PAMATO
Merlie Alunan
1
1
INGON ani ang pagduwag bikubiko.
2
Magkuha og lipak ug magbagis sa yuta. Ang bagis porma og balay nga may mga
kuwarto. May gikasabotang mga pamaagi ug mga agianan pasulod ug paguwa
aning balaya. Aron mahibawog asa moagi pasaka ug pakanaog, ilabay ang usa ka
bato sulod sa bagis. Kon asa tugpa ang imong bato, mao nay kuwarto nga una
nimong adtoon.
3
Kinahanglang ang imong bato, hamis. Haom sa imong palad. Hustos gibug-aton.
Kini aron iniglabay unya nimo niini, dili kini molasik bisag asa, motugpa gyod sa
imong tumong. Di sayon mangitag bato nga tukma sa imong panginahanglan. Kon
makakita kag sakto nga bato, ampingi gyod ni pag-ayo. Mao na ni himoang
pamato. Isulod sa imong bolsa, hikap-hikapa panagsa, hunghongig sineguro aron
makaambit kinig dagon ug motuo gyod sa imong mando.
2
4
ANG sakayanon maghupot sad sa iyang baruto og usa ka putol nga puthaw, o
usahay usa ka bilog nga bato. Way sapayan og unsay porma basta kini may igong
gidak-on ug gibug-aton. Sa pagdunggo, ihulog ang bato sa tubig aron ang sakayan
dili danason sa sulog o sa balod. Aron motulin ang sakayan, haw-asa ang bato
dayon larga.
5
Apan labing tinuod, kining akong giasoy way kalabotan sa bikubiko o sa
panakayan. Mao gyod nay laktod sa estorya, magsugod sa baryo unya moabot sa
langit.
3
6
ANG lungsod sa Dueñas giila sa Iloilo nga pinuy-anan ni Tenyente Gimo. Si Gimo
maoy bantogang ungo sa tibuok Kailonggohan. Sa Dueñas ko natawo ug didto sad
ko magtubo. Mao ra nig moingon ka, ikaw taga Sugbo nga taga Parian ka o taga
Naga ba hinuon, nga gibantog sad nga lugar sa mga gamhanan dinhi sa ato.
7
Didto sa Dueñas, ang among tawag sa lagas, “mal-am”. Si Mal-am Tikyo, si Malam Tonyang, ug ako, sa akong pangedaron karon nga saysentahon, hayan tawgon
na ko didto sa Dueñas nga Mal-am Milay.
8
“Haay, masakit ya akon tuhod. Mal-am na gid.” (Sakit akong tuhod. Lagas na
gyod.) Mao ni sinultihan nga Kinaray-a. Sinultihan sa amoa sa Dueñas. Binisaya ra
man hinuon ni gihapon.
9
Si Mal-am Silay among silingan. Ang tawag namo niya Ma-am Silay, pinayungit.
Dili siya ungo, uy, apan dagway siyag ungo kon kaming mga bata ray pasultihon.
Usahay silas Idik ug Botsoy managan og makakita niya nga magpadulong.
1
10
Ang panit ni Mal-am Silay nanguyos, morag dahon sa tabako nga gibulad sa Adlaw.
Iyang mga bukog nangulbo sa iyang siko ug tuhod. Niwang kaayo siya ug tikuko na
gyod kaayo, halos di na makabarog, ug lugos na makatuyhad kon molakaw. Buta
si Ma-am Silay.
11
Bisan pa niini, adlaw-adlaw, si Ma-am Silay manaog sa iyang balay ug magbaklay
padulong sa tubod aron maligo. Inagak siya sa iyang duha ka apo nga dalagahay.
Mag-una si Daday, nga maoy magbitbit sa hungot nga sinudlan sa sabon ug lugod
ug sa kinagod nga lubi nga maoy iyang ihiso sa iyang nangugis ug taas nga buhok.
Magsunod si Talya, ang ikaduha niyang apo. Si Ma-am Silay magkupot sa abaga ni
Talya, ug silang duha mag-aginod ngadto sa tubod. Duol ra man sa ilang balay ang
atabay sa tubod. Apan tagtunga sa dangaw na lang ang lakang sa lagas nga buta,
mao nga ang duol morag lima ka kilometro ang kadugayon sa pagbaktas.
12
Kalagmitan, labyan mi nilang magduwag bikubiko sa daplin sa dalan. Gipaningot.
Nanimahong adlaw. Way ligo, siyempre.
13
Magbaga ang yuta sa kaudtohon sa among mga lapalapa kay wa man miy mga
tsinelas. Bisan si Ma-am Silay, magtiniil. Adtong panahona wa pay uso ang
esmagol. Parehas namo, tungod sa labihang kabaga sa kubal sa iyang lapalapa, wa
ray bale ang dagaang sa yuta sa among pag-iniktin. Si Daday ug si Talya
magbakya. Madungog kaayo namo ang kagulkol sa kahoy kon mosantik sa bato sa
ilang paglakaw. Kaming tulo ka babaye, si Caring, Melinda ug ako, mohunong og
iktin-iktin ug magpadaplin, magnganga nga magatan-aw sa ilang hinay uyamot
nga prosesyon.
14
Usahay mosunod ko ngadto sa atabay aron motan-aw sa mal-am nga maligo.
Nahibawo ko nga inadlaw ang tubig sa atabay gikan sa kainit sa yuta diin kini
maggikan. Magtimba si Talya og tubig ug buboan niya ang iyang apoy. Lugoran ni
Daday ang iyang likod, sabonan ang nanguyos niyang mga bukton, bitiis, tutoy.
Ilang tabangan og bubho sa pinaugang lubi ug dinukdok nga dahon sa lemon ang
iyang puti nga buhok.
15
Manaligdig ang tubig sa iyang nanguyos nga panit. Unya mohuros ang bugnawng
hangin gikan sa nag-alirong nga kakahoyan. Manglimbawot akong balhibo. Unsa pa
kaha kadtong mal-am nga hubo? Way tagad ang lagas kon kinsay naglibot ug
nakakita sa iyang nahikyad nga kalawasan. Di parehas kang Talya, ang patadyong
maayong pagkabilikis sa iyang lawas samtang siya naligo. Siya ug si Daday.
16
Inigkahuman nilag waswas sa tigulang, sudlayon ni Talya ang iyang buhok para
matangtang ang nanghibilin nga sapal sa lubi. Magsinaw ang iyang buhok ug
manimahong dinukdok nga dahon sa lemon. Iya kining ipadunghay aron mauga sa
hangin ug sa Adlaw. Ug maghinay-hinay na sad silag baktas pauli.
4
17
SA Dueñas niadtong panahona, ang among kawsanan sa tubig ginganlag bayong.
Usa ni ka putol nga kawayan nga gitangtangag buko sa taliwa, usag tunga sa dupa
ang gitas-on. Pun-on ni sa tubig sa atabay ug pas-anon pauli, unya ihuwad sa
tadyaw.
2
18
Magkawos og usa ka bayong, igo nang ikaligo sa mal-am. Di ba mas masayon
buhaton?
19
Wa ni mosulod sa akong hunahuna kaniadtong walo pa lay akong edad ug igo lang
magpalutok sa akong mata inigsagadsad sa tiil ni Mal-am Silay sa bagis sa akong
bikubiko. Wa sad ko kahunahuna ani samtang nag-atang ko sa mal-am nga
maligo. Kainit sa Adlaw, kabugnaw sa hangin, kanindot sa tubig nga mipasinaw sa
nanguyos na nga panit ni Mal-am Silay— mao ra ni akong nasabtan adtong
panahona.
20
Dili gugma. Kanang pulonga ihalas pa sa dila sa usa ka batang sip-onon.
5
21
USA ka adlaw ana, namutos mi sa among kabtangan, tanan, banig, unlan, kaldero
ug kulon, lakip mga plato ug luwag, ug ang among diyotay nga sinina. Si Nanay, si
Tatay, ug ang akong tulo ka igsoon. Nanakay mig bus, dala ang among tanang
putos. Nanghilak ang akong nanay ug akong mga igsoon. Nanghilak ang among
kapartidosan nga nagpalarga namo.
22
Ambot ngano to, apan ako, wa gyod ko mohilak, uy.
23
Bisag mawa na ang atabay sa tubod. Mawa na si Caring, si Melinda, si Botsoy ug si
Idik nga akong kaduwa og siyatom ug bikubiko. Di na ko makakita nilang Ma-am
Silay, Daday ug Talya sa ilang inadlaw-adlawng prosesyon aron maligo.
24
Bisan pa niana, wa gyod ko mohilak. Akong hunahuna, ah, mobalik ra nya ko.
Pagbalik nako naa ra na gihapon sila.
25
Dugay na to kaayo.
26
Ug wa gyod ko makabalik.
6
27
LABANG sa Siquijor, sa mga isla sa Kabisay-an, layo-layo sa nag-aso nga tuktok sa
Kanlaon, paduol sa Parian, lahos pa gani ngadto sa Naga. Naabot ko sa Iligan, sa
lugar sa mga Muslim. Nakapasilong kog pila ka tuig ilawom sa landong sa Cuernos
de Negros, diha sa naglawod-lawod nga mga katubhan.
28
Pagkalayo na nako sa Dueñas nga akong gigikanan. Bisan didto ko natawo ug
nagtubo, ang Dueñas, wa tuyoa, lugar nga akong tinalikdan. Daghan na kog
balayng gisak-an ug gikanaogan. Nakaamgo ug unsay gugma gumikan sa
paghandom sa mga nangawala, mga biniyaan ug wa na hipalging mga butang.
29
Dugay nang napulbos sa katuigan si Ma-am Silay. Di na gyod kabalikan ang
kabatan-on, kalaski, katin-aw sa mata, kahamis ug kaambongan. Apan sa akong
panumdoman, hagtik lang gihapon ang tagaktak sa bakya ni Talya ug ni Daday sa
kabatoan sa dalan. Ang lapalapa sa buta nga lagas nagkanaas lang gihapon sa yuta
sa iyang inadlaw-adlawng pagsimba sa atabay, paghandom sa kainit sa tubig sa
atabay, kabugnaw sa hangin nga gikan sa kakahoyan, singgit ug katawa sa mga
bata nga nanagduwa. Kadtong panahona di na gyod kabalikan.
3
30
Pagkalayo na gyod sa Dueñas. Bisan ang karaang sinultihan nga kanhi haniti ko
mosulti, nalimas na sa akong dila.
31
Apan sayod ko sa dalan pabalik sa akong mga biniyaan. Ako kining gibalon, bisan
diin pa ko gidagsa, wa buhii sa alimpatakan, bisag unsa pay gipanglayat,
gipangtungas o gipanglugsong man. Bisag sila wa na diha, nahibawo kog asa ko
sila hikaplagi. Sa akong alimpatakan, timgas ang tanan, ambongan, tibuok ang
kahulogan.
32
Sa usa ka sakayan, ang pamato batok sa balod ug andam alang sa haros sa
panahon. Paglarga sa among bus, akong gihilam ang akong gitipig-tipigan sa
akong bolsa— ang akong pamato, akong duwa-duwaan, haom sa palad, hamis,
balanse ug may igong gibug-aton. Di molasik kon ilabay, motugpa gyod sa akong
tumong.
33
Mao nay estorya, maghanoy-hanoy man, motuyok ra gyod sa iyang gisugdan.
(2007)
4
Meet the Writer
MERLIE M. ALUNAN, an associate of the U.P. Institute of Creative Writing, is a
professor at the U.P. College in Tacloban City, where she currently resides. She
obtained her M.A. in Creative Writing from the Silliman University in Dumaguete City
in 1975. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Lillian
Jerome Thornton Award for Nonfiction, Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas, Free
Press, Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Creative Work, and Likhaan Workshop
Award. Her book Hearthstone, Sacred Tree (Anvil, 1993), in particular, consists of
sets of poetry that won in the prestigious Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for
Literature in 1985, 1988, 1991, and 1992. She published another collection of
poems, entitled Amina Among the Angels, in 1997. Her other works include a book
that delves into social history, Kabilin: 100 Years of Negros Oriental (1993) and the
anthology Fern Garden: An Anthology of Women Writing in the South (1998). In
addition to teaching literature, she also serves as a panelist in prominent writing
workshops
like
the
Iligan
National
Writers
Workshop.
(http://panitikan.com.ph/authors/a/mmalunan.htm)
5
FLIP GOTHIC
Cecilia Manguerra Brainard
1
Dear Mama,
2
Thank you for agreeing to have Mindy. Jun and I just don’t know what to do with
her. I’m afraid if we don’t intervene, matters will get worse. Mia, her Japanese
American friend, had to be sent to a drug rehab place. You’d met her when you
were here; she’s the tiny girl who got into piercing; she had a nose ring, a belly
ring - and something in her tongue. Her parents are distraught; they don’t know
what they’ve done, if they’re to blame for Mia’s problem. I talked to Mia’s Mom
yesterday and Mia’s doing all right; she’s writing angry poetry but is getting over
the drug thing, thank God.
3
There’s so much anger in these kids, I can’t figure it out. They have everything - all
the toys, clothes, computer games and whatever else they’ve wanted. I didn’t have
half the things these kids have; and Jun and I had to start from scratch in this
country - you know that. That studio we had near the hospital was really tiny and I
had to do secretarial work while Jun completed his residency. Everything we own this house, our cars, our vacation house in Connecticut - we’ve had to slave for. I
don’t understand it; these kids have everything served to them in a silver platter
and they’re angry.
4
We’re sure Mindy’s not into drugs - she may have tried marijuana, but not the
really bad stuff. We’re worried though that she might eventually experiment with
that sort of thing. If she continues running around with these kids, it’s bound to
happen. What made us decide to send her there was this business of not going to
school. Despite everything, Mindy had always been a good student, but this school
year, things went haywire. This was what alerted us, actually, when the principal
told us she hadn’t been to school for two weeks. We thought the worst but it
turned out she and her friends had been hanging out at Barnes and Noble. It’s just
a bookstore; it’s not a bad place, but obviously she should have gone to school. We
had to do something. Sending her to the Philippines was all I could think of.
5
She’ll be arriving Ubec on Wednesday, 10:45 a.m. on PAL Flight 101. Ma, don’t be
shocked, but her hair is purple. Jun has been trying to convince her to dye her hair
black, for your sake at least, but Mindy doesn’t even listen. Jun has had a
particularly difficult time dealing with the situation. It’s not easy for him to watch
his daughter "go down the drain," as he calls it. He feels he has failed not only as a
father but as a doctor.
6
It’s true that it’s become impossible to reason with Mindy, but I’ve told him to let
the hair go, to pick his battles so to speak. But he gets terribly frustrated. He can’t
stand the purple hair; he can’t stand the black lipstick - yes, she uses black lipstick
- and the black clothes and boots and metal. I’ve explained to him that it’s just a
fad. Gothic, they call it. I personally think it looks dreadful. I can’t stand the spikes
around her neck; but there are more important things, like school or her health.
She’s just gotten over not-eating. That was another thing her friends got into - not
eating. Why eat dead cows, Mindy would say. She was into tofu and other strange
looking things. For months, she wasn’t eating and had gotten very thin, we finally
had to bring her to a doctor (very humbling for Jun). The doctor suggested a
6
therapist. One hundred seventy-five dollars an hour. She had several sessions then
Mindy got bored and started eating once again. She’s back to her usual weight, but
well, the hair and clothing might scare you, so I’m writing ahead of time to prepare
you.
7
Thanks once again Ma, for everything, and I hope and pray that she doesn’t give
you the kind of trouble she’s been giving us.
8
Your daughter,
9
Nelia
*
10
Dear Nelia,
11
She had blue hair, not purple. Arminda explained that she had gone out with her
friends and found blue dye - obviously you were unaware of this. She brought
several boxes of the dye, including bottles of peroxide. Can you just imagine-peroxide--what if the bottles broke in her suitcase? Apparently, she has to remove
color from her hair before dying it blue. The whole process sounds terribly violent
on the hair, but I didn’t say anything; I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot.
12
Arminda arrived an hour late - PAL, you know how that airline is. She was not
wearing boots; she had left them in New York, she explained, and was wearing
white platform shoes instead. It’s an understatement to say that operations at
Ubec Airport came to a halt when people caught sight of her. People around here
like to say Ubec is now so cosmopolitan, with our five-star hotels, our discos and
our share of Japanese tourists, but it will always retain its provincial qualities.
When I saw Arminda - blue hair, black clothes, sling bag, platform shoes - I was
not sure Ubec is ready for Arminda. I had to remind myself that I survived World
War Two and therefore will survive Arminda.
13
Indeed she is rebellious. It does no good to tell her what to do; in fact she goes out
of her way to do exactly the opposite of what you say. I have placed her in your
old room and have stopped entering the room because the disorder is too much for
me to take. Clothes all over the bed and dresser chair, and scattered all over the
floor as well. One cannot walk a straight line in that room. There was also the
business of blue dye all over the bathroom. The maid Ising spent one whole
afternoon scrubbing the tiles with muriatic acid to remove the stains.
14
Her language is foul, her behaviour appalling. I will not pretend that it’s been easy
having Arminda here. I try to give her a lot of leeway because she is just fifteen
and doesn’t know any better, but having her here has been purgatory.
15
Frankly, Nelia, I blame you and Jun for all this. If she had been trained properly, if
she had been taught right or wrong from the beginning, she would not be this
incorrigible brat. Forgive me, but I don’t know what else to call this willful, mouthy,
and arrogant child. I have repeatedly called your attention: I have warned you that
that child will bring you to your knees if you don’t discipline her. But all I heard
from you and Jun was: Ma, don’t be old-fashioned; this is the American way. Here
now is the result of your American experiment. My words have proved prophetic,
7
have they not? There is some poetic justice in all this: your daughter has finally
shown you the pain parents endure, as I have endured on account of you. I am still
trying to figure out why you left for America when you had a good life here. You
parroted all the cliches about America--freedom, equality, human rights,
opportunities--well, obviously you have learned that cliches are just that.
16
I am not enjoying rubbing it in and pray she can still be saved. And I also pray that
you and Jun can alter your ways. You two have become too American for your own
good. This has contributed to the problem. You have spoiled her. You yourself
admit you have given her everything. Every material thing perhaps, but not a good
sense of herself. It is clear this child is terribly insecure, that she does not like
herself. Coloring her hair, this outrageous get-up - she is simply hiding behind all
these.
17
Another thing, you do not even keep an altar in your home; and even though you
go to church when I visit you in New York, I am well aware that you do not always
go to Mass on Sundays. Despite all your wealth your family does not have a solid
foundation, so there you are. But let us drop the matter for the moment. After all,
you and Jun are paying for your mistakes, and I can only hope that it is not too
late.
18
Let me resume my report on Arminda.
19
Arminda has been so disagreeable, the kids of Ricardo dislike her intensely. I had
hoped they would all get along and that therefore Arminda could spend time with
her cousins. I am old, and my interests and hers are very different. Miriam and
Oscar are close to her in age. Unfortunately things didn’t work out. In her New
York accent Arminda called her cousins backward and ignorant, and therefore they
boycotted her. She has only me and the servants who barely speak English. She
does not really talk to me but does extend standard cordialities: good morning,
Lola, good evening, Lola, at least you have taught her that much.
20
She is restless; she does not know what to do with herself. She roams around the
house and yard. She likes helping the gardener build bonfires in the afternoon; of
course her playing with fire makes me nervous so we keep a close eye on her.
There is just no telling what will enter her mind. In the evening, she watches
television. She is constantly flipping the channels, from Marimar to CNN, my head
spins when I watch TV with her. The maids say she reads and writes when she is in
her bedroom. I have suggested that she write you and Jun but she says she will
never talk nor write to you.
21
Obviously, she cannot hang around here forever. I’ve visited schools around here
so she can go to school soon. She will not do at St. Catherine’s. The nuns there are
as strict today as they had been half a century ago. Ricardo suggests enrolling her
in American School. Your brother says American School is more liberal, less
traditional; perhaps Arminda will not be so different there.
22
Oh, another thing, she insists on being called Arminda, not Mindy. She said she has
always hated that name; that it reminds her of some dumb television show "Mork
and Mindy."
23
I will let you know how her schooling goes.
8
24
Love and kisses,
25
Mama
*
26
Dear Nelia,
27
Arminda is not in school. I had enrolled her at American School, but the night
before she was supposed to go school, she shaved off her head - the whole thing
except for the blue bangs. Even the liberal Americans will not have her. She hated
school in New York and will never go to school again, she insists.
28
I was very angry but have decided not to force her. At any rate, there is no school
in Ubec that will take her. The Christmas holidays are almost here, then there’s the
Sinulog festival; nothing much will be happening in school any way. I have told her
that she must spend a few hours reading in our library; your father had many
history books and there’s the entire collection of the Encyclopedia Brittanica
besides. For once she agreed to something.
29
Frankly I feel she is unhappy about having shaved her head. She has been wearing
that black fedora hat of hers with the veil in front. When she is not in the library,
she sulks in her bedroom. I have raised six children and have eleven
grandchildren; I know better than to give her attention.
30
Mama
31
P.S. I forgot to mention that it had entered her head to dye the hair of my Santo
Nino. Since you were an infant, that poor statue has been standing at the landing
of our stairs, unmolested; we offer it flowers, we light candles in front of it; we
take it out for the Sinolug parade; the artist Policarpio Lozada carved it from hard
yakal wood, which is now impossible to find, and here your daughter comes along
and colors its hair bright blue. It looks ridiculous, Nelia--the Child Jesus in red
robes with blue hair. When she saw how upset I was, she offered to dye the hair
black, but I told her to leave it that way as a reminder to all of what she has done.
32
I am saying the novena to the Santo Nino, patron of lost causes, for your daughter.
*
33
Dear Nelia,
34
I don’t know if the Santo Nino had something to do with it, but she has discovered
the animals. I have three pigs, one enormous black female and two small males
that I’ve earmarked for Christmas lechon. She releases the small ones from their
pen in the morning and chases them around. Sometimes I catch her talking to
them. The runt, the pink one with freckles down his back, cocks his head to one
side and stares at Arminda, as if he is listening. She gets the water hose and hoses
them down. The piglets root about and roll around the mud near the water tank,
then afterwards, they march back to their pen.
9
35
She also plays with my two hens. Abraham had given these to me several months
ago, but one day, they started laying eggs and I could not kill them. The chickens
run around scot-free and they never learned to lay eggs in a regular place. I’d tried
to make nests for them near the garage, but they prefer the many nooks and
crannies around the yard. Arminda hunts for the eggs daily. She says the hen that
lays brown eggs favors the place under the star apple tree, whereas the hen that
lays white eggs lays under the grapefruit tree. She asked the cook to teach her
how to prepare the eggs properly so Arminda now knows how to fry eggs, scramble
them and make omelettes. This morning, she made me a cheese omelette and she
arranged it on the plate with parsley garnish to make it look pretty. She was quite
delighted at her creation.
36
She is really still just a child. I cannot help wondering if your lifestyle there has
forced her to grow up too quickly. Your way of life is horrible; when I am there my
blood pressure rises from all that hurly-burly. Life does not have to be such a rat
race. One ought to "smell the flowers" - as your kitchen poster says.
37
Love and kisses,
38
Mama
*
39
Dear Nelia,
40
We did not have lechon for Christmas. I had seen it coming. Christmas Eve, when
the man I contracted to slaughter and roast the pigs arrived, Arminda begged me
not to have the pigs killed. She was in tears. She said she would grow out her hair
once again; she promised to behave - anything to save the pigs. Like Solomon I
weighed the matter: Christmas meal versus the pigs. I could see that the pigs
meant a lot to her, that in fact, the pigs are partly responsible for her more mellow
behaviour. In the end I decided to save the pigs. For the first time since her
arrival, Arminda kissed me on the cheeks.
41
She was actually charming to her cousins. We joined them for midnight Mass at
Redemptorist church, then later we gathered at home for the Noche Buena meal.
Even without the lechon, there was plenty of food. It’s always that way every year,
even when you were small, too many rellenos and embotidos; and Ricardo always
makes his turkey with that wonderful stuffing. The desserts are another whole
story: sans rival, tocino del cielo, meringue, mango chiffon cake, maja blanca, all
the way to the humble sab-a bananas rolled in white sugar.
42
I don’t know if it was a joke but Miriam and Oscar gave her a black wig. Arminda
removed her hat, tried on the wig and kept it on the whole night. I was surprised
to see that she looks a lot like you.
43
Arminda gave everyone poems written in calligraphy on parchment paper. I do not
know what mine means but it says:
44
I fled from you
45
A world away
10
46
I turn and
47
Find you
48
All around me.
49
As usual, she wore black, but this time it was a dress sewn by Vering. It had a nice
flowing skirt, and instead of a zipper, the dress had black ribbons that criss-crossed
and tied into a ribbon. She wore black net stockings and black chunky shoes. She
continues to wear black lipstick but we have become used to it. Actually we have
become used to Arminda and her drama; and I believe she is getting used to us.
50
I hope your Christmas has been as lovely as ours.
51
Love and kisses,
52
Mama
*
53
Dear Nelia,
54
Arminda wanted to know more about the Sinulog festival. People are getting ready
for the Sinulog and the Christmas decorations have given way to the banners with
the image of the Child Jesus. I explained that even before Christian days, Ubecans
have always celebrated during harvest time. When Christianity was introduced, the
statue of the Child Jesus, called the Santo Nino, became the focal point of the
festivities. People dance to honor the Child Jesus. In parades, people dance to the
beat of drums. Some people blacken their faces and they wear costumes and
dance through the streets of Ubec. People do get drunk and it can get wild
sometimes, so one must know where to go; I told her this because I could see her
eyes sparkling with interest.
55
We visited the Child Jesus at the Santo Nino Church. I could not help myself - I
pointed out to her that this original statue does not have blue hair. Embarrassed,
she looked down at her shoes and mumbled that she had offered to dye my
statue’s hair black. I explained that if we dye the statue’s hair from blue to black to
God-knows-what-other-color, it will lose all its hair. She apologized once again for
having touched my statue. She said this sincerely and I decided to let the matter
go.
56
I related stories instead about the Santo Nino: how the Child roams the streets at
night; how the Child gives gifts of food to His friends. And I told Arminda of how
you were born with beri-beri and how I danced to the Child Jesus so that you
would be saved.
57
The last item fascinated her.
58
"What is beri-beri, Lola?" she asked.
59
"A disease caused by a lack of Vitamin B," I said.
11
60
"What happened to my Mom?"
61
"She was born near the tail-end of the war, and I had not eat properly when I
carried her. Your mother had edema and nervous disorder. Her eyes were rolled
up; she was dying."
62
"I didn’t know my Mom almost died."
63
"I prayed to the Santo Nino for her life."
64
"She never told me she was sick when she was a baby."
65
"Perhaps she did and you didn’t listen."
66
She furrowed her brows and thought for a while before asking, "How did you
pray?"
67
"I danced my prayer."
68
"Show me," Arminda said.
69
And so outside the Santo Nino Church, we held candles in our hands and we
shuffled our dance to the Child Jesus. It was mid-day and quite hot and sweat
rolled down our faces as we swayed to the right, then to the left. People gathered
to watch us. I am usually shy about this matters, but this time I did not mind. Both
of us were laughing when we finished.
70
She also wanted to see the old Spanish fort, so we drove to Fort San Pedro and
later we stopped by the kiosk with Ferdinand Magellan’s cross. This got her
interested and she scoured the library for information on Philippine history. She
was pumping me full of questions; then this morning, she expressed interest in
going back to school. After the Sinulog, I will meet with the principal of the
American School.
71
I think, Nelia, that Arminda’s problem has been basically a question of identity. I
know Jun has talked to Arminda, telling her she has Filipino blood but that she’s an
American citizen. I am not sure that is enough for that child. At the hospital where
he works, Jun is treated like a god; he is a doctor and is not subjected to the
"looks" and the questions: where do you come from? Or worse - what are you? He
doesn’t feel the discrimination, not as much as Arminda may, in your American
world.
72
These past months, she has immersed herself in our world - granted it is not her
world because one day she will return to America - but in the meantime, she has a
better understanding of what it means to be Filipino. It is important for one to
know where one comes from, in order to know where one is headed.
73
Love and kisses,
74
Mama
*
12
75
Dear Mom and Dad,
76
I need six packages of blue dye and three bottles of peroxide. If you call Mia, she
can tell you where to buy them. Tell Mia, I’m glad she’s well and that I wish she
were here with me. She’d like this place; it’s cool. Tito Ric has brought us to the
beaches here, and he’s promised to take us to the rice terraces this summer. He
said the place is very old, and there are mummies there, and there are fireflies at
night. He also said some of the people there, especially the older ones, have
tattoos on their bodies. (He’s already told me I can’t have a tattoo, so you don’t
have to worry.) I can’t wait for the summer.
77
Last week we had the Sinulog. It wasn’t as fancy as the Rose Parade nor the Mardi
Gras, but there were numerous parades all over the city. Day and night for a week
you could hear the drums beating. People from other towns came to the city and
many of them slept along the sidewalks. The city was crammed with people,
celebrating and eating and dancing. I went around with Miriam and Oscar. They
were such dorks before, but they’re not that bad any more.
78
For the main parade, we wore costumes - Lola lent Miriam and me some of her old
sayas; Oscar blackened his face and wore a huge feathered hat. The three of us
had blue hair. People stopped us in the streets to ask about our hair. They fingered
our hair and wondered how we turned it blue. We just laughed. We did not tell
them we used dye from New York. It was like a secret - our secret.
79
But I’ve ran out and need more. Be sure and send it; but don’t rush because the
school does not allow blue hair. I’ll have to wait until summer vacation before I can
dye my hair blue again.
80
Love,
81
Arminda
(1998)
13
Meet the Writer
CECILIA MANGUERRA BRAINARD is the award-winning author and editor over a
dozen books, including the internationally-acclaimed novel, When the Rainbow
Goddess Wept, Magdalena, Acapulco at Sunset and Other Stories, Philippine Woman
in America, and Woman With Horns and Other Stories. The book, Cecilia's Diary
1962-1968, was released in August 2003.
She edited Growing Up Filipino: Stories for Young Adults, Fiction by Filipinos in
America, and Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America. She co-edited with
Edmundo Litton, Journey of 100 Years: Reflections on the Centennial of Philippine
Independence. She co-edited with Marily Orosa three anthologies: Behind the Walls:
Life of Convent Girls (2005), A La Carte: Food and Fiction (2007), and Finding God:
Trues Stories of Spiritual Encounters (2009). A La Carte won the Gourmand Award in
the Philippines and garnered third in the Gourmand Award held in London.
Cecilia also wrote Fundamentals of Creative Writing (2009) for classroom use. Her
work has been translated into Finnish and Turkish; and many of her stories and
articles have been widely anthologized.
Cecilia has received a California Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction, a Brody Arts Fund
Award, a Special Recognition Award for her work dealing with Asian American
youths, as well as a Certificate of Recognition from the California State Senate, 21st
District. She has also been awarded by the Filipino and Filipino American
communities she has served. In 1998, she received the Outstanding Individual
Award from her birth city, Cebu, Philippines. She has received several travel grants
in the Philippines, from the USIS (United States Information Service). In 2001, she
received a Filipinas Magazine Award for Arts.
She has lectured and performed
universities, including UCLA, USC,
Philippines, PEN, Beyond Baroque,
others. She teaches creative writing
in worldwide literary arts organizations and
University of Connecticut, University of the
Shakespeare & Company in Paris, and many
at the Writers Program at UCLA-Extension.
She is married to Lauren R. Brainard, a former Peace Corp Volunteer to Leyte,
Philippines; they have three sons. (http://www.ceciliabrainard.com/)
14
MENS REA
Lakambini Sitoy
1
Steve became a feminist in his sophomore year at law
Supreme Court stripped a judge of his robe. The judge had
and prettiest of his clerks to massage his back, and then his
his briefs, he’d then flopped over into a supine position
down…
2
“I am innocent!” he sputtered to the reporters when it was all over. “I merely
wished to compliment her beauty! I had no criminal intent…”
3
Lecherous old goat, Steve scribbled to the girl who had sat next to him since the
first day of freshman year. Her name was Helen and she was cute and it was
mostly to wipe that expression of amused tolerance off her face that he’d decided
to embrace the women’s cause. That was how he thought of it: The Women’s
Cause, although none of the women in his family ever mentioned it.
4
Helen was useful at recitations, discreetly fanning out notes and case digests so
that Steve, standing flustered beneath the barrage of insults from the professors,
had only to glance down a microsecond before rattling off the right answer.
5
Thus he had earned his first good mark in Criminal Law.
6
“Mens rea?” Professor Sadueste thundered one afternoon a week into the term.
“You’ve never heard of mens rea? Well, for your information, Mr. Prieto…” and
here the old man paused, with a wicked twinkle in the eye,”…mens rea is monthly
offering to the Goddess of Fertility—a discharge of blood nobly endured by
women, but suffered even more nobly by their husbands!”
7
For one wretched moment Steve thought he was serious. And then the class
laughed, even the girls (no one dared step out of line in their freshman year). He
felt his face burn. Sadueste strode triumphantly back to his record book to write
in the inevitable 5.00; Steve’s eyes dropped to where Helen was frantically
rapping upon the textbook page; he saw the light and called out in one last
tenacious effort to save his ass: “It means ‘criminal mind,’ sir! It is the evil intent
that turns a simple act into a crime!”
8
STEVE had never been in love, but he knew the symptoms from brief interludes in
college that he had filed away with care, to be savored in moments when life had
proved itself a joke and him a miserable loser. Helen, he knew, was in love with
him. Long, helpless moments she spen gazing into his eyes. Oh, she had mens
rea for him, all right. Undoubtedly no one of his caliber had ever challenged her
opinions in her small provincial alma mater.
9
They argued all the time, oblivious to the stares and titters of classmates as they
passed: Helen pinned to the railing of one of the college’s numerous hallways,
Steve pacing excitedly back and fourth. He loved debate: it honed his lawyerly
talents. “You’re terrible!” he would taunt her.
15
school, the year the
ordered the youngest
buttocks. Clad only in
and pulled her head
10
“When you’ve painted yourself into a corner you always pick the same convenient
escape hatch: that I’m a man and you’re a woman and I wouldn’t have the
faintest notion how things work from your perspective so I might as well back
down since I’ve already lost. Right? Right.”
11
They talked about human-rights lawyering, of going corporate, of where the best
jobs were: in Congress or in an NGO, in Makati or on campus, and so on.
Whenever he found himself mired in the morass of Abortion, or Rape, or Wife
Beating, he knew he could steer her by the nose to safer ground. But with each
argument he found himself genuinely having a good time. On her turf, at that.
Gender Issues. The words made him tingle al over, as though he and she were
working their way, side by side, through a clutch of pornographic magazines. It
gratified him to draw Helen out—or turn her on. It made the helpless rage that lit
her face at his taunts all the more delicious.
12
“What would you do if I came to class tomorrow morning a feminist?” he chuckled
one day.
13
“Marry you,” Helen replied without batting an eyelash. Steve was amazed at her
boldness. It was to get her goat that he thought of finding work at the feminist
NGO she had been raving about the whole of last year, the same place she was
now applying to. There were a couple of part-time jobs available: one researcher,
and one for a maintenance person of sorts. He figured he had a chance: surely
he’d picked up enough womenspeak from her. Besides, when they saw his
grades, they saw his grades, they’d have no choice but to hire him. He had
weathered his freshman year well: Sadueste had given him a 1.75. Helen had
gotten a 2.00. She had steadfastly refused to laugh at the old man’s jokes.
14
The organization was quartered in a two-story house in a peaceful residential
district. The paint was grying along the walls; at the far end of the yard was a pile
of refuse: a baby’s chair, an old bicycle. There were leafless vines and pots of
dying flowers, which no one seemed to have the energy to clean up. Purple crepe
paper flapped valiantly in the branches overhead, and there was a purple rug in
the doorway, and purple posters in varoios languages, bearing the inevitable
woodcuts of twisted female faces. Even the upholstery had an air of faded royalty.
There was another aura to the place: one of anger and resignation. As Steve
waited nervously for the lawyer who would interviee him (a woman, of cours;
they were all women in this place) he felt a twinge of embarrassment. What if he
got the job and Helen didn’t? He hadn’t really thought about it. He was in theis
thing for some pocket money, she to pay the rent.
15
He was hired. “The official title is administrative assistant,” he told her a couple of
days afterwards. “I’m sort of a glamorized clerk. No. An all-around hired hand.
I’m even on call to change light bulbs. They haven’t gotten aournd to making me
serve the coffee, but that day isn’t too far off.”
16
Helen raised an eyebrow. A phone call from the organization had informed her
that they were sorry, her biodata was very good, but another girl had gotten
there first. Unperturbed, she’d promptly gotten work at another NGO involved in
tribal rights. Steve’s glorious ploy to grab her attention had fizzled out; he felt like
a fool.
16
17
However, he scribbled to her in class, I’m game. Funny, thoug—when the
machines start acting up or the plumbing’s on the blink, it’s still the fellow with
the penis who has to fix it.
18
Helen giggled: Cute, O.K., but why didn’t you get the researcher post anyway?
19
Researcher’s got to read all the new books from the alternative U.S. presses, and
even drafted what, after a long and tedious process, would one day be legislation.
That was the greatest kick of all. That, and the legal assistance program. Steve
had watched the interviews: women coming in from some provincial backwater,
quacking and coverd in bruises, their grief assuaged by speedy rundown of the
law.
20
Because I’m wrong shape and size, he wrote. Only women get to be researchers.
21
Helen grinned.
22
All that hype about gender equality, he grped on. That’s a load of bull.
23
She scribbled: Oh, but it’s just a matter of broading your perspective, Mr. Prieto.
Picture it. You’re uneducated. Indigent. Nursed on Catholic prudery. And raped so
recently that you still bear the stench of masculine effluents on your flesh. In
front of you is Steven Prieto, notepad in hand. And you’re to recount to this
strange man how others like him spread-eagled and skewered you like a hunk of
meat. Come on, Steven, you’re a feminist now.
24
That floored him. She was articulate, all right. But only on paper, he hastily added
to himself.
25
Diosa, the new researcher, the girl who had…beaten him, had cropped hair and a
cynical smirk and wore baggy khaki trousers with a little belt bag of native design
about her hips. Her movements were careless, her laughther loud. Steve was
certin she was a lesbian.
26
They would all be lesbians in this place—the woman in charge of publications, the
five other researchrs who swept into the office slightly neurotic from Corporate
Law or Criminal Procedure or whatever, even the slender sensual girl who came
to work draped in tie-dyed cotton. Lesbians, or women nursing some deep dark
childhood violation. Purple rage, lilac bliss. He couldn’t imagine any of the sunny
scrubbed girls he’d flirted with in college ending up in a place like this. He himself
was an intruder. He had penetrated.
27
Each day he went to wrok with a mixture of fear and exhilaration. He’d park his
car n the balzining hot street and buckle up for an anfternoon of mindless work.
The day’s assignment would be waiting for him on his little desk. Pleadings to be
delivered to courtrooms in Makati, Manila, Marikina. A stubborn computer virus
that none of the women could eradicate. Each task was accompanied by a couple
of lines form the head lawyer, elegantly penned in balck ink. Steve had never
been ordered around, and in writing to boot, but within a short while he began to
look forward to the notes. He was master and slave in one. Without him the
organization would fall apart.
17
28
Gradually they discovered his other talents. “What the hell was the title of that
movie rape star case?” Doris, a researcher, fretted one day.
29
“People v. Jose.” he replied helpfully and, after a moment’s pause, gave the year
and most of the citation.
30
Doris went to the shelves to look it up. “You have a very retentive memory, don’t
you, Steven,” she said in amazement.” Now give me Article 147 of the Family
Code…”
31
It soon became a little game to them. When someone needed a case or a codal
provision the researchers went to Steven Prieto. The whole office warmed to him,
thumped his shoulder. He knew he had crossed the gender barrier when one
afternoon he heard Doris and Yeng discussing comparative masculine anatomy a
few feet from where he sat. His maleness had become invisible.
32
And then somebody’s cousin’s cousin was raped by her boyfriend on the verandah
of an abandoned home at midnight. The culprit immediately proposed marriage,
but nevertheless they brought the unfortunate girl in, her words a barely audible
whisper, a paper bag of blood-staine clothing in hand. Beneath her faded t-shirt
and jeans her body was tight and slender.
33
“Jesus, she’s so pretty she breaks my heart,” Steve said.
34
There was silence throughout the office.
35
A black blur, and then the head lawyer, in one of the power suits she wore to
court, swept into his line of vision. “Are you saying she asked for it, Steven?”
36
He felt a stab of ice in the region of his belly. “No, ma’am; what I meant
was…was…” The words came out of nowhere,”…that a healthy young man with
normal impulses couldn’t help but pay homage to her good looks, ma’am.”
37
The lawyer’s eyes looked with his. “Are you saying that the rapist was motivated
by the best of intentions, then?”
38
“Well, he asked to marry her, didn’t he?” he mumbled wretchedly, his face the
hue of the posters on the wall.
39
“The woman is fanatic,” he said to Helen the next day.
40
She gave a curt nod of assent. She was always in a hurry now, her movements
short and quick.
41
“She won’t even let me answer the counseling hotline,” he went on, “Unless
there’s absolutely no one else around. And then all I can do is take down their
names and numbers. Jesus. All those callers need is someone sound legal advice.
I can rattle off the Family Code faster than Diosa can say the First Amendment.”
42
Diosa, with the cropped hair, handled the hotline, and the preliminary client
interviews, and a couple of writing projects to boot. Oh God, it ranked like hell.
18
43
44
Helen turned to him at last. “It doesn’t just come from up here, Steven,” she said,
tapping her temple. “You’ve got to work from here as well,” now she indicated her
heart. “It’s tough enough sensitizing a woman. Every day I discover some new
contradiction in me that has to
be worked out.”
45
“Why, I’m even more of a feminist than you!” he grinned, pleased at the chance
to tease her.
46
She merely shook her head, her eyes exhausted. Perplexed, he drew out a pack
of cigarettes, watching her. The corners of her mouth deepened. That was the one
thing the never forfeited: afternoon cigarette break. It was fast becoming his only
link with the old Helen, the girl who could spen hours gazing into his eyes,
nodding, smiling.
47
Now he gazed at her appreciatively. She was too dark-two years ago, in college,
he’d never have given her a second glance. Her skin was earth brown, with a
healthy tinge of red. Terra cotta. She was of almost pure native extraction. She
was terrible dresser, but after a month or so among counterculture eccentrics he
now realized that there was a deliberateness to her batiks, her woven knapsack,
her bronzes and beads—that the riot of colors she spported was not due to
poverty, but was her style. He wondered what sort of girl she was underneath;
after more than a year of her acquaintance he had come away with nothing but
her smile. It was a nice smile; too a trifle hesistant, but that was no doubt the
unpolished provinciana in her. Once, on a jeep bound for Taft he’d searched the
features of his fellow passengers and was delighted to discover so much of Helen
in them. Except for her smile. Winsome. Nah, that was poetry; that was stupid; it
conveyed nothing about her.
48
She merely stood against the railing, cigarette burning away forgotten between
her fingers, watching him while he talked. At the end of the hour she had barely
stirred. But it was time to study. He whipped out a book—the Civil Code—and
thrust it into her face. “Property. Easements. I have 20 articles for tomorrow.
Prompt me if I make a mistake.”
49
She shoved the book back at him.
50
“Steve, no.”
51
“What’s the matter with you? We always study together after smoking.”
52
“You study. Have you ever considered what a toll these afternoon sessions have
taken on my class standing?”
53
It was true; the professors were cutting her to pieces at recitation.
54
“It’s your fault,” he said. “You could have refused!”
55
“I am refusing now.”
56
“Oh, Christ!” His voice rose, all he could think of were those twenty articles on
Easements and how he was due to recite tomorrow.
19
57
“Steve, don’t get me wrong. I like you. Oh, don’t over-react; hasn’t any girl told
you that to your face? I like you a whole lot, but that’s no reason for you to
demand whole chunks of my time.”
58
“Demand? Who’s demanding? What are you talking about?”
59
“What about just now? I stood here listening to your blather for a full hour. Don’t
you realize I could have read three whole cases instead?”
60
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” He was pale with outrage. “I ghought you wanted it. I had no
intention of—you could have refused. You could have refused!”
61
SO WITHIN a single day he was in deep shit with Helen and at work. School was
the only consolation. He loved the law: the mechanical interlocking of its pieces,
the infinitesimal details. His books held the building blocks of life: everything,
action, emotion, reduced to lowest terms, named and neatly catalogued.
62
But even that was slipping away. The hours each day at the NGO were wreaking
havoc on his concentration. It was impossible to be completely alone. Looking up
from his work, he inevitably encountered the haunted eyes of some client where
she sat on the corner couch, her children crawling over her lap and making a
mess of the magazines on the coffee table. Off in a croner the researchers
dismembered their respective crushes and shrieked over body parts. The mothers
and daughters on the couch listened and tried to reconcile the urbane
upprclassmen of their tales with the cops and stevedores who came home drunk
to fall on their women with punches and kicks and sex.
63
None of the clients seemed surprised to see him. They took the presence of a man
in a law office for granted. He had no great love for them now, only horror. They
waited unmoving, for half a day, to rise with sighs of relief when the head lawyer
ushered them into an antechamber. Slowly, painfully, their stories came out:
bitter grunts and croaks that he, who spoke English at home, could barely
undserstand. Lackluster eyes steared at invisible points on the polished glass
table. One woman sat for an eternity, shivering, until something gave and she
began to weep, hoarse sobs, grief so profound and yet so crude that it was hardly
human. The lawyer did not stop her. Steve sat hunched over the computer
keyboard, hands over ears, hating the woman for making him feel as he did.
64
Running errands for the head lawyer he encountered them firsthand in the
jeepneys: these men who were wellspring of such grief. Their sweat slicked his
own pale forearms; they belched the foul odor from their empty bellies into his
face. He examine their veined workers’ hands with the dirt under their fingernails,
and with a mixture of revulsion an fascination imagined them kneading womanflesh, thick greasy fingers working their way up thighs, probing intimate folds and
crevices. Babae tinuhog ng matanda. Hinoldap na, binarbikyu pa. That was how
the Tagalog tabloids put it. Skewerd. Spindled.
65
What did they feel, these women? Did they cry out, close their eyes? Did they
bleed? The questions haunted him, running around and around his head with the
same desperate speed with which he chased after jeepneys: his face screwed up
against the black fumes, he would hoist himself by one hand up into the stifling
20
metal interiors, to leap out at his stop, onto the searing hot pavement, already
half-running to his destination, the impact of his landing shooting straight up into
his leg to the knee that had been injured in a high school basketball game, the
shock running up his calves and thighs, expending its full force on the small of his
back.
66
At the end of the day, school and job behind him, he would collapse exhausted on
his bed, looking up with disgust at the collection of paperbacks on the shelf, the
science fiction and fantasy he’d pored over in high school and college, his old
Dungeons and Dragons game sets. How naïve he’d been, and how content. At
least there’d been none of this gooddamn guilt. The mirror at the entrance hall
showed a pale-faced boy, eyes darkly circle beneath wire-frame glasses, skin
breaking out from the pollution, hair and clothes reeking of the thousand and one
odors of Manila’s jeepney-riding masses. He was 21 and looked 22.
67
The night shower washed away the dirt, if only from his surfaces. But it was
marvelous to hold up his hands and watch the suds drip form them, long fingers
clean and white anew. He thought of Helen—would she bleed too?
68
WHEN the midterm grades were announced, he knew he would have to drop
Property. The three ugly letters—DRP—would make a huge foreign blot upon his
transcript. He looped off, as though he’d lost his virginity.
69
You’re bleeding all over your books, Helen scribbled to him in the library.
70
“What?” he said.
71
She wrote into the margin of his notebook, her head inclined rather carelessly, he
thought, as though she were trying to provoke him: Mens Rea=the psychological
bleeding experienced by smart young men when they discover they never had the
answeres after all.
72
“Jesus shit,” Steve said. His face burned. Helen sat there, smiling.
73
A couple of sophomores from another section sauntered by. “You two again,” one
of them said, and the other clucked his tongue knowingly.
74
Steve leapt up, gathering up his books and making a beeline for the exit. She
followed.
75
“Where are we going?” she said. He didn’t reply. They both knew where they were
headed—to a spot on the ground floor they had discovered in their freshman year,
sheltered from the sun by the thousand tons of stone that rose above it. They had
not used it for days.
76
“Mens Rea,” he spat out the moment they were there.
77
“Mens rea indeed! Why don’t you ever write those little notes to yourself, Helen?
Come on, write yourself up. You’ve bad mens rea for me since the first day of
school.”
21
78
Her spine stiffened, but she had the grace not to deny it. “Do we really need
this?” was what she said. “You’ll have to go work in a few minutes.”
79
Work. He’d forgotten about work.
80
He wrenched out a cigarette form the pack in his breast pocket. And then he knew
what he would have to do. “I’m not going.” When she stared at him in surprise he
went on, aware that he was losing control, “It was a dumb idea anyway. When I
got the job I thought I was the most privileged man on earth. I risked everything,
do you get it? Imagine me, Steven Prieto, working in the women’s movement.
How must they have laughed when they found out. Enzo, Brian, the whole lot of
them. Me putting on a skirt to try and please you, they must have said.”
81
The words were out. But his head still pouned—to the rhythm of the rock music
that blared from the jeepnesy tearing through traffic. It was the rhythm of gross
abandon, of sex.
82
“Steven,” she said. “What is this?” I don’t know where you’re coming form!”
83
“Stop playing coy,” he snarled at once. “You’re a feminist, aren’t you?”
84
“Hey, feminist doesn’t mean I waltz around to your music!” she shrilled back.
85
“Feminist maens you do anything you want, in any way you want, and nobody has
the right to question you because, oh, you’re so dedicated, so holy. Argue any
which way. Write any old thing. Order this, order that—“
86
Helen’s mouth dropped open.
87
“Only woman can be researchers. Sit there for hours while some stupid bitch
blubs her whole life story out as though only she had problem in the world. What
are you anyway, lawyers or shrinks? Oh yes, men do get admitted, but all they do
is operate the xerox machine, fix the lights, run the errands! I suppose you can’t
stomach the notion of goddamened heat. But oh no, leave the deliver jobs to the
man—he’s tough, he can handle it.”
88
“It takes heart, Steven. It takes heart.”
89
“Yes, it does. Heart, perod. Heart, the privileged signifier. Men don’t have hearts.
On no. I suppose because I’m a man I can’t emphathize with your freaking
uterine cancers, your Cinderella fantasies? You can’t even construct a decent legal
argument. Premise, premise, premise, conclusion—simple! But oh no, structure
must be over-thrown, structure is masculine. Jesus Christ!
90
She had backed away, without realizing it, against the railing; her hand crept
blindly towared the solidity of the pillar behind her. Her eyes were round with
amazement. He saw two tiny reflection of his own flushed face.
91
“If you’re talking about my stand on abortion—“
92
“You have no stand on abortion!”
22
93
“Steve—“
94
“Nor whores. Nor on rape!”
95
“But you’ve never respected my ideas enough to listen—“
96
“You have no ideas!”
97
There was silence. He saw the rapid rise ad fall of her chest. There seemed to be
something very very wrong with her face.
98
“Nebolous. You all are. Everything out of the poetry books of your mind.
Everything hearsay. Oh pardon me, hersay. I can predict to the letter your every
opinion. Listen to me. You’r not listening!” for she had turned away to retrieve her
books from the railing. He yanked at her arm. She stood arrested, stockstill and
poised for flight.
99
Slowly he released her. She did not move. He advanced,
eyes were welling, indisteinct.
100
“You know what you’ve done?” she whispered.
101
“You’ll never make a good lawyer, Helen.”
102
“You know what those long monologues of yours have done to me?”
103
“Sentiments, emotions all the time. That’s not the law.”
104
“They’ve raped me, Steven,” she cried out, and her head bobbed with the force
with which she flung the word at him.
105
“Jesus Christ!”
106
She had pulled the rug from under his feet.
107
“You rape people. You’ve cut me down, forced me back—I’ve spent an entire year
talking to you, no, listening, nodding agreement, saying yes, yes to nurse that
poor wounded rich-kid ego of yours. And look, I’m on the smoke-up list in
Property. I’m flunking Torts. You don’t even care.’”
108
They fell back. Steven bunched his fists into the pockets of his trouser. Helen
wept, just a couple of tears trickly discreetly down her cheeks. Steve’s old
girlfriend had wept in the same way, when he had broken up with her shortly
before entering law school. I’ve no time for emotions now, he’d told her
astonished face.
109
Helen dried her eyes. “Steve, I’m sorry.” She edged over to thim. “I’ll be joining
you in a couple of weeks; they’ve already hired me, over at your NGO. Things
might get better then; they could modify assignments if we reasoned—”
23
stood over her. Her
110
“In a couple of weeks I’ll be gone,” he said. “My probationary period ends on the
30th.” It was now his turn to edge away.
111
“I was looking forward to working with you!”
112
“No, Helen. You only wanted to change me.” His own accusation made him smile.
“If I lopped it off and offered it to you, would you be happy then? Helen?”
113
With a rapid gesture he slashed at his crotch, collected air and emptied his hand
into hers. She gazed down at her palm as though a severed member did confront
her. When at last she raised her eyes to him he was shocked, for it seemed that
her whole countenance was falling apart, all the warmth and strength and secret
shared laughter eroding away until what confronted him was a death mask, her
death mask, a fading glint of comprehension in the eyes.
114
“So what do you want me to do?” she said in a tiny voice.
115
He shot his last few drops of venom into her: “Leave me alone.”
116
Helen collected her books and began to walk away.
117
God, he thought tiredly. God, it wasn’t enough. He wanted her to bleed. Just a
trickle, or perhaps a stream, wetting her pants all down both legs: long strings of
russet to speed past her ankles and pool about her shoes. But no, he wanted
more; he wanted her blood on the polished floor, surging through the halls of the
College, down the streets to flood manholes and turn fluttering scraps of paper
into pulp; to leap up in sprays form the whelles of jeepneys, men bringing a mess
from the pavements as they hauled themselves in, endeavoring to wipe the
indelible stuff off their huge veined workers’ hands; to flow into a thousand and
one kitchens, where babies screamed and the reek of cooking poisoned the air
and women crouched soundless next to uncleared tables, doubled up to nurse
their wounds, their faces hidden in their hands.
118
He raised his head. Helen was gone. He though he saw her, farther down the hall,
figure reduced to a series of stick shapes against the haze of light from the main
entrance. He wondered if he should call to her. Look, he wanted to say. Look what
you did to me. He wanted to run after her and spin her around and yell in her
face, Look look look you cut me. He wanted to tear at his own clothes. Se what
you made me do, he wanted to say. He wanted to grab her palms and press them
to his body. He felt a mad need to smear his own blood on her to take her hand
and press it to his crotch and cry out, Look look, feel this, can you feel me
bleeding.
(1994)
24
Meet the Writer
LAKAMBINI A. SITOY, also known as Bing Sitoy, writes in English. She has
published two collections of short stories in the Philippines. Mens Rea and Other
Stories was published by Anvil in 1999 and received a Manila Critics Circle National
Book Award that same year. Jungle Planet was published by the University of the
Philippines Press in 2006 and was shortlisted for the MCC National Book Award for
that year.
Sitoy is among 21 authors on the Man Asian Literary Prize's long list for 2008. The
novel, Sweet Haven, is her first.
She received the David T.K. Wong fellowship from the University of East Anglia,
Norwich, United Kingdom in 2003.
Her short stories have appeared in magazines such as Philippines Free Press,
Philippine Graphic and Story Philippines. They have appeared in various anthologies
in the Philippines, such as Likhaan Anthology of Poetry and Fiction (published by the
University of the Philippines Press) and The Best Philippine Stories, a 2000 anthology
published by Tahanan Books and edited by Isagani Cruz.
Other stories have appeared in
Hawaii; Wake, an anthology of
published in Britain to benefit
anthology of Southeast Asian
Copenhagen in 2008.
Manoa, the literary journal of the University of
stories, essays and poems about Southeast Asia
victims of the 2004 tsunami; and Ansigter, an
short stories published by Forlaget Hjulet in
Sitoy has received writing fellowships from the National Writers' Workshop in
Dumaguete (1989) and the University of the Philippines National Writers Workshop
(1990). She has also received nine prizes in the annual Don Carlos Palanca Memorial
Awards and a Philippines Free Press Award (1994).
As a journalist, Sitoy also served as a lifestyle and cultural section editor and
columnist for the Manila Times.
She was an MA guest student at Roskilde University in Denmark in 2006.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakambini_Sitoy)
25
BIAG NI LAM-ANG
Pedro Bukaneg
1
God, the Holy Ghost, illumine, Lord,
my thought so I can relate faithfully
the accont of the life of a man.
2
In the old, old days there were a
couple who had just been united in
holy wedlock.
3
As the days rolled by, the wife
conceived the child which was the
fruit of the sacrament they had
received.
4
She ate a variety of fruits like green
tamarind, pias,1 and daligan;2
5
Young coconut fruits, guavas about
to ripen, oranges, and lolo-kisen.3
And for meals she ate these:
6
7
8
“You go and see the bamboos we
planted on Mount Kapariaan and cut
down some.
Panapana4 and maratangtang,5 ararosip6 and aragan,7 tirem8 and
shrimps;
Pingpinggan
and
im-immoko,
loslosi11
and
pokpoklo,12
13
14
leddangan and soso —these she
liked much to eat.
9
10
9
When she reached the seventh
month of her pregnancy, she and
her husband were filled with joy at
the proximity of her confinement.
10
Namongan
then
thought
preparing a balitang15 for
confinement.
11
She told her husband, “Ay,16 my
husband Don Juan, kindly go and
cut bamboos for my balitang.
12
“It is necessary that we now
prepare all things needed for the
coming of our child.
13
“So that we shall not be found
unprepared when the day comes.
The balitang then will be ready for
me to lie on.”
14
Her husband Don Juan therefore
started out; and when he reached
the clump of bamboos he went
around it once.17
15
He then commanded the wind to
blow. The rain fell in torrents. The
14
of
her
A species of snail with a sharp-pointed
shell.
15
A sort of bed, made of bamboo, one end
more raised than the other, where women about
to deliver are to lie in confinement.
16
Note the frequent use of this word
throughout the poem. This word is characteristic
of the mountain tribes. See T. Inglis Moore,
“Kaatong: A Novel of Bontok and Ifugao”,
Philippine Magazine, June, 1932 – December,
1932.
17
There is a superstition that when a man
goes to the forest to cut trees, he should first
implore the consent of the spirit of the forest
before he fells a tree, otherwise misfortune
would befall him. don Juan’s going around the
clump of bamboos, a strange procedure, can
perhaps be explained by this superstition.
1
Averrhoa bilimbi. Tagalog: kamias.
2
Averrhoa carambola. Tagalog: balimbing.
3
Limnanthemu cristatum.
4
Echinotrix calamaris.
5
Tripneustes gratilla.
6
Antidesma ghaesembilla. A green seaweed which looks like a cluster of tiny grapes.
7
Najas graminea. An aquatic fern.
8
Oysters.
9
A sea product similar to the Placuna
placenta or windowpane oyster.
10
A bolo-like shell.
11
A kind of shell fish.
12
A green sea-weed with finger-like leaves.
13
A species of snail.
26
clouds were like unto a
abyss—so black were they.
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
deep
23
To engage the checkered Igorots in
a fight.
In the meantime,
Namongan lay in confinement.
Lightning and thunder in quick
succession attacked the clump of
bamboos and trimmed it like hair.
24
“Ay”, Don Juan said, “it would be
shameful on my part should I carry
you, bamboos.”
The bamboos
therefore went before and Don Juan
followed after.
All available midwives were called
for to assist in the delivery,
including Old Marcos, the diver,
Alisot, and Pasho, the rich man;
25
But all their efforts to a successful
delivery availed not.
And they
thought of an old woman, shorn of
almost all her strength.
When he reached home, the
bamboos arranged themselves in
the houseyard.
26
And she succeded in helping
Namongan to a successful issue.
The newborn was a boy who had
already the gift of speech:
27
“Ay, mother Namongan, when you
have me baptized, baptize me with
the name Lamang, and my godfather shall be the old man Gibuan.”
28
And when he was baptized, he
asked his mother Namongan about
his father:
29
“Ay, mother, this I should like to
know: whether I have a father or
none, whether I am of honorable or
dishonorable birth.”
30
And Namongan said in answer.
“Ay, my son Lam-ang, as regards
thy father when you were still in my
womb, he went away.
31
“He went to war with the checkered
Igorots in the Igorot country, and
since then he has not returned.”
32
And Lam-ang said, “Ay, mother
Namongan, kindly give me leave to
search for him.”
33
And Namongan answered, “Ay, my
son, my brave Lam-ang, dare not
And Namongan said, “My husband
Don Juan, I need firewood such as
molave and gasatan18 for my lyingin,
And also dangl19a and guava20
stripped of its bark. Also you go
and buy a jar and a stove on which
to warm myself.
“Also prepare water for my bath
and a one-man pot so hat we shall
have something to keep the
kadkad-dua21 of our child in.”
When he had all these thins
prepared, Don Juan set out for the
blackest22 mountain by way of the
river,
18
Palaquium luzoniense. Tagalog: dolitan,
bagalangit.
19
Vitex negundo. An aromatic shrub with
digitately 5-foliate leaves and blue flowers.
20
This and 19 and 18 are considered good
for firewood, especially if used in a delivery
room, because their coals do not easily turn to
ashes.
21
The placenta. There are a few customs
among the Ilocanos attending its disposal. In
some communities the custom is to keep the
placenta in a pot and hang it up from a tree. In
other places, it is floated in a pot or basket down
a river or brook out to sea.
22
This adjective perhaps indicates the
distance or height of the mountain.
Far
mountains are
mountains.
27
usually
blacker
than
near
go because you are still too young
and your limbs are brittle.
34
35
36
the
absent—those
traveling.27
“You are a baby scarcely nine
months old.”
Brave Lam-ang,
nevertheless, went inspite of his
mother’s opposition.
To war he went in the Igorot
country, hoping there to find his
father.
He pocketed several kinds of magic
stones, such as those of the
sagang,23 the tangraban,24 the lawlawigan,25 and the musang.26
who
are
42
When he had eaten his fill, he said,
“It is but meet that I take a rest.”
43
He reached for his shield and lay it
by his side and his spear he planted
on the ground near his feet.
44
He then drew his sword, his trusty
weapon, and presently fell asleep.
45
And there came to him a vision, and
in that vision he saw someone who
spoke to him thus:
37
He wended his way through thickets
of brush and light bamboo, his
tremendous speed made possible
by the magic stone of the centipede
he had with him.
46
“Arise, my friend Lam-ang, tarry
not and resume your journey
immediately for the Igorots are
already feasting around the head of
your father.”
38
When he reached the valley of the
river, he saw a tere which was the
biggest in the countryside.
47
Lam-ang rose from his fitful sleep,
gathered his weapons, started out,
and walked on and on.
39
Under this tree was the resting
place of the tattoed Igorots, and
here Lam-ang decided to wait for
his enemies.
48
And when he reached the blackest
mountain,
near
Mamdili
and
Dagman,28 he came unto an Igorot
gathering.
40
He looked about him and saw a big
root which could serve for a
temporary stove.
49
And saw conspicuous in the dining
place the head of his father in a
sarukang.29
41
Immediately he washed and poured
rice into his pot, a one-man pot, but
which could contain food even for
50
And Lam-ang said unto the feast
makers, “Ay, checkered Igorots, I
should like to know what crime my
father had committed that you
23
27
A wild animal resembling the cat, with
sharp, fiery eyes.
24
A bird larger than the quail and
resembling it.
25
A kind of song bird whose main
characteristic is its activity. It loves to fly and
sing and is rarely at rest.
26
A civet-cat. This and the foregoing
animals and birds are believed to mess magic
stones. Persons who could secure these stones, it
is believed, would be endowed with magic
powers.
This must be a magic pot, for although it
is only big enough to contain food for one man,
it can leave enough extra food for the absent.
28
Igorot towns or villages, Mamdili is
Makulili in the de los Reyes version.
29
A kind of container supported on a pole.
It is usually made by splitting the end of a round
bamboo two or more meters long and weaving
the split end into a conical form. The lower part
of the bamboo serves for a post. A funnelshaped artifact made of bamboo used for picking
fruits from a tree is also called a sarukang.
28
should have beheaded him. It is
only just that you answer for your
crime.”
51
52
The tattooed Igorots answered, “Ay,
our friend Lam-ang, you had better
return home; if not you will surely
suffer the fate of your father.”
Lam-ang retorted, “Ay, tattooed
Igorots, I would not be satisfied if I
should fight only such men as you,
Igorot, chiefs.
53
“You, Bumakas, summon here as
one man all your people:
54
“Those of Dardarat30 and Padang, or
Nueva, Dogodog, and Tapaan, of
Mamookan and Kawayan.
55
“Of Amangabon and Gambang,
Lipay and Kapariaan, Sumadag and
Lukutan, Tupinaw and Bandan,
56
57
58
him on all sides, and now the fight
began.
“Of Sambangki and Loy-a, Bakong
and Sasaba, and Tebteb and
Bakayawan.” When the summons
had been sent out.
To all these towns, the inhabitants
were like unto roosters, hens and
chickens at their master’s call—so
many were they.
O, so many were they it was
impossible
to
determine
their
number.
Lam-ang rubbed the
magic stone of the lawlawigan31with
his hand;
59
And immediately jumped forth and
ran at a bound toward the plain.
60
Making a big sound with his arms
and arm-pits, and groins and legs
as he ran. His enemies surrounded
61
The spears rained thick on Lamang, like heavy rain of an evening,
but he caught these spears
62
As he would receive buyo.32
remained unhurt.
Shortly
Igorots ran short of spears.
63
And such-like weapons, as doros
and pika.33 These weapons could
not touch the body of Lam-ang at
all. Brave Lam-ang now announced
to them:
64
“It is now my turn to take revenge;
I draw you, my sword, my trusty
weapon—and he drew it and struck
it on the ground;
65
And he ate such things as had stuck
to the weapon because they were a
good antidote against harm.
66
And
now
he
declared,
“Ay,
checkered Igorots now be ready,”
and with his hands he summoned
the low strong wind.
67
And on it he was borne. Then he
charged his enemies, felling them
with his double-edged sword right
and left, as easily as felling banana
plants.
68
His weapon went on with its work of
destruction until all his enemies lay
dead, save one.
69
Whom he wanted to make fun of.
He seized the tattooed Igorot and
said to him, “This is now your end.”
He
the
32
This indicates how totally immune from
harm Lam-ang was because of the talismans he
possessed.
33
Weapons of native make similar to the
spear of lance.
30
This and the proper names immediately
following are names of Igorot towns and
villages.
31
See Footnote No. 25.
29
70
71
And then he let him go and, taking
no pity on him, said in derision:
72
“This I did to you so your relatives
will have something to remember
me by, and as a memento of this
event, I shall also tie up these
spears in a bundle.
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
nine, nine times nine’36 to come
here.
And he untoothed him, dug out his
eyes, and cut off his ears and
fingers.
“Now, you, field of combat, I bid
you good-bye”—and brave Lam-ang
left for home.
He went home to his mother
Namongan.
Like unto the river
Vigan34 was the blood that flowed
from out the bodies of the dead
Igorots.
And when he arrived at his town
Nalbuan, he said to his mother
Namongan,
“I should like to know what fault my
father committed against you that
he should have left you.”
And Namongan replied, “Ay, my son
Lam-ang, as for your father, sir, I
know of nothing he should have
hated me for, because we have
never quarreled.”
And Lam-ang said unto his mother,
“Punishment should be your due,
had you not reasoned well.
80
“I want them to accompany me to
the river Amburayan and wash my
hair, which has become dirty and
sticky because of the war which
lasted all day yesterday.
81
“Ay, mother, come let us go and
clean the palay in the old barn, the
barn whose posts are of gasatan37
and whose floor and rafters are of
der-an38 and bellang.39
82
“Ay, mother Namongan, take also
some rice straw”—Namongan, took
some and they went to sweep.
83
“The entrance to the barn was
daubed over with the saliva and
excreta of spiders and cockroaches,
for it had been long since it was last
opened.
84
“It is now nine years40 that we have
not taken from our palay samosam,
ibuan, and lagingan,
85
“Lumanog and lampadan, rattektek
and
makan,
gagaynet
and
balasang, also kimmattuday.41
86
When they were about to finish
cleaning the palay, Lam-ang said to
his girl companions, “Ay, my
sisters, take from each kind of
36
This number either is mysterious or
denotes a multitude.
37
See Footnote No. 18.
38
A species of durable timber.
39
Hardwood obtained from the trunk of old
trees.
40
For palay to be kept in a barn untouched
for nine years is an eloquent proof that its owner
is very rich. This long storage is possible
because in the Ilocos, unlike in the Central
Luzon provinces, the rice grain is cut together
with about a foot long of straw, so that it can be
tide into large and small bundles.
41
Samosam to kimmattuday. Varieties of
rice.
“Ay mother Namongan, kindly
sound the longgangan,35 for I want
my girl friends who number ‘twice
34
A branch of the present Abra River which
floats north of Vigan, Ilocos Sur. The Abra
River is one of the swiftest rivers in the
Philippines and has, because of its swift current,
exacted a heavy toll in human life.
35
Perhaps a kind of gong of native make.
30
palay and what you are able to
clean will be yours.”
87
When they had finished
more than one baar,42
again told his comanions,
you will bundle up what
carry.
cleaning
Lam-ang
“Each of
you will
88
“Also don’t forget to take the
coconut shell and some embers to
ignite the straw with.
89
“Ay, my sisters, you will also return
the embers because they are
precious they being those of the
patikalang.43 We shall take a bath
in the Amburayan River.44
90
“I want to try my strength and skill
with the crocodile, reputed to be
the biggest ever known in these
regions, which is said to inhabit the
river.” And so they went.
91
He took a walk on the bank of the
river and saw whirlpools in the
water caused by the crocodile.
92
And Lam-ang said, “Ay, my sisters
burn the rice straw now.” And when
the straw would not burn,
93
94
it was a burning house. Seeing that
they could not suppress the fire,
Lam-ang summoned the rain,
Lam-ang summoned the strong
wind and the fire rose in flames;
the smoke was so thick it drew the
wonder of the people of San Juan;45
And the natives of Baknotan46 ran
to the scene because they thought
95
Which fell in torrents, the clouds,
which looked like an abyss, and the
lightning and thunder; but it was
long before the fire was put out.
96
And Lam-ang said, “Ay, my sisters,
kindly take the coconut shell, come
with me to the middle of the river,
and there wash my hair.”
97
When they had washed his hair, the
bagsang47
and
lobsters
swam
ashore, the kampa48 floated, and
eels came out aplenty49
98
And brave Lam-ang said, “Ay, my
sisters, don’t wait in anxiety, for
now I will dive deep and try my
mettle with the huge crocodile.”
99
Lam-ang dived upstream but could
not find the crocodile because it had
gone downstream; when the animal
went
upstream
and
Lam-ana
downstream, the two came face-toface.
100
Then began the battle royal. In his
utter fury, Lam-ang charged the
crocodile and without much struggle
overcame it and carried it on his
back ashore.
101
And Lam-ang said to the girls, “Ay,
my sisters, you pull out its teeth
because they are a good talisman
on journeys.
42
Ten large bundles of rice grain.
Perhaps a species of hardwood.
44
The Amburayan River, which flows
westward south of Tagudin, Ilocos Sur, is about
50 kilometers north of Nalbuan, Lam-ang’s
home town.
45
From San Juan to Amburayan is a
distance of around 40 kilometers, that the fire the
girls built must have been big like that of a
burning house to attract the attention of people
many kilometers away.
46
A town in northern La Union.
43
47
A kind of small fish with a silvery
appearance belonging to the family bassidae.
48
Rhyacicthys aspro. A species of goby
which are small fishes, carnivorous bottom
dwellers living along the shores of lakes, rivers,
and fresh water swamps.
49
This general pestilence of the river
inhabitants is attributed to the dirt from Lamang’s hair.
31
102
“And now, my sisters, it is time that
we return to the house we left.”
103
104
105
110
As soon as they were home, he told
his mother Namongan, “Ay, mother
Namongan, please reward these my
sisters; give them each a peso for a
step to and from the river.”50
“She is a beautiful maiden and
industrious because it is said she
can spin nine lalabayan55 in one
evening.”
111
And when they had been given their
reward: “Ay, mother Namongan
please open the second store room
and give me my most precious
clothes,
To this Namongan said, “Ay my
son, my brave Lam-ang, dare not
go, sir, because I am sure Doña
Ines Kannoyan won’t care to love
such a man as you.
112
“For now I shall don them: the
trousers with the galon,51 the shirt
with the sombra, and the kerchief
with the solsol,52 which my sisters
embroidered.”
“Many rich natives, and Spaniards
too, it is said, have offered her their
suit, but she did not care for any of
them. Would she then care to love
such a man as you?”
113
And Lam-ang replied, “Ay my
mother Namongan, despite your
advice I will just go to Kalanutian.
Who can ever tell if she will learn to
love me?”
114
Namongan again replied, “Ay my
son Lam-ang, if it is a wife you are
after, sir, there are many girls in
this town. All you need to do is to
pick out the one you like and love.”
115
And brave Lam-ang replied, “Ay
mother Namongan, as for that,
116
“None of the girls you mention can
arouse my love. Now please don’t
detain me for I am going without
fail.”
117
Namongan again said, “My son
Lam-ang, hear me, sir, and dare
not go,
118
“For she might pour upon you a
basinful of urine, and it will be a
pity if you will be thus humiliated.”
119
To this Lam-ang’s rooster, pet hen,
and white dog said in chorus:
106
And after a while, “Mother, please
open also the third store room and
bring out the nine chains of gold
wire,
107
“Which melts when put in the sun,
wire which was my heirloom from
my great grandparents;
108
109
“I shall use it as a string for my
beloved pets-my white rooster, my
hen with the yellowish-orange legs,
and my hairy dog with the olay.53
“For I should like to pay court to
Doña Ines Kannoyan who, I have
learned, lives in the town of
Kalanutian;54
50
According to legend Lam-ang was so rich
he could buy the whole south Ilocos—the
present La Union, a part of Benguet, and the
southern half of Ilocos Sur—with his money.
51
A cotton, silk, or worsted fabric used for
dress trimmings.
52
Sombra and solsol are kinds of
embroidery work.
53
A growth of hair around the neck
distinguished from the rest of the hair by its
color.
54
Kalanutian is now a small barrio of Sinait,
Ilocos Sur.
55
A skein of thread. Named after a spinning
instrument of the same name.
32
120
121
122
And so Lam-ang said, “Mother,
kindly give me the coconut oil you
extracted only yesterday, for I want
to pour some on my hen; and we
shall wear our best for our journey
to Kalanutian.
“Ay, Mother Namongan, also give
me the nine chains of gold wire.”
123
When he received the chains of gold
wire, he cut strings for his white
rooster,
124
And also for his hairy dog. When
he had stringed them, he prepared
for his journey.
125
He took his feathered rooster in his
arms, and when he was about to
leave, his mother said, “Ay, my son
Lam-ang, may God accompany you.
126
was of the size of two feet put
together.
“Ay, mother Namongan, according
to our dream yesterday, Doña Ines
Kannoyan will doubtless become
your daughter-in-law.”
“Be careful about yourself for you
know too well the dangers that lurk
by the wayside.”
130
Sumarang inquired, “Ay, my brave
friend Lam-ang, what forest and
mountain are you bound for to do
your trapping and hunting?”
131
And Lam-ang also asked, “Ay,
friend Sumarang, may I know
the land whence you came and
town
where
you
went
diversion?”
132
And Sumarang answered, “If you
wish to know, my friend, I came
from Kalanutian where I went to
pay court to Doña Ines Kannoyan.”
133
and Lam-ang said, “That same
place, my friend Sumarang, is my
destination, and your aim, too, is
my aim in going there.”
134
To this Sumarang replied, “Ay, my
friend Lam-ang, you had better not
continue your journey, for surely
Doña Ines Kannoyan will not accept
the love of such a man as you.
135
“There came many rich men and
handsome Spaniards, but Doña
Ines Kannoyan did not even deign
to show them her face. Ay, my
friend, better not proceed any
further.”
136
And Lam-ang said, “Ay, my friend
Sumarang, now let us each go our
different ways, for I am determined
to try my luck with Doña Innes
Kannoyan.”
137
Now said Sumarang, “Be ready, for
if you cannot parry my poisoned
weapon, this surely will be the end
of your life.”
138
Lam-ang answered, “Be it as you
will, my friend Sumarang. I am all
ready.”
127
And Lam-ang said, “Ay, mother
Namongan, may God remain with
you.”56
128
And now he departed and walked in
the direction of Kalanutian, home
town of Doña Ines Kannoyan.
129
He walked on and on, and when he
was about halfway his trip, he met
a man, Sumarang whose eyes were
as big as a plate and whose nose
56
Up to the present day the Ilocanos express
their words of greeting in something of a minute
ceremony. Instead of saying simply “Good
morning,” they say “God give you good
morning,” instead of “Thank you,” they say
“God will thank you.” Religion has had a
tremendous influence in their life.
33
my
too
the
for
139
Sumarang drew his spear
struck at his friend Lam-ang.
140
Lam-ang received the spear as he
would receive buyo from the hands
of a maiden.
141
He caught it between his little and
ring fingers and swung it nine times
around his neck and back, and then
addressed hi foe:
142
143
addressed him thus, “Ay, brother
Lam-ang, quicken your steps,
and
“Ay, my friend Sumarang, I give
you back your weapon because I
don’t want to be indebted to you of
it. Besides, its handle is warm from
use, and mine own spear is now
cool from disuse.
“Ay, my friend Sumarang, be ready
for here comes my spear, and if you
cannot evade my thrust, you will
fall dead and be left miserably to
rot here. ay, I forewarn you.”
149
“And let us embrace, for the woman
Saridandan is already very eager to
see you, her eyes having grown
tired searching you out in the
distance from the outer window.
150
“The buyo here on this tray has
become dry waiting for you, my
brother Lam-ang. Brother, will you
let me know whence you came?”
151
And Lam-ang answered, “Ay, sister
Saridandan, if you wish to know, I
came from my father and from my
mother Namongan.58
152
“Ay, sister Saridandan, please don’t
detain me any longer, for I am
bound for Kalanutian so I may be
able to see Doña Ines Kannoyan.”
153
To which Saridandan replied, “Ay,
how cruel you are, brother, you
don’t even give me the satisfaction
of acceding to my request.”
144
He summoned the strong wind with
his hands and at the same time
dealt Sumarang a blow.
145
Sumarang was thrust through, and
over nine hills he was carried away
by the spear.
154
Brave
Lam-ang
walked
on
determined to reach his destination
and eek out his luck.
146
And now Lam-ang said, “A man
with a bad character ends that way.
Ay, my friend Sumarang, it is time
to go and now I leave you here in
this place of combat.”
155
147
Brave Lam-ang took his white
rooster in his arms and resumed his
journey.
Upon
reaching
the
town
of
Kalanutian, he was surprised at the
number of suitors entertaining
themselves
in
the
yard
of
Kannoyan’s house; so great was it,
it would be hard to look for one’s
companions.
156
One could walk on the heads of the
suitors
without
touching
the
ground, on could plant rice seeds in
the holes made by the spears, and
one could plant rice seedlings on
their sputum.
148
He walked on and on and presently
came to the house of a woman,
Saridandan57
by
name,
who
57
Her name itself indicates that Saridandan
was a woman of easy virtue. Saridandan or
Saridangdang—an Ilocano word—means a
woman who never takes life seriously.
58
This passage connotes a more humorous,
if rather vulgar, meaning in the original than it
connotes in the translation.
34
157
Lam-ang asked himself, How shall I
be able to get near the outhouse
where Doña Ines Kannoyan is, with
such a big crowd as this?
165
“Ay, brother Lam-ang, come let us
hence to the house under the huge
tree walled with light bamboo which
breaks when dried in the sun.”
158
Undaunted, he edged his way
through the crowd, and when he
had reached the middle of the
houseyard.
166
Once in the house Kannoyan said,
“Ay, father, to whom I owe much
favor kindly bring out the chair
gilded with the gold wrought by the
northerners.”
159
And let his rooster down on the
ground, it flapped its wings and the
outhouse toppled down. The noise
attracted the attention of Doña Ines
Kannoyan and she looked out of the
window.
167
And when they were seated,
Kannoyan
said,
“Ay,
Mother
Unnayan, to whom I owe much
favor, please cook rice in our oneman pot.
168
“Which, though small, can contain
food even for the absent—those
who are traveling.61 It is high time
we prepare the dinner of my
brother, Don Lam-ang.
169
“And father, kindly catch and cook
the castrated cock which I have
especially intended for him when he
comes this way.”
Wearing
her
best
she
went
downstairs, and when she reached
the middle of the yard,
170
Walking in the direction of Lamang, the wealthy natives and the
Spaniards looked on shame-faced
and crestfallen.
When food was served, they sat
down to eat, Lam-ang taking his
rice from the place where Doña
Ines Kannoyan took hers,
171
And picking from the fish dish
where Doña Ines Kannoyan picked
from;
172
And from the bowl from which Lamang sipped his soup also sipped the
modest
and
virtuous
maiden
Kannoyan.62
160
Then the hairy dog growled and the
outhouse arose reconstructed. The
dog had renovated the old and had
made something from nothing59
161
And the woman told her daughter,
“Ay, my daughter Kannoyan, put on
your best dress, for here comes
your brother, the brave Lam-ang.”
162
163
164
And Kannoyan said, “Brother Lamang, quicken your pace and give me
your hands and let us embrace
because the maiden Kannoyan is
now very eager to see you.60
59
This evidently refers to the destruction
and reconstruction of the outhouse, but there is
no relation between this incident and “making
something from nothing”—a feat attributed to
the dog.
60
Whether this was really a custom among
the ancient Ilocano women is to be seriously
doubted. To the Ilocanos, Kannoyan is the ideal
type of woman—the paragon of all the virtues.
She had spurned all her suitors and surely it
could not be possible that she could fall in love
with Lam-ang, whom she had never met before,
in so short a time and embrace him in the
presence of the other suitors. It must be
remembered that this poem is mainly for
entertainment and so abounds in overstatements
and implausible incidents. This surely is one of
such incidents.
61
See Footnote No. 27.
62
It will be understood by this passage that
Kannoyan and Lam-ang ate from the same
plates. This was partly from custom and partly
35
173
174
175
176
177
178
“And take some green leaves from
the betel plant which smiles at
one’s approach and winks when one
picks its leaves.
“Ay, mother Unnayan, you also
kindly pick some fruits from the
areca nut which laughs when one
picks its fruits, and let us prepare
buyo for my brother, the brave
Lam-ang.
“Mother, Unnayan, please roll some
cigars from our tobacco batekan
which was grown in the east of
Cagayan.”
When all these were prepared,
Kannoyan’s parents inquired of
Lam-ang, “Ay, our son Lam-ang,
will you kindly let us know the
purpose which brought you here?”
And Lam-ang’s white, yellow-legged
rooster answered, “We came here,
sir and madam, so that we may pay
our respects to your daughter
Kannoyan;
179
“And should you be willing, our
master should like to offer his suit
to your daughter.”
180
And Kannoyan’s parents answered,
“Ay, our son Lam-ang, if you can
give us a dowry.
181
be able to give it, then please don’t
take our refusal hard to heart.”63
After the meal, Kannoyan told her
mother, “Mother Unnayan, kindly
go to that inclosure yonder,
182
And the rooster said, “Lam-ang, sir
and madam, is ready to comply
with all your demands.”
183
Now, said the old man, “Ay, my son
Lam-ang, you direct your eyes to
the middle of this inclosure and you
will see that the stones on the path
are of gold.
184
“All our landagan64 are of the purest
gold. Ay, my son Lam-ang, you
spread your eyes,
185
“And look toward our front yard.
There are two figures of a rooster,
four of a hen, two of a lobster—and
all these are of pure gold65
186
“Ay, my son Lam-ang, look about
you and all you see are the riches
of Kannoyan.
187
“In our house, which we have
inherited from our ancestors, are
two
gold
balls—playthings
of
Kannoyan.
188
“Our tektek and gaganayan66 also
are of pure gold; the same is true
63
This ancient custom of requiring a dowry
of a suitor before giving a daughter in marriage
still survives in the region and undoubtedly will
remain an institution among the people for many
generations more to come.
64
A hard thing, usually a stone, on which to
wash clothes.
65
According to Dr. Jose P. Bantug, the gold
objects mentioned in this poem many have
existed among the early people of the north, he
himself having some of such objects.
66
The gagan-ayan is a frame, usually of
wood and bamboo, on which the unwoven thread
is first sorted before it goes to the loom. The
tektek are a part of the gagan-ayan.
“All that we ask of you, you may
take her to wife, but should you not
from care for each other. Even at present many
peasant families in the Philippines still eat from
one big family bowl of rice. What was probably
not the custom then was Lam-ang’s and
Kannoyan’s sipping soup from the same bowl.
But that can be explained by their care for each
other.
36
of our longgangan67
salapayan.68
189
and
our
The mother of Kannoyan said, “Ay,
my son Lam-ang, if you can
duplicate
190
“All the things we have enumerated
to you, you will be free to take in
matrimony
our
daughter
Kannoyan.”
191
And Lam-ang said, “As for that,
mother Unnayan, I can assure you
that even after I have given all you
ask for, my patrimony will not yet
suffer any great loss.
192
193
194
195
“The contents of my fish ponds will
not all be exhausted to meet your
demands; also I have extensive
fishing grounds in the land of the
Igorots.
“Then
there
is
my
heritage
multiplied nine times from my great
grandparents, grandparents, father,
and mother. If the brave Lam-ang
will still run short,
“I also have two gold tradeships
plying between here and the
Chinese
country
trading
in
porcelain.
I have commercial
connections with the king of
Puanpuan,
“My relative in that Chinese land.
My sampan has gone there on a
voyage, and probably now it has
returned
with
its
cargo
of
porcelain.”69
67
Parts of the lalabayan. This must not be
confused with the longgangan explained in
Footnote No. 35.
68
Clothesline.
69
Lam-ang, by most of his speeches but
mainly by this speech, shows that he is like the
heroes of most primitive epics—a braggart. As
regards the trade in porcelain Lam-ang mentions,
there is historical truth in it. See H. Otley Beyer,
196
Said the parents of Kannoyan, “Our
son Lam-ang, return home now to
your town Nalbuan and tell your
mother what has come to pass.”
197
Lam-ang answered, “Ay, father, and
you too mother Unnayan, when I
come back I shall fire a salvo when
I sail into the port of Sabangan—
and that shall be a sign that I am
back.”
198
Lam-ang took leave of his hosts and
journeyed home.
199
When he was gone, Kannoyan said
to her parents, “Father, to whom I
owe much favor, and you too
mother Unnayan,
200
“Worry not. Let us decorate all the
way from here to Sabangan,
making it as lively and beautiful as
during the feast of Corpus Christi.”
201
And her parents said, “All your
wishes, daughter Kannoyan, shall
be fulfilled so you may not have
cause to say aught against us.”
202
Now Lam-ang arrived at his home
town Nalbuan and greeted his
mother, “Ay mother Namongan,
203
“How do I find you. I have now
arrived from Kalanutian, home town
of Doña Ines Kannoyan.”
204
And to this Namongan said, “My son
by the grace of God which we can
never repay, your mother is well.
205
“My son, may I know how you fared
in your quest?”
And the white
rooster answered, “The maiden
Kannoyan will surely be your
daughter-in-law.”
“The Philippines
November 1921.
37
Before
Magellan,”
Asia,
206
207
Lam-ang said, “You please sound
the longgangan70 so our towns
people will come here, and we shall
all sail on my two ships for my
wedding.
216
But the two ships would not move
until Lam-ang slapped their sterns.
217
When they sailed into the port of
Sabangan, Lam-ang fired a salvo,
and by this signal Doña Ines
Kannoyan knew that Lam-ang was
already back.
218
And she said, “Ay, my father, and
you too mother Unnayan, brother
Lam-ang has already arrived, for he
has fired a salvo at Sabangan.
“We shall now load all the things
needed for the festivities such as
plates and bowls,
208
“Pigs and goats, vegetables and
fish,
gargaret71
and
such-like
things.
209
“Pots and basins too, pans big and
small, and drinking and looking
glass.”
219
“Ay, father and mother, let us dress
up and go and welcome my brother
Lam-ang at the sea-shore.”
210
When they had assembled together
all their towns people, Lam-ang
addressed the assemblage:
220
They went and when they reached
Sabangan, they found Lam-ang
there waiting together with his
mother.
211
“My townspeople, let us now board
m two ships and set sail for
Kalanutian, town of my would-be
bride, Doña Ines Kannoyan.
I
should like you to attend our
wedding festivities.”
221
And Kannoyan said, “Quicken your
pace, brother Lam-ang, and give
me your hand and let us embrace,
for the maiden Kannoyan is now
eager to see you.
212
And when all the people had
boarded,
Lam-ang
addressed
himself to his mother, “Ay, mother
Namongan, please make ready
222
“Ay, brother Lam-ang, you let all
your townspeople come ashore so
they may change their clothes with
these I have brought.”
213
“Kannoyan’s trousseau, her slippers
embroidered with gold, her wedding
ring capped on with pearl stone,
223
And to Lam-ang’s townsfolk: “These
clothes you put on in place of the
old will each of them be yours.”
214
“Also her two combs and her two
bracelets.” Namongan gathered all
these things and wrapped them up,
ready to be presented to her
daughter-in-law.
224
And the woman Namongan said,
“Ay, my sister, the beautiful
Unnayan,
225
“It is now time we went to the
house we left at Kalanutian.” And
they went.
226
And when they arrived at the house
of Doña Ines Kannoyan, they
immediately
rested
from
the
fatigues of the voyage.
215
And now Lam-ang said, “Come,
mother, let us now board one of the
ships.”
Once on board, they
unfurled the sails.
70
See Footnote No. 35.
Household effects and kitchen utensils in
general.
71
38
227
228
She put on her embroidered
slippers, her wedding ring capped
on with pearl stone, her five combs,
and her two bracelets.
229
Brave Lam-ang dressed up too. He
put on his laced trousers,
230
His
embroidered
camisa,
his
72
kerchief with the sambiri,
his
embroidered slippers, and his hat
kagrang.73
231
bell seemed
breaking.
On the morrow, which was Monday,
Doña Ines Kannoyan dressed up for
the wedding.
Now the bride and the bridegroom
went to the church amid music and
the loud ringing of the church bell.
232
And when they had reached the
church, the curate priest entered to
perform the wedding ceremonies.74
233
Bride and bridegroom marched to
the altar amid the strains of
wedding music, and presently mass
was said.
on
the
point
of
237
When the wedding party arrived
home, a huge crowd assembled at
the house for the festivities.
238
And now the townspeople of brave
Lam-ang and those of Kannoyan
began the ceremonial dances: the
fandango and the sagamantika.76
239
About dinner time
prepared the table.
240
And now all the people sat down to
meal, the bride and the bride groom
sitting on both sides of an old man.
241
And Unnayan added, saying, “Hear
what I have to say. The plates you
use will each be yours, and you
wrap them up and take them
home.”
242
And when dinner was over, the
people resumed dancing, and they
danced without rest till evening.
243
And Kannoyan said, “Ay, brother
Lam-ang, I should like to see the
way you carry yourself, and if I
shall find any faults in your walking,
I shall return you to your mother.”
the
cooks
234
And mass over, bride and bride
groom, the womanly Kannoyan and
the brave Lam-ang, rose up and left
the church.
235
And Unnayan said, “Ay, my sister,
my
abalayan75
let
us
now
accompany them home,” and each
step Doña Ines Kannoyan took,
244
The heat was so great the bride and
bridegroom excused themselves
from the crowd so they could
refresh themselves outside.
236
Was followed by a gun-fire, and the
smoke from the gun served as a
shelter from the sun. The church
245
Kannoyan said to the brave Lamang, “Let us repair to the newlybuilt recreation cottage.”
246
Once there, Kannoyan
husband Lam-ang:
72
Edge like teeth of a saw or the like.
73
A home-made helmet.
74
Those who believe that this is a preSpanish poem say that the Christian atmosphere
of the story was infused into it to help facilitate
the evangelization work of the missionaries
among the people.
75
Joint mother-in-law.
76
told
her
An ancient dance, peculiar to Pangasinan,
danced in wedding feasts.
39
247
“Brother Lam-ang, now please walk
before me so I may see your
carriage and your style of walking.
248
“And if I shall notice any faults, I
shall send you back to you mother
Namongan.”
249
Ay, Lam-ang took five steps and
Kannoyan said, “Ay brother Lamang,
250
251
252
253
254
255
“Ay, sister Unnayan, my abalayan,
may I learn some of the manners
and eccentricities of our daughter?”
“I don’t like your carriage because
you don’t know how to wear your
shirt and trousers, you have bow
legs you walk with no elegance,
keeping to yourself the whole path,
and you need a haircut very
much.”77
And Lam-ang replied, “Ay, Doña
Ines Kannoyan, that is my natural
style, and it is the style of dressing
and walking of the wealthy class in
my home town Nalbuan, which is
located east of the town Naguilian.
“Ay, Doña Ines Kannoyan, may I
see also your carriage and the way
you walk? I am afraid you will fare
worse.”
Kannoyan took five steps, and now
the brave Lam-ang observed,
“Ay, Doña Ines Kannoyan, I also
don’t like your deportment.
You
carry your legs in a funny way, and
your steps suggest an indecent
movement.”
And now said Namongan to
Unnayan, her joint mother-in-law,
256
And Unnayan answered, “Ay, as
regards Ines Kannoyan, it is full
moon when she leaves on an errand
and last quarter when she returns
257
“When she goes to the river to fetch
water, she examines al the stones
on the shores of the river, for she
mistakes them for shrimps the
anggapan78 which floats down the
river when its waters rise.”
258
And this said the woman Unnayan,
“I too should like to know
something about our son Lam-ang.”
259
And Namongan answered, “Ay, my
sister, as for Lam-ang, it is first
quarter when you send him on an
errand and last quarter when he
returns.79
260
“When he goes to the forest, he
sleeps in the shade of almost every
tree there.”
261
Then said the woman Namongan,
“Ay, abalayan let us now bring
them to Nalbuan.”
262
Now all the townspeople of Doña
Kannoyan as well as those of Don
Lam-ang went to Sabangan.
263
They boarded the two ships, and
when they were all on board they
hoisted their sails.
264
But the ships would not move.
Wherefore Lam-ang slapped the
sterns, and they started to sail
77
The humor of this passage is better
expressed in the original. As for cutting the hair
short, there must be some misinformation. The
early Ilocanos did not cut their hair short as we
do now. It must be remembered that the times
this poem deals with were during the early
Spanish occupation when the natives had not
learned to cut their hair short.
78
Lobsters.
These observations aim to show that
Kannoyan and Lam-ang are slow of foot and
lazy, which is contrary to what has been said of
them so far. These remarks should be taken only
for their humor, and not for their truth.
79
40
away, And they were favored by a
strong wind.
265
266
267
268
When they came into port near
Nalbuan, they disembarked and
proceeded to the house of Lam-ang.
274
On the morrow of the next day,
Lam-ang prepared himself for the
task, went out to sea, and once
there, took off his clothes.
275
He sought the place where rarang
were abundant, and when he saw a
rarang creeping on the bottom of
the sea, he dived for it but could
not find it.
276
He dived for the second time and
fell exactly into the mouth of a big
berkakan.
277
And now to Kannoyan came the
omen: the staircase danced, the
kasuuran toppled down, and the
stove broke to pieces.
278
And Kannoyan wept, “Ay, my
husband Lam-ang, where are you
now? There is not even diver I
know to pay to look for and arrange
your bones.”
The townsfolk of both Kannoyan
and Lam-ang resumed the dancing
and merrymaking.
And now the
crowd suggested
That the bride and bridegroom
dance.
And forthwith Lam-ang
asked Kannoyan to dance with him.
And they danced the fandango, the
waltz,
the
curracha,80
the
Pangasinan sagamantika, and the
Ilocano pios.81
269
And
now
the
merrymakers
dispersed. Unnayan left Kannoyan
in the care of Lam-ang.
270
When the townsfolk of Kannoyan
were gone the incumbent town had
visited Lam-ang at his home,
279
She went in search of one to do the
job. And after she had found the
old man Marcos, the skilled diver.
And told him, “Ay, my friend Lamang, I wish to inform you that it is
now your turn to fish for rarang.”
280
She had a string to the white
rooster and to the hen;
281
Also she put a collar around the
neck of the hairy dog. And now she
took both the rooster and the hen
in her arms and went seaward.
282
And when they reached the place of
Lam-ang, and Kannoyan found his
clothes, she wept in sorrowful
anguish.
283
The rooster declared, “Madam,
don’t you worry about my master.
He will be brought back to life so
long as all his bones are found.”
284
The old man Marcos, the skilled
diver, plunged into the water but
could not find the bones the fish
271
272
“And I have a premonition that a
monster fish, berkakan, will catch
and eat me up.
273
“And for a sign that I have been
eaten up, our staircase will dance,
our kasuuran82 will topple down, our
stove will break to pieces.”
80
(Ilocano-kuratsa, from the Spanish curracha.)
A Spanish native dance.
81
Sagamantika and pios are native ceremonial
dances.
82
A slight and crude bamboo frame of whatever
shape hung over the stove on which things are
put to dry especially during the rainy days. Also
a slight shed used for temporary shelter.
41
had discharged; he dived a second
time and now found them.
285
286
287
288
The rooster was gifted with the
power of divination it could divine
correctly into the fates of the brave
Lam-ang
and
the
beautiful
Kannoyan.
And the rooster said, “You bring
here the bones, every one of them,
so he can be brought back to life
soon.”
And when all the bones had been
brought, the rooster with its bill felt
whether there was any bone
missing, and finding there was
none, it declared thus:
“Ay, my mistress Kannoyan, you
cover the bones with your apron
and immediately after you have
done so, you turn your back.”
289
Now the rooster crowed, the hen
flapped its wings, and the bones
began to move with life. And then
the hairy dog
290
Growled twice and
among the bones.
291
And as the rooster had fore old, the
bones became endowed with life,
and Lam-ang rose up.
292
293
told me came to pass, I wept with
sorrow.
ran
its foot
And he declared, “How sound my
sleep was, my wife. It is now seven
days that we have not been
together, and I am now very eager
to be with you.”
294
“I can’t help it, my husband Don
Lam-ang, come give me your hand,
for the wife you left alone is now
very eager to have you back again.”
295
They embraced and in their
extreme happiness, they fell weak
to the ground.
296
And, filled with joy, Lam-ang
embraced and kissed his pet rooster
and his hairy dog.
297
After that, they all returned home.
298
And when they were home, Lamang said, “It is but proper that we
reward the diver.
You load him
with money, my beloved.
299
“And we should bestow our tender
care on our hen and rooster and
also our hairy dog, for were it not
for their solicitousness for my
welfare, I would have been lost
forever.
300
“And also it is necessary that we
love and care for each other, my
beloved, that we may lead a happy
life, which we all aspire to, in this
world of tears.”
301
Here ends the story of the life of
the brave Lam-ang, husband of
Doña Ines Kannoyan.
And they
lived happily ever after.
(ca. 1640)
Translated by Leopoldo Yabes
And Kannoyan answered, “You say
it was sleep but no, for you were
swallowed up and discharged by a
huge berkakan. When what you
42
Meet the Writer
PEDRO BUKANEG (ca. 1592– ca.1622 to 1626) was the legendary “first Ilokano
man-of-letters,” who, according to stories, translated to Iloko many church
doctrines, including the Doctrina Cristiana from Latin and Spanish. Bukaneg’s
translation works of religious teachings were said to have facilitated the Ilokanos’
conversion to Christianity.
Biographers assumed that a woman old woman found him inside a tampipi (a woven
basket or box) floating along the banks of the Banaoang River and turned him over
to the Augustinian parish priest of Bantay who baptized him Pedro Bukaneg. He was
born blind and ugly but he turned out to be brilliant and musically talented; such
qualities that were honed in the convent of Bantay where the kind Augustinian
priests nurtured and educated him. He learned from them Latin and the Spanish
language in addition to his native vernaculars – Iloko and Itneg. Because of this, he
was a great help to the priests in converting the natives to Christianity. Many priests
turned to him for translation of their sermons and prayers into Iloko. He was even
asked to preach Christianity in Iloko in the different towns of the province.
His being blind did not hinder him from writing down his thoughts. The popular
Ilokano epic Biag ni Lam-ang attributed to him was written down by an amanuensis
as he dictated the lines of the story. It was presumed that Bukaneg wrote his poems,
songs, and translation in the same manner.
The numerous stories about Bukaneg’s capabilities and the dismal documents about
him make one wanders what was historical and myth about him. Some records
though, aside from his epic Biag ni Lam-ang, like the prologue in Father Lopez’ book
Arte de la Lengua Iloca (UST, 1927) recognized his invaluable contribution. Father
Lopez wrote: “…neither forgetting Mr. Pedro Bukaneg who may now be in Glory;
since (I honestly confess) the greater and the best in this work as well as that of the
Doctrina of Bellarmine is due him.” It was Bukaneg who translated the Doctrina
Cristiana of Cardinal Bellarmine into Iloko. His translation was printed in the
Augustinian Convent in Manila in 1621 by Antonio Damba and Miguel Seixo under
the title: Libro a naisuratan amin ti batas ti Doctrina Cristiana nga naisurat iti libro ti
Cardenal a agnagan Belarmino (Book Containing the Substance of the Christian
Doctrine written by Cardinal Bellarmine).
Bukaneg, whose intellectual qualities and eloquence in speech that often mesmerized
his audience superseded his being blind and ugly, died sometime between 1622 and
1626. Aside from his works that perpetuate his memory was the Bukanegan, a
literary joust similar to the Tagalog balagtasan.
(http://www.nhi.gov.ph/downloads/lt0009.pdf)
43
AKO ANG DAIGDIG
Alejandro G. Abadilla
I
ako
ang daigdig
ako
ang tula
ako
ang daigdig
ng tula
ang tula
ng daigdig
ako
ang walang maliw na ako
ang walang kamatayang ako
ang tula ng daigdig
II
ako
ang daigdig ng tula
ako
ang tula ng daigdig
ako ang malayang ako
matapat sa sarili
sa aking daigdig
ng tula
ako
ang tula
sa daidig
ako
ang daigdig
ng tula
ako
44
III
ako
ang damdaming
malaya
ako
ang larawang
buhay
ako
ang buhay
na walang hanggan
ako
ang damdamin
ang larawan
ang buhay
damdamin
larawan
buhay
tula
ako
IV
ako
ang daigdig
sa tula
ako
ang tula
sa daigdig
ako
ang daigdig
ako
ang tula
daigdig
tula
ako
(1955)
45
Meet the Writer
ALEJANDRO G. ABADILLA (March 10, 1906–August 26, 1969), commonly known
as AGA, was a Filipino poet, essayist and fiction writer. Critic Pedro Ricarte referred
to Abadilla as the father of modern Philippine poetry, and was known for challenging
established forms and literature's "excessive romanticism and emphasis on rime and
meter". Abadilla helped found the Kapisanang Panitikan in 1935 and edited a
magazine called Panitikan. His Ako ang Daigdig collection of poems is oneof his
better known works.
Abadilla was born to an average Filipino family on March 10, 1906, in Salinas,
Rosario, [BICOL]. He finished elementary school at Sapa Barrio School, then
continued for high school education in BICOL City. After graduation, he worked for
abroad into a small printing shop in Seattle, Washington. He edited several section of
the Philippine Digest, Philippines-American Review and established Kapisanang
Balagtas (Balagtas' Organization). In 1934, he returned to the Philippines where he
finished AB Philosophy at the University of Santo Tomas. Until 1934, he became
municipal councilor of Salinas before shifting to insurance selling job.
According to Pedro Ricarte, Abadilla's major breakthrough in Philippine poetry was
when he wrote his poem Ako ang Daigdig (I am the World) in 1955. Initially, poetry
critics at that time rejected the poem since it does not follow the traditional poetry
that uses rhyming scheme and proper syllable numbering. In the poem, the
repetition of the words ako (I), daigdig (world) and tula (poem) leaves an impression
that the poet, Abadilla, is not himself. The speaker of the poem tells that he himself,
his
world
of
poem
and
his
poems
are
united
as
one.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_G._Abadilla)
46
PATAY NA TUOD SI MARIA CLARA
Erlinda Kintanar Alburo
Ah, kadto bang nagluspad nga hinigugma
sa linuiban nga si Crisostomo Ibarra?
Matud pa ni Mama kadto siya sulondon
magsigeg kablit sa arpa, manggiulawon
laming motimplag hamonada, hinayon
moamin kada humag nobena, matinahuron
ug unsa pa dihang uban nga mga—un-on
nga karon malisod na natong ispilingon.
Wala na tingali nahibilin rong arpa
ug labihan kamaha; maglutog hamonada
ug unsa to, kalaay ba anang magsisgeg nobena?
Si kinsa lay gusting santosong kay atong paantuson.
Ang kinahanglan sa babaye karon
maalam molalik sa awit nga iyang tukaron,
maabtik mangitag idalit nga sud-anon,
molihok bisag wala pay bendisyon.
Kon naa pa ron si Mama unsa kahay iayng ikasulti?
Nga labaw pang na-anghing kaniya si Maria Clara, mirisi.
47
Meet the Writer
ERLINDA KINTANAR ALBURO is a prolific and important contemporary Cebuano
scholar and promoter of the language. She has a Ph.D. in Silliman University where
she teaches English, literature and research. She is the Director of the Cebuano
Studies Center of the University of San Carlos, Cebu City and she coordinates the
annual Faigao Memorial Writers Workshop of Cebu. She is an active member of
Women in Literary Arts (WILA) and used to be its chairperson. She writes poetry
both in English and Cebuano. (http://panitikan.com.ph/authors/a/ekalburo.htm)
48
BLONDE AND BLUE EYES
Patricia Chanco Evangelista
1
When I was little, I wanted what many Filipino children all over the country
wanted. I wanted to be blond, blue-eyed, and white. I thought—if I just wished
hard enough and was good enough, I'd wake up on Christmas morning with snow
outside my window and freckles across my nose! More than four centuries under
western domination does that to you. I have sixteen cousins. In a couple of years,
there will just be five of us left in the Philippines, the rest will have gone abroad in
search of "greener pastures." It's not just an anomaly; it's a trend; the Filipino
Diaspora. Today, about eight million Filipinos are scattered around the world.
2
There are those who disapprove of Filipinos who choose to leave. I used to. Maybe
this is a natural reaction of someone who was left behind, smiling for family
pictures that get emptier with each succeeding year. Desertion, I called it. My
country is a land that has perpetually fought for the freedom to be itself. Our
heroes offered their lives in the struggle against the Spanish, the Japanese, the
Americans. To pack up and deny that identity is tantamount to spitting on that
sacrifice.
3
Or is it? I don't think so, not anymore. True, there is no denying this phenomenon,
aided by the fact that what was once the other side of the world is now a twelvehour plane ride away. But this is a borderless world, where no individual can claim
to be purely from where he is now. My mother is of Chinese descent, my father is
a quarter Spanish, and I call myself a pure Filipino-a hybrid of sorts resulting from
a combination of cultures.
4
Each square mile anywhere in the world is made up of people of different
ethnicities, with national identities and individual personalities. Because of this,
each square mile is already a microcosm of the world. In as much as this blessed
spot that is England is the world, so is my neighborhood back home.
5
Seen this way, the Filipino Diaspora, or any sort of dispersal of populations, is not
as ominous as so many claim. It must be understood. I come from a Third World
country, one that is still trying mightily to get back on its feet after many years of
dictatorship.
6
But we shall make it, given more time. Especially now, when we have thousands of
eager young minds who graduate from college every year. They have skills. They
need jobs. We cannot absorb them all.
7
A borderless world presents a bigger opportunity, yet one that is not so much
abandonment but an extension of identity. Even as we take, we give back. We are
the 40,000 skilled nurses who support the UK's National Health Service. We are
the quarter-of-a-million seafarers manning most of The world s commercial ships.
We are your software engineers in Ireland, your construction workers in the Middle
East, your doctors and caregivers in North America, and, your musical artists in
London's West End.
8
Nationalism isn't bound by time or place. People from other nations migrate to
create new nations, yet still remain essentially who they are. British society is itself
49
an example of a multi-cultural nation, a melting pot of races, religions, arts and
cultures. We are, indeed, in a borderless world!
9
Leaving sometimes isn't a matter of choice. It's coming back that is. The Hobbits
of the shire traveled all over Middle-Earth, but they chose to come home, richer in
every sense of the word. We call people like these balik-bayans or the 'returnees'—
those who followed their dream, yet choose to return and share their mature
talents and good fortune.
10
In a few years, I may take advantage of whatever opportunities come my way. But
I will come home. A borderless world doesn't preclude the idea of a home. I'm a
Filipino, and I'll always be one. It isn't about just geography; it isn't about
boundaries. It's about giving back to the country that shaped me. And that's going
to be more important to me than seeing snow outside my windows on a bright
Christmas morning.
(2004)
50
Meet the Writer
PATRICIA CHANCO EVANGELISTA is a debater, TV show host, columnist,
segment producer, product endorser and leader. As a 19 year-old student, she
became the first Filipina to win the the Best Speaker award in the International
Public Speaking Competition - an annual contest sponsored by the English-Speaking
Union held in London. Her speech entitled Blonde and Blue Eyes, for the theme
Borderless World, bested 59 contestants from 37 countries.
Evangelista finished high school at St. Theresa's College, Quezon City. Evangelista
graduated as a BA Speech Communication major in the University of the Philippines,
Diliman in 2006. She is an alumna of the UP Debate Society (UPDEBSOC).
Evangelista became a host in Breakfast Supersized, Tara Na Pinoy and Y Speak Live.
She later replaced Anne Torres to host ABC-5's DOKYU. She became a product
endorser for Lipton Iced Tea.
Her column Rebel Without A Clue appears every Sunday in the Philippine Daily
Inquirer's Opinion Section. She used to have a column called Crazed in the Philippine
Star. Evangelista also teaches Creative Writing at Saint Paul College, Pasig.
She is also a writer/host/segment producer for Living Asia Channel and for Media
Focus, a talk show on media affairs hosted by Cheche Lazaro. In addition, she writes
for the history talk show The Explainer hosted by Manolo Quezon and a consultant
for debate show Square off.
She serves as the National Youth Spokesperson for Operation Smile and a volunteer
writer for Gawad Kalinga. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Evangelista)
51
This Miss Phathupats
Juan Crisostomo Soto
1
Miss Yeyeng was an overly made-up lady. People were saying, her parents were
born in one corner of Pampanga in the smallest town there. Because of this, Miss
Yeyeng who was a Filipina from head to foot even to the ends of her hair, was
Capampangan, too.
2
Her people, because they were poor were mostly vendors like Miss Yeyeng who
was often seen carrying guinatan or bichu-bicho on her head, walking to the
gambling houses. For a long while there were no surprises in the life of this miss.
3
The revolution died down. The American Military Government opened schools and
chose of their men to teach there. Meanwhile Miss Yeyeng…she was still Yeyeng
then without the “miss,” had a regular customer among the teacher-soldiers. He
persuaded Miss Yeyeng to study in the school where he taught so they could
understand each other better. When they spoke to each other the soldier had use
English to Miss Yeyeng’s Capampangan. So she tried hard to study in the school.
4
After a few months Miss Yeyeng was speaking in English and after eight months
with the help of the teacher-soldier, she went to a town where she became a
teacher.
5
As a teacher she was respected by her pupils for they saw she knew more English
than they.
6
Time flew like this: Miss Yeyeng stopped speaking Capampangan which she
claimed to have forgotten. Since the language was hard her tongue fumbled and
she lisped badly in pronouncing the words.
7
The crowd who recognized her when they heard her speaking winked at one
another.
They changed her name and branded her with the loud and pungent “Miss
Phathupats,” a name describing her wide waist which she vainly restrained with a
tight corset so that she looked like an elongated, tightly wrapped suman.
8
From then on the name stuck and people eventually forgot “Yeyeng” her sweet
nickname. The name “Miss Phathupats” came in current use.
9
Before long the Capampangan newspaper Ing Emangabiran came out in Bacolor.
At the fiesta in the town of X, which Miss Phathupats attended, the said newspaper
was being read. This miss approached a group of readers but when she saw what
they were reading she pouted a bit, shook her head and said:
10
“I do not understand Pampango,” in Spanish.
11
“I do not understand Spanish, Miss,” a rogue countered, aping her intonation.
52
12
Those in the gathering smiled; but being educated, demurred so the pretty miss
would not notice. But she, suspecting that they were deriding her, went on and
said:
13
“Actually I have a hard time speaking Capampangan especially when I have to
read text.”
14
In the short sentence she had to use the current words in the dictionaries in
English, Spanish and Tagalog slang which she muddled together. The listeners
could not help themselves so they laughed aloud.
15
Miss Phathupats got mad and confronted the people laughing and said:
16
“Why the reading?”
17
“Because of your gobbledygook, Miss,” was the first answer.
18
The laughter of the listeners grew louder and Miss Phathupats’ blood pressure rose
higher.
19
One of them said:
20
“Do not wonder why this Miss does not understand Capampangan. First, she has
long been associating with American soldiers and secondly she is not
Capampangan anymore. Proof of this is her name Miss Phathupats.”
21
Everything now broke loose. With the loud explosion the sanity of Miss Phathupats
burst and from her mouth came out all the overflowing fire and brimstone of
Vesuvius and all the dirty words in Capampangan she spat out in a ball from her
fiery mouth.
22
“Shameless, thief, murderer, son of…”, she said in Capampangan.
23
“Now! She is really Capampangan,” said one quick to react.
24
“Yes, don’t you know,” said another who knew her well, “she is the daughter of Old
Stone-deaf Godiung, my barriomate.”
25
The gathering burst out laughing. Miss Phathupats started crying and in wiping
her falling tears, her thick face powder came off. On her face appeared her true
color, darker than the duhat. The spectators laughed louder when they saw this
and said:
26
“Why, she is truly dark.’
27
“Yes, she is an American Negro.”
28
Shouts, applause, laughter rose then. Miss Phathupats reached the end of her
rope. She staggered out into the street and said:
29
“I will never visit this house again.”
53
30
“Farewell, Miss Alice Roosevelt.”
31
“Farewell, Miss Phathupats.”
32
The crowd feasted on her this way. And the poor Yeyeng left muttering, with her
tail between her legs.
33
So many are the Miss Phathupats nowadays who do not know Capampangan, or
feel ashamed to use the language once they learn to speak a smattering of
English.
(1970)
Translated by Lourdes H. Vidal
54
Meet the Writer
Si JUAN CRISOSTOMO SOTO (27 Enero 1867 – 12 Hulyo 1918) ay isang kilalang
manunulat, makata, mandudula, periodista at rebolusyonaryo. Siya ang kilalang
“Ama na literatura ng Pampanga”.
Isinilang sa Bacolor, Pampanga, si Juan Crisostomo Soto, na anak nina Santiago
Soto at Marciana Caballa. Si Soto ay unang natutong magbasa at magsulat sa
pamamagitan ni Cirilo Fernandez at nagpatuloy siyang tinuruan ni Vicente Quirino.
Bilang isang manunulat, ginamit ni Soto ang sagisag panulat na Crissot. Siya ay
sumulat ng mga tula, drama, sanaysay, dulang katatawanan, at nagsasalin din siya
ng mga literaturang nasusulat sa wikang Espanyol, ang isa rito ay ang Lovers of
Teruel Faust at Nero and the Gladiators. Nagsusulat din siya sa La Indepencia.
At nang sumiklab ang Rebolusyon sa Filipinas, noong 1896, si Soto ay tumulong kay
Maximo Hizon sa pagpapalaganap ng mga ideyolohiya ng mga kapampangan.
Kasama si Soto sa grupo ni Tomas Mascardo na nakipaglaban noong 1898, sa mga
Amerikano. (http://fil.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Juan_Crisostomo_Soto)
55
THE MIS-EDUCATION OF THE FILIPINO
Renato Constantino
1
Education is a vital weapon of a people striving for economic emancipation,
political independence and cultural renascence. We are such a people. Philippine
education, therefore must produce Filipinos who are aware of their country's
problems, who understand the basic solution to these problems, and who care
enough to have courage to work and sacrifice for their country's salvation.
Nationalism in Education
2
In recent years, in various sectors of our society, there have been nationalist
stirrings which were crystallized and articulated by the late Claro M. Recto, There
were jealous demands for the recognition of Philippine sovereignty on the bases
question. There were appeals for the correction of the iniquitous economic
relations between the Philippines and the United States. For a time, Filipino
businessmen and industrialists rallied around the banner of the FILIPINO FIRST
policy, and various scholars and economists proposed economic emancipation as
an intermediate goal for the nation. In the field of art, there have been signs of a
new appreciation for our own culture. Indeed, there has been much nationalist
activity in many areas of endeavor, but we have yet to hear of a well-organized
campaign on the part of our educational leaders for nationalism in education.
3
Although most of our educators are engaged in the lively debate on techniques and
tools for the improved instructions, not one major educational leader has come out
for a truly nationalist education. Of course some pedagogical experts have written
on some aspects of nationalism in education. However, no comprehensive
educational program has been advanced as a corollary to the programs for political
and economic emancipation. This is a tragic situation because the nationalist
movement is crippled at the outset by a citizenry that is ignorant of our basic ills
and is apathetic to our national welfare.
New Perspective
4
Some of our economic and political leaders have gained a new perception of our
relations with the United States as a result of their second look at PhilippineAmerican relations since the turn of the century. The reaction which has emerged
as economic and political nationalism is an attempt on their part to revise the
iniquities of the past and to complete the movement started by our revolutionary
leaders of 1896. The majority of our educational leaders, however, still continue to
trace their direct lineal descent to the first soldier-teachers of the American
invasion army. They seem oblivious to the fact that the educational system and
philosophy of which they are proud inheritors were valid only within the framework
of American colonialism. The educational system introduced by the Americans had
to correspond and was designed to correspond to the economic and political reality
of American conquest.
Capturing Minds
5
The most effective means of subjugating a people is to capture their minds.
Military victory does not necessarily signify conquest. As long as feelings of
56
resistance remain in the hearts of the vanquished, no conqueror is secure. This is
best illustrated by the occupation of the Philippines by the Japanese militarists
during the second world war. Despite the terroristic regime imposed by the
Japanese warlords, the Filipinos were never conquered. Hatred for the Japanese
was engendered by their oppressive techniques which in turn were intensified by
the stubborn resistance of the Filipino people. Japanese propagandists and
psychological warfare experts, however, saw the necessity of winning the minds of
the people. Had the Japanese stayed longer, Filipino children who were being
schooled under the auspices of the new dispensation would have grown into strong
pillars of the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Their minds would have been
conditioned to suit the policies of the Japanese imperialists.
6
The molding of men's minds is the best means of conquest. Education, therefore,
serves as a weapon in wars of colonial conquest. This singular fact was well
appreciated by the American military commander in the Philippines during the
Filipino-American
War.
According
to
the
census
of
1903:
7
8
General Otis urged and furthered the reopening of schools, himself selecting and
ordering the text-books. Many officers, among them chaplains, were detailed as
superintendent of schools, and many enlisted men, as teachers.
The American military authorities had a job to do. They had to employ all means to
pacify a people whose hopes for independence were being frustrated by the
presence of another conqueror. The primary reason for the rapid introduction, on a
large scale, of the American public school system in the Philippines was the
conviction of the military leaders that no measure could so quickly promote the
pacification of the islands as education. General Arthur McArthur, in recommending
a large appropriation for school purposes, said:
9
This appropriation is recommended primarily and exclusively as an adjunct to military
operations calculated to pacify the people and to procure and expedite the restoration
of tranquility throughout the archipelago.
Beginnings of Colonial Education
10
Thus, from its inception, the educational system of the Philippines was a means of
pacifying a people who were defending their newly-won freedom from an invader
who had posed as an ally. The education of the Filipino under American
sovereignty was an instrument of colonial policy. The Filipino has to be educated
as a good colonial. Young minds had to be shaped to conform to American ideas.
Indigenous Filipino ideals were slowly eroded in order to remove the last vestiges
of resistance. Education served to attract the people to the new masters and at the
same time to dilute their nationalism which had just succeeded in overthrowing a
foreign power. The introduction of the American educational system was a subtle
means of defeating a triumphant nationalism. As Charles Burke Elliot said in his
book, The Philippines:
11
To most Americans it seemed absurd to propose that any other language than English
should be used over which their flag floated. But in the schools of India and other
British dependencies and colonies and, generally, in all colonies, it was and still is
customary to use the vernacular in the elementary schools, and the immediate
adoption of English in the Philippine schools subjected America to the charge of forcing
the language of the conquerors upon a defenseless people.
57
12
Of course, such a system of education as the Americans contemplated could be
successful only under the direction of American teachers, as the Filipino teachers who
had been trained in Spanish methods were ignorant of the English language . . .
13
Arrangements were promptly made for enlisting a small army of teachers in the United
States. At first they came in companies, but soon in battalions. The transport Thomas
was fitted up for their accomodations and in July, 1901, it sailed from San Francisco
with six hundred teachers -a second army of occupation – surely the most remarkable
cargo ever carried to an Oriental colony.
The American Vice-Governor
14
The importance of education as a colonial tool was never under-estimated by the
Americans. This may be clearly seen in the provision of the Jones Act which
granted the Filipinos more autonomy. Although the government services were
Filipinized, although the Filipinos were being prepared for self-government, the
Department of Education was never entrusted to any Filipino. Americans always
headed this department. This was assured by Article 23 of the Jones Act which
provided:
15
That there shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of
the Senate of the United States, a vice-governor of the Philippine Islands, who shall
have all the powers of the governor-general in the case of a vacancy or temporary
removal, resignation or disability of the governor-general, or in case of his temporary
absence; and the said vice-governor shall be the head of the executive department
known as the department of Public Instruction, which shall include the bureau of
education and the bureau of health, and he may be assigned such other executive
duties as the Governor-General may designate.
16
Up to 1935, therefore, the head of this department was an American. And when a
Filipino took over under the commonwealth, a new generation of "FilipinoAmerican" had already been produced. There was no longer any need for American
overseers in this filed because a captive generation had already come of age,
thinking
and
acting
like
little
Americans.
17
This does not mean, however, that nothing that was taught was of any value. We
became literate in English to a certain extent. We were able to produce more men
and women who could read and write. We became more conversant with the
outside world, especially the American world. A more widespread education such
as the Americans would have been a real blessing had their educational program
not been the handmaiden of their colonial policy. Unfortunately for us, the success
of education as a colonial weapon was complete and permanent. In exchange for a
smattering of English, we yielded our souls. The stories of George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln made us forget our own nationalism. The American view of our
history turned our heroes into brigands in our own eyes, distorted our vision of our
future. The surrender of the Katipuneros was nothing compared to this final
surrender, this levelling down of our last defenses. Dr. Chester Hunt characterizes
this surrender in these words:
18
The programme of cultural assimilation combined with a fairly rapid yielding of
control resulted in the fairly general acceptance of American culture as the goal of
Filipino society with the corollary that individual Americans were given a status of
respect.
58
19
This, in a nutshell, was (and to a great extent still is) the happy result of early
educational policy because, within the framework of American colonialism,
whenever there was a conflict between American and Filipino goals and interests,
the schools guided us toward thought and action which could forward American
interests.
Goals of American Education
20
The educational system established by the Americans could not have been for the
sole purpose of saving the Filipinos from illiteracy and ignorance. Given the
economic and political purposes of American occupation, education had to be
consistent with these broad purposes of American colonial policy. The Filipinos had
to be trained as citizens of an American colony. The Benevolent Assimilation
proclamation of President McKinley on December 21, 1898 at a time when Filipino
forces were in control of the country except Manila, betrays the intention of the
colonizers. Judge Blount in his book, The American Occupation of the Philippines,
properly comments:
21
22
Clearly, from the Filipino point of view, the United States was now determined “to
spare them from the dangers of premature independence,” using such force as might
be necessary for the accomplishment of that pious purpose.
Despite the noble aims announced by the American authorities that the Philippines
was theirs to protect and guide, the fact still remained that these people were a
conquered nation whose national life had to be woven into the pattern of American
dominance. Philippine education was shaped by the overriding factor of preserving
and expanding American control. To achieve this, all separatist tendencies were
discouraged. Nay, they had to be condemned as subversive. With this as the
pervasive factor in the grand design of conquering a people, the pattern of
education, consciously or unconsciously, fostered and established certain attitudes
on the part of the governed. These attitudes conformed to the purposes of
American occupation.
An Uprooted Race
23
The first and perhaps the master stroke in the plan to use education as an
instrument of colonial policy was the decision to use English as the medium of
instruction. English became the wedge that separated the Filipinos from their past
and later to separate educated Filipinos from the masses of their countrymen.
English introduced the Filipinos to a strange, new world. With American textbooks,
Filipinos started learning not only a new language but also a new way of life, alien
to their traditions and yet a caricature of their model. This was the beginning of
their education. At the same time, it was the beginning of their mis-education, for
they learned no longer as Filipinos but as colonials.
24
They had to be disoriented form their nationalist goals because they had to
become good colonials. The ideal colonial was the carbon copy of his conqueror,
the conformist follower of the new dispensation. He had to forget his past and
unlearn the nationalist virtues in order to live peacefully, if not comfortably, under
the colonial order. The new Filipino generation learned of the lives of American
heroes, sang American songs, and dreamt of snow and Santa Claus.
59
25
The nationalist resistance leaders exemplified by Sakay were regarded as brigands
and outlaws. The lives of Philippine heroes were taught but their nationalist
teachings were glossed over. Spain was the villain, America was the savior. To this
day, our histories still gloss over the atrocities committed by American occupation
troops such as the "water cure" and the reconcentration camps. Truly, a genuinely
Filipino education could not have been devised within the new framework, for to
draw from the wellsprings of the Filipino ethos would only have lead to a distinct
Philippine identity with interests at variance with that of the ruling power.
26
Thus, the Filipino past which had already been quite obliterated by three centuries
of Spanish tyranny did not enjoy a revival under American colonialism. On the
contrary, the history of our ancestors was taken up as if they were strange and
foreign peoples who settled in these shores, with whom we had the most tenuous
of ties. We read about them as if we were tourists in a foreign land.
Economic Attitudes
27
Control of the economic life of a colony is basic to colonial control. Some imperial
nations do it harshly but the United States could be cited for the subtlety and
uniqueness of its approach. For example, free trade was offered as a generous gift
of American altruism. Concomitantly, the educational policy had to support his
view and to soften the effects of the slowly tightening noose around the necks of
the Filipinos. The economic motivations of the American in coming to the
Philippines were not at all admitted to the Filipinos. As a matter of fact, from the
first school-days under the soldier-teachers to the present, Philippine history books
have portrayed America as a benevolent nation who came here only to save us
from Spain and to spread amongst us the boons of liberty and democracy. The
almost complete lack of understanding at present of those economic motivations
and of the presence of American interests in the Philippines are the most eloquent
testimony to the success of the education for colonials which we have undergone.
28
What economic attitudes were fostered by American education? It is interesting to
note that during the times that the school attempts to inculcate an appreciation for
things Philippine, the picture that is presented for the child's admiration is an
idealized picture of a rural Philippines, as pretty and as unreal as an Amorsolo
painting with its carabao, its smiling healthy farmer, the winsome barrio lass in the
bright clean patadyong, and the sweet nipa hut. That is the portrait of the Filipino
that our education leaves in the minds of the young and it hurst in two ways.
29
First, it strengthens the belief (and we see this in adults) that the Philippines is
essentially meant to be an agricultural country and we can not and should not
change that. The result is an apathy toward industrialization. It is an idea they
have not met in school. There is further, a fear, born out of that early stereotype
of this country as an agricultural heaven, that industrialization is not good for us,
that our national environment is not suited for an industrial economy, and that it
will only bring social evils which will destroy the idyllic farm life.
30
Second, this idealized picture of farm life never emphasizes the poverty, the
disease, the cultural vacuum, the sheer boredom, the superstition and ignorance of
backward farm communities. Those who pursue higher education think of the farm
as quaint places, good for an occasional vacation. Their life is rooted in the big
towns and cities and there is no interest in revamping rural life because there is no
60
understanding of its economic problems. Interest is limited to aretsian wells and
handicraft projects. Present efforts to uplift the conditions of the rural masses
merely attack the peripheral problems without admitting the urgent need for basic
agrarian reform.
31
With American education, the Filipinos were not only learning a new language;
they were not only forgetting their own language; they were starting to become a
new type of American. American ways were slowly being adopted. Our
consumption habits were molded by the influx of cheap American goods that came
in duty-free. The pastoral economy was extolled because this conformed with the
colonial economy that was being fostered. Our books extolled the western nations
as peopled by superior beings because they were capable of manufacturing things
that we never thought we were capable of producing. We were pleased by the fact
that our raw materials could pay for the American consumption goods that we had
to import. Now we are used to these type of goods, and it is a habit we find hard
to break, to the detriment of our own economy.
32
We never thought that we too could industrialize because in school we were taught
that we were primarily an agricultural country by geographical location and by the
innate potentiality of our people. We were one with our fellow Asians in believing
that we were not cut out for an industrialized economy. That is why before the
war, we looked down upon goods made in Japan despite the fact that Japan was
already producing commodities at par with the West. We could never believe
Japan, an Asian country, could attain the same superiority as America, Germany or
England. And yet, it was "made in Japan" airplanes, battleships and armaments
that dislodged the Americans and the British from their positions of dominance
during the Second World War. This is the same attitude that has put us out of step
with our Asian neighbors who already realize that colonialism has to be extirpated
from their lives if they want to be free, prosperous, and happy.
TRANSPLANTATION OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS
33
American education in effect transplanted American political institutions and ideas
into the Philippines. Senator Renato, in his last major address at the University of
the Philippines, explained the reason for this. Speaking of political parties, Recto
said:
34
35
It is to be deplored that our major political parties were born and nurtured before we
had attained the status of a free democracy. The result was that they have come to be
caricatures of their foreign model with its known characteristics – patronage, division
of spoils, political bossism, partisan treatment of vital national issues. I say caricatures
because of their chronic shortsightedness respecting those ultimate objectives the
attainment of which was essential to a true and lasting national independence. All
throughout the period of American colonization, they allowed themselves to become
more and more the tools of colonial rule and less and less the interpreters of the
people’s will and ideal. Through their complacency, the new colonizer was able to
fashion, in exchange for sufferance of oratorical plaints for independence, and for
patronage, rank, and sinecure, a regime of his own choosing, for his own aims, and in
his own self-interest.
The Americans were confronted with the dilemma of transplanting their political
institutions and yet luring the Filipinos into a state of captivity. It was
understandable for American authorities to think that democracy can only mean
the American type of democracy, and thus they foisted on the Filipinos the
61
institutions that were valid for their own people. Indigenous institutions which
could have led to the evolution on native democratic ideas and institutions were
disregarded.
36
No wonder, we, too, look with hostility upon countries who try to develop their
own political institutions according to the needs of their people without being
bound by Western political procedures. We have been made to believe in certain
political doctrines as absolute and the same for all peoples. An example of this is
the belief in freedom of the press. Here, the consensus is that we cannot
nationalize the press because it would be depriving foreigners of the exercise of
freedom of the press. This may be valid for strong countries like the United States
where there is no threat of foreign domination, but certainly, this is dangerous for
an emergent nation like the Philippines where foreign control has yet to be
weakened.
RE-EXAMINATION DEMANDED
37
The new demands for economic emancipation and the assertion of our political
sovereignty leave our educators no other choice but to re-examine their
philosophy, their values, and their general approach to the making of the Filipino
who will institute, support, and preserve the nationalist aims. To persist in the
continuance of a system which was born under the exigencies of colonial rule, to
be timid in the face of traditional opposition would only result in the evolution of an
anomalous educational system which lags behind the urgent economic and political
changes that the nation is experiencing.
38
What then are the nationalist tasks for Philippine education? Education must be
seen not as an acquisition of information but as the making of man so that he may
function most effectively and usefully within his own society. Therefore, education
can not be divorced from the society of a definite country at a definite time. It is a
fallacy to think that educational goals should be the same everywhere and that
therefore what goes into the making of a well-educated American is the same as
what should go into the making of the well-educated Filipino. This would be true
only if the two societies were at the same political, cultural, and economic level
and had the same political, cultural, and economic goals.
39
But what has happened in this country? Not only do we imitate Western education,
we have patterned our education after the most technologically advanced Western
nation. The gap between the two societies is very large. In fact, they are two
entirely different societies with different goals.
ADOPTION OF WESTERN VALUES
40
Economically, the U.S. is an industrial nation. It is a fully developed nation,
economically speaking. Our country has a colonial economy with a tiny industrial
base – in other words, we are backward and underdeveloped. Politically, the U.S.
is not only master of its own house; its control and influence extends to many
other countries all over the world. The Philippines has only lately emerged from
formal colonial status and it still must complete its political and economic
independence.
62
41
Culturally, the U.S. has a vigorously and distinctively American culture. It is a
nation whose cultural institutions have developed freely, indigenously, without
control or direction from foreign sources, whose ties to its cultural past are clear
and proudly celebrated because no foreign power has cause no foreign culture has
been superimposed upon it destroying, distorting its own past and alienating the
people from their own cultural heritage.
42
What are the characteristics of American education today which spring from its
economic, political, and cultural status? What should be the characteristics of our
own education as dictated by our own economic, political, and cultural conditions?
To contrast both is to realize how inimical to our best interests and progress is our
adoption of some of the basic characteristics and values of American education.
43
By virtue of its world leadership and its economic interests in many parts of the
world, the United States has an internationalist orientation based securely on a
well-grounded, long-held nationalistic viewpoint. U.S. education has no urgent
need to stress the development of American nationalism in its young people.
Economically, politically, culturally, the U.S. is master of its own house. American
education, therefore, understandably lays little emphasis on the kind of
nationalism we Filipinos need.
44
Instead, it stresses internationalism and underplays nationalism. This sentiment is
noble and good but when it is inculcated in a people who have either forgotten
nationalism or never imbibed it, it can cause untold harm. The emphasis on world
brotherhood, on friendship for other nations, without the firm foundation of
nationalism which would give our people the feeling of pride in our own products
and vigilance over our natural resources, has had very harmful results. Chief
among these is the transformation of our national virtue of hospitality into a stupid
vice which hurts us and makes us the willing dupes of predatory foreigners.
UN-FILIPINO FILIPINOS
45
Thus we complacently allow aliens to gain control of our economy. We are even
proud of those who amass wealth in our country, publishing laudatory articles
about their financial success. We love to hear foreigners call our country a paradise
on earth, and we never stop to think that it is a paradise only for them but not for
millions of our countrymen. When some of our more intellectually emancipated
countrymen spearhead moves for nationalism, for nationalization of this or that
endeavor, do the majority of Filipinos support such moves?
46
No, there is apathy because there is no nationalism in our hearts which will spur us
to protect and help our own countrymen first. Worse, some Filipinos even worry
about the sensibilities of foreigners lest they think ill of us for supposedly
discriminating against them. And worst of all, many Filipinos will even oppose
nationalistic legislation either because they have become the willing servants of
foreign interests or because, in their distorted view, we Filipinos can not progress
without the help of foreign capital and foreign entrepreneurs.
47
In this part of the world, we are well nigh unique in our generally non-nationalistic
outlook. What is the source of this shameful characteristic of ours? One important
source is surely the schools. There is little emphasis on nationalism. Patriotism has
been taught us, yes, but in general terms of love of country, respect for the flag,
63
appreciation for the beauty of our countryside, and other similarly innocuous
manifestations of our nationality.
48
The pathetic result of this failure of Philippine education is a citizenry amazingly
naïve and trusting in its relations with foreigners, devoid of the capacity to feel
indignation even in the face of insults to the nation, ready to acquiesce and even
to help aliens in the despoliation of our natural wealth. Why are the great majority
of our people so complaisant about alien economic control? Much of the blame
must be laid at the door of colonial education. Colonial education has not provided
us with a realistic attitude toward other nations, especially Spain and the United
States. The emphasis in our study of history has been on the great gift that our
conquerors have bestowed upon us. A mask of benevolence was used to hide the
cruelties and deceit of early American occupation.
49
The noble sentiments expressed by McKinley were emphasized rather than the
ulterior motives of conquest. The myth of friendship and special relations is even
now continually invoked to camouflage the continuing iniquities in our relationship.
Nurtured in this kind of education, the Filipino mind has come to regard centuries
of colonial status as a grace from above rather than as a scourge. Is it any wonder
then that having regained our independence we have forgotten how to defend it?
Is it any wonder that when leaders like Claro M. Recto try to teach us how to be
free, the great majority of the people find it difficult to grasp those nationalistic
principles that are the staple food of other Asian minds? The American architects of
our colonial education really labored shrewdly and well.
THE LANGUAGE PROBLEM
50
The most vital problem that has plagued Philippine education has been the
question of language. Today, experiments are still going on to find out whether it
would be more effective to use the native language. This is indeed ridiculous since
an individual cannot be more at home in any other language than his own. In
every sovereign country, the use of its own language in education is so natural no
one thinks it could be otherwise.
51
But here, so great has been our disorientation caused by our colonial education
that the use of our own language is a controversial issue, with more Filipinos
against than in favor! Again, as in the economic field Filipinos believe they cannot
survive without America, so in education we believe no education can be true
education unless it is based on proficiency in English.
52
Rizal already foresaw the tragic effects of a colonial education when, speaking
through Simoun, he said:
53
You ask for equal rights, the Hispanization of your customs, and you don’t see that
what you are begging for is suicide, the destruction of your nationality, the
annihilation of your fatherland, the consecration of tyranny! What will you be in the
future? A people without character, a nation without liberty – everything you have will
be borrowed, even your very defects!..... What are you going to do with Castilian, the
few of you who will speak it? Kill off your own originality, subordinate your thoughts to
other brains, and instead of freeing yourselves, make yourselves slaves indeed! Ninetenths of those of you who pretend to be enlightened are renegades to your country!
He among you who talks that language neglects his own in such a way that he neither
64
writes it nor understands it, and how many have I not seen who pretended not to
know a single word of it!
54
It is indeed unfortunate that teaching in the native language is given up to second
grade only, and the question of whether beyond this it should be English or Pilipino
is still unsettled. Many of our educational experts have written on the language
problem, but there is an apparent timidity on the part of these experts to come out
openly for the urgent need of discarding the foreign language as the medium of
instruction in spite of remarkable results shown by the use of the native language.
Yet, the deleterious effects of using English as the medium of instruction are many
and serious. What Rizal said about Spanish has been proven to be equally true for
English.
BARRIER TO DEMOCRACY
55
Under the system maintained by Spain in the Philippines, educational opportunities
were so limited that learning became the possession of a chosen few. This
enlightened group was called the ilustrados. They constituted the elite. Most of
them came from the wealthy class because this was the only class that could
afford to send its sons abroad to pursue higher learning. Learning, therefore,
became a badge of privilege. There was a wide gap between the ilustrados and the
masses. Of course, many of the ilustrados led the propaganda movement, but they
were mostly reformers who wanted reforms within the framework of Spanish
education. Many of them were the first to capitulate to the Americans, and the first
leaders of the Filipinos during the early years of the American regime came from
this class. Later they were supplanted by the products of American education.
56
One of the ostensible reasons for imposing English as the medium of instruction
was the fact that English was the language of democracy, that through this tongue
the Filipinos would imbibe the American way of life which makes no distinction
between rich and poor and which gives everyone equal opportunities. Under this
thesis, the existence of an ilustrado class would not long endure because all
Filipinos would be enlightened and educated. There would be no privileged class.
In the long run, however, English perpetuated the existence of the ilustrados –
American ilustrados who, like their counterparts, were strong supporters of the
way of life of the new motherland.
57
Now we have a small group of men who can articulate their thoughts in English, a
wider group who can read an speak in fairly comprehensible English and a great
mass that hardly expresses itself in this language. All of these groups are hardly
articulate in their native tongues because of the neglect of our native dialects, if
not the deliberate attempts to prevent their growth.
58
The result is a leadership that fails to understand the needs of the masses because
it is a leadership that can communicate with the masses only in general and vague
terms. This is one reason why political leadership remains in a vacuum. This is the
reason why issues are never fully discussed. This is the reason why orators with
best inflections, demagogues who rant and rave, are the ones that flourish in the
political arena: English has created a barrier between the monopolists of power
and the people: English has become a status symbol, while the native tongues are
looked down upon. English has given rise to a bifurcated society of fairly educated
men and the masses who are easily swayed by them. A clear evidence of the
65
failure of English education is the fact that politicians address the masses in their
dialects. Lacking mastery of the dialect, the politicians merely deal in generalities.
59
Because of their lack of command of English, the masses have gotten used to only
half-understanding what is said to them in English. They appreciate the sounds
without knowing the sense. This is a barrier to democracy. People don’t even think
it is their duty to know, or that they are capable of understanding national
problems. Because of the language barrier, therefore, they are content to leave
everything to their leaders. This is one of the root causes of their apathy, their
regionalism or parochialism. Thus, English which was supposedly envisioned as the
language of democracy is in our country a barrier to the full flowering of
democracy.
60
In 1924 the eminent scholar, Najib Saleeby, wrote on the language of education in
the Philippines. He deplored that attempt to impose English as the medium of
instruction. Saleeby, who was an expert on the Malayo-Polynesian languages,
showed that Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano, and other Philippine dialects belong to the
same linguistic tree. He said:
61
62
The relation the Tagalog holds to the Bisaya or to the Sulu is very much like or closer
than that of the Spanish to the Italian. An educated Tagalog from Batangas, and an
educated Bisayan from Cebu can learn to understand each other in a short space of
time and without much effort. A Cebu student living in Manila can acquire practical use
and good understanding of Tagalog in less than three months. The relation between
Tagalog and Malay is very much the same as that of Spanish and French.
This was said 42 years ago when Tagalog movies, periodicals, radio programs had
not yet attained the popularity that they enjoy today all over the country. Saleeby
further states:
63
Empirically neither the Spanish nor the English could be a suitable medium for public
instruction in the Philippine Islands. It does not seem possible that either of them can
become the common or national language of the Archipelago. Three centuries of
Spanish rule and education failed to check use of the vernacular. A very small minority
of Filipinos could speak Spanish in 1898, but the great mass of the people could
neither use nor understand it. Twenty – five years of intensive English education has
produced no radical change. More people at present speak English than Spanish, but
the great majority hold on to the local dialect. The Spanish policy might be partially
justified on colonial and financial grounds, but the American policy cannot be so
defended. It should receive popular free choice, or give proof of its practicability by
showing actual and satisfactory results. The people have as yet has no occasion to
declare their free will, and the present policy must be judged on its own merits and on
conclusive evidence … But teaching English broadcast and enforcing its official use is
one thing, and its adoption as the basis of education and as the sole medium of public
instruction is a completely different matter. This point cannot be fully grasped or
comprehended without special attention and experience in colonial education and
administration. Such policy is exalted and ambitious to an extreme degree.
64
It aims at something unknown before in human affairs. It is attempting to do what
ancient Persia, Rome, Alexander the Great and Napoleon failed to accomplish. It aims
at nothing less than the obliteration of the tribal differences of the Filipinos, the
substitution of English for the vernacular dialects as a home tongue, and making
English the national, common language of the Archipelago.
66
65
This is more true today. Very few college students can speak except in mixed
English and the dialect. Our Congress has compounded their confusion by a
completely unwarranted imposition of 24 units of Spanish.
IMPEDIMENTS TO THOUGHT
66
A foreign language is an impediment to instruction. Instead of learning directly
through the native tongue, a child has first to master a foreign tongue, memorize
its vocabulary, get accustomed to its sounds, intonations, accents, just to discard
the language later when he is out of school. This does not mean that foreign
languages should not be taught. Foreign languages should be taught and can be
taught more easily after one has mastered his own tongue.
67
Even if the Americans were motivated by the sincere desire of unifying the country
through the means of a common tongue, the abject results of instruction in English
through the six decades of American education should have awakened our
educators to the fact that the learning process has been disrupted by the
imposition of a foreign language. From 1935, when the Institute of National
Language was organized, very feeble attempts have been made to abandon the
teaching of English. Our educators seem constantly to avoid the subject of
language, in spite of the clear evidence of rampant ignorance among the products
of the present educational system.
68
This has resulted in the denial of education to a vast number of children who after
the primary grades no longer continue schooling. In spite of the fact that the
national language today is understood all over the country, no one is brave enough
to advocate its use as the medium of instruction. There is the constant argument
that new expenditures, new efforts in the publication of new textbooks will be
required. There are arguments about the dearth of materials in the national
language, but these are feeble arguments that merely disguise the basic
opposition of our educational leaders to use what is native. Thus the products of
the Philippine educational system, barring very few exceptions, are Filipinos who
do not have a mastery of their native tongue because of the deliberate neglect of
those responsible for the education of the citizens of the nation.
69
A foreign tongue as a medium of instruction constitutes an impediment to learning
and to thinking because a student first has to master new sounds, new inflection,
new sentence constructions. His innermost thoughts find difficulty of expression,
and lack of expression in turn prevents the further development of thought. Thus
we find in our society a deplorable lack of serious thinking among great sections of
the population. We half understand books and periodicals written in English. We
find it an ordeal to communicate with each other through a foreign medium, and
yet we have so neglected our native language that we find ourselves at a loss in
expressing ourselves in this language.
70
Language is a tool of the thinking process. Through language, thought develops,
and the development of thought leads to the further development of language. But
when a language becomes a barrier to thought, the thinking process is impeded or
retarded and we have the resultant cultural stagnation. Creative thinking, analytic
thinking, abstract thinking are not fostered because the foreign language makes
the student prone to memorization. Because of the mechanical process of learning,
he is able to get only a general idea but not a deeper understanding. So, the
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tendency of students is to study in order to be able to answer correctly and to pass
the examinations and thereby earn the required credits. Independent thinking is
smothered because the language of learning ceases to be the language of
communication outside the classroom. A student is mainly concerned with the
acquisition of information. He is seldom able to utilize this information for
deepening his understanding of his society’s problems.
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Our Institute of National Language is practically neglected. It should be one of the
main pillars of an independent country. Our educators are wary about proposing
the immediate adoption of the national language as the medium of instruction
because of what they consider as opposition of other language groups. This is
indicative of our colonial mentality. Our educators do not see any opposition to the
use of a foreign language but fear opposition to the use of a foreign language but
fear opposition to the use of the national language just because it is based on one
of the main dialects. The fact that one can be understood in any part of the
Philippines through the national language, the fact that periodicals in the national
language and local movies have a mass following all over the islands, shows that,
given the right support, the national language would take its proper place.
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Language is the main problem, therefore. Experience has shown that children who
are taught in their native tongue learn more easily and better than those taught in
English. Records of the Bureau of Public Schools will support this. But mere
teaching in the national language is not enough. There are other areas that
demand immediate attention.
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Philippine history must be re-written from the point of view of the Filipino. Our
economic problems must be presented in the light of nationalism and
independence. These are only some of the problems that confront a nationalist
approach to education. Government leadership and supervision are essential. Our
educators need the support of legistrators in this regard. In this connection, the
private sector has also to be strictly supervised.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR
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Before the second world war, products of the Philippine public school system
looked down upon their counterparts in the private schools. It is generally
accepted that graduates of the public schools at that time were superior to the
products of the private institutions in the point of learning. There were exclusive
private institutions but these were reserved for the well-to-do. These schools did
not necessarily reflect superiority of instruction. But they reflected superiority of
social status.
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Among students of the public schools, there was still some manifestation of
concern for national problems. Vestiges of the nationalistic tradition of our
revolution remained in the consciousness of those parents who had been caught in
the main-stream of the rebellion, and these were passed on to the young. On the
other hand, apathy to national problems was marked among the more affluent
private school students whose families had readily accepted American rule.
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Today, public schools are looked down upon. Only the poor send their children to
these schools. Those who can afford it, or those who have social pretentions, send
their children to private institutions. The result has been a boom in private
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education, a boom that unfortunately has seen the proliferation of diploma mills.
There were two concomitant tendencies that went this trend. First was the
commercialization of education. A lowering of standards resulted because of the
inadequate facilities of the public schools and the commercialization in the private
sector. It is a well known fact that classes in many private schools are packed and
teachers are overloaded in order to maximize profits. Second, some private
schools which are owned and operated by foreigners and whose social science
courses are handled by aliens flourished. While foreigners may not be anti-Filipino,
they definitely cannot be nationalistic in orientation. They think as foreigners and
as private interests. Thus the proliferation of private schools and the simultaneous
deterioration of public schools have resulted not only in lower standards but also in
a definitely un-Filipino education.
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Some years ago, there was a move to grant curricular freedom to certain qualified
private institutions as well as wider leeway for self-regulation. This was a
retrograde step. It is true that this move was in answer to charges that state
supervision would enhance regimentation. But in a country that is just awakening
to nationalist endeavors, it is the duty of a nationalist administration to see to it
that the molding of minds is safely channeled along nationalistic lines. The
autonomy of private institutions may be used to subvert nationalist sentiments
especially when ownership of schools and handling of social sciences are not yet
Filipinized. Autonomy of private institutions would only dilute nationalist
sentiments either by foreign subversion or by commercialization.
OTHER EDUCATIONAL MEDIA
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While the basic defect in the educational system has been responsible for the lack
of nationalist ideals, there are other media and facilities that negate whatever
gains are made in some sectors of the educational field. The almost unilateral
source of news, films, and other cultural materials tends to distort our perspective.
American films and comics, American press services, fellowships in America, have
all contributed to the almost total Americanization of our attitudes. A distinct
Filipino culture cannot prevail if an avalanche of western cultural materials
suffocates our relatively punny efforts in this direction.
NEEDED: FILIPINOS
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The education of the Filipino must be a Filipino education. It must be based on the
needs of the nation and the goals of the nation. The object is not merely to
produce men and women who can read and write or who can add and subtract.
The primary object is to produce a citizenry that appreciates and is conscious of its
nationhood and has national goals for the betterment of the community, and not
an anarchic mass of people who know how to take good care of themselves only.
Our students hear Rizal and Bonifacio but are their teachings related to our
present problems or do they merely learn of anecdotes and incidents that prove
interesting to the child’s imagination?
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We learned to use American criteria for our problems and we look at our prehistory
and our past with the eyes of a visitor. A lot of information is learned but attitudes
are not developed. The proper regard for things Philippine, the selfish concern over
the national fate ---these are not at all imbedded in the consciousness of students.
Children and adolescents got to school to get a certification or diploma. They try to
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learn facts but the patriotic attitude is not acquired because of too much emphasis
on forms.
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What should be the basic objective of education in the Philippines? It is merely to
produce mean and women who can read and write? If this is the only purpose,
then education is directionless. Education should first of all assure national
survival. No amount of economic and political policy can be successful if the
educational program does not imbue prospective citizens with the proper attitudes
that will ensure the implementation of these goals and policies. Philippines
education policies should be geared to the making of Filipinos. These policies
should see to it that schools produce men and women with minds and attitudes
that are attuned to the needs of the country.
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Under previous colonial regimes, education saw to it that the Filipino mind was
subservient to that of the master. The foreign overlords were esteemed. We were
not taught to view them objectively, seeing their virtues as well as their faults.
This led our citizens to form a distorted opinion of the foreign masters and also of
themselves. The function of education now is to correct this distortion. We must
now think of ourselves, of our salvation, of our future. And unless we prepare the
minds of the young for this endeavor, we shall always be a pathetic people with no
definite goals and no assurance of preservation.
(1959)
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Meet the Writer
RENATO CONSTANINO, born in Manila on March 10, 1919, was the eldest of three
children of Atty. Amador Constantino and Francisca Reyes.
Constantino was a prolific writer. He wrote around 30 books and numerous
pamphlets and monographs. Among his well-known books are A Past Revisited and
The Continuing Past (a two-volume history of the Philippines), The Making of a
Filipino (a biography of Claro M. Recto), Neo-colonial Identity and CounterConsciousness, and The Nationalist Alternative. Several of his books have been
translated into Japanese and The Nationalist Alternative has a Malaysian translation.
His writings invariably reflected his nationalist, democratic, anti-colonial and antiimperialist perspective whether he was writing historical articles or articles on the
economy, Philippine society and culture. Because of what were then regarded as his
radical views and his criticisms of those in power, he was persecuted many times in
his life. He lost his position in the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1951 and
thereafter he was prevented from getting a job because intelligence agents
discouraged employers from hiring him on the ground that he was a security risk. Off
and on during his life, his articles were refused by major papers which used to print
his works. In fact, his most widely read essay, The Miseducation of the Filipino, had
to wait five years before it saw print. A few years before martial law, he was
frequently criticizing Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos in his columns. These columns
were published in a book, The Marcos Watch, just two weeks before Marcos declared
martial law. When martial law was declared, he was placed under house arrest for
seven months and not allowed to travel abroad for several years.
Recognition of Constantino's work came in his later years, among them Nationalism
awards from Quezon City in 1987, Manila in 1988, The Civil Liberties Union in 1988,
and U.P. Manila in 1989. These were followed by Manila's Diwa ng Lahi Award in
1989, a Doctor of Arts and Letters (honoris causa) from the Polytechnic University of
the Philippines in 1989 and a Doctor of Laws (honoris causa) from the University of
the Philippines in 1990.
Renato Constantino died on September 15, 1999. He left behind his wife and
collaborator, Letizia Roxas, his son Renato, Jr. and daughter-in-law Lourdes
Balderrama, his daughter Karina and her husband, Randy S. David, eight
grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
(http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Renato_Constantino)
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PLATITO
Adonis Durado
Nanghugas kog tasa ug platito
dihang kalit kong nahigugma
sa pulong nga "platito"
Platito-pla-ti-to inig litok
mokang-a ang imong baba
ug labtikan sa imong dila
ang ngilit sa imong ngipon,
dayog tutho sa simod-pla-ti-to.
Tingali kung ang akong asawa,
napangalan nako nig "Platito".
"Intawn ang akong Platito."
"Sus, gakamuritsing si Platito."
"Kaparaygon ba aning Platito"
Para nako, kung ang "platito"
usa pa ka kolor, siguro mora
kinig kolor sa puwang sibuyas-ang kapuwanon dili puwa.
Kung ugaling usa ni ka numero,
morag gahinambid nga kwatro
tupad sa mabdos nga otso.
Kung parte kini sa nawong,
mao niy bukobuko sa dungan
o kaha kanal nga mibadlis
taliwa sa ilong ug sa ngabil.
Kung usa kini ka mananap,
usa ka isdang barungoy-di lang kahibawng molangoy,
kaantigo pud nga molupad.
Kung tiyempo kini sa panahon,
basin uwan sa udtong tutok
o ang unang tugnaw sa tun-og
sa kagabhion sa Nobyembre.
Kung usa kini ka instrumento,
turutot ni Louis Armstrong
"Turutot" --haha, gwapoha ba
yati aning pulonga--tu-ru-tot.
"Turutot, turutot sa turutoy..."
Ug kalit lang, wa ko kamatikod
nahiplos na diay sa akong kamot
ang gisabunan kong platito.
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Meet the Writer
ADONIS DURADO works as a graphic designer and is currently based in Bangkok,
Thailand. He received the "Emmanuel Lacaba Prize" from the National Commission
for Culture and the Arts in 2000, and "The Best New Writer" from Cebuano Studies
Center and Faigao Foundation in 2001. He was a fellow of Iligan National Writers
Workshop, UP National Writers Workshop, and Don Cornelio Faigao Workshop.
(http://balakerongdaku.blogspot.com/)
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