Building From Within: Indigenous Nation-Building and State-Making During the Filipino Third Republic, 1946-1957

Abstract

This study looks at multiple expressions of indigenous agency in Filipino nation-state building from the attainment of Filipino independence in 1946 under the Third Republic. The study begins with postwar reconstruction under the Roxas administration, through the crisis and challenge years of the Quirino years, and the emergence of the strongman of the people, Ramon Magsaysay. Under whom, Filipino nation-making reached its peak years. The study concludes in 1957 with the untimely end of the Magsaysay administration, but with the emergence of a united Filipino people where citizens from all sectors came to be involved. This study argues that Filipinos possessed a natural aversion to communism, which the Third Republic used to consolidate Filipino support, and which prevented the Huks from taking over. Sources of Filipino unity included consolidating all ethnicities. Other sources were overcoming challenges, such as the Huk rebellion and integrating Chinese-Filipinos, Tagalog, and revisions in the educational curriculum. There were many debates surrounding Filipino sovereignty over US bases in the islands. Filipinos participated in regional organizations, such as SEATO and the Bandung Afro-Asian Conference. Major issues involved corruption, security, bridging the urban and the rural, and economic development. Also, many scholars have often overlooked the multiple, diverse Filipino perspectives that lay underneath traditional Cold War superpower-centric narratives. This study disproves the notion that Filipino nationalism can only be studied through the artificial lens of class, which is an oversimplification. The purpose of this study is to show that Filipinos worked together and built a unified Filipino nation-state that is multicultural, multiracial, and hostile to collectivists.

This study uses official government documents, personal papers, memoirs, diaries and newspapers from the Filipino and American archives. These sources contain the involvement of state and non-state actors who contribute to the complex mosaic of Filipino nation-state making. These sources reflect the presence and diversity of Filipino perspectives that point to sources of Filipino unity. The study concludes with the Third Republic, as the ultimate expression of Filipino indigenous agency, having consolidated the ethnic and linguistic groups in the islands, appealing to shared Filipino visions, values and interests.