Philippines 101

“Filipinos, it has been said, are Malay in family, Spanish in love, Chinese in business and American in ambition. History intervened in the evolution of Filipino cultural life, intruding with a heavy hand on critical occasions, for better or worse irreversibly affecting the Filipino character.”

– Alfredo Roces, Filipino artist-writer

“The Philippine political culture is… personalistic but violent, religious but superstitious, corrupt but tolerant, hierarchical but distributionist, solicitous of form but not of content, legalistic, but careless of equity, media-obsessed and nationalistically vociferous with respect to rights but negligent to obligations.”

– Lew Gleeck, American historian

“What would we do without rice? Those who do manual labor would go hungry midway through the gap between meals. And what would we take to go with ­kari-kari… tinapa, tuyo, tapa? Loaf bread? Only rice provides the mild, comfortable background that makes the very salty, the highly flavored, logical and palatable.”

– Doreen Fernandez, Filipina food writer

“The fiesta is a lift to their sagging spirits, a foe to their woes, a pill for their aches, a break from the rigor of their daily toil and a release for their dionysian bent. It is the focus of the energies of a people given to gaiety, the love of living and the belief that a day must be set aside to thank the Lord for all the good things He has given them.”

– Manuel D. Duldulao, Filipino author