Can the Philippines Stand Alone?

    

    The Philippines has faced a lot of difficulties in their lives. Our resilience is tested if something catastrophic happens, particularly if it is unexpected and something beyond our control. Filipinos are profoundly resilient individuals and have consistently demonstrated their fearlessness in tough situations.

Typhoon Yolanda, known as Haiyan internationally, has become a name that is impossible to forget. The super typhoon wiped out houses, killed more than 6,000 people, and destroyed agriculture, leaving the homeless without any source of income for those who survived. But for the people who experienced its wrath, picking up the pieces and getting up was the only way to move forward.

After the Philippines was ravaged by Typhoon Yolanda, ‘resilient’ was a term commonly used in the city of Tacloban by the media, survivors, government officials, and several other stakeholders to identify those affected by the disaster. This discusses how resilience was abstractly deployed to characterize the plight of citizens who were, in fact, frequently suffering from a double phase of dispossession: once by the typhoon yet again by government policy and the unequal allocation of relief goods and services due to the inadequacies of the disaster response. Tacloban was described as an 'exemplary center' of the post-Typhoon Yolanda relief effort, despite these inadequacies. I argue that the overarching rhetoric and strategies of resilience became rituals aimed at normalizing modes of profit‐seeking and recreating the unequal socio‐economic status quo. I believe that 'resilience' is a concept that is complex, overused, distorted, and disputed, and that a more transparent definition of disaster relief and recovery resilience is required.

Bayanihan is a Filipino term that referring to the spirit communal unity and cooperation. We may not prevent instances of many people suffering and dying from these disasters in times of calamity, but Filipinos still practice bayanihan. Officials and even non-officials are providing donations to the victims for relief goods and medical assistance. The power of bayanihan is shown when someone is in a critical state and needs financial and moral help.

Filipinos are resilient individuals and they have consistently demonstrated their perseverance in tough circumstances. I can always see hope in them. Hope springs ever eternal. If there’s one quality that marks the Filipino people, it is resiliency. We’d been colonized, had to rebuild our cities, suffered under terrorism and dictatorship, fended off economic recessions, and fled from our homes in the face of calamities.

References:

https://quintua.blogspot.com/2018/10/resilience-of-filipinos-towards.html

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/apv.12215#:~:text=After%20Typhoon%20Yolanda%20devastated%20the,those%20affected%20by%20the%20disaster.