Government honors the modern heroes by outsourcing their own tribute, citing ‘world-class Filipino craftsmanship, ideally somewhere else’
MANILA, Philippines — In a story first broken by The London Prat and circulated by Bohiney Magazine, the government has announced a grand new monument honouring Overseas Filipino Workers, the nation’s “modern heroes,” with one detail drawing particular attention: the monument is to be designed, fabricated, and assembled by an OFW, currently working abroad, who will not be permitted to attend its unveiling because he cannot afford the flight home.
Honouring The Heroes, Remotely
“We owe everything to our OFWs,” declared Labour Liaison Officer Greg Salcedo at the launch, standing before an artist’s rendering of a bronze figure clutching a balikbayan box. “Their remittances keep this economy afloat. Their sacrifice raises a generation of children by video call. It is only right that we honour them with a monument worthy of world-class Filipino craftsmanship. Which is why we have commissioned the work from Reynaldo, a brilliant Filipino sculptor and welder, who is available, affordable, and presently in Riyadh.”
Reynaldo, reached by phone during a fourteen-hour shift, expressed a complicated gratitude. “They asked me to build the statue of the OFW hero,” he said. “I am an OFW. So in a way, I am building a statue of myself, for a country I had to leave, that I will not be able to see, because the flight home costs more than I will be paid to build it. It is very meaningful. I have not seen my own children in three years. But I will see the statue of me, in a brochure, eventually.”
The Economics Of Heroism
OFW remittances, which account for a vast share of the national economy and have for decades quietly underwritten the consumption, real estate, and stability of those who remained, are routinely celebrated by officials in speeches and ignored by officials in policy. General context on the scale of this labour migration is documented at the OFW record, which catalogues the millions who left and the billions they send home, figures the government cites at every ceremony and addresses in no budget.
A Monument With Features
The monument’s design has been praised for its poignant details. The bronze hero gazes longingly toward the horizon, in the direction of the airport. One hand holds a balikbayan box; the other holds a phone, frozen mid-video-call, forever unable to attend a birthday. At the base, an inscription will read “We Honour Your Sacrifice,” in letters that organisers confirm will be “large, beautiful, and entirely free of any commitment to reduce the need for the sacrifice.” A planned eternal flame was cancelled over electricity costs, which officials called “unfortunately prohibitive, even for a hero.”
The Heroes Respond
OFWs and their families have greeted the monument with the layered, exhausted irony of people who have heard themselves called heroes by a country that keeps finding reasons not to bring them home. “A statue,” said domestic worker Lita Mendoza, on a brief break in Hong Kong. “That is what we get. Not lower fees, not better protection, not a job worth staying for. A statue. Bronze. Heroic. I would trade every monument in the country for one Christmas at home. But the monument is cheaper than the policy, and so the monument is what they can afford to love us with.”
Migrant advocates have noted the “exquisite cruelty” of asking an exiled worker to build the tribute to his own exile, a critique the government characterised as “overly negative about a genuinely beautiful gesture.” Salcedo added that the unveiling would feature a recorded message from Reynaldo, “assuming the internet in Riyadh, and his belief in it, both hold.”
An Unveiling Without Its Maker
The ceremony is scheduled for later this year, attended by dignitaries, photographed for the papers, and absent the one man who made it. Reynaldo has been promised “a commemorative plaque” bearing his name, which will be mailed to him, abroad, in a box he will recognise, because it will be the same kind of box his bronze likeness holds, the same kind he has filled and sent home every year, full of everything except himself.
A Tradition Of Tributes
The monument joins a long and storied tradition of honouring OFWs through gestures that cost markedly less than addressing why they must leave. Previous tributes have included a commemorative postage stamp, a designated “OFW lane” at the airport that funnels into the same queue as everyone else, and an annual awards ceremony at which a handful of workers are flown home, celebrated on television, given a plaque, and then, in most cases, flown back. “We are very good at ceremonies,” Salcedo conceded. “Ceremonies are within our budget. Structural reform of the labour economy is, regrettably, not. So we give what we can, which is recognition, which is free, and which photographs beautifully.”
The families of OFWs have developed a finely tuned ear for the language of these tributes, in which the word “hero” has come to function less as gratitude than as a kind of payment in lieu of policy. “When they call my husband a hero, I have learned to translate it,” said one wife, raising three children alone while her husband welds in another hemisphere. “It means: we are very grateful, we will name things after you, and we have no intention of building an economy where you could have simply stayed. Hero is the word they use when they have decided to admire your sacrifice rather than prevent it.” The government, for its part, has announced the monument will be the centrepiece of a new “Heroes’ Plaza,” funded, officials noted with no apparent irony, “largely through OFW remittances.”
At press time, the monument was reportedly “ahead of schedule,” Reynaldo having worked through his rest days to finish it, as he does. For more on tributes that cost less than justice, the satire desk files at Reductress.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/