Time for Filipino Food

Time for Filipino Food

            Here is an abbreviated version of a recent article I wrote for "VIA Times Newsmagazine."  I had been writing about history and politics for a while and decided that it was time for a change, time for a word about Filipino Food.  Enjoy:  

                "I recently emailed my Sheboygan, Wisconsin nephew Nick (not his real name) who has a Filipino fiancée.  The subject was food.  He replied promptly and enthusiastically.  We both love Filipino food.

            Nick and fiancée Clara (not her real name) from central Mindanao have been going together for several years now, so I was curious to know what their favorite Filipino foods were.  In looking back now at Nick’s email reply, I can see that my nephew was writing at the end of a tiring day.  He was thinking about my question, but his answers were coming to him slowly at first.  Thus I was not surprised that his first thoughts were about baked goods since Nick is noted for his sweet-tooth.  “In terms of my favorite Filipino recipe,” he said, “I would have to say Puto.”  (Nick has adopted the common Filipino culinary usage for ‘puto’.)  “That’s the steamed muffin-type snack commonly served with cheese on top.  Clara makes some great puto and she makes it for sale.”  Nick then adds that “chicken or pork adobo are good served with rice.  These would be Clara’s favorites,” that is the adobos and puto.

Nick went on to describe some of his own sweet-type recipes that he shared with Clara and her family.  He was clearly more alert now.  “I enjoy cooking, and when I travelled to the Philippines I thought it would be good to cook some of my favorite recipes from the USA for Clara’s family.  For years I have been travelling to the Philippines just prior to the New Year.  As you may already know, Filipinos enjoy celebrating the New Year by partying all night long with fireworks and a lot of food.  I offered to cook some food for the occasion.  One of my kids’ favorites is my homemade pizza and bread sticks.  It also seemed to be a favorite of Clara’s family too.  It seemed they like many of the recipes I brought with me . . . angel food cake, chocolate chip cookies, homemade cheese cake.”  A sweet-tooth indeed.

Reading his next food observation, I could tell that Nick’s food-memories were cooking.  “In many celebrations in the Philippines it is common to roast a pig. Families would raise a pig until it was big enough to slaughter and roast over a big fire.  Clara’s daughter did just that. She got a pig and raised it for months.  The last time I visited, the pig was there at their house, kept like we might keep a dog.  But the pig was meant for a feast.  I witnessed the roasting of one of these pigs for one feast.  It is a major undertaking.  Getting enough wood together, setting up the pipe for the spit that will be able to hold the weight of the pig and be able to turn.  Then roasting the pig for hours until it is fully cooked.  They would take turns turning the spit by hand.  Serving the pig was just a matter of putting the whole pig on a table for everyone to carve off a piece of meat.”  

Nick’s description of the pig roast resonated with me entirely.  I particularly enjoy Filipino pork adobo and have made it myself on a couple of special occasions, though I have never attended a pork roast such as he described, though I have often heard about them.     

Nick then ended rather abruptly: “Unfortunately it is time for me to sleep.”  I sent him a thank-you email and said that it was nice to observe someone else who can be kept awake by the thought of good food.  Then come the happy dreams."       

Bob Boyer
November 14, 2019

Notes on "How to Hide an Empire"

          Daniel Immerwahr's recent book, "How to Hide an Empire," focuses on the U.S. as a colonial power surpassing even the Spanish, French, and (yes!) the U.K.  It is alternately fascinating and irritating, but, fortunately the information and insights, the fascinating part, outlasts the Irritating. 

          The following are just a few initial notes I've made a week or so after finishing the book and deciding that my thoughts about it would not leave me any peace until I wrote some of them down. 
Also I've already told my daughter who gifted me with the book that I wanted to talk to her about it.  She is an avid reader herself, as well as a professional statistician, so I realized I'd better have a few details prepared.

          Here are the first thoughts, somewhat randomly jotted down and then checked against the text.  I need to mention that I am, for the first time, using an eBook here, rather than a hard copy where I love to dog-ear and mark up pages.  Consequently I have not always been able to locate topics that Immerwahr may have explained further in footnotes, though, believe me, I have made the attempt.  I suspect that readers of this blog will be better able to check up on my use of Immerwarh's notes.

          Daniel Immerwahr, “How To Hide An Empire,” 2019

          1) What happened to the U.S. Army Air Corps in the Philippines after Pearl Harbor?

          Immerwahr effectively details the sequence of events from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941 (December 8 in the other Pacific Island Territories of the U.S. in a later time zone, as he correctly points out; he further notes that all other Pacific Island Territories of the U.S. were attacked simultaneously, which for all of them, and by far the larger number, the day of "Infamy" was December 8, 1941).  The following is the sequence of events in the Philippines. 

          *MacArthur receives the news by telephone at his quarters (“penthouse atop the Manila Hotel” he can’t resist saying) in the Manila Hotel at 3:40 a.m. Philippine time.  He goes immediately to his command headquarters.

          *MacArthur’s air commander goes to headquarters.  MacArthur refuses to see him.  The air commander tries a second time with the same non-result.

*MacArthur receives “repeated warnings from Washington,” even “direct orders,” all of which go unacknowledged.  Strangely Immerwahr doesn’t specify what the orders were that were ignored.

          *The Japanese planes arrive “sometime after noon, nine hours after Mac
Arthur’s phone had rung,” and bombed the U.S. planes on Clark Airforce Base and a few other smaller fields; nearly all the planes were, shockingly, still on the ground.

With some legitimacy Immerwahr  concludes by comparing this catastrophe to the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay in which Dewey and the U.S. Fleet demolished the hapless Spanish Fleet completely while it remained confined in the harbor. 

I have read a few speculations as to why MacArthur failed to act in the nine hours between news of Pearl Harbor and the arrival of the Japanese planes.  The only one that I remember having any authority points out that about half of the U.S. fighter planes and bombers would have had to be in the air constantly for those nine hours while the other half refueled in order to remain on full alert.

          More helpful are Immerwahr’s stats, which I had not seen as detailed in other treatments: eighteen of thirty five B-17s (the vaunted Flying Fortresses) and “ninety other aircraft” destroyed and “many others” damaged.  The damaged planes either couldn’t get off the ground at all for some time, or else most of them were unable to get past the bombed or strafed wrecks. 

          Immerwahr makes clear what I hadn’t realized before.  The U.S. actually did have a formidable air defense in the Philippines, but MacArthur's seeming paralysis doomed it to failure.  Like the Spanish in 1898, the U.S. lost “its fleet in a single day.”

Immerwahr, to his credit, does not accuse or even criticize MacArthur (something he is happy to do elsewhere) for his failure to act at this crucial moment, but actually refers to his proven military genius before and after the loss of the air defense, and accepts what others have said.  It remains a “mystery.”

          2)  Immerwahr helped me realize that I never fully understood the status of people living in U.S. Territories and the difference between U.S. nationality and citizenship.  

          Immerwahr makes the point very dramatically.  With the (official) surrender of the U.S. Army in the Philippines (over eighty percent Filipinos) after battling valiantly for  over five months, “Sixteen million Filipinos—U.S. nationals who saluted the Stars and Stripes and looked to FDR as their commander in chief—fell under a foreign power.”    

           In an age in which "voter registration" is a sensitive issue and a major concern of both liberals and conservatives (and everyone in between) this distinction jumped out at me, and I realized that I wasn't entirely up on it.  Immerwahr goes into some of the colonial history, but he avoids (unfortunately perhaps) giving a brief civics lesson.  Suffice it to say that in 1941, all native Filipinos were U.S. nationals though not U.S. citizens, unless their parents had become U.S. citizens.  It is also further instructive to discover which "outlying possessions" (a term I well remember from elementary school classes) acquired citizenship and voting rights. 

           3)  How the Japanese attack on Perl Harbor was an attack on the United States.

          FDR’s famous “Infamy” speech on December 8 went through numerous drafts, all now in the National Archives.  Initially Roosevelt announced a “bombing in Hawaii and the Philippines,” but after hours of “tinkering” he had eliminated the Philippines from equal prominence.  Immerwahr intimates that Roosevelt wanted to emphasize that the attack was on the United States, and Hawaii was the closest territory.  And it was, at least technically, a part of the U.S., while the Philippines, although the largest by far in population, was a “Commonwealth” and slated for eventual independence.                 Immerwahr also intimates that a further factor was that there were more white citizens on Hawaii proportionally than in the Philippines.  Racism, he believes, here as well as throughout the colonial experience of the U.S., was a another important historical throughout the colonial experience and probably for Roosevelt; racially Hawaii was, although whites were a minority, more white than any of the other territories, certainly than the Philippines.

          Clearly, Immerwahr’s analysis of the U.S. as a colonial power, an “Empire,” is not without controversy, with strong racial and racist implications.  We will return, when appropriate, to “How to Hide an Empire.”

rhb

Duterte Makes Headlines for His Drug War

          On occasion "The Wall Street Journal" covers important developments in the Philippines, with Jake Maxwell Watts who reports for them from Manila.  Friday, July 12, 2019 contains a noteworthy feature with a picture from late June of police at the scene of a killing.  The headline reads, "U.N. Seeks Probe on Duterte's Drug War."

          The U.N. Human Rights Council voted to launch an investigation "into the alleged killings of tens of thousands of Filipinos by police in a yearslong war--a rare international rebuke of President Rodrigo Duterte, who started the campaign on narcotics."

          I recommend the whole article, but a couple of items lodged in my mind.  One is that I was reminded that there have been very few (I frankly don't remember any) instances of national or international governmental criticism of Duterte.  (OK, it comes back to me.  The International Court of Justice in The Hague launched an investigation about a year ago.)  Which, when I think about it, is unusual and surprising.  Another is that the resolution passed by a slim vote, 18 to 14, with the Philippines voting against it, along with China, with whom Duterte has developed warm relations.  The article reviews the different, and varying statistics on the "extrajudicial killings," but even the lowest number, 5400, is enough to call for international outrage.  At least one would think so.

          Jake Maxwell Watts ends his article by referring to clashes between Mr. Duterte and Agnes Callamard, "the U.N.'s special raporteur on extrajudicial killings," citing Duterte's threat to Ms. Callamard, "'if you investigate me, he said during a speech in 2017, I'll slap you."  Duterte's mysogynist attitude has become notorious since his election. 

          It is fortunate that the International Court and now the U.N. Human Rights Council have taken public stands on investigating Duterte's "Drug War."  Filipino Women, like Vice President Robredo, along with a few Filipino Catholic Bishops are getting at least some outside support in their challenges to Duterte.  It's not surprising, unfortunately, that the U.S. president has not joined them.

rhb, July 13, 2019, the eve of Bastille Day

The Philippines leads on climate change? Yes!

I confess that I didn't completely believe this title of a "Commonweal" magazine article a few months back about the Philippines leading on climate change.  See what you think.  Let me/us know.  Oh, and my new resolve on this blog is to share my VIA Times NewsMagazine articles on a more regular basis.  You can also go to this blog site and click on the magazine link there.  rhb

The Philippines Leads on Climate Change

By: Bob Boyer

Most readers may not be surprised by this headline, but I confess that I was mildly surprised two or three months ago when I heard a Filipino on National Public Radio (NPR) claim that his country was leading the world on climate change. Then I caught up with an article written, at about the same time, that strongly seconded the claim. “If you want to see an inspiring example of engagement with Laudato si’ –Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment—look to the Philippines.” (Rita Ferrone, “Commonweal,” January 25, 2019, 6).

Ferrone guides us through this development, explaining why and how “Catholics in the Philippines, more than anywhere else,” have engaged so strongly with Francis’s pleas. Shortly after the encyclical appeared in June of 2015, “the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) released a strong statement backing the central concerns of the encyclical: ecology, stewardship, and concern for the poor.” (Ferrone, 6) The Bishops noted that the effects of climate change are “deleterious and devastating” on everyone but “especially on impoverished and struggling nations and communities.”

And the Philippines, both a “struggling” and a Catholic nation, is responding. “Church groups have lobbied for clean energy; fought the spread of polluting industries, deforestation, and mining; engaged indigenous communities in planting trees; and worked for solar-energy access for offgrid communities in poor areas.” (Ferrone, 6) These groups and the Bishops have evidently gotten attention at home and abroad. The Global Catholic Climate Movement came to Manila to launch its 2017 “Laudato si’ pledge” campaign. The Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Louis Antonio Tagle “invited Catholics around the world to sign the “Laudato si’ pledge.” Characteristic of Tagle, his invitation is both eloquent and humble: “I don’t want to sound presumptuous, but I would like to say that I am speaking in the name of the church, in the name of humanity, in the name of the poor, in the name of our common home, creation.” (Ferrone, 6)

Ferrone concludes her article with a listen-up message for the Catholic Bishops of the U.S., noting that by contrast with the Philippines, the U.S. Bishops have done precious little to promote climate change. She points to the Philippines and to Ireland, “where the bishps have divested from fossil fuels.” “They get it in lots of places,” she says, but “Here? We’re still waiting.” (Ferrone, 6).

As I noted at the outset, I was mildly surprised when I heard the Filipino on NPR make such a convincing case about the Philippines taking the lead on climate change. With hindsight, I’m much embarrassed. I’ve written about my own travels in the Philippines, emphasizing that the country is an archipelago of about six hundred inhabited islands. I’ve taken overnight Super Ferry trips and been amazed at the country’s beauty and aware of its vulnerability to flooding from a combination of rising water levels and typhoons. Former students at my college wrote to me to ask where they could send money to help out after Typhoon Yolanda in 2013 caused thousands of deaths and massive destruction.

Fittingly “the Philippines Leads” on climate change. Let’s follow.

Bob Boyer welcomes your observations at Robert.boyer@snc.edu.

Bangsamoro Organic Law Questions Answered

     I received a reply from my journalist friend in the Philippines (who wishes to remain anonymous for this entry) today with the answer to the second of the two questions raised by my friend in De Pere, Wisconsin recently.  The question posed was will the Muslims be able to serve in the national military if and when the new law goes into effect.  The answer is so well worded (not a surprise) that it is dead on target and I can't match it, so here it is, with his quirky punctuation included.

     "my hunch was right--the answer of course is yes, because one of the implicit aims of the law is to integrate former members of the MILF and MNLF (the muslim rebels) into the AFP and PNP.  that's the only way they can defang the rebellion--bring them over to the other side.

     if you can go over a copy of the BOL online--it's the Bangsamoro organic law, by the way, not a treaty per se--you'll find this stated in Article XI, Sec. 2, on public order and safety."

     He included a link to the BOL online, but I am going on his research because he always does it so thoroughly and accurately.  And this closes the three-post series (July 30, August 1 and 2) answering key questions about the new BOL.  

Bangsamoro Organic Law

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Duterte Signs Treaty Allowing for More Muslim Autonomy

      A friend of mine, a fellow reader of "The Wall Street Journal," asked me recently what I thought about a recent article about the treaty with the Muslims in Mindanao.  I promptly replied that I was pleased with that news, even though I am grudging about giving Duterte any credit about anything.  I went on to explain that the treaty was a positive development, even though the Muslim leadership (of the former major militant opposition, the Moro National Liberation Front) would have liked more independence from Manila than they finally got.  The treaty granted self government in most major areas, except for military defense, which would remain with the government in Manila.

     My friend then asked me two astute questions.  "Isn't there likely to be continued friction between the separatists and the central government.  And will the Muslims in the newly independent area be represented in the military?"  I have to admit that I did not have ready answers.  I had been hoping for a successful conclusion to the lengthy (years long) "truce" that had basically held between the MNLF and Manila.  I had not recently looked closely at the terms of the treaty, and I did not know how to answer his question.  Of course, I promised to do some searching in my news sources and one or two contacts.

     I haven't quite gotten to the research yet, but I decided to share the questions with you.  I'll let you know when I have something further, but I welcome your thoughts in the meantime.

July 31, 2018    
rhb