This review highlights the global positioning of discourses/writing on the Filipino diaspora, given the neocolonial and subjugated situation of Filipino migrants, exiles, refugees, etc. in the planet. Unless this subordination to U.S. imperial hegemony is acknowledged and the revolutionary resistance to it recognized, any reflection on the condition of the Filipino/the Philippines is only a Hollywood fantasy, if not a bad case of incurable self-delusion.
The anniversary of the death of the Philippines' national hero Jose Rizal this Dec. 30 affords us the occasion to reassess his work, particularly in the context of ongoing fierce class war in the Philippines between the oppressed, impoverished majority and the few privileged landlords and politicians bought by global capital. This is taking place at a time when the Philippines is being re-colonized by the U.S. as the world's imperialist hegemon. Would Rizal want the country partitioned to greedy transnational corporations and their national elites in the current terrorist war against peoples of color in particular? These reflections hope to provoke a re-thinking of what it means to be a Filipino with the Philippines in permanent crisis, using Rizal as a point of departure, especially in the light of its citizens becoming an embattled diaspora--more than ten million OFWs as exploited domestics and contract workers around the planet, while the country's rich natural resources, cultures and traditions are wasted by foreign profiteers of globalizing capital supported by local comprador parasites currently headed by the corrupt Arroyo regime. "O where is the hope of the motherland...."?
Adventures in American Theocracy - Part 1 - The Pequot War (tags)
Those wanting to know what a theocratic American foreign policy would look like need only consider 17th Century New England and the Pequots