09517
June 19, 2009

Celebrating independence, Filipinos lament new bondage

by Maurice Malanes
Ecumenical News International

MANILA — As the Philippines recently celebrated 111 years of independence from Spain, a church leader in the country claimed that it is now Filipinos who hold their fellow citizens in bondage.

In comments to mark independence day on June 12, Roman Catholic Archbishop Angel Lagdameo blamed this situation on what he said were self-serving politicians and the harassment and extra-judicial killings of activists, including church workers.

He added that widespread economic poverty in the country was due to control of vast tracts of lands by a few landlords and unequal opportunities for ordinary workers.

“We may have declared independence from some nations but the ones that now enslave and exploit Filipinos are fellow Filipinos,” said Lagdameo.

On June 12, 1898, Filipino revolutionaries led by General Emilio Aguinaldo declared independence from Spain. This ended almost 400-years of colonial rule. Still, the country’s freedom was short-lived because the United States soon became the new colonial master.

In separate Independence Day-related comments, a pastor of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines said that some church leaders still regarded the nation’s indigenous culture as “pagan and, worse, as ways of the devil.”

This is the same view that some early missionaries held, said the Rev. Filemon Lagon Jr, a youth pastor in Baguio City, “They believed that they were destined to civilize others, and sought to supplant our culture and spirituality with a westernized Christianity".

As an example of the culture the colonizers suppressed, Lagon cited the country’s tribal folk, whose spirituality and religious rites revolve around their farming cycles, and who consider their land and resources sacred and, therefore, something that people are required to take care of.

This view, Lagon said, leads to “good stewardship of God’s creation, and something we must help enhance through the gospel of Christ.”

Still, in his June 12 Independence Day message, Archbishop Lagdameo also said, “We should be grateful to the Spanish Dominican, Augustinian, Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries who brought the cross and the faith to us. Since then, the evangelization that began with them five centuries ago has continued and goes on today.”