The Chinese in Philippine Socio-Politics
...y phase of our development as a nation. and yet these facts are seldom taught to us, not even mentioned in our textbooks and are often relegated to the dark recesses of our consciousness. to cite few examples: (1)gen. aguinaldo's army once included an entire brigade composed entirely of chinoys headed by a certain gen. pa hua (not sure of the pinyin transliteration), they went hand in hand with the filipinos fighting for independence from the heavy yoke of spain; (2)in the context of contemporary history, we even elected a chinoy to the presidency, the case in point: former president corazon aquino, whose ancestry hails from the fujian province of china; (3)our present mayor, hon. jesse robredo, is also a chinoy whose parents probably spoke a hakka dialect of the chinese language and so with the governor of masbate, antonio kho, and the former political dynasty of isabela, the dy family...and so on. so it is not surprising to know that many of our people, including our national hero jose rizal, find out that they have descended from a mixed filipino and chinese blood instead of the much preferred and often-thought-of spanish mestizo ancestry. in fact, i find it increasingly hard to think of the filipinos as a people without the chinese as much as it is difficult to perceive ourselves as one coherent nation without the moros (who are the original founders of manila. the spanish founded intramuros on the ruins of rajah soliman's old kingdom), and the spaniards (who gave the name filipinas). what is so ironic is that chinoys are more filipino than most filipinos are. i remember one friend of mine had a job interview at jortan dist. (a chinoy-owned business here in naga). she was expressing her usual introduction in english with fluency and eloquence when she was interrupted by the interviewer (who happened to be the chinoy owner) saying "ne, bikol sana kita ta bikolano man ako". the main reason why chinoys prosper here in the philippines is that they have a clear consciousness of who they are: filipinos who h...