One of the more infamous characters in Philippine literature is the Picaresque Juan Tamad. Juan, whose moniker is Filipino for ‘lazy,’ is a young man who tends to get in trouble for corner-cutting ploys. In one story, he is tasked by his mother to bring some crabs home for dinner. Too lazy to carry them back in a bucket, however, he decides to release the crabs and have them scurry on home ahead of him.
No one in their house has any dinner that night.
Juan Tamad is a controversial archetype. Some, especially frustrated employers, see him as an accurate representation of their errant charges. Others, however, view him as a demeaning caricature drawn by exploitative taskmasters—and his, ahem, innovations thus appear as clever subversion of authority. Positioned at the intersection of these views, Juan Tamad provides a means to examine more deeply the Philippines’ attitudes toward work and creativity, as well as the various factors that have shaped and continue to shape them.
There’s one more thing to consider before going further: the idea of work ethic. While most people use it to refer broadly to attitudes toward work, properly speaking, work ethic refers to the idea that work has intrinsic moral value and, therefore, ought to be pursued largely as an end in itself. It’s a fairly recent view in the grand scheme of history, its rise often attributed to the Reformation movement. And while it soon became widely adopted by people of all religions, this socio-cultural background shouldn’t be overlooked.
Foreign Concepts
When the Spanish set about colonizing the Philippines, it was likely a clash in notions of work that lead the conquistadores to view their victims as lazy. Spain’s capacity—and ambition—for circumnavigating the world relied on a relatively advanced economic system, in which vast resources were channeled into highly specialised pursuits. This meant that agricultural and industrial workers had to produce significant surplus. In the early Philippines, however, while society had advanced enough to support specialised industries, the scale of society meant that a lower level of surplus was required of them. The kind of output the Spanish demanded of them would have been, well, foreign.
Another major consideration in people’s attitude toward work is the kind of reward that might be expected of it. Many of the early Protestants made their way to the frontiers of the New World, where one reaped what one sowed and one’s fortune improved by the sweat of one’s brow. Under such circumstances, there were strong incentives to develop diligence on the individual and societal levels.
For early Filipinos—called indios by the colonists, or mestizos if they were of mixed heritage—hard work presented few rewards. Colonial society was highly stratified and opportunities for social and economic advancement were strangled by heavy taxes, limited education, forced labor, and restrictions on landholding. As far as industry and agriculture were concerned, Filipinos had strong disincentives to do any more than what was expected of them. The benefits of their hardships would only accrue to their masters.
This is not to say that a work ethic of the sort prevalent today could not take root. Despite the disincentives, there were Filipinos who continued to thoroughly apply themselves. In the late 19th century, bolstered by greater access to education both at home and abroad, the Philippine middle class gave rise to the ilustrados. The ilustrados leveraged their education to critique the colonial government and call for either reforms or independence. Because of the colonial administration’s heavy-handed governance, however, they usually had to resort to subtle means of criticism, which they carried out through their mastery of prose, drama and art.
Contrast
In one of Juan Tamad’s episodes, presumably the last, the young man’s sloth reaches such depths that a passing troop of monkeys, convinced by his motionlessness that he must be dead, bury him alive.
All of the Juan Tamad stories are morality tales, but perhaps this last one carries its message to its extreme: if you don’t work hard, you will earn a death in ignominy. Furthermore, Juan’s token attempts—and failures—at easing his own burdens reveal another purpose in the stories, which is to discourage and discredit creativity. The colonists saw heavy labor as not just a means to profit, but also a means to control the population.
In this regard, the ilustrados provide an interesting counterpoint to Juan Tamad. The latter is a pastiche of laziness, whose attempts at thinking outside the box are never more than half-baked. On the other hand, the ilustrados’ success in critiquing the colonial government and inspiring broader support for independence was based on excellence in creative pursuits. It may have been several decades after their heyday that the country would achieve that independence, but their methods nonetheless undo the caricature of Juan Tamad.
These historic circumstances serve as a guide to understanding work ethics and creativity in contemporary Philippine society and show that any proper understanding of the former should consider the latter. For while the country has come a long way since its colonial past, stratification and limits on social mobility are still prevalent; and where they remain, so too does the need for Filipinos to resort to innovation in order to advance. Hard work, in other words, means smart work, means being creative.
Industry and Identity
Creative work in the Philippines thus binds together individual and national identity. Furthermore, Philippine society’s strong emphasis on filial ties—if not quite collectivism—exerts influence on Filipino creative work, as well. As an aesthetic endeavour, such work must confront a society that sees each artist as a representation of the whole nation; as a career, it must guarantee stability not just for an individual, but for a family or community.
The circumstances of creative work in contemporary Philippine society bear this out. As early as the 1980s, the Philippines was a hub for animation, providing outsourced work to countries like the USA and Japan. Now, the local industry encompasses design and development for web, mobile, games and more. The majority of such work carried out is still outsourced, however, and so industry entrants must be able to perform at international standards. It follows, naturally, that many local creatives also go on to work in leading studios around the world.
These factors shape the attitude Filipino creatives bear toward their work. Beyond a matter of personal virtue, hard work—a necessity, in any case, to compete in an international market—is a gateway to other abstract desires: communal stability and self-expression, personal integrity and national pride.
Making the best of a working arrangement with Filipino creatives involves building on this perspective on creative work. Such workers will value stability and security, which can be expressed through open communication and professional transparency; in turn, one can expect the same kind of commitment. Likewise, if you treat them and their work with respect, you can expect the kind of output that has solidified the Philippines in the global marketplace of creative work.
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