BY: GILBERT PILAYRE
The Filipino Psyche and Stockholm Syndrome
Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth, writes: “Colonialism is not satisfied merely withholding a people in its grip… It turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.” The result is a people caught between inherited memory and imposed identity—a hybrid consciousness that has not been allowed to fully heal or become whole.
It is with deep foreboding that one observes how most Filipinos fail to grasp the vast gulf between the ideals of democracy and its cultural practice of “freedom.” Each election lays bare a troubling truth: we have taken the lessons of history and cast them aside. The great sacrifices of our revered heroes—who bled and struggled, even offered their lives to free this land from foreign domination—seem to carry no weight when we stand before the ballot box, choosing leaders as if history’s warnings were mere whispers in the wind. In a disturbing display of national Stockholm Syndrome, we put felons into office as casually as if we were shopping with no idea of the budget. These felons drain our meager resources to such an extent that, instead of ensuring decent and livable wages that put food on the table, many still go to sleep hungry.
Despite progress, poverty in the Philippines remains entrenched: in 2021, about 20 million people lived below the poverty line, including 10.5 million children, with 3.7 million facing food poverty. Educational outcomes are alarming—91% of 10-year-olds cannot understand simple text, and one in four children is stunted, signaling deep-seated health and nutrition challenges. Healthcare and basic services lag, too: healthcare costs are burdensome—with 45% of expenses paid out of pocket—and access to PhilHealth is particularly low in marginalized regions. Only half of households have dependable water and sanitation, conditions that further perpetuate poverty, poor health, and poor educational outcomes (Reuters, PIDS, World Bank).
The Spanish colonization of the Philippines, for over three centuries, ingrained a hierarchical and patronage-based system, where loyalty to the “patrón” or colonial authority was rewarded with survival, protection, or material benefits.
The American domination likewise softened domination through education, pop culture, and infrastructure, creating an image of benevolent rule that masked deeper political and economic control.
Despite formal independence in 1946, Philippine sovereignty was circumscribed by treaties that safeguarded U.S. access to its natural wealth. The General Relations Treaty preserved U.S. military footholds; the Bell Trade Act imposed “parity rights” that allowed U.S. exploitation of natural resources on equal terms with Filipinos, contingent on constitutional overhaul; and the Laurel–Langley Agreement later eased some economic restrictions but maintained systemic access for U.S. interests. In the words of nationalist historian Renato Constantino, this was less liberty and more “neo-colonial masquerade,” where the rhetoric of freedom masked enduring, external control over the nation’s destiny.
Post-colonial politics carried over these patron-client dynamics, now in the form of political dynasties, celebrity leaders, and vote-buying mechanisms.
Imagine a hostage held for nearly half a century—not in a dark cell, but in a house where every rule, habit, and even taste was shaped by the captor. The Philippines, under U.S. colonial rule (1898–1946), was taught to admire its captor’s “benevolence” while being bound to economic dependence. The captor fed, educated, and dressed the hostage, but only in ways that reinforced the hostage’s belief that survival—and progress—were possible only under the captor’s protection.
When “freedom” finally came, it was signed on paper alongside treaties (e.g., Bell Trade Act, Military Bases Agreement) that kept the captor’s access to land, markets, and resources intact. In Stockholm Syndrome terms, the hostage not only thanked the captor but also defended him against critics, often blaming other “enemies” for their misery.
This psychological dependency became political: leaders schooled under the colonial system inherited its worldview, defending trade laws and security pacts favoring the former ruler, convinced these were for the country’s good. Even mass culture—songs, films, education curricula—echoed the captor’s ideals, making foreign validation feel like the ultimate measure of worth.
Nationalist historian Renato Constantino called this a “miseducation”—a deliberate shaping of the Filipino mind to internalize subservience as patriotism. It’s why foreign intervention is often welcomed with open arms, why unequal agreements are justified as “necessary,” and why the former colonizer is still viewed not as an exploiter, but as a “special friend.” In other words: the hostage no longer needs chains, because the captivity is in the mind. It’s like some lying, low-life husband crawling back to his wife, swearing he’s a changed man
while still sneaking off to bang his girlfriend on the side. Same ring on his finger, same slime in his soul.
But the deeper wound is this: the victim does not see itself as a victim, but as the grateful heir of a crooked pact. It calls plunder a favor, and chains a gift.
And so the nation smiles through the ache, mistaking the hand that robs it for the hand that feeds it. The flag waves, the anthem swells, and the children are taught to be proud of a freedom they have never truly touched. In the quiet between elections, the same old families count their spoils, the same old treaties bind our future, and the same old dreams are pawned for bread.
We call it resilience. Perhaps it is. But it is also the endurance of a people who have learned to cradle their chains like heirlooms, who confuse survival with salvation, and who cannot remember the taste of a life without permission. The hostage door has long been open, yet we linger inside, telling ourselves the world beyond would be far less kind.
And so we drift, a people haunted by the ghosts of our own making, chained not by iron but by memory and consent. Fanon warned that the colonized mind is a battlefield, where freedom is always shadowed by the specter of its absence. We taste independence, yet we swallow treaties that keep our rivers, forests, and minerals in the hands of others. We vote, yet the ballot carries the weight of centuries of miseducation; we choose leaders, yet history’s warnings fall like dead leaves on soil too dry to remember their roots.
The Philippines is a house built atop the ruins of its own story. Its children sleep on floors painted with the ghosts of hunger; its schools echo with lessons borrowed from distant lands; its cities rise in glittering defiance over villages that vanish in neglect. We are a people who love the hand that takes from us, smile at the master who binds us, and call chains by the names of gifts.
History is patient, but so is despair. Somewhere, in the whisper of wind over Manila Bay, in the quiet resistance of those who dare to read and dream, the question lingers: when will the hostage learn that freedom is not a contract signed by others, but a courage born within? Until then, the wretched of the earth remain both witness and victim—mourning what was stolen, mourning what they helped steal from themselves.