This piece was supposed to have come out last Friday, June 21, 2024, as my slightly belated take on our Independence Day but got bumped off because I prioritized a last-minute piece regarding Vice President Sara Duterte's resignation from the Cabinet.

THERE is a popular lamentation, especially in social media, that Filipinos and the Philippines never truly became free or independent ('malaya'). I see this going back to the notion of an 'unfinished revolution (of 1896)' that Reynaldo Ileto discusses in 'Knowledge and Pacification,' and which Vicente Rafael scoffed at in a social media post: