“Its finale was GMA’s most watched,” said the woman whose back was to me.

“The youth of today are so lucky! They can just watch Jose Rizal’s novels!” gushed the woman across from her.

“You know, I only understood ‘Noli Me Tangere’ and ‘El Filibusterismo’ when I watched ‘Maria Clara at Ibarra,’” said the woman seated beside the one who raised the topic.

The buzz about the 52-episode “Maria Clara at Ibarra” was hard to ignore, especially regarding the characters Fidel de los Reyes y Maglipol and Maria Clara “Klay” Ynfantes played by David Licauco and Barbie Forteza, respectively. I wondered what was going on. My high school lessons on Rizal’s novels never mentioned Fidel, an entrepreneur, as Crisostomo Ibarra’s best friend, or Klay, a nursing student, as his “cousin.”

There’s no begrudging the tremendous success of “Maria Clara at Ibarra.” It was Netflix Philippines’ most watched show two days after it premiered in April, and the #MariaClaraAtIbarraonNetflix trended on Twitter Philippines. But as a literature teacher and a reader, I have questions: What happens to Rizal’s original intention? Did it help to learn Philippine history?

Impressive production 

The effort put into the series was obvious. The actors weren’t cloying, with emotions conveyed through the eyes and body gestures. Tirso Cruz III, Andrea Torres, and Juancho Triviño were particularly riveting as Padre Damaso, Sisa, and Padre Salvi, respectively. They exuded control, and didn’t regress into sentimentality.

The stylists Jan Raroque, Roko Arceo and Margie Sorro pulled out all the sartorial stops in costuming the actors in the fashion of the bygone eras. Arceo, in an interview with philstar.com, said no expense was spared on the ladies’ Filipiniana and the gentlemen’s suits that cost P30,000 to P40,000 per set for materials, labor, and accessories (i.e., fancy fans held by a chain, bowler and top hats, and canes). 

The team, said Arceo, took liberties in making Simoun’s wardrobe, “playing on prints and colors” to exude a foppish, eccentric vibe, to contrast with Ibarra’s monochromatic suits. But Arceo emphasized that they stuck to Rizal’s description of Simoun having long, white hair that contrasted with the black goatee, and dressing in English fashion accentuated by dark glasses and a pith helmet.

Another world

Portal fiction wove its magic on viewers through Klay’s time travel adventures, leaving them guessing how she’d extricate herself from various situations. This isn’t surprising because the focus of the genre, according to masterclass.com, is the character who travels from the present world into another realm through a magical portal. (Examples of some famous portals are the 9 3/4 train platform in London that Harry Potter goes through to reach Hogwarts and a wardrobe that the Pevensie siblings climb into to get to Narnia.) Klay’s portals were Rizal’s novels and Maria Clara’s hair comb. 

A distinct feature of portal fiction is its trope of leaving the “real world” for a far more fantastical one, and navigating it. This is the trope that opened creative pathways for head writer Suzette Doctolero and her team to fit Fidel and Klay into the reimagined plot, write new story trajectories, and undo tragic events by speculating on the what-ifs. 

Creative guesses 

A major what-if in “El Filibusterismo” is Maria Clara’s death in the convent from an illness. Simoun learns this from Basilio, and the dandy silver fox is wracked with pain because Maria Clara died “…without knowing [he’d] lived for her.” Doctolero had the lovers meet after 13 years, paralleling it to Fidel and Klay’s nascent relationship. Actors Julie Anne San Jose and Dennis Trillo laced the tragic lovers’ brief reunion with bittersweet poignancy without regressing into maudlin expressions of love, longing, and grief when Maria Clara was accidentally shot by Salvi.

Simoun and Damaso meeting again in “Maria Clara at Ibarra” was another interesting conjecture. It was startling to see a doddering Damaso unable to remember Simoun, who was back with a vengeance but who left deflated. In the novel, Damaso leaves for Manila after Maria Clara enters the nunnery; he eventually dies after being posted to a distant province.

The death of Elias after helping Ibarra escape from the guardia civil is the emblematic fate of indios bereft of education, money, and social standing. But in the series, he was reborn as the comrade and close friend of Fidel who’d turned into a freedom fighter nicknamed “the enlightened one.” Tellingly, Elias’ resurrection in the series recast indios from cursed, subservient creatures into a formidable force of social change.

Noticeably, with the focus on the lovers in the series, the novel’s subplot on the dismal state of education was overshadowed. “‘Noli Me Tangere’ exposed the defects in the system of education pursued in the colleges and in Filipino universities and the evil results of the teachings,” said historian Teodoro A. Agoncillo in “The Revolt of the Masses,” quoting T.H. Pardo de Tavera.

Placido Penitente’s case, the physics class, and Isagani and Fr. Fernandez’s chat, with the latter arguing strongly for the futility in educating Filipinos, are the chapters narrating the flaws in the educational system in length.

Klay’s mystical appearance in her namesake’s bedroom in the series set the what-if ball rolling. Her presence was antithetical to the time and place, giving rise to comical scenes (i.e., Maria Clara and Fidel imitating Klay’s turn of phrase, saying “yarn” and “babu” respectively.) Maria Clara and friends were bewildered by Klay’s undergarment. To help Klay fit in, Maria Clara taught the “crazy extranjera” that womanhood was all about being beautiful and seen, but never heard.

The critique on misogyny was unexpected but welcome, and thus, Klay educated everyone on gender equality. She fought against being browbeaten and assaulted by men to keep her in place. She went head-to-head with the priests, Capitan Basilio, including Fidel and Ibarra in the initial stages of their relationship, who thought little of women’s worth outside of the domestic setting.

Portraits of women

The presence of strong women—led by Klay—was a forceful argument for the success of “Maria Clara at Ibarra. In the novels, Maria Clara and Julî recede from society. Maria Clara is fragile and prone to tears at the slightest provocation. She’s taciturn when Padre Damaso and Capitan Tiago make arrangements for her marriage to Linares, and cries at the mention of Ibarra’s name. In the series, Maria Clara was confident and decisive after Klay urged her to think and speak her mind. She cried, not because of fragility, but frustration at the state of affairs. She vehemently rejected Linares’ marriage proposal, telling him she’d only marry Ibarra. She defied her father and visited Ibarra together with Klay, both of them disguised as gentlemen—when they were forbidden to see each other.

Julî’s rebirth in “Maria Clara at Ibarra” was an indictment of the shaming and blaming of rape victims. She chose life and reconciled with Basilio after listening to Klay. In contrast, Julî, in the novel, commits suicide after being coerced by Sister Balî to see Padre Camorra for Basilio’s release. Balî is the reverse of Klay, playing down Julî’s fears of Camorra, gaslighting her for Basilio’s death if she fails to get the priest’s help, and belittling her because a priest won’t be interested in a peasant girl.

Paralleling the strong women are the victimized women (i.e., Doña Consolación and Sisa). In the novel, Doña Consolación is a former washerwoman who dresses badly and is beaten and later abandoned by her husband, the alferez. Her cruel side has her whipping Sisa and causing the death of Társilo Alasigan, an alleged conspirator who insults her. She had him submerged in the well and then defiles his body with cigarette burns.

Significantly, “Maria Clara at Ibarra” attempted to explain Consolaciôn’s behavior. When Fidel prevented her from whipping Sisa and she countered with a threat of her husband arresting him and Klay, Fidel’s riposte silenced her: She wasn’t important and never held a special place in her husband’s heart. That fleeting realization in her eyes showed how psychologically scarred she was by the absence of friendship, love, and respect in her life.

Sisa’s descent into insanity is pegged on Crispin’s death, but she is already teetering on the brink prior to his death. “Maria Clara at Ibarra” framed her insanity within the oppressive living conditions of the Spanish colonial period, where years of destitution, living with a wayward husband, and social prejudice took their heavy toll on her. Her children were her anchor to sanity, and their disappearance completely unhinged her. Klay protecting Sisa from people’s callousness and Fidel sending her to the hospital for treatment depicted Philippine society’s uphill battle against the stigma of mental illness.

Romance or politics?

Portal fiction works well with most, but not all, literary genres. Old Egyptian, Greek, and Norse mythologies were successfully made relatable to young American readers by author Rick Riordan, who added demigod characters like Percy Jackson to the pantheon of mythological deities, but retained the original premise of the universe’s creation and the gods’ origins. However, reworking political novels is problematic.

With “Maria Clara at Ibarra,” Rizal’s political novels were turned into historical fiction romance set in colonized Philippines. Romance isn’t a problem, but Rizal’s novels are not about romantic love. As the historian Ambeth Ocampo has pointed out, Rizal revealed the “cancer” in the Philippine society of his day in “Noli Me Tangere,” and presented revolution as the solution for the Philippines’ future in “El Filibusterismo.”

The interrupted romances of Maria Clara and Ibarra, Salome and Elias, and Basilio and Julî are examples of how colonial rule permeated every aspect of life. Undeniably, “Maria Clara at Ibarra” showed the friars’ cruelty, the poverty, and absence of social justice in the colonized Philippines, but the K-drama finale of Klay and Fidel’s reunion eclipsed its fight for independence. Fidel arriving at Klay’s timeline replicated Emperor Lee Gon returning to Jeong Tae-uel after traveling to various timelines from the K-drama series “The King: Eternal Monarch.”

Arguably, the novels are fiction. But, said Agoncillo, nothing was purely imagination in “[Rizal’s] character portrayal or in his delineation of the local color: every incident, every character was real and breathing the polluted Philippine air [in] ‘Noli Me Tangere.’” Meanwhile, “El Fibusterismo” continues Rizal’s political protests, revealing what Agoncillo called “his radical and revolutionary tendencies as exemplified in the iconoclast Simoun.”

Ignoring the context of Rizal’s works and simply viewing “Maria Clara at Ibarra” as romance comprise a thorny premise. With the act of reading a tall order these days and Philippine history relegated to the back burner in schools, “Maria Clara at Ibarra” only muddled whatever scant knowledge of history Filipino students are grasping. Significantly, sentiments about “Maria Clara at Ibarra” are centered on Fidel and Klay’s romance, trumping discussions about the Philippines’ colonial past, present, and future history.

But all is not lost. Teachers can use “Maria Clara at Ibarra” as a supplementary tool in their classes. I would use it if I decide to teach literature again; I’d discuss the framing of Philippine history in Rizal’s works and in the series, among other things, and require my students to read the novels and materials on Philippine history.

And is anyone willing to start the discussion on “Maria Clara at Ibarra,” Jose Rizal, and Philippine history?

The post ‘Maria Clara at Ibarra’ turned Rizal into a romance writer appeared first on CoverStory.

Three months after the ouster of the Marcos regime in February 1986, a group of 16 economists from the University of the Philippines issued a report titled “Economic Recovery and Long-Run Growth: Agenda and Reforms.” The report evaluated the economic performance of the martial law years and proposed a set of recommendations. The section on the Marcos debt is particularly revealing. 

The evaluation began by stating that: “The foreign debt incurred by the old regime is one of the biggest obstacles to Philippine economic recovery. The Philippines is one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world: seventh in size of debt, sixth in debt to exports ratio, fourth in debt to GDP ratio, and ninth in debt service ratio.”

But the size of the debt and related indicators were just the tip of the iceberg. The UP report went on to say that “most of the projects financed by the foreign loans were unproductive; … not well chosen or were probably chosen precisely to finance capital flight through the overpricing of projects.” So-called “official development assistance” was “generally tied to projects that were not very high in the country’s priorities or were tied to sources of imports and equipment that are more expensive than competitive suppliers.” 

To make matters worse, projects that were financed by the debt were found to be “overpriced, mismanaged, not viable to begin with, or made unviable by changes in exchange rate and the international environment.”

Related: Martial law and the urgency of remembering

Bataan Nuclear Power Plant

The most notorious case of debt misuse concerned the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Construction began in 1973 and was completed in 1984. But the plant was never operated due to natural hazards at the site and corruption issues even as the original project cost of $700 million ballooned to $2.2 billion. The debt service on a syndicated loan from the US Export Import Bank, Citicorp, and Swiss and Japanese banks amounted to $140 million a year, $12 million a month, and $388,000 a day. Total repayments ended only in 2007 and reached $22 billion, or 900%, over the original project cost. 

Additionally, the government continues to spend P40 million a year in maintenance costs for the mothballed plant. 

A Marcos crony, Herminio Disini, brokered the project construction deal with Westinghouse Electric. In 2012, the Sandiganbayan antigraft court ordered Disini to return $50 million he had received as “commission” from Westinghouse. In addition, the Supreme Court in June 2021 ordered Disini to pay the Philippine government P1.1 billion in damages for “influence peddling” (i.e., using his ties to Marcos to get the power plant’s construction contract awarded to Westinghouse). 

A 1986 research study by Japanese scholars Mamoru Tsuda and Gus Yokoyama uncovered proceedings of hearings by the US House subcommittee on Asia-Pacific affairs showing that “Japanese corporations had paid rebates to Marcos and his cronies, as well as to financial groups allied with the former President, in connection with Japanese yen loans to the Philippines.” 

On the home front, the Commission on Audit in April 1986 accused Marcos of issuing a memorandum that illegally diverted millions of dollars in US aid from the Economic Support Fund (ESF) which were then camouflaged as a “confidential fund.” Also irregularly diverted was P35 million to the “confidential fund” of the ESF Council which was chaired by Imelda Marcos.

Automatic debt appropriation law 

Upon the declaration of martial law in September 1972, Marcos went on an unprecedented borrowing spree. To gain the confidence of potential creditors and assure them of debt repayments, he issued in 1977 Presidential Decree No. 1177 mandating the automatic appropriation for debt service as the No. 1 priority of the government budget over and above social and economic services. 

The Philippines is thought to be the only country in the world with such an automatic debt appropriation law. 

By the early 1980s, the government had become aware that it could no longer service its foreign debt. To cover this up, Marcos technocrats falsified official records by “window dressing” the Gross International Reserves account which overstated foreign reserves by $600 million, or 43% of declared reserves. In a 1985 paper, political scientist Teresa S. Encarnacion wrote that “window dressing was a scheme used by the technocracy to prevent the IMF/WB (International Monetary Fund/World Bank) group from seeing that the level of international reserves had reached a dangerously low level.” 

Encarnacion quoted a Far Eastern Economic Review article in describing the process: “The PNB (Philippine National Bank) branches overseas ostensibly lent money to its non-bank affiliates in the Philippines which deposited the foreign exchange proceeds with the PNB head office which in turn sold the foreign exchange to the Central Bank. The Central Bank to whose books these were credited as part of reserves (because they were treated as capital inflow) deposited the funds with the same PNB branches overseas. Such arrangements are called ‘back to back’ transactions.” 

The economy, however, was quickly deteriorating beyond repair. Economic growth contracted, exports fell, workers’ incomes were reduced, and unemployment rocketed. By 1983, the peso had depreciated relative to the dollar by 120% compared to the 1970s. Record-high oil prices and the political fallout from the assassination in August 1983 of returning opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. worsened the situation. 

Debt relief

Marcos virtually declared bankruptcy in October 1983 as he sought debt relief from foreign creditors via a three-month moratorium on principal debt payments. Debt rescheduling amounting to $6.3 billion was secured but only until 1986, thus assuring even larger debt service payments afterward. 

Nevertheless, Marcos cronies and business associates were privileged in the distribution of generous bailout funds. These same cronies had earlier made use of behest loans that were provided with sovereign guarantees reportedly without compliance with standard banking rules. 

The UP economists argued that the Philippine economy failed to benefit from the large inflow of debt funds due to mismanagement and misuse. Debt repayments drained the country’s foreign reserves, which could not be replenished due to low export prices and a higher import bill. 

Worse for the average Filipino family, expenditures for social services and basic maintenance suffered. To service the debt, taxes and user fees for services were raised even as the government “had to resort to short-term and non-concessional borrowing as the country’s credit rating worsened and the international credit rating tightened.” 

The UP group lamented the government’s tendency “to subordinate growth to an overly burdensome debt service” and called for a more self-reliant economy (i.e., “paying for imports with exports rather than by foreign borrowing”). Foreign financial assistance was to be welcomed so long as “the terms of assistance are favorable” with preference for grants and soft loans, while “hard loans should be examined very carefully.”

4,300% rise

When Marcos first assumed the presidency in 1965, the Philippines’ total foreign debt was $600 million. When he was forced out of power in February 1986, the debt had risen by 4,300% to $26.25 billion.

The 1977 automatic debt appropriation law, unfortunately, remains in place to this day and repeatedly constrains the government from substantially increasing appropriations for essential social and economic services. Between 2020 and 2022, debt service payments accounted for a yearly average of P1.32 trillion, or 28.95% of the government budget. The 2023 budget proposal of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. consists of P1.631 trillion in debt service, or 31% of the budget. 

As of the end of July 2022, the country’s total debt amounted to P12.89 trillion ($226 billion). More than half, or P7 trillion, was accumulated during the term of President Rodrigo Duterte alone. Of this amount, P1.4 trillion (20%) was for Covid-19 expenditures. The latter debt could have been avoided had Duterte heeded the call of civil society organizations and workers’ groups for alternative ways of raising revenue, such as imposing a wealth tax on the richest Filipinos, auditing and canceling illegitimate debts, and collecting the unpaid taxes of the Marcos family. 

The worst part of the Covid-19 loans was that a significant part was unused and irregularities in the procurement of health equipment were exposed.

According to the Economic Intelligence Unit, the Philippine debt level is now 62.1% of the gross domestic product, breaching the internationally accepted level of 60 percent. Marcos Jr.’s administration plans to borrow P2.21 trillion more in 2023, P2.418 trillion in 2024, and  P2.1 trillion in 2025. 

‘Debt bomb’

The civil society watchdog Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) doubts whether the overblown Philippine debt has actually benefited the people. It warns of an impending “debt bomb” and calls for a citizens debt audit to uncover what the group calls “illegitimate and onerous debts.” 

FDC president Rene Ofreneo questions if the current debt is sustainable and whether the nation can avoid the scenario of a “lost development” of the 1980s decade. To avert a 1980s-type crisis, Ofreneo calls for the cancellation of debts, especially those that aggravate the climate crisis via fossil-fuel-dependent projects that, at the same time, displace communities and deprive them of livelihoods. 

If the government’s debt is distributed among Filipino families, each household will owe P495,769. Ibon Foundation says that new taxes will be mainly used to repay the debt which, given the regressive tax system, will be borne disproportionately by the poor and the middle classes. 

Thirty-six years after the end of the first Marcos regime, the dictator’s dubious legacy of a debilitating debt crisis and accompanying economic breakdown looms as a potentially calamitous storm cloud on the horizon.

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