'We have yet to see the reactions and opinions of actual katulong/kasambahay back home.... It’s important to ask who is part of this discussion and who is not.'

The posthumous publication of Pulitzer Prize-winning Filipino-American journalist Alex Tizon’s "My Family's Slave" has provoked much discussion and some controversy. Many readers were moved by the plight of Lola Eudocia Tomas Pulido, who was 18 years old in 1943 when the author’s grandfather “gave” her to the author’s mother as a “gift” and who worked for the author’s family for 56 years.

Tizon provided harrowing details of how Lola Eudocia was subject to frequent scolding, forced to work long hours well beyond physical exhaustion and sleep amid piles of laundry, beaten in place of the author’s mother when the author’s mother misbehaved, promised but never actually given an “allowance.”

The essay also recounted Tizon’s own efforts to make amends: standing up to his mother in defense of Lola Eudocia; bringing Lola to live with him in her old age and helping her obtain US citizenship; giving Lola $200 a week to send to relatives, and later paying her airfare to visit relatives back in the Philippines; taking her on family vacations; and bringing her ashes back to her birthplace.

The internet being what it is, Tizon’s article has generated its share of commentaries both thoughtful and thoughtless, knee-jerk and nuanced. While some were quick to condemn Tizon for not doing enough, and sooner, to redress 50 years of suffering and exploitation (a point that should get one thinking in turn of how long the United States and its people have taken, and are still taking, to redress the trauma and long-term immeasurable human cost of slavery), a number of commentators have called for better historical and cultural understanding of slavery and the utusan/kasambahay/katulong (house help) system in the Philippines that made such suffering and exploitation possible in the first place. (READ: The Atlantic's 'My Family Slave' should not end with a feast)

The conversation has not been confined to one among Americans (including, of course, Filipino Americans, many of whom have learned about the situations of “maids” from their grand/parents or from their own visits to the Philippines), but has reached across the Pacific and the world to encompass middle- and upper-class Filipinos living in the Philippines and other parts of the world.

I say “middle- and upper-class Filipinos” because, so far, we have yet to see mainstream media solicit and present the reactions and opinions of actual katulong/kasambahay back home. In the case of overseas Filipino workers (numbering some 2.4 million in 2015, 51% of them female, and more than half of female workers being classified as “laborers and unskilled workers,” a category that includes domestic helpers [more about “unskilled” later]), it is also difficult to track the discussion among them because: 1) they are not likely to have the time to browse, let alone post comments in, English-language media; and 2) the internet discussion has been mainly in English (and there is no translation of the article into Filipino and other Philippine languages).

In short, it’s important to ask who is part of this discussion and who is not. (READ: Finding Eudocia Pulido in her hometown in Tarlac)

4Moreover, reading through the comments, one can’t help wondering at what is missing or, more important, what is silenced or erased when people – particularly those who identify as Filipino by nationality or by heritage – attempt to explain the context of slavery and the utusan system in the Philippines.

The most obvious context here is that household work in general is devalued and for that reason poorly renumerated. Economists do not factor unpaid “household production” or “own-production” – the work done by and within a family for its own use (cooking, cleaning, child care, etc) – in their statistics. There are now calls among some economists to come up with a way to measure household production, but the challenges of measuring the "quality" of such production remain.

In the Philippines, the labor (both muscle and emotion) needed for household production is sub-contracted by families (including some poor ones) to their katulong. Even when paid housework is included in national statistics (a country’s GDP, for instance), it is still viewed as “unimportant” and classified as “unskilled,” as though the quality of caring for home and children (the future generation, the human resources) doesn’t count for much.

Then there is the oft-repeated remark that since Eudocia Pulido was called “Lola” (Filipino term for grandmother), this meant that she was considered “part of the family.” This so-called explanation is actually a non-explanation, since it says nothing about the exploitation that happens within families. The cultural practice among Filipinos of calling their kasambahay “lola” in no way mitigates, let alone justifies, the exploitation of Lola Eudocia. Generations of feminists have detailed the abuse and exploitation that can be found in the most intimate, private sphere of the family, in the relationships between spouses, between parents and children, between heads of households and dependents. (READ: We are all Tizons)

In a posthumously published commentary called “Strange Hierarchies” (Philippine Studies: Historiographical and Ethnographic Viewpoints vol. 64, issue 1, 2016), the scholar Benedict Anderson argued that “maids are an interesting site to study the cross-effects of class inequality and intra-gender inequality.” He trenchantly observed that Southeast Asian middle-class children often “learn the ropes” of inequality from – and practice being “unequalizers” on – their own “yayas” (a Binisaya term that originally means “aunt” but is now synonymous with kasambahay who care for children).

In his comments, Vince Rafael rightly points out that Filipino "slavery" has its own specific history and system of social arrangements and relations. (Slavery in different forms, as well as other forms of indentured, conscripted, and unremunerated labor, exist in many regions of the world across centuries.) Rafael examines how the concepts of mutuality, reciprocity, utang ng loob (a concept more complex than simple “debt of gratitude”), awa (pity), and hiya (shame) underpin the historical system of slavery in the Philippines, and inform present-day relations between katulong and their so-called "amo."

The thing about these so-called “Filipino values” is that they work in a double-edged way: as much as they are often the only means by which the oppressed are able to assert their agency and human dignity against their oppressors (as Vince eloquently shows), the language of reciprocity has also functioned historically to mask and enable the power dynamics of inequality and subordination.

In fact, one of the thorny issues in the agrarian and tenancy disputes of the past century in the Philippines has been tenants and sharecroppers’ resentment of the way the landlords, who already benefit from a rigged system that keeps their tenants and workers perpetually indebted to them, still expect or demand personal services from them – services ranging from cutting firewood to repairing houses and, worse, offering their children as household servants – for free.

This is why the issue of wages has been an important component of the political struggles of workers around the world, as wages set some limits on how much mutual obligations people –particularly those in power vis-à-vis the powerless – can exact from each other.

Another running thread of the internet commentary on the Tizon article is the unconscious paternalism exhibited by some commentators who claim that one is doing a good thing – the right thing, even a favor – by giving the poor food and shelter in exchange for having them do house work for very little pay, or no pay. The middle classes, behaving just like the landlords (and, if you want to think farther afield, slave-owners and colonizers), like to invoke this brand of self-congratulatory paternalism when they say that they “take care” of their servants even as they relentlessly exploit them.

There are, it must be said, examples of good employers who do their best to ensure the welfare of their servants. But a comment such as this one – “i feel like many filipinos don’t have so much so i wouldn’t be surprised if some took people in as help…even when they weren’t paid, feels like a way for them to take care of each other” – does not help clarify things. Its vague talk of mutual help runs the danger of shading off into the patronizing rhetoric of hiring-maids-as-a-favor-to-the poor, because both beg the question of who is making more use of whom. After all, the cost of providing food and shelter is far less than having someone be at one’s beck and call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Just for comparison, let’s look at contemporary Japan, where servants were commonplace until the end of World War II. Nowadays, the cost of hiring a professional nanny to take care of one’s child is about 2,000 yen an hour, plus transport and other expenses. If you multiply this by 8hours, that’s already 16,000 yen for one day’s work – and the nanny cannot be asked to do any other housework (for cleaning, you have to ask another company to provide that labor, and you’ll also be charged per hour). A stay-in nanny who works 8 hours a day, 7 days a week for a month will cost you 480,000 yen. Compare this to the median family income in Japan, which is about 7 million yen a year, or around 583,000 yen a month. Which is to say that Japanese middle-classes cannot afford live-in nannies or even hourly-pay nannies. Companies like Duskin are hiring Filipino workers and paying them the equivalent of $1,500 or P66,000 a month to do house-cleaning for Duskin clients. Their pay is roughly comparable to the minimum hourly wages in Japan. (Compare this to the P2,500 that the Kasambahay Law mandates for domestic helpers in Metro Manila as against P9,000 per month for non-agricultural labor in the National Capital Region.)

The "culture" of the utusan system is deeply connected to politics, economics, and institutions. Alex Tizon is right to use the term “slave” because, in the 20th century, if someone doesn’t get paid for doing work that she ought to get paid for (regardless of whether she consents to an unpaid arrangement or not), then she is a slave by our 20th-century definition. It is possible to speak of a wife, a widow, a sister, a grandmother, an aunt, or a daughter (and their male counterparts) as working like a slave, even when the work they do is considered part of their “familial” obligation.

The point is that we are no longer talking about 16th-century or even 19th-century slavery. The national liberation struggles, the abolitionist and Civil Rights movements, the workers’ movements, the feminist and other social and political movements from all over the world since then have helped create a world where what happened to Lola Eudocia and the oppression of so many other people all over the world can no longer be condoned, and what is needed is not just understanding and individual initiatives to redress the situation – laudable as Alex Tizon’s efforts to make amends to Lola Eudocia had been – but larger systemic and structural changes such as better enforcement of laws and regulations and better protection of the vulnerable and the poor.

What exactly are the politics and economics of the utusan question and why is the utusan system so pernicious and long-lasting, despite the progress in our political and social values? What are the specific problems and challenges that we middle-class Filipinos need to grapple with?

If it is a question of housework, most Filipino middle-class families can save up for a washing machine, and assign the chores of cooking and cleaning among themselves (husbands and children included, not exempted). But the factors that account for the persistence and longevity of the maid system are deeply political and economic, and involve a series of institutional problems. Here are just a few of them:
• The erosion of the standards of the Philippine public school system: as recent as the postwar era, the public school was of sufficient high quality that people were proud to go to public school. The great historian Resil Mojares, for example, talks about his pride in being a public school student (as opposed to private school) in one of his essays in House of Memory. Washington Sycip and Kerima Polotan, two prominent Filipinos, went to public schools. The point about public schools is that they would have been within walking distance of the houses in a district. But the erosion through inadequate funding and bureaucratic corruption of the public school system has given rise to the middle-class preference to send their children to private schools, and because private schools are often located at a distance from their homes, they have to rely on maids to ferry their kids to and from school, or keep house for them as they ferry their own children back and forth.
• Concerns (real and imagined) about law and order: while most children of working-class families have no choice but to walk or commute to school by themselves, most middle-class parents worry about the safety of their kids, fearing that the kids will be robbed, molested, or kidnapped. Some middle-class children are so coddled by their parents that they have never taken a bus or a jeepney in their lives. (We haven't begun talking about how cocooning children from the world outside their airconditioned car windows and middle-class homes engenders a narrow, blinkered view of that world.)
• The repeated failures of industrial policy: had the country's elites been able to formulate and implement better industrial policies, the employment opportunities that would have opened up for women in factories, offices, and other better-paid workplaces would have encouraged more women to take jobs other than household service. Middle-class families often worry about the precariousness of their finances because they know the wages they themselves earn are not enough for them to pay their DHs well.
• The lack of support system for childcare: there are kindergartens, but only for those who can afford them, and there are not many government-subsidized and employer-provided childcare facilities that will allow working mothers to entrust their small children to adequately compensated, professional caregivers.
• The failure of imagination and mindset: while there are enlightened men who are willing to share the housework with their spouses, the onus is still on the women to do the bulk of the housework. Worse, because the middle- and upper-classes are already so dependent on their maids, they tend to breed in their own children a similar “señorito/a” complex that views housework as something only maids – other people – do. This kind of mentality explains the cluelessness of those who, having gone abroad or migrated to First World countries, complain about having to do the housework themselves and wax nostalgic about having katulong back home to make their beds for them (as Anderson mentioned in his essay). It also explains the annoying predilection of middle- and upper-class matrons to complain about the “laziness,” "slowness," “untrainability,” and "untrustworthiness" of their maids (an NHK documentary shown in Japan actually recorded one such conversation involving one of the Philippines’ elite families--had this documentary been shown in the Philippines, it would have ignited a firestorm of controversy). If the work done by the maids are not up to the standards of the matrons, why don’t the matrons do the housework themselves?

What “My Family’s Slave” has done is to bring up a subject that is often left unsaid and left unthought and unexamined, a subject that, far from being just a problem of Philippine poverty and corruption and lack of state capacity "out there," implicates all of us who have ever had yayas bring us up and keep house for us. We have to render ourselves accountable for – and live with the guilt and consequences of – all the things we have allowed to happen and all the things we could and should have done but failed, for whatever reason, to do. – Rappler.com

An earlier version of this piece was published in the author's site, ikangablog.

Caroline Hau works in Kyoto. Her latest book, Elites and Ilustrados in Philippine Culture, is published by Ateneo de Manila University Press. </s> Rappler's Lian Buan visits the grave of Eudocia Pulido, the subject of the controversial story penned by Filipino-American journalist Alex Tizon, and meets the relatives she left behind

TARLAC, Philippines – The Atlantic's "My Family's Slave," which featured the life of Eudocia Tomas Pulido as an unpaid househelp to a Filipino family in America, stirred so much controversy and opened debates to modern-day slavery, human trafficking, and race.

In the hilly town of Mayantoc in the province of Tarlac, Eudocia's relatives say they've always had a hint that she was not being paid but they never had a chance to discuss it with her because their communication was cut off for a long time. (READ: Finding Eudocia Pulido in her hometown in Tarlac)

In Mayantoc, they call her "Kosyang" and this is what they have to say. – Rappler.com </s> Joanna Demafelis left Philippines in search for a better life after she was offered a job in the Middle East in 2014.

Little did she know that she would never come back.

The 29-year-old was hired by a Lebanese man and his Syrian wife who lived in Kuwait.

Last year, the heinous couple retorted to domestic abuse and killed her.

After Demafelis went missing for a year, her dead body was reportedly discovered from a freezer placed in an apartment, which was abandoned by the couple. Nader Essam Assaf and his wife Mona Hassoun fled for Syria after the discovery. After an Interpol manhunt, Assaf was detained by the Syrian authorities and was handed over to Lebanon. His wife was placed in custody in Damascus.

After a month of being arrested, Assaf confessed to murdering the domestic worker.

As per local media, there was evidence the maid was tortured and strangled to death.

The Kuwaiti Criminal Court sentenced the couple to death by hanging for the brutal murder.

"The court has ruled in absentia to punish the defendants by hanging on the charges they were assigned to," the court documents, obtained by al-Rai newspaper, read.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte was outraged after discovering about the Filipina murder case and vowed to "sell his soul to the devil" to bring the Filipina workers back home, who were being abused and assaulted in Kuwait.



 Over 2 million Philippine citizens work overseas, but after Defamelis’ murder and other stories of abuse on domestic workers, Duterte’s government offered free flights home for approximately 10,900 Filipinos who overstayed their visas.

Duterte also ordered a ban on further deployment of workers in the Persian Gulf country.

Defamelis’ family said she was planning to visit them in 2018, but after not being in touch with her for nearly a year, they reported her missing to the authorities. What followed was devastating.

For decades, domestic help in the oil-rich Persian Gulf, hailing from developing south and Southeast Asian countries, have suffered torture at the hands of their wealthy employers. Not much is being done about it, though. </s> JOANNA Demafelis loved life. She took hundreds of selfies and posted them all over social media. So it was unusual when she stopped.

Her family grew worried about the maid from the Philippines who had moved to Kuwait to support them. Their fears turned out to be justified.

In February this year, a full 12 months after she went missing, Ms Demafelis’ body was discovered inside a freezer in an abandoned apartment where she’d worked for a Lebanese man and his Syrian wife.

The sixth of nine children had moved overseas in 2014 like many young Filipino women do to help their families survive. They were struggling to repair the battered family home after Typhoon Haiyan tore through.

She would call family routinely and never complained. But when the calls stopped, her family went to authorities.

The Lebanese-Syrian couple was arrested in February in the Syrian capital Damascus following an Interpol manhunt.

Syrian authorities handed the husband, Nader Essam Assaf, over to Lebanese authorities, while his Syrian wife remained in custody in Damascus. On Sunday, the pair was sentenced in absentia to hang for their crimes, but the fallout has impacted an entire country.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte responded to Demafelis’ death by banning the deployment of Filipino workers to Kuwait, though that won’t affect the more than 250,000 Filipinos still working in the oil-rich nation.

The Philippine senate, meanwhile, has opened an inquiry into what went wrong.

The president, who is prone at making public outbursts, also lashed out at Middle Eastern nations.

“The Filipino is no slave to anyone, anywhere and everywhere,” an enraged Mr Duterte said shortly after Demafelis’ body was found. “We send to you a Filipino worker ... do not give us back a battered worker or a mutilated corpse.”

In the wake of the Demafelis murder, Manila has been working to facilitate the return of its nationals who wish to leave, including those who have lost their residency status.

Ambassador Renato Pedro Villa declined to comment on the verdict over the weekend when asked by reporters but told AFP on Sunday that his country has already repatriated 4000 Filipino nationals living in Kuwait without the necessary paperwork.

“We are now in talks with Kuwaiti authorities to secure an amnesty that will allow 6000 Filipinos living without papers to return,” he said.

Rights groups have voiced alarm over the plight of workers in the Gulf and other Arab countries, where migrant labour is regulated under a system known as “kafala”.

The kafala, or sponsorship, system ties migrant workers’ visas to their employers, prohibiting workers from leaving the country or changing jobs without prior consent.

In February, a casket carrying the body of Ms Demafelis arrived at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, four years after she left. Her relatives were inconsolable.

Back home, Philippine labour officials pledged to shoulder the repair of her family’s house — still not fixed — where relatives were preparing for her funeral.

— with AFP </s> A bronze statue in Manila symbolizing the World War II sex slaves abused by Japanese soldiers has been removed, less than five months after it was erected.

The statue was removed around 8 p.m. local time Friday night. Activists sympathetic to the plight of the former sex slaves gathered at the site Saturday morning and they are expected to issue a statement later Saturday.

The seven-feet bronze sculpture, which depicts a blindfold, grieving woman in Maria Clara traditional Filipiniana gown, was unveiled on Dec. 8 last year along Roxas Boulevard in Manila City.

"This monument is a reminder of the Filipino women who were victims of abuses during the occupation of the Japanese forces from 1942-1945. It took a while before they came out into the open to tell their stories," read the inscription on the monument.

The erection of the statue angered Japan. The Japanese government had protested and demanded that it be taken down.

An alliance of Filipino women GABRIELA and Lila Pilipina (League of Filipino Women) had urged the Philippine government to ignore Japan's demand.

GABRIELA is at the forefront of the Filipino women's struggle for freedom and democracy while Lila Pilipina is an organization of wartime sex slaves.

Both groups have demanded justice on behalf of the ageing "comfort women" in the Philippines - an official apology from the Japanese government, just compensation, and inclusion of the "comfort women" issue in Japan's historical accounts and textbooks.

Knocking down the statue would be a setback in the victims' long struggle for justice, the groups said.

The unveiling took place 76 years after the Japanese invasion of the Philippines that started on Dec. 8, 1941, 10 hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese occupation of the Philippines occurred between 1942 and 1945.

It's estimated that up to 200,000 women in their teens from around Asia, including South Korea, China, Indonesia and the Philippines, were forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels during that period.

To keep alive the memories of the "comfort women," similar memorial statues in South Korea, China and the United States' San Francisco have been built. </s> American and Filipino officials on Tuesday hailed a “bright future” and the end to a dark episode in their nations’ longtime alliance as the United States brought back to Philippine soil three bells looted from a local church in 1901.

After a U.S. Air Force plane carrying the Bells of Balangiga landed in Manila, the American ambassador to the Philippines signed them over to Filipino Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana in a ceremony filled with symbolism.

“The return of the Bells of Balangiga lets us reflect on the U.S.-Philippine relationship – where we have been, where we are, where we are going,” U.S. envoy Sung Kim said during a handover witnessed by kin of Filipinos who were killed by American forces in the sacking of Balangiga town, in the central Philippines, during the Philippine-American War 117 years ago.

American troops at the time claimed the church bells as war booty.

The bells were symbolically flown in on a U.S. military cargo plane named after late American Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who once famously declared that he would return to liberate the Philippines – a U.S. colony at the time – from Japanese occupation during World War II.

Kim said the ties binding the two allies were “ironclad” and “consecrated by the service and sacrifice of the Americans and Filipinos who fought side-by-side for freedom.”

“On behalf of the United States, it is my great honor to be here at this closing of a painful chapter in our history,” he said. “The bells’ return reflects the strong bonds and mutual respect between our nations and our people. It demonstrates our determination to honor the past and the sacrifices made together by Filipinos and Americans. And it heralds our bright future as friends, partners, and allies.”

While Kim noted that past Philippine presidents had worked to have the bells returned, President Rodrigo Duterte took the Americans to task over them.

The president’s rhetoric and threats to sideline Washington while the Philippines sought closer ties with U.S. rivals China and Russia were largely seen as having sped up legal work needed to repatriate the church bells.

“The history of these bells spans the entire relationship between the United States and the Philippines. In the process, they have touched many lives. And their return underscores the enduring friendship between our countries, our shared values and shared sacrifices,” Kim said.

The bells soon will be reinstalled at the Church of San Lorenzo de Martir in Balangiga, Samar province, a fitting Christmas gift to the mostly Catholic town that was pining for the return of the historical artifacts.

With the bells finally back on Philippine soil, both countries can now move on, Lorenzana said.

“They are going back to where they belong. It is time for healing. It is time for closure. It is time to look ahead as two nations should which shared history as allies,” the Philippine defense chief said.

“There’s no need to argue who is wrong and who is right. But it is safe to say these bells come to symbolize a painful episode in the history both the Philippines and U.S.,” he said.

Duterte will be present during the handover of the Balangiga bells on Saturday in Eastern Samar.

In the town of Balangiga, residents were excited for the historic homecoming of the three bells, and local officials have tightened the security in time for the arrival ceremony. For the first time in more than a century, the bells will peal to mark this year’s nine dawn Masses before Christmas.

“We are praying we will have a good weather on the day of arrival,” said Fe Campanero, a town tourism officer, adding that the bells will be open for a public viewing for locals and tourists after the turnover.

The bells of Balangiga were considered war trophies by the U.S. Army after reprisals that followed the infamous Balangiga Massacre on Sept. 28, 1901. The massacre was ordered to avenge the deaths of 45 American soldiers who were attacked by Filipino guerrillas. The bells were taken by American soldiers because they were used to signal a surprise attack by Filipino revolutionaries.

After being removed from the Philippines, one of the bells wound up with the U.S. 9th Infantry regiment at Camp Red Cloud in South Korea, while the two others ended up were at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo.

President Duterte used the story of the Balangiga Massacre to cast aspersions on the U.S. government after it questioned his administration’s war on drugs that has left thousands dead since mid-2016. He then demanded the return of the bells, and accused Washington of being hypocritical for calling him out on alleged rights abuses when the American military had committed past atrocities. </s> Americans in Philippines jittery as Duterte rails against United States

OLONGAPO (Reuters) — In a bar along the Philippines’ Subic Bay owned by an American military veteran, the main topic of conversation is not the upcoming U.S. election despite the Donald Trump coffee mugs, photographs and caps on display.

The talk is of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s tensions with Washington and his courting of China, which is worrying the bar’s mostly American clients who have settled in the vicinity of the huge Subic Bay base, a former U.S. navy installation.

“The biggest fear is that one day he’s going to wake up and say ‘everybody from the U.S., get out of town’ and we’d have to leave our loved ones behind,” said Jack Walker, a retired Marine sergeant who has lived in Olongapo, the town around the base, for five years.

For more than a century the Philippines and the United States have had a shared history of colonialism, wars, rebellion, aid and deep economic ties. That could change as Duterte’s three-month-old administration re-examines the relationship.

In a series of conflicting statements, Duterte has insulted U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. ambassador in Manila for questioning his war on drugs, which has led to the deaths of more than 2,000 suspected users and pushers. He told Obama to “go to hell” and alluded to severing ties with Washington.

Then, after weeks of anti-American rhetoric, Duterte said the Philippines would maintain its existing defense treaties and its military alliances.

The comments have left Americans and U.S. businesses in the Philippines jittery about their future, said Ebb Hinchliffe, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce.

“Every time he opens his mouth and says something negative about America, that hurts me personally...and from a business standpoint, it’s not helping,” he said.

He said three trade delegations representing American technology, financial services and manufacturing companies had canceled trips to the Philippines in recent weeks.

At least two American companies have opted to do business in Vietnam instead “because of the president’s anti-American sentiment.” Hinchliffe declined to name the companies or give further details.

The United States ruled the Philippines from 1898, when it acquired the country from Spain, until recognizing its independence in 1946.

About four million people of Philippine ancestry live in the United States, one of its largest minorities, and about 220,000 Americans, many of them military veterans, live in the Philippines. An additional 650,000 visit each year, according to U.S. State Department figures.

According to a Pew Research Centre study last year, the Philippines is the most pro-U.S. country in the world.

Despite the shared history, though, the Philippines has a strong nationalistic movement that has questioned the U.S. alliance. In 1991, the government asked Washington to vacate the Subic Bay naval facility and the nearby Clark Air Base.

But as tensions increased with China over the territorial dispute in the South China Sea, the Philippines signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with the United States in 2014 that grants Washington increased military presence through rotation of ships and aircraft for humanitarian and maritime security operations.

However, Duterte has said that agreement will be reviewed and he insists that the Philippines, the third-largest Asian recipient of American military aid after Pakistan and Afghanistan, can do without assistance.

He was to leave for China on Tuesday on a state visit that could shift alliances in the region.

Philippine government officials have sought to play down Duterte’s comments.

“Where the president is coming from is that he wants to encourage the Filipino people to be more independent,” said government spokesman Ernesto Abella. “It’s not so much an anti-American relationship as a pro-Philippine sentiment.”

Edward Pooley, a former Marine colonel who has lived in the Philippines for nearly 30 years, said Duterte’s words were “heartbreaking” but he remained optimistic about the bilateral relationship in the long term.

“We’ve always done a lot of charitable activities and...we feel the appreciation. Don’t give up on us,” he said.

The mayor of the city of 220,000, Rolen Paulino, said his people were “pro-American” but that he supports Duterte’s shift in foreign policy.

“If the president wants to invite Russia and China...I will teach my people Russian and Chinese because we have to adapt,” Paulino said.

But many in the business community have labeled Duterte’s rhetoric as largely bluster and take comfort in the fact that he has yet to translate it into action.

The business process outsourcing or BPO sector, expected to account for 9 percent of GDP this year, remains largely optimistic about growth in the Philippines.

“Suffice to say, there are questions that are being asked because of (Duterte’s) statements,” said Danilo Reyes, country manager of Genpact, one of the biggest American BPO companies in the country. “But it does not really translate to actions, we continue to expand.” </s> The Philippine government faced a backlash Monday over claims it was trying to whitewash the history of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Critics said a series of edits to the Facebook page of the country's official government record were an attempt to put a positive gloss on years of authoritarian rule.

Among changes that sparked fury over the weekend was the claim that Marcos imposed martial law in 1972 to deal with Muslim secessionists and a communist insurgency.

Opponents charge Marcos declared martial law to keep himself in power. They also say he threw opposition figures in jail and plundered state coffers.

The gazette also said he gave up his role in 1986 to "avoid bloodshed"; historians agree he reluctantly fled in the face of massive popular opposition.

"The caption should have been "Ferdinand Marcos stole $10 billion dollars worth from Filipinos, had 34,000 Filipinos tortured, had 3,240 Filipinos murdered, and was so hungry for power he tried to stay dictator for life," one angry commentator posted on Facebook.

The furore is the latest chapter in a struggle over the national narrative in a fiercely partisan country, where power has traditionally been passed among a small number of elite families.

Controversial President Rodrigo Duterte -- a Marcos ally -- has reignited squabbles over Marcos' legacy with a plan to bury his embalmed body in the "Cemetery of Heroes".

Mainstream historians agree that Marcos's 21-year rule was a dark period for the Philippines; a time when extra-judicial killings, disappearances and corruption were the norm.

Most Filipinos lived in grinding poverty, even as the president and his family grew wealthy -- a gulf symbolised by the discovery of thousands of pairs of luxury shoes in the first lady's living quarters.

"We are not in the business of revising history," assistant press secretary Ramon Cualoping insisted Monday in response to the outcry.

"The Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines is devoid of any political colour and affiliations," he added.

The government later revised the entry to say only that Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and went into exile in the United States in 1986.

Marcos died in 1989 and his family was later allowed to return to the Philippines where they have made a remarkable political comeback, with several members getting elected to major positions.

Duterte, who styles himself as an anti-corruption crusader, is a close ally of the Marcos family and credits them for his election as president in May. </s> The talk is of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's tensions with Washington and his courting of China, which is worrying the bar's mostly American clients who have settled in the vicinity of the huge Subic Bay base, a former U.S. navy installation.

"The biggest fear is that one day he's going to wake up and say 'everybody from the U.S., get out of town' and we'd have to leave our loved ones behind," said Jack Walker, a retired Marine sergeant who has lived in Olongapo, the town around the base, for five years.

For more than a century the Philippines and the United States have had a shared history of colonialism, wars, rebellion, aid and deep economic ties. That could change as Duterte's three-month-old administration re-examines the relationship.

In a series of conflicting statements, Duterte has insulted U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. ambassador in Manila for questioning his war on drugs, which has led to the deaths of more than 2,000 suspected users and pushers. He told Obama to "go to hell" and alluded to severing ties with Washington.

Then, after weeks of anti-American rhetoric, Duterte said the Philippines would maintain its existing defence treaties and its military alliances.

The comments have left Americans and U.S. businesses in the Philippines jittery about their future, said Ebb Hinchliffe, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce.

"Every time he opens his mouth and says something negative about America, that hurts me personally ... and from a business standpoint, it's not helping," he said.

He said three trade delegations representing American technology, financial services and manufacturing companies had cancelled trips to the Philippines in recent weeks.

At least two American companies have opted to do business in Vietnam instead "because of the president's anti-American sentiment". Hinchliffe declined to name the companies or give further details.

The United States effectively ruled the Philippines from 1898, when it acquired the country from Spain, until recognising its independence in 1946.

About four million people of Philippine ancestry live in the United States, one of its largest minorities, and about 220,000 Americans, many of them military veterans, live in the Philippines. An additional 650,000 visit each year, according to U.S. State Department figures.

According to a Pew Research Centre study last year, the Philippines is the most pro-U.S. country in the world.

Despite the shared history, though, the Philippines has a strong nationalistic movement that has questioned the U.S. alliance. In 1991, the government asked Washington to vacate the Subic Bay naval facility and the nearby Clark Air Base.

But as tensions increased with China over the territorial dispute in the South China Sea, the Philippines signed an Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the United States in 2014 that grants Washington increased military presence through rotation of ships and aircraft for humanitarian and maritime security operations.

However, Duterte has said that agreement will be reviewed and he insists that the Philippines, the third-largest Asian recipient of American military aid after Pakistan and Afghanistan, can do without assistance.

He was to leave for China on Tuesday on a state visit that could shift alliances in the region.

Philippine government officials have sought to play down Duterte's comments.

"Where the president is coming from is that he wants to encourage the Filipino people to be more independent," said government spokesman Ernesto Abella. "It's not so much an anti-American relationship as a pro-Philippine sentiment."

Still, the mood was sombre at Dynamite Dick's bar in Olongapo when a Reuters reporter dropped in recently.

Edward Pooley, a former Marine colonel who has lived in the Philippines for nearly 30 years, said Duterte's words were "heartbreaking" but he remained optimistic about the bilateral relationship in the long term.

"We've always done a lot of charitable activities and ... we feel the appreciation. Don't give up on us," he said.

The mayor of the city of 220,000, Rolen Paulino, said his people were "pro-American" but that he supports Duterte's shift in foreign policy.

"If the president wants to invite Russia and China ... I will teach my people Russian and Chinese because we have to adapt," Paulino said.

But many in the business community have labelled Duterte's rhetoric as largely bluster and take comfort in the fact that he has yet to translate it into action.

The business process outsourcing (BPO) sector - expected to account for 9 percent of GDP this year - remains largely optimistic about growth in the Philippines.

"Suffice to say, there are questions that are being asked because of (Duterte's) statements," said Danilo Reyes, country manager of Genpact, one of the biggest American BPO companies in the country. "But it does not really translate to actions, we continue to expand."
A controversial piece written in The Atlantic magazine about the Filipino servant caste and the Filipino American family involved in it triggers a debate in both the Philippines and the United States.