home
objects
the balikbayan box

johanna fausto

Coined by the Marcos regime in the 1970s, the word “balikbayan” combines two Tagalog words: “balik” (to return, to go back) and “bayan” (homeland) and refers to any person returning to the Philippines of Filipino descent living abroad.  Marcos wanted to encourage members of the country’s educated professionals who emigrated in droves in the 1960s and 70s (a process referred to as the “brain drain”) to return home and visit the family they left behind in the land of no economic opportunity and political instability.  During his administration, airfares to the Philippines decreased while tax incentives increased for balikbayans.  The experience of returning “home” juxtaposed the tourist treatment balikbayans received at “home” as they were encouraged to spend their dollar earnings on their families and in their hometowns.  Marcos hoped to increase tourism and revitalize a poor economy that his own administration weakened.  What was an informal policy in the 1970s became law by the late 1980s.  By then, millions of Filipinos lived abroad and regularly wired money and shipped goods from their new land back to their homeland.  Marcos did not realize that his coining the term balikbayan would someday create a dramatic shift in conceptualizing notions of nationhood and transnational identities.
Balikbayans decided to take advantage of these discounted airfare rates and tax breaks and returned home to visit their families.  But they could not return empty handed.  They needed to bring gifts, at least one for each member of the family.  Generosity between kin abounds in the Philippines because resources are scarce.  Generalized reciprocity often occurs with consanguinal or affinal kin but may also exist among fictive kin.  The Catholic sentiment of charity perpetuates an obligation to give by promoting the idea of sharing one’s prosperity with others who have less.
Because families are so large, early balikbayans found their suitcases limited in size.  It could not fit all the pasalubongs (gifts) they wanted to give.  So they started using sturdy, discarded boxes that once held computer equipment, canned goods, and diapers (Pampers being the preferred brand.  In the next object ethnography, you’ll see why).  And out of the balikbayan brought forth the balikbayan box.  Without a balikbayan, the balikbayan box would not exist and could not function.  Yet after two decades of its existence, the balikbayan box has come to yield more power, charisma, and aura than its progenitor.
The Filipino-American who came up with the brilliant idea to manufacture and mass‑produce a standard cardboard box for balikbayans is now extremely rich.  The balikbayan box’s utilitarian functionality and virtual weightlessness make it the ideal luggage of choice for the balikbayan.  And in this case, bigger is better because there never seems to be enough space to place all the pasalubongsBalikbayans often purchase the largest box size available, which has a total volume of 8,415 cubic inches (27.5” L x 18” W x 17” D).  All are brown although there are some occasional albinos.  Adorned at the bottom and on top with packing tape, these adhesives come in a variety of colors:  brown or clear shiny tape, dull metallic gray duct tape, a boring black tape, or even a blue one like the color of a Microsoft XP toolbar.  The boxes have no handles so to accommodate their bulkiness and their heavy weight, sturdy twine gets wrapped around each one for easy carrying and handling.  How else can such a thing be transported?  Each balikbayan box demands respect, usually weighing 70 pounds, the maximum weight allowed on board a plane according to airline regulations.
Stacked on top of each other, balikbayan boxes look identical.  Writing on its surface is minimalist.  Sometimes, the name and logo of the manufacturing company is pre‑printed on one side to demarcate regional differences in box origin.  Three, black lines are also pre-printed for the return and to addresses, like those found on bill payment envelopes.  These lines reinforce the box’s clean‑cut image.  It will not tolerate wayward handwriting to slope upwards or downwards.  Rigidity and clean lines is the key to its aesthetic feature.  I wait for the artistic-minded, punk Filipino to come along and use the empty background of the balikbayan box as his or her palette.
Until then, the only real opportunity for a balikbayan box to show off a distinctive external feature is in the written addresses.  But even this opportunity is not taken.  All the addresses look identical too, which gives the impression that Filipinos were all taught how to print in an architecture class because the giver and recipient’s names and addresses are written using big, neat, block capital letters.  The marker of choice is usually a thick black or blue sharpie pen.  And beware:  never use red ink!  For in Filipino culture, writing a name in red is bad luck and may even wish that person dead.  In these days of the computer, pre‑printed names appear on an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and get pasted on to one or multiple sides of the balikbayan box.  This particularly useful technique is popular with a traveling family of five who have ten boxes to label.
At each departure city in America, the balikbayan loads his/her balikbayan boxes on a cart and pushes it to the airline counter for check-in.  A maximum number of two items can be checked in per person and usually, a balikbayan will have one piece of standard luggage and one balikbayan box.  One can’t help but comment on the odd heterogeneity of his/her luggage, which looks like a family comprised of adopted children from all over the world.  Owner and box are separated at check-in but are reunited once again at the baggage claim in Manila’s international airport.  Because balikbayan boxes all generally look the same, the balikbayan cannot merely give it a cursory glance prior to claiming it nor can (s)he identify it when it first appears on the conveyor belt.  The box wants to be read.
Although the smooth cardboard skin provides a sense of homogeneity amongst the group of boxes in the airport, the similarities end there.  The contents inside the balikbayan box provide an accurate insight into the very nature of the social relations between the sender and the receiver.  These objects also indicate the specific needs of the receivers and the ability with which the giver can give; they are the living embodiment of the relationship between the balikbayan and the family (s)he left behind.

Recipients of these goods eagerly anticipate the visit of the balikbayan as the return of a loved one who left home.  But entangled in this imagined arrival is the expectant appearance of the balikbayan box as well.  Hugs, kisses, and tears get exchanged when the balikbayan arrives at the house after getting fetched from the airport.  While this act of intimate re-acquaintance occurs, the luggage is unloaded from the car and the balikbayan box follows its owner like an obedient puppy.  The balikbayan and the balikbayan box share the spotlight in this dramatic entrance act.  After the euphoria of the reunion dies down, the attention gets placed on the box.  For in that box, perishable and non-perishable commodities from a foreign land are given to eager family members who rarely consume such things.  The ritual of its opening is akin to the ritual of opening Christmas presents.  What’s inside?  Where’s my gift?  What did I get from America?

Arriving without a box is like arriving without one’s limbs. If this happens, the unspoken obligation to give and to receive is broken.  The balikbayan gets silently chastised which later turns into rampant gossip for forgetting his/her Filipino heritage, for being selfish and not sharing what (s)he has with the less fortunate family.  The family is shamed for how could they raise such an ungrateful individual?  What will other family members think when they arrive expecting their gift and receive none?  What will the neighbors think?!  The only way to get exempted from this obligation is if the balikbayan’s trip is unexpected, such as a death in the family.  The ticket is bought at the last minute with no time left to call ahead, to create a list of requests, and to shop till one drops in search of the perfect gift.  If the balikbayan cannot return home, (s)he sends in its stead a balikbayan box from abroad, which acts as a proxy.  The family receives the box in glee, saddened that their relation could not be there but excited that they are the lucky recipients of unexpected gifts.

The journey of the balikbayan boxes in the Western Hemisphere is clear to me because I’ve always been the sender and never the receiver.  But what is the fate of this box after it served its purpose, delivering goods to kin relations?  What happens to you?  There must be thousands of discarded balikbayan boxes in the Philippines.  Do they get recycled for a newer purpose?  Perhaps.  Filipinos recycle almost everything discarded because of their poor living conditions:  electronics, clothes, and sadly even food.  I imagine the poor living in the slums of Manila, searching through the garbage heaps for something potentially useful.  Are they in search of shelter, which comes in the form of a used balikbayan box provided by a Filipino living in Los Angeles, California?  Did this Angelino ever think his/her box would serve more good beyond the family (s)he sought to provide for?  How many of these boxes arrive in the Philippines and how tall would they be if they were stacked flatly on top of one another like pancakes?  I don’t know.  I do hope someday, an artistic Filipino will collect these discarded boxes and use them as a theme for his/her artwork.  Should the collection get exhibited in a Western museum, the box’s journey would come full-circle, wouldn’t it?

But does the balikbayan box promote a cultural hegemony and neocolonialism?  It has been argued that it has.  The recipients do not have access to the commodities in the box unless given by a balikbayan kin.  Do the objects tantalize the recipient and perpetuate an overwhelming desire to live and work overseas because they promise a better life in a country other than the land of your birth?  Or do these objects really help the standard of living of the kin receiving them?  A more detailed ethnography of the box’s internal organs will be examined next time.  For now, it is accurate to conclude that the boundaries between the balikbayan and the balikbayan box are often blurred.  And if you were to spot a balikbayan box in the airport, know that a balikbayan is not far away.  Or vice versa.
home
objects