(Note: This is a reflection paper in my class Sociology 243 Popular Culture SY 2008-2009.)
When the Americans left a surplus of military hardware after the World War II, it certainly got the Filipinos’ creative juices (or grease for that matter) flowing. With ingenuity, the Filipinos created what is presently called the jeepney and called it their own. Since then there was no stopping it from skyrocketing to national cultural icon status.
The Filipinos took pride in the fact that they were able to build a functional means of transportation out of leftovers from the war. It was the symbol of the Filipino’s industriousness, creativity, ingenuity and many other valuable Filipino traits such as bayanihan (Filipinos putting the jeepney together), and pakikipagkapwa (passengers, who are complete strangers, help each other out in passing the fare or assist an elderly or child mount the jeepney).
Aside from its function, its form has also become popular. In his website, Godofredo Stuart stated in his article “Undisputed King of the Road” that the jeepney is the proletarian palette of creativity. No jeepney is ever alike: from crocheted curtains, mini altar of religious decorations on the driver’s dashboard, spray paint art of his loved ones on the side of the jeepney, witty slogans, mirrors, stickers, bobby heads, to horns that sound like a crying cow, a giggling baby or a rooster crowing early in the morning. Never the minimalist, the jeepney is a shrine of borloloys.
The jeepney has come to be a symbol of the Philippines so much so that when Pope John Paul II arrived in the country, he travelled in a Sarao-made vehicle (the pioneer makers of the jeepney). Tourism promoters advise foreigners not to go home until they’ve experienced a ride in the jeepney, as it is the genuine Philippine adventure. However, if we are to revisit what a jeepney actually means to the Filipinos, we might find it less fascinating than it used to be.
Through the years, the jeepney’s image has been tainted with pasaway drivers who make cutting-trips, always beating the red light, stopping in the middle of the road to load and unload passengers, smoke belchers and are the usual main cause of traffic. From kings of the roads, they have become the bane of the thoroughfares. The jeepney’s open structure doesn’t make a passenger feel safe with the rampant daylight robberies.
From afar, the jeepneys look like cans of sardines, squeezing in 14 instead of the 12 seat capacity per jeepney. Stuart gives a picture perfect description: “…on a full load, it’s a can of sardines, shoulder-unto-armpit, back-unto-chest, shoulder-unto-shoulder, elbow-unto-hipbone, unavoidable thigh-on-thigh intimacy, butts accommodating forward to the seat’s edge as another squooshes back to mold into tight spaces. It’s a disparate mix of the ‘masa’ forced into sharing a humid olfactory and respiratory environ teeming with the composite scents of body odors, fading perfumery, and the more than occasional passenger reeking of alcohol, his head drifting into a slumberous rest on a fellow passenger’s shoulder. The open windows welcome the miasma of urban ground ozone pollution and freshly brewed and belched smoky black clouds of diesel fumes spewed out by buses and jeepneys alike.”
Not surprisingly, it was opportune for other modes of transportation to have their share of the thoroughfares. The tricycle was suitable for brief trips and light loads and the FX/minivans which are preferred by the middle class because, unlike the jeepneys, they have air-con and have more space. It seemed like the jeepney has been reduced to nothing but a utilitarian mode of transportation to the masa, sometimes even less compared to its other counterparts.
Stuart describes the masa’s shifting perception of the jeepney: “The masa, long jaded from its ubiquity and blind to the ‘art’, the jeepney is nothing but that utilitarian mode of transportation, available and affordable.”
What maybe seem inevitable might be prevented, if Filipinos make the effort to rekindle the jeepney’s original meaning: “a venue for true proletarian art” and a reminder of the Filipinos’ excellence to build something exceptional out of nothing. Otherwise, the sad thing truth might be is that the jeepney may not see its last trip just yet but it may see its end soon as the vehicle of “the masa’s ethos” as it soon fades into obscurity with the kalesa, bahay kubo, etc. as just another national artifact on a shelf.
Sources:
Stuart, Godofredo, http://www.stuartxchange.org/Jeepney.html
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