Does colonialism and slavery belong to the past?

Wayne Dyer said “Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.” One can say that, well then, if this is what slavery is, then we all are slaves since all of us don’t have the choice to do what we want with our lives. I can say that I am a slave since I have not choice but to belong in this culture, and society where I must go to school and study, since there are no other secure way to have a good living in the future. I can also say that I am a slave of my race; I cannot choose to live in another race’s body. I can say that I am a slave of my choice course curriculum’s floating subjects since I cannot choose which one I like to take.
That is one way of looking at it, but would be unfair to those who are really slaves of our time. An example, was from the article of Kate Manzo in the Edkins, 2009, book. In this article, she mentioned the situation of child labourers in the cocoa industry. They are not paid and are forced to work. But you can say how are they different from me? I can’t choose, they can’t choose. But the difference is that they are not given the decision. But for me, their decision is made for them without even their consent. For me, they are not even given the luxury to know about this decision, nor were they given the information on what could have had happened to them if they were to live a different life.
I would often ask myself asking, is my country really free? Has our time of being colonized passed and we can still govern ourselves? All throughout my life, my mom would explain certain negative “Filipino” actions is because of our colonial mentality. Actions like preferring imported products over locally produced products. Or the fact that we Filipinos desire Caucasian physical qualities. I have had been branding these Filipino actions as such and would blame those countries who colonized us for everything negative that is happening in this country. To how I connected all of those, I do not know how, but everyone can and will say that corruption, katamaran (laziness), crab mentality, and other negative aspects about us Filipinos is because of those who colonized us. We say that we learned corruption from the Spaniards who corrupted our lands. We say that the Spaniards is the reason why we are lazier than how it should be. That the Spaniards would call us lazy because we would rest when it is noon, and use this explanation rather than saying that we rest because it is too hot to work when it is noon. So I would often say that we are still colonized in a certain way, and we can not rid of this just yet, or ever. Despite the fact that we now live in a modern world, I would think that being modern would not rid us of our colonial mentality and are still colonized. But are we?
A dictionary definition of colonialism is the control or governing influence of a nation over a dependent country, territory, or people. Two thoughts came to my mind when I read this about us Filipinos being colonized. First, it is that we Filipinos are those who are colonized and not the Philippines. And secondly, that we are not colonized because this country I governed by its people and not of other countries. It is in the definition that colonialism is not exclusively a nation’s influence to another, but it may also be a nation’s influence to a certain group of people. We, the Filipinos whom I identify as Filipinos in my mind and in the limitations of my subjectivity and perspective, are the people who are colonized, but there are other Philippine citizens who are not. May it be of the next generation or that of other parts of the Philippines I have not yet experienced. This first thought gave me the impression that we still, or they, can change for the better, if one would define not being colonized better. This made me think, that maybe, this colonial mentality, my subjective perspective conceive as Filipino have, the next definition of Filipino does not have. Maybe my lack of hope did influence my foresight in this matter and there is still hope yet for Filipinos to be branded my subjective, based on my perspective, as not colonized.
My second though, that our nation seemingly is not governed by another nation, and that makes us not colonized, made me think that maybe what me and my mom conceived as colonial mentality is what is Filipino. Maybe we are not colonized and this is really our own culture. Because of this, I remembered a joke that my dad told me. He told be about Batanes (I think) and that the stores there have not bantays (sales person/clerk). The norm there is that if you want to buy something from the store, you would just get what you want and pay, since it is assumed that everyone there knows the price. My dad said that this was because that area of the Philippines is so far away that “hindi nila alam na Pilipino sila, kaya sila ganun.” (they do not know that they are Filipino, that’s why they are like that). So maybe, what is Filipino is really that, with colonial mentality, imperfect.
We brand this time that we have now as modern. And we think that since we are the modern men of the world, we must have the ideal values, behaviors, cognitions. (Well at least I think this is what we think). But how can we really call ourselves modern if shades of the past, of slavery and colonialism, still haunt us?