Our unfinished revolution

Tomorrow, November 30, is Andres Bonifacio Day. When I was a student in the 1990s participating in commemorative protests on this day, I was often tasked to write statements for leaflets declaring that Bonifacio’s revolution is an unfinished revolution.

As I grew older, that view evolved, perhaps into something more nuanced. From historical literature and my own experience, I came to see how and why that revolution remains unfinished. More than a century after Bonifacio’s era (he was born on November 30, 1863), we still have not fully grasped the dynamics and cultural undercurrents that have made the Philippine struggle for self-determination a recurring tragedy.

It is easy to analyze and list the factors that led to our failure as a nation to form a modern republic. We can say that movements were undermined or sidelined by ‘ilustrado’ and propertied elites. We can say that the masses desired genuine independence and social change. We can say that the fruits of their struggle were captured by those who were more comfortable with compromise.

Yet none of these fully answers the question of why our revolutions always fall short when Vietnam, for example, triumphed. Today, Vietnam has overtaken the Philippines in income per person. But while the lead in GDP per capita is slight, the gap in real well-being is wider because ordinary Vietnamese benefit from a significantly lower cost of living. It is well documented, but you may also ask a friend who has just had a vacation in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City; they will tell you how cheap it is to take and enjoy that trip compared with a vacation in Bohol or even in Oslob.

Vietnam’s GDP growth last year was at 7.1%, according to Reuters, compared to around 5.6% for the Philippines. Vietnam banks on exports and manufacturing as the anchors of its continued growth, while the Philippines relies primarily on a consumption-, services-, and remittance-driven model with a relatively weak manufacturing base, leaving us more vulnerable to external economic and geopolitical shocks.

I digress to Vietnam not to indulge in self-flagellation but to make a point that our own unfinished revolution is neither a permanent curse nor an ill-fated course. The direction of our history can still be redirected by choices in politics, culture, and social organization.

In that sense, I hesitate to pit economic classes against each other because an analysis based solely on economic interests is, for me, too narrow and simplistic. Likewise, uncritically adopting Vietnam’s model of struggle and revolution is simplistic and does not necessarily work in our own context.

A true movement for progress is multisectoral, driven by noble, shared goals, good intentions, and the capacity to act in response to real material conditions. There must be something in the Filipino molding of culture, society, and even geography that we need to recognize and address if we are to make our social movements succeed in building a modern, progressive republic. The goal is not to erase these traits but to rechannel them into nation-building.

It was not long ago when I mentioned in this space Jerrold Tarog’s film trilogy “Heneral Luna”, “Goyo”, and “Quezon”. The films “Heneral Luna” and “Goyo” expose the infighting and ego-tripping that crippled the revolution that Bonifacio started, while “Quezon” shows how the same instincts later evolved into a more polished game of patronage, image-building, and managed corruption. These films suggest that our unfinished revolution is not only about foreign powers or bad institutions but also about long-standing traits in our political culture, including the choices and temperaments of Filipinos in power, that we have not fully confronted.

I relate this to the present flood-control corruption scandal and the sustained protests it has sparked. This is not to say that history will again simply repeat itself, but rather to remind us of what is at stake. If we want the current anti-corruption movement to lead to real and genuine reforms, we must be aware of our own history, of the culture and habits that weakened earlier movements, and make a deliberate effort not so much to reject them as to rechannel them.

We need to work with our actual social material, such as family and kinship, faith, tribalism, religiosity, utang na loob, and archipelagic life, and slowly reweave these into who we might yet become --a modern and proud nation. I wish to elaborate on this in future column pieces.