Yes, we did survive the Americans, and the Japanese. Just to suffer under the hands of a fellow Filipino who brought martial law. Yet, we strived for another independence by marching to EDSA for what to foreigners was a miracle… but for us, a simple virtue of unity. A bloodless revolution that ended the twenty-three ear reign of the Marcos's.
Eighteen years later, we are now but mere slaves of poverty, social and racial differences, the evils in the economic and educational systems, graft and corruption, culture war, and our ruler's personal and political agendas.
Which brings me to thinking about what could be going through the minds of Rizal, Bonifacio, Aquino and all other freedom fighters if in case they still live.
As if the problem is not hard enough, thinking for a solution could be more brain draining. The leaders all tell us that everything is fine. Fooling us poor Filipinos, fabricating, elaborating and exaggerating just to cover for all their failures.
In a time where public elementary school students scream and moan “I'm tired of studying under a mango tree”, where the basic salaries of bourgeois people won't be able to sustain the cost of living, where people owns P64, 000.00 worth of foreign debts even before they are born, where insurgencies pops up like mushrooms, where crime is a box -office among news breaks, where injustice is a common picture, living and dreaming of a prosperous and peaceful life would only lead us to wistful thinking.
But what could be the cure? It is said that we can help in our own little way, for so many times, the young has been thought to do little things, but as far as I remember, nothing has changed. We have shifted from one leader to the other, even ousting a sick and dysfunctional president in 2001 but to no avail.
Another uprising would only turn us to “lost sheep.” Not to mention being the subject of jokes around the world. An uprising against what? Against who?
Our rulers has done their job, and they did it good, making people believe this false freedom, this now empty independence that our heroes fought and died for. They have done well in poisoning the young's innocent minds, making them believe that the war is over...that the white dove triumphantly flies with the leaves of peace in her beak.
Come June 12, I will not go running around, celebrating and shouting happy independence day like everyone else. Instead I will light a single candle and mourn for Rizal, Bonifacio, Aquino, all the other freedom fighters, and those working for every little scrap of food for their families in this special day. I will mourn for the innocent children who in no time will be facing the truth about this land. Lastly, I will mourn for this now empty freedom, a freedom we should have protected, an abstraction that we have always wanted and deserved.
(The author is a Mass Communications junior from San Sebastian College.)
