Assuming arguendo that Prof. Samuel P. Huntington's hypothesis is right, he spoke, however, of the future. As the Los Angeles Times' Gregory Rodriguez wrote: "Some observers suspected that Huntington was actually projecting his anxiety over the future of the multiethnic United States onto the world stage." The reality is that the Philippines has been mired in Professor Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations (CoC)" for several hundred years now. The entry of the United States in Filipino domestic affairs during the Spanish-American War of 1898 added another "civilization" to the ongoing cultural clash. Yes, the Americans brought in 1898 to the islands the White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant (WASP) civilization in the Filipino CoC.

Let me explain the CoC's existence in the Philippines centuries before the arrival of the Americans. And certainly long before Professor Huntington was even born.

Before the Americans came to the Philippine Islands (PI), the Spanish colonial authorities (AKA Hispanic civilization) were actually engaged in a continuing clash with the Moros over the control of Mindanao. The Moros belong to the Islamic civilization. The Spaniards, like Professor Huntington, found the enemy and like what Mr. Rodriguez wrote, "they are arriving from the south." For more than 300 years, the Spaniards, together with their Mexican Creoles, could not subdue the Moros. The Spaniards, Mexicans and their Indio minions had to defend themselves against infrequent raids by the Moro pirates.

On the other hand, the Chinese had established also their presence prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. The Chinese residents and traders in the Philippines represented the Confucian civilization.

Even after the Americans had established their control over most of the islands, the other civilizations continued their conflicts. They clashed not only in matters of trade and industry but also in politics. Immediately after the American colonizers legalized political parties, some Filipinos organized the "Federalista" Party that advocated their assimilation into the American mainstream. These pro-WASP Filipinos were the forerunners of the now-called "Brown Americans." In the 1930s, the CoC found a compromise in politics. Commonwealth President Manuel L. Quezon was the pride of the Hispanic civilization. Vice President Sergio Osmeña, Sr., a Filipino Chinese, represented the Confucian civilization.

The American colonizers did not realize that the Philippines they conquered was a virtual melting but boiling pot. The PI did not only have the three competing civilizations but also had so many other ethnic minorities. There were the Lumads, Mindanao's non-Moro tribes. The Mangyans were in Mindoro Island. The Aetas (Agtas) in Zambales and Bicolandia. The Ifugaos, the Kalingas, the Igorots and other tribes in the Mountain Provinces. The Ivatans of the Batanes Islands are even related to the indigenous Taiwanese.

Advance the Philippine clock by more than 100 years and we find the same cultural clashes in the country. The four power blocks (civilizations) are still in a massive struggle for the control of the country. The Imperial Manila (TIM) took over when the colonizers left. But the Moro pirates are still raiding some of the islands. Remember the Abu Sayyaf raid in 2000 in Palawan Island that took people (including three Americans) for ransom? The TIM is basically a modus vivendi of elite HispanoFilipinos, Filipino-Chinese taipans and WASPs. The third group is anchored on the American Chamber of Commerce and its members who control multinational branches.

Mr. Rodriguez summed up Professor Huntington's concerns in regard to the growing presence of Mexicans in the Southwest. These are the refusal "to assimilate and belligerently assert their ethnicity . . . (and the) belief in cultural conflict leading to cultural behaviors . . ." Professor Huntington's concerns were the same worries of American colonizers in the Philippines in 1898.

The U.S. blundered when they took over the Philippines. The Americans replaced Spanish with English as the language of government, education and commerce. If only the Americans had the foresight. Nobody among the WASPs thought that the U.S. would become bilingual and Spanish would be the second language. Perhaps if they started mastering Spanish then, now things could have been better for the Philippines and the American Southwest.

The Filipino homeland is worse than the worst nightmare of Professor Huntington, who feared that the United States would be divided into two peoples, two cultures and two languages. The Philippines is practically divided into tens of groups of people, each with their own culture and speaking a cacophony of languages.

(To be continued . . .)