Anatomy of a Filipino by Prof. Felix Bautista. Performed by 8- Darwin of Turac National High school, San Carlos City, Pangasinan. Please SUBSCRIBE for more student performances :)

THE ANATOMY OF A FILIPINO
By Prof. Felix Bautista

I like to think that I am a Filipino, that I am as Good, a Filipino as anyone. My heart thrills when I hear the National anthem being played. And my blood rises, when, I see our flag, fluttering in the breeze. And yet, I find myself asking: how Filipino Am I, really?

My first name is American. My Last Name is Chinese. When I am with girlfriends or more correctly, when, I am with my friends, who happen to be girls, I talk to them in English. If they are thirsty, I buy them a bottle of American coke. If they are hungry, I treat them to an Italian pizza pie. And when I have the money, I give them a real Chinese lauriat.

Considering all these. Considering my taste for many things foreign. What right do I have to call myself a Filipino? Should I not call myself a culture orphan? The illegitimate child of many races? Rightly or wrongly, whether we like it or not, we are the end products of our history. Fortunately or unfortunately, our history is a co-mingling of polyglot influences. Malayan and Chinese. Spanish and British. American and Japanese.

This is historic fact we cannot ignore. A cultural reality we can not escape from. To believe otherwise is to indulge in fantasy.

I must confess, I am an extremely confused and bewildered young man. Wherever I am, whatever I may be doing, I am bombarded on all sides by people who want me to search for my national identity.

Tell me the language I speak should be replaced, by Filipino; they urge me to do away with things foreign to act and think, and buy Filipino.

Even in art, I am getting bothered and bewildered. The writer should use Filipino as his medium, the nationalists cry. The painter should use his genius in portraying themes purely Filipino, they demand. The composer should exploit endless possibilities of the haunting kundiman, they insist. All these sound wonderful.

But Rizal used Spanish when he wrote, Noli and Fili. Was he less of a nationalist because of it? Must the artist to be truly Filipino, paint with the juice of duhat? And must he draw picture of topless Muslim women or Igorot warriors in g-string? And if the composer desert the kundiman and he writes song faithful to the spirit of the youths of today, does he become un-Filipino? We are what we are today because of our history.

In our veins, pulses blood with traces of Chinese and Spanish and American, but it does not stop being a Filipino because of these. Our culture is tinges with foreign, influences, but it has become rich. This mingling, in fact could speed us on the road to national greatness. Look at America, it is a great country and yet it is the melting pot of Italian, and German, British, and French, or Irish and Swedish.

Filipinism, after all, is in the heart.

If that heart beats faster because the Philippines is making progress; if it fills with compassion because its people are suffering, then it belongs to a true Filipino and it throbs with pride in our past; if it pulses with awareness of the present; if it beats with a faith in the future, then we could ask for nothing more all other things are unimportant.

I have, an American first name. And I have, a Chinese last name.

And I am proud, very very proud because underneath these names beats A Filipino Heart.