IT'S THE HACIENDA WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: THE DECLINE OF THE FILIPINO SPANISH MESTIZO AT THE DAWN OF THE MILLENIUM - by Carlos Celdran

This is good reading... and offers a lot of insights. But I also have a lot of things to say... maybe later nga lang.



IT'S THE HACIENDA WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: THE DECLINE OF THE FILIPINO SPANISH MESTIZO AT THE DAWN OF THE MILLENIUM

Overheard in Alabang Town Center: "Shet, dude. I'm a cono kid daw. But that's ok."
Inaki
Ibaturralde seemed like he had it all. Young, tall, fair, and
good-looking, he was a Makati born, Alabang bred, English speaking,
Spanish swearing, mestizo of Basque descent. After his secondary
education in Manila's premier Opus Dei school, he spent his college
years in California, before taking the position of Senior Vice
President at his father's Ayala Avenue trading firm at the tender age
of twenty eight. In 2003, he married Chavelli Lazarriaga, another fair
skinned mestiza with an equally fair family name who worked in Manila's
fashion industry. They were wed in a highly publicized ceremony at the
San Antonio in Forbes Park and were expecting their second child by the
end of last year. Life couldn't seem any more charmed. They were the
"IT" couple of the Polo Club and Punta Fuego set; golden examples of
Manila's young "alta" society and the touchstone for couples in
Manila's millenium generation of de buena familia Spanish mestizos in
Dasmarinas Village and Ayala Alabang.

But
underneath this espadrille-wearing, tanned-while-jet-skiing-at-Tali
facade, something was amiss over at the hacienda, so to speak.
Apparently, Inaki had developed a taste for inhaling copious amounts of
cocaine. Not an easy habit to cultivate, mind you, as such imported
indulgences are mainly available through clandestine deals done in five
star hotel rooms at U$350.00 a pop as opposed to the Php1500.00
per-bag-on-the-street-corner deals for it's local "masa" counterpart,
"shabu" (Crystal Metamphetamine). And for the past few years, Inaki
miraculously managed to keep this sordid detail under wraps - from both
wife and family - until things started unravelling - and quite messily
at that - at home.

It was
only a year after his third wedding anniversary that Inaki started
acting out of sorts. Due to limited access to family bank accounts,
Inaki had resorted to "shabu" and the addiction had taken it's toll.
Inaki looked bloated and sweaty at business meetings and his habit of
locking himself into the downstairs den (sometimes for up to two days)
was something which began to concern his young wife. Nevertheless, his
habit remained overlooked - perhaps subconsciously - by those around
him until last Christmas eve when his mother's maid found drug
paraphernalia (crystal pipe and a roll of tinfoil) in the front seat of
his car while transferring Christmas presents to the tree. So after a
rather audible confrontation, Inaki was banished from his wife, family
and their digs above his mother's garage to fend for himself. Nothing
was heard of him until a month ago, when a segment on the evening news
revealed that Inaki had knifed a tricycle driver in United Paranaque
while in a frantic state of paranoia. Today, he sits in a
rehabilitation center in Bicutan, his wife now settled in the United
States with both children, far away from the scandal and shame. The
golden boy now tarnished in the eyes of the upper crust - an outcast
from the walls of his city.

Now
although the aforementioned is merely an extreme composite of
characters, sadly, Inaki's story is not a rare one one among the
families of Manila's todo insular, Royal Ambre scented crowd. His story
is that of a promise unfulfilled; a morality tale about the importance
of restraint and self-confidence and an image symbolic of the state of
Hispanic Filipinos the 21st century. It's a metaphor about his
ancestry, that of Spanish mestizos, also known as "tisoys" or "cono
kids" - a monicker derived from their habit of peppering conversations
with the aforementioned "c" word. They are a people that have lost
their footing in this world, and have no idea how to go about standing
up and finding it once again.

But
how did the "tisoy", once a proud, plentiful, and productive breed
found freely grazing and settling in the open districts of Ermita,
Malate, Pasay, and San Miguel, fall so far from the status that they
enjoyed in the Philippines for hundreds of years? From the 19th century
until the mid-seventies, the "tisoy" and his culture were ubiquitous to
the Philippine landscape. From the hallways of the country's
corporations to the billboards which trimmed our highways, the images
of Spanish mestizeria could be found managing multinational
corporations or modelling the latest fashions. Manning shop counters at
the Escolta, counting cash behind bank windows, or serving coffee in
the sky, mestizos and mestizas were everywhere. But in an amazingly
ironic turn of events, from being the dominant culture which the
populace yearned to emulate, they now find themselves marginalized and
struggling to find their position in a Filipinas that has decided to
fully embrace it's Asian roots in the twenty-first century. Just turn
on the television or watch a movie and the glaring irrelevance of the
mestizo will immediately stare back at you. Gone are the days of the
artista male romantic lead in the mold of Rogelio dela Rosa, Edu
Manzano, or Gabby Concepcion. Even mestizos de entresuelos (mestizong
bangus or quasi-mestizo mestizos) like Kuya Germs Moreno or Redford
White are also fast disappearing from the showbiz firmament. It's
obvious that the white skinned, aqualine nosed template has ceased to
be the pinnacle of male physical aspiration and in it's place we now
find the chinky charm of the late Rico Yan or the moreno mein of Piolo
Pascual. And instead of living near to their forefather's ancestral
lands near the walled city of Intramuros, Spanish mestizos now find
themselves commuting back and forth from the newer gated districts of
Makati, Paranaque, and Alabang. The displacement of their home and
their culture was a cruel fate that had crept up without warning. But
how did this come to be? Nobody can say for sure. One can only
hypothesize.

Perhaps it's because they lost their home?
Overheard at a tour from a guest: "These mestizos really liked their walled cities.."
It
was only when I heard this statement that I realized the concept of the
"gated community" is something that has always been integral to the
personality of Manila. The notion of a society that is "within" and one
that is "without" is still as prelevant today as it was in the times of
Jose Rizal. Just replace the subdivision security guards with the
guardia civil and the Household helpers ID/Community Tax Certificate
with the cedula and it's Noli Me Tangere with a cheaper wardrobe
budget. But although the system still remains, Intramuros - the city
where this system originated has been gone for over 61 years now,
destroyed in February of 1945. In a battle between the Japanese
Imperial army and the US Armed Forces at the close of World War II,
this 400-year old Spanish designed walled city, and the most overt
physical manifestation of Spain's influence in the Orient became the
central war theatre within the capital. After a month of heavy
fighting, this city made of coral, volcanic ash, and wood, inspired by
designs from France, Madrid, and England, was pummeled to dust; the
largest and only specimen of Spain's presence in Asia wiped off the
face of the earth. Most everything we see today, with the excepton of
San Agustin Church; is a post-war reconstruction. And not only was the
walled city obliterated; but the Spanish mestizo residential enclaves
of Ermita, Malate, Sampaloc, and Pasay were left in ashes, their fair
skinned residents massacred and buried in mass graves. Even the "tisoy"
commercial playground that was Escolta in Santa Cruz - a place so
patrician that salesgirls even had to speak Spanish - was reduced to
rubble. It was really after this period that slow migration of the
surviving mestizos began. Perhaps driven away by the bitter memories of
the war or by the encroaching displaced rural poor, they first wandered
off into the promised - and gated - land of Makati suburbia in the
1950's, then into newer, flashier digs in Ayala Alabang in the 1980's.
But for those mestizos who ended up in the more middle class spectrum
of the social ladder by the 1970's, there were the gates of Merville
and BF Homes to keep the sweaty toiling extramuros communities at bay.

Eventually,
with the coming of President Marcos, things would come to a head for
the mestizo. Although the martial law era can be perceived as
oppressive on one hand, it was also a period when a cohesive Malay
identity was established for the Filipino through the cultural efforts
of Marcos' New Society Movement. It the first times in Philippine
history that the Malay Identity was truly celebrated in all aspects of
Filipino life. Government programs, cultural events, and even public
architecture all had to celebrate this newfound yet ancient identity
promoted by the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan or The New Society Movement.
Ako ay Pilipino. We're here, we're brown, get used to it. And it didn't
only show in the architecture, it showed in media as well. The mestiza
look of Rosa Rosal and Gloria Romero was out, and it was the morena
template of Alma Moreno and Gloria Diaz that became the "wet look" of
the moment. It was at this period that many "tisoys" ended up leaving
altogether, moving away and settling into happy
white-collared/white-colored existences in Australia or the United
States, the promise of a new start and identity beckoning them away
from their Philippine past.

Perhaps they lost their entitlement?
Overheard at a couturier: "Mestizos were never taught how to work.."
A
rather shocking statement but one that cannot be dismissed because it
really is a peek into the preconceived notions many Filipinos have
about their Hispanic counterparts. Myth number one. Spanish mestizos
are lazy. Myth number two. Spanish mestizos are all heirs with
endowments and assets. Both not necessarily true. Mestizos dicks have
never been bigger, they've only been whiter. Just as Spanish mestizos
have never been richer, they only seemed like they were. Perhaps this
sense of entitlement came about because historically, Spanish mestizos
have never really been part of the manual labor force. Occupations for
tisoys were pretty much white-collared and handed down to them as a
birthright; some careers even assured way before they were out of
diapers. For the rural mestizo, all he had to do was wait for harvest
season to come round and the income would almost generate itself. And
at the end of it all, when daddy died, the land - and workers on it -
were all his to possess. And for the urban mestizo, all he had to do
was depend upon Manila's old boy's club run by The Ateneo/La Salle/et
al alumnus association to assure them of the exact same jobs that their
fathers also toiled. But now, Spanish mestizo founded corporations like
Philippine Airlines, and San Miguel Corporation are out of their
original owners hands (The Todas for PAL, the Sorianos for SMC); and
now have to restructure themselves away to be competitive in the modern
world. Some tisoys found it harder to compete for that same job in a
system now based on merit than on who was their dad's fraternity
brother. And due to this, quite a few them decided to forego the hassle
of asserting himself and finding a new identity within this revamped
society, and instead take the alternate route of migrating into the
promise of a tabula rasa in cities like San Francisco or Sydney (See
the last part of previous paragraph).

Or maybe they just never wanted to be here in the first place:
Once told to my face: "Ay, Carlos. Mestizos. They're all liars."
The
most freaky of all the statements I've heard, but once again, perhaps
it rings true. Could it be that the Spanish mestizo, who never felt
neither at home in the Philippine archipelago nor in the Iberian
peninsula, could be cursed to roam the world never to find his stead?
Cursed to forever live in gated communities with all the insularities
it brings? After all, Inaki's family was so detached from the fact that
their family lived in a Southeast Asian country in the Pacific that
they even maintained their Spanish passports and spoke Spanish at the
dining table. His own mother would go out of her way to let everyone
now that their family was NOT to be considered part of the brown-ness
which surrounded them. She once commented about her other, darker
daughter-in-law: "Oye, Es guapa. Por una Filipina." ("She is pretty.
For a Filipina.") Aesthetically, The Ibaturraldes were known for their
fondness of bullfighting posters, ashtrays which said: "Fuma menos,
cono" (Smoke less, expletive meaning vagina), and for the blue and
white porcelain tile emblazoned with the words: "Dios Bendiga Cada
Rincon en Esta Casa" (Lord Bless Every Corner of This House) hanging
above their front door; mandatory household items for the
aspirationally Iberian. And with this lack of desire to integrate -
both culturally and aesthetically - perhaps we can say that the Spanish
mestizo doesn't want to be at home in the Philippines at all. He would
rather embrace the romantic notion of an Occidental Philippines that
cannot be, than to become part of the Oriental Philippines which exists
before him right now. And with this decision to deny the context which
surrounds oneself, comes the corresponding consequences: The insecurity
of never being accepted and the paranoia that someone out there is
always trying to get you. Time to build those walls again.