Filomeno V. Aguilar

Is the Filipino Diaspora a Diaspora

ABSTRACT: Despite the widespread popularity of the discourse on diasporas since the 1980s, the recognition of a Filipino diaspora in the wider Anglophone scholarly world did not occur until the mid 2000s. A major factor for this recognition was the considerable number of scholarly works on Filipino Americans produced largely by Filipino American scholars who used diaspora as theoretical frame starting in the late 1990s. Grappling with the realities of the global migrations of Filipinos, the Philippine state and Filipinos in the Philippines and in other parts of the world also began to deploy the diaspora discourse. This article analyzes the ways in which the discursive fields in the US and in the Philippines have converged or diverged. Although diaspora can be a problematic concept, the author examines methodological issues that focus not so much on identities but on the imagined and constructed collectivity within which the putative diasporan identity of Filipinos is embedded. Without reducing diaspora to a reifying checklist, the author explores the Filipino diaspora discourse along these five dimensions: (a) population dispersal from an original homeland, real or imagined; (b) a process of diasporization; (c) ongoing relationship with the homeland, nurtured by collective memory or mythology; (d) idealization of return to the homeland; and (e) self-awareness or collective consciousness that is intergenerational and interrelated to coethnics and compatriots within the diaspora.

KEEPING THE STATE AT BAY: The Killing of Journalists in the Philippines, 1998-2012

ABSTRACT In Southeast Asia the Philippines holds the distinction of reporting the highest number of murdered journalists between 1992 and 2012. This record makes the Philippines closer to countries in other parts of the world characterized as “transitional” democracies. These countries enjoy near full press freedom, but their institutional setting allows the perpetrators of crimes to evade accountability. The authors of this article argue that explaining these murders as due to state repression of progressive journalists in the Philippines ignores the complexity of these killings. This article shows that journalists murdered for their occupation (classified as “motive confirmed”) did not threaten the interests of the state as state but rather the interests of local power-holders. Thus, the killings of mass media practitioners need to be understood in the context of local-level contestations over positions and resources sanctioned by the state framework, particularly following the decentralization since 1991. Preliminary data analysis of journalist deaths from 1998 to 2012 and selected case studies suggest that these killings are primarily local events, mostly in provincial towns and cities.

Rice and Magic: A Cultural History from the Precolonial World to the Present

Beliefs in rice spirits were integral to the magical worldview of the precolonial inhabitants of the Philippine islands. Under Spanish colonialism, rice became a staple but it underwent disenchantment and symbolic marginality. By the 1870s rice production fell short relative to demand. Twentieth-century initiatives to address persistent shortages culminated in the 1960s Green Revolution, which further altered the rice plant and ushered in the age of practicality. Because rice production cannot be fully controlled, farmers still deploy culturally meaningful strategies to deal with uncertainties. The old meanings of rice for commensality have also proven resilient and reveal peculiarly Filipino ways.

Rev. John N. Schumacher SJ, 1927–2014

Fr. John N. Schumacher SJ died on 14 May 2014, thirty-four days short of his 87th birthday. Born in Buffalo, New York, on 17 June 1927, Father Schumacher entered the Society of Jesus on 30 July 1944, arriving in the Philippines four years later to undertake philosophical studies at the Sacred Heart Novitiate. From 1951 to 1954 he taught English and Latin and served as Prefect of Discipline at the Sacred Heart He returned to the United States to pursue Theology at Woodstock College. He was ordained to the priesthood on 22 June 1957. Fascinated by Rizal, he went on to pursue a doctorate at Georgetown University. He returned to the Philippines in 1964 and became part of the pioneer faculty of the Loyola House of Studies, which would become the Loyola School of Theology, where he devoted over forty years to impart church history to generations of Jesuits, seminarians, and students. Father Jack, as he was known, took his oath as a Filipino citizen in 1977. In 1998, on the centenary of Philippine independence, he received the Ateneo de Manila University’s Gawad Tanglaw ng Lahi.