12/06/2022
12 June 2022
By Trelly A. Marigza
After 300 years of Spanish rule, Filipino rebels led by Emilio Aguinaldo declared Philippine Independence in his ancestral home in Kawit, Cavite on 12 June 1898. This was also the first time the Philippine national anthem and the national flag was displayed.
In 1962 President Diosdado Macapagal said
that this was the day when we declared our desire to exercise our inherent and inalienable right to freedom and independence.
Well, there is more to this in our nation's history.
Freedom comes when the heart and soul are free and when each one can responsibly exercise their rights.
Independence day celebration... But have we ever been truly independent? More than three centuries ago, this country run an egalitarian society. But the Roman empire arrived in search of spices and conquered. Other empires came - conquered, occupied influenced. They all came in different ways, in many faces.
Can we truly celebrate an Independence when we are so much controlled and influenced by others, when having our own minds is prone to repression, when leadership is dictated by foreign policies, when economy is held by a few, when legislators make laws that benefit themselves, when poverty prevails, when ignorance prevails in suffrage, when our societal psyche is molded by agency manipulations and historical distortions, when even the unborn is indebted, ideas repressed, internal displacement and extra judicial killings are becoming the norm, funds are for war but not education and health, and the earth continues to groan in pain as blood rain pours.
How Filipino are we is a question to ask. Why, even the term Filipino is not an indigenous term. How much do we even know of our own culture, our indigenous ways and practices? What are supposed to be our indicators to say we belong to this country indeed?!