In almost all of us,
there's an 'Intsik'

The lawyers who assisted him in the Senate hearings are Edwin Lacierda, a Chinoy, whose ancestors hail from Fujian province in China's southeastern coast, and a (surname) Princesa, also from Albay.

On the other side of the divide in last Monday's hearing where all the president's men flanked Lozada were two probinsyanong Intsiks, and as far as I can remember, they kept mentioning their "celestial" lineage in political meetings. Joselito Atienza, the three-term mayor of Manila who is now in charge of our mines and forests, lakes and rivers, has ancestors who are from the Dy family. Mike Defensor's mother is a Tan from Pampanga. Don't ask me where the Defensors are from. Everybody and his mother knows about this very political, very high-profile surname.

Manny Gaite is a Bicolano, by the side of Joker Arroyo when he was Cory's executive secretary, later taken in by Robert Aventajado as his undersecretary for "flagship" projects during the Estrada reign. I know nothing about Gaite's ancestors. But I heard he it was who drafted EO 464, to the eternal delight of Eduardo Ermita and their Boss Woman. As for lawyer Antonio Bautista, the guy who was caught with his pants down when Lacson unraveled his lies and his past, I do not care to know whereof he descended. Neither does Senator Kiko Pangilinan, his student at the University of the Philippines, when he was yet allowed by the UP to teach in its hallowed halls.

The senators most solicitous about Jun Lozada's health are also probinsyanong Intsiks, if we go by their ancestral lineage. The man who started it all in the Senate by exposing the ZTE supply contract at the time when DOTC was still claiming that it was "lost" in a Hainan hotel, Panfilo Lacson is a Caviteno whose forebears come from the Lacson clan of Molo in Iloilo, also probinsyanong Intsiks in the Fil-Hispanic era. The guy who along with the Black and White Movement, were involved in trying to genuinely secure Jun Lozada upon his return from Hong Kong, Benigno Simeon Aquino III, Noynoy to his father Ninoy, is the only son of Corazon Cojuangco, whose grandfather was a Chinese immigrant from Fujian who sold rice in Malolos before he and his sisters moved to Paniqui in Tarlac.

Lozada's "tormentor", Joker Arroyo, his paisano from Baao in Camarines Sur, is not a probinsyanong Intsik, as far as I know. His ancestors are Kastila. The chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee is Alan Peter Cayetano, whose mother is a German-American from the shores of Lake Michigan, but of course, he does not torment the probinsayong Intsik, unlike Miriam Defensor Santiago of Pototan in Iloilo, married to Narciso "Jun" Yap Santiago of Tarlac.

Remember when Madame Miriam suddenly blew her top in a previous Senate hearing on the ZTE-NBN stink late last year? When she fulminated about these "intsiks" who according to her recollection or interpretation of history, "invented corruption"? When the Chinese Filipino community reacted against her racial slur, she profusely apologized, and as if to mitigate her mental slip, she proudly declared she married a Chinaman. He, he, he.

Now I don't know wherefrom Benjamin Abalos' ancestors come. Pinoy na Pinoy, as in native na native, in color, in the shape of his eyes, in his homespun humor. But his wife's ancestors are also probinsyanong Intsik from the fabled province of Pampanga.

The man who Lozada and before him, Joey de Venecia told the nation and the world as most eager to see the ZTE-NBN deal push through, this most powerful "kumpadre" of Benjamin Abalos, is a Kastila from his paternal side, the Arroyos and Pidals of Iloilo who migrated to Negros Occidental after a grand-uncle was removed by Manuel Luis Quezon from his gubernatorial post because he was the patron of jueteng in Iloilo, in partnership with a probinsyanong Intsik, Sualoy of Amoy. But from his maternal side, the landed Tuasons of Marikina and Quezon City, ah, that is another story. Legend has it that they too descended from a Chinese immigrant. But such antecedents my friend Manolo Quezon would be better at "explaining."

Bertie Lim, speaking for the Makati Business Club, is descended from the illustrious General Vicente Lim, a Manilenong Intsik, whose face adorns the one-thousand peso bill, fifty pieces of which Mike Defensor handed to Lozada the night before that historic dawn press conference. Bertie and Che-Che Lazaro's grandmother is the equally revered Pilar Hidalgo Lim, educator and social work organizer.

But on the other side of the Makati business fence, there is that fierce Mike Arroyo and GMA loyalist, Vivian Yuchengco, who wants Bertie to shut up, and who, if you recall, wanted snipers placed in Makati's buildings to shoot Trillanes and Lim down last November 29. Now that's one pure-blooded Chinese, as far as I know. She is a niece (not a daughter as many mistake her to be) of Ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco, our envoy once to China and once to Japan, who controls the RCBC, Malayan Insurance, and yes, Pacific Plans.

Then of course, there is another fierce GMA loyalist, now chair emeritus of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who wants everybody to just suffer in silence, despite all the lying and all the stealing. His name is very Chinese - Donald Dee, who along with Mike Varela and Sergio Ortiz Luis, my friend Mar Roxas used to call "negociantes sin negocio" during the days of Erap, when they were all Erap loyalists. In FVR's time, they were also FVR loyalists. These days, only Donald still mouths the Malacañang line on radio and TV. Does his brother Dewey who fled to Canada want to return?

The whole country is filled with Intsiks, whether probinsyano or Manileno or recycled into alta sociedad by money, money, and more money. Even the ancestors of the national hero, Jose Rizal, come from Chio-say in Fujian, Hsi-hsi in Mandarin.

But greed, whether permissible, moderate or excessive, or shall we say, breathtakingly Arroyo-class, is not a question of genes or race, or bloodline, Senadora Miriam.

It's a question of breeding. It's a question of moral values.

It's not even a question of wealth or the lack of it. Some of the most scrupulously honest are the poorest in our society. Some of the most rapaciously greedy are from alta sociedad. Some of them even speak the language of our conquistadores, Castillian, whose race produced Miguel de Unamuno and Cervantes along with the Isabela la Catolica and the Inquisitionists, and after whose weak and sickly Felipe II, these benighted islands are named.

Now these Kastilaloys go to China and enter into sleazy and fishy deals because the once poor Chinese are the wealthiest in the world. And these deals are characterized by commissions , "bumubukol" because of excessive greed.

They have little if any morals, even if they claim to be of landed gentry, or sport illustrious surnames. They cannot, as Romy Neri says it, "moderate their greed".

Which led Jun Lozada, the probinsyanong Intsik, to say, "Filipino should not mean one family; Filipino should be about a country, a people".

One recalls that Leon Ma. Guerrero, highly admired man of letters and diplomat sans pareil, called Jose Rizal, the probinsyanong Intsik from my province of Laguna, "the First Filipino." And now Lozada, despite his admitted faults, wants us all to bear in mind what being Filipino should mean.

Yes indeed. People of the Philippines, whether Intsik or Kastila or Pinoy na Pinoy, versus the spouses Jose Miguel Tuason Arroyo and Gloria Macaraeg Macapagal Arroyo.