Our heroes paid dearly for our freedom and suffrage, but the people who inherited them just sold them for a hundred pesos. - Gary Lising, Filipino humorist
This week (August 29, to be exact), we commemorate National Heroes’ Day, a solemn holiday in which we should be reflecting the sacrifices our heroes made to attain the freedom and sovereignty we enjoy today.
This year’s celebration of National Heroes’ Day comes amid what historians and educators have perceived as an increased attack on the country’s historical heritage: of painting heroes as villains and villains as heroes.
Historical distortion has run rampant, with self-styled “experts” on social media claiming that the history that we have learned in the years since People Power in 1986 was not just wrong but also prejudiced against one family whom they claimed are the real heroes of the country.
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It’s interesting to note that people whom some people consider as heroes are considered villains in other peoples’ history.
Adolf Hitler, the dictator who ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945, is considered by Westerners as an insane tyrant who murdered millions – not just Jews, but other ethnic groups his regime has considered to be “subhuman” – aggressively expanded Germany and unjustly colonized neighboring countries; promoted a skewed propaganda portraying the debunked notions of “master race,” and started a war that ended in near-total ruination for Germany.
And yet for his admirers, Hitler was a political genius who aimed to save the world from the clutches of Jewish tyranny and Communist domination and fought for the preservation of a “world order” against the perceived chaos of democracy.
The same divisive trend can be seen of the Marcos family.
To half of Filipinos, former President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. is not just a “good” president – he was a hero who also tried to save the country from the clutches of Communist domination and promote a “New Society” that will bring prosperity and peace to Filipinos. (His 1965 pledge that “this nation shall be great again” has been much-touted as a mantra by his die-hard supporters.)
To the other half of this country, Marcos is a kleptocrat who used the vast powers he gave to himself to silence critics, enrich his family and cronies and indulge on a life of luxury while millions suffered from poverty, starvation, and human rights abuses.
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Take note that Act No. 3827, which institutionalized the National Heroes Day in 1931, never named a specific hero – in fact, what our country considered as heroes such as Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio were honored on specific days in the calendar.
The nearest we can glean on what the government really meant by a hero is in a speech that former President Jose P. Laurel (who himself was accused of being a Japanese collaborator during World War II, but was hailed by some as a president who tried his best to protect Filipinos against abuse by the Japanese occupiers) made in 1942.
In that speech, Laurel honored “them on this day which national custom has consecrated to the memory of those who knew how to sacrifice the interests of self and the rich pleasures of living for the sake of the dignity and welfare of the greatest number.”
Take note: in Laurel’s strict interpretation, we honor as heroes those people who sacrificed their lives, their fortunes and their honor to attain not only independence but also the socio-economic development of the Philippines.
Which is why I am baffled that some Filipinos consider a hero a man who single-handedly brought an entire country to near-ruination while his wife unashamedly spends millions in shopping sprees and lived the life of a “queen” while their country’s poorest literally had to wade through a mountain of garbage in order to get their daily bread.
Maybe it’s time for us to re-evaluate what our definition of “hero” should be.
Do we really honor our heroes for the lives they actually led, or do we honor them because our own beliefs fitted theirs – whether what they did is actually patriotic or not?