Are
We
Still
by: Krissa Alvarez
Controlled
by tHe
U.S.
?
Is Philippines still a colony of the United
States? Maybe not in a literal way anymore. The Philippines has been an independent country, a republic in fact, ever
since World War 2 ended. We already
have our own government and it is run by
Filipino leaders. But I tell you this, we are
still controlled by the United States. You
may ask, how come? We live to please the
world, especially the United States. We all
know the United States is one of the most
developed countries in the world in a lot of
aspects and of it is their economic status.
The Philippines is controlled in a way that
our economic status is dependent on theirs.
As an example, a research paper was done
on how the United States still have the control over the Philippines in the economic
perspective as ninety percent of our foreign
trade and investment is with the United
States. Moreover, the United States have
been controlling the Philippines by maintaining their dependence in economic terms as
the United States have been the number one
buyer of exports from the Philippines
(Padilla, 2013).
Not only has the United States have
been controlling our economy but they
have been controlling our lifestyle.
As you can see, Filipinos have this colonial mentality. Many of the Filipinos
would love to buy more of the import
products by the United States than our
very own products. It can be seen with
the gadgets we use, the sweets we eat,
the clothes we buy and wear, the movies
or television shows we watch, the music
we listen to, and the list will continue on.
Instead of patronizing our country’s own
works, we idolize what the Western culture brings to us. In addition, we also
copy their work or we make their work
as an inspiration of our very own which
lacks originality and creativity on our
part; the reason why we are usually
called gaya-gaya or copycats. With this,
we can infer that we are still being controlled by the United States and it is only
in our hands if we want to be completely
free from their supremacy or not.