Philip's critique of Chavez's authoritarian style is nothing new, as Frank Bardache (1993), Rodolfo Acuna (1988), and others have elaborated on this on various occasions. Qualified by profuse praise of Chavez's charismatic stature and his self-sacrificing devotion to the welfare of the farm workers, Philip's objection to Chavez's top-down management was long suppressed for the sake of the public image of UFW unity. However, the struggle for popular democracy in the Philippines and in the U.S. pre-empted Philip's devotion to UFW bureaucracy. It was only when Chavez embraced the brutal Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines, and invited the fascist labor minister Blas Ople to speak to the UFW rank and file in the August 1977 Convention, while muzzling his own vice-president Philip, that Philip could no longer restrain himself.
This crisis is significant for configuring Philip's narrative because it ushered the rupture, the ethical choice, that defined his character from idem-sameness to ipse-selfhood: his opposition to the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines coincided with a national upsurge of radicalism among Filipino-Americans, in particular the second or third-generation youth, who were mobilized in the late sixties and seventies by the civil-rights and anti-war campaigns. This is the youth that he appeals to at the end, his audience, his hope for a new future. No such turning-point can be found in the early stages of Philip's life that equals this episode in intensity and resonance. Patient and forgiving, self-effacing to the point of seeming to be fatalistic or indifferent, Philip finally disrupted postcolonial inertia and connected his present with other moments in his life when he rebelled, contradicted abusive authority, and tried to help sustain a community of honest, dignified, morally capable citizens of equal status.
In the section of his autobiography, "The movement must go beyond its leaders," Philip opposed the irrational cult of a leader and the suppression of criticism which deprived union members of "their right to reason for themselves." Capability for moral choice needs to be actualized by democratic public institutions such as unions, etc. Notwithstanding the praise of Chavez by Peter Mathiessen, the biographers Richard Griswold del Castillo, Jacques Levy, Joan London, John Gregory Dunne, and others, Philip's reservation may be explained by his identification with the plight of his compatriot Larry Itliong who initiated the Delano grape strike and had never really been credited for his part in this historic event. Philip regretted not having been closer to Larry whose self-contradictions, tied to the apathy and suspicion of his ethnic group, limited his efficacy. Responding to those who wanted to preserve the mythical aura of Chavez and the movement, Philip writes: "For me, we need the truth more than we need heroes" (2000, 91). He has broken from the circumscribed locus of family and ethnic kinship; defamiliarized, he joins a larger family of citizens united by the solidarity of civic cooperation and the humanizing telos of transformative political praxis.
Truth, in Philip's eyes, concerned principles, not personalities. Although he resigned from the union after he publicly distanced himself from Chavez's support of the Marcos dictatorship, Philip remained supportive of the UFW and the entire unionizing movement. Although he bewailed the fact that he sacrificed too much in his struggle to survive (a duty to support his family in the Philippines) and maintain his dignity as a Filipino assisting his community and fighting for workers' rights, Philip was never bitter or cynical. He affirmed an internationalism that transcended the narrow parochial claims of ethnicity, racial affiliation, and nationality: "I respect the differences between people through their cultures, and I think all efforts, energies, and money should be concentrated to serving the people instead of making profits for a select group or country here and there." -- E. SAN JUAN, JR.
More at:
http://www.bulatlat.com/news/5-29/5-29-veracruz.htmLinkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=43297.0
