History Tells Us Why Filipinos Worship Foreigners

History never occurred to me merely as a list of straightforward facts and dates designed to make my life as a student every bit closer to the torture chamber. Oddly enough, it's always encapsulated me in a bubble of awe and fascination. I'd spend many afternoons ogling over the documentaries on the Discovery Channel about the latest archaeological finds in China, life in the Imperial Court of Russia or the dealings of the British East India Company. I noticed, though, that aside from one episode on the mummies in Benguet, the Philippines hasn't featured in another of the network's ubiquitous focus-on-Asia shows.

I realized in class that one nagging problem is the lack of an aggressive Filipino identity. When people mention ‘China', temples, the Forbidden City and the Shanghai skyline come to mind. When they say ‘Indonesia', people easily conjure up Balinese dancers, minarets and exotic spices. When the ‘Philippines' comes up, what do people imagine? Barefooted islanders decked in the most fashionable leaves and twigs? When I was ten years old, I had a Canadian penpal who once thought she was doing me the huge favor of "civilizing" me by attaching a Coca Cola bottlecap to one of her letters. Hey, it's not her fault ok? I'm not going to go on rambling about what an ignorant hillybilly she was for doing that. At the time, I was baffled enough to laugh it off in bewilderment, but now I do realize it was a serious manifestation of how the world has been misled into believing that the Philippines is a tangle of forests and savage nature untainted by the wonders of microclimate air conditioning and express courier services. Well, admittedly, the local courier services are still reminiscent of the days when mail was delivered on horseback, but much of the world's backward perception of our islands and our people is all thanks to the historians who've taken up the noble task of chronicling our country's fortunes along the space-time warp.