Filipino society and culture. Are we our own worst enemy?

Of course. Of course! All the more we should have that revolution. Sa puso and sa isip muna before you start destroying institutions.

Let’s talk about the Philippine media today. Can you comment on the state of the media?

I get very distressed every day when I read the newspapers. Because there is really nothing there to read. When I say nothing to read, I mean something that makes me think. Walang-wala. Okay, we have columnists. But many of these columnists are more concerned with their ego trips more than anything else. And ang yayabang nila. I’m not only talking about newspaper columnists but radio and television people. You know, akala mo kapag nagsalita sila, the problem is solved. It’s part of the verbose, the verbal quality of our society. And there is so little discussion in our newspapers of regional issues. We belong to this part of the world but we don’t know what’s happening in so many countries in the region. See... You know, in the 1950s, I had an occasion to talk with Sukarno. And I asked him what his ideas on regionalism were. Remember, I was in my 30s. And I was already thinking what our role in Southeast Asia was, not the world; we are too small. We can afford a regional view. A world view, we cannot. Maybe now. Because we have millions of Filipinos overseas. Can you imagine if these millions of Filipinos have strong sense of nation? Can you imagine if there is a center? Wala. There is no center. They go on as individuals, and that’s it. If there is a center, we can put our best foot forward. Going back to Sukarno, so I asked him this question: What is Indonesia’s role? What do you, Mr. President, think about Southeast Asian regionalism? This was before the birth of MAPHILINDO or the ASEAN. This was in 1950s. He was often in Manila because Sukarno had a girlfriend in Manila. You can put that down. Everybody knows it. At that time, he recognized that we were far ahead of Indonesia. Sabi niya: "Look at the map. We have the biggest most populous country in the region. The richest in natural resources. We will dominate Southeast Asia." Sabi niya. But sa loob-loob ko, I said, "Yes, we can accept that because Indonesia is big. At that time, we were far more progressive than them." But sa loob-loob ko lang, "Yes, we will grant Indonesians that, but we will lead intellectually and culturally in the region. Because, first, we were a democracy. Second, we had a lot of brain power. Remember, I always say this, Indonesia had only 114 university graduates in 1949 when Indonesia became independent. In 1949, we already had hundreds of Ph.D.’s in our universities. And so, we were ahead. So the question I always ask people is, why were we left behind? Bakit tayo naiwan? You know, we’re going around in circles. We’re left behind because of elite irresponsibility, because of cultural problems, because of the absence of vision in society.

After the President delivered the SONA, her Cabinet members went to talk to the rallyists outside the Batasang Pambansa. One of the Cabinet secretaries spoke to a news reporter and said that she reminded the crowds that despite our differences, we are all Filipinos and we all want the same thing – the vision of a better life. If that is true, then why is it so difficult to build a consensus and why are so many Filipinos left wanting?

In some arguments, an appeal to the antagonist runs like this: We are all Filipinos. Why do we have to battle one another? Since when have Filipinos spoken in one voice? As Imelda said, some are smarter that others. Translation: Some are greedier than others.

A former Spanish Ambassador to the US – Salvador de Madariaga – once said to you: "A country need not be a colony of a foreign power – it can well be a colony of its own leaders." In the light of our history and present circumstances, can you comment on that statement?

We are now a colony of our leaders, the Filipino oligarchy whose bastion is in Makati. It is the same elite who collaborated with the Spaniards, the Americans, the Japanese. Having imbibed the vices of our colonizers, they continue the exploitation that has always been the fate of the lower classes. For the time being, anyway, for now, the lower classes are slowly awakening to the possibility of a class war.

Do you think there is too much Pinoy bashing in our media? How much of it is warranted and when does it become counterproductive?

There is Pinoy bashing because there is something to bash. Mawawala yan when there is nothing to bash. Like for instance, the Japanese are not engaged in Pinoy bashing because they are successful. And I always tell the Japanese themselves who are critical of Japanese society, you cannot argue with success. How can you argue with success? Sa Instituto Cervantes, when I spoke there, someone asked how do we get a better image abroad. My answer to that specific question is it’s not so much public relations, it’s what we do here. We should develop this country to the point that there is no poverty, to the point when we are very proud and there you have it. It is not just enough to just tell the truth which is necessary but you should be able to focus on things that are positive. It’s not because I got the National Artist Award. But that would be front page news in other countries. The Magsaysay Award, which I also won, is appreciated all over Asia. It doesn’t hit the front page in the Philippines. That should always be front page news. But some movie star has an abortion, you know, and andun sa front page yan. So, media as a whole should be more eclectic and should give more coverage to things that are positive. Every time a Filipino entrepreneur makes his success anywhere, dapat front page news yan. Every time a Filipino artist scores a hit in Europe or elsewhere, dapat front page yan. Dapat all the time so that all these achievements that are created by these successful Filipinos will be given more meaning.

In your latest book, Soba, Sensei, and Shibuya – a memoir of post-war Japan, you write about the Japanese work ethic, their time-honored traditions, their pursuit for excellence. What can we learn from the Japanese culture and how might we adapt it to our society?

Again, that is one of my hobbyhorses. Now you must remember that I lived during the Occupation. And I knew Japanese brutality. And up to now, I do not forgive those who collaborated with the Japanese. But given these thoughts that were born out in the past, I still think that we can learn a lot from the Japanese. First and foremost, a strong sense of nation. Second, the qualities of the Japanese themselves – ang sipag nila. And how they have honed many aspects of their culture which they then applied to their industry. A Japanese worker is a very precise and skilled worker. And they are proud of whatever they are. So I tell my students if you become a janitor, aspire to be the best janitor in the country. If you are going to be a craftsman, aspire to be the best craftsman. Because that is the one thing that I wish we could get from them. Craftmanship. Punctuality. Hard work. I mean there is a dark side to Japanese culture. I don’t deny that. But we look at what is good about them and adapt these things. Basically, I appreciate what Yukiji Fukusawa did. He was the major ideologue of the Meiji restoration of 1868. He said that the Japanese had to learn Western technology but apply a Japanese spirit. And that’s what they did. In 1939, 1941, they already had a very impressive armed forces. It was one of their slogans – a strong army, a prosperous country. They challenged the US and almost won. And they were only 65 million at the time. And we are 80 million. That means, if we are the Japanese, we could challenge the US now. (Laughter)

You have often gone to Japan to start writing a new book or to finish a novel in progress. What about Japan is so inspiring to you?

First, of course, there is so much to learn in Japan. In all the Japanese cities, there is so much to see. And like New York, marami ring libre doon. All you have to do is go to a department store. You can have a free meal, eating all these food samples. (Laughter) Mabubusog ka na do’n. Then you go to one of the floors where they have crafts exhibition. Makikita mo doon ang mga skilled craftsmen... what they do, whether it’s carpentry, carving, paggawa ng mga kimonos. Most of all, it’s very safe. I go out walking at night. Mag-isa lang ako at three in the morning. I don’t worry about my safety at all. The Japanese, basically, are very honest. Although, my translator said, "Ha, ha, not anymore." (Laughter) You know, I once left a camera in a department store. And I forgot all about it but I got it back. Once in the subway, the same thing happened. I left a very important notebook. And it was given to the lost and found. I got it back.

Several administrations have promised to make land reform policies and programs work. Thus far, the promises have remained unfulfilled. Are you hopeful about the President’s land reform program?

It remains to be seen. You know, when President Macapagal got elected you study the beginning of his term – in the first five-year plan that he submitted to the Congress, there was only one page on Agrarian Reform. Because Macapagal himself was not a farmer. While he was poor, he really wasn’t a farmer. That’s why I hope that Gloria will really give this a real push. Because there is no reason why we are not self-supporting in food. We have more arable land than Japan. And you go to Japan, and there are so many spaces. Even in the city, which are developed. You take the North road going to Ilocos, you come across especially in the central plane, makikita mo, lots na malalaki na walang tanim. One of the necessary laws that should be passed by the Congress is land use. Not only in the rural areas, but in the cities. Kung wala kang lupa sa prubinsya, patay ka. That’s why you have this mass migration to the cities because the people who come here... wala silang lupa. Wala silang pagtamnan. That’s why I would like to bring you to my village, which I visit quite frequently and you would see it has become a rural slum. Marami ng barong-barong doon which wasn’t there when I was a child.

How do we stem the tide of negativity that seems to be eroding our national consciousness?

You can break a circle (the circle of poverty, corruption) anywhere. But the greatest problem which faces us is this moral decay which you cannot resolve in one month or one year. It has to be total, with the leadership leading the way. At the core of a country’s development is ethics, either built up by religion, culture or whatever. Which is why any leader should not only be ethical, but should also recognize those aspects of culture that promote ethics.

In your speech at the Instituto Cervantes, you said: "I have to go back to what I consider as my own personal legacy from Spain, starting from the village in Pangasinan where I was born and where I was introduced not only to the Spain of our history but to the Spain of Cervantes – the noble Spain that we should know more about." Tell us about the noble Spain we should know more about.

Spain of Cervantes, of Lope de Vega, of Zurbaran, of the people who opposed the Inquisition. Because this is the Spain that is truly republican and democratic. All these Spanish artists who portrayed a noble Spain. And some of the most noble characters came out of the civil war. And that is why I am always on the side of the Republicans. Because, first, many of the writers were also on the side of the Republicans – Hemingway, the Lincoln Brigade, the International Brigade. Frederico Garcia Lorca. These are the Spaniards that I’ve always appreciated. Even old man Madariaga. Because I knew Madariaga personally. And it was I who invited him to come here in the 1960s. Now, the other Spain that is also noble is, in a sense, the people who braved the oceans. Can you imagine how it was to travel in those days? All those flimsy ships without modern navigational equipment, it required a lot of courage. Many of them were killed. For all of those achievements, I take my hat off to Spain.