Baguio Reads Carlos P. Romulo: That Thing About Igorots

Dr. Jose Dalisay’s talk in UP Baguio’s just concluded webinar, “Reading the National Artists Series: Baguio Reads Carlos P. Romulo,” ignited my interest in CPR’s works. It also brought back an age-old issue involving his write-up about the highlanders of northern Philippines.

I had, of course, learned a bit about CPR in high school and college although I never really ever read any of his books back then. The first thing I remember of him is his immortalization in a highly sensationalized photo-op which shows him wading ashore right behind MacArthur during the US Army’s amphibious landing in Palo, Leyte in 1944. I also know that he served as President of the United Nations General Assembly and of the University of the Philippines, and was named National Artist (of the Philippines) for Literature. That he was a Pulitzer Prize winner (1942) was news to me — I learned it the first time from Professor Dalisay’s lecture. I also read somewhere that when a Russian diplomat belittled him (he was about 5’4″) saying, “You are just a little man from a little country,” he was ready with his quick and ungetoverable comeback: “It is the duty of the little Davids of this world to fling the pebbles of truth in the eyes of the blustering Goliaths and force them to behave!”

As a graduate student and subsequently a teacher in UP, I had never heard Romulo’s works mentioned or discussed. His autobiographic writings were never included in our canonized texts falling under Creative NonFiction (CNF). It was only during the webinar’s open forum that I understood why he never made a blip on our literary radar. Apparently, his reputation as the quintessential Amboy (American Boy) did not sit well with the anti-imperialist temper among UPians from the ’60s onwards.

For me and many other Igorots, however, his accolades as a statesman, soldier, and writer have been partly overshadowed by the flak he got for his oft-quoted statement, “Igorots are not Filipinos.” It was said that, some decades ago, one of our highly popular local politicians, Atty. Alfredo Lam-en (dubbed “John Wayne of the Philippines” and “Father of the Igorots”), was so incensed by CPR’s pronouncement that he marched down the august aisle of the Philippine Congress in his g-string to deliver a stirring speech in which he said, “The only difference between Carlos P. Romulo and I is that he wears his necktie around his neck, while I wear mine below!“

When Professor Dalisay raised the issue after his lecture and suggested that we look at the context of that repeatedly bashed utterance, I happened to have just gotten ahold of an e-copy of CPR’s Mother America: A Living Story of Democracy (download it for free HERE) and pulled out the quote in question (Romulo 1943, 59). Here it is in full:

“Even in the Philippines, to cite one recurrent source of annoyance, stories were frequently sent to America concerning our wild tribes, the Igorots, in which they were represented as Filipinos. These primitive black people are no more Filipino than the American Indian is representative of the United States citizen. They hold exactly the same position they are our aborigines.

This small percentage not more than 100,000 of his tribe exist in our mountains was in the Philippines long before the Malayans, our ancestors, came from the southerly tip of Asia. Doubtless the Igorot has a better claim to the Philippines than we as the American Indian has prior claims on America.

The fact remains that the Igorot is not Filipino and we are not related, and it hurts our feelings to see him pictured in American newspapers under such captions as, “Typical Filipino Tribesman.” We passed laws in the Philippine Legislature forbidding pictures under such captions to be taken out of the Philippines.

We are sensitive in such matters, because the Filipino is as yet an unknown quantity to the world. It is easy to misrepresent an unknown quantity. A known one cannot be misrepresented.

The unknown and unproven Filipino is anxious to lift his head, Every such misrepresentation the Filipino regards as an attempt to push him back into obscurity.

The Oriental has always been a submerged individual, tryingvery hard to assert his personality. Each time an Occidental, without perhaps meaning to, assumes a patronizing attitude toward an Oriental, the Oriental feels himself pushed back and down.

More than all else, the Oriental has come to resent patronizing manners and condescension.

One of the greatest needs of the future will be the establishment of information centers in the world capitals insuring the dissemination of accurate news of each country.” [emphasis added, SMS]

The excerpt above belongs to chapter ten of the book entitled, “The White Man in the Orient.” In this chapter, he discusses the White Man developing a decadent lifestyle and an air of superiority over natives once he gets settled in an Asian country, explains the Oriental’s jaundiced view of the White Man’s attitude and lifestyle, and rejects some of the White Man’s stereotypes of the Orientals.

In general, the whole quote seems to be a balanced take on some causes of tensions in Asian-American relations. It even looks, at face value, like a self-reflexive text with its pointed observations about us Asians and our frailties. However, upon closer reading, one can note his obvious flair for the dramatic couched in his tendency to generalize (e.g., the Japanese are drinkers while the rest of the Asians are not — p. 56; the Oriental this, the White Man that… — pp. 57, ff.) and to promote his self-assured assessment of Filipino identity which betrays his ignorance of, to use his own words, “the unknown and unproven Filipino” (p. 59).

It is ironic that despite all his eloquence, he failed to judiciously choose his words in this instance and created misunderstanding more than clarity, stirred up divisiveness rather than galvanized unity. For while he argued against misrepresentation, he actually misrepresented Filipinos by assuming that his elitist and colonial view of Filipino identity — which excludes Igorots — is accurate or fair. In his desire not to be othered by his American friends, he othered the already marginalized among his own people. In patronizing the Igorots (e.g., “Doubtless the Igorot has a better claim to the Philippines than we — as the American Indian has prior claims on America”), he unwittingly articulated an essentialist, condescending view of the Filipino indigene much like how many racist White Americans regarded those they called “Redskins.” In saying, “it hurts our feelings to see him pictured in American newspapers under such captions as, ‘Typical Filipino Tribesman,'” he rubbed salt on a wound the Igorots have been nursing since the Spanish colonization, for obviously he was more concerned about his image (and that of Filipinos he imagined he represented) than the plight or felt needs of these highlanders in the North. In affirming proudly that “[they] passed laws in the Philippine Legislature forbidding pictures under such captions to be taken out of the Philippines,” he negated his own capacity to realize the superficiality of their Manila-centric legislative approach to the issue of Indigenous Peoples’ rights.

So while the context shows that he was agitated by the White Man failing to understand the Brown Man better (or vice versa), the text in question nevertheless reveals that he had no qualms about painting the Igorots black and was not discerning enough to at least recognize the various shades of this discursive gray area called “Indigeneity.”

So while I admire him for being such a prolific and engaging writer (I might read his other books too) and for achieving such a stellar reputation in glocal politics which most of us might not even match even in two lifetimes, I can’t resist the temptation to say that when it comes to how he viewed Igorots at the time, he was a… jackass.

Or not. For maybe if we were to dig to the bottom of things, it might turn out I totally misunderstood CPR after all. Which means I get to be the Nick Bottom in the narrative I have spun and woven.

Romulo, Carlos P. 1943. Mother America: A Living Story of Democracy. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.