Christmas 1945

LAST Friday, my column was about how we might use our holiday gifts to promote "native chic" -- the idea that local products aren't just good but very good and, if we want to play on class consciousness, are actually most chic.

Some friends have been calling in to say they appreciated the reminder, one of them being "Tita" Gilda Cordero-Fernando, who asked for more "native chic" columns. Since I can (almost) never say no to her, I thought of expanding that first article while we're still in the holiday season.

For today's column, I'm going to pick up on this idea of native chic, emphasizing the need to buy local as a way of building not just economic but also social capital.

168 Mall

My column last week suggested, strongly, that we might want to avoid the 168 Mall for Christmas shopping, even if, admittedly, its stuff is really, really cheap. Shortly after I did the column, I read that the Bureau of Internal Revenue raided 168 and found that nine out of every 10 stalls there were evading taxes. That should be enough reason to avoid 168, right?

The capitalists are mainland Chinese (and, lately Koreans, I hear) so the money made doesn't stay either, except for the paltry wages paid to the sales clerks. Well, there are rumors that the money does stay in the country to fund less than wholesome manufacturing activities by the mainland Chinese. I have no way of verifying this, so I won't go into detail.
All said, 168 doesn't help the country and may even be doing great harm. An irony really because "168" is derived from the Chinese's love of magical numbers: 168 means "the road to prosperity." The question is, whose prosperity?

For capitalism to work, capital must generate more capital. That isn't happening with 168's operations. At least the Chinese goods sold in legitimate mall establishments help to lubricate the economy through taxes (sort of) and new venture capital.

Social capital
But, there's more to all this than loss of economic capital. For the country to move forward, we also need social capital, which consists of knowledge, skills and values that are passed from one generation to another. Like economic capital, social capital needs to accumulate and to "reproduce."

We lose both economic and social capital with our addiction to imported stuff. Certainly, the lure of the "imported" is universal, and certainly we've been addicted to imported stuff for several centuries -- even before the Spaniards arrived, there was a thriving trade with the Chinese.

But my gripe is that today, with import liberalization, our addiction has grown to an unprecedented scale, to the extent that we are killing initiatives for local production. Why bother to put up new manufacturing firms when you can just import from China? What happens here is an erosion of traditional knowledge and skills, the social capital future generations could have used.

Inquirer had an article about how lantern makers were losing out to the cheap imported Chinese lights. Even sadder was how they've stopped producing some product lines, such as abaca lanterns. We're bound to see more of these products disappearing, together with vital knowledge and skills. Even more disturbing, I hear that cheap versions of our lanterns are now beginning to show up overseas-produced in mainland China. I shudder to think that in a few years, my Yna will be buying "Filipino" lanterns that are made in China, perhaps with a whole bunch of kitschy electronic
innovations. I'd be heartbroken, too, if all that I'll have to show her are photographs of the original traditional lanterns.

Carols and cards
When we buy local products, we're not just supporting local businesses, we're actually creating a demand for more of those local products, which means knowledge and skills are passed on, often with innovations.

Nothing is too inconsequential as we build this social capital. I'm still perplexed at the lack of locally designed Christmas cards and wonder why it took the Unicef to popularize Manuel Baldemor designs for such cards. OK, so maybe paper Christmas cards are on their way out because of e-cards on the Internet, but that should only push us to move in and produce Filipino designs for these e-cards.

The other night, I brought my Yna to her first concert: the University of the Philippines' Singing Ambassadors' "Pamaskong Handog" by the Baywalk in Manila. I had a moment of nostalgia remembering how our school choir went around caroling. That's disappearing, too, with caroling now used by urban poor kids to extort money as they ambush your car: "Pay, or we torture you with our singing." I sometimes tell the kids, at least sing local carols, but I wonder just how many of these songs are still being passed on.

The UP Singing Ambassadors does have a new CD, "Songs of the Season," with their rendition of 15 traditional English and Filipino carols, explaining why they keep reaping so many awards.

Building social capital doesn't mean sticking to the traditional. I read about a CD of Kapampangan carols, "Kalam ning Pasko," composed by Crispin Cadiang and sung by the likes of Mon David and Antoinette Taus. Simply having carols in Kapampangan is an example of building social capital.

But I haven't been able to find that CD in Manila. We need better marketing for so many of these products, and together with that marketing we need more conscious efforts to build on the "social capital" aspect. For example, the recordings could come with a brief historical vignette for each of the songs. It was only yesterday, through Manolo Quezon's column http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=60719&col=111, that I learned about "Payapang Daigdig" being composed by Felipe de Leon in 1945, a few months after the bombing of Manila that killed thousands of Filipinos. Christmas that year must have been harrowing for the maimed, hungry and homeless survivors.
Manolo's history of the song could not have been timelier, because the night before I was listening to it on the Singing Ambassadors' latest CD. It's always been one of my favorites and I suspect it will be for Yna, too. For now, I'm fully content humming the tune to Yna as a lullaby, dreaming of De Leon's peaceful nights, quiet stars and the gentle breeze.

But someday, when Yna's older, around "Noche Buena" [Christmas Eve feast] and beneath a colorful "parol" [Christmas lantern], hopefully not made in China, I'll explain the lyrics to her, and why, remembering Christmas 1945, we must never give up on building peace, at home and in the world.

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