What the Filipino
needs to do today
While those opposed to GMA keep doing their own thing and insisting that they are doing the country some good, what do the rest of us Filipinos have to do? The answer comes from someone in London writing to a reluctant writer:

That you have had little success in journalism does not mean that you are not fit to write. Not all of us are born journalists, nor are literary men all journalists. As for me, the question of writing in more or less literary style is secondary; the principal thing is to think and feel rightly, work with a purpose, and the pen will take care of transmitting it. The principal thing that should be demanded from a Filipino of our generation is not to be a literary man but to be a good man, a good citizen, who would help his country to progress with his head, his heart, and if need be, with his arms. With the head and the heart we ought to work always; with the arms when the time comes. Now the principal instrument of the heart and the head is the pen. Others prefer the brush, others the chisel; I prefer the pen. Now, it does not seem to us that the instrument is the primordial object. Sometimes with a poor one great works can be produced; let the Philippine bolo speak. Sometimes in poor literature great truths can be said.

Image from JCAsabona who captions it simply 'Desktop' (flickr.com/). Me, my preferred instrument is the computer and the Internet, which I use through my many, many blogs and my articles at American Chronicle. It's apt for this message from an unnamed Filipino (can you guess who he is?)

How do you create a country out of divided peoples? The Filipinos are 100 tribes in 100 languages in 100 cultures: can they ever be united? They better not. They will be better off harmonized, better off to keep their individualities intact while they join forces to create a country. Like an orchestra, playing differently but playing the same song. The Filipinos are not a country - we are only so many peoples. So we try to destroy each other. We are very good at being very bad. What we have in the Philippines is Tribal Wars. The military is one of the tribes, and it thinks it knows best. How do you stop people from thinking they know best? Don't listen to them.

With apologies to Martin Luther King, I have a dream. I dream of the fractured culture of the Filipinos unfractured by the different cultures themselves. The Cebuanos and Tagalogs and Ilocanos, the Big Three, leading the cultural struggle to unite and create one language out of the hundred we have. Each culture will then enrich each other and the Filipinos will derive much profit from that common enterprise.

One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Philippines)

I don’t want another 100 Years Of Solitude on the part of us Filipinos. I never liked that novel of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I never liked the way the author writes. He confuses me, and in that he is very successful: he wrote the novel to confuse the reader.

1935: The Quezon Constitution declared it a policy of the state to have one national language to be based on one of the existing languages of the country. Congress was to ‘take the necessary steps towards the development of a national language which is based on one of the existing native languages.’

1937: Tagalog was chosen as that linguistic basis. And thus began the legally unchallenged supremacy of Tagalog as the structure upon which the national language was to be constructed. And thus began the development of that vocabulary through concoctions that were exemplified by such words as pamantasan (literally, a place where people are taught to become wise – a university) and salumpuwit (literally, something to catch one’s ass – a chair).

1985: It had been 50 years of solitude, 50 years of confusion since the national policy was constitutionalized, essentially half a century in which Tagalog reigned in a solitary role as the singular basis of the national language. There were howls of protest, but they were drowned by the purveyors of the law. Among other linguistic concoctions, pamantasan became accepted, while salumpuwit was rejected by the people for being ridiculous. Nonetheless, many more Filipinos learned to speak the national language (Tagalog). Did the Filipinos become united because there were more of them speaking the same language in offices, businesses and schools? Not by any chance. In the tongue we were united, untied; in the real world, Philippine tribes like the Ilocano, Tagalog, Cebuano and Bicolano became more fractious among themselves; all became more vehemently regionalistic. But essentially, everyone kept their peace. It was the silence of unease, the silence of the lambs. Not 50 years of education in nationalism. We attended the pamantasan and graduated, but we never became wiser, or even wise.

The silence of 50 years was interrupted intermittently with little noises on expansions little by little of the vocabulary of the national language, but no sound was heard on the expansion of the linguistic spirits towards a common tongue and common values. The Filipinos remained as fractious as ever, even more so. The half-century was interrupted by threats and attempts at coup by pretenders-finders of truth, beauty and goodness; although none prospered, the truth is that they were spawned by 50 years of fractionalism fostered by the imposition of an artificial national language.

1986: Last year of the hegemony of Tagalog as the chosen single basis to develop the national language. As if suddenly, the Filipinos woke up to the reality that all those years of solitude showed only one thing: a scientific failure at developing a national language on the basis of a single language. The Filipinos were confused no more.

1987: The Cory Constitution declared that the national language be now called Filipino, and ‘which shall be furthered developed and enriched on the basis of existing Philippine and other languages.’ Now we were going to be reasonable and build our national language based on all the languages in the country, not simply the dominant one.

2006: Almost 20 years more of solitude. Where are we now? We have a national language in name only. And where do we find Filipino unity? In our nightmares.

I don’t want another 30 Years Of Solitude. That is why I have spoken. And this is just the beginning.

Frank A Hilario