Hostilities have recently been going on between the Philippines and Hong Kong over the Mendoza hostage taking. Protests have been made, people have been condemned, websites have been hacked, old issues like Filipinos killed in Tiananmen Square brought back up. And some people have the audacity to bring a racial undertone to the whole thing. Which is mystifying to me since the Chinese mestizo was as much a part of creating the Filipino nation as any Filipino.
Some of the most prominent people in the history of the Philippines had Chinese blood running through their veins.
Sergio Osmena, Jose P. Laurel, Elpidio Quirino, Ramon Magsaysay, Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon Aquino, and your current President Noynoy Aquino are all Presidents with Chinese blood.
Carlos P. Romulo, Roberto Ongpin, Supreme Court Justice Claudio Teehankee, Jaime Cardinal Sin, UP President Vidal A. Tan, Teodoro M. Kalaw; all prominent Filipinos with Chinese blood.
Some of the most prominent pieces of the Philippine revolution were descended from or were Chinese mestizos - Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. Del Pilar, Emilio Aguinaldo, Father Jose Burgos, Father Mariano Gomez, Father Jacinto Zamora, Pedro Paterno, Apolinario Mabini. The La Liga Filipina was founded in the house of one Doroteo Ongjungco.
The Chinese Mestizos had a much larger role in building the Filipino identity and the Filipino nation than most of realize. It was not confined merely to these prominent individuals. It was the education and influence that the middle class Chinese mestizo had that allowed them to plant the seeds of liberal and subversive ideas.
If you want to know more about this, allow me to redirect you to Antonio S. Tan's excellent work, The Chinese Mestizos and the Formation of the Filipino Identity.
