Another repost from the HDTD archives, this one from 2006:
I am sitting on a cliff overlooking a volcano sticking out of a lake, and contemplating the end of empires.

One of the reasons for that is the fact that I am being serenaded by a three-man band in mariachi suits singing an off-key rendition of “La Bamba.” Is there an image that better captures the colonial history of the Philippine Islands?
Why yes, there is:

The United States is probably the only other country on the planet in which you might find an “eatería.”
Anyway, I am contemplating the end of empires, in this case America’s empire in the Philippines.
That empire did not end in 1946. In some ways, U.S. power in the Philippines grew after independence. The postwar Parity Act, for example, removed most of the restrictions on private American investment in the Philippines that Washington had imposed during the colonial era.
PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICA: Yes, Washington did things like that, once upon a time.
The Bell Trade Act allowed the Philippines duty-free access to the American market for a number of years, but it was American pressure that kept the agreement from being permanent. The Bell Act also required the Filipinos to keep their market open to American goods, but in fact exchange controls made it increasingly difficult for American producers to sell their goods in the islands.
For those of you who might quite reasonably conclude that post-independence Philippine stealth protectionism was a blow to the Dread Empire, it turns out that it was a highly-resented U.S. trade mission in 1950 that foisted the entire edifice of capital controls on a Philippine government that would have greatly preferred to retain open trade. In fact, during the 1950s the “Special Economic and Technical Mission in the Philippines” 1950s exercised more control over Philippine economic policy than the Governor-General ever did.
American influence went beyond economics. In a more traditional imperial manner, the Armed Forces of the Philippines not only defeated Communists at home, but were capable of sending 7,000 combat troops to Korea when Uncle Sam asked. This influence remains. A small number of American troops quietly helped the ARP neutralize Abu Sayyaf, American forces provided aid after the 2006 landslides, and everyone seems to have an “uncle in the U.S. Navy.”

But the empire is fading. America is withdrawing from this country. The United States seems much further away than it does in El Salvador or Panama, and I don’t mean geographically.
You first see it in little signs, things that might not be obvious to most visitors, but which stand out to anyone who has spent time in Latin America, or at least Latin America north of the Panama Canal.
It starts with the use of the word “Asian.” Everything is Asian. The commercials brag about “Asian” products. The new malls tout themselves as Asian. Stranger still, whenever somebody points out something odd or interesting about the Philippines — even the most astoundingly Latin American things — they’ll smile and say something like, “Now you know what it’s like in an Asian country” or “That’s how we do things in Asia.”
I used to agree with President Fidel Ramos — the Philippine Republic is a Latin American country in the wrong hemisphere. And when I first got here, Manila somewhat reminded me of San Salvador, only bigger. The architecture, in fact, is if anything even more American than anywhere south of the Río Bravo, and that (combined with mariachis, eaterías, and those Special Forces guys in Mindanao) made it seem at first like the American influence was still going strong.
But after a week I’ve become clear that the Philippines are not in the same orbit as Latin America.
PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICA: I’ve found Filipinos often use “Asian” as an adjective to describe things they believe aren’t derived from the West. Since Filipino culture has the very American tendency to gloss over the actual details of history — unlike some nations, whose inhabitants hold onto history like grim death — this can lead to some very WTF moments. But General Ramos went to West Point, where they do not stint on history, and I think he was very aware of the possibility he might become the Philippines’ first caudillo ... and if my read on his character is correct, he didn’t like that idea at all.
Take musical tastes. Them Filipinos, some do like the hip-hop, at least in a poorer part of Mandaluyong City where Lil’Kim (Lil’Kim? Yeah, Lil’Kim) blared from a boom box. And they play 50 Cent in the hotel gym. But that’s not representative. Filipino pop music is, to an American ear, an unlistenable slop of odd melodies and slow beats. Imagine a world where pop peaked with Electric Light Orchestra.
But the really popular foreign artists come from Korea and Japan, not Brooklyn or southern California. And it shows in the way people dress. There are no baggy pants, no chains, no track suits, nada. Nor is there stringy hair and ripped jeans. Or black nail polish and combat boots. None of the typical American pop subcultures can be found, in rich neighborhoods or poor.
The contrast with, say, Zacatecas City in Mexico, is striking. You can say the same about almost anywhere in Latin America. It is in the same pop-cultural orbit as the United States. The punk rock is as good, the hip-hop is much better, and the Latin music is... uh... the same. Even the schlocky pop and the embarrassing (but addictive) Euro-techno-electro-dance-whatever is recognizable in Latin America — it may not be on MTV, but you’ve heard it in a car commercial.
That’s not true in the Philippines. I mean, nobody here even knows what reggaetón is. And I don’t recognize any of their musical icons, whether they are from here, Hong Kong, or Korea.
PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICA: Ahem. I’ve seen the signs for reggaetón in NYC, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard any.
A VOICE FROM THE FUTURE: Maybe not in 2006, you hadn’t, but that can’t still be true.
PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICA: Be that as it may, one of the Philippines’ most noticeable human exports used to be musicians for the supper clubs of Asia. Lounge acts and saxophonists, no kidding. The point of reference you want is not ELO, but the Captain and Tennille singing “Feelings” to a background of Kenny G. Haven’t you karaoke’d there yet? I'm shocked.
A VOICE FROM THE FUTURE: I did in fact karaoke in Manila (but not Zamboanga City, no) after I wrote the original version of this post. And the Colbert Report has since clued me in to the identity of at least one pop star from Korea:
Considering that I’m here on business, I also can’t help noticing the strange business card ritual. You whip out the card, hold it with both hands so that the other fellow can read it, and hand it over with a little bow. If there’s a business card ritual in the other hemisphere, I bloody well never noticed it. But it’s the norm all over Asia.
PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICA: As far as I know, this is recent in the Philippines, Asia’s last holdout regarding this custom, which I believe was modified from fin-de-siecle British practice.
It’s more difficult for me to talk randomly to people than it is in Latin America. The reason is that the general level of English is poor. Surprisingly poor. All the newspapers are in English. Most of the signs are also in English, even in the slums. Yet I’ve overheard only two conversations between Filipinos occurring in that language; one here at this volcano-side resort, the other in a (rather good!) bookstore in the upscale Rockwell area of Makati City.
(The bookstore had the very Filipino name of “Fully Booked.” One thing hasn’t changed, and that’s the Filipino love of a bad pun.)
Nevertheless, ‘more difficult’ isn’t the same as impossible. The fellow we hired to drive us around, Raul Relente, introduced me to his friends and family. And here’s what I found: they all have relatives in the States. Most would like to move there. But most would like to move anywhere that is neither poor nor predominately Muslim. The U.S. is just another country.

Raul is particularly angry about the perceived decline of English in the Philippines, believing that it’s robbing his children of opportunity. “Tagalog will not go anywhere! Tagalog will not disappear! They are not going to forget how to speak Tagalog!”
While Raul’s command of English is excellent, he’s mostly self-taught and his accent takes some getting used to. And while English is more than just another language here, its level in the Philippines may be deteriorating. I’ve heard this complaint over and over, from journalists to academics to politicians.
English could disappear.
PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICA: And why not? it happened to Spanish.
People could forget how to speak English. In fact, I’ve seen it happen on national television, where the head of the National Bureau of Investigation started to stumble for words during an interview, and the announcers switched to Filipino without realizing it.
Of course, it’s hard to say what the real trend is. Ferdinand Marcos strongly discouraged English during his rule, and switched the schools over to Tagalog. Cory Aquino kept the policy after the first EDSA revolution ousted Marcos. Nevertheless, the 2000 census reported that 64% of all Filipinos over age 5 can speak English, up from a reported 52% in 1980. What we don’t know, however, is the quality of English.
Responding to President Arroyo’s recent decision to re-emphasize English in the public schools, the Department of Education administered an English diagnostic test to about 60,000 teachers... and has since refused to release the results.
A VOICE FROM THE FUTURE: My original links about the controversy no longer work. Here is a copy of Executive Order 210, which brought English back to the schools. Here is the current state of the debate, as legislators try to not only bring back early-age English instruction, but make its use mandatory from the third grade onwards.
PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICA: My take on the Filipino linguistic situation is that it’s not bilingualism, but diglossia. Two languages are used, but each in its own social context. (The literature on the subject sometimes talks about “high” or “prestige” versus “low” languages. I find this terminology carries its own toxic set of assumptions.)
In the Philippines, English is not primarily used as a lingua franca, but as the language in which one discusses, um, the matters one discusses in English. It’s the technical language par excellence. It’s the language of journalism and Scrabble and international gossip. You don’t use it to converse by itself, but as a specific mode to convey certain types of information.
You can see how this might not quite correspond to what a modern language educator would consider fluency.
Also, there’s a lot of code-switching in Filipino conversation. One language will be used to convey sincerity, and then there’ll be a sudden switch to another to discuss business, and possibly even another switch to a third for other subjects. Think of the French conversations in War and Peace. It’s like that.
Education policy may be changing back towards encouraging English, but the idea is not to retain ties with the United States. Rather, it’s to compete better with other Asian nations. If the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (J-PEPA, “jay-pepa”) with Japan comes through — which I tend to doubt — Japanese might be more relevant. Raul has three sisters who are married to Japanese men, with ten Japanese-born and Japanese-speaking children between them.
A VOICE FROM THE FUTURE: J-PEPA is still up in the air.
I met the Philippines’ chief negotiator with Japan, Thomas Aquino, on Friday. He had a lot of very interesting things to say, but two things stand out. The first was during a discussion of investor protection in J-PEPA. He mentioned that the Japanese are very different than the Americans … and more attuned to the Philippines. “The USTR came down hard on is on intellectual property; they wanted to see prosecutions. But we’re more Asian: the courts are used more to get a feel for the other guy’s negotiating position before going to an out-of-court settlement.”
(He’s half-right. The Japanese are trying their best to be attuned to Philippine sentiment, but the particular use of the courts that Mr. Aquino describes is not particularly Asian—it’s common to any country where personal relationships can’t cover everything and the courts still don’t work very well.)
He went on to say, “The feeling that people have about the U.S. is that it’s just there. The U.S. expects us to be an ally like Britain, but we’re just not that close.”
And that’s true. You know what the kicker is? No anti-Americanism. The place just suffered an attempted coup, a Senator is on the lam, American troops are still roaming around the far countryside, and nobody, not in the papers, not on the TV, seems to be ranting about Washington.
PURE PRODUCT OF AMERICA: That Latin American style of anti-Americanism certainly has existed in the Philippines, but I think — and I could be entirely off-base here — that it’s now viewed as rather quaint, like tie-dyed love-beaded hippie protestors are in the U.S.
Of course, all this could really be nothing more than my Latin American background. I’ve spent most of my time either in the United States or in a region where it dominates everything, from pop culture to politics. When the informal American empire cracks in the Western hemisphere, it involves tear gas, oil prices, and really long speeches on television. You see it cracking. But here, in the Philippines, the United States just seems to be slowly fading away, so far replaced by just an inchoate “Asianness.”
Maybe it’s a case of inflated expectations that I didn’t even know that I had.
There are lots of ways the fading of U.S.-Philippine links could stop, or even reverse. Call centers and business process outsourcing could tie the Philippine economy back across the Pacific. Something bad could happen in the islands or the immediate neighborhood and bring calls to have the American empire charge right back. Or the U.S. could start to cultivate the ties it’s allowed to fade since the first EDSA revolution. It could happen. In some ways, it already is.

After all, can a country that can produce this really ever break its ties with the homeland of Orange County?
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