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Legitimizing Empire
Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican Cultural Critique
By Faye Caronan UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09730-0
CHAPTER 1
Consuming (Post)Colonial Culture
Multicultural Experiences in Travelogues and Ethnic Novels
[T]he reading of ethnic literature can be seen to set a stage for the performance of difference—race relations are made manageable and students are able to "relate" to diverse and highly differentiated experiences by reducing difference to individual encounters via ethnic "texts"; that is, complex differences crosshatched by gender, class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so on, are subordinated to the general category of experience of the unfamiliar.
—David Palumbo-Liu, The Ethnic Canon
In his introduction to The Ethnic Canon, David Palumbo-Liu argues that the formation of the ethnic literary canon coincides with the corporate recognition of the changing demographics of the U.S. workforce. The implementation of ethnic studies curricula and the teaching of the ethnic canon at universities can thus be understood as perfunctorily incorporating ethnic differences to manage an increasingly diverse U.S. workforce. Uncritical additions of diverse cultural narratives do not transform our understanding of U.S. history and society but serve instead to affirm and institutionalize the hegemonic narrative of the United States as a colorblind, multicultural, egalitarian society where one's success can be directly attributed to one's effort. Scholarship on multicultural education compares simplistic additions of ethnic and racial diversity to tourism. This comparison underscores how both multicultural education and international travel are ways of offering "authentic" cultural experiences to U.S. consumers interested in accumulating multicultural capital, touted as a key asset in today's job market. It also demonstrates how ethnic cultures are simplified and commodified for consumption by a mainstream U.S. audience.
In their commodification of ethnic cultures, ethnic novels and contemporary travel guides are today's equivalent to the photographic catalogs of the United States' new island territories at the turn of the twentieth century. In this chapter I analyze three different sets of texts: Our Islands and Their People (a set of turn-of-the-century travelogues commissioned by the U.S. military), the popular travel guide Lonely Planet, and the novels Dogeaters and América's Dream. These cultural productions all serve to deliver the colonized other to a mainstream U.S. public that is specific to its particular historical context. The military-funded travelogues are products of the traditional colonial form that U.S. global power took at the turn of the century. These were government-produced books aimed to familiarize the American public with the United States' intentions for its new island territories, demonstrating direct government involvement in manufacturing consent for U.S. imperialism. The travel guides and ethnic novels likewise manufacture consent for U.S. global power, but they are products of the form U.S. global power took after World War II, one that was no longer dependent on direct political control but on unequal economic and military agreements to secure U.S. global interests. Thus, the travel guides and novels reproduce narratives of U.S. exceptionalism and affirm U.S. global power independently, without overt ties to the U.S. government. Instead, the narratives they produce are shaped by the cultural market. The novels and the travel guides I analyze are mainstream cultural representations, but they reproduce hegemonic narratives of U.S. exceptionalism in distinct but related ways. As cultural products, the novels and travel guides are widely understood as enabling consumers to experience the "authentic" postcolonial other. Travel guides recommend itineraries and activities that allow the consumer to experience postcolonial culture firsthand, whereas ethnic novels are marketed as representing "authentic" stories of the postcolonial others. In this sense, the ethnic novel delivers the postcolonial other for consumption by a mainstream U.S. audience while the travel guides recommend how best to consume the postcolonial nation.
Our Islands and Their People, like the more recent Lonely Planet guides, represent the Philippines and Puerto Rico for consumption. Our Islands and Their People note what industries are best suited for the new island territories and evaluate the island populations as potential workers to attract U.S. capital investment. The Lonely Planet guides represent the islands' unique cultural attractions and natural wonders to entice the Western tourist. I begin this chapter by arguing, through a comparative analysis of Our Islands and Their People and the Lonely Planet Philippines and Puerto Rico guides, that the tourist industry reproduces colonial stereotypes and hierarchies. The continuity of these representations from the colonial to the postcolonial period in the Philippines and Puerto Rico suggests a lack of self-sustaining economic development under U.S. colonial rule. Such development was touted as economic emancipation in contrast to the Spanish empire's explicit economic exploitation of the islands and part of the packaging of U.S. imperialism as benevolent assimilation.
Whereas Our Islands and Their People and Lonely Planet center the tourist perspective in their representations of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, the perspectives of tourist industry workers themselves are represented in the novels Dogeaters and América's Dream. Hagedorn's and Santiago's representations (respectively) of Filipino and Puerto Rican interactions with foreign tourists and the tourist industry bring into question the social consequences of economic reliance on international tourism. Through the characters of Joey in Dogeaters and America in América's Dream I analyze the authors' representations of tourism to demonstrate how both authors foreground the continuity of limited economic opportunities for Filipinos and Puerto Ricans in the colonial and "postcolonial" era. In representing this continuity Hagedorn and Santiago critique the construction of U.S. imperialism as the economic emancipation of the Philippines and Puerto Rico and the promise of foreign tourism as an easy way for the islands to develop their respective economies.
Dogeaters and América's Dream can be read as a critique of how the Philippines and Puerto Rico were economically exploited by U.S. colonialism and thus left vulnerable to economic exploitation by global capitalism in various forms, including unequal trade relations with the United States, World Bank structural adjustment programs, and foreign tourism. However, the novels' representations of the tourist industry can also be read simply as an account of inherent third-world corruption and poverty because the hegemonic narrative of U.S. exceptionalism either touts the benefits of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines or Puerto Rico or neglects this history altogether. Without the historical context of U.S. imperialism and within the culturally American assumption that success correlates with hard work, it is a logical conclusion to blame Filipinos and Puerto Ricans for their own lack of economic development. I close the chapter by analyzing how the marketing and canonization of these novels facilitate the erasure of the historical contexts of the novels and enable readings of these novels as authentic voices of diversity for consumption by an American society that values multiculturalism. As a result, this framing perpetuates hegemonic narratives of U.S. exceptionalism and predisposes readers to approach the novels in the same way that tourists use travel guides—as a mechanism for the consumption of multicultural diversity.
How to Consume the Empire
Travelogues explicitly produce knowledge about foreign places and people for those who have yet to encounter them physically. Travel guides recommend itineraries and inform potential tourists of what to expect when they travel. However, these travel narratives offer seemingly objective information about places and people from particular privileged vantage points. For instance, Our Islands and Their People is a two-volume 1899 travelogue of the United States' newly acquired empire of islands in the Pacific and Caribbean created from images taken by photographers commissioned by the U.S. military. It is not surprising, then, that such representations of Filipinos and Puerto Ricans supported U.S. military and economic interests on these islands by introducing U.S. citizens to America's new overseas empire and explaining the benefits of possessing these islands. Recent travel guides to the Philippines and Puerto Rico are not explicitly linked to nor do they explicitly represent U.S. foreign interests, but they are representative of U.S. global power in the post–World War II, "postcolonial" era of globalization, after the United States granted the Philippines and Puerto Rico varying degrees of political sovereignty.
Due to the lack of self-sustaining economic development during U.S. colonial rule, the Philippines and Puerto Rico were still economically dependent on the United States despite being granted some degree of political sovereignty. This in turn required the Philippines and Puerto Rico to seek out foreign sources of economic aid as U.S. global power transitioned away from the colonial model. Mass tourism offered the possibility of attracting foreign sources of income. For Puerto Rico, the advent of the mass tourist industries coincides with the advent of Puerto Rico's commonwealth status in the mid-twentieth century. In the Philippines, attracting tourists first became a priority during martial law, as the American war in Vietnam neared conclusion. The Philippines benefited economically from providing support for U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. In both cases, the departure of U.S. economic support made it necessary for these islands to find other sources of foreign income. Tourism was one of these sources. Today, travel and tourism represents a small but significant fraction of the Philippines' and Puerto Rico's GDP, 11.3 percent and 7 percent respectively in 2013. However, their commitment to investing in and developing their international tourist industries illustrates the importance both islands place on tourism for their economic development. As a former U.S. colony and a current U.S. commonwealth, the Philippines' and Puerto Rico's development of their tourist industries can be understood as postcolonial strategies for fostering economic growth after centuries of economic subordination to colonial powers. Apparently, the United States had not followed through on emancipating the Philippines and Puerto Rico from colonial economic exploitation through self-sustaining economic development.
The Lonely Planet guidebooks thus represent the re-articulation of colonial power hierarchies in an era of postcolonial globalization because tourism is one way that cash-strapped postcolonial countries exploit themselves to re-attract capital from former imperial powers. These guidebooks package the Philippines and Puerto Rico for the consumption of individual tourists, whereas Our Islands and Their People packaged these islands for consumption to benefit U.S. business interests. The illusion of choice in the current era of globalization masks how globalization reproduces colonial inequalities between wealthy former empires and poor former colonies. The Philippines and Puerto Rico choose to develop their tourist industries because this seems to be an easier way to bring in foreign money than borrowing money from international institutions at high interest rates. Tourists from wealthier former imperial powers can choose to visit poorer former colonies because they have the resources to travel with ease internationally, whereas it is difficult financially and logistically for many residents of former colonies to visit wealthier, former imperial powers. In this way, the Lonely Planet guidebooks' recommended consumption of the Philippines and Puerto Rico and Our Islands and Their People's recommended consumption of the islands similarly facilitate the economic exploitation of the islands.
Here I examine Lonely Planet travel guides because they are produced by the world's largest travel publishing company. The guides' success and popularity led the British Broadcasting Corporation to first purchase a 75 percent stake in the company in 2007 and ultimately the entire company in 2011. Their offices are located in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Australia—all developed countries. A majority of the authors of Lonely Planet: Philippines and Lonely Planet: Puerto Rico are from the United States. Thus, these representations are mediated through the economically privileged perspective of individuals who are (for the most part) from former colonial powers. Given these circumstances, the similar representations of Filipinos and Puerto Ricans in Our Islands and Their People and the Lonely Planet guidebooks are not surprising because both encourage the consumption of the islands. Our Islands and Their People argues—by emphasizing the new colonies' development and business potential—that these islands should be U.S. colonies. The Lonely Planet guidebooks for these islands provide historical, natural, culinary, and other pleasurable reasons to visit. The similar representations in the Lonely Planet guidebooks and Our Islands and Their People also suggest that little has changed in the Philippines and Puerto Rico in the past century, minimizing the enduring consequences of U.S. colonialism except those that benefit the Western tourist.
The introduction to Our Islands and Their People indicates travel as a key objective: "The object of this book, therefore, is to present as perfect and complete a view of the late Spanish Islands and their people as the tourist, traveler or pleasure seeker could obtain by visiting them in person." This travelogue clearly links travel to colonialism by encouraging travel to the islands while itemizing the benefits for the U.S. of maintaining an island empire. Discussion for each territory delineates the benefits of its occupation, describing the climate and what crops would be successful there, indicating inexpensive, available land, and even including methods for cultivating crops. Our Islands and Their People and Lonely Planet: Philippines represent the Philippines as an unexplored frontier. In an explicit pitch to U.S. entrepreneurs, the authors state that "[i]n a commercial sense, [the Philippine islands] are probably worth more than any other region of the same size in the world. In spite of the average density of the population, which is three times greater than that of the U.S., there are vast districts of wild lands, wholly unoccupied and nominally owned." Likewise, the Lonely Planet: Philippines represents the Philippines as an exotic paradise that is for the most part untouched. This guide reproduces the rhetoric of Westward expansion:
The best thing about traveling in the Philippines is the sense that there are still discoveries to be made, sometimes just around the corner. With so many islands and so few visitors (at least in comparison to some other Southeast Asian nations), the Philippines is one of the last great frontiers in Asian travel. For those willing to adapt to the challenges of travel here, there are plenty of rewards ... extraordinary rice terraces, tropical rainforests, underground rivers, soaring limestone towers, uninhabited "Robinson Crusoe" islands, and cascading waterfalls. And that's just above the ocean surface!
Adventurous travelers are urged to challenge themselves by discovering firsthand the "last great frontier." Both texts evacuate the Philippines of people to construct an image of empty lands waiting to be developed or discovered by the reader.
Our Islands and Their People and Lonely Planet: Puerto Rico also describe Puerto Rico using the rhetoric of westward expansion. Our Islands and Their People emphasizes empty, fertile lands to encourage the entrepreneur to invest labor and capital in Puerto Rico: "In every one of the principal islands there are vast tracts of unoccupied lands as fertile as the sun ever shone upon, and these may be purchased, now before the general era of improvement sets in, for a mere song in comparison to their real value." Lonely Planet: Puerto Rico encourages tourists to travel beyond the cities by promising that those "who venture into the island's mountainous interior or explore its undeveloped southern and western coasts are coming across stately hill towns where the locals in the plaza seem to have been feeding the same pigeons for decades." This text constructs Puerto Rico as still undeveloped but markets the untouched lands for U.S. tourists, not U.S. entrepreneurs. The author constructs the locals as anachronistic, quaint people more suited for tourist consumption than their own economic production.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Legitimizing Empire by Faye Caronan. Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS.
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