Michael Tan: Pinoy Kasi

Pinoy Kasi: the UNOFFICIAL website of anthropologist Michael Tan's Philippine Daily Inquirer opinion column. For more information, visit his official web site at: http://pinoykasi.homestead.com/

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Friday, December 15, 2006

Corruption's faces

PINOY KASI

Corruption’s faces
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:59am (Mla time) 12/15/2006

Published on Page A15 of the December 15, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


IT SOUNDED almost like a joke, but my father says it’s true. This story he picked up on one of the Chinese cable channels’ newscasts.

A man had failed in a suicide attempt because the rat poison he used turned out to be adulterated. His family was jubilant and bought some alcoholic beverages to celebrate. But fate works in strange ways: The liquor was adulterated, too, and accomplished what the despondent man had failed to do with the rat poison.

My father isn’t quite sure if this happened in Taiwan or in mainland China, but his point is that corruption is so rampant now that people’s lives are being put on the line. Every day now there are reports on Chinese cable television about scams with consumer goods, including some that kill. The most disturbing one I heard some time back was about adulterated milk powder that killed several children.

I’m sharing these stories partly to warn readers about some of those cheap imports coming in, especially from China. Some -- like, would you believe, P400 cassette recorders -- don’t pose major dangers except that you would probably realize, when the product breaks down after a few weeks, that you’ve just thrown away money on an expensive toy. I have no doubts that China will eventually produce top-quality durable consumer goods, but right now, production standards are abysmally low in many manufacturing sectors. Even worse, those already low standards are often violated because of corruption. I’m afraid many Chinese electronic products are just too shoddy right now, and some can pose very real risks, for example Christmas lights that easily overheat and short-circuit.

Then there are all these food products, many with the most outrageous health claims. I often check out the ones my parents buy or get as gifts and really, many aren’t even worth the packaging. I’ve found insects and mold inside, and joke that at least the insects provide some nutrition, considering that many of these products are junk, with too much flour, sugar or salt.

Riding on the craze for traditional medicine, we’re also getting many Chinese medicinal products with claims of being “organic” or “natural.” Again, I’d be very careful here. If you can’t read Chinese, you won’t know that some of these products contain quite powerful and dangerous Western drugs. I’ve found cold remedies with tranquilizers and antibiotics, and “pain killers” with steroids. These are the “safer” medicines in the sense that they at least have the ingredients printed out. I shudder to think of all the other health products that aren’t as straightforward. Again, there are laws that regulate the production of medicines, including a prohibition on the mixing of traditional and Western ingredients, but the corruption’s so rampant the laws have little meaning.

Respectable

I started off with China because we tend to get so depressed thinking of corruption in the Philippines. It’s bad here, no doubt, but corruption is found everywhere and its adverse consequences know no borders as substandard products enter global trade.

But I did want to get now to corruption’s faces. The word “corrupt” makes us think of sinister-looking characters, operating in dark corners. In reality, and this is what is so terrifying, corruption’s many faces are often quite benign, even pleasant. There are the ever respectable businessmen or businesswomen with their briefcases and laptops, but who have perfected the art of paying off whoever needs to be paid off. The goods that are dumped here have gone through so many layers of corruption, from the regulatory agencies in China to local customs officials.

We think, too, of corruption, as being confined to “poor” countries like our own, forgetting the multibillion dollar scandals of Enron and America’s corporate world. Talk about respectable.

We think of fly-by-night factories packaging contaminated milk powder in some seedy building. But what about those huge multinational companies that sued our Department of Health after it came up with stricter regulations on advertising and promotion of milk formula? It is corruption, too -- and of the worst kind -- when you bully Third World governments.

Family

Transparency International just came out with their latest annual ratings of corruption in the world, and this year, they also released results of a Global Corruption Barometer, based on surveys in several countries. In the Philippines, 16 percent of respondents said they paid bribes in the past 12 months. (Only 16 percent? I thought. It should have been higher.)

But the figure reminds us that corruption has many faces -- including our own. And the corrupted? The police, Transparency International said, are the most “vulnerable.” I use quotes there because it’s hard to think of those pot-bellied scoundrels as vulnerable. Let me catch myself there: Yes, many of them do fit our stereotypes of the corrupt but think, too, of the last time you were held up by some policeman or traffic enforcer. They can actually be quite amiable, and ever so polite, full of “po” and “sir” and “ma’am” as they pull you over to the curb. More “po” and “sir” crop up as they accuse you of having violated some rule. At some point, you finally ask what you need to do. Oh, but don’t they look so innocent when they go, “Kayo po...”

Psychologists talk about cognitive restructuring as a way of controlling your emotions. You’re indignant over the corruption, so you try to calm yourself down by looking at that face, and trying to not to think of him (or, increasingly now, her) as low life. And that’s what’s so horrifying: you look at that face and you realize he or she looks just like many people we love: a child, a sibling, even a parent.

That is what is so disconcerting: It’s a battle against time. Do we get to the point where there will be a total disconnect between what we say and do at home and in schools, and what happens out there in the real world? We can talk our heads off about corrupt politicians but early on, our children will pick up, catching on to all the little transactions in homes and offices, around permits and licenses and taxes and traffic violations.

I want to end on a hopeful note. I know some national government agencies and local governments are trying hard to streamline procedures and bureaucracies to cut some of the bottlenecks that invite corruption. I have many friends, too, who try extra hard to avoid those little “facilitating” transactions for permits and licenses, payments, even if it means a delay, say, in getting the house renovated or in getting a business started. It’s not easy, but we need to think again of faces. Do we want someday to find someone we know, gambling with people’s lives for a fee, and doing this with so much aplomb, so much graciousness?

Good toys

PINOY KASI

Good toys
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 01:16am (Mla time) 12/13/2006

Published on Page A15 of the December 13, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


“CHILDREN are so lucky these days,” one of my friends muttered the other day as we walked through a bazaar. She was referring to the many toys -- including quite a few low-cost ones -- that have flooded the country.

But is all this really a blessing?

I’m finding it’s actually more difficult now to find good toys, “good” being so many things. For starters, we need to go back to the original purposes of toys. Yes, they’re meant for play, and for fun. But “play” itself has its social purposes: all societies have invented toys as a way of preparing children for the life ahead. The toys are there to stimulate their brains, sharpen their motor skills, develop manual dexterity. Toys and games together help the child to socialize. Why, toys even impart certain values.

I’ll explain all that in a while; all that was just a starter to impress on you the immense responsibilities that come with choosing toys.

Safety

If it has become so difficult to choose toys, it’s because so many toy manufacturers seem to have lost touch with the original uses of toys. Today, toys are big business, manufactured by huge multinationals based in the developed world but using cheap labor in Third World countries, particularly China.

Many of the toys are claimed to be educational but they are really designed to catch the attention of young kids, and their parents, with trite gimmicks. In this age of electronics, we’re being dumped with toys that offer superficial razzle and dazzle with all their blinking lights and inane sounds. Cheap they are, but their life spans are also quite short -- which, maybe, is just as well because they do little for the children.

Of even greater concern are the safety issues around many of these toys. Yesterday, the papers featured some warnings from the EcoWaste Coalition about toxic toys (e.g., those that have phthalates, chemicals that are suspected of causing cancer and kidney damage). The EcoWaste Coalition warns about PVC plastic, identifiable in some toys by a number “3” inside the recycling symbol.

The Coalition has other useful safety tips. Toys should be age-appropriate, with some toy manufacturers indicating the right age for their product. In some cases, all you need is common sense; for example, you don’t give a basketball to a 4-year-old.

Toys shouldn’t have small or loose parts that can be swallowed. Ask the emergency rooms of hospitals, and they’ll tell you about all the kinds of things they’ve had to fish out of children’s throats—from necklace beads to plastic screws.

Toys shouldn’t have excessively long cords that might get entangled around toddlers’ necks and cause strangulation. Avoid toys with sharp edges and points. Particularly important for Filipinos: avoid toys with loud sounds. I’d add here, avoid toys that suddenly play out loud sounds, especially if they come out from dolls. The problem isn’t just damage to children’s hearing but the psychological effect as well: those innocent-looking, moving Santa Clauses that go “Ho! Ho! Ho!” can actually scare very young children.

The EcoWaste Coalition also warns about the toys’ packaging: make sure to properly dispose of plastic wrappers and bags (which can suffocate a child), as well as the fillings like foam peanuts and paper strips, which they might end up eating, or aspirating.

PC toys

I’m not a fan of PC, or political correctness, precisely because it often stops at using the right language. Let’s take our principles a step further by applying them to the toys we buy. If we campaign against a toxic environment, then let’s make sure we don’t contribute to that pollution with our toys. For starters, let’s recycle the toys. It’s just so tempting now to keep buying new ones because there are so many available. When you see that cuddly stuffed animal, ask yourself if it’s really for the kid or for yourself.

EcoWaste Coalition’s guidelines on safe toys had one glaring omission: avoid toys that use batteries. Such toys contribute to environmental pollution because the batteries have small amounts of chemicals, such as mercury. Children don’t need all those flashing lights and sounds; your voice and your smiles (okay, add a few hundred facial antics) delight them more than the electronics.

But children like things that move, you might argue. Well, you’d be surprised to find there are all kinds of mechanical toys that don’t need batteries. My Yna’s favorite toy was a colorful plastic duck mounted on a stick with wheels, its wings flapping as you roll it along. They’re dirt-cheap and are sold everywhere; I got Yna’s in front of a church.

Values

Very early, too, Yna acquired a taste for “pullback” toy cars, so called because you pull them back and release them, and they zoom away like a Formula One car. She had seen a male cousin playing with one and I could tell she was totally fascinated so I got her one -- much to the horror of relatives who said cars are only for little boys.

Toys reflect our values too, and as far as I’m concerned, Yna’s going to play with cars just as her brother (yes, I have two now) gets to play with clay pots later. Maybe not dolls, but more because I just don’t like the dolls being sold these days, the way they’re all tied to TV productions. Or worse, other dolls, including Barbie, put too much emphasis on externals like fashions, even cosmetics. (Yes, there are dolls now that you put make-up on.)

The toys we get our kids send them very clear messages about what the world should be. One time in a handicraft store, I saw a kid picking up a rain stick. These are bamboo tubes filled with sand. When you turn the stick around, the sand trickles down and the sound resembles rain. It was clear he had never seen one. Then, in a flash, he had it figured out; he took it up, mounted it on his shoulder and began “firing.” The rain stick had become a bazooka. I shuddered thinking of the kind of toys and TV fare he had gotten at home.

Rain sticks were originally Brazilian musical instruments, but they do make wonderful toys. So really toys aren’t about brand names and glittery lights. Once, in preparation for a long trip, I got a fairly expensive educational toy for Yna. She took to it for three minutes, then abandoned it for another “toy” which kept her busy for the rest of the trip: a crumpled ball of aluminum foil.

Toys are us, if I might borrow from a trademark. Repairing and reusing old toys teach children about the value of recycling. Get kids to share toys, including donating toys to an orphanage, and we’re teaching them about generosity. Buying a book instead of some kiddie gizmo teaches them about priorities. Improvising on a toy creates creativity and innovation. There’s much more yet to toys and games, even a sense of fair play, like not grabbing someone’s toy or changing the rules of a game mid-way.

Who knows, maybe, behind our politicians’ antics, there are tales, too, of good toys and bad toys.

Friday, December 08, 2006

Our Islamic heritage

PINOY KASI

Our Islamic heritage
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:36am (Mla time) 12/08/2006

Published on Page A15 of the December 8, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


WHAT a delight, and a relief, it was that the Pope’s trip to Turkey helped to advance Muslim-Catholic (and Christian) dialogue. There was much tension before he left, with many Muslims still hurting from a lecture he delivered in Germany last September, which was interpreted as being anti-Islam. The Pope later expressed regrets but insisted he had been interpreted out of context.

The Pope visited two major mosques in Turkey, considered significant because he was only the second pope, after John Paul II, to have entered Muslim places of worship. Those visits were not without risk, considering that more dogmatic Muslims might have interpreted it as blasphemous intrusion. When John Paul II visited the Hagia Sophia in 1967, he caused some controversy because he had knelt and prayed. Pope Benedict was more cautious.

Educational

The papal trip was well covered by Al Jazeera, the Arabic cable TV network, which could help to project a more benign image of Christian leaders to Muslims. Conversely, I hope the coverage on CNN and BBC helped to educate non-Muslims on Islam.

Even CNN’s anchor persons audibly gasped in awe as their cameras panned the grand interiors of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. The Hagia Sophia still has an image of the Virgin Mary with the Child Jesus, amid inscriptions praising Allah, all reflecting its colorful history. First built in the 6th century as a Byzantine church, it was converted into a mosque when Muslims took over, and finally transformed into a museum in 1935 after Turkey became a secular state.

CNN also featured the Pope’s visit to a stone house near the city of Ephesus, supposedly where the Virgin Mary spent her last years. It is a popular pilgrimage site for Catholic Marian devotees as well as Muslims. Jesus Christ is, after all, considered a great prophet by Muslims, and his mother is particularly loved.

There’s so much more that needs to be done to educate Christians and Muslims about each other’s religions, including the legacies we share. Writers sometimes refer to Jews, Muslims and Christians as the “three religions of the Book,” referring to our sharing of the Old Testament.

‘Mabuhay’

Much has been said about the prejudice Christians in the West have for Muslims, fueled in part by stereotypes such as Hollywood portrayal of “Arabs” as sinister-looking characters. Islamophobia, the irrational fear of Islam, is often mixed with this Arabophobia, with few people realizing that “Arab” refers to people living in several countries, and of different faiths, including Christianity.

Filipino Christians have picked up much of this fear of Muslims and of Arabs partly because of our turbulent history of conflicts in Mindanao. Now, with large communities of Muslims in most major urban centers of the country, Christians are learning to live with Muslims but the relationship is still one of uneasy co-existence.

We could defuse some of the suspicions we have of each other if we could just look for our common heritage. Christians, in particular, need to give more attention to how “Filipino” -- as a language, a people, a nation -- is itself infused with an Islamic heritage without many of us knowing about it.

Last October, I wrote a column about how important the word “mabuhay” is for Filipinos. I wasn’t able to trace the origins of this use, so I’m grateful that professor Julkipli M. Wadi of the University of the Philippines’ Institute of Islamic Studies wrote to remind me that “mabuhay” is derived from Arabic.

The professor points out that “hay” in Arabic means life, and “ma” connotes “presence,” a way of saying “there is” or “it is.” Thus, as “maganda” means “there is beauty,” “mabuhay” would mean “there is life.”

And what about “bu”? Wadi isn’t sure here, but notes that the Tausug word for life is “buhi.” He proposes that “hi” or “hih” is an indigenization of the Arabic “hay,” while “bu” could have been added for emphasis, like English has “indeed.” So “buhi” (the word for life not just in Tausug but many other Philippine languages) and “mabuhay” could mean “there is, indeed, life.”

Wadi notes, too, that our words for death -- “patay,” “nakapatay,” “mamatay” -- are derived from the Arabic “mawt.”

I’ve already mentioned that “Arab” isn’t synonymous with Muslim, but in our context, the entry of Arabic words into the Philippines happened because of Muslim missionaries who reached our shores several centuries ago. So the Arabic loan words come in as part of an Islamic legacy.

The borrowing of such basic words as those for life and death most probably occurred in the context of religious and philosophical exchanges. Wadi points out that the Islamic perspective of life has at least five stages, as described in the Koran (II:28): nothingness, life, death, resurrection and Final Return. He writes: “Life in Islam must be celebrated and death is not necessarily an end but the beginning of a more pure, blissful, eternal life.”

He mentions other Filipino words of Arabic origin, including “kaluluwa” (soul, from the Arabic “ruh”) and “hukom” (judge from the Arabic “hukm” for judgment) and notes how so many of the loan words are in the realm of psychology and spirituality. Even the expression “ala e,” particularly popular in the Southern Tagalog region, is from “Allah,” the Islamic and Semitic name for God.

Our Islamic expert also mentions “simbahan” as coming from the Tausug “sumba,” which in turn is derived from the Arabic “subha” or praise. So, we owe the Muslims this important word, and concept, of worship as praise.

When the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines, Islam had already reached different parts of the islands, including Manila. Catholicism eventually became the dominant religion but, ironically, became another channel for Islamic influences. Spain, after all, was once occupied by the Muslims or Moors, who left a strong influence in the arts, from architecture to music. Alicia Coseteng writes in “Spanish Churches in the Philippines” about the Muslim influence in churches in the provinces of Bohol and Cebu. One church in Carcar, Cebu, even has those onion-shaped domes or cupolas and four-cornered hat roofs that we usually associate with Islamic architecture.

Coseteng also refers to “Moorish” influences in the churches’ interiors, mainly the elaborate floral and geometric patterns. Islam discourages graven images in places of worship, so it’s not surprising that mosques seem so bare—until you notice the walls, floors and roofs, covered with the most intricate of ornamentation.

Ornate design is sometimes described in English as “arabesque,” its root word telling you where it all started. Who knows? The Filipino penchant for "borloloy" -- the almost excessive side decorations on everything, from our clothes to our jeepneys -- may have similar arabesque origins. (“Borloloy,” if you’re wondering, comes from the Spanish “borla,” or tassel, so a "borloloy" person looks like someone with a lot of tassels and accessories.)

Beyond “ala e” and “mabuhay” and Pinoy arabesque, there’s much more to our Islamic heritage waiting to be rediscovered.

Porn and spectacle

PINOY KASI

Porn and spectacle
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:31am (Mla time) 12/06/2006

Published on Page A15 of the December 6, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


THE day the "Nicole" verdict was to be handed down, I happened to be at the Department of Health on Rizal Avenue in Manila with a fellow faculty member from the University of the Philippines and some students. After the meeting, I suggested a visit to Quiapo. I’ve been working on a research report on Filipino sexuality and wanted to look at the type of videos being sold in that area.

It wasn’t difficult convincing my companions to come along. For Diliman creatures, a trip to Manila is like a safari, and a trip to Quiapo is, well, extreme safari, almost like inviting people to walk with lions and tigers.

Inferno

Or maybe a better metaphor comes from the Italian writer Dante’s Inferno. In Quiapo, there’s a particular building that could have come straight out of Dante’s magnum opus.

The street itself is filthy with stagnant water and every imaginable kind of litter, but this is nothing compared to the interior. The stalls facing the sidewalk all sell pirated videos, but fairly wholesome stuff like Baby Einstein and Disney cartoons. Enter the building and you know it’s going to be different inside. Oppressive heat engulfs you. The miasmas of the street’s trash assault you, now mixed with human sweat. The videos being sold become raunchier, lots of violent action films but still mixed with Korean "telenovelas" [TV soap] and local tearjerkers, and some soft porn. This isn’t quite Inferno yet, maybe Purgatorio, with videos of the most inferior quality, many copies of copies of pirated copies.

It’s a labyrinth in there and as you get into the deepest recesses, even the vendors’ faces begin to change. There are gaunt-looking women carrying emaciated children. I learned later that some of them actually live in here.

Move further in and you don’t see the women anymore. The vendors are all men now, and the stuff they sell is hard porn.

It’s an international X-rated bazaar in that Inferno. Name it, they have it. The vendors ask what you want: "Pinoy?" [Filipino?] "Kano?" [American?] Japanese? They tout videos with women on the cover, literally in your face, and can quickly tell if you’re interested or not. If you’re not, they ask, “M2M?" which means male to male. And if you’re still not interested, they have more varieties to offer, from "ladyboys" (male transsexuals who’ve had hormone therapy but not the surgery itself) to “barely legal” videos, referring to very young “stars.”

The Filipino productions seem a bit tamer, but try to make up for this with every other title carrying the word “exposé” or “scandal,” usually named after a place. In fact, I think this whole genre started out with something like “Dumaguete Scandal,” supposedly secret videos taken in dormitories of students, and they certainly weren’t working on their homework.

Cities were soon joined by provinces, and, curiously by schools, with titles like “UST Scandal” and “Perpetual Help Scandal,” although that fad seems to be fading, too. When I asked last Monday, the vendors said those titles had been “phased out.” But one of them, desperate to make a sale, went through his whole stock and dug out two videos: “Ateneo de Zamboanga Scandal,” supposedly taken with a Nokia phone and, to the feigned dismay of our team, “UP Scandal.”

Voyeurism

Porn thrives because of the voyeur in humans. Some of these scandal-and-exposé tapes are extremely blurred, but this, I guess, is part of the thrill that’s pushed through the title, a chance to peek in, via digital technology, at the most intimate of human behavior.

And whom are we supposed to be peeking at? The students are popular, partly because young people having sex is so terribly transgressive. The X-rated videos, supposedly of dorms, are there to poke fun at society. The wrapper of one X-rated tape, “Bacolod Sex Scandal,” has this come-on: “The people and leaders of Bacolod have neglected the proliferation of sex videos of the city’s young. The young now are overwhelmed with lust, ready to do it anywhere any time. Wake up! Witness these ... [I’ll omit the colorful adjectives] shots taken in Bacolod.”

In a country so plagued by political scandals, it’s inevitable that the videos begin to take on some of those national themes. The vendors told me one bestseller these days is “Davao City Police Scandal,” supposedly footage of trysting between a police officer and the wife of a junior military man. “As seen and reported in TV Patrol and 24 Oras,” the cover declares.

Then it happened. “Nicole! Nicole!” one vendor offered, waving a video. I found out they were selling two videos, one called “Olongapo Scandal” and the other “Nicole.” The videos feature a Filipina and a Caucasian. The videos play on the Nicole tragedy, even as it maligns her, insinuating that she had a sordid past, culminating with the rape.

Still porn

The "Nicole" case, and its strange convergence with the X-rated videos, reminds us of the many battles that still need to be fought around gender and sexuality issues.

First, throughout the trial, there was a lot of gossip, pretty much similar to the “Olongapo Scandal” tapes, of a “liberated” (used in its negative Filipino-English sense) woman who was asking for it because she had gone out with the Americans and had been drinking. I even heard talk about how “sweet” Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith looked, which unnerves me because it shows how naïve we can be at times. My psychologist friends will tell you about the paradox of the sociable sociopath: the most devious, the most lecherous of sociopaths are able to get away with bloody murder precisely because they can be warm and amiable.

Lost in the portrayal of "Nicole" and the corporal is this simple definition of rape: forced sex. It’s important that we Filipinos, the men especially, learn that there is such a thing as date rape, and even marital rape. In fact, there’s something even more bestial with date and marital rape because in such cases, you violate someone who has come to trust you.

Second, the coverage of the rape incident often took on qualities of those cheap Quiapo porn videos. In fairness, many media practitioners were conscious about the ethics of reporting on rape, for example using the pseudonym “Nicole” even if it was not legally required, but much of the coverage was clearly intended to titillate, as the legal definition of porn goes.

Now that the trial is over, "Nicole" will fade from public memory. If she is remembered, it will be as “the one raped.” There’s the risk we might end up forgetting all the other important issues, from national sovereignty and the Visiting Forces Agreement, to our still twisted concepts about sex and sexuality.

To remain fixated on the sensational aspects of the rape is to reduce this whole incident into another seedy porn production, like what’s sold in Quiapo, turning us into a nation of voyeurs craving for cheap public spectacles.

Pedigrees

PINOY KASI

Pedigrees
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 02:59am (Mla time) 12/01/2006

Published on Page A15 of the December 1, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


WHEN I hear “pedigree,” I think of a snooty poodle, haughty head held up high, with a certificate from the Philippine Canine Club showing her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, including several names in red to refer to champions or those that won awards in dog shows.

But pedigree applies as well to humans, with claims to aristocracy, again supported by the pedigree itself, which is the list of ancestors. In Western countries, it does make some sense since only the rich would have extensive ancestral records. I’m going to explain later that among the Chinese, both rich and poor (or maybe the not so poor) are able to keep pedigrees.

Last Wednesday, I wrote about the human need to unravel our origins, dating back millions of years with human evolution, or in the more recent past with family trees. There’s even computer software now available to help with reconstructing the records.

But even without the software, I think people might be able to manage. The Chinese have managed centuries of ancestral records without computers. A few years back, my parents and I visited the province of Fujian and went to our "lao jia" [ancestral village], where my paternal grandfather came from. My father and all his siblings were born in the Philippines and yet the ancestral book had them all. I was told that if I really wanted to dig further back, I could do this across several generations.

Shortly after that visit, my father received a letter from the family association asking him to update the records by sending the names of his children. I imagine that the records will continue to be updated across several generations of Chinese-Filipinos.

Here in the Philippines, family trees are beginning to catch on. In fact, this might be a good time to start a project, with the Christmas clan reunions. Just interviewing all your relatives should get you started with your pedigree (stop thinking now about poodles).

If you’re really serious about all this, you can bring the names of some of your ancestors to the Mormons’ national church headquarters in White Plains, Quezon City, where they have a computerized file of all birth records in the Philippines. From these files, you should be able to piece together a major part of your ancestral jigsaw puzzle.

Complications

Not all of this search for ancestors will be smooth sailing. As you search through the Mormons’ computerized files, be prepared for surprises, such us finding previously unknown spouses and offspring of those illustrious ancestors.

A bigger problem though may be the lack of records, given that many Filipinos are born and die without ever being registered. That’s why the best way to start is still through old-fashioned interviews with your relatives. Work on the older ones—even if they seem forgetful, their long-term memory is usually intact, and that includes remembering who’s related to whom.

I know one elderly woman who had to be hospitalized two years ago and whenever a doctor, nurse or therapist entered her room, she’d look at the nameplate. If the surname sounded familiar to her, she’d begin rattling off the names of people she knew with the same surname and ask if the hapless hospital staff was related. With additional questions about hometowns, parents’ and grandparents’ names, she did succeed in establishing some of the kinship ties of several of the hospital personnel.

Not surprisingly, this grand old grandmother's home in Quezon City has its family tree painted on her living room wall. It’s a large tree, which I’ve always imagined to be narra, with the main trunk representing a man who lived in the 19th century, with four (or was it five?) huge branches, each representing one wife, with the names of all descendants, and their spouses, down to great-grandchildren represented by tiny twigs.

Anthropologists love these family trees, or, if we want to sound more scholarly, genealogies. There’s a whole notational system for doing these genealogies to represent males, females, sibling relationships, parent-offspring relations, marriage, divorce, death.

But I’ve always wondered how accurate these genealogies are. Not all families will be as inclusive as that Quezon City clan I just mentioned, with all the side branches. Other clans would be very selective with their family trees. We remember the lawyers and doctors and bishops and generals, but conveniently forget the "kobrador" [bill collector], the "kargador" [stevedore], the vendors, the "colegiala" (convent-school girl) who ran away with (gasp) the "tsuper" -- oops, I beg your pardon, the family chauffeur.

Then there’s the problem of families that change their surnames. The “I-witness” TV program's Howie Severino had an entertaining documentary last month about names in the Philippines, with some coverage of stigmatized surnames. The documentary mentioned one Ilocano chap with the surname Pekpek (a Tagalog slang word for the vagina) who got it changed to ... Perpek. Only in the Philippines.

IMSCF syndrome

Now the truth why I’m doing another column on origins. I had a subtitle in last Wednesday’s column that read “IMSCF syndrome,” but didn’t quite get to discuss the syndrome for lack of space.

So just what is this syndrome? One of my graduate students, Christine Ajoc, alerted me to this term in a paper she submitted for my biological anthropology class. It means “I am Spanish-Chinese-Filipino syndrome,” and it is common among overseas Filipinos living in North America. Among Filipinos in Hawaii, there’s another variation where they claim Hawaiian ancestry as well.

The term actually appears in a legal website, dictionary.laborlawtalk.com, and is described as “ethnic forgery” because that mixed ancestry is fabricated. The dictionary entry speculates that this falsified pedigree reflects the lack of a national identity among overseas Filipinos and the need to boost their social status by claiming to have Spanish and/or Chinese blood. Somehow, Filipino takes on connotations of being poor, of being inferior.

When you think about it, this is really another variation of genealogical amnesia. By bringing in fake ancestors, we actually exclude the genuine ones. It’s sad, in a way, and instructive, reflecting our colonial mentality and our obsession with class.

I don’t hesitate to tell people my grandparents came from a dirt-poor village in southern China and that both my grandfathers started out in the Philippines with very small buy-and-sell ventures, with my maternal grandfather selling handkerchiefs on a sidewalk on Escolta Street.

My father says there is a Chinese proverb that, loosely translated, goes this way: “A successful person should have no qualms about acknowledging humble origins.” I would think there should be pride in staking that claim, and making a statement for the way hard work can make a difference for generations to come.


Origins

PINOY KASI

Origins
By Michael Tan
Inquirer
Last updated 00:11am (Mla time) 11/29/2006

Published on Page A15 of the November 29, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer


NEANDERTHALS have been making headline news lately. No, I don't mean the politicians; in fact, I will clarify that unfounded insult in a while. I'm referring to Homo neanderthalis, currently believed to be our closest relative in the increasingly complex human ancestral tree.

The other week, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany announced that they had reconstructed part of the genome, the genetic make-up, of a Neanderthal man who lived 38,000 years ago, using new techniques called metagenomics. They did this using a thighbone to extract DNA, the building blocks of genes.

The breakthrough represents the new directions that are being taken as we try to unravel the mysteries around our origins. Before this, scientists -- mainly physical anthropologists -- could study the bones to look at evolutionary changes only.

From the Neanderthal bones that have been recovered, we do know something about their external appearance. We know they were about as tall as we, Homo sapiens, are, but were stockier. They had a larger skull than we do, although that still doesn't tell us how intelligent they were, since brain size doesn't really correlate with mental ability. Their skull bones tell us they had high eyebrow ridges and a more massive jaw, a bit of the Arnold Schwarzenegger look, which contributed to the idea that Neanderthals weren't very smart. That, of course, is an unfair stereotype; US President George Bush doesn't have any of those Neanderthal features and yet...

With the advances in genetics, it'll be possible to have fossils tell more detailed stories. By reconstructing the Neanderthals' genetic make-up, we will be able to get down to figuring out what the color of their hair, eyes and skin were. Scientists are looking forward as well to finding out more about their brain function, and even their capabilities for speech and language as we have today. (To do this, they'll be looking for a gene FOXP2, responsible for the development of language skills. The gene is found in Homo sapiens but not in chimpanzees, our other close relative.)

There was a brief period, between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, when Neanderthals and Homo sapiens lived in Europe. So scientists are intrigued, too, as to whether the two crossed paths. Was it a hostile relationship, where Homo sapiens might even have contributed to Homo neanderthalis' extinction? Or was it one of tolerance? Even more tantalizing is the possibility that there might have been, you know, friendlier relations that led to Neanderthals contributing to our own gene pool.

The last two or three years, scientists have been coming up with different opinions on whether Homo neanderthalis and Homo sapiens interbred. Technically, breeding between two different species shouldn't occur but all over nature we do find this happening occasionally, so maybe there was some of that between Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalis, which would mean they're actually ancestors, rather than just cousins.

If scientists do confirm that interbreeding happened, I can imagine Hollywood films capitalizing on this to create some Paleolithic love story, with maybe Governor Arnold playing a lead role.

Need to know

Governments and private foundations pour millions of dollars each year into research on our origins, whether to get more fossil bones, or, now for this very sophisticated metagenomics research. All those investments tell us something about our being human: our need to know where we come from.

More dogmatic Christians will insist the answer is simple: God created all species as is, and that's it. But many Christians are willing to accept that there is a creator God who allows evolution to take place. The head of the Human Genome Project in the United States, responsible for mapping out the genes of Homo sapiens, is an evangelical Christian who recently came out with a book arguing that there is no conflict between the Christian faith and evolution.

Still other scientists say there is no creator God, that nature is, in the words of Richard Dawkins, a "blind watchmaker" in which things just happen, or rather, just evolve.

Whatever one's personal beliefs are, there can be no denying the growing fossil record in support of evolution. When I first did a biological anthropology course back in the early 1980s, I had to plaster my walls with the names of different fossils in our ancestral tree. Now that I have to teach the anthropology courses myself, I find myself having to update the handouts every semester to incorporate new fossil names. I don't ask the students to memorize them since there are so many now.

From the 19th century into the first half of the 20th century, people still thought of human evolution as a matter of looking for a "missing link" between apes ( e.g., chimpanzees, gorillas) and humans. Today, scientists don't use that term anymore, recognizing that our ancestral tree consists of many branches and side branches, rather than a straight line.

IMSCF syndrome

Our need to know about our origins takes many forms, and is certainly not confined to bones and fossils. In the past, adopted children often had a difficult time finding out who their biological parents were. Today, in countries like the United States, adoption agencies and adoptive parents will take pains to establish who those biological parents are, in case an adopted child wants to look for them someday. The need to know has been transformed into a right to know.

The need to know translates into the current craze to reconstruct genealogies or family trees. Ofelia Ac-ac, a Filipina anthropologist who now lives in Belgium, came visiting earlier this year and told me about how she had gotten her hometown, Paete in Laguna province, to go into a huge family tree project, using fairly simple computer software.

Genealogical mapping helps build community solidarity, and may even bring peace to warring ones. In the province of Kalinga, retired anthropology professor M. C. Barrameda has been working with communities to map out genealogies. The result? People from different villages are now discovering relatives in other villages, and are questioning why they have such bitter, even murderous, feuds.

But then maybe it's because some people choose to forget the ties that bind. Jean Dumont, a French anthropologist who wrote "Visayan Vignettes," observes how we sometimes go into selective amnesia to forget or exclude relatives who are poorer. Maybe, in other cases, as in Kalinga, we choose to forget relatives who wronged us.

All that again tells us something about humans. Deep down, the need to go back to the past, several millions of years or just a generation or two, is a need to anchor ourselves in the present.