Primero de Julio started like any other day. Today, however, was different because of its historical significance to my home country and to where I’m currently living. Who would have thought that today would be the 65th anniversary of Philippines-Cuba Diplomatic Relations? I didn’t know that. Neither did those in the Home Office. We all did not have any clue, except, of course, our hosts who arranged for the unveiling a commemorative stamp to celebrate the event.
It appears that when the United States symbolically handed over our independence on 04 July 1946 (they of course stayed on in my country, introducing Parity Rights Act which allowed them equal rights to exploit our natural resources and kept their rights to their Naval and Air Bases), Cuba, which was then still more than a decade away from its Revolución and was still a favorite American puppet, was among the first to recognize our so-called Independence. No wonder nobody among us remembered that day. Who would care to remember two American puppets feting each other’s continuing existence as American lapdogs.
My opinion on the significance of the date aside, I must admit the Cubans were putting their best foot forward for this occasion. The commemorative stamp, which shows the Fortaleza de Cabaña of Havana and the Fort Santiago of Manila, is actually beautifully-designed. I wonder if the Philippine Postal Authority could be able to design something as good as this one. Probably not. They would not even think of doing the same thing for a country whose historical linkage to the Philippines dates back 400 years ago to the Spanish colonization period. Here’s the conundrum in Philippine-Cuban relations. For two countries who have shared centuries of common legacy, the recent tracks of the two could not be much more different having diverged starting in 1959 when Cuba decided to embark on its revolutionary path. The Philippines on the other hand stood firmly behind the United States during the Cold War.
In reality, the past 65 years can be characterized as “lost years” for both Philippines and Cuba. Prior to 1959, the two countries had fruitful and rich common histories which culminated in the late 19th century when both Cuban and Philippine revolutionaries were fighting a common struggle for independence and back in the days when both sides still spoke the Spanish language. Historians from both countries have established that the Revolutionary Movements in the Philippines and Cuba were actively in touch with each other. A solid bond existed between the blood brothers of mutual struggle separated by thousands of miles of ocean, but with a singular objective of achieving self-determination. Of course, we know what happened to the story. The gringos came and spoiled the party and ruled as benevolent Big Brother for the next 50 years or so. In fairness to the gringos, both Cuba and the Philippines did actually experience prosperous years between 1900 and 1940. In Cuba they call the period Vaca Gorda, while not just a few Filipinos longingly look back at the so-called Peace Time.
Fast forward to 2011. Cuba still speaks Spanish, but with the propensity of not pronouncing “S” while speaking at a blinding speed. Filipino’s on the other hand could only count using Spanish words and little else. But hey, we have become so Americanized that we parlayed it into a hugely-successful Call Center industry, which ironically invokes so much negative emotion in the United States for allegedly stealing jobs from American workers. Claro M. Recto bemoaned the Saxonization of the Philippines. How exactly did we manage to lose our capability to speak the Spanish language in such a short span of time? The answer of course is, outside of the ruling economic and political elite, we never really did speak that language as much in the Philippines. It was the other way around. The mestizos learned to speak our language. And when the generation that spoke Spanish at home died off, the next generation of coñitos and coñitas had already grown up learning how to speak Arrneow or La Sallite English.
Back to Cuba and the Philippines. We keep embassies in each other’s capital cities. We work together at the United Nations. We ask them to train our boxers. We smoke their tobacco. We drink their mojitos and Cuba Libres. We dance their salsa and cha-cha-cha. But it seems there is a wide chasm that exists between us (and not just geographically). I think we may have actually stopped caring for each other.
When one visits the viewing deck of the Jose Marti (Cuba’s National Hero and a contemporary of Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal) Memorial in the Revolution Plaza of Havana, which is the highest point in the city of Havana, the Cuban builders placed markers for the distances to selected cities around the world. Lo and behold. Manila is among those cities with markers, which is a testament of the past historical linkages between the two Spanish colonial ports (Manila is 15,123 km from Havana, according to the marker). We used to be the extreme outposts of the Spanish Empire. Porcelain, ivory and silk from Manila were loaded on Spanish galleons which eventually reached Havana before they were shipped onward to Spain. That historical umbilical cord has been cut off, probably never to be reestablished again. It is as if two brothers got separated at birth. One grew up with American foster parents, while the other one got sent to a Latin American orphanage run by Russian nannies and grew up as a rebellious, petulant child. When they finally meet up as adults, they could no longer recognize each other.
So we attended the ICAP program and spoke the usual platitudes – we were so close then, we work together at the UN, we thank you for your support for the end of the US embargo, etc.. Heck, we even read our statements in Spanish to the delight of the hakot crowd mostly made up of veterans of the 1959 Revolution, who were actually there for the free drinks and pica-pica. But you could feel the artificiality of the whole thing, as if we were merely playing a game of charades. Adding insult to injury, our car got jacked while it was parked outside of the venue, so we have to stay for most of the evening waiting for the Cuban version of the CSI (which of course, true to Cuban habit, arrived late) to come over and lift prints while a K9 sniffed the crime scene. The imagery was so ironic. We came to celebrate a memorial. We ended up watching a crime scene.