Pinoylandia

It was early on in our writing time for ST—when we were just contributing pieces but not doing so regularly—that one of the writers who disagreed with what I wrote suggested I ceased writing and return to the country where I came from. He might have had a thing against CW Filipino writers.

The only problem was that I was already a naturalized citizen for more than 20 years, had left my country of origin in the ’60s, and was a few years ahead of the CNMI’s blanket entry into the union when Ronald Reagan declared citizenship for those residing on the islands of the CNMI.

I did not realize what a challenge it was to be a Pinoy in the Marianas. When a former Guam acquaintance invited me from Manila for a week on Saipan to see the money that can be made in importing contract labor in 1989, I was flabbergasted at the living conditions provided Filipino workers. In one instance, I saw a 20-foot container refurbished into bed bunks for 20 workers. The outhouse was outside and the kitchen was on the other end of the rectangular box. I declined his offer.

Coming back a decade later from Hawaii to assume the parson role and function at a Protestant church in ‘98, I was advised not to wear a polo barong coming into the CNMI. To be perceived as a Pinoy was not a plus in one’s favor.

Of course, having spent time dealing with civil and human rights issues, I thought the racial sensitivity was blown out of proportion until I sought shelter from the rain in one of the fancy stores for tourists. One of the counter girls reminded me of a Filipina friend and I asked if she had any Filipino blood in her heritage. I got a look that was classic, with a stern and sharp response: “Of course NOT!” Serves me right for falling into the racial trap.

But I am from Pinoylandia. Looking up the word in a dictionary will not help. It is not there. The category is a place in the kukute (brain) before it is a superficial geography on the planet. In fact, if Pinoylandia exists at all, it is around the world among Filipinos in diaspora but without the organizing magnetism of something like the Chinatowns and Koreatowns in major cities. Pinoylandia of my familiar stays dispersed.

Filipinos are highly socialized people, ever conscious of their “people knowledge” expressed in hierarchical structures. There was one Filipino organization in Dallas, Texas, when I left in 1971. When I returned a decade later, I was told that there were at least 200 Filipino organizations in the city. It appears that when one of the organizations held an election, the “losing” party would establish a new organization. My father hails from the small town of San Esteban, Ilocos Sur, in the Philippines and in Honolulu alone, there were allegedly more than five organizations whose name identified with a section of the town.

A united body that provides umbrella services to all member organizations tends to dissipate into just one among many organizations and we shall not trace the history of unifying bodies in both the Marianas and Hawaii to make our point. 

The role and function of a united body is often functionally operational when its officers serve rather than rule. Sadly, many are still hung up on the power of social rule, and many organizations are hardly in existence to serve a clientele as they are to promote the interest of its officers and members. That is not a moral judgment, just a statement of fact for this writer.

I number myself among the Pinoy in diaspora. Though travelling with the blue book of Uncle Sam, that is a matter of citizenship, not a mindset. Pinoy is a mindset, street-smart and world-wise.  There are many members across the planet paying no dues since they are not organized. 

Pinoys are a common sense people with a worldwide perspective. The street-smart quality is practical and objective. Its metaphors are grounded in the real, the deeds are authentic and verifiable. As President Reagan once said of his foreign policy to the Russians, “Trust but verify.”

Widespread world-wise, quality is varied and quantity dispersed. Pinoys don’t long for the Hispanic de clase definition of selfhood. The term “Filipino” referred to Spaniards born in the archipelago. The natives were called “indios.” Assuming the title “Filipino” when the Kano came calling to ascend to a higher social status scale.

That Pinoy derives from “Filipino” is without question, but in my youth it was the slang for the nighttime guitar strummer after downing beer-gin-coke for courage to serenade a lassie visiting the village from the “city” for a time.

My world-wise contribution is the lucidity that since ‘68, the Earthrise was the context of identity and selfhood, not ethnicity or citizenship. If Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart, my Pinoylandia is in the soul. During typhoons, a guitar strums in my neighborhood even as a storm got stronger. It strums anticipating Atsani these days behind boarded windows.

Meanwhile, I nurse my beer-gin-coke.