Sacrifices
(Conclusion)
written by Conrado de Quiros
published on the Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 22, 2004

I’M glad Ibarra Gutierrez wrote what he did. I have at least someone to point to (other than myself) to show the alternative is by no means hypothetical; it is real. The choice of coming back to the country, or indeed staying put, may now take on the aspect of the road not taken, or the one littered with sharp stones, but as Gutierrez shows, that is the illusion and not the reality. It is the paradise espied in the distance that is the illusion and not the reality. Or it is the mirage and not the oasis.

I had a similar experience when I was in the United States three years ago. The salesman in the department store where I bought a memory stick for a camcorder was a Filipino, and he was absolutely delighted when he discovered I was a “kababayan” [fellow countryman]. He said he thought at first I was Japanese. I wanted the 128 MB, but they had only the 64 MB. But not to worry, he said, he would order the 128 and it would be there the following week. I thanked him but said I wouldn’t be around the following week. He gave me a card, saying he’d keep me abreast of sales the department store would have in future, and asked me where I was going. He was absolutely discombobulated when I said back to Manila. I swear his jaw fell. He could not grasp the idea.

He asked me what I wanted to do a damn fool thing like that for, or that was the subtext of his more polite question. I said I had a job in Manila. He countered that there were jobs in the United States and they paid better. He himself had been a high school teacher in the southern province of Iloilo, he said, and he could barely support his wife and two kids with his pay. He had gotten to the United States only after much effort. He was denied a visa several times, but he persevered and managed to get one in the end. I did not ask him what kind. He took one odd job after another until he became a clerk in the department store. By dint of hard work, he eventually got promoted to the camera section. He would never dream of going back to Iloilo, he said.

Like Gutierrez, I have heard friends in the United States explain me away almost apologetically (to themselves most of all) as being a “nationalist.” That presumably is the reason I am not joining them in the land of the free and brave, free enough to work your ass off for the cottage with the picket fence and brave enough to endure cold, exile and meaninglessness to do it: I am a “nationalist.”

Well, if “nationalist” means to continue to believe in this country, notwithstanding resolute proof of its predilection for suicide, and armed only with the vision or hope it can be better, then I guess I am a nationalist. If “nationalist” means to read our history or know the past, something most Filipinos refuse to do, and having it for guide to glimpse the way to the future, then I guess I am a nationalist. If “nationalist” means to relate to other people as a Filipino, as someone who has a home, an identity and pride in his national patrimony, who has “malasakit,” or can feel deeply for his country, then I guess I am a nationalist.

It is no big deal, it is what the people of other countries have. And it is a testament to our impoverishment that what is routine and natural and obvious to them take on the aspect of epic heroism for us.

But it isn’t just this that drives me to stay here and try to make things better, however seemingly hopeless that has become, no small thanks to a procession of vicious leaders who seem determined to send this country hurtling to the precipice. Not least this last one, who is now depleting the national coffers to remain in power. Gutierrez hits the nail on the head when he asks, what are you really giving up when you choose to stay here? Unless you are an overseas Filipino worker who is compelled to leave from the stark choice of living or dying, toiling in the desert or starving in a lush land, what sacrifices are you making?

You are not going to starve on a teacher’s pay, however small that is. You are not going to starve on a journalist’s pay, however iniquitous it is. And you are not going to starve on whatever material rewards come from working in an NGO, exercising a profession (engineering, law, architecture, medicine, priesthood), or painting, playing music and writing, however meager they are. Arguably, you will earn more elsewhere, notwithstanding that you are reduced to being a maid in Kowloon, a caretaker in Toronto, or a salesclerk in a camera shop in Los Angeles. But that brings us to the heart of the matter:

All you really lose is a “pursuit of happiness,” a right enshrined in the Constitution, that has to do with acquiring more and more — or at least more than the next fellow. That is the largely unquestioned premise of this monumental Diaspora, the rod by which we measure success. You are a doctor in this country, you compare yourself to what Filipino caregivers abroad get and you will be envious. But you compare yourself to the bedraggled mass huddling in a tiny corner of this wretched metropolis, and you will consider yourself lucky. You are a public school teacher, you will be hard put to buy your two kids chicken dinners from a Jollibee fast-food restaurant every week. But you will be able to buy them shoes and books and send them to school where the barefooted and tubercular farmer fighting off pests in the fields won’t.

Frankly, I too cannot understand that attitude of many Filipinos in the United States who say that if this country can only provide them jobs and investment opportunities that will allow them to enjoy the amenities they have there, they would not think twice about repairing here. Gutierrez is right: thankfully, he doesn’t have to demand those conditions to want to live here. I don’t either.

I figure I’m not the one who’s making sacrifices. They are.

I’m reposting an article that was originally published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on April 21, 2004.  I hope we can all pick up something from it.

Sacrifices
written by Conrado de Quiros

IBARRA Gutierrez has written a very inspiring piece that surprisingly hasn’t yet found its way in print. So I have the honor of doing it for him.

Gutierrez says he’s finishing his master’s degree in New York, where he’s lived the past year, and is all set to come home soon. Not just to revisit for a while but to reoccupy his teaching post in the University of the Philippines (UP). This has raised no small amount of eyebrows from Filipinos and Americans alike. He is graduating this May, and it’s all his friends can do to understand why on earth he doesn’t just stay put and get a job there. But Gutierrez hasn’t just defied convention in not opting to remain in New York, he has defied reason in having no reluctance to go back to Manila. I reproduce his piece in its near entirety, it’s worth every column inch of it:

“It is this lack of regret, no, this utter joy, at leaving the supposed center of the universe for a backwater Third World country that has baffled so many of the people I have met here. Many of them — a few Americans but mostly Filipinos (or former Filipinos) — seemed to assume that since I was fortunate enough to make it to the States, I would want to stay here permanently. So many times in the past months, I have found myself in the awkward position of having to actually justify why I intended to go back to the Philippines as soon as my studies concluded. I just found it inordinately difficult to come up with reasons for wanting to go home, when this was a decision that seemed so fundamental, so natural, so obvious, that I never really thought I would ever have to defend it before anyone, least of all other Filipinos.

“But explain it I had to do, over and over-to relatives, to friends, to classmates and acquaintances. ‘I just feel that I would be happier, and be more useful, working back home,’ I would say, somewhat apologetically, as if by expressing a desire to stay in the Philippines I was somehow giving offense in some peculiar way. This rather weak response would usually be met with tolerant, half-embarrassed smiles and comments on how much of a sacrifice I was making. What I have never figured out is whether they thought I was a hero or a fool for choosing to make that ’sacrifice.’

“Personally, I do not think of myself as either. What is more, I do not even believe that I am making a sacrifice at all.

“By choosing to go home, what am I giving up, really? It is not as if by working in Manila I am choosing a life of starvation, deprivation, and abject poverty as compared to the life of wealth and comfort I will supposedly have working in the United States. Certainly on my modest salary from UP — where I work as a member of the junior faculty — I will never grow rich, and (thanks to John Osmeña), I will probably never be able to rise above the poverty line by any appreciable margin either. But, with a little extra effort, I will be able to maintain an acceptable level of dignity for myself and my family. Is giving up what amounts to a few extra perks then such a noteworthy sacrifice?

“Unlike so many of our OFWs who are forced to go overseas to work for a few years as manual laborers and domestic helpers, my situation, like the situation of so many other university-educated, middle-class Filipinos, does not involve a choice between starvation and survival. Rather, it involves the less spectacular and more prosaic choice of renting a two-bedroom apartment in Quezon City or owning a sprawling house in a New Jersey suburb; of commuting on a UP-Pantranco jeepney or driving the latest model SUV; of making do with a Third World salary or insisting on being paid in the Almighty Dollar.

“Neither do I believe that the United States is such a wonderful place to live and raise a family in. This is a country that spends billions on law enforcement and “homeland security,” but where almost no one feels safe in their own home. This is a nation with the best medical facilities in the world, but where without health insurance you cannot even get a splinter removed. This is the land of the free, at least until the government starts suspecting you are a terrorist.

“And among the Filipinos I have met in the United States, one thing has been nearly as consistent as the surprise that has met my intention to go home. That is if they could keep their higher salaries, if subways could be built in Manila, if the PNP [Philippine National Police] could become less corrupt, if FPJ [Fernando Poe Jr.] could be stopped from becoming president, then they would want to live in the Philippines.

“I am glad that I do not have to worry about having any of these conditions met. This May, no matter what happens, I will be flying home.

“And it will be the easiest ’sacrifice’ I ever had to make.”

It’s a beautiful piece, and a particularly timely one. Notwithstanding the elections, pieces like this will always be timely anytime. But it is particularly welcome these days in the light of Elmer Jacinto almost becoming the rallying cry of the frustrated youth in this benighted country. Jacinto is the young man from the southern province of Basilan (he’s in his late 20s but anyone who is not 40 is young to me now) who topped the medical board exams but is going to work in New York as a caregiver. That too he says — like Gutierrez — without reluctance, without regret, and probably with much thankfulness, if not joy. I did say I did not blame Jacinto for choosing a life of exile abroad after the life of exile he’s lived within in his own country, courtesy of presidents like Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who have made Basilan synonymous with terrorism. But I did not say he is worth emulating.

As Gutierrez shows, there is another choice, one some others have taken. It requires neither heroism nor sacrifice, though it helps to have idealism and loftiness of mind. But for the most part, it requires only seeing the things that really matter in life.

(To be concluded)