The Philippines status changed in 1936. A 10 year process toward independence from the USA was begun. It was time to show the world who the Philippine people were and show the masses at home that things will get better going it alone. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Looking at todays stamp, you can see the ambition or making the Philippines a great country. The majestic figures around the portrait of President Quezon do that. By showing the then current President, they are showing the simplicity with which they were facing the challenges. Reliance on an individual politician to get things done. Even in the best of times a political leader will be resented by a sizable minority. Portraits of political leaders in democratic places are better left till after their death. The partisanship is then dissipated and a legacy of good works can be honored by all. The USA puts no live figures on stamps, except actors in a role, but in 1936, the Philippines no longer had to listen to the USA.
Todays stamp is issue A69, a 6 Centavo stamp issued by the American Commonwealth of the Philippines on November 15th, 1936. It was a part of a 3 stamp issue celebrating the anniversary of the inauguration of Manuel Quezon as the second President of the Philippines. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents mint. All the variations of this issue have the same low value. Optimism can appear sad in retrospect when goals go unfulfilled.
The Philippines was granted a 10 year track toward independence by the USA in 1936. This was supported by the USA at the grass roots level because as a colony, Philippine sugar could be freely imported to the USA at a cost the American growers could not match. How many times around the world have we faced with the complications of sugar cultivation profitably without resorting to slavery. As part of the move toward independence, a long term legislator, Manuel Quezon was elected President. His parents were school teachers and he served the first Philippine President/Dictator Aquinaldo as a aide.
Quezon was interested in social justice and therefore took a half hearted stab at land reform. The Philippines had many American owned large plantations whose product was export crops. They were taken by the government and sold on into local hands. This still left the same system of absentee landlords, cash export crops, less local food production and few tenant farmer rights. This helped government revenue but did not raise the lot of the people fast enough. The Government promoted the native language Tagalog that it rebranded Filipino and tried to promote alongside English and the fading Spanish. Some feel this was a mistake as the ability to speak English is a marketable skill in the world market and of course the language emanates from Indian and Pacific Islanders who are a minority of the ethnicity of the Philippine people.
In 1941, Japan invaded and Quezon’s government fled into exile in the USA. The large American B17 bomber force stationed there had not succeeded in taking out the Japanese invasion armada as it was itself taken out in a daring Japanese air raid. The state of the Philippines was shown in that the bombers were parked together in a small area where they could be guarded from local looters not how they would be dispersed for use in wartime.
Quezon by now was old and sick with tuberculosis. His government in exile had little power and was bogged down in a power struggle with Quezon’s vice president who expected to take power. Quezon died in 1944. His political party, the Nationalists remained a important political force until Ferdinand Marcos in 1978 merged rival paries into one party, his own. Ironically in the mid 80s the party returned as a power base for the Laurel and the Aquino political dynasties. Both had got their start in the Second Philippine Republic, the Japanese puppet government of their occupation. This was after all a rival government to exiled Quezon.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the legacy of President Quezon. He fell short but achieved much and remains a symbol of Philippine independence. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.