|
|
| |
Philippines: Pacquiao the
hero
By Marco Garrido
 MANILA
- The news, for once, made one proud to be a Filipino.
The former baker boy from General Santos, Manny
Pacquiao, had wrested the world featherweight boxing
championship from Marco Antonio Barrera. He won no title
other than the acknowledgment that he had convincingly
thrashed the world champion.
The image of
Pacquiao draped in the Philippine flag, fists jabbing
the air in triumph, was enough to dispel the implacably
bad news that had marked an early election season. News
of taint and instability - corruption, impeachment and
coup rumors - had, for the moment, yielded to a
contagion of euphoria after Pacquiao's victory. "It was
like EDSA all over again," noted editorial writer
Conrado de Quiros, referring, of course, to the
people-power movements that had deposed presidents
Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada; "the much-abused
and lowly-regarded Filipino doing the near impossible,
pushing his way into greatness armed with heart and epic
talent."
So, in an 11-round display of heart and
hunger, Manny Pacquiao had become a hero. He was
certainly welcomed home as a hero. A motorcade paraded
him from Makati City to Malacanang Palace, where
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo awarded him with cash,
honors and a condominium unit. He was feted in the
evening with a victory party and concert, with the
highlights of his fight replayed on a giant-screen TV.
Two enterprising congressmen even filed a resolution
proposing to award him the Congressional Medal of
Achievement. The way the festivities were billed said it
all: "Manny Pacquiao. The New Filipino. Champion of the
World."
Pacquiao the underdog
To
Filipinos, Pacquiao was even more the hero because he
had been expected to fail. By 4-1, the odds had favored
the Mexican Marco Antonio Barrera, who was widely
considered Pacquiao's superior in experience, skill and
class. Barrera, aka Baby Face Assassin, at 57 wins and
three losses, had more fights, years of fighting
experience and knockouts (40) under his belt. While
Pacquiao's record was also formidable (37-2-1, 28 KOs),
he was considered largely untested, if not altogether
raw. An earlier fight against Agapito Sanchez had shown
him to be, in the words of one commentator, "reckless
and one-dimensional".
For Filipinos, Pacquiao's
lack of polish in the ring simply corroborated the
humbleness of his beginnings. Born in the city of
General Santos in Mindanao, Manny Pacquiao grew up
baking rice cakes at the local bakery. At the age of 12,
he and his friends signed up for the municipality's
weekly boxing match as a way to amuse themselves.
Pacquiao won 20 bouts straight, as well as the gold in
the culminating amateur tournament. Realizing he might
have a future with his fists, he went to Manila to
train, living with a friend in the squalid area of
Sampaloc. It would be years before he arrived on the
boxing scene known as "Pac-man" to international
audiences and, to Filipinos as, "The Destroyer".
His story, as many Filipinos choose to read it,
is one of bucking the odds through hard work, discipline
and prayer. There is a certain relish in Pacquiao's
being roundly booed by the pro-Barrera crowd as he
entered the Alamodome arena in San Antonio, Texas,
despite his gracious overture - wearing a Spurs jersey -
and his imperturbable smile, widening, as de Quiros put
it, with each new wave of boos. There is a certain
relish, as Filipinos see it, in the way the boxing world
betrayed its bias against Pacquiao, its private
dismissal of him as an ugly Third World bumpkin: with
referee Laurence Cole ruling his slip a knockout and
refusing to call the match despite Barrera's wooziness
in the later rounds ("[He] looked like he was moving in
slow motion," one commentator noted), and with the
announcer presuming to translate Pacquiao's English into
English: refining his "I will stay ... like before" into
"Ladies and gentlemen, he says he will remain humbled!"
And there is tremendous relish in his finally assuming
the role - as avatar of national honor - that Filipinos
wanted him to assume. As one editorial writer described
it, instead of jumping up and down making whoopee like a
barrio boy smitten by a stroke of luck, as he had been
wont to do after previous wins, Pacquiao reacted with
unusual solemnity: making the sign of the cross, draping
the Philippine flag around his shoulders like a cape and
allowing himself to be lifted upon the shoulders of his
people.
Pacquiao the hero
To be sure,
Manny Pacquiao is not the only Filipino world-class
sports champion. Eugene Torre, Asia's first Grandmaster,
recently won the Chess Open in Sweden. Dorothy Delasin
took the prize at the Ladies Professional Golf
Association (LPGA) Tournament in Alabama. But chess and
golf, unlike boxing, are not sports the Filipino masa
(hoi polloi) instinctively rally to. They do not
excite the popular imagination because they serve less
well as metaphors of popular aspirations. Particularly
in Pacquiao's case, his lack of pedigree only further
recommends him for the mantle of Filipino folk heroism.
He embodies narratives of overcoming - mainly poverty,
prejudice and cynicism - that history has ingrained as
themes in Filipino culture, and he invigorates the
figurative meaning behind these narratives by being,
quite literally, a fighter.
Manny Pacquiao's
claim to heroism is substantiated by his display of
prowess. Perseverance and talent insufficiently explain
the full meaning of prowess in Filipino culture. Prowess
is endowed power; it implies divine sanction, as if
those who manifest it have been personally enabled by
heaven. The most compelling local demagogues, political
or religious, often succeed in manifesting prowess,
through a show of arms or by performing unnatural feats
such as healing the sick or appearing impervious to
bullets, and hence, projecting an aura of
irresistibility.
Pacquiao's only equivalent in
the Filipino sports today is Efren Reyes, the billiard
player aptly dubbed "the magician". Reyes, perhaps even
more than Pacquiao, has a peculiar genius for the game;
making shots deemed impossible and winning games he's
never played before. Like Pacquiao, Reyes has an
attendant legend: He grew up in a billiard hall with a
pool table for his bed. In his early days, he would
enter foreign tournaments under a pseudonym and would be
dismissed offhand until he contrived the most magical
shots and, once victorious, would disappear from the
incredulous crowd with his group of laughing Filipinos.
Pacquiao for president
Politicians
have been quick to crowd Pacquiao's limelight. The
tourism secretary, the Philippine sports commissioner
and, most unlikely, the director of the National Bureau
of Investigation were among those who showed up to greet
Pacquiao at the airport. Manila Mayor Lito Atienza made
Pacquiao an honorary citizen of the city. Arroyo, with
her re-election campaign perhaps too much on her mind,
even interrupted the post-fight interviews to elbow in
her congratulations to Pacquiao. At least this time she
was hailing a real Filipino hero and not some
international pop idol with a sizable fan base, such as
Jerry Yan of the Taiwanese pop group Flower Four or
Mandy Moore, both recent guests to Malacanang. As
Arroyo's own popularity ebbs, her campaign strategy
seems to have degraded into one of associating herself
with popular people. Her choice of a running mate, Noli
de Castro, the newscaster who sidelines as a senator,
chooses popularity over substance.
She has
reason to be wildly copping photo-ops. Action star
Fernando Poe Jr would seem to be on the verge of
officially announcing his candidacy for the 2004
presidential race. FPJ, as he is fondly called, aka Ang
Panday (The Blacksmith), after a movie role in which he
plays, well, a blacksmith, fits the mold of folk hero.
Fatherless at 13, FPJ dropped out of high school to
work. He began as a messenger boy for a movie studio,
became a stuntman and eventually found fame as an actor
and producer. He reprises the same role throughout
countless movies - that of the silent, sinless man, slow
to anger but who once aroused becomes a relentless
avenger - and, because he took great pains to keep his
private life private, the public chose to conflate FPJ
the person with his onscreen persona.
This is
the man whom the masa would elect as their
president if elections were held today. That FPJ has so
far demurred from running has only redoubled the zeal of
his supporters. An organization has even been founded
urging FPJ to run. The subtly named Freedom, Peace and
Justice (FPJ) Movement, while forswearing any
affiliation with the actor, claims to have collected 2
million signatures in support of an FPJ candidacy. The
movement platform holds that FPJ "is the only living
symbol strong enough to unite our country, [and] at the
same time, rally the frustrated cries of all our people
- privileged or marginalized".
FPJ supporters
assume that the prowess he shows onscreen will naturally
extend into real life, that because he could not fail as
an action hero, he will succeed as president. FPJ's
appeal taps into a well of cynicism: people tired of
pinning their hopes on ordinary men and women who have
disappointed them beyond reckoning seeking solace in the
extraordinary and supernatural, as if someone who would
seem to upset the natural order in one sphere would
likewise be able to defy its limitations in other
spheres more relevant to their lives.
The FPJ
Movement recognizes that people want a hero more than a
president. For the time being, at least, they have Manny
Pacquiao.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
