A great many among the masters of Filipino Martial Arts especially the old masters such as GM Nick Elizar fear that when the time comes, Filipinos will wake up one day and see that their very own stick fighting art has been named ‘European’ or ‘American’ stick fighting. This horror haunts their very sleep that’s why some masters are very eager to propagate this art throughout the islands of the Philippines. If only it was mandated long ago by law that FMA be part of the school curriculum, the apocalypse could have been stopped. However, even when the law passed, it is ironic that there are more foreigners who know Filipino Martial Arts than Filipinos themselves. Even Masters who propagate the art abroad, have gathered much appreciation and acceptance contrary to what is happening now on ground zero. In this article, I shall endeavor to reflect on what social and cultural factors that helped initiate the slow disappearance of Filipino in Filipino Martial Arts.
With more and more youth being driven away from the knowledge of their own identity through various social forces such as globalization, the future of Filipino Martial Arts in its homeland is dim. As more and more foreigners flock to the country and learn from the masters then proceeding to take what they have learned and teach it somewhere, there is now somewhat a problem of imbalance. With a hint of despair, there is a looming fear that in years to come, the Filipino Youth on ground zero, if they will ever wish to learn Filipino Martial Arts, will learn it not anymore from their own countrymen but from foreigners. In fact, the documentary ‘The Bladed Hand’ have shown us an example of this wherein, the French ambassador, who was also an FMA instructor, taught FMA to the Philippine Armed Forces then lo and behold, the Filipinos he taught did not have any idea that the Martial Art they were learning is native to the Philippines.
What now are the causes of such a phenomenon? In my reflections on society and culture and the upbringing of the Filipino person, I see some influential factors to consider and to see about when we are talking about this apocalypse. Cultural crises such as the proliferation of colonial mentality, crab mentality and culture of dividedness are such moving factors which influence the state of FMA. Political and institutional factors such as lack of promotion, the lack of academic studies to back and assist FMA, and the politics of corruption in the country which leads to poverty are factors tied to the management and struggles in the propagation of FMA.
The Ever-Present Colonial Mentality
In the Philippines, whatever is foreign is accepted, trusted and is raised into the pedestal. Perhaps this is also why there are instructors who readily accept foreign students rather than native students. However, the reverse is also true. Many of the Filipino youth is being drawn to the clutches of the globalized world. Therefore, whatever is foreign, is the best, and the good, and the more functional than what is indigenous.
This kind of mentality has been in the Philippines since the Spanish colonized the archipelago. It has a lot to do with the friars that educated the Indios with the knowledge that whatever is the native practice is of the devil, and whatever is of the native is backward and underdeveloped therefore it should be scrapped. After having seen the power of the Spanish Empire (through various coercion and atrocities), the natives agreed to this and made it their gospel. What is white is now the beautiful. What is Catholic is now the good way to spirituality. What is from the Guardia Civil is proven to be effective. This was the beginning of the miseducation although a lot of Filipinos saw through this, especially those who were educated. Through this period, we saw an evolution of the FMA because of the interactions of Spanish forces and the native ‘soldados’ – native Filipino militias who were taught and who were at the disposal of the Spanish. During these times, I imagine that there were exchanges in skills and that the Filipinos had a taste of what Spanish fencing was. Marveling at the effectivity and efficiency of the long-range techniques, some natives who knew bolo fighting which was usually mid to short range have incorporated into their arts the technique of the Spanish. This now added the prowess of the soldado which then reinforced the notion that what they learned from the foreigner was effective and thus should be treated with high regard.
Now, let us go forth in time to the American period which was divided into two, first, the American occupation and second, the war. In the first half, the most effective tactic of the Americans in order to defeat Filipino Revolutionaries were to divide and conquer, the second was the institutionalization of education. When the Americans run the education in the country, they pretty much revised only what the Spaniards preached. They have now become the models of the Filipino and whatever is Filipino was “barriotic” – a term which roughly means “of the villages”. When the Americans left after the war, this has been ingrained in the minds of the Filipinos and was also reinforced with the fact that the Americans won the war and that therefore, what they say is the truth. With this, the Americans influenced the way the Filipinos think. In relation to Martial Arts, I suspect that because the Philippines was the primary recipient of the cultural products (i.e. education, media, culture, language etc.) of the US, the proliferation of Japanese Martial Arts was one of its greatest influences after World War 2. That is why before there where schools of eskrima, arnis or kali, there where first schools of karate, judo etc. These arts were then regarded as the epitome of fighting for the reason that it was promoted by the Americans via the veterans who studied in Japan.
Regarding the Japanese Regime, if ever there was a time that there have been cultural exchanges with the Filipinos, I doubt that Martial Arts were a part of that because the Japanese have always been Imperialistic in nature when they occupied the islands, meaning that they would not have appreciated the exchange since, even if the Japanese pushed for the Filipino’s native cultural promotion, they have always regarded their own as being a culture descended from the gods and was the private property of Imperial Japan not to be shared with the colonized.
Hence, this is the consciousness that the colonizers have ingrained in us. Even with the efforts of schools to purge this colonial mentality through education, it cannot. There have been many interconnected factors and one of the most influential is cultural dividedness, which means that because the Philippines is a country of many indigenous groups competing for power, and siding with the powerful – be it institutions or colonizers – is a good go. Cultural dividedness will be discussed in the next section.
Today’s youth therefore, need only a tinge of a good sales talk from foreigners and they will go accept it because having very powerful countries influence you through half a millennium has ingrained in the Filipinos a sense of self who lives in doubt and is reinforced by fear. And to think that this cannot be shrugged off in a matter of decades if other factors also still occurs.
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