Cultural System of Philippines (2)

A Clustering of Cultural Forms
Overlapping religious and linguistic cleavages—most notable in the cases of tribal populations and the Muslims of Sulu and Mindanao—are not the only instances in the Philippines in which cultural forms have tended to cluster. In the case of landowners and their tenants or farm-workers, for example, patrons and clients may both be fluent in the regional language, reinforcing other commonalities. However, the landowner is more likely also to have mastered Filipino, English, or in an earlier era, Spanish. Access to these other languages has been a significant advantage in economic and legal affairs. It also intensifies the social cleavages between landlords-cum-patrons and tenants-cum-clients.
Patron-client ties have typically reinforced and been reinforced by regional and religious identities. As a legacy of Spanish colonialism, landowners and their tenants or farm-workers have generally shared the Catholic faith. However, religious identities have recently become more complicated. With the Church’s post-Vatican II commitment to social action, elements of the traditional socioeconomic elite have grown disenchanted with the Church. There appears to have been a surge in elite membership in evangelical Protestant denominations and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons). If this trend continues, the rural Philippines may witness the emergence of class-based religiosity, heightening elite-poor tensions to the extent that religious groups address concerns for social justice.
While the development of nationwide class or group-based organizations may be hindered by linguistic and regional attachments, these cultural features appear to pose fewer constraints on the emergence of local or provincial-level social organizations. The evolution of the Huk movement in Central Luzon in the 1930s to 1950s, of current national-level peasant organizations such as the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP = Peasant Movement of the Philippines) and the Federation of Free Farmers (FFF), and of regional organizations such as the Agrarian Reform Alliances Of Democratic Organizations (ARADO) and the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW), evidences an organizational tendency in which local or regional organizations are united in a larger confederation. Local or regional organizations enjoy considerable autonomy in their activities vis-à-vis national leadership. This phenomenon is also reflected to a degree in the organization of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA). Although headed by a central committee, the CPP/NPA has adopted a strategy of “centralized leadership, decentralized operations” in response to Philippine geography and ethnic and linguistic diversity.