Kingdom of Maharlika: divided by more than an ocean
I’m Filipino-American, and that’s a pretty loaded statement. To be Filipino-American like me is to have two countries and none, to be envied and mocked, to be familiar and foreign, to understand but unable to speak— all at once.
I’m a States-born Filipino. Born from the 80’s wave of professionals. I grew up believing in the ‘American Dream.’ Our whole family lived in the West Coast suburbs, trying their best to recreate that back-home feeling with big Sunday BBQ’s at my Uncle’s house, singing karaoke, settling in as Americans. We’re grown now. And I’ve never been to the Philippines. It’s expensive to go there, and I haven’t been able to make time to go. It’s a shame, but it doesn’t make me any less Filipino than the ones who were born there.
In 2020 the world is divided. I write this now because we are finally standing up for anti-Blackness, collectively. To me, that extends to dismantling white supremacy, Western oppression and anti-immigrant sentiments. Just as we are tearing down statues of Columbus and slave traders. It’s a reckoning. We reject the cancer that is colonization, and reclaim our ancestors’ destinies. The trauma from colonization and occupation runs deep and is passed down from generation to generation, not only in our genes, but in our values, how we learn who we are, how we interact with the world.
Transgenerational transmissions take on life in our in dreams, in acting out, in “life lessons” given in turns of phrase and taught us by our family. Discovering transmission means coming to know and tell a larger narrative, one from the preceding generation. It requires close listening to the stories of our parents and grandparents, with special attention to the social and historical milieu in which they lived — especially its military, economic, and political turmoil.
What do you know about the Philippines pre-colonization? We were the Painted Ones. We are the people of Lapu-Lapu, who killed that savage Magellan and delayed the Spanish occupation of the islands by over forty years. And then 333 years of violent, genocidal, West-washing oppression and subjugation. Beating the ancient ways out of us. Dividing us by the color of our skin and the bridge of our nose. Suppressing over seven-thousand islands that already had their own distinct, independent, developed cultures, languages and religions, the Kingdom of Maharlika — in the name of a king on the other side of the world. How many generations of trauma is that?
Three hundred thirty three years. Let that sink in for a moment. . During that time, The Spanish, Dutch, English took their share of riches and resources to ship back to the white world on the backs of Black and Brown labor. Indigenous people being shipped off to zoos for spectacle, and god knows what else.
Our dads think of the Philippine nationalist heroes of the late 1800s: Bonifacio, Rizal, Aguinaldo. My generation looks to the women revolutionaries: Teresa Magbanua and Tandang Sora, and Gabriela Silang who lead an Ilocano movement for independence from Spain in the mid-1700s.
And after all that, 1.5 million Filipino men, women and children are killed in the Philippine-American War.
In 2020 we still see anti-Blackness in Filipino communities. Today is Juneteenth and for the first time in US history, it has become just short of a federal holiday, all in just about a week and a half. It was only 155 years ago that the last rebel state, Texas abolished slavery. That is what this day commemorates for Black Americans. But who is truly ‘free’ in America today?
What does it mean to be ‘Filipino’ if we were not a single nation before the colonizers set foot on our land? The closest thing I can find so far is the Kingdom of Maharlika: a time of warriors, clans and gold; that went as far as Japan, Borneo, Hawaii and everywhere in between. A time when gender wasn’t reduced to binary stereotypes and trans-women were revered as shamans.
So why does any of this matter? Because we need to rethink our ‘Filipino’ values. These are values based on lifetime after lifetime of oppression under one ‘white’ group, and then another. Telling us we are less than. That we only deserve what they give us. And now it is our turn. But we are our own worst enemy. The racism, the apathy, the inhumanity, the complacency, the acceptance that this is the only way. Enough.
I was told by some that I have no idea, no business speaking on the politics of Duterte and the Philippines today. It’s better now, they say. I don’t know how bad it was, they say. But I do see how a Black life in America, the land of the American Dream, is worth nothing to the ones in power. And a lot of that treatment stems from American laws that were (and still are) legally passed by our government at every level. Relying solely on principles of ‘legality’ is dangerous. Weaponizing the law is not a new tactic. Just because it’s ‘legal’ doesn’t mean it’s right for the people. Some Filipinos in America know this very well, as we are particularly called out in several state’s laws. I demand that our standard go beyond legality, to consider humanity.
I also know we live in a global world. And just as an earthquake creates a tsunami across oceans, the wave hits us all eventually. History happens one article, one court ruling, one moment at a time. We have to constantly push, constantly ask, “safer streets for who? And at what cost?” I think of Kian delos Santos and how all the others we will never know about because no one gave a damn.
The soul is one thing that can’t be really be colonized. Our souls are our connection to the universal life force, which it returns to after our mortal death. The energy of oppression doesn’t just disappear. It can be silenced but never truly gone. It waits. It waits to be felt and heard by someone through some means — lived experience, reading history, hearing oral accounts — it is awakened. And from there, we must continue to discover our true selves and unlearn everything that has kept us away from each other.
