Forging the Filipino future

A new year has just begun, but 2026 arrives with a bang, as if to remind us that the world does not pause for calendars.

Nicolás Maduro, the embattled president of Venezuela, has been captured by the United States. On the surface, it is another headline in the endless stream of news, yet for us in the Philippines, it resonates differently. When we see a leader being taken down by the US, it echoes a history we know too well, a history that continues to shape how we understand power and resistance.

When Maduro’s capture appears on our smartphone or television screens, it is difficult, as Filipinos, not to think of our own past, when after the Spanish-American War, the US annexed the Philippines, transforming what had been hope for liberation into a long, bloody struggle against a new colonizer.

The Philippine Insurrection, or the Philippine-American War, began in 1899, triggered by the firing upon soldiers who had expected independence after Spain’s defeat, and over the next three relentless years, guerrilla tactics, ambushes, and brutal reprisals left tens of thousands of Filipinos dead, exposing in the harshest terms the violent logic of imperial ambition and the fragility of freedom when power is unevenly distributed.

In March 1901, in Palanan, Isabela, a small group of American soldiers, led by Gen. Frederick Funston, disguised as prisoners of war, slipped deep into Aguinaldo’s camp and captured Emilio Aguinaldo, the self-proclaimed president of the Philippine Republic, effectively decapitating the leadership and causing organized resistance to falter; history, if we are willing to look closely, shows this pattern repeating itself across time and place, whether it was Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, or now Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, where the removal or isolation of a leader sends a message, not only to the people resisting but to the wider world, that dissent against the hegemon will not be tolerated.

From where I stand, as a Filipino youth committed to understanding global affairs, 2026 is shaping up to reveal how far a global hegemon will go to preserve its grip on power, and guided by its grand strategy, every policy, every alliance, every intervention seems designed to secure a world order in which it remains dominant. I support Western values such as freedom and justice—they are worth defending—but history and current events show that these ideals are often subordinated to strategic interests, bending to serve power rather than people.

Even domestic policies abroad, or actions aimed at vulnerable populations, demonstrate how foreign and domestic priorities converge in the service of control, which leaves those who resist to face the full weight of that power.

This is the paradox we, as Filipinos, inherit: the language of moral leadership, often spoken with grand ideals and lofty promises, frequently conceals a simpler, harsher truth—that survival, control, and dominance, rather than justice or virtue, drive the actions of the powerful, while ordinary people bear the heaviest consequences, struggling to live and to dream under systems they neither shaped nor consented to.

The Global North frames its interventions and strategies as the defense of order, as the maintenance of stability, yet much of the Global South, where the Philippines is part of, experiences them as nothing more than the continuation of an uneven system, one in which compliance is rewarded, dissent punished, and the very notion of freedom becomes contingent on the whims and calculations of those in power.

As Filipinos, we have seen this play out across generations: in the sudden imposition of foreign policies, in the rewriting of our history, and in the ways in which decisions made oceans away ripple through our daily lives, shaping what we can aspire to, what we are allowed to question, and ultimately, what it means to be free in our own land.

2026 is not just another year to mark on the calendar; it arrives as a challenge, a call to remember that history is not a distant story but a living presence that shapes how we, as Filipinos, perceive the world and our place within it. It reminds us that the struggles for sovereignty, for dignity, and for self-determination did not end with Aguinaldo’s capture or with the countless unnamed heroes who took up arms against colonizers; they continue in every act of resistance against oppression, in every effort to claim our rights, and in every question we ask about who truly holds power in our world.

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Christopher Paller Gerale, 28, is a Filipino scholar, researcher, and global affairs analyst currently based in Indonesia. He is affiliated with Universitas Negeri Malang (State University of Malang) as a recipient of Indonesia’s prestigious Kemitraan Negara Berkembang (KNB) Scholarship Program.