About Jon E. Royeca

(Part 9 of the “In Defense of the Filipino” series)

FOR anti-Filipinos, the meaning of Filipino time is “always late.” It is said that the Filipino is and will always be late in his appointments. He does not value time. He is never punctual. He wants to be late in gatherings because he likes to get the attention of everyone. He is the one who arrives last; thus, everybody notices him because of his untimely arrival. Are all these negative remarks against us Filipinos true?

Early discipline. Classes in public and private elementary, secondary, and tertiary schools begin at 6:15 a.m. For those in the afternoon shifts, their classes begin at noon.

Morning-shift students wake up before dawn. From the time they get off the bed, they hurry in taking baths or showers, having breakfast, brushing their teeth, and putting on their school attire. It is heartwarming that there are six-year-old Grade One pupils who wake up and take baths or showers that early so that they would not be late in school.

The children do all that to arrive in school before the flag ceremonies, which regularly commence at 6:00 a.m. Those who live in far places wake up earlier to avoid being caught in entangled traffic flows during the morning rush hour.

Most of the teachers and students arrive in schools before 6:00 a.m. For those in the afternoon shifts, they arrive before noon. This is discipline. More than 20 million Filipino students and half a million Filipino teachers practice it.

Work schedule. Work in offices, factories, stores, and other similar establishments begins at eight in the morning. Thus, professionals, employees, and workers also hurry in taking baths or showers, having breakfast, brushing their teeth, and getting dressed to arrive in their places of work early or on time. Such rush is already a regular ritual for the hardworking Filipinos.

Again, it is discipline. Now that they are already in their respective bread-winning fields, they still do what they had practiced when they were still studying.

Market vendors are all ready before dawn so that they can buy the freshest vegetables, fruits, fish, meat, and other wet market items at the delivery centers or slaughterhouses. They have to get the best goods, and they can only do that if they arrive early at the delivery centers or slaughterhouses.

We Filipinos arrive early or on time in our destinations. This is the real or genuine time of the Filipino.

Spanish defect. Why is it that the Filipino is slapped with the accusation that he is always late, even when he arrives in his engagements early or on time?

This has something to do with the Spanish colonization of our race. Being the colonizers, the Spaniards wanted to be superior to the Filipinos and in everything. They wanted to be served, adored, and given all the attention.

On occasions, they wanted everyone to notice their arrival and the importance of their presence. That did that by arriving late.

Jose Rizal told in his first novel, Noli Me Tangere, of Spaniards who did not come on time: “Linares had not yet arrived, for being an important person, he must come much later than the others. There are people who are flattered that for each hour of delay because they have not yet arrived, they become more significant” (p. 329).

In his second novel, El Filibusterismo, Rizal also narrated how the Spaniards loved to be the laggards in gatherings. The play The Bells of Cornville was set to begin at 8:30 p.m., but by 8:45, the show could not yet start because the Spanish governor general had not yet arrived. He came many more minutes later, getting all the attention. But he failed to be the last, for a lady followed him. This lady was also frustrated because there was still an unoccupied seat. Rizal observed:

“Indeed, there are persons who come to the theaters like asses in a race: he who arrives last is the winner. Sane men we know would rather mount the scaffold first than turn up at the theater before the start of the first act” (pp. 165-166).

Rizal castigated his countrymen who were trying to be like Spaniards: “What will you be in the future? A people without character; a nation without liberty; everything that you will posses shall be borrowed, including even your own defects” (p. 171).

Being late is a Spanish defect that some of our ancestors imitated and passed down through succeeding generations. Most of those imitators were the wealthy elite and those working in the government. They loved being special, like the Spaniards. In gatherings, they arrived late to make them more dignified. They would feel elated if there were people who had been waiting for them.

When Spanish rule ended in 1898, the Americans became the new colonizers. Hungry for imperial glory, the Americans tended to criticize and degrade everything Filipino.

The United States president then, William McKinley, said that the Americans would colonize the Philippines because they had to “educate the Filipinos, and uplift, and civilize, and Christianize them.” For them, Filipinos were uneducated, uncivilized, and unchristian. This had become the American thinking of the Filipinos.

When they summoned people to help run the country, the ones who approached them were those wealthy elite and those working in the government who had all borrowed the Spanish defect of being always late. Those people—who were only a fraction of the entire population—did not give importance to schedules; they did not come on time.

Thus, the Americans found another opportunity to criticize and insult the Filipino race. They created the idea that American time was always on time and that Filipino time was always late. This is just one of the negative things that they inculcated into the Filipino consciousness during their half-a-century rule of our country.

How it was invented. When communicating with their superiors in the United States, the American colonial authorities needed to regularly check the time zones because of the time difference between the United States and the Philippines.

The International Date Line dictates that the eastern zone, where Philippine time belongs, is 24 hours or a day ahead of the western zone, where U.S. time belongs. Nature has it that Philippine time is ahead and that American time is behind.

It became uncomfortable for the American colonizers because anything American must always be the superior. That had to be reversed by inventing the Filipino time theory. They found the right time to invent it when they met with those few elite who were always latecomers.

Had the Spanish colonizers invented it, Filipino time would have been called hora de Filipino. Or it would have been oras ng Pilipino, since the Spaniards did not teach us their language but studied and used ours. Its English name itself is the groaning proof that it is an American invention.

Intellectual decolonization. The Spanish colonizers practiced their own time here in the Philippines—always late. Some of our elite ancestors borrowed it. And the American colonizers gave it a name (Filipino time), and wove it into the Filipino consciousness.

Because of the negative remarks that the Americans instilled into the Filipino thinking, like the Filipino time, it is now common to find people who do nothing but praise anything associated with Americans and belittle anything associated with Filipinos.

That is a fruit of “what was eaten is what will be belched.”

Let us now free ourselves from the wrong thinking implanted in us by our colonizers. We should no longer swallow—so that we would no longer belch—what had been wrongfully fed to us. It’s intellectual decolonization.

The real or genuine Filipino time is being early or on time. We Filipinos prove this ourselves when we arrive early or on time in our respective destinations. If there are people who come late, they are not the majority. Which fact weighs heavier: The few who are late, or the majority who are early or on time?

To decolonize our minds, let us stop being narrow-minded: Always bashing the Filipinos as if we were totally hopeless and useless, and insulting the entire Filipino race for the faults of some people. If there are latecomers, think or say: “There are people who are really like that.” Use people, instead of Filipino.

Having latecomers on occasions cannot be avoided because there is no perfect person, race, or country. There will really be individuals who will be late, whatever their races are.

Other articles by Jon E. Royeca