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FedMan
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« on: December 23, 2007, 12:54:00 pm » |
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Feudal
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:18:00 12/20/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- It wasn’t in the movie, but there’s a scene in the opening of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” where Don Corleone borrows money from his consigliore to give to a supplicant who has come to him with his problems. It’s all for show, of course (money is the last thing the Godfather lacks), but his gesture of borrowing money from a subordinate (and therefore being in his debt) to give to a needful importuner is not lost on the needful importuner. He falls on his knees, kisses the Godfather’s hand, and departs. More than any substantial help, it’s that gesture that has made the fellow grateful -- and loyal -- for life.
In activist days, we used to call that style “feudal,” which was rampant because the country remained feudal in many respects. In the countryside, land was concentrated in the hands of big “hacenderos” [plantation owners] who treated their tenants and sharecroppers the way the manorial lords of Europe did their serfs several centuries ago, holding the power of life and death over them. The parallel with the lord-serf relationship was not exaggerated: In many instances, the caciques did pretty much own their tenants body and soul. They were their source of life and death and could decree either fate with impunity.
This relationship was governed not by impassive rules but by personal appeal, not by demand but by supplication, not by justice but by charity. That was the seed from which sprang this country’s feudal outlook, shown particularly in the “politics of patronage” or the “politics of personality,” one where politicians played the part of landlord to the citizens’ tenants. They were the source of beneficence and could dispense or withhold it depending on whether they were pleased or displeased. Indeed, that was the seed from which sprang much of the Filipino’s attitudes and values: his proneness to ignore rules and resort to personal appeal, his proneness to rely on connection rather than ability, his proneness to seek gratuity rather than due.
The ultimate lord of the manor or cacique, of course, was the occupant of Malacañang, and it was not uncommon in the past to see farmers troop there to implore the “summum bonum” to send some scrap of blessing their way. Well, there was a more ultimate lord of the manor or cacique then (as now), but he could not be importuned directly, only through the intercession of the saints. The faith bequeathed by the friars is arguably feudal, but that’s another story.
I thought I had seen the last of the most resolute displays of feudal practices during Ferdinand Marcos’ time (Marcos milked his Godfather role for all it was worth), until I saw that spectacle in Malacañang of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regaling the Sumilao farmers with Her Presence early this week.
I never saw it during Cory Aquino’s time: Unfortunately for her, Cory will always carry the stigma of the Mendiola Massacre, when the farmers trooped to Malacañang to demand their due and were met by a hail of bullets on the Mendiola Street leading to the Palace. I never saw it during Fidel Ramos’ time: At least in style, if not entirely in substance, Ramos struck the most capitalistic pose among the presidents, talking of tigers and dragons, and vowing to put the country at par with the other Southeast Asian countries who were well on their way to being so. And Joseph Estrada, though the most immersed in feudal culture -- “kumparehan,” “walang iwanan” being the bywords of his rule -- ironically enough might have been the one who most did something for land reform, putting Horacio Morales in charge of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).
Of course, it was the Sumilao farmers themselves who sought the audience with Arroyo. Can you blame them? They’re desperate, and the desperate will do desperate things, including, as the local saying puts it, cling to a knife. The law, in the form of the DAR, the Supreme Court, and the entire government itself, was stacked against them, even if justice, in the form of the original award to them by DAR of the land they are laying claim to, was on their side. Where law was a cold, impassive, and unyielding force, their President, notwithstanding proof to the contrary, might not. You won’t mind going for miracle cures too if you’re dying.
Arroyo did revoke the conversion of the disputed land to industrial land and decreed the original DAR grant of the land to the farmers in the name of land reform be obeyed. What obstacles remain in the path of the farmers (that is just the first step in a journey of a thousand miles), we do not know. But for the nonce government is basking in the glory of a (PR) job well done, something it wasn’t able to do with Arroyo flying to Kuwait to pluck an overseas Filipino worker from the jaws of death (somehow that didn’t fly off). But for one moment last Tuesday, I thought I saw Don Corleone personally borrowing money from his consigliore to give to a supplicant.
I’m happy for the farmers and share their joy at getting a gift for Christmas and/or a respite from life’s tribulations. Heaven knows no one more badly needs it. But in the end you can’t escape the monumental irony of that spectacle, which is a stinging and poignant commentary on our times. The whole point of land reform, for which an entire government department was built, is to end once and for all the sway of feudalism in this country, not just by physically breaking up huge tracts of land and giving land to the tillers but by spiritually breaking the fetters that bind the serf to his lord, the tenant to his master, the weak and powerless to the strong and all-powerful. Yet, if the Sumilao farmers have gotten their due, or part of it, it has only been because of the triumph of charity over justice, gratuity over due, intercession over obligation. It is only because the lord of all lords, capo di tutti i capi, has decreed it so. And now they owe.
Feudalism is dead, long live feudalism!
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