November 27, 2003, AsiaTimes, Philippines: Pacquiao the hero, by Marco Garrido,

November 27, 2003, AsiaTimes, Philippines: Pacquiao the hero, by Marco Garrido, 

MANILA - The news, for once, made one proud to be a Filipino. The former baker boy from General Santos, Manny Pacquiao, had wrested the world featherweight boxing championship from Marco Antonio Barrera. He won no title other than the acknowledgment that he had convincingly thrashed the world champion. 

The image of Pacquiao draped in the Philippine flag, fists jabbing the air in triumph, was enough to dispel the implacably bad news that had marked an early election season. News of taint and instability - corruption, impeachment and coup rumors - had, for the moment, yielded to a contagion of euphoria after Pacquiao's victory. "It was like EDSA all over again," noted editorial writer Conrado de Quiros, referring, of course, to the people-power movements that had deposed presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada; "the much-abused and lowly-regarded Filipino doing the near impossible, pushing his way into greatness armed with heart and epic talent." 

So, in an 11-round display of heart and hunger, Manny Pacquiao had become a hero. He was certainly welcomed home as a hero. A motorcade paraded him from Makati City to Malacanang Palace, where President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo awarded him with cash, honors and a condominium unit. He was feted in the evening with a victory party and concert, with the highlights of his fight replayed on a giant-screen TV. Two enterprising congressmen even filed a resolution proposing to award him the Congressional Medal of Achievement. The way the festivities were billed said it all: "Manny Pacquiao. The New Filipino. Champion of the World." 

Pacquiao the underdog

To Filipinos, Pacquiao was even more the hero because he had been expected to fail. By 4-1, the odds had favored the Mexican Marco Antonio Barrera, who was widely considered Pacquiao's superior in experience, skill and class. Barrera, aka Baby Face Assassin, at 57 wins and three losses, had more fights, years of fighting experience and knockouts (40) under his belt. While Pacquiao's record was also formidable (37-2-1, 28 KOs), he was considered largely untested, if not altogether raw. An earlier fight against Agapito Sanchez had shown him to be, in the words of one commentator, "reckless and one-dimensional". 

For Filipinos, Pacquiao's lack of polish in the ring simply corroborated the humbleness of his beginnings. Born in the city of General Santos in Mindanao, Manny Pacquiao grew up baking rice cakes at the local bakery. At the age of 12, he and his friends signed up for the municipality's weekly boxing match as a way to amuse themselves. Pacquiao won 20 bouts straight, as well as the gold in the culminating amateur tournament. Realizing he might have a future with his fists, he went to Manila to train, living with a friend in the squalid area of Sampaloc. It would be years before he arrived on the boxing scene known as "Pac-man" to international audiences and, to Filipinos as, "The Destroyer". 

His story, as many Filipinos choose to read it, is one of bucking the odds through hard work, discipline and prayer. There is a certain relish in Pacquiao's being roundly booed by the pro-Barrera crowd as he entered the Alamodome arena in San Antonio, Texas, despite his gracious overture - wearing a Spurs jersey - and his imperturbable smile, widening, as de Quiros put it, with each new wave of boos. There is a certain relish, as Filipinos see it, in the way the boxing world betrayed its bias against Pacquiao, its private dismissal of him as an ugly Third World bumpkin: with referee Laurence Cole ruling his slip a knockout and refusing to call the match despite Barrera's wooziness in the later rounds ("[He] looked like he was moving in slow motion," one commentator noted), and with the announcer presuming to translate Pacquiao's English into English: refining his "I will stay ... like before" into "Ladies and gentlemen, he says he will remain humbled!" And there is tremendous relish in his finally assuming the role - as avatar of national honor - that Filipinos wanted him to assume. As one editorial writer described it, instead of jumping up and down making whoopee like a barrio boy smitten by a stroke of luck, as he had been wont to do after previous wins, Pacquiao reacted with unusual solemnity: making the sign of the cross, draping the Philippine flag around his shoulders like a cape and allowing himself to be lifted upon the shoulders of his people. 

Pacquiao the hero

To be sure, Manny Pacquiao is not the only Filipino world-class sports champion. Eugene Torre, Asia's first Grandmaster, recently won the Chess Open in Sweden. Dorothy Delasin took the prize at the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) Tournament in Alabama. But chess and golf, unlike boxing, are not sports the Filipino masa (hoi polloi) instinctively rally to. They do not excite the popular imagination because they serve less well as metaphors of popular aspirations. Particularly in Pacquiao's case, his lack of pedigree only further recommends him for the mantle of Filipino folk heroism. He embodies narratives of overcoming - mainly poverty, prejudice and cynicism - that history has ingrained as themes in Filipino culture, and he invigorates the figurative meaning behind these narratives by being, quite literally, a fighter. 

Manny Pacquiao's claim to heroism is substantiated by his display of prowess. Perseverance and talent insufficiently explain the full meaning of prowess in Filipino culture. Prowess is endowed power; it implies divine sanction, as if those who manifest it have been personally enabled by heaven. The most compelling local demagogues, political or religious, often succeed in manifesting prowess, through a show of arms or by performing unnatural feats such as healing the sick or appearing impervious to bullets, and hence, projecting an aura of irresistibility. 


Pacquiao's only equivalent in the Filipino sports today is Efren Reyes, the billiard player aptly dubbed "the magician". Reyes, perhaps even more than Pacquiao, has a peculiar genius for the game; making shots deemed impossible and winning games he's never played before. Like Pacquiao, Reyes has an attendant legend: He grew up in a billiard hall with a pool table for his bed. In his early days, he would enter foreign tournaments under a pseudonym and would be dismissed offhand until he contrived the most magical shots and, once victorious, would disappear from the incredulous crowd with his group of laughing Filipinos. 

Pacquiao for president

Politicians have been quick to crowd Pacquiao's limelight. The tourism secretary, the Philippine sports commissioner and, most unlikely, the director of the National Bureau of Investigation were among those who showed up to greet Pacquiao at the airport. Manila Mayor Lito Atienza made Pacquiao an honorary citizen of the city. Arroyo, with her re-election campaign perhaps too much on her mind, even interrupted the post-fight interviews to elbow in her congratulations to Pacquiao. At least this time she was hailing a real Filipino hero and not some international pop idol with a sizable fan base, such as Jerry Yan of the Taiwanese pop group Flower Four or Mandy Moore, both recent guests to Malacanang. As Arroyo's own popularity ebbs, her campaign strategy seems to have degraded into one of associating herself with popular people. Her choice of a running mate, Noli de Castro, the newscaster who sidelines as a senator, chooses popularity over substance. 

She has reason to be wildly copping photo-ops. Action star Fernando Poe Jr would seem to be on the verge of officially announcing his candidacy for the 2004 presidential race. FPJ, as he is fondly called, aka Ang Panday (The Blacksmith), after a movie role in which he plays, well, a blacksmith, fits the mold of folk hero. Fatherless at 13, FPJ dropped out of high school to work. He began as a messenger boy for a movie studio, became a stuntman and eventually found fame as an actor and producer. He reprises the same role throughout countless movies - that of the silent, sinless man, slow to anger but who once aroused becomes a relentless avenger - and, because he took great pains to keep his private life private, the public chose to conflate FPJ the person with his onscreen persona. 

This is the man whom the masa would elect as their president if elections were held today. That FPJ has so far demurred from running has only redoubled the zeal of his supporters. An organization has even been founded urging FPJ to run. The subtly named Freedom, Peace and Justice (FPJ) Movement, while forswearing any affiliation with the actor, claims to have collected 2 million signatures in support of an FPJ candidacy. The movement platform holds that FPJ "is the only living symbol strong enough to unite our country, [and] at the same time, rally the frustrated cries of all our people - privileged or marginalized". 

FPJ supporters assume that the prowess he shows onscreen will naturally extend into real life, that because he could not fail as an action hero, he will succeed as president. FPJ's appeal taps into a well of cynicism: people tired of pinning their hopes on ordinary men and women who have disappointed them beyond reckoning seeking solace in the extraordinary and supernatural, as if someone who would seem to upset the natural order in one sphere would likewise be able to defy its limitations in other spheres more relevant to their lives. 

The FPJ Movement recognizes that people want a hero more than a president. For the time being, at least, they have Manny Pacquiao.