Filipino Moments: Juan Tamad No More

By Jon F. Dee

A Labor Day Tribute to the Filipino Working Men and Women Abroad

Today, the Philippines could sing of Juan Tamad as the wind beneath its wings. Indeed a lot of positive things could be said of the Filipino working man, particualrly those workers who exported themselves to the world labor market.

Twenty years ago, the foreign exhange desk of the Philippine National Bank was handling close to forty percent of the country's external transactions. At that time, half of the annual foreign income of $6 billion went to oil imports. Only a fraction of the energy needs was provided by local sources, thereby aggravating the loss of sugar and coconut as the traditional exports.

To relieve the pressure on the three-month country dollar reserve position, a short-term goal of raising to 20% the local component of energy usage was set. It appeared to us then to be a lofty goal from the 10% the off-shore oil wells were producing. Foreign exchange holdings are one measure of a country's financial health, a six-month reserve to cover importation being considered minimum for a positive rating.

By 1985, the Philippines owed $25 billion to the Paris Club, international development organizations like the World Bank, IBRD, ADB and 500 other private banks, the biggest ones being from Tokyo, New York and California. The loans were practically in default and on many of those loans creditor banks had tacked on a 2% penalty in addition to the already high interest rate available to high-risk, third-world countries.

In hindsight, what we thought then to be an unattainable energy goal was in fact a very mild prescription if the Philippines expected to ever free itself from the bondage of being the Sisyphean debtor.

Today despite press releases to the contrary, the economcy is far from secure. Twenty years after the default that led to a moratorium which created a secondary market for Philippine Promissory notes selling much below par in the international financial markets, the foreign debt has risen to $75 billion.

Inspite of predictions after World War II that the Philippines would be the bridge to the future that is Asia, the nation still bears the burden of that promise and has a runaway population of some 82 million. Eighty percent are Roman Catholics and the professed creed is to put more food on the table rather than limit the participants in the banquet of life. But how?

Consistent with the reasoning of the 1970's water seemed to be the answer. With massive loans from international economic development institutions, the goal was to double rice production by building irrigation systems to conserve water and enable the farmers to plant during the dry season. So Juan Tamad, the farmer, was put to work to increase his productivity by 100% to save the country from having to pay for basic needs with precious dollars. The dollar earnings had also trebled to $18 billion, but so had the price of oil; consequently, servicing the foreign debt took the other half of the dollar earned, and the peso dropped, driving up the cost of all imports. So what could have been silver linings became instead a rising tide of expectations and unsatiable desires for consumer imports.

The bleeding from the external sector could have been fatal to the country's international credit were it not for the remittances by the country's laboring class abroad. The country might have finally rediscovered its greatest asset -a self-reliant people eager to work whenever conditions warrant. Will the Filipino finally find his redemption in the vineyards of the world?

Yet the resultant relative strength of the Philippine peso, as for example compared to the Mexican which dropped in value to P2,000 to a dollar, over the last few decades notwithstanding intermittent shocks caused by political and military events, the growth and stabilization of foreign reserves, miraculous as it seems, has not been adequately credited to its real source - the Filipinos working abroad. It is a fact which in turn allowed for longer and larger refinancing to pay for maturing foreign borrowings.

Like the tribal hunters that we still are in some ways, Filipinos leave their county in search of the pot of gold in whatever ideological or economic terrain accessible to them. They are the little Dutch boys like Peter, the generation that's trying to plug the leaks in the fragile dike that is the Philippine economy.

A million and a half in California, two million strong in America, another four million points of light strung across the globe, Filipinos have created foreign exchange beehives not unlike emerging China's super surrogate but homogenous economies in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the Chinatowns of San Francisco, Vancouver and Toronto. Dentists, doctors, accountants, engineers, ministers, musicians, nuns, office workers, seamen, teachers - all laborers, mostly working with their hands, toiling for lower wages, suffering through longer hours and victimized by both pride and prejudice. On their shoulders have fallen the twin yoke of failed political leadership and profligate spending of the past.

They preach in Italy and in reverse evangelization bring the light back into the heart of Christendom. They sail the open seas, taking chances between fire and sea so that others on deck may bask in the sunshine of their lives. They sing in clubs and cabarets that others may forget their cares. They toil in the night, and long into the wee hours of the morning, caring and giving, perhaps alleviating the terror of the sick, the unloved and the advanced in years, while themselves waiting for the curtain call of their own darkening stage in foreign lands. In the oil fields of desert lands, they face mortal danger and suffer isolation and the fear and loneliness they bear it all with stoic hearts. As they forego quality time with their own, we fear for their lives as they care for the children of this world.

Do they ever know who my generation's hero is? Neither general nor archbishop, he is unbemedalled and unsung. No arch of trimph or cathedral will mark his labor. His character was not forged in the fire and hate of combat but built from life's little joys and hurdles.

Earning his bread from day to day by his unselfish sharing and resolve that tomorrow will always be a better day for the children, he has prepared the womb for more liberators of the future, marching in victory but not in the shadow of a gun barrel, waving instead the olive branch of a Pacific people.

In an uncommon, unmodern act of loyalty, the Filipino working man abroad has not turned his back on the motherland. He has cast instead an economic lifeline giving susteneance to kin and friends alike and in more important respect, inspiring hope and pride in the homeland.

We all have become seekers of the American Dream, but whatever allegiances we have sworn to, let us remember the true heroes of our generation. If you are of the lineage of Lapulapu, Gabriela Silang, Sumory, Bonifacio, Mabini, Tandang Sora, or Guimbaolibot, you will, in all likelihood, remember, amidst the bounty of this nation, a familiar memory of a kinder place and a gentler time that molded a self-sacrificing people who have not forgotten to pray and smile and sing and dance.

He is my kind of hero, who has not lost his passion for living and even in impoverishment is yet capable of celebrating the arts and daring the future. Be worthy of him, give him a helping hand, be your brother's keeper and always be alert for opportunities to serve, that we might yet heal and make whole this many splintered, self-exiled community that truly deserves God's blessings.