CHICKENPIEWe call it Independence Day. The jeepney driver calls it another Tuesday, except with traffic.
128 years since Emilio Aguinaldo read a declaration in Kawit, Cavite, and told Spain to keep walking. Spain moved on. We are still, somehow, in the process of figuring out what exactly we were freed into.
The ceremonial grounds are ready. A general is adjusting his barong. Kids are wilting in the heat by 7am — brought there by parents who believe that standing in formation for two hours in June builds character. They're not wrong. It just builds the wrong kind.
Here is what 128 years of independence actually produced: the most durable, emotionally devastating labor export program in Southeast Asia. We didn't design it. It grew from a very Filipino thing — caring about your family so much that you choose to leave them. The OFW is the longest-running bayanihan move in history. We are continuously moving the house to a better location. The house just happens to be the person.
We also built sinangag. We built the jeepney — the only vehicle on earth that is simultaneously a work of art, a public transit system, and a daily argument about personal space. We built the taho vendor's route: memorized, reliable, earlier than your alarm, kinder than your boss.
We invented "diskarte" because "resourcefulness" doesn't carry the weight of solving a full problem with a borrowed tool, half an ingredient, and no backup plan.
The politicians are celebrating today too. At their own events. Where the champagne is cold and the catering is handled. The Senate is still sorting out who gets to hold the gavel — Acting SP Gatchalian's bloc is studying the question, which is how Filipinos say "nobody has answered yet." DOLE has issued holiday pay guidelines. Someone's HR is already preparing an interpretation. At ₱82 a liter, the jeepney driver running the flag parade route today will not be breaking even. This is what 128 years of independence looks like from the top floor.
Here is what it looks like from the street: the tricycle driver with four passengers currently weighing a fifth. The anak who texted nanay in Riyadh at 6am. The tita who made lechon anyway even though it's just five people this year.
The parade will end. The fireworks will go off at varying degrees of legality. The kids will go home sunburned and slightly more cynical, which is developmentally appropriate.
But somewhere between the first text to the nanay abroad and the sinangag at 5am — somebody is living 128 years of independence, not just commemorating it.
Happy 128th. Try not to make it political.
