A HERITAGE OF SMALLNESS

By Nick Joaquin

The national heritage is a heritage of smallness

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Heritage: something we inherited from a previous generation [implies

that no outside force (e.g. Spanish) influenced our inability to sustain the
big effort]
Barangay/balangay is a small boat; barrio is a small locality; sari-sari
store is a small stall selling tingi products, the smallest degree of retail;
industry and way of living follows isang kahig, isang tuka concept.
o isang kahig, isang tuka Ang kita sa isang araw ay sapat
lamang para sa isang araw na pangangailangan; living one day at a
time
o tingi one stick of cigarette, half a head of garlic, small sachets
Buying small portions repeatedly, instead of buying bulk in
one go; a tactic to just survive everyday
Mirrors the financial status of most people in the country
Barangay (aka Barrio)
o 30-100 families
o Shows our tendency to petrify in isolation instead of consolidating;
to split smaller like an amoeba instead of growing like a seed.
o The moment a town gets too big, its splits into towns
o Our excuse/apologia: alleged difficulty of administering so huge an
entity
States in America are much larger but they can manage and
are not complaining
The amount of effort we spend seems out of proportion to the returns; we
work more but make less.
o We have the habit, whatever our individual resources, of thinking
poor, of thinking petty

However far we go back in our history its the small we find

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Many little efforts, however perfect each in itself still cannot equal one
single epic creation.
We would deliberately limit ourselves to the small performance.
o This attitude explains why were finding it so hard to become a
nation.
Used only to the small effort, we are not as a result capable of sustained
effort and lose momentum fast (ningas cogon)
o Ningas-kugon: sa una lang masigasig, maganda o magaling ngunit
sa kalaunan ay hindi na naitutuloy ang nasimulan.

Our pattern of averting large venture, big risks and bold extensive
enterprises may have been set by the migrations
o We try to equate the odyssey of the migrating barangays with that
of the Pilgrim Fathers of America
One was a voyage across an ocean into an unknown world;
the other was merely going to and fro among neighboring
islands
Exhibits of Philippine artifacts with items that show our cultural heritage
confirm that it has been our nature to think and act small.
1. The Filipino works best on a small scale
o Tiny figurines, small pots, filigree work in gold or silver
o We feel adequate to the challenge of the small, but are
intimidated by the challenge of the big
2. The Filipino chooses to work with soft, easy materials
o Clay, molten metal, tree bark, vine pulp, softer woods/stones
o We feel equal to the materials that yield but evade the
challenge of materials that resist
3. The Filipino tends to rut and be complacent once it has mastered a
material, craft or product; dont move on to a next phase
o Native art of pottery declined when the Chinese introduced
porcelain
No effort was seen to master, or even outdo the arts of
the Chinese
The native pot got buried by Chinese porcelain, as
Philippine tobacco is still being buried by blue seal.
Our cultural history, rather than a cumulative development, seems mostly a
series of dead ends
o Fear of moving on to a more complex phase
Ex. Santos (saint figures)
We achieve perfection in making santos out of wood,
but we could not achieve the same perfection with
more difficult materials such as marble and bronze
o Fear of tools
Ex. Wheel in pottery; plow in agriculture
Wheel and plow had to come from outside
because we always stopped short of
technology
o The iron law of life: Develop or decay.
By limiting ourselves to the small effort, we make ourselves less and less
capable of even the small thing as the fate of the pagan potter and the
Christian santero should have warned us.
o Philippine movies

Looking more and more primitive as the rest of the cinema

world speeds by on the way to new frontiers
Our excuse/apologia: We have to be realistic; were in the
business of making art, not money.
o Philippine literature
Defined by and identified with the short story
The small literary form is as much as we feel equal to
o Philippine transportation
The problem of modernizing our systems of transportation
is a problem so huge we hide from it in the comforting
smallness of the jeepney
o Philippine architecture
With population swelling, there should be an upward thrust
in architecture but we continue to build small, in our timid
two-story fashion.
Flat and frail, our cities indicate our disinclination to make
any but the smallest effort possible.
It wouldnt be so bad if our aversion to bigness and our clinging to the
small denoted a preference for quality over bulk; but the little things we
take all forever to do t oo often turn out to be worse than the massproduced article.
o Our excuse/apologia: Mass production would ruin the quality of
our products
o Arguments against technological progress, like the arguments
against nationalism, are possible only to those who have already
gone through that stage so successfully they can afford to revile it.

For the present all we seem to be able to do is ignore pagan evidence

and blame our inability to sustain the big effort on our colonizers.
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Our claim: Our colonizers crushed our will and spirit; our initiative and
originality to the point where inferiority has become part of our nature
Colonialism is not uniquely our ordeal but rather a universal experience.
o The Jews and all the havoc in their long history of woe merely
toughened them up

Spain was 800 years under the Moors, but what should have been a
thoroughly crushed nation got up and conquered new worlds
instead
o Bottomline: our inclination to the small should not be blamed to
our colonizers, because it has been present in our country and
thriving in our countrymen ever since.
o If it be true that we were enervated by the loss of our primordial
freedom, culture and institutions, then the native tribes that were never
under Spain and didnt lose what we did should be showing stronger
will, spirit, initiative and originality and having richer culture and
greater progress than the Christian Filipino. Do they? No.
An honest reading of our history should rather force us to admit that it
was the colonial years that pushed us toward the larger effort.
o There was actually an advance in freedom, organization of towns
and provinces, and an influx of new ideas.
As wheel and plow set us free from a bondage to nature, so
town and province liberated us from the bounds of the
barangay.
o The liberation we experienced during our colonial years can be
seen from:
Comparing our pagan with our Christian statuary

Soar of our architecture

Glimpses of a heritage of greatness

1. The defense of the land during two centuries of siege
a.
2. Propaganda Movement
a.
3. The Revolution
a.