That most famous phrase

Actually, I’d say the famous runner-up of a phrase—the most famous one being “My loyalty to party ends where my loyalty to country begins,” dating from 1922—is the most famous because two presidents of Indonesia have quoted it in their memoirs. But here it is in full. The full phrase was, “I prefer a government run like hell by Filipinos to one run like heaven by Americans because no matter how bad, a Filipino government might be improved.” See the citations from Alfredo Saulo’s monumental two-volume reference book on the late President Manuel L. Quezon from 1978.

Context is everything. Quezon himself, in an extemporaneous speech he made on Dec. 9, 1939, responded to an oratorical contest he attended, together with the audience’s response as recorded at the time:

“It is true, and I am proud of it, that I once said, ‘I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by Americans.’ I want to tell you that I have, in my life, made no other remark which went around the world but that. There had been no paper in the United States, including a village paper, which did not print that statement, and I also had seen it printed in many newspapers in Europe. I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by any foreigner. I said that once; I say it again, and I will always say it as long as I live. [applause]

“But that is not an admission that a government run by Filipinos will be a government run like hell [laughter]. Much less can it be an admission that a government run by Americans or by the people of any other foreign country, for that matter, can ever be a government run like heaven. [laughter]

“We have had four years of our government—the Government of the Commonwealth of the Philippines—a government run by Filipinos, and I defy anybody, American, foreigner or Filipino, to tell me that ours today is a government run like hell. I should say that this is the best government we have ever had in the Philippines, and I will now enumerate the facts to prove this to you.

“We have been under American administration. I will not speak now of the Spanish regime because that already belongs to history. We have been, I repeat, under American administration for over 40 years. But when did the common tao receive the protection of the government, if not only upon the establishment of the Commonwealth? You heard American governors-general charge the cacique of abusing his power, but they were merely denouncing the political bosses, not the economic bosses whom they never went after. When did Juan dela Cruz ever have any chance at social justice if not only upon the establishment of the Commonwealth? Under the American rule, a law in this country authorized the imprisonment of the kasama who left his landlord while still pecuniarily obligated to the latter. But it was Manuel Quezon, let me tell you, who did away with that law.

“Is that freedom? Would that be freedom—allowing a poor tao who owes his landlord to be sent to jail—which you so proudly claim the Filipino enjoyed under the former regime?

“Will you, I ask, have less faith in your own President, the man chosen by your own people, a man of your own flesh and blood? Will you have less faith in him than in a foreign governor-general? [applause] When was the right of habeas corpus denied in the Philippines, and by whom? It was denied during the first years of the American occupation, if you could still remember the concentration camps in Batangas. Did the government of the Philippines, while it was purely in American hands, ever consider the Filipino and his existence as its main concern? When did you have a bank organized to promote Filipino commercial interests? When did you have a bank, the Philippine National Bank, organized to help Filipino farmers, Filipino industrialists? It was established only when the Philippines had the Senate, when we had Harrison, who, as our American governor-general then, permitted the Filipinos to govern this country. And it was because Governor-General Wood tried to undo what that former American governor-general had done that I said: ‘I would rather have a government run like hell by Filipinos than a government run like heaven by Americans.’

“I never expected to hear such an assertion [that we should reexamine our coming independence] from the lips of any young Filipino. I had expected to hear it from their fathers … Yes, I heard them advocating the continuation of American sovereignty in the Philippines upon the theory that America gave us freedom and would give us more freedom than we could give ourselves. At that time, those who had so believed and spoken had not had occasion to see with their own eyes what the Filipinos could do if they were given the chance to govern themselves. But after four years of the Commonwealth Government … for any young man here to say that he would rather see Americans continue in the Philippines. I should reply, ‘Make yourself an American citizen.’ [laughter]“

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Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3