The Maya should be the Filipino national bird.

Symbols such as these are important, because they represent the heart and soul of a nation and its people.

Thus, when Fidel Ramos decreed that henceforth, the Philippine Eagle should be the Filipino national bird instead of the lowly Maya, many Filipinos were heartened.

Already suffering from a depressed national psyche as "The Sick Man of Asia" in a sea of booming Economic Tigers, the Haribon brought a timely boost to the Pinoy's bruised national bird.

Here, at last, was a symbol every Filipino could be proud of---Pithecopaga jefferyi, last survivor of the fierce raptors of the Dinosaur era, with the second-longest wingspan among the world's great eagles.

Yet, the high-flying Haribon is also symbolic of many things which are wrong with our country.

It is a solitary patrician, soaring among the lofty skies where it is rarely seen, beyond the reach of ordinary mortals like you and I.

Unlike the small and plebian Maya, it is big, white and proud. Like the colonials and estrangheros who continue to hold the masses in their grasping claws.

In contrast, the black and brown Mayas live close to the ground, humbly sharing its abode with the small and sundry.

The Haribon has a lavish, luxurious lifestyle. It is a predator high in the food chain, preying on lesser animals below it on the social totem pole, and needing an inordinate amount of forest to survive.

Compare that, to the frugal Maya, happily subsisting on the crumbs that eagles and men, casually brush off tables of conspicuous consumption, generously sharing in its poverty the little it has with the members of its flock.

Unlike the Haribon who would die without his forests, the Maya is equally at home in the boondocks and the city, gracefully co-existing in the buildings and rice fields which men have build, on what were once its home and playground.

The Filipino is neither proud nor patrician. He doesn't need neither mansion, car nor mistress beyond his simple needs to be happy.

He is humble. He is frugal. He is generous. He is a survivor.

And it is in being small, and black, and humble that he is strong.

We are not Haribon.

We are Pinoy.

And the Pinoy is a Maya.

As the good book says in the Gospel according to St. Mark, chapter ten, verse 31:

But many that are last first shall be last, and the last first.

Let us put the Maya back into the Filipino.

Today.