Exilo, Exilo

Ngayon ay alam ko na: Na tunay na merong heograpiya ang kalungkutan at pasakit—at dito sa dayo, ang heograpiyang ito ay permanenteng residente sa nangungulilang dibdib, sa kaluluwang nagkakallautang, at sa pusong palagiang nangingibang-bayan. Ganun din na ang heograpiyang ito ay isang pasang-pasang krus na lumalampas sa mapanligtas na basbas ng panahon o ng angkin nitong galing na magpahilom ng mga sugat, sariwa man o mga peklat sa isip.

Tuwing umaga ng paglilingkod sa ibang bansa, ang silangan ang aking tungo: doon sa Diamond Head, ang panandang burol sa balikat ng islang ito na tumatanod sa malawak na karagatang Pasifiko, na, sa aking naglalayag na imahinasyon, ay karugtong ng di masukat-sukat na katawan ng katubigan sa isang bahagi ng bayang iniwan. May pagpapakahulugan ang pook ng aking pinaglilingkurang unibersidad: dito ipinapanganak ang araw. Gusto kong isipin ito—gustong kong panghawakang ito bilang isang susing pagpapakahulugan ng lahat ng pagpapakahulugan ng aking pagiging exilo.

Sa kanluran ang aking inuuwian kung kaya ang siklo ng aking pang-araw-araw na buhay sa dayo ay nakaangkla sa ikot ng aking maliit na mundo, sa inog ng araw, sa rebolusyon ng mga planeta ng kada dalawampu’t apat na oras na buhay at karanasan at paghahanap ng katubusan sa ibang bayan. Hindi sa lugar na ito una akong napadpad sa paglalagalag kundi sa kabila pa ng malawak na karagatang ito, doon sa Mainland ng Estados Unidos ng lahat ng mga alalahanin at pagkikipagsapalaran, mga pagdurusang ayaw ko nang balikan, mga pagpapakasakit na ang tanging nakakaalam ay ang kuwadernong tangan, isa kada mahalagang muhon ng pakikibaka, mga kuwadernong magtatatlumpo na at ngayon ay pawang mga eksibit ng aking pagtalunton sa ganun ding daan ng mga nagsipunta sa Amerika isang daang tao na ang nakararaan: mga sakada sa Ilocos, Tagalog, at Visaya na nagsilikas sa mga mumunting baryo upang makipagbuno sa mga karahasan ng kapital, ng plantasyon, at mga lunang amo, halimbawa; mga pansamantalang obrero sa mga taniman at pagawaan ng delata tulad nina Manuel Buaken at Carlos Bulosan; at mga tago-ng-tagong tagaalaga ng mga mayayamang matatanda sa Nueva York at Nueva Jersey.

Litanya ng mga komplikadong karanasan ang tatlumpong kuwaderno, at tulad ng sa Luma at Bagong Tipan, tila isa itong personal na talaan ng paglalakbay paglayo sa bayan at pag-uwi sa sarili, upang sa sulok ng mga dilim at lungkot, sa isip at sa mga parkeng ramdam ang matinding pag-iisa, doon, doon ko sinasariwa ang aral tungkol sa hakbangin ng pagtutubos sa sariling nandarayuhan, sa sariling naging exilo sa mga lungkot at kontradiksyon ng bayang sinilangan upang mula sa malayo ay malirip ang mga mumunting liwanag sa mga siwang ng mga dingding ng pagdanas.

Nakatala sa aking mga kuwaderno ang mga daan-daang pahina ng mga pangamba, ng mga pagdadalawang-isip, ng mga pagbabaka-baka, ng mga pananakot sa sarili na hindi ang Amerika—at ngayon ay ang Hawai`i—ang lupaing laan para sa akin, ang Lupang Pangako, na ang solusyon ng pagbabaha ng luha sa aking unan, ng tuwi-tuwinang pagdagundong ng aking dibdib, at ng di mabilang sa daliring pagyugyog ng aking balikat sa dilim ay ang pag-eempake sa dalawang maletang dala-dalahan at sumakay sa unang eroplanong pabalik sa bayan. Pero hindi ganoon kadali ang mga bagay-bagay sa dayo kung ang bayang iniwan ay isa ring heograpiya ng pagpapakasakit at kalungkutan, kung ang bayan ay isang republika rin ng mga anomalya sa lumbay at kawalan ng panlipunang katarungan.

Sa hapon, uuwi ako sa tahanan sa kanluran, doon sa laot, doon sa mga kabit-kabit na bundok na rumururok sa payapang kalangitan upang sa kabila nito na lingid sa akin tanaw ay manganganak ng nagyayabang na talampas na kumakanlong ng mga taniman, kabahayan, mga lugar na pinagpapasyalan at pinagpipiknikan, ng mga makikipot na daan paakyat sa mga balikat ng mga burol at gubat, at ang walang katapusang katubigang ang alon ay tila mga baylarinang nagsasayaw sa tugtog ng hangin o sa saliw ng mga ibong nagsisikantahan pagdating ng takip-silim. May magkahalong pagkamangha at pagkatakot sa aking dibdib kapag nakikita ko ang lampas-lampasang karagatan. Pakaiisipin ko ang hintuturong sumusunod sa guhit sa langit na iniiwan ng eroplano noong panahong wala pa akong kamuwang-muwang sa ibig sabihin ng paglisan at matagal na hindi pagbabalik.

Sa pagitan ng umaga at hapon—sa pagitan ng pagpasok sa trabaho sa silangan at pag-uwi sa kanluran ng araw sa malungkot at malamig na higaan sa gabi ay ang walang katapusang pag-iimbento ng kahulugan ng mga panahong inagaw sa amin, kaming mag-anak, habang nagkakasya kami sa email at paminsan-minsang webcam. Aaliwin ko ang sarili sa pagbabagtas ng kahabaan ng malulungkot na freeway ng bayang ito ng mga nakapinid na mga silid, mga bahay na kuta ng mga taong-kuwago at pinipipi ng garang panlabas, mga pintuang di halos nagbubukas, mga bintanang wala man lamang dumudungaw, at mga kalyeng walang tao kundi mga sasakyan at sasakyan pa na palagiang naghahabol sa palagiang tumatakas na oras.

Peregrino, sabi ko sa sarili, at naaalala ko ang panahon ng paghahanap ng kahulugan sa seminaryo: mga panahon ito ng pagkatali sa mga oras, sa mga gawain, sa awtoridad, sa rehimentadong pagwawaldas ng isip at kabataan, sa dasal, isang libo at isang dasal, taimtim at mapagkumbaba, dasal na humihingi ng kaliwanagan kung ang piniling landas ng paglalakbay sa buhay ay siya ngang landas na laan, takda ng panahon at pook, takda ng uniberso, takda ng mortal na buhay. Sa pinaderang buhay sa seminaryo, nangabubuhay kami noon sa kapangyarihan ng batingting: umaga, tanghali, at gabi ay pinaghaharian kami ng batingting, ang makapangyayaring batingting, ang batingting ng aming bawat hininga, ang batingting ng aming kakayahang sumunod sa mga may poder at sa tinig ng Espiritung tumatawag sa amin sa ganoong uri ng buhay.

Sa pagtulog ay ang batingting.

Sa paggising ay ang batingting.

Sa paglibog—na madalas ay palihim at lingid sa mga awtoridad—ay ang mahiwaga at makapangyarihang batingting.
Ang batingting ang kumakalampag sa amin tuwing madaling araw na kasarapan ng pagtulog pagkatapos ng maghapong rehimen ng pag-aaral at pagdarasal. Ang batingting din ang kontrabida sa aming makukulay na panaginip na di kayang sagkaan o harangin o angkinin ng paring pinagkukumpisalan.

Gugulantangin ka ng batingting habang sa panaginip ay ang naratibo ng paglaya—ikaw sa isang tuktok ng matayog na bundok na tumatanaw sa isang malawak na karagatan na walang haggan, naabot ng tanaw at hindi rin, sa bundok na iyon na doon mo wiwikain ang pormularyo ng paglalakbay tungo sa pansariling kalayaan: “Ako ay nangangako mula ngayon na hinding-hindi na ako pasisiil sa mga manupakturadong katotohanan ng buhay sa loob ng mga makakapal na pader.”
Pipilitin mong balikan ang panaginip, pipiliting malaman ang katapusan nito, pipiliting alamin kung sa huling kabanata nito ay magtatanggal ka ng sotana at mangangako sa Poon ng buhay na maglalakbay pa rin ayon sa kahingian ng tunay na kalayaan at kabutihan. Hahanapin ang karugtong ng panaginip sa mga dasal na mekanikal na sasambitin, mga pormuladong dasal ng Aman Namin at Ave Maria.

Subalit hindi ganoon ang landas ng panaginip—hindi tumatalunton sa nais ng nanaginip kapag ito ay nakarating na sa lebel ng ibang ulirat. Pipilitin mong ibalik ang himbing ng tulog sa pag-upo at pagdinig sa walang utak na sermon ng pari subalit kinakailangang sumagot ng “Amen,” magkurus sa tamang panahon, lumuhod sa tamang sandali, umawit na wala sa puso.

Ang batingting ang hudyat ng lahat: ng pagkilala na ang mortal mong buhay ay di iyo, na ikaw, seminarista, ay isang exilo sa buhay na ito, na ikaw at lahat ng mga nilalang, ay pawang mga exilo, at ang buhay na ito ay isang naratibo ng pagiging exilo—mga talinghagang kayhirap isadiwa subalit ang katotohanang taglay ay singtotoo ng mortalidad at hangganan ng hininga.
Sa sulok ng aking isip na nagliliwaliw, isang permanenteng residente doon ang walang ngalang lumbay na ang ugat ay ang di pagkawari kung kailan nga ba mauulinigan muli ang harutan ng mga anak sa isang tahanang malaya kaming magpalitan ng mga talinghaga na hindi sinasagkaan ng binabayarang oras mula sa mga mandorobong phone card o ng binabantayang mga minuto sa bawat long distance.

Sadyang buntis na pangako ng pagsasama-sama muli ng pamilya para sa isang katulad kong naglagalag.
Taon ang bubunuin bago maaprubahan ang petisyon ng pagiging migrante ng kaanak, taong walang simula sa mga buwan at araw at linggo. At habang wala pa sa ganoong kalagayang makakapiling ang kaanak, magdadamot sa sarili ng lumbay, luha, at ligalig. Magbabantay ng uubusing pag-iisa, lungkot, pangarap. Patatagin ang sarili sa pamamagitan ng paalalang nakaugat sa pag-asang buhay, ang ugat ay may dugo, ang mukha ay sa isinisilang na araw sa umagang papasok ako ng trabaho sa silangan: May pagbubuo pagkatapos ng mahabang panahon ng pagkakahiwa-hiwalay.

Alam ko ang pag-asang iyon, minemorya na ng lahat ng selula ng aking aking utak, bawat himaymay nga king kalamnan, ngunit kapag dumapo ang kakaibang lungkot, hahayaan kong lumaya ang luha, aalon sa aking mga mata, dadaluyong sa aking pisngi, at mapapakinggan ko ang aking piping hikbi: walang salita ito ngunit punum-puno ng wika.
Alam ko ang ibig sabihin ng pag-asang eternal.

Subalit magkaiba ang alam sa nararamdaman, at ang damdamin ay singtingkad ng araw sa katanghaliang tapat na ang anino ay sa tao mismong nangangarap—hindi lumalampas kundi sinasakop mismo ang hugis ng pagkatao, ng isip, ng malay, ng lahat ng halagahing pinanghahawakan at napanghahawakang tunay.

Titigan ko ang araw at hindi ako kumukurap: sa kabilugan nito, doon, sa sentro ng mga apoy, doon ko madalas hinahanap ang katuparan ng isang pangarap na makahabol pa ako sa mga harutan ng mga anak, na noong iwan ang panganay ay katutuntong pa lamang sa kolehiyo at ngayon ay ipinaglalaban na ang sariling karapatan at buhay; ang pangalawa ay patapos na noon ng hayskul at ngayon ay magtatapos na ng kanyang karera at ibig nang pasukin ang pagiging potograpo upang madokumento ang aming maraming taong paglayo; at ang bunso ay nag-aaral pa lamang humakbang noon at ngayon ay siya nang tagasagot sa telepono tuwing nagkakaroon ako ng panahon at pera na idayal ang telepono sa tahanang iniwan upang sa binabayarang sandali ay mapaglapit naming ang distansiya sa aming pagitan.

Naaalala ko ang unang uwi: di ako makilala ng bunso, ayaw lumapit sa akin, kinikilala ng mabuti kung sino ang dumating, basta lamang tinititigan ako, di siguro mawari kung ano ang dapat gawin—kung tama ba na ang bagontaong dumating ay yakapin, halikan, kausapin, kumustahin, sabihan ng “Itay, itay!”

May sugat sa isip ang ganitong mga eksena subalit kinakailangang magpakatatag ang exilo—subalit kinakailangang magiging matatag ang naglagalag na nagsusumikap bumalik sa mga pook na iniwan, sa mga panahong iniwan, sa mga pusong iniwan. Sa ganitong pagkakataon ko ring inuusisa ang sarili: Tunay nga bang nakakabalik ang umaalis sa poon, panahon, at pusong iniwan? Naaareglo ba ang mga lamat ng utak, ang mga sugat na bunga ng mga distansiya at paglayo, ang mga araw at gabing nangawala?

Hindi ko noon alam kung saan sulok ng puso ko apuhapin ang galak sa pagkakita sa bunso na noong iwan ay di pa ako halos matatandaan, di memoryado ang hugis ng aking mukha, di kabisado ang timbre ng aking tinig. Tuwing dumadapo sa akin ang damdaming kayhirap pangalanan habang kaniig ang pag-iisa sa dayo, makikipagpaligsahan ako sa mga sandali upang takasan ang depresyon. Normal na siguro ang ganito sa katulad naming nagbibilang ng araw sa kalendaryong binudburan ng mga marka ng anibersaryo at kaarawang di naman naming nadadaluhan subalit minamarkahan pa rin sakaling may milagrong magaganap at sa isang kisapmata’y makakalipad papauwi sa Filipinas. Subalit hanggang sa guni-guni lang madalas ang ganoong pag-iilusyon sa dikta ng mga numero at araw ng kalendaryong dinidisimula ng mga magagandang tanawin sa bayang iniwan.

Sa dayo, sa pag-uwi sa gabi sa tentatibong tahanan ay kaniig ang lamig ng higaan, kaisa ang katahimikan ng mga nauumid na upuan, kaharap ang mesang di halos nadadapuan ng pagkain sapagkat mas maiging kumain sa labas sa pag-aakalang ang mga taong katulad na estranghero sa iyong paligid ay mga tao pa ring naghahanap ng pakikiisa, mga markado rin ng heograpiya ng lumbay at pasakit. Sa pagkilala sa kanilang lumbay at lungkot ay nakakalikha ka ng isang uri ng komunyon ng mga peregrino ng mga pangungulilang ang pangalan ay di makikita sa litanya ng mga emosyon ng mga nangingibang-bayan kundi nasa molde ng mga kuwentong walang may kakayahang magsadiwa sapagkat lumalampas ito sa wika ng pagbagabundo sa buhay. Habang kinakagat ang pagkain sa fastfood sa gitna ng mga ingay at kalembang ng kahon ng kahera at mga dolyar na pamatid-uhaw sa lahat ng uri ng kasaganaan at kabutihan, ramdam ang pag-iisa, tumitingkad ang pag-iisa, at ang pag-iisa ay walang kaparis. Pipiliting alalahanin ang kapangyarihan ng pagsipol sa dilim kapag dinadapuan ng takot—subalit hindi takot ang kalaban ng pusong nag-iisa kundi ang salita ng ibang nagbibigay buhay, naglalarawan ng hugis at anyo at kulay ng katubusang magbibigay ng kagampan sa lahat ng mga alalahanin ng manlalakbay sa buhay, sa bayan mang iniwan o sa bayang kinapuntahan.

Kapag dinadapuan ako ng ganitong uri ng kalbaryong walang ngalan, kakausapin ko ang sarili at papangalan, tuwi-tuwina, ang tunay na kalagayan. “Exilo, exilo,” sasambitin ko, paulit-ulit na pagsambit, paulit-ulit tulad ng “Om” ng Sadhanang aking natutuhan sa seminaryo noong matagal nang panahon.

“Exilo, exilo” sasabihin ko muli, kasabay ng aking paghinga, kasabay ng pagkilala sa prana ng kapaligiran, sa chi ng uniberso, sa anito ng mga alaala ng mga ninuno. “Exilo, exilo,” sasambitin ko muli at naroroon ako sa isang panahon, sa baryo ng aking tatang, sa paligid ng mga kagubatan, mga burol, mga ilog, mga palayan, mga umaga na malamig at ang kaanak ay magsisiga, nagsusunog ng mga dahon at sanga ng kahoy, magsisiga, at ang kaanak ay nangagsipapalibot sa apoy at nangagsisikukuha ng darang sa apoy upang labanan ang lamig hanggang sa sandaling bubulaga ang araw, at magreregalo ito ng darang. Subalit habang nakatago pa ang araw sa mga bundok sa silangan, ang siga ang magsisilbing balon ng darang, at mula sa liwanag nito ay magbibinhi ng pagkukuwento.

Una muna ang pinakamatanda sa angkan, ang paulit-ulit na kuwento ng kanyang paglalakbay, ng kanyang paglisan, ng kanyang pagtungo sa mga plantasyon sa Hawai`i, ang pagpapatatag sa sarili sa gitna ng mga dagok, ng kaapihan, ng kalupitan, ng kawalan ng hustisya. Ang pagpapanatili sa pananampalataya. Ang pagpapangako na magbabalik sa bayan, paghuhusayin ang buhay, itataguyod ang pamilya. Ikakabesa ko ito—at lahat na mga kuwentong aking maririnig, nanamnamin ang mga piling salitang ginagamit upang maisawika ang karanasan, pakakaisipin sa aking utak kung bakit ganito ang pagsisiwalat at hindi ganoon—at sasagutin din ang mga tanong na higit sa lahat, ang pagbabalik ay isang uri ng pagtutubos sa sarili.

Tahimik lang kaming mga bata, subalit may ingay sa aking utak.

Gusto kong lumayo.


Gusto kong maglayag.


Gusto kong makarating sa mga malalayong lupain at makita doon ang pagsilang at paglubog nga raw.

Gusto kong maging saksi sa mga walang katapusang pagbubuntis ng mga pag-asa at pagpakahulugan ng buhay sa dayo, sa mga kuwento ng mga exilo, mga nandarayuhan sa sariling bayan, mga nandarayuhan sa ibang bayan, mga peregrino sa sariling kalooban, sa sariling isip, sa sariling pagkakatiintindi ng katotohanan at kabutihan at kagandahan.

Gusto kong maglagalag tulad ng ibig sabihin ng ‘pag-agkawili’ ng mga Ilokano noong panahon.

Gusto kong maglakbay tulad ng paglalakbay ng mga bayani sa mga epiko ng mga pamayanang grupo ng bayan—at sa paglalakbay ay makakasagupa ang lahat ng mga balakid, at tatalunin lahat ng mga ito upang makauwi sa sariling isip, sa sariling loob, sa sariling nakem, sa sariling buot.

Makikinig kami sa kuwento ng nakatatanda at susunod ang iba pang nagsilayo upang magbalik din sa pook ng aking tatang at isawika ang sariling karanasan.

“Exilo, exilo,” sasabihin ko—at ang aking sarili ang aking sasabihan.

Pakakaisipin ko ang panahon na naririto na ang kaanak: ang kanilang pag-alis sa tahanang nagtago at nagkanlong sa kanilang pagkatao at kabataan, ang mga halakhak na nakatago sa mga dingding, ang mga luhang nakasuksok sa mga pansariling taguan, ang mga sulat ng mga anak na nangangako ng pagpapakabuti, ng pagsasaayos ng ugali, ng hindi pag-uulit sa mga nagawang kalabisan na siyang sanhi ng pagratsada ng sermon mula sa kanilang ina.

Pakakaisipin ko ang pagkawala ng mga supling ng ugat sa bayang sinilangan.

Pakakaisipin ko ang kanilang pag-aalumpihit na umalis sa bayan, at sa dayo, sa mga pook na iba ang takbo ng simoy ng hangin at iba ang ikot ng mundo, dito, dito sila magsusumikap magka-ugat, mabuhay tulad ng lahat ng exilo, magbago ng wika, magbago ng dila, magbago ng utak, magbago ng panlasa. Minsan, naiisip ko ang katarungang taglay ng ganitong hinaharap—at naiisip ko, ako mismo ang nagiging ahente ng pagiging exilo ng aking kaanak.

Magdududa ako sa aking mga pasya, magbabaka-baka sa mga posibilidad.

Pakaiingatan natin ang bahay natin, sabi ng panganay. Paaayos natin, palalakihin. Magbabalik tayo.

Mag-aaral akong maging potograpo, sabi ng pangalawa.

Magreretiro ako dito, sabi ng kabiyak sa telepono.

Tatakbo ang bunso sa bintana at pagmamasdan ang mabining pagpatak ng ulan sa aming lugar sa gilid ng Kamaynilaan. “Umuulan din ba sa bahay mo, itay? Dito sa bahay namin, hala, lumalakas ang ulan!” Iba ang bahay ng bunsong iniwan.
Nangingilid ang aking luha. Iba ang aking bahay, iba ang bahay ng aking mga anak. Tunay ngang iba ang bahay ng kaanak na iniwan.

Exilo, sasabihin ko sa aking sarili. Exilo.

Magpapakawala ako ng malalim na malalim na buntong-hininga, pakakawalan ko sa dagat, sa hangin mula sa Diamond Head, sa gabi sa mga tugatog ng mga bundok sa kanluran, sa umaga sa mga freeway na aking lalakbayin.

Exilo, exilo, sasabihin ko.

Walang salitang nabubuo sa aking mga bibig.

Lumalampas sa wika ang pagiging exilo.


-30-


A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Abr 29/07

Ilokano as a National Language, 7

(Note: This is a copy of my email to Mr. Manuel Faelnar, Vice President for Metro Manila of SOLFED (Saving Our Languages Through Federalism), and who kindly found a way to hook me up with Dr. Jose V. Abueva, former President of the University of the Philippines and now President of Kalayaan College in Marikina City, the Philippines. Dr. Abueva, through Mr. Faelnar, sent a copy of his “Kapunongang Bisaya in the Global Filipino Nation: A Proposal” to which I am reacting and commenting. I share these comments I emailed to Mr. Faelnar.)

Dear Manuel,

I read with openness of heart and soul Dr Abueva's proposal for the KB. I must say the whole concept is laudable except for the following flaws:

1. It is not critical enough of the manipulations by law and history and by political and cultural leaders in the 'officialization' of Tagalog as P/Filipino. I dare say it does not unmask the lies and ruses of Tagalog being passed off as 'the national language'. This, to me, is a disservice and it results in the next point, ie.,

2. the notion of 'incorporation' of Binisaya terms (Dr. Abueva's term). The very notion of incorporation itself needs revisiting because of the fact that P/Filipino as a national language has remained structurally the same as Tagalog (ie., grammar, syntax, semantic configuration, etc.) and thus, in reality, this P/Filipino is in reality, a DIALECT of Tagalog and NOT a national language. When two 'languages' can perfectly understand each other, one is NOT a language but a DIALECT. The historical and linguistic primacy of Tagalog would then logically render this presumptuous 'P/Filipino' as a dialect of Tagalog and is not therefore in keeping with the spirit and intent of the 1987 Constitution. Ask a Linguistics 101 student and he tells you this simple fact of language and how it is different from a dialect. So the national language 'P/Filipino' is a dialect? My good guess is that we have been hoodwinked by policymakers including language teachers and educators, not to mention the ignorant political leaders who do not know any better but nevertheless have the power to ram into our throats their own brand of skewed truth on how to build a nation based, among others, on one and only one national language. This is a Marcosian tactic and it is ideologically grounded on thought control and Gulagization.


This leads me to point three:

3. How did it ever happen that we gave 'citizenship' to the Tagalog language when in reality, the Marcos and Cory Constitutions are conceptually clear about what the 'national language' is supposed to be?

Which brings me to point four:

4. How is it that to form a nation, there should only be one and only one national language? Who decreed that? Are we not learning from the flaws of Western history that gas-chambered their other languages in an Aryanist streak and fit for purity so that the Western nations can become nations? Is this not the wrong model to follow?

Which brings me to point 5:

5. Federalization--your Solfed's position--is one way to go and we must fight it out that: 1. Filipino as a national language ought to end up masquerading as Tagalog; and 2. we must opt for more than one national language. Fair is fair. Justice must be served. We have done a lot of linguistic and cultural injustices to our people. It is high time that we realized that we have all been a party to this continued serving of injustice.

Lastly, I buy your Solfed's position--and we must push for that one.

I have no problems with the 1987 Constitution mandate on Filipino as a national language. I guess that Dr. Abueva had a hand in that. My worry is that the Constitution has to be good with what it clearly provides. We need to account those who are passing off the lies and ruses--and we need to be real with the spirit and intent of the Constitution otherwise we all go haywire. Or we ask for amendment if need be to serve the ends of justice, fairness and linguistic and cultural democracy. Linguistic tyranny and cultural dictatorship must be recognized even if these are in guises--and effectively so.

Hats off--the anitos will bless you and Solfed,

Aurelio Agcaoili

UH Manoa/Apri 29-07

A Gospel According to GK

An Everyday Gospel According to GK:
A Reading of “Paradise: Three Stories of Hope”

By Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, Ph.D.
University of Hawai`i at Manoa


On Saturday, April 21, 2007, I watched Gawad Kalinga’s “Paradise: Three Stories of Hope.” It was one of those film showings we go to once in while, and this time around, it was at the Filipino Community Center in Waipahu. Several days before, the retired Rep. Jun Abinsay called me up to say that I would be his guest, and that if I could find time to join the community and watch the film. I said, yes, and then I was hooked. I saw friends, I saw the business and community leaders, I saw the smiles of people, and I saw sorrow in the flesh. In the silence, that sorrow was palpable: I allowed the tears to flow freely on my cheeks, feeling the flow, feeling it with the humanity I could muster, the scenes of wretchedness overwhelming me, the hope in those stories giving me hope for the people and the homeland as well. My initial reaction was personal, subjective, perhaps within the ambit of crude intelligence that can only come from recognizing your feelings, your emotions, and your realization that life, indeed, is a difficult text. In all these mixed reactions as the reel showed the real in the country I know best, I had the darkness of the Filcom Center ballroom for cover. No one knew I shed tears. I had the white hanky for help.

All art is propaganda, I know. All films are, for certain. Being a teacher of film—and art, for that matter, this I have known. And so I just simply sat back and relaxed and enjoyed the GK propaganda in the three stories in the film, knowing and knowing full well that what I would see is the GK gospel that talks about how we can find heaven in this rotting and rotten hell that the country we left behind has become. The cynical in me had to go away as well, and I allowed the three stories to sink in my head, with Ryan Cayabyab’s music of the same title giving the soothing for the bruised soul even as I came to terms with what the stories were trying to suggest. “Even if Heaven Cries” talks of the despair that comes with grief and destruction and havoc such as the case of the wiping out of an entire village in Liloan. There the living were buried alive and they died poor, covered by the mud of the mountains desecrated by the loggers. “My Brother Elvis,” reveals what love can do to a bubbly but homeless boy, Elvis. “Marie” reminds us of the epic story of 9/11, that literal and symbolic destruction of lives and hopes only to allow life and hope to come back again from the ruins. If we look for realism in these short films, you have enough of them, although Elvis’ journey from being homeless to having a loving home might present some oddities that are more like tropes than realities such as that almost comical pushing-and-shoving of the doghouse from one place to another, only to disappear in an instant. But the acting, the emotionally-charged scenes, and the narrative structure that is fluid in each story, are more than enough to compensate for the technical flow that we sense when we compare the film with the standards of high budget film conceived in millions of dollars complete with millions of ad exposures in glossy covers of magazine and talk show spots.

We are told of the miracle in the production of the film: how the topnotch actors on Philippine silver screen waived their ‘normal’ millions of fees, the actors including Maricel Soriano, Cesar Montano, Robert Arevalo, Ricky Davao, Carmi Martin, Michael V, and Lilia Dizon; how the producers Buth Jimenez, Tony Gloria, Bobby Barreiro found the absurd pieces come together in a jigsaw solved with clarity of purposes; and how Ryan Cayabyab the music artist willingly allowed his music to be used as the score to salve the suffering soul in the story and in the spectator.

Early on, there are no pretensions, no high handed techniques known only to the usual “Hollywoodization” of even the inane Philippine film trying to imitate the blockbuster and dollar-raking film from the commercialized mindsets of the world’s viewers.

Even before I saw the film, I have committed to the GK committee in Honolulu headed by Jun Abinsay that we are going to incorporate into our syllabi at the Ilokano and Philippine Drama Program of the University of Hawai`i the film which we will show on August 21. I knew that this film would make a difference to our students majority of whom are of Filipino heritage.

My rating for this film: five stars for telling exactly what we need to know and to hear: that we cannot allow to continue to happen what Juvenal has said a long time ago—Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se, quam quod ridiculos hominess facit—what is hardest to bear in dire poverty is that it makes a man a laughingstock.

The stories are simple, a bit soapy, those melodramatic types whose plot structures we could have read in the comics form, heard from the radio soap operas, or watched on the boob tube. Yet the honesty of hoping, the sheer honesty of igniting hope where hope is none to be found, where hope has wished to be absent forever—this, I think, is the gem in the trilogy. It is this sense of the gospel—the sense of the good news—in the everyday. We see in this the kernel of redemption that we all need as a people, whether we are in the Philippines or abroad.

This sense of the redemptive leads me to my meditations on the gospel according to GK.

My relationship with GK, the movement and non-profit organization whose unquestionable good deeds are sweeping across the Philippine archipelago and now in some Third World countries, is more conceptual than practical. I have had friends in Los Angeles who were into GK’s causes of eradicating homelessness and of bringing back decency and self-respect to the poor and the wretched of the homeland. These friends talked of how, with just a thousand dollars, a home could be built and a living hope could spring back into the hearts of the homeless. There is a pro-active dynamic in this idea and I was sold to it.

Back in the Philippines many years ago, GK, to my mind, was just like many other organizations who put a premium more on the results than on the rah-rah-rah. From afar, as a researcher, I had read up on the homes they built, the lives they rebuilt, and the families they gifted with grace.

As a teacher in a state-owned university, I could only look in amazement at this miracle happening before my very eyes. I took note of what GK wanted to do and in my mind, I remember most the organization’s desire to eradicate the spectacle of poverty and misery that many presidents and political leaders of the country have vowed to do, but nonetheless lost the heart to keep their vow once the power to rule was in their hands.

Such is the lot of the home country that the many who have left its earth and soil and daily barrage of atrocities to find and found a home some place else have grown cynical of this show of systematic violence against those who have no access to the country’s resources.

Up close, I remember what I wrote in a monograph, “The Poverty of the Philippine Poor,” published several years after People Power I.

To write that monograph, I went on a fieldwork among the mushrooming slums and squatter colonies of Metro Manila.

In those times, the yellow revolution was on its full swing, and we had high hopes for the better. But later on, Cory Aquino’s leadership began to show the challenges of reforming and reshaping a country whose oligarchs have had their heyday and who had no intention of giving up the perks and pelf of power. Dispersal of rallies became common; farmers who massed up in Mendiola demanding ‘land for the landless’ were massacred and a writer and teacher like me could only gather his thoughts in prayer and on paper. The sense of betrayal was palpable.

I joined a group doing fact finding missions in areas where the poor with their shanties were displaced, their pots and pans and faith in disarray, on the streets for the full view of the gawking public, with children unkempt and hungry, with mothers and old women clutching at their Santo Ninos and their Mothers of Perpetual Help to invoke the mercies of the muffled heavens. I invested on wrenching emotions writing that monograph. Anger became a logical reaction—anger because of this wastage of hope and blessings and people’s trust in their leaders. The betrayal is systemic, I knew then, and that knowledge has not changed. The new leaders who were supposed to be giving the people a new lease on life after more than two decades of suffering and political repression were not simply present for and in the name of the people.

I left the country with a heavy heart after years and years of university teaching, with this spectacle of poverty growing heavier each day. You simply are reminded of the inutility of it all, this wastage of dreams, aspirations, opportunities for changes, and leadership that could have spelled the difference between making social justice work and sliding back into the way things had been. The either/or situation was too much to bear.

A couple of months ago, the retired Rep. Jun Abinsay called me up to ask if I could join the core group to discuss about ways in which we can bring in people to get educated into what our various communities in the United States could do to help GK in its work of providing homes for the wretched of the Philippines. The State of Hawai`i, certainly, has its worries related to homelessness, with families living in parks and beaches because the cause of rent has skyrocketed and that home ownership has become some kind of a ‘good luck’, a buenas for those who can afford to pay the monthly mortgage by doing double jobs and running away from all the social gatherings that seem to be endless.

In that gathering were Abinsay, Sonny Perez, Tony Boquer, JP Orias, and myself. We talked of premier showings, of how to make it known to the community of the good deeds of GK, of building men and women and communities by rebuilding in them the sense of decency and self-respect. It was a gathering of minds, and the work began, and indeed, Abinsay, Perez, and Boquer pushed the idea to its fruition. They are giving back to the homeland of the Filipino people who have come to Hawai`i, even if Perez is from Guam and Boquer has nothing to do with the Philippines. Despite these differing circumstances of who they are, we have warriors in the three, and in these warriors is their basic humanity.
Paradise, indeed, can be revisited, rethought, reinvented, redefined.
And hope? It springs eternal in the hearts of man and women who know what it takes to be truly and fully human by permitting and coaxing others to become full and truly human.

(Published at the Fil-Am Observer, May 2007)

Ilokano as a Heritage Language in Hawaii

(Speech delivered at the Timpuyog Scholarship Banquet and the Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Program Retirement Testimonial for Prof. Precy Espiritu and Prof. Josie Clausen, UH Manoa's HIPLL, Pacific Beach Hotel, April 27, 2007, Honolulu, HI).


Ladies and gentlemen:

Even as I stand before you this evening, I am awed by your coming to celebrate with us at this Timpuyog Scholarship Banquet of the Timpuyog and the Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program of the University of Hawaii.

Tonight, we will honor two of our program scholars and two of our retiring faculty members. Tonight, we also honor ourselves, we Ilokanos, we Filipinos, we Filipino Americans, we immigrants, and we who understand the meaning of diversity in this land.

In less than a year that I assumed the position of program coordinator, I have become a witness to two retirements of two former full-time faculty members when the number of fulltime positions is only three.

These two retirements translate to 67% of the fulltime faculty retiring in less than a year, with a total of 64 years of teaching between them. I look for some meanings of this event somewhere, and before me is a symbolic struggle, a surprising challenge, and a living hope. This whole exercise reminds me of the Latin proposition: vivas ut possis quando nec quis ut velis—he plants trees to be useful for another generation.

Agmula isuna iti kayo tapno pakairanudan ti sumaruno a kaputotan. Magtatanim ng puno upang pakinabangan ng susunod na salinlahi. Vivas ut possis quando quis ut velis. Nagmulada, apo, iti kayo, ket datayo ti nagapit.

These days, I think of the challenges ahead: the kind of cultural and language struggle the Ilokano Program has to go through in this University, in the heritage community of Ilokanos in Hawai`i, in the community of language and culture scholars.

For the 34 years that the Ilokano program has existed in this University, I have come to understand the meaning of such a challenge, and in the aloneness and solitude of an academic and scholar, I see this urgency to keep the ember alive in order for us to be constantly reminded of our duties to ourselves, to our communities, and to the world.

One such duty is to survive.

Another such duty is to thrive. To survive, to thrive—to survive and thrive: these, I think, are to serve as the mantra for pushing the Ilokano Program to grow in spite of all the difficulties. With 9 of every 10 Filipinos in Hawaii tracing their heritage in Ilokano, and with Ilokano as the historical language of the Filipino diaspora in the entire United States, with 4,500 Ilokanos—90 percent of the annual total of Filipino immigrants—migrating to Hawaii each year, the challenges are enormous.

We have opened up the Ilokano program for public service in Hawai`i and in the Philippines. Today, we have inked up a consortium program with other 13 universities and colleges in four regions in the Philippines where Ilokano language and culture is of interest to academics, to the community, and to the students.

There are a number of obstacles that we are faced with in this consortium agreement aimed to assure us that Ilokano language and culture will not only survive but also thrive.

One of them is the skewed, unjust, and culturally tyrannical and dictatorial national language policy of the Philippine government that entitles and privileges one regional language at the expense of other lingua francas.

Number 2, the continuing manipulation by academic, cultural, and language leaders of that obsolete concept of ‘one national language, one nation’ dictum—an imperialist, obsolete, and triumphalist linguistic and epistemological position.

And number 3, the need to understand, again and again, that the Philippine nation, like the United States of America, is a veritable ‘nation among nations’ and thus, in keeping with the premises of the social contract to do good, justice and fairness must be served.

For all these obstacles, we offer these:

One, the need to put an end to the tyrannical and dictatorial consequences of a monolingual national language policy that favors only one regional language against other lingua francas in order to arrest the linguistic and cultural genocide of the Filipino people.

Two, the unmasking of the 70 years of manipulation by academic, cultural and linguistic leaders of their political agendum to lobotomize the minds and consciousness of the Filipino people in order for them to easily invade and colonize these minds and consciousness of our people.

Three, the recognition that the Philippines has not only one or two lingua francas but at least three: Ilokano, Sebuano, and Tagalog—and to assure our people the growth, nurturing, sustenance, and promotion of all three and not giving entitlements and privileges to only one.

These proposals, to me, provide the context of our celebration today, because even as we formally say goodbye to Prof. Precy Llague Espiritu and to Prof. Josie Paz Clausen for giving almost all of their academic life to the cause of the Ilokano program, even as we witness the awarding of scholarship to two of our rising scholars, Abe Flores Jr. and Valerie Sandi, and even as we honor the sacrifices of our Timpuyog officers and members, we have a struggle to pursue and this struggle is as legitimate as the struggle of all peoples for authentic and genuine freedom.

For if there is one heritage language and culture left to die its own death and uncared for, our work is not done.

Our work as a part of the Ilokano heritage begins with our commitment to the Ilokano language and culture. Yet, we assure ourselves that our work does not stop there but moves on to link up arms with other heritage languages and cultures.

It is the work of our two colleagues, Manang Precy and Manang Josie, that we have all come to celebrate for this evening; it is the work of our Ilokano and Philippine heritage students that serve as the raison d’etre of our gathering; it is the resistance against all forms of social and cultural injustice, all forms of neo-colonizing and imprisoning actions; it is that insistence that all forms of democracy and justice and fairness are forms of recognizing the basic oneness and humanity in each of us.

It is on this note of insisting that we remember and that we commit ourselves to not to forget that I welcome you all to this banquet.

You have honored us by your presence.

Your presence has given us the energy we all need to push for a rethinking of an ancestral homeland that is not only territorial and physical but spiritual as well. That homeland could be in our heritages languages, in our heritage cultures, and in our commitment to diversity in this country.

Ditoy ken idiay Filipinas, nabukelen ti tignayan a manggutigot iti gobierno ti Filipinas a mangbigbig a ti Ilokano ket maysa nga opisial ken nailian a lengguahe.

A consortium and a movement of scholars, schools, colleges, and cultural workers have been formed to push for the Philippine government to declare Ilokano as an official and a national language.

We will see how far we can go with this movement but we will not stop.

Ang pagkilala sa higit na malaking Filipinas na lampas sa makitid na lente ng iisa o dadalawang wika ang siyang ideyal na naghahanap ng katuparan. Ang ideyal na ito ang siya ring susing pangarap ng sino mang nakakaintindi ng higit na malawak na kahulugan ng bansa ng mga ninuno.

Even as we speak of a Filipino nation, in this country and elsewhere, we speak of our indebtedness to the sacrifices and dedication of those whose fruits of labor we reap today. We thus dedicate this gathering to Professor Prescila Llague Espiritu for steering the program for 33 years. We dedicate this gathering as well to Professor Josie Paz Clausen for helping out in making the Ilokano program grow.

Dumanonkayo amin, apo, lumaemkayo, ket makipagragragsakkayo kadakami. Welcome and Good evening to all of you.

Ilokano as a National Language, 6

I argue for one thing: that we have to put an end to the hegemon--and this hegemon is the lie so pervasive that no one is able to think clearly anymore: the hegemon that Tagalog is isomorphically 'the national language' as this is the basis of Pilipino, which, by abracadabra, became the 'Filipino.'

With so much of intellectual resources in the academe and in the country, only a handful of scholars and language teachers have been able to see the sleight of hand here--the magicians of 'national language' so busy in the last 70 years trying to prop up that idea that the Philippines has now 'a national language' and it is P/Filipino.

I say: this is a linguistic lie--and this has been going on for so long we need to exorcize our minds, call the anitos and heal ourselves from this systematic/systemic forgetting inflicted upon us by so many to whom we have entrusted our cultural and linguistic resources as a people.

We have been hoodwinked.

The interim solution to this issue is this: let us agree to a normalization of the linguistic terror and trouble we have inflicted upon our people.

The road to 'normalization' has to be blazed, and the blazing demands a declaration that (a) the government made a mistake in declaring Tagalog as the basis of the national language, (b) that the current P/Filipino is none but Tagalog in another guise and therefore it is not another language but a dialect of the same language, as it is the case, and (c) that other major non-Tagalog languages existing as lingua francas must be declared as national languages now.

One tactical strategy we ought to consider and soon is this revisiting of this phenomenon of Tagalogization of all things Philippine. We will all end up parroting the same, and in this systemic forgetting that we have become a party too, we will all look at the world with the single lens Tagalog provides until one day we cannot anymore find the road back into our hearts and souls and minds because we have mortgaged all these in the name of a national languages that is not national but only made national by the edict of people who did not regard the meaning and substance of diversity.

There is this slow genocide happening in the Philippines and in the immigrant communities abroad, and with the commercial cooptation of the media by way of the cable channels, forgetting has become a passion. It has become the very logic of making people remember the imaginary nation but not their own dreams in their own language, not their hopes in the own language, not their passions in their own language.

This has a name--and the name is peril in Philippine paradise, a peril indeed as no other peril of another name.

This imposition of a mind over other minds is one Gulag we have made for ourselves, and the more sinister issue is that we are not saying that we are hurting, that we have been pained, that we have been bleeding, and the hurting and the paining and the bleeding are costing us our cultural and linguistic lives.

Certainly, language and culture are not rice.

Certainly, they do not count in terms of minimum wages.

But language and culture are food for the soul, for the mind that remembers, for the spirit that yearns and longs for community, for membership, for association, for a regathering.

But language and culture are the wages of being human, and as wages, they are to be there to make speak the unspeakable, say the unsayable, dream the undreamable, express the ineffable, language that which resists language so we can all speak again, say again what we want to say, dream again what we want to dream, express what we want to put into words, and verbalize that is beyond alphabets, and sounds, and words.

All these, I think, are those that matter.

Without them, we are nothing. No-thing.

So let the Ilokano language speak again for us, mediate our world, and hit right into our soul as a people.

A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Apr 26/07

Ilokano as a National Language, 5

On April 23, I got a call from Cornelio J. Ancheta, publisher of Fil-Am Observer, one of the more respectable newspapers circulated in the State of Hawai`i. It is also with the FO that I write a host of issues concerning culture, human rights, and Ilokano language and culture, the very cause of my candor and passion, and the elan vital of my willingness to join the struggle to free our people from centuries of linguistic tyranny and cultural injustice.

For years and years, we have been made to swallow hook, line, and sinker the myopic idea that holds onto to the feudal and medieval belief that to be build a nation, all people must speak one and the same language, which is the premise, for instance, of the monolingual emphasis of the United States in its own understanding of what contitutes a nation, patriotism, and human understanding, forgetting that the human understanding of what is just and good is the backbone of what a nation is and ought to be. Somewhere, John Rawls has sketched out for us of the non-negotiable premise for doing social justice: the good life for the most people. And now this call from my publisher, CJ Ancheta, saying, among others, "I am publishing your piece on Ilokano as a national language. You have the right to your opinion, that is your opinion, and I will respect that in full."

Earlier, Tawid Magazine, through editor Jaime Agpalo, has picked up the concept of pushing for Ilokano as a national language of the Philippines in order to put an end to the schizophrenic iatrogenesis pandemia that has afflicted the people of the Philippines, a pandemic that has been caused by the linguistic and cultural policymakers who never understand what a culture and language is to a people different from those in the center of their own vortex of power and whose solution, this pandemic, it seems now, are the very people who had caused this social disease, including their linguistic and cultural apparatuses and appendages: the media, Malacanang, the shameless and unthinking school system, both private and public, the popular cultural forms including the abominable noontime shows carried over here by The Filipino Channel that can only make a sorrowful spectacle of our lot as a people. You name all of these, and we have a conspiracy to subtly effect a cultural and linguistic genocide on all the rest of the cultures and languages of the Philippines excpet Tagalog and English.

Let me make myself clear here: that I am not against the Tagalog people and the people who think of English as our economic salvation and our passport to domestic help and caregiving work in Palestine, Israel, Canada, Japan, Iraq, Italy, and Germany. Let me make myself clear: that the cause of our linguistic and cultural troubles is the mistaken notion that in a multicultural and multilingual nation-state like the Philippines, only one national language is sufficient to 'language' all the dreams and aspirations of a people who are, in fact, various peoples, with their own sets of world view, customs, traditions.
The 'isang bansa, isang diwa' bluff was good propaganda to cow people into believing that their past has nothing to do with the building up of a country from the ruins of erros and more errors.

Here is not a case of one ethnolinguistic group against another--a case of Ilokanos crying foul against the Tagalogs.

Here is a case of saying, with conviction, that the government's linguistic policy on the national language is all flawed, and the cracks and defects are showing and are swallowing us up, all of us, Tagalogs and non-Tagalogs alike, because, for another round of cultural and linguistic injustice, we are being made to believe that a single language is all that matters to finally pursue the good life for all of us.

The sad and sorrowful history of the Philippine nation has taught us a good lesson: that in all the wars that Filipinos waged against the colonizers and the neocolonizers including dictatorship and abusers of power--the revolutions that include the many revolutions whose gains were snatched from us by the opportunists--these revolutions had to be 'languaged' in the language of the people who were taking part. It was only when these revolutions were translated into their own view of the world that they gained the strength to commit themselves and to offer their own lives.To speak, thus, of the Katipunan, as some myopic social scholars tend to dangle before us as 'languaged' by and only by, Tagalog, is to become amnesiac.

To speak of Tagalog as Pilipino, and then to speak of Pilipino as Filipino, is running counter to what history has demonstration: a history of linguistic and cultural manipulation that began in 1937 with the presidential prejudice of Manuel Luis Quezon and still prevailing today. For 70 years we people from the non-Tagalog speaking areas have to contend with this lazy and irrational and abnormal idea about our lives and minds and art and literature being measured against the standards set by English and Tagalog, and now more with Tagalog being passed off as Filipino.

There are a thousand and one lies somewhere in this long history of lies and it is high time that we unmasked these lies. We cannot wait for 70 more years to realize that soon, if we did not act now, we are going to lose the linguistic resources of our multilingual nation with the insistence of that myopic and self-serving view that Tagalog is basis of the national language, now called Filipino. That formulation, I dare say, is even running counter to the requisites of the 1987 Philippines Constitution. Any idiot can read the provision in that Constituion to realize that we have been hoodwinked all along.

No, I will tell CJ Ancheta that my position is not only a matter of opinion, in response to his generosity of spirit of asking people to accept my opinion and listen to what I have to say. I insist that facts have been distorted and many language teachers, scholars, and government policymakers including the Surian ng Wikang Pilipino have been shortchanging us for so long.

For 70 years, we endured, we acquiesced, we did not say anything, afraid that some powerful people might get mad at us.

For 70 years, we kept mum, we kept our corner, we accepted that we are not from Manila.

For 70 years, we allowed our voices to be automatically stiffled, or if not, translated to the language of the powerful.

For 70 years, we believed in the 'nationalist' ruses and guises and pretensions, believing that if we spoke our mind in the language we know best, we end up not being nationalist enough.

But I read the Ilokano Katipuneros signing the Katipunan documents in their own blood in Ilokano.

What I am to do with this supreme sacrifice? Should I wait for another 70 years before speaking up?

In sum, it is high time that we rally behind this cause: to federalize the major languages of the country and as a consequence, declare, among others, that Ilokano has every right to be a national language in much the same way that Tagalog, a regional language, has every right to become the lingua franca of Southern Tagalog.

If we are not going to do it now, there is no other time we can ever do it. And if we are not going to do it, nobody will ever do it for us.

Oh well, we will end up the vanquished before we realize it is too late.

A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Apr 26-07

MAESTRA A MANANG/MANANG A MAESTRA

(Ken Dr. Josie Paz Clausen, iti panagretirona)

Daytoyen ti aldaw ti umuna a pakada, manangmi a maestra
Ing-ingungotenmi a pagwadan ti puli, dakami nga agsaksi ita
Ngayed daytoy a punsion, panagrarambak dagiti adu a lagip
Pannakiengkuentro iti agnanayon, pannakitinnulag iti isip.

Mano kadi nga arinunos dagiti bulan, tawen, amin a panawen
Ti maruros tapno iti panagrurusing dagiti sabong, agbalinen
A maris daytoy ti ita a masakbayan nga iti nakem bilangen,
Mano a panagraray-a, mano a panagayat ti inkam salaysayen?

Ta dakami dagiti nakautang riwriw a kaasi nga awanan nagan,
Saan a mabunniagan dagiti bannuar iti nagrupsan a kalman.
Ta ngamin, maestrami, ibatim ti pateg dagiti kaasi ti puso
Ta ngamin, maestrami, iti barukongmi nga agindeg ti rag-o.

Iti pakasaritaankami nga agtaklin, agkamang, agsurnad
Kadagiti pinanid a linabag, idiay kami a di agtukiad,
Sadiay nga agbirok kadagiti balikas a mangted agas
Pangsandi iti kawaw iti panagtaltalawataw ti imnas.

Ta kasta amin ti pakabuklan ti pannakaisadsadtayo,
Sika a maestrami, dakami, datayo amin nga immadayo
Iti wasnay ti dalan a panagbibinnulig dagiti addang
Sadiaymi met laeng a biroken anag panangiwanwan.

Sika ngamin, maestra, ti isem kadagiti aldaw a nalulem
Ti silnag ti bulan iti rabii a dagiti bituen sapsapulen
Sika ngamin ti pagpangalan iti panagaddang ti nakem
Ti sadiri dagiti mautoyan met a regta iti samiweng.

Ammomi itan ti kansion kadagiti panagirugi
Ta insurom ti ritual ti panagitukit kadagiti bin-i
Winaknitam ti uma a sadiay ti umok ti kakaasi
Ket insublim iti ili ti nagtalappuagaw a pannagibi.

Agdios-ti-agnginakami ngarud ita, manang a maestrami
Agyamanankami iti adu nga anus ken panangaklili
Iti pammakadami ti duayya ti nakautang a barukongmi
Agsubad ti biag kenka iti pannarabay ken bendisionmi.

A Solver Agcaoili/UH Manoa/Abril 22, 2007

Diskurso ni Ducat

Ti bomba ti mangibaga. Adda desperasion iti angin a malang-ab,
iti man aldaw wenno ti nagabay nga agpatnag. Ta kasano kadi, aya
ti manglemmes iti bain no awan maisubo sagpaminsan?

Iti eksena, adda dagiti kalaban: ti pulitiko a ninong ti gayaman
wenno ti apges ti tian. Naktidiablo la ketdin a biag ta no adda
man laeng waragawag, agar-arakattotda piman a manglangan!

Salaysayen ti henesis ti dagensen iti barukong:
ubbing a mammigat iti kari ti pangngaldaw
ket iti dulang awan mata ti bisin kadagiti maulaw

iti bisin. Planuen ni Ducat ti panagsuplongna iti tangatang,
wenno iti langit dagiti karkararag a di mangmangngegan:
awanan lapayag ti santo sepulkro, awanan mata ti dakes

iti labes dagiti taeng a ti pinggan ken mabisbisinan.
Bay-am ngarud a ti bomba ti agbalikas, agsao iti dakes
amin a kinadakes, kas iti kanibusanan dagiti palangguad

dagiti pabunar dagiti babaknang nga idiay, aguraytay
iti mangabngaban a tulang, wenno ti maregmeg a kasla
mukat wenno ti nabangles a katay iti titilmonan.

Palibbuongek, kuna ni Ducat, bettakek amin a mabettak,
ti bangabanga, kas pagarigan dagiti agdudungsa nga antukab,
nabsog a nagtulakak kas kadagiti buaya nga agan-anak

di makarikna iti rugi ti tigab wenno panagangtab
kas iti padi, ti pimpiman nga anak ti dios nga agsuysuyaab
makaturog piman kaadu't nakaparintumeng nga agsurnad.


A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Abr 17-07

The Case of Ilokano as National Language, 4

With more than 20 million people speaking Ilokano all over the world, what do you with this continuing rendering of a people into one of systemic and programmatic invisibility?

While other nations, countries, and peoples take pride in what they have got in their hearts and soul, we have a people that have, in sum, an agendum for smallness.

This agendum for smallness has afflicted so many, and has invaded the internet and has used it as if this were their fiefdom, some form of a absolute license that they think, they have the absolute use even at the cost of the honor and pride of other people.

Small minds, I call this, and it is the same smallness that we see in that cowering stance we have been doing before the lord of the nation's poweful languages, Tagalog and English.

No, these Ilokano writers who have in them this affliction of smallness cannot see that there are at least two forms of struggle that we have to wage at this time, and in this order of priority:

One, the struggle to have Ilokano declared as a national language and

Two, the struggle to modernize the Ilokano language in order to serve as the mediating instrument for the contemporary experiences of the Ilokano.

These twin stuggles, of course, are not easily discernible to many of the Ilokano language's pretending writers with their pretense for greatness even if what they have are hardly earned accolades.

Some even have the temerity to decapitate other people so that these bunch of pretenders can rise on the decapitated heads of other Ilokano cultural workers.

We can only cry in pain even as we watch how small we have become because we have believed in this magic in this agendum for smallness as if this were some sort of an oracion, an abracadabra that has gone pfffffft.

This agendum for smallness afflicts many writers in Ilokano whether these are in Oahu or Obando, Hapon or Hawai`i.

Perhaps they do not know that some writers are not afflicted with smallness but greatness of heart and soul, those writers who take in all the pain, believing that so much can be gained along the way as long as they are mindful of what is happening.

To be small is comforting and comfortable--and it is twin to choosing to be nameless and faceless, like that act of using an alias when dishonoring another writer. This is the best shortcut to the impossibility of being and becoming, an abomination of the highest order, because here, decency and self-respect are not any longer one of the premises for the good life, for the good relationship, for a humane understanding of the world.

You talk of courage here, or boldness, or daring.

The wrtier who decapitates others cannot see the connection between what he does and the neocolonial strategy for divide et tempera, which he probably does not understand either.

Even as other writers look at the greater things that concern us all, the small-time writer with the small mind can only come up with some vague threats about the 'rippuog' and some such destructions, perhaps alluding to the power of the divine who can wreak a temple and on the third day build it up again.

The logicians have a name for this: presumptuous presumption. It is a fallacy that perhaps the writer with the small mind does not understand because he simply cannot fathom what this is.

And to think that he is an Ilokano writer makes you sad, so darn sad. Idiocy has never been this bad, not among writers who should know more than the man on the street. But then, times change. And they do, in the Ilocos as in exile, in Dagupan as in the diaspora.

Because you are reminded of this writer's boast, his boast as empty as his head, as empty as his words. Oh, the magic in the smallness comes crawling in the crevices and cranies of the mind now less human because the writer has put his small successes in his head.

The problem with Ilokano language and literature is not within the purview of this writer, pretending as he always is, that he has known all that has to be known, semantics and all, syntax and all, semiotic possibilities and all.

He is no different from many other Ilokanos in the academe who hold on to the view that they did not have to learn Ilokano because they are born into the language, and with that birth comes the full knowledge of the language of his birth.

We cannot blame the country's language policy makers: if we have a significant portion of the millions of speakers of Ilokano in this ignorance mode, there is no way we can win in the struggle. There is no way the struggle to make Ilokano a national language gains cultural, moral, and political ascendancy.

The solution: we need to weed out the writers who do not know their language, their literature, their history, the politics of their ethnic identity, the righteousness of the cause of declaring Ilokano as a national language. There are so many of them in our midst.

Only if we know the releve of our causes can we have the power to empower ourselves. Socrates is right: we have got to examine our literary and linguistic practices.

Then and only then can be become language and culture revolutionaries for and in the name of the Ilokano people everywhere.


A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Apr 17-07

Masaker ti Darepdep

1.
Ammom ti Virginia iti uppat nga aldaw ken rabii
a panagtalawataw, kadua ti daranudor ti Greyhound
ken ti ragrag-o dagiti nakaul-ulimek a kabakiran.

Manipud iti Los Angeles, sinurotmo ti dana
ngem dimo ammo dagiti lemma wenno piglat
ti isip a pimpiman, kas ti agay-ayat a no tumira

iti anges kapada ket kasla busi a kellaat ken pannakapnek
idi ubing a ngem itan ket sabali met ti nakapay-an.
Tallopulo ket tallo a biag ti naipatli iti dua-tallo laeng nga oras

iti unget ti bala ni Cho Seung-Hui a diak nakaabrasa
wenno nasabat kadagiti agpampanurnor a kalsada
iti Blacksburg, wenno iti apagapaman a sipnget

iti Jamestown. Kasano ti namaris a panangiladawan
ti napintas a buya iti Williamsburg, ti kolonial a siudad
dagiti kolonial a gagem, dagiti pinanid a panagibtur

dagiti adipen, panangiginggina kadagiti saplit
a makiinnagek iti kudil, tulang, lasag, lua
ken iti araraw ti wayawaya kadagiti rabii a di makaidna?

Sa man itan, daytoy a trahedia, ay, mairukit manen
dagiti pannakitinnaya dagiti aglibas kadagiti matmaturog
nga alad, kadagiti agkikidem a disierto, dagiti imigrante

a rabrabak wenno pannakaideport dagiti amin a kita
ti buteng kadagiti rabii nga aramiden nga aldaw
dagiti makigasanggasat nga agkalay-at kadagiti pader

iti daga wenno iti isip wenno kadagiti beddeng ti linteg.
Agdigos dagiti pasilio iti dara, wenno ti lamisaan ti propesor,
wenno ti pisara a mangikaskassaba iti sagpaminsan a babawi

gapu ta itan, ita nga aldaw, ti tallopulo ket tallo a lib-at
a tallopulo ket tallo met laeng a biag, dardarepdep iti agnanayon
kas kadagiti freeway a di mamingga iti panagdaliasat

a mangungpot iti punganay ti aldaw a kas iti uppat nga aldaw
a panagsubli ti kararua iti naggapuan a kalgaw, iti napalabes
a tawen nga isusurnad iti siudad dagiti di met idi nakaam-ames

a pasamak, agalinggetak itan nga agkamang iti lagip
tapno nanamek ti buya ti James River a nagsangladan
dagiti nagsangpet tapno kadagiti pusek ti natangig a bakir

kadagiti sipnget ti pammati ken aminen nga an-anek-ek
iti lugar a nakayanakan, sadiay, iti nalawa a danum a kaing-ingas
ti baybay, sadiay, iti silaw dagiti milion a kulalanti kadagiti muyong

sadiay a lagipek ti signos dagiti bangungot iti daytoy nga aldaw.
Abril 16, kuna ti kalendario iti sango, ngem sabali ti petsa
ti liday iti aganikki a barukong ta ti dagensen ket addaan bulan,

panawen, oras, minuto. Uppat nga aldaw daydi panangun-unor
kadagiti di mabigatan a dalan ken dagiti din sa met agdungsa a rabii
ngem itan, allangonek ti bagik, iti sirmatak, kitaek ti Virginia

nga am-ammo dagiti kuadernok a nagisuratan kadagiti linglingay.
Uray ti lapis a saksi dagiti estranghero a ragragsak iti pannangan
iti buffet a panagtulakak ken panagikari a dinton maulit ti rabrabak

saanda a maturog ita a rabii, saanda nga aginana, urayenda
dagiti kontro ti kanalbuong, ti kontra signos dagitoy a dara,
ginalon no ar-arigen, maitibnok iti tinta ti panagestoria.

Maysa a tawen a panaglangan iti Virginia ket daytoy itan buribor ti ulo:
iti pannakamasaker ti tallupulo ket tallo a darepdep ken karayo
adda kadi pay laeng mangpadanon kadatao iti ili ti an-anug-ogtayo?

2.
Personal itan ti pananglaglagip ket ti masaker ti darepdep
inringpas ti bala nga agbusi sa ti daraan nga ibit nga agsayasay
kadagiti diding wenno iti sulsuli ti pakpakaasi a saan

nga itodo ti panagtodas kadagiti tagtagainep no diket
bay-an dagitoy a makariing, maigamer kadagiti bigat
a tantannawagan ti init kadagiti agur-uray a siled.

Mabati dagiti katkatawa dagiti pimmusay kadagiti pasilio
kadagiti kisame kadagiti maipilkat nga ib-ibit iti diding
kas tropeo ti naisungani a laing, sirib iti barengbareng.

Lagipem ti dua a lawas a pannakilantip iti siudad ita
ken dagiti kabangibang a pannakaiyaw-awan
iti panagbirbirok iti akademia dagiti dumadangadang.

Agsublikanto ngata pay kas iti dati, ti karayo kas idi?
Karawaem ti sungbat kadagiti sulinek ti panunot
ket ikur-itmo dagiti nailasin a paspasugnod.

A S Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Abril 17-07

The Case of Ilokano as National Language, 3

The rage among informed Ilokano writers, cultural activists, and scholars is palpable.

Even in the silence, I can sense the storm brewing, and the storm is going to be a deluge, and this deluge will test the premises of the cultural idiocy that we see in the governmental policies relative to the national language, national literature, and national culture. I can name some now, with their rage against the systemic and programmatic wiping out of the other lingua francas of the homeland because of the unfair advantage being given to Tagalog as Pilipino as Filipino (say, what is the difference, pray tell!) in all aspects of our national life.

At the very least, this unfair advantage given to Tagalog is an anomaly because it is based on entitlement and on privileges. Leoncio Deriada's position, for instance, to distinguish, in one literary contest sponsored by a government agency, between Tagalog writing and Filipino writing is laudable, and was appropriate, but at the same time, it masks the reality that indeed, Tagalog writing is not distinct from Filipino writing.

In effect, that proposal came in early because the distinction cannot be found, is, in fact, unfounded, unless we accept that a Tagalog writing becomes Filipino writing when we use, in a Tagalog work, some words from Aparri to Zamboanga City, such as 'mafato/napudot'--or 'okinnam'--, and 'este,' 'bien,' or other Chavacano words pidginized from the Spanish.

But this is tokenism, and no amount of language engineering based on tokenism will ever correct the cultural and lingustic injustices inflicted upon millions and millions of peoples--in the plural--in the Philippines, with Sebuano still lording it over as the 'national lingua franca' in the Visayan and Mindanoa, and Ilokano, as the 'national lingua franca' in Northern Luzon, and for history's sake, in the diaspora. For the historical language of the diaspora is none other but Ilokano, but the muffling of the enemy has been so effective, the muffling making it appear that the Ilokano in the diaspora has no voice of his own, has to find that voice in other languages not his own but those of others, such as Tagalog and his pidgin/Hawaiian English that you cannot even recognize as English at all, if the basis is the one you hear from television--from the CNN headquarters.

This tokenism is the culplit--and this is the cause of this sytemic masking off that is making it appear that we have, in fact, already a P/Filipino.

The other culprits to these are well-meaning academics, who, operating from a particular linguistic base, comes up with a totalizing strategy to account everything. Virgilio Enriqueze's "sikolohiyang Filipino" is one prime example, when, in his exuberance to found something called "native psychology" or the more stylish term "indigenous psychology", called the Tagalog experience of "psyche" the "sikolohiyang Filipino." There are other academics of this mold, such as Prospero Covar's "araling Pilipino" and Zeus Salazar's "p/filipinolohiya". Include here the philosopher Leonardo Mercado and we have a quartet that pushed for a totalizing view of the national experience based on one linguistic experience.

Mercado, for instance, in his metalinguistic approach, tried hard to put together the possibilities of loob-nakem-buot coming together but did not succeed, or so I think. The premises are never the same for arriving at that forced conclusion in order to account what, in abstraction, is called "Filipino philosophy', which had nothing to do with the nation but only with some select ethnolinguistic groups representing themselves but never the nation as a whole.

The big intellectual problem--and a huge one at that--in the Philippines is that logical equation being done to account the nation: Tagalog is equal to Pilipino; Pilipino is equal to Filipino.

There has been this shorthand way to make things 'national' for political reasons, part of which is that almost fanatic view that says that when the center has spoken, the whole thing is finished. There is a formula for this in the medieval church, which medievalism still pervades to justify religous moral standards: "Roma locuta est--Rome has spoken." And because Rome has spoken, no one has the right to make a speech again. The word Rome has uttered about anything at all is final and there are no ifs and buts.

The linguistic arrogance in Tagalog began when it did not recognize--it did not have any intention to recognize in the beginning--the other sounds of the other languages only to find out that this linguistic position to account the alphabets of the national language is ultimately wrong.

The sense here is this: that if the equation--this isomorphism--continues, then we have sold our souls to the neocolonizers.


A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Apr 17-07

The Case of Ilokano as a National Language, 2

The ideological consequences of the sloganeering gimmicks of the New Society gave rise to an ideologically impotent understanding of what constitutes a 'nation' and a 'new society.'

The framers of the concept 'new society', those bright boys from the academe, failed miserably to understand that in the building up of a transformed and new society, only one and only one language is not the requirement. Thus, the 'isang bansa, isang diwa' slogan that schoolchildren mouthed from 1972 and onwards propagandized a mentality that was not only serf-serving to those in the center of power, with Manila-centrism providing the flawed backgrey. That slogan simply short-changed us into understanding that democracy, the backbone of that new order, did not require one and only one language and did not intend to stifle and muffle the voices and dreams and hopes of those outside Metro Manila, the humonguous city with its claim to the proverbial and equally ad populum kind of a phrase, 'the true, the good, and the beautiful.' In short, we could have had a 'new society' without the imposed Tagalogization of all that concerns our national life, from awareness of the injustices around us to the zest and vitality that is required to lived the good life in that new society. The myopia is palpable--and the leaders are guilty of this lobotomization of the minds of our people, such that, in the end, the standard of national life became either an Anglicized-Englishicized one or a Tagalogized one, or both depending on whose presidential era one is speaking about.

This failure of the bright boys of Malacanang to see beyond the imprisoning 'one nation, one thought/language' mindset gave rise to the failiure of our collective imagination to build up a county, nation, and society that has multiple national languages.

If we did have the vision, if we had that imagination, we could have set a political philosophy of language that was able to respond to the requisites of democracy. Somewhere, we know of this truth: that the solution to the problems of democracy is more and more democracy.

The solution to the problems of democracy is not dictatorship: political, cultural, economic.

The solution to the problems of democracy is not the oligarchy of those walled within walls--those who take residence in palaces, in the hallowed halls of Congress, in posh villages that do not of the hardship of those who cannot speak Tagalog and neitther English.

The solution to the problems of linguistic and cultural democracy is not the imposition of two colonial and neocolonial languages: English and Tagalog.

For English is the proof of how divided we have become, with the chasm of that division a symbol and a social sin, with the Englicized leaders only talking to themselves and among themselves, and never with and to us.

For Tagalog has become a internal-neocolonial tool of the unknown enemy, well, we know them too, the enemy who has received an email from the gods, a fax message from the goddesses, or a text message from the anitos--the email, the fax, the text all telling them that from hereon, they are the new lords and masters, those who know Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino because they speak the message of the poetically phrased but empty boast of an empty rhetoric, 'isang bansa, isang diwa.'

These are the sins of the fathers, and we urge them to confess of their sins before the Filipino public, telling us, and telling in frankness and courage and daring, that, well, they have been imprisoned by the myopic thoughts of the myopic past and that today, they have realized where their mistakes and sins and failures lie.

Democracy seen in its lights gives us the options, the gift of vision, the freedom of thought. I wonder how we have been imprisoned to this singular national language idea, not challenging it, not rejecting it, not resisting it in a systematic way, excpet in the 'reactionary' theatrics of some legislators who probably did not know how to distinguish the semantic difference between 'a language from the region' and 'a regional language.'

The lesson learned is this: that we can build up a country, we can build up a nation, we can build up a decent and self-respect society by giving decency and respect to the languages and cultures of those in the periphery, of those in the margins, of those outside the center of power, of those outside the academe whose members have become tools to this widespread illusion about the Tagalogization and Englishization of the homeland.

The lesson learned is this: We are not going to allow Ilokano and the other lingua francas of the country, say Sebuano, to go the wastebin of cultural and linguistic history. We have given so much entitlement and privilege to English and Tagalog. Now is that time for us to ask for an accounting of our cultural and linguistic obligations.

At the very least then, Ilokano needs to be declared as a national language. So all the other lingua francas of the country.

A Solver Agcaoili
April 16, 2007/UH Manoa

Ilokano Language and Literature and the Issue of Invisibility

(Note: On April 12, I had the opportunity--or I was given the opportunity--to take part in the Philippine Literature Festival put together by the UH Manoa's Tagalog Program, with the festival showcasing the pride of Philippine letters in the Philippines and abroad, one writing in Tagalog, Joi Barrios, and the rest writing in English: Ninotchka Rosca, R. Zamora Linmark, Michelle Cruz Skinner, Francis Tanglao-Aguas, and Marianne Villanueva, with all of them based in the U.S. Mainland, although Linmark shares his time between teaching in UH Manoa and residency in New York. The topics presented by the panelists were well prepared, with all of them zeroing on the duty of the writer to be faithful to the human experience, to the human condition. Aguas was passionate about his call to keep on with the struggle to make a space for the Filipinos writing in America; Linmark talked about the need to support the small publishing houses, Rosca lamented the negligible percentage of immigrants who read (about 3 percent, she said); Villanueva said she would email me on publishers wanting to publish translations; and Skinner, ever the silent type, talked of her need to be left alone most of the time. In many ways, one theme that cropped up is the issue of invisibility in Filipino-American Writing in America.

I listened intently, taking down notes in my head. I would be asked to give my sharing after the six panelists were done with their presentation, me as a member of that category, 'local writer.'

Below is what I said, my short spiel creating various reactions from some groups. I spoke from the heart--I did not read from any notes but spoke directly to the audience. Here is how I would remember what I said--although I know I would not remember exactly how I parsed them. The issues and meanings I wanted to drive at are reconstructed here. The provocation created by my extemporaneous talk is most welcome to open up the floodgates for a discussion on the mistakes--and prevailing mistakes--related to the concept of 'Philippine Literature', which, in reality, is an anomaly since it is plain and simple Tagalog literature and 'Filipino as National Language', which is, in reality, another anomaly, since it is Tagalog language with a token of 'manang' and 'manong' and a hodge-podge of other words the uninformed proponents pick up along the way. These are two anomalies that need to be addressed now and soon, with urgency, immediacy, and expediency.



I would like to speak from the heart. I am a writer, and I write in three languages: Ilokano, English, Tagalog (mark that I did not say Filipino, initially, because I believe that somewhere along the way, the whole nation, the whole Filipino people have been deceived by this idea that we now have Filipino, although the only proof that claimants can say is that they have a 'Tagalog-like/Tagalog-based language' that is called Pilipino, and now, because this is what is demanded by the opportunity to keep on with the opportunity to Tagalogize the Filipino mind, is now called, unfortunately, Filipino.)

When we speak about invisibility, I am wondering: What could be the invisibility of the Ilokano writer like?

What is that invisibility that is being experienced by the Fillipino American writer writing in English in America and who has been able to create a space for himself, or the opportunity has created a space for him?

What is that invisibility that is being experienced by the Tagalog writer in the Philippines and the abroad, with that writer having all the privileges and entitlements the Ilokano writer does not have?

I do not know. If we have a problem with these languages--or the literatures from these languages--the problem on the shoulder of the Ilokano writer in Hawai`i is far more than the one on the shoulders of these writers.

For the Ilokano writer to be affirmed, he has to write in Tagalog.

For the Ilokano writer to be affirmed, he has to write in English.

Now we have a triple problem for the Ilokano writer: for him to write, for him to write in Tagalog, and for him to write in English to be affirmed, to be accepted.

Considering that in the State of Hawai`i, from the census data of the Philippine Consulate, we have about 9 of 10 Filipinos here who trace their heritage from the Ilokos, from the Amianan. In short, we have here Ilokanos and Ilokano-speaking people whose voices have never been heard. We cannot hear them because they are made invisible, they are rendered invisible by so many social, linguistic, and cultural forces.

The playing field in Philippine American writing has never been level, has never been even, has never been equal.

When I was in California, I edited an Asian Pacific American newspaper. I decided to publish works in Ilokano and Tagalog by poets and essayists. Some liked the idea, as it showed the position of the newspaper in terms of affirming diversity and ethnic pride. But many did not like the idea as this made the paper 'too ethnic.' I held on to the celebration of diversity, and at the cost of losing readers and subscribers, I contintued to pubish ethnic materials, in Ilokano, in Tagalog, and in English, in a variety of topics and issues concerning the Asian Pacific American immigrants, with columnists from New Jersey, San Diego, Salt Lake, Hawaii, Manila, and Los Angeles. I wanted to zero in on the immigrant experience and celebrate that experience using the lens of diversity.

It is this diversity that concerns me now even as we speak of Filipino Literature and Philippine American Writing.

My concern stems from the invisibility of the Ilokano writer and other ethnic writers except Tagalog and English, with all the entitlements and privileges of these two forms of writing.

We do not have these entitlements and privileges in Ilokano writing, not even in this State with the majority of the population tracing their heritage in Ilokano , with a ratio of 9 of 10 Filipinos over here. In all of Philippine history in this State, the writing that we talk of is English writing by Filipinos and it is Tagalog writing by Filipinos sometimes called P/Filipino, ambivalence and ambiguities intact.

I dare say that the Ilokano writer writing in Ilokano has no voice in this State even if he is more than anyone else among the ehtnolinguistic groups coming from the Philippines.

No, his voice has been silent, has been silenced. And he has no space to speak except that space he creates for himself.

He can only talk to another Ilokano writer, and both he and the other are the only readers, are the only listeners. It is the same in the country where we come from; it is the same in this State, our destination State, and no better. How do we deny the voice of the majority of the Filipinos over here? What morals can we resort to to justify this continuing systemic rendering of the Ilokano writer and the Ilokano writer to that category which is not seen, not heard, not allowed to exist in the same way that the Tagalog writer and the English writer and Tagalog writing and English writing are allowed to exist?

I do not know, but like Ninotchka's phrase, the Ilokano writer will certainly continue to be a warrior on the road. He will continue to resist, claim and fight for his rights, and will continue to fight it out till kingdom come.

The prospects are not bright, but an enduring spirit is what is needed here, and a space reserved for the Ilokano writer so he can be permiited to language his pain, his struggle--so that he can learn again to speak, to have his own speech.

We have started this speech--and this will continue from hereon.


(Note: This extemporaneous talk provoked reactions from predictable sectors and individuals. It probably is going around town now, but I will continue to stand my ground. Some ugly truths must be said, verbalized, and worded in an effort to transform this ugly reality that is killing all Ilokanos in the Philippines and in the diaspora. Two languages continue to kill our sensitivities and senbilities, and unless we did something creatively and with understanding, we will end up mouthing our understanding of ourselves in the language of our neocolonizers. That, I think, will inaugurate our death as an ethnolinguistic group.)

Oneing With the Community

(Opening Remarks of A. S. Agcaoili at the 2007 Festival of Drama, Songs, and Short Video, Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program, U of Hawa`i at Manoa, Art Auditorium, April 14, 2007)


In the name of the Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program of the University of Hawai`i at Manoa, in the name of all our students who are about to showcase their talents and gifts this morning, and in the name of all the members of the faculty of this program, please allow me to greet and welcome you all.


In this gathering, we are truly proud to walk hand in hand with our students in this program so that they will be able to confidently show their abilities that demonstrate their love for the heritage they come from. Many of them, we know well, have been born here; many others grew up here and have their minds molded and formed here. But despite these accidents of their birth and growth, they are ever-ready and prepared to go back and trace and retrace their roots and learn as much as they can the ethos, the ways, and mindsets of their ancestors. This readiness and openness in their hearts and soul is, to me, a virtue, and it is a virtue for all of us in the program as well. This is a virtue that is at the same time the wellspring of the pride that is ours, and with you becoming witnesses as well, together we shall all be proud of them.


Please allow me to offer in oblation this program—this Festival of Songs, Drama, and Short Videos—to the two professors of the program who are both retiring this school year, Professors Prescilla Llague Espiritu and Dr. Josie Paz Clausen. Between Profs. Espiritu and Dr. Clausen are 63 years of nurturing our program, long years, indeed, of caring for the culture and the language of the Ilokano who has come here as an exile in the State of Hawai`i, the Ilokano who has come one hundred years ago. It is not pure accident that it is in this centennial of the celebration of the coming of the first sakadas that we are also celebrating our remembering of our debt of indebtedness to Prof. Espiritu and Dr. Clausen. Brothers and sisters and guests, join me then in honoring Manang Precy and Manang Josie and through our festival this morning, we give them our gratitude and thanks because of their patience, industry, and goodness. We bless them as well so that in the years of their retirement, they are blessed with health, strength, joy, and well-being.


Today is indeed extraordinary because we witness a gathering and re-gathering of the members of our community. The joy in me is particular and palpable in witnessing that the parents are here, that the relatives are here, that the Ilokano heritage community is here, and that all those who have come to our assistance and help and aid are all here to be with us. With your presence, you are telling us that we need to continue to develop the Ilokano program in this University because this program is not only for our students who are your children but also for the entire community of Ilokanos and the peoples of Amianan.


Please join me, therefore, in greeting and congratulating the officers and members of Timpuyog: Ilokano Student Organization because of their tireless and endless effort to make this festival happen this morning. Good morning to all of you and long live!

Kammayet ti Programa ti Unibersidad ken ti Komunidad

(Panglukat a Bitla ni A. S. Agcaoili iti 2007 Pabuya ti Drama, Kinnantaan, ken Ababa a Video, Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program, U of Hawai`i at Manoa, Art Auditorium, Abril 14, 2007)


Iti nagan ti Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program ti Unibersidad ti Hawai`i iti Manoa, iti nagan dagiti adalanmi a mangipabuya kadagiti talugadingda ita a bigat, ken kasta met nga iti nagan dagiti mangisursuro iti daytoy a programa, palugodandak koma a mangkablaaw ken mangpadanon kadakayo.


Iti daytoy a tallaong, sidadayawkami a mangkibin kadagiti adalanmi iti daytoy a programa tapno iti kasta ket sipapannakkelda a mangiparang kadatayo amin dagiti iduldulinda a kinasaririt a mangipakita iti panagayatda iti puli a nagtaudanda, a numan pay kaaduanna kadakuada ti nayanak ditoy wenno ditoyen ti nakatubayan dagiti kananakem ken kapampanunotanda, sindadaan dagitoy nga adalan a sublian dagiti kannawid, kaugalian, ken kultura ti puli a naggapuanda. Daytoy a kinasindadaan iti puso ken kararua ket maysa a birtud para kadakami amin iti daytoy a programa, birtud a bubon met laeng ti panangipasindayagmi kadagiti kabaelanda tapno iti kasta, kaduadakayo a kas saksi, maipagpannakkeltayo amin ida.


Palugodandak met koma a mangidaton iti daytoy a program—ti Fiesta ti Kinnantaan, Drama, ken Ababa a Video—kadagiti dua a propesora ti programa nga agpada a nagretiro iti daytoy a tawen ti panagseserrek, da Propesora Prescilla Llague Espiritu ken Dr. Josie Paz Clausen. Iti nagbaetan da Propesora Espiritu ken Dr Clausen ket innem a pulo ket tallo a tawen a panangtagtagibi iti programa, naunday a panawen a panangilala iti kultural ken pagsasao dagiti Ilokano a naitawataw ditoy Estado ti Hawai`i iti las-ud ti sangagasuten a tawen. Saan nga aksidente nga iti sentenario ti selebrasion ti yuumay dagiti immuna a sakada ket ita met a selebrararantayo ti pananglagiptayo iti utang a naimbag a nakem kada Propesora Espiritu ken Dr. Clausen. Ngarud, kakabsat, kaduaendak iti panaglugaytayo kada Manang Prescy ken Manang Josie ket babaen iti daytoy a panagpipiestatayo ita, itedtayo kadakuada ti panagyaman kadakuada gapu iti anus, saldet, ken kinaimbag. Kasta met itedtayo kadakuada ti bendision tapno iti panawen ti panagretiroda ket umagapay kadakuada ti salun-at, pia, ragsak, ken karadkad.


Naisangsangayan daytoy nga aldaw ta maimatangantay manen ti maysa a buya ti panagkakammayet. Partikular ti ragsak kaniak gapu iti pannakaimatangko ti kaadda dagiti nagannak, kabagian, komunidad, ken dagiti aminen a tumultulong kadatayo tapno maparang-aytayo daytoy a programa a saan laeng a programa ti Unibersidad no di ket programa ti intero a komunidad dagiti in-inabo ni Ilokano ken dagiti taga-Amianan a naisadsad ditoy a lugar.


Ngarud, buyogandak iti panangkablaawko kadagtii opisial ken kamkameng ti Timpuyog: Ilokano Students Organization iti awan ressat a panaggamuloda tapno maisayangkat daytoy a fiesta ita a bigat. Naimbag a bigatyo amin a sangapada ken agbiagkayo!

The Case of Ilokano as a National Language, 1

The argument I am putting forward is this: the insistence that the Philippines now have a national language in the form of that chameleon which is Tagalog masquerading as Pilipino and then as Filipino is one of the heavy-handed manipulations that many of the ethnolinguistic groups have had to go through in our history of nation-building. The arrogance that goes with this claim is one that is doubly manipulative, with the entitlement and privilege that has been given Tagalog in the past that continues up to today. The argement could sound like a broken record--some kind of a water under the bridge, but I see that linguistic and cultural injustice here that must be addressed if the county is really serious in doing justice to the rest of the people of the Philippines.

These manipulations, one that have served that narrow interest of those who think only in terms of one ethnolinguistic group and presume that this same ethnolinguistic group can serve as a cover term for all the experiences of the country, have had its heydey of 'fabricated truth' and that it is high time that we have it unmasked in order to transform Philippine reality--especially that reality that has something to do with the national language, the national culture, and the national literature.
The big trouble in the conception of these three concepts--a culture that is national, a language that is national, and a literature that is national--is that all these refer largely to the culture, language, and literature created, produced, performed in the everyday in the Tagalog area and in Manila, clearly indicative of a form of an ethnocentrism passed off as nationalism.

Something is wrong here and there seem to have evolved that complacency in resisting this continuing onslaught on the sensibilities of the other peoples of the country.

One of the key reasons why we have arrived at this terrible situation is the notion that for a country to be truly national, that country should have only one and only language, and one and only one culture. The second one we have achieved: the culture of corruption that is rampant among those who can wield power over the rest of the population, a culture that is slowly creating a seepage in the way we affirm ourselves with dignity and self-respect--and this culture of silence we have adopted in the face of this unwanted onslaught of the Tagalogization of anything belonging to the nation, of the mind of the peoples of all the ethnolinguistic groups, of the Tagalogization of consciousness, of the Tagalogization of all the apparatuses of culture, the media, the economic and political life of the peoples. The problem is the myopia of the framers of the 'national language,' forgetting tha it is possible for a country to have more than one national language because, let us accept it, the myopia is based on the notion, not empirically correct as it is, that the country is divided along linguistic line. The cause of our division has never been along linguistic line: the cause of our division has always been along the terms of domination and oppression, with the dominator against the dominated, the oppressor against the oppressed.

Today, we think different. It would be a service to the country if those who are in the know would understand that a country may opt to have many national languages--and that in opting such, we are more attuned to the realities of our people and not to the expectation of a powerful elite who speak the language of the colonizers and the language that they use to speak or command their domestic helps in Manila, Tagalog.

The making of Ilokano as a national language is long overdue in much the same way that the making of Sebuano as a national language is as expedient as the declaration of ceasefire between the warring factions.

I argue for a rethinking of the national policy on the national language, a policy based on irrationality, on the fear of the unknown, on the disregard and disrespect for the democratic and cultural and linguistic rights of other peoples--in short, a policy that is dictatorial, tyrannical, and neocolonial.

For today, we have a new colonizer in sheep's clothing--and this neocolonizer is the proponent of Tagalog as the vessel and the only vessel of our self-knowledge and self-reflection as a nation. I say: this position can never be correct if measured against the requisites of social justice and fairness. I say: this position is untenable when measured against the demands of linguistic and cultural democracy.

The only way to correct these injustices is declare multiple national languages for the country with multiple respectable lingua francas.

A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manao, Apr 14/07

CHED Endorses Nakem

CHED endorses Nakem Conference

The Commission on Higher Education of the Republic of the Philippines, the government agency tasked to supervise higher education institutions in the country, has endorsed the 2007 Nakem International Conference.

The endorsement assures teachers in the HEIs of claiming credits for professional development and may avail of official business time while attending the four-day conference to be held May 22-25 in Mariano Marcos State University in Batac, Ilocos Norte, the Philippines.

The Nakem Secretariat has also asked the endorsement of the Department of Education and Culture.

Dr. Carlito S. Puno, D.P.A, chairs the CHED.

The 2007 Nakem International Conference has for its theme “Panagpanaw ken Panagindeg—Exile and Settling in Ilokano and Amianan History and Culture.” It is expected that a number of leading scholars, academics, and cultural workers on Ilokano and Amianan life will troop to Batac to take part in the exchange and diffusion of ideas on the various concerns, studies, and issues to be raised.

The 2007 Nakem is convened by Alegria Tan Visaya of the Mariano Marcos State University in the Philippines and Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawai`i at Manoa in the United States.

The chairman of the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino/ Commission on the Filipino Language, Dr. Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco, Mr. Juan SP Hidalgo, Dr. Lilia Quindoza Santiago, Dr. Alegria Tan Visaya, and Dr. Aurelio S. Agcaoili will deliver the keynote addresses.

For more information, contact the Office of the President of MMSU Dr. Miriam E. Pascua or Dr. Visaya, Secretary of the Board of Regents and chair, Nakem 2007 Philippine panel.

Nakem Book Intro

Nakem as Imagination and Critical Consciousness,
Nakem as Our Gift: An Introduction


Aurelio S. Agcaoili, Ph.D.

i.
With this volume, a twin of Saritaan ken Sukisok: Discourse and Research in Ilokano Language, Culture, and Politics (2006), the Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program of the University of Hawai`i at Manoa, in collaboration with Nakem Conferences Inc. and the International Academy for Ilokano and Amianan Studies, offers the atang for the anito, the offertory for and in the name of the peoples of Amianan. The atang is this book.

This offering of this book as the atang is done with reverence and respect for all the peoples who trace their heritage from Amianan. It is also done with humility—with humility rooted in the humus, that consciousness of the ground, with the feet firmly planted in the soil, the head close to the earth, bowed because the bowing is an act of recognition of the sacredness of space, of time, of space-time. The ground here is concrete: it is the Amianan ground, territorial and psychic, and material and memorial: the earth of the Kailokuan, Kordiliera, and the valley of Kagayan—the KKK of Ilokano and Amianan Studies; this earth includes the place beyond the boundaries, beyond the beddeng to open up to new territories, new spaces, new places, new sites, new ground, new kaingin—new clearings in order to commence settling, homing, rooting, re-rooting. We thus include here the earth that even if it is not lived in the everyday, it has remained remembered everyday—the act of remembering one of ‘becoming a member again’: ‘re’ and ‘membering’. For it is in the remembering that the distance is bridged, and the exploring begins, again and again, the exploring always tentative, always a play, always a to-and-fro, always an act of approximating the vast possibilities of the lay of the land before us, the land promising some sense and meaning in life. For it is in the remembering that we get to experience the richness of our stories as peoples, the stories of our departures and arrivals, of our exploration and returning to share with the others the lessons we learned along the way, with our stories getting more and more a part of the ‘big story’, complex but not complicated because we have learned to unspool the thread of the beautiful weave of our many stories becoming one because we have learned the ways to, and the virtues of, synthesis and creation.

Let this book take on its role as a humble repository of some form of knowledge that the 2006 Nakem Centennial Conference has so far produced, a form of knowledge that invites discourse and discussion, conversation and clarification, and dissent and debate. In many ways, it plays up on the power of symbols, with its four parts coming into a fusion, the fusion necessary and urgent.




ii.
Part I situates Nakem Conference as an intellectual and academic exercise through the remarks of the leaders of the University where Nakem was held for the first time: Dr. Linda K. Johnsrud, Dr. Neal Smatresk, Dr. Joseph O’Mealy, and Dr. Amefil Agbayani; Part II gives us directions that will guide us on what road we are to take in pushing for a Nakem Conference that is committed and dedicated to a cause, hence, the need to go back to the ideas and propositions of the three keynote speakers: Dr. Bienvenido L. Lumbera, Dr. Lilia Quindoza Santiago, and Dr. Ma. Crisanta Nelmida Flores; Part III sets the tenor for discourse, with papers drawn from those presented at the conference: Dr. Aurelio S. Agcaoili, Prof. Elizabeth Calinawagan, Dr. Josie P. Clausen, Abraham Flores Jr., Ms. Ana Marcelo, Dr. Vincent K. Pollard, Mr. Julius Soria, Dr. Alegria Tan Visaya, and the testimonies of our students of the Ilokano program: Jeremy Sabugo, Rod Antalan, James Ramos, and Rachel Aurellano; and Part IV, the dedication part, sets the tenor, temper, and tone of the gratitude Nakem has for Prof. Precy Espiritu, one of the many who made it possible for Nakem to come about, with the papers of Dr. Aurelio S. Agcaoili and Mr. Virgil J. Mayor Apostol.

We are dedicating this book to Professor Prescila Llague Espiritu for the 33 years that she put in to give birth, nurture, and sustain the Ilokano Program—its name that I inherited as coordinator is ‘Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program.’ It is our way of saying the panagyaman even if we know we can never thank her enough for her act of seizing the opportunity to let the program grow from a single course, and then two, and then allowing it to bloom and then nurturing it further and with dedication to become the only bachelor’s program of its kind anywhere else in the world. We are aware of the humus in Prof. Espiritu—of her being rooted to the ground. I asked her many times why did she put up with the Ilokano Program, and always, there was one consistent answer: it was a job ‘I had to do.’

That could have been true.

But there are at least two ways of doing a job we have to do.

One, we can do it without the heart and soul and mind, in a neither-here-nor-there way, in that kind of a bahala na understood improperly, the summoning of the gods in the cry of ‘Bahala na!’ not sincere but a lip service.

Or two, we can do it with full heart and soul and mind. This, I think, is what makes the ‘doing’ different; it is what separates it from an ordinary way of doing a job that we have to do. What makes the act of ‘doing’ extraordinary is the heart in the doing, the mind in the doing, the soul in the doing.

As an ‘inheritor’ of this program, I can only be thankful; I can only be grateful. I allow myself to be awed by the symbols and meanings behind this gift of person, this gift of self, this gift of life—for in this program is the present presence of these three: person, self, and life.

iii.
In the coming years, we will continue to gather into books the conference papers presented at the inaugural 2006 Nakem Conference and in the succeeding conferences in the hope that the peoples of Amianan will be able to draw from these researches some inspiration to help critically produce relevant knowledge/s for our peoples in the North and for the country as a whole. In invoking the country, we are not limiting the concept of country as a territory but we are opening it up for exiles, immigrants, and migrant laborers to explore and to ‘talk story’ about the homeland that they remember, the homeland that no matter what, would always have a place in their hearts.

iv.
In naming this movement ‘nakem’, we are plumbing the core concept of Ilokanohood and extending the same concept to the other peoples of Amianan even if we are certain that there are many languages and cultures in this part of the country.
We acknowledge with humility—not with a foolish pride—that in the Amianan, Ilokano has become the lingua franca. This phenomenon is a result of many factors, and one of them is the ‘inherent’ and ‘logical’ interaction and commingling—the nexus—of cultures among the peoples of KKK. We admit a certain privileging here, this we acknowledge as well, and the privileging is a prejudice, knowledge before judgment, a prea+judicium in the way hermeneutics proposes this concept as a keyword to human understanding and communication. Gadamer talks of two kinds of prejudices: one that is negative and thus, infertile, and hence to be rejected; and two, positive, because these prejudices lead one to productive knowledge. It is this second sense of prejudice that we invoke the prejudicial in the privileging of Ilokano as a lingua franca of Amianan.
The privileging of Ilokano in the Nakem Conferences and in the issues raised in this volume is a consequence of the historical circumstances that gestated what is now being proposed as ‘Ilokano and Amianan Studies.’ In light of this, we hope to go beyond what the lingua franca offers in order to plumb the wisdom of the ages from the other ethnolinguistic groups of Amianan.


Honolulu, Hawai`i
April 2007

2006 Nakem Speakers & Participants

2006 NAKEM CONFERENCE SPEAKERS AND PARTICIPANTS


Abadilla, Ariel
Abajo-Quides, Lydia
Abinsay, Felipe
Acidera, John Henry
Agacid, Sharon
Agag, Sarah
Agbayani, Amy
Agcaoili, Aurelio
Agsalog, Danny
Aguilar, Erwin
Aguilar, Marie
Agustin, Abigail
Albano, Gene
Albayalde, Leonora
Ancheta, Cornelio
Antalan, Rod
Aquino, Bettina
Aquino, Consolacion
Aquino. Edward
Arakaki, Dennis
Aurellano, Rachelle
Bagaoisan, Calvin
Barcelona, Elena
Basuel, Letty
Basuel, Romulo
Bautista, Ernie
Baustista, Gloria
Bautista, Rose
Baxa, Artemio
Bederio, Concepcion
Beniga, Elias
Berg, Lyla
Bernales, Teresita
Bolong, Ma. Luz
Brown, Patricia
Buduhan, Lydia
Bueno, Amalia
Bumanglag, Manuel
Caligtan, Grace
Capina, Lito
Caraang, Christine
Castigo, Marilyn
Centeno, Carmen
Clausen, Josie
Codiamat, Marianne
Coloma, Krystel
Concepcion, Bederio
Conde, Francisco
Corpuz, Annie
Cuaresma, Charlene
Daproza, Brigido
Daproza, Rose
Daquip, Tina
Dayao, Annie
De Aquino, Rose
Domingo, William
Ellorin, Bernard
Epan, Dolores
Espejo, Marlon
Espinas, Deanna
Espiritu, Precy
Estoque, Erlinda
Evangelista, Vincent
Felipe, Virgilio
Fernandez, Perlie
Fernando, Norma
Flores, Abraham Jr.
Flores, Eddie
Flores, Ma. Crisanta
Fonacier, Elvira
Funtanilla, James
Funtanilla, Janelle
Gabriel, Janice
Galat, Absalon
Garces, Nicki
Gasmen, Imelda
Gonzalves, Theodore
Guerero, Adrialina
Guerrero, Katrina
Guerrero, Kerry
Guillermo, Maricon
Gutierrez, Lynn
Ide, Yoko
Javines, Michael
Johnsrud, Linda
Julian, Estrella
Julian, Peter
Lingle, Linda (Governor)
Liongson, Nicetas
Liongson, Raymund
Llacuna, Ruth
Losch, Naomi
Luga, Jacquelyn
Lumbera, Bienvenido
Magdalena, Fred
Malate, Agnes
Mak, Alice
Malicdem, Virginia
Malinnag, Andres
Mallanao, Christopher
Manahan, Joey
Manuel, Joel B.
Manzano, Helena
Marcelo, Ana
Mendigo, Rosalina
Menor, Katrina
Montero, Clem
Nagasaka, Itaru
Nagtalon-Miller, Helen
Ochoa, Cynthia
O’Mealy, Joseph
Orlanda, Elva Lois
Ortega-Bolong, Luz
Panida, Madelyn
Pablo. Josephine
Pagatpatan, Vivian Luz
Palafox, Shaun
Pascua, Daniel Jay
Pascual, Melissa
Pasiwen, Cesaria
Pe Pua, Rogelia
Pinera, Steven
Pollard, Vincent
Pukahi, Lucianne
Ragasa, Lorebeth
Raquel, Elizabeth
Rivera, Corazon
Ramos, James
Raras, Jaime
Reed, Lawrence
Rigonan, Conception
Rivera, Richard
Rose, Jennifer
Rupisan, Susan
Ruth, Llacuna
Sabugo, Jeremy
Saclamitao, Monalisa
Sagayadoro, Tony
Saludes, Pacita
Sandi, Valerie
Santiago, Lilia Quindoza
Santos, Andrea Alejo
Schmidt, Richard
Singh, Gary
Smatresk, Neal
Soria, Estrella
Soria, Gary
Soria, Julius
Soria, Marcelino
Soria, Trixia
Sumigat, Chester
Suyat, Zenaida
Tabin, Lorenzo
Tablit Jr., Mario
Tadena, Modesto
Tagaban, Angelica
Taong, Estrella Pada
Taong, Paul
Taylan, Roxanne
Toyama, Jean
Trimillos, Ricardo
Tugade, Terry Gabriel
Tugade, Tito
Valdez, Rowena
Valdez, Venus
Verzon, John
Victorio, Edith
Villalobos, Mod
Visaya, Alegria
Walch, Nancy
Yee, Barbara
Yoro, Amaldo
Yoshioka, Jim
Zamar, Sheila

Nakem Book Intro

Nakem as Imagination and Critical Consciousness,
Nakem as Our Gift: An Introduction


Aurelio S. Agcaoili, Ph.D.


i.
With this volume, a twin of Saritaan ken Sukisok: Discourse and Research in Ilokano Language, Culture, and Politics (2006), the Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program of the University of Hawai`i at Manoa, in collaboration with Nakem Conferences Inc. and the International Academy for Ilokano and Amianan Studies, offers the atang for the anito, the offertory for and in the name of the peoples of Amianan. The atang is this book.

This offering of this book as the atang is done with reverence and respect for all the peoples who trace their heritage from Amianan. It is also done with humility—with humility rooted in the humus, that consciousness of the ground, with the feet firmly planted in the soil, the head close to the earth, bowed because the bowing is an act of recognition of the sacredness of space, of time, of space-time. The ground here is concrete: it is the Amianan ground, territorial and psychic, and material and memorial: the earth of the Kailokuan, Kordiliera, and the valley of Kagayan—the KKK of Ilokano and Amianan Studies; this earth includes the place beyond the boundaries, beyond the beddeng to open up to new territories, new spaces, new places, new sites, new ground, new kaingin—new clearings in order to commence settling, homing, rooting, re-rooting. We thus include here the earth that even if it is not lived in the everyday, it has remained remembered everyday—the act of remembering one of ‘becoming a member again’: ‘re’ and ‘membering’. For it is in the remembering that the distance is bridged, and the exploring begins, again and again, the exploring always tentative, always a play, always a to-and-fro, always an act of approximating the vast possibilities of the lay of the land before us, the land promising some sense and meaning in life. For it is in the remembering that we get to experience the richness of our stories as peoples, the stories of our departures and arrivals, of our exploration and returning to share with the others the lessons we learned along the way, with our stories getting more and more a part of the ‘big story’, complex but not complicated because we have learned to unspool the thread of the beautiful weave of our many stories becoming one because we have learned the ways to, and the virtues of, synthesis and creation.

Let this book take on its role as a humble repository of some form of knowledge that the 2006 Nakem Centennial Conference has so far produced, a form of knowledge that invites discourse and discussion, conversation and clarification, and dissent and debate. In many ways, it plays up on the power of symbols, with its four parts coming into a fusion, the fusion necessary and urgent.




ii.
Part I situates Nakem Conference as an intellectual and academic exercise through the remarks of the leaders of the University where Nakem was held for the first time: Dr. Linda K. Johnsrud, Dr. Neal Smatresk, Dr. Joseph O’Mealy, and Dr. Amefil Agbayani; Part II gives us directions that will guide us on what road we are to take in pushing for a Nakem Conference that is committed and dedicated to a cause, hence, the need to go back to the ideas and propositions of the three keynote speakers: Dr. Bienvenido L. Lumbera, Dr. Lilia Quindoza Santiago, and Dr. Ma. Crisanta Nelmida Flores; Part III sets the tenor for discourse, with papers drawn from those presented at the conference: Dr. Aurelio S. Agcaoili, Prof. Elizabeth Calinawagan, Dr. Josie P. Clausen, Abraham Flores Jr., Ms. Ana Marcelo, Dr. Vincent K. Pollard, Mr. Julius Soria, Dr. Alegria Tan Visaya, and the testimonies of our students of the Ilokano program: Jeremy Sabugo, Rod Antalan, James Ramos, and Rachel Aurellano; and Part IV, the dedication part, sets the tenor, temper, and tone of the gratitude Nakem has for Prof. Precy Espiritu, one of the many who made it possible for Nakem to come about, with the papers of Dr. Aurelio S. Agcaoili and Mr. Virgil J. Mayor Apostol.

We are dedicating this book to Professor Prescila Llague Espiritu for the 33 years that she put in to give birth, nurture, and sustain the Ilokano Program—its name that I inherited as coordinator is ‘Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program.’ It is our way of saying the panagyaman even if we know we can never thank her enough for her act of seizing the opportunity to let the program grow from a single course, and then two, and then allowing it to bloom and then nurturing it further and with dedication to become the only bachelor’s program of its kind anywhere else in the world. We are aware of the humus in Prof. Espiritu—of her being rooted to the ground. I asked her many times why did she put up with the Ilokano Program, and always, there was one consistent answer: it was a job ‘I had to do.’

That could have been true.

But there are at least two ways of doing a job we have to do.

One, we can do it without the heart and soul and mind, in a neither-here-nor-there way, in that kind of a bahala na understood improperly, the summoning of the gods in the cry of ‘Bahala na!’ not sincere but a lip service.

Or two, we can do it with full heart and soul and mind. This, I think, is what makes the ‘doing’ different; it is what separates it from an ordinary way of doing a job that we have to do. What makes the act of ‘doing’ extraordinary is the heart in the doing, the mind in the doing, the soul in the doing.

As an ‘inheritor’ of this program, I can only be thankful; I can only be grateful. I allow myself to be awed by the symbols and meanings behind this gift of person, this gift of self, this gift of life—for in this program is the present presence of these three: person, self, and life.


iii.
In the coming years, we will continue to gather into books the conference papers presented at the inaugural 2006 Nakem Conference and in the succeeding conferences in the hope that the peoples of Amianan will be able to draw from these researches some inspiration to help critically produce relevant knowledge/s for our peoples in the North and for the country as a whole. In invoking the country, we are not limiting the concept of country as a territory but we are opening it up for exiles, immigrants, and migrant laborers to explore and to ‘talk story’ about the homeland that they remember, the homeland that no matter what, would always have a place in their hearts.


iv.
In naming this movement ‘nakem’, we are plumbing the core concept of Ilokanohood and extending the same concept to the other peoples of Amianan even if we are certain that there are many languages and cultures in this part of the country.
We acknowledge with humility—not with a foolish pride—that in the Amianan, Ilokano has become the lingua franca. This phenomenon is a result of many factors, and one of them is the ‘inherent’ and ‘logical’ interaction and commingling—the nexus—of cultures among the peoples of KKK. We admit a certain privileging here, this we acknowledge as well, and the privileging is a prejudice, knowledge before judgment, a prea+judicium in the way hermeneutics proposes this concept as a keyword to human understanding and communication. Gadamer talks of two kinds of prejudices: one that is negative and thus, infertile, and hence to be rejected; and two, positive, because these prejudices lead one to productive knowledge. It is this second sense of prejudice that we invoke the prejudicial in the privileging of Ilokano as a lingua franca of Amianan.
The privileging of Ilokano in the Nakem Conferences and in the issues raised in this volume is a consequence of the historical circumstances that gestated what is now being proposed as ‘Ilokano and Amianan Studies.’ In light of this, we hope to go beyond what the lingua franca offers in order to plumb the wisdom of the ages from the other ethnolinguistic groups of Amianan.


Honolulu, Hawai`i
April 2007

Ilokano as National Language Campaign

Espiritu and the Spirit of the Ilokano and Amianan Peoples,
Intellectual Lifework, and the Birthing of Nakem Conferences


Aurelio S. Agcaoili, Ph.D.



(A testimonial essay in honor of Prof. Prescila Llague Espiritu, on the occasion of her retirement from the University of Hawai`i after 33 years of service as an advocate of heritage culture and a teacher of Ilokano as a heritage language)



0. The Espiritu, The Spirit, and The Anito

To speak of ‘espiritu’ is to invoke the sacred, the divine, and the godly. To arrest the concept and make it as one’s own, appropriate it in the way the hermeneuts do—borrow it and never return it by making it as one’s own in order to serve one’s ends and interests—is to make ‘espiritu’ as spirit, to make it as the anito of the ‘idi ugma,’ the élan vital of the ages, the same life force of the peoples of Ilokos and Amianan. This is what we declare: To make the lifework of Professor Prescila Espiritu as the anito of what we inheritors of a program would like to pursue in the years to come.


We are appropriating Professor Espiritu’s name—but we are appropriating as well the vocation and work in that name. This is the bigger context and political position I am taking in taking a look at a colleague’s lifework and try to unravel before the public the mind that has taken permanent residency in that lifework.


The borrowed colonial term ‘espiritu’ for the peoples of the Philippines, and in a more specific sense, for the peoples of the Ilocos and Amianan, is the anito and no other, the sense of the past and the present and the future—the sense of time collapsing into a continuum and into an eternity, its configuration divisible only by the temporal dynamics of human need for boundaries, for categories, for labels, that, in the final sense, are not necessary when, in the mystical union of language and silence, silence takes on language, silence becomes language in its fullness, and language becomes silence, its language in full and beyond it, a silence in quietude and stillness, placid as placid can be.


I am not aware that there are many families in the Philippines carrying the Espiritu surname, not perhaps in the way one would give up counting dela Cruzes, Ramoses, and Santoses—some kind of a last name that one Spanish governor general imposed upon the people when, in that need for control and administration, he passed an edict requiring all the subjects of the royal crown to have their own first and last name, some kind of a biological taxonomy imposed upon a people now growing restive and restless and revolutionary. The pontifical power of imperium commingling with the heavens, of course, blessed that crown that ruled the people for more than three hundred years, bribing them with the promises of heaven and salvation, and making them cower in fear with the dread of ‘the eternal fires of hell.’

When last names do come few and far between in the Philippines, there are several reasons that come tickling one’s mind, and this is accord with some zest and vigor from the irrepressible rumors of a republic eternally in search of itself: (a) the male members of the clan, tribe, family, or the village bearing that last name contributed warriors in the sporadic wars against the Spaniards, the Americans, and the Japanese—in that order—and got themselves killed, hence, the decimation; and (b) the male members belong to the elite and/or the bourgeoisie that is not known to ‘multiply’ a lot because they tended to have some kind of a ‘genetic sexual attraction’ for each other, hence, ending up not genetically preconditioned to reproduce because they are marrying their own cousins or distant relatives. Think of evolutionary development in reverse here. The Philippines has a fair share of this ‘cousin-marrying-cousin phenomenon’, and some members of these families are in the alleys of power in the homeland, which explains in many ways the literal and figurative impotency and infecundity of these ‘honorable’ men and women in public administration and governance. I am not certain, though, of the ‘evolutionary’ objectivity—or that ‘rigor’ in hard science—involved in this ‘popular knowledge’.

Knowing Professor Prescila Espiritu for many years, I am convinced that the reason why there are not many Espiritus is that the family, tribe, and clan is a bunch of bold and daring and courageous people who were ready to face the challenges of the everyday in both the personal and the social level—that indeed, the Espiritus somehow found their way to the warfront, literally, historically, politically, and culturally and offered themselves in oblation for and in the name of the homeland.
There may be few Espiritus, for sure, but the ‘espiritu’ as life’s energy is not a case of quantity, not a play of numbers, but one that serves as an engine in the pursuit of that which is good because it is true, the true because it is beautiful, the beautiful because it is good, and the good because it is true. The ‘espiritu,’ thus, as élan vital in the social struggle and selfless sacrifice one gets involved with is the same ‘espiritu’ of her name, this teacher, mentor, colleague, and cultural advocate, who, having come at the right place and the right time in this land of Ilokano immigrants—this Hawai`i that is both ‘gloria’ and ‘not-so-gloria’ of many Ilokanos—took advantage of that opportunity to build a program that has, in the last three decades, served the Ilokano people of this State.


1.0 Paths Crossing


Professor Espiritu’s path and mine were—are—always crossing. In a way, her cultural biography insofar as the advocacy for Ilokano studies is concerned, is linked up in a certain way with that of my own, and this fact of our cultural life being linked up is made more meaningful by the fact that I came into the Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program of the University as inheritor of this program’s many blessings as well as its challenges.

My involvement in Ilokano studies—the studies about Ilokano life, culture, politics, language, arts, economics, history, and literature—can be traced back to the early days of Martial Law when all of a sudden, the chaotic country and unruly republic and unrestrained revolution all fell silent and bulldozers cleared roads and highways were built and electric light came into the villages. I remember hearing the old folk narrative forms on radios—dallot, the epic Lam-ang, the duayya, the samiweng—and hearing them all with surprise and delight. I remember mulling over the words I heard, their sounds mystical, their suggestions rich, and their references earthy and yet joyous. I remember that when I heard the words I had a preference for something always got stirred in my soul. I remember us young men and women reciting our promise to help pursue the aims of the New Society as envisioned by then President Ferdinand Marcos and my winning a poetry contest on radio, the contest piece a play of phrases, a sleight of hand of sounds, a trick of thought I now barely recall. I just knew that if I played up all these ingredients well, I could make a poem, and that poem could be one of the best Ilokano poems there ever was. That was exuberance of youth, plain and simple braggadocio, true, but that would inaugurate my endless love affair with the Ilokano language, the first language I ever heard.

Born in an Ilokanized part of an Ibanag country in the valleys of Cagayan, Ilokano was the first language Professor Espiritu heard even if her parents were Tagalog, her father being a businessman who moved to that part of the country in response to a business opportunity that beckoned to him. The boundaries are porous in a multilingual and multicultural country such as the Philippines, and depending on the circumstances of one’s birth and upbringing, one member of an ethnolinguistic group could easily become a member of another one as the years go by. This is not to be seen as cooptation but a volitional act demanded by the accidents of life. Survival is the first of the ethical principles and one has to survive first before discoursing about good and its lack. In the graveyard, the rules are the same for all of the dead—the rules of dead language, dead desires, and dead silences. There are no ethical rules among the dead; the rules are for the living.
Among the living, the story of the ethics of survival is not the same.

What delights us no end in the life story of Professor Espiritu is her decision to embrace her Ilokanoness and her Ilokano self, she being born in an Ilokanized country, without at the same time denying her being a Tagalog. It was not to be one of exclusion; it was to be inclusion of all that she was—and is. This decision would bring her to this part of the world—and the meaning and relevance of that decision to embrace her Ilokano self as well as her Tagalog self is that it would lead her to the doorstep of the academe, that more than thirty years ago, needed a cultural advocate of a heritage and who would teach the language through which that heritage is being mediated. In many of our get-together with friends, this idea of meaning and relevance would crop up and I would say—and everyone would confirm—that all of these decisions were part of a grander design for a grander scheme of things we do not know, and which, more than thirty years ago, was not known to Professor Espiritu as well. We are learning from hindsight, but the road ahead is wide and bright. There is much Ilokano and Amianan metaphysics in this view of things, but having embraced our Ilokano selves, there is only that eureka that attends to a knowledge that should have been there a long time ago.


2.0 Intellectual Lifework


There is a saying about a person’s worth measured by the book he or she writes and leaves behind as a legacy to his or her people, to his or her ethnolinguistic community, and to the intellectual community to which he or she is a part. Professor Espiritu is leaving behind two books, not one, both books blazing a trail in Ilokano language pedagogy, an area of interest that is rarely valued in the Philippines, and arrogantly and ignorantly assumed by academics even in the Ilocos that, having been born into the language, they claim they already know Ilokano and its secrets, its magic and its enchantment, and its terrors and surprises. This is the same arrogance and ignorance of many of the country’s educational policy makers, who, in their confused and conflicted minds, keep on sweeping the ‘dust’ of Ilokano life and culture under the rug, and letting that dust stay there for as long as their arrogance and ignorance remain their core value and virtue, justifying their act, again with arrogance and ignorance, that they will continue to do this ‘sweeping under the rug’ in the name of the sacred nation, the sanctified republic, the holy country, and the blessed colonial language of the elite and the sacrosanct national language whose beginnings are a history and story of machinations and political maneuverings by uninformed cultural and academic elites whose voices reflect those of the center, those of hegemonic Manila, and those who pontificate of the need for ‘one and only one national language’ so that each one umili—each citizen—would be able to speak to each other in that ‘one and only one language’ from the center of power, economics, and culture.

The elites are still around, lording it over all of us, and making us mimic them as if we never have a mind of our own, speaking their own speech, forming our lips in the way they form their lips so that we would be able to pronounce well their own sounds as if to the regional language passed off as national language we are all born.

The elites do not know, of course, that they are presiding over our own linguistic and cultural death—and even if they have come to know of that knowledge, they have refused to accept that they are committing cultural tyranny and linguistic dictatorship. Such has been the lot of Ilokanos; such has been the lot of all other languages and cultures of the Philippines except Tagalog and English and the cultures they propagate, propagandize, produce, and reproduce. Even as I say this, I will be accused—as has been in the past—of being a reactionary, of being unable to see the politics behind the choice of one regional language over another, of refusing to see, to follow the warped logic of one academic that wantonly and triumphantly took pride, in her essay, that each child in the corrupt and corrupting land is now singing each morning the ‘Lupang Hinirang,’ the country’s national anthem, and that this is done by all of the children of the sad and sorrowing land, the children whose minds are ready for linguistic and cultural lobotomy, their singing of the national anthem each morning a sufficient proof for justifying that Tagalog has come to stay and rule and preside over all the ways we see the world. There is, of course, a systematic failure of knowledge in this claim—this failure to see the others, the ‘othered’ ethnolinguistic groups of the country, because one has been able to successfully take a position that is comfortable and convenient, with the largesse and benefits that go with such a position. Comfort blinds comfortably; convenience blinds conveniently. We call this the excess of exuberance, the vice of ‘triumphalism’, or the ‘blindedness’ that goes with victory, pushing others to the unknown margins, the unkind hills, the terror-filled mountains, and the unfamiliar boundaries because these ‘othered’ others do not matter in the national experience, in the national discourse, in the national accounting of who we are as a people.

These are difficult and painful realities—and they are ugly as well.

The difficulty is not so much on the victor: they hear their own voices, their voices loud and clear, thundering, colonizing, superior—The Voice.

The difficulty is on those who were not given the chance to be heard, those whose voices were snatched of them, their vocal cords slit, their throats pried open or muffled, whichever was easier to accomplish. In the course of the country’s history, many academics became a party to this orgy of difficulty, to this orgy of victors against the vanquished, with teachers colonizing students in English and colonizing them once again in Tagalog. This double colonization is a situation most difficult for so many of the ethnolinguistic groups of the Philippines—and those who have been entrusted the knowledge to know did not know, did not care to know, or refused to know because speaking in English was good for ‘the export of warm bodies’ in the oilfields of the Middle East and in the high rises of Singapore and Hong Kong, and speaking in Tagalog entitles you to citizenship in the nation searching for a single language by eradicating other languages and valorizing one but only one to erase the vestiges of disunity, underdevelopment, corruption, bad leadership, and miscommunication, poverty, misery, and the myriad abstractions they link with the sins of diversity and plurality. This is, of course, propaganda done badly, with wrong premises, with skewed conclusions about what constitutes unity despite diversity, and oneness despite the multitude of languages and cultures of the country.

In the face of all these, there was one thing that was happening in the University of Hawai`i at Manoa. I asked around how did it ever happen that in 1972, the Ilokano language finally came into the halls of the academe, and after 66 years of historical presence in the Hawaiian Islands it finally got to be recognized as the “native language of the majority of Filipino immigrants in the United States,” in the words of the scholar and lexicographer Carl Rubino. I got some answers: there was a need for an Ilokano language course at the University that was why Professor Espiritu was asked to teach it.
That was history—a history of need, not a history of want.

Or a history of ‘want’ based on a real, heartfelt ‘need.’ While everyone in the country was going agog and gung ho with a national language that was as schizophrenic as some victimizers and victims of militarization and Martial Law were, there was, in the University of Hawai`i, that singular and sacred act of digging a garden, putting the organic soil back, and sowing the seed of Ilokano language pedagogy. While the brilliant people of the country’s Ministry of Education and Culture did not know exactly what education and culture they were ministering and instead imposing their draconian measure to make everyone speak in English and Tagalog by surgically removing the brains of students and inserting in there the strange sounds of strange languages and inculcating the grammar of submission to these educational policy makers their ‘untried’ truths about the connection between English and Tagalog, and the love of country, the Ilokano language program at this University began.

Like the act of giving birth, the beginnings were not easy.

For one, the Ilokanos themselves have lost their belief in the sanctity of their words, the lyricism and song and music of their language, the beauty of the world revealed by their speech, and the logic that comes off from their discourses. While there was a need, as some people perceived, and as some people had made known to the University and the people who should know better and who were in the know—or who were willing to try to get to know of the possibilities of offering Ilokano as a language course—the necessary support from so many sources was not easy to come by. Like the act of birthing, gestation was a long and arduous process, one that took years and years to go through, always requiring much patient understanding and an enduring spirit.

But Professor Espiritu did what had to be done, always on the lookout for opportunities, for the challenges that went with putting up another course and another one and promoting these courses among the students, among the heritage teachers, among the members of the community. For more than three decades, this sustained spirited of action, this dedication and commitment that knew no bounds, oozed out of Professor Espiritu’s mind and heart and soul, the spirited action dominating her, possessing her, egging her on, enchanting her, urging her, and prodding her to move on. Each year was a challenge since that first time that Ilokano was offered, finally, as a legitimate academic course with legitimate academic credits. That recognition by the University was more than sufficient to put a stamp to Ilokano, making it as legitimate as any other language taught at the University and spoken by many immigrant homes in the communities.


3.0 Nakem and the Birthing of a Movement


Professor Espiritu’s retirement came after much lingering. I heard for the first time she was retiring—or she was planning to retire—some six years ago. Like a parent to her child who is going away for the first time—except that her retirement is the reverse, with the one retiring going away and her program left behind to, with much hope and work, grow and bloom some more—there was much tentativeness in the first steps to go away, staying put as much as she could, holding on to the memories, holding on to that which is dear to her for the years and years of leisurely walking along the corridors of buildings and the walkways between them after a joyful class of the structure of Ilokano or a class on Philippine drama or a class on modern Philippine film, courses all that she diligently put together, conceptualized, designed.

My privilege in witnessing all these is mine alone—singular and sacred. It is singular because the historical situation and circumstances of my inheritance chose me; it is sacred because this ‘choosing’ is a call, a vocation in the way of the Latin ‘vocare,’ when the gods choose you to fulfill a mission. I can only fall on my knees and beg for grace and guidance.
I did not have any emotional and psychic investment in the program prior to the thirty-three years that Professor Espiritu manned the Ilokano program. While it is true that I had had on-and-off relationship with the Ilokano program by way of the lectures and speaking tours that I did in the interim prior to my coming in on board as the program coordinator, that relationship was not sufficient to prove that now my life has intertwined with it. It was not to be so until in late 2005, Professor Espiritu and I began to brainstorm, plan, and organize the 2006 Nakem Centennial Conference, the program’s contribution to the planned Filipino Centennial Celebration honoring the first 15 sakadas to set foot in the Islands in 1906, all of them, incidentally, Ilokanos.

The Nakem Conference was to be the bind that held us together—with our minds oneing in so many of the issues that attended to a respectable academic conference we had in mind, with intellectuals and cultural workers coming from all over and attending and participating and delivering papers on Ilokano and Amianan issues, intellectuals and cultural workers that have so much to share about Ilokano life, Ilokano culture, Ilokanoness—in the Philippines or in the diaspora.

Professor Espiritu’s huge role in the conference was to push me into thinking ahead of many things, including that obligation to name what we were both thinking, the naming perhaps an unconscious act on my part as a creative writer, with my world always burdened, delighted, and terrorized by the act of naming a human and poetic experience, rendering that name into language and verses and stanzas in order to share the poetic truth the mediated—the ‘languaged’—experience offers.
Problems of logistics saddled the conceptualization—but all told, with the two of us assisted by colleagues and friends and advocates of the same linguistic issues we were fighting for—the problems turned out to be opportunities for learning and for dreaming on and for pursuing our dream about a movement that would bring all scholars and leaders to the bargaining table so that once and for all, we begin to discuss the issues about us before other people discuss about us without us knowing that they are now doing so.


4.0 Commitment to the Community


In 2006, and in an effort to sanctify the sacrifices of sakadas—the sugarcane plantation workers who first came to Hawai`i as indentured laborers valued for their bodies and brawn and not their brains for it was assumed they did not have, or that some of the laborers had to lie about their having some kind of an education—the Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program came out with Ani/Harvest. In that book, Professor Espiritu writes on the genesis of her cultural advocacy, the essay also her acceptance speech of the award bestowed upon her by the GUMIL Filipinas in its 2006 National Conference and Convention: “My commitment to the establishment and development of the Ilokano Program at the UHM, since I started teaching the first course in 1972, has been primarily motivated by the notion of Ilokano becoming an obscure language. I believe that we must not allow Ilokano to be relegated to the category of ‘dying language.’ A truly living language with approximately twenty million speakers worldwide, and the native or heritage tongue of the majority of Filipinos in the diaspora must not be set aside as a dispensable commodity, undeserving of respect and preservation. With all our collective efforts and advocacy—educators, writers, Ilokano organizations, and millions of Ilokano speakers—our Ilokano language and culture will not only survive, it will thrive!”

There are not many of the educators like Professor Espiritu, whether we speak of educators in the Philippines, in the United States, or in other countries where there are Ilokanos. Many Ilokanos in the country and abroad look at the Ilokano language and culture with disdain, sometimes with the eyes and rulers of outsiders, relegating Ilokano in the dark corners of their consciousness, or simply dismissing it as some kind of a pest that needs to be swatted and then trashed and completely forgotten. The Ilokanos in the United States tend to become too busy becoming Americans in an effort to be accepted more easily by the mainstream community. Some busy themselves losing their Ilokano accent, looking down on those who have been here for so long and yet their Ilokano accent trails them like a mad ghost, haunting and provoking, teasing and revealing the truth that beneath the façade of Americanization is that fact that Ilokanos are Ilokanos even if they had already switched their last name from “Bulong” to “McLeaves” to commence and complete, in one full sweep, their Americanization process.

We can name a few people from the more respectable higher institutions of learning who have the heart and passion for things Ilokano—and by extension, Amianan: Beth Calinawagan of the University of the Philippines Baguio; Visitacion Mamuad, Onofrecia Ibarra, Jeremias Calixto, and Alegria Tan Visaya of Mariano Marcos State University; Jaime Raras of the University of Northern Philippines; Arnold Molina Azurin, Lilia Quindoza Santiago, Noemi Rosal, Mario Rosal, Ofelia Silapan, and Roderick Galam of the University of the Philippines Diliman; the faculty of the University of Hawai`i at Manoa; and the scholars Lawrence Reid and Carl Ralph Galvez Rubino. For a people of more than twenty million and having only a handful of scholars in the academe to study and conduct consciousness-raising programs to convince the Ilokanos and other people of the country and abroad into joining the struggle premised on the knowledge and truth that the Ilokano language, Ilokano culture, and Ilokano literature are not ‘regional’ but national in scope, this situation is unforgivable. It is also a linguistic, cultural, and literary anomaly that every serious scholar, teacher, creative writer, and cultural leader of the Philippines should address and resolve with urgency.

There is no way we can accept in the spirit of justice and fairness—and with the standards of cultural and linguistic democracy—that Ilokano language is ‘only a regional language’ and that Ilokano literature is ‘only a regional literature.’ For the facts are clear: Ilokano is spoken in many parts of the country and is not confined in the Ilokos, in the Cordilleras, and in Cagayan Valley. We have to account the Ilokano speakers in Mindoro and Palawan; we have to account the Ilokano speakers in Mindanao.

We have to account as well the literature, in all its forms, that is being produced in these areas, including the kind of cosmopolitan and educated literature of the Ilokanos being produced in Manila and the cities and other urban areas, the kind of Ilokano literature that is being produced in the center of power, commerce, and culture mediated by unthinking pop cultural forms that do not contain sufficient energies for self-reflection and self-criticism: the boob tube television dictated by Manila consciousness, by Manila capital, and by Manila taste; the broadsheet and tabloid newspapers that give a token recognition of ‘news and features’ from the regions; the cinema that has become an instrument of a ‘massified form of aesthetics and human experience’ with only a handful that takes on the cudgels to bring into the social consciousness of the many the injustices the peoples outside Metro Manila are suffering from.

The isomorphism of Manila-centric view of ‘national experience’ and Tagalog consciousness via language, literature, and other pop cultural forms has given rise to generations of Filipinos that have measured each other according the norms of colonial power, such as the ruler provided by English, and internal domination of a Tagalog consciousness that has gone on and on unchecked because everyone is busy learning English and Tagalog to measure up. We cannot adopt here a position of one scholar that says that we have been able to colonize English—that we now have, indeed, Filipino English and thus, this proves that we do not have any problem anymore as a people and as a nation because we can now speak the kind of English that the English-speaking peoples of the world speak. This, to me, is untenable—in much the same way that it is untenable to say that we now speak Tagalog and since Tagalog is Pilipino and since Pilipino has metamorphosed into Filipino, then all shall be well and that all other ethnolinguistic groups in the country should now keep silence, keep mum, and say a thousand ‘Amen,’ the Amen like the Hebrew that seals the act of resignation in trust, in faith, and no complaint.

In turn, then, all Ilokanos and the peoples of Amianan should now band and together fight for the recognition that Ilokano is a national language; that Cebuano is a national language; that other languages spoken by many of our people in the country are national languages; and that all languages of the country must be given the opportunity not only to survive but to thrive. We lose one language and the poorer we become. We kill one language, and we have poised the death of a privileged, because imposed, national language also known as Tagalog. In light of this, we see from this advocacy work the need to rethink and revisit the position that there should only be one regional language, that is, Tagalog, and that Tagalog should continue to enjoy its entitlement and privilege as Pilipino, and that as Pilipino graduates into Filipino, it should further be entitled and privileged to become the national language we have been looking for but have not found so far. We cultural advocates no better than this narrow, herd-like, mass thinking. We know that the recognition of multiple national languages would spur communication and communion, unity in diversity, and democracy and justice. There is no other way we can shortchange the requisites of cultural and linguistic democracy by withdrawing it or diminishing it. The only antidote to the problems of democracy is more democracy—and this holds for language, culture, literature, and all other things that make up a country, that constitute a self-reflecting nation, and a self-respecting people.


5.0 A Grateful Language and Cultural Community


We are thus grateful for the efforts of Professor Prescila Espiritu, for the years that she put together to sustain a program that is the only one of its kind in the world. Not even the Philippines has it; not even the Universities from the regions where Ilokano ought to be taught but is not because of the mistaken and uninformed notion of many Ilokanos that they already know Ilokano and that there is no need for them to learn the language of their birth. These people look at the world with presumptuous presumptions, not knowing that the British, Australians, and Americans have up to the doctorate and post-doctorate programs in English; the Spaniards and the South/Latin Americans have up to the doctoral program in Spanish; that the French have the same thing for their language and culture; and so on. If Ilokanos do not even have the courage and daring to own up their ignorance of their own language—so many do not even know their grammar and orthography even among the ranks of the educated ones, even among those with advanced university degrees, even among the ranks of the policy makers and cultural leaders—then we are doomed forever. This the same reason why in internet epistemologies and email ontologies, you have ignoramuses multiplying like flies in the summer or like mosquitoes during the rainy season, arguing, among others, about the validity of coming up with foolish school policies that penalize school children caught talking in the speech—in the language—that is the abode and indwelling of their being, their becoming, and their soul, the Ilokano speech they are at home to, the Ilokano language that is now the home of their awakening. The philosopher has said that an unexamined life is not worth living. It is high time, indeed to examine our Ilokano lives, our lives as Ilokanos, our lives as Ilokanos in the Philippines and abroad. This is a need for the examination of social conscience and collective soul, and if there is a need for us to name the problem, then, let the naming begin.

A grateful people can only give its gratitude and thanks. The fact that Professor Espiritu has stood by an abstract people—abstract because the Ilokano heritage community in Hawai`i is a sea of faces, desires, conflicts, dreams, contradictions, struggles and strugglers. The only concrete member, ceteris paribus, is the student in the class. Even that is itself a struggle as the interaction between a heritage learner and a heritage language teacher is laden with metaphors, with symbols, with persuasions, with constant reminders that it is worth going back to one’s roots, this last one a psychological blackmail to those who are searching for their Ilokano selves even if they have already found their American selves.



6.0 The Present Qua Future—and the Act of Presencing

We can only take our hats off in respect and reverence to the sacredness of the acts of sacrifice of Professor Espiritu, acts that are selfless, acts that she utilized and summoned to build upon the Ilokano program. We can only imagine the long hours, the dark days, and many moments of despair and disappointment that are twin to a clear vision and to a big dream such as the Ilokano program.

Even as I personally inherit a vision and a mission, the task on hand are enormous. But I see that enormity not as a problem but a challenge, an opportunity to keep growing, to keep sustaining what we have gained, to keep the vision, to turn the vision into a mission, and to turn the mission into pursuable because realistic and committed goals.

The program will become a witness to the resiliency of the spirit of the Ilokanos and the peoples of Amianan and to this end we offer two vehicles to pursue this dream: the annual Nakem Conferences and the International Academy for Ilokano and Amianan Studies.


7.0 Be Well, Maestra


To Professor Priscila Espiritu, be well. We thank you for the years of offering your strength and song, sorrow and joy, and love and life in order for the Ilokano and Philippine Drama and Film Program to be conceived, to be born, to be nourished, and to grow. Like your name, the anitos be with you, the spirits of the ancestors bless you. Your deed will be etched in the memory of our people for all times. You have shown us the way, and there is no turning back for the many of us now. Bless us with the anito, with the spirit even as we bless you with the anito, with the spirit.


Published in Nakem: Imagination and Critical Consciousness in Ilokano Language, Culture, and Politics
Honolulu: IPDFP, in collaboration with Nakem Conferences Inc. and International Academy for Ilokano and Amianan Studies, 2007.

Nangina nga Aldaw iti Nalaka a Biag

A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Abril 7-07

Panagtanggad

Tanggadenmi dagiti aldaw iti lagip,
saan a dagiti agkatangkatang
kadagiti sileleddaang a parke wenno
iti maiprusprusision a pannakaiyaw-awan.

Sumalogkami a sumang-at kadagiti dana
ti pammati a tawid, kas iti panagar-arudok
a panangibuat iti babantot ti krus
ti kinapimpiman, dakami nga immadayo,
dakami nga agaywan kadagiti rikna
a no tiliwem ket apagaman, kas iti biag
ti maperresan nga udang:
panagadak kadagiti kali
a pagumokan ti sibeg wenno billit-tuleng
no agmalaska ket ti karasaen,
ingarannaka kas iti gasat a naisangsangayan,
'tay bisa, kas pagarigan, a lisensia
panagbaliudong dagiti ayat iti ili
iti bukod a bagi
iti asi nga adda kadagiti panagur-uray
iti panangiyalikaka ti kailian iti lualo
ti pammigat a babalaw, maidasar a kanayon
iti oras ti panangsangrap koma iti pangngaldaw
a ngem di met mairusok, kabsat,
di met umuneg iti karabukob
di met sumurot iti katay iti panaglidduok
dagiti amin a babanto dagiti amin a bibineg
dagiti amin a panagbatibat ti inapuy
iti dalikan ti barangabang a manglanglangan.

Ta kastan sa ditoy, iti aldaw dagiti panagtanggad:
awan kanito a nangina, awan anges nga addaan balor
ta ingga't langit amin a di mangan-ano, kas iti ririttuokan
ti duri a maktang, kas iti panagbilang iti oras
iti bundy clock ayattay laeng ti makaullo
makabirok makabulibol iti sagpaminsan a gasat.

Ngem ania ngarud, kasta a talaga
ti panagtanggad: rummuar iti pagindegan
kalpasan ti pananguros, mamitlo nga umanges
iti trinidad ti panagagawa dagiti binunar
a pakasaritaan dagiti migrante a panagpaspasanaang.

Mapadso dagiti aldaw, kas iti pannakapadso
ti amin a kita ti panagtanggad. Iti pannakakusbo
amin a regta rikna risisis kontro iti risiris,
sadiay nga agungar dagiti agramut a parmata,
iti lugar nga adayo, kas pagarigan wenno
iti lugar a nakaikamangan dagiti agkamkamang
a pammakawan kadagiti langlanglangan.


A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Abril 7-07

Definisyon ng Nerbiyos

(("Wala akong nagawa sa aking mga paa, papa. Malaki ang sunog, mataas ang apoy."
Leah Francine, sa pagkasaksi sa sunog sa mga kabahayan
sa aming pook sa Marikina, Filipinas, Abril 2/07)



Muni-muni na nga lang
ang katapat ng takot.

Malayo, musmos na bunso,
ang tapang sa karuwagan.

Ang pagsasadiwa sa pagtutubig
ng tuhod ay pangunahing salita
tungkol sa mga kahihinatnang
ang simula ay di rin nating mawari.

Tulad ng apoy sa malapit,
sa kapitbahay nating pinagtagpi-tagpi
ng mga pira-pirasong yero, tabla,
pangarap na makaahon sa bunghalit
ng umaga't gabing
naninirahan sa mga sulok
ng mga mumunting tahanang
barong-barong din ng mga pag-aalinlangan,
ang alipato ay sa susunod na bahay nagpakanlong
sa langkay-langkay na karalitaan
ang mukha ay sa madungis na pangarap
at ang darang sa mga apoy ng lunsod
ay isang bulkang nag-iimbot.
Batang gabi noon, sabi mo,
malapit nang lamunin ng dilim
ang huling raya ng araw.
Nagsimula sa usok ang hiyaw
na nang maglaon ay konsiyerto
ng bulahaw ng tao at bombero
mga pagkalkula sa dahas ng ulan
sa katawang inagawan ng bubong
sa pagal na laman, pagod sa pagkayod
sa maghapong pakikipabaka
sa sahod.

At ngayon itong apoy:
saan ngayon sisilong ang mga pinagkaitan
ng apoy ng lunsod, mga inagawan ng tulog
hinablutan ng kadyot sa buhay
lakas halimbawa na magbangon sa madaling araw
harapin ang umaga, tanggapin ang hapon
at sa papag ay bilangin ang bituin
sa nakikipaglabanan sa titig
na butas ng nagpapanggap na mansion?

Sabi mo, di mo nagawang pigilin ang mga paa.
Takot ang tawag doon, musmos na bunso,
pag-angkin ng nerbiyos sa murang isip
at doon, doon sa kaibuturan ng pagsasaksi
sa buhay sa lunsod, maaalala mo ang bendisyon
ng walang katapusang panahon.

Malayo ako, at malapit ang sunog.

Pero kaylapit din, musmos na bunso,
ang walang hanggang pag-irog,
ang pagpapalayo sa apoy sa iyong pagtulog.

Magbabantay ako sa iyo, at ang mga daga
sa dibdib ay pawang mangagsisilayo
hanggang sa ikaw ay iwan sa iyong pagsuyo
sa pagkatuto sa diwa ng sunog.

Matutupok, musmos na bunso,
ang alin mang sasakmalin ng apoy.
Malilikha sa mga abo ang sagradong
salungat ng panaghoy.

A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/Abril 6/07

Ariangga ti Barangabang

Abril 6/07
UH Manoa

Barangabang ti Ariangga

Abril 6/07
UH Manoa

Aldaw a Panagngilin

April 6/07
UH Manoa

Ayat iti Panawen ti Ariangga

Ket iti dangadang a lumtuad dagiti agibit a karasaen, dagiti nakapatig a karasaen, dagiti pimmurawen a karasaen. Ket iti dangadang, agsublinto ti kararua ni Ina Wayawaya, lugananna ti kararua ti kada kaputotan, parmekenna dagiti nakem a sinabidongan dagiti puraw a bannawag ken puraw a malem ken ganggannaet nga angin, tagikukuaenna manen dagiti panunot ken anges ken tagainep dagiti annak ti ili ken pagilian. Ket iti dangadang met nga agsubli dagiti Bannuar, mabuniaganda amin iti sirok ti latok, masaka amin dagitoy iti barukong ken sellang ken panagal-al ken panagalimpatok iti katengngaan ti aldaw ken katengngaan ti rabii, iti katengngaan ti gawat ken tig-ab tapno mapasamak manen ti panagdara ti ubing nga init ken ti kabus. Agtedted ti ubing a dara iti antigo a talon dagiti darepdep ni kinawayawaya ket amin a makamurmuray, amin a makariing, asaenda dagiti tadem, iwanaswasda dagitoy iti estranghero nga angin ket sulnitanda amin a kararag dagiti lumlumoten a dios ti kinalinteg. Iti dangadang agsubli met ti kulibangbang a mangikot kadagiti lagip, tagikukuaenna ti sardam ken ti kaltaang, riputenna dagiti darikmat tapno maipasngay ti balligi, tapno matungpal ti tagainep, tapno manen ken manen ket mangngegan dagiti lallay ken duayya a mangirakurak iti wayawaya, mangipakdaar iti pannakatungpal ti naimbag a damag iti ngudo dagiti daraan a tadem.

- Prologo ti Dangadang



1. Estranghero

Inlukat ni Bannuar ti kurtina ti tawa ti eroplano ket manipud iti ere ket nasaksianna dagiti nalidaw a silsilaw nga aggilapgilap iti daga, kas kadagiti kulalanti nga ay-ayamenda idi kenni Ka Laya iti barrio a nakaisadsadanda iti Kailokuan tapno sadiay, iti naariangga nga ulimek dagiti maulupitlupit iti gimong, iti natalinaay nga ariangga dagiti nakem a makariing kadagiti inhustisia ti biag, sadiay, sadiayda a makasusuroda kadagiti wagas ti pannakidangadang iti nagan ti kinalinteg.

Ket nakasursuroda. Sinursuruan ida dagiti umili. Nakasursuroda no kasano ti mangayat nga awan labas, ti mangipateg iti sapasap, panagipateg a saan nga abstrakto no di ket agburayok nga aggapu iti isip, iti nakem, iti lasag, iti paulo dagiti daniw iti inaldaw-aldaw a pannakidangadang iti biag.

Malagipna dagiti a rabii a managpabus-oy, dagidi rabii a nakawaywayas ti panaginnala ti sipnget ken lawag, ti panaginnala ti pul-oy ken bulong, ti panaginnala dagiti bituen iti tangatangda. Immisem ni Bannuar. Nagburayok iti kaungganna ti maysa a ladingit a paggaammona unay.

Nagkidem, ket iti sirmatana, umis-isem ni Laya—ni Ka Wayawaya—agay-ayab, makisasao kenkuana. Nabengbeng dagiti kiday ti balasang a kunam la no sadiay ti paglemlemmengan dagiti amin a palimed ti Tignayan a pagkamkamenganda a dua. Saan a pumanaw dagiti nasam-it nga isem kadagiti naamo a matana. Ket ti agong a natundiris, kasla man laeng agderraas a payaw, dagiti payaw a nakipagmumulaanda a kaduada dagiti makipagrikrikna iti ilunglungalongda a panagbalbaliw iti gimong. Dagiti payaw iti dayaen ti Kailokuan, dagiti nakatangtangig a payaw dagiti kakabsat nga Kalinga, dagiti kakabsat nga Yapayao, dagiti kakabsat nga Ifugao—dagitoy ti malagip ita ni Bannuar ket agsubli ta agsubli kenkuana ti nakaam-ames a lagip nga uppat a tawen nga intartarayanna.

Nangibbet iti nakaun-uneg a sennay.

Laya, kinunana, Laya.

Ka Wayawaya, kinunana iti nababa a timek nga isuna laeng ti makangngeg. Laya, Ka Wayawaya.

Iti sipnget, binirokna ti naisem a rupa ti kaayan-ayatna, ti naamo a rupa ti maysa a parsua a nangipadulinanna kadagiti buteng ken turedna, kadagiti pigsa ken kapuy ti pakinakemna, kadagiti paulo dagiti daniw a sursuratenna. Ta mannaniniw isuna ni liday ket ita, iti daytoy a panagawidna, kayatna nga ikur-it dagitoy a liday, nagananna, sangnguenna. Kayatna a saanen nga agtaray pay, a saanen nga agkamang pay iti estranghero a lugar, iti lugar nga adayo kadagiti lagip. Kayatna ti agtalinaed iti eksena dagiti nadara a lagip.

Binarkesan ti riknana ti nagduduma a ladingit.

Kas iti ladingit ti ipapanaw.

Kas iti ladingit ti panagsubli a dimo ammo no sadinno ti pagsubliam.

Inkeddengna ti agsubli iti daga a nakayanakanna. Awan amad ti yaadayok, kunana, awanan bugas, awanan kaibatogan. Nagbabawi no apay a pimmanaw.

Itay pay nga inanunsio ti piloto ti dandanin pannakikammaysa ti naglugananda iti daga a nakayanakanna. Sinabat isuna ti pamiliar nga eksena: ti panaginnagaw ti sipnget ken lawag.

Kastoy nga eksena idi pumanawak, kinuna iti bagina. Kastoy met laeng nga eksena idi agawenda kaniak ni Ka Laya ken ti bunga ti ayan-ayatmi. Awan, saanda a naikkan iti gundaway tapno masaksianda met koma ti baro nga agsapa kalpasan ti panaginnagaw ti sipnget ken lawag.

Nagkidem.

Iti isipna ket ti ladawan dagiti adu a panaginnagaw ti sipnget ken lawag iti biagna. Iti ili a naggapuanna. Iti ili a nagkamanganna. Kadagiti il-ili a nagtaltalawatawanna. Kadagiti dandaniw nga awan pay iti papel ngem addadan iti barukongna, iti panunotna.

Aginnagaw ti sipnget ken lawag idi panawanna ti pagilian kalpasan ti pannakaikkat ti presidente a mamati maysa laeng a karnabal ken pelikula ti panagidaulo. Nakatugaw idin ti baro a presidente a nagkari a dinanto tultuladen dagiti barrairong ken tulisan. Ketdi, dalusanna ti gimong, ket dinanto ipalubos a mamulitan ti dayawna a dayaw met ti natakneng nga amana.

Nagdengngeg idi ti bitla ni baro a presidente. Aginnagaw ti sipnget ken lawag idi ibagana dayta, iti Luneta, iti sango dagiti riwriw nga umili a napan nakipagragragsak iti balligi ti presidente a minolde dagiti pantasia ti pelikula.
Nagdengngeg ni Bannuar—ngem saan a namati.

Kaduana ni Laya, isuda a dua iti Luneta, kinaandingayda dagiti umili a nagkunkuna, iti pukkaw a kasingin ti balligi ti kaaduan, Erap, Erap, Erap para kadagiti marigrigat!

Ulimek laeng ti adda iti baetanda, isuda ken ni Laya iti dayta a sulinekdagiti sibibiag a panagsaksi iti pakasaritaan a maisurat iti nagan dagiti umili. Ulimek a pakabuklan ti nagsasamusam a kita ni ayat. Ti ayat para iti bukod a bagi. Ti ayat para iti sabali, iti kapada, iti kadua. Ti ayat a para kadagiti awanan ressat a tagtagainep maipapan iti nainkalintegan a biag—ti nalinteg gapu ta nadur-as ken nadur-as gapu ta nalinteg a biag—para iti kaaduan no di man iti sapasap.

Ket napasamak ti baro a rinnupak: umili kontra kadagiti mangidaddadanes.

Isuna ti maysa kadagiti immuna iti santuario ti Birhen iti EDSA. Saan, duada kenni Laya.

Mangisursuron idi ket iti dayta a rabii a di impalubos dagiti senador a luktan ti enbelop a naggianan ti ebidensia tapno mapaneknekan ti kinabalangkantis ti presidente a nangikari iti awan mulitna a panagayat iti pagilian, nagmartsada manipud iti kampusda iti Unibersidad, dinagasda dagiti burgis nga agad-adal iti dua pay a pagadalan iti Katipunan, ket manipud dita, tinayengtengda ti C-5 tapno masalpotna ti santuario ti Birhen a nagkutaanda, kaduada dagiti umili, kaduada dagiti soldado, kaduada dagiti tagainep ken buteng ken kararag, ket iti tallo nga aldaw, kalpasan ti tallo nga aldaw, maulit manen ti pakasaritaan ti naliday a pagilian, ti di pay nalpas a pagilian.

Iti maikatlo nga aldaw, nagsapata ti babai a pangulo, ti maikadua a babai a pangulo. Mumalem kadin idi, sinaludsodna iti bagina? Aginnagaw kadin idi ti sipnget ken lawag?

Adda gita iti dila ti babai, kunana ken ni Laya. I do not trust her. Convent-bred, ha! The nerve, the pretensions. I should know.

Pinisi ni Bannuar ti pandesal ket intedna ti kagudua kenni Ka Laya.

Adu dagiti karasaen iti palasio, kinuna ni Ka Laya. Nakadalungdong iti tubao a nalabbasa nga adda garitgaritna a kiaw ken asul ken berde ken nangisit, ti maris dagiti aglalaok a riknana para ken Laya, ti kakaisuna a Ka Wayawaya iti biagna. Ti kiaw, kunana, kas iti maris a paggaayat ti umuna a babai a presidente a nangbarayuboy iti oportunidad ti demokrasia a naited kenkuana. Ti asul, kas iti maris ti awanan mantsa a birhen a nayanak nga awanan iti basol a tawid. Ti berde, kas kadagiti minuyongan a no agbunga ket agruruoy. Kas kadagiti agbalin a bunga ti ayan-ayatmi a tinenneb ken tentenneben dagiti dangadang iti kalsada, kadagiti rali, kadagiti agsasaruno a martsa tapno maipinget ti kalintegan dagiti umili.

Naggaraw ti tubao ni Laya ket nagparang ti naparammag a kiaw a naigarit iti laylayan ti ulay, ti pannakapanio dagiti kakabsat iti Kamindanawan, ti ulay a nagbalin metten a praktikal a dalungdong dagiti aktibista iti Kamanilaan. Kiaw ti umuna unay a babai a presidente, kunana. Maris ti signos ti umuna unay a batibat a pinaglangada nga ayat iti naunday a panawen. Kiaw met ti umuna unay a dangadang dagiti umili, pannakidangadang a baruyboyen ti dadaulo nga addaan met iti amarilio a gagem.
Ania met ti kolor daytoy baro a presidente a nangtawid kadagiti sakripisio a dara dagiti umili, sinaludsod ni Bannuar iti nakemna.

Addadan iti adayo. Nalpasen ti sapata.

Addadan iti pedestrian lane iti EDSA, iti sango ti monumento a mangipakpakdaar iti naidumduma nga ayat dagiti umili iti pagilian, iti daydi umuna unay a naikappiaan a rebolusion a namuonan kadagiti adu unay a kita ti naisisiasi nga ayat, ti kinadangkok nga aglanglanga nga ayat, ti kinaranggas nga aglanglanga nga ayat, ken ti batibat a pinaglanglangada met nga ayat. Naunday a panawen, kinuna ni Bannuar. Naunday a panawen.

No koma laeng adda am-ammok a mannamay, nabayagen a tinamayko daytoy a babai, kinuna ni Ka Laya, umis-isem.
Siakon ti tamayem tapno kankanayonakto latta nga adda iti dennam, kinuna ni Bannuar.

You with your bourgeois love. Kineddelna ni Ka Laya ni Bannuar.

Adda sabidong kadagiti ruot nga ar-araben dagitoy a karasaen iti panawen ti lenned, kinuna ni Bannuar.
Kasta kano met ti mannamay. Agarab iti ruot iti panawen ti sellag. Ni Ka Laya.

Adda sabidong kadagiti antigo a narra ken algarrubo a manglinlinong iti palasio. Ni Bannuar. Mariknak dagiti managperdi a puersa.

Metaphysics, metaphysics, kinuna ni Ka Laya.

Adda sabidong kadagiti isem dagiti nakapatig a mangliklikmot iti pangulo. Ni Bannuar.

Siak met ti agpugto, kinuna ni Ka Laya. Adda sabidong iti karayan a nabuyok a mangig-igid iti lugar a pakainawan dagiti kari ti pangulo. Iti daytoy nabuyok a danum a nakalipaten iti kayat a sawen ti après ken panagayos, ditoyto a mangipaanod dagiti ubbing a lallaki ti bangka a papel a nakaisuratan dagiti tagainepda. Iparadanto ti baro a pangulo dagitoy nga ubbing a lallaki. Pagkarianna ida.

Dikayonton mangan iti ittip, babbarok, kunaenna.

Malanitanton dagiti bibigyo, annakko, kunaenna.

Saanton nga agsaraaw dagiti boksityo iti agsapa ta maturogkayonton a sibubussog, dakayo amin nga annak ti ili, kunaenna.
Agiddakayonto kadagiti pagturogan a mangidatdatn iti nargaan a turog, iti makapaungar a ridep, ti pagturogran a naarkosan kadagiti lalat dagiti karasaen, kunana.

Ket iti sabsabot ti ulo dagitoy a karasaen, ditoy, ditoykayonto nga uminom iti arak, lumidok iti arak ni imnas, ni dur-as, ni pannakapnek.

Ikarik.

Ikarik ken isapatak.

Ikarik ken isapatak a diakto agungar iti sabali a biag no diak matungpal dagitoy a balikas.

Agpalakpak, siempre ti tallaong, nga adu kadagitoy ti kasingin dagiti karasaen.

Nagplastar ni Bannuar. Immuestrana ti kannigid nga imana iti sangona, iti nibel dagiti matana. Pinormana ti ima a kas paltog, ket kinunana, Ping, ping, ping.

Puntaak ti nagbaetan ti mata ti karasaen a rumrummuar iti agkalkalawakaw a ngiwat ti baro a presidente, inlastogna iti kaayan-ayatna.

Tirador, kinuna ni Laya, sa nagkatawa.

Isu a siak ti inayatmo. Gapu ta nalaingak a tirador.

Phallic argument. Patriarchal fallacy number one, your honor.

Kineddel ni Laya ti bakrangna, nakapimpino a keddel.

Tinukmaanna ti ima ti kaayan-ayatna ket inagkanna. Siiimatang dagiti aktor iti umuna unay a rebolusion dagiti umili, kadagiti agnanayon a muestrada iti dayta a monumento ti kinabannuarda.

Nagkidem manen ni Bannuar ket nilagipna ti rali a nakaarestuan ni Laya.

Dayta ti rugi ti amin.

Ka Wayawaya, kinunana. Laya, Laya.

Nagkidem ket binay-anna a layusen ti riknana dagiti naladingit a lagip, dagiti naragsak a lagip, dagiti awanan-naganda a lagip.

Nanglagip. Linagipna dagiti adu a sennaay ni ayat.

Ti panagkatangkatangna iti agarup uppat a tawen.

Ti pannakaisadsadna kadagiti estranghero a lugar dagiti estranghero met laeng nga agindeg a kas kenkuana.
Ti pannakaipalladawna iti lugar dagiti migrante nga agbirbirok iti kaipapanan manipud iti duadua, buteng, darepdep.
Iti lugar dagiti kapada nga umili a di kaano man binalbaliwan dagiti estranghero a galad ken panirigan.

Iti lugar met laeng dagiti kapada nga umili a mangibain iti sulinek a naggapuanda, a nakalipaten iti pagsasaoda, a saanen nga agsubli iti ili a naggapuan tapno suknalanda koma dagiti sagrado a disso ti panakipagilida.

Naganunsio manen ti piloto. Dandanitayon, kunana. Welcome to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Welcome to the Philippines.

Winanawanan ni Bannuar ti agsaknapen a sipnget.

Laya, kinunana. Ka Wayawaya.

2. Sariugma ni Ina Wayawaya

Nangrugi ti amin iti tagtagainep. Maysa a batibat a tagainep nga awanak iti sukal.

Kampay idi a dagiti kabus ken sellag ken lenned ken bannawag ken agmatuon ket maidasar a pammigat kadagiti dulang a nabayagen a kaing-ingas ti saraaw.

Kadagiti dulang a nabayagen a di nakaangot iti lanit.

Kadagiti dulang a nabayagen a di nakangngeg kadagiti karaggak dagiti ubbing nga aggiinnunna nga agtig-ab.

Kadagiti dulang a nabayagen a di nakangngeg kadagiti kararag ti panagyaman dagiti mapmapnek a nagannak.
Sipud pay idi ken aginggana ita, kinuna ni Bannuar.

Isuna ti Bannuar a nagtalawataw.

Ti nagtalawataw nga anak, ama, umili.

Ti nagtalawataw a mannaniw.

Kasasaona ti bagina iti maysa a tagainep.

Adda isuna kadagiti muyong iti sakaanan dagiti natangig a bantay, sa kadagiti dissuor kadagiti luglugar a di maad-adakan ti sariwawek a tao, sa kadagiti baresbes nga agubbog kadagiti kasamsamekan santo agkurno nga agtunda iti matris ti baybay.
Kitaen ni Bannuar ti aglawlaw.

Agtirtiritir dagiti muyong gapu iti saraaw.

Agpapauyo dagiti dissuor gapu iti panagtalapuagaw dagiti nalamiis a danum.

Agdudungsa dagiti karayan gapu iti pannakapukaw dagiti après ken lames ken dagiti sumuko iti subukan.
Manipud pay idi punganay aginggana kadagitoy a panawen dagiti awanan nagan a panagallaalla tapno mabirokan dagiti agpukawpukaw nga ugaw kadagiti makan, kinuna manen ni Bannuar.

Binilangna dagiti ramayna: aguppat a tawen a dina sinublian ti daga a pinanawan. Aguppat a tawen a panaglangan kadagiti martsa ken rali ken ariangga iti Mendiola, iti Ayala, iti Roxas Boulevard, iti Welcome Rotunda.

Ti ariangga ti dangadang ti kailiwna.

Ti ariangga ti Tignayan nga adda iti puso ken isip dagiti umili a makipagmartmartsa tapno maipukkawda dagiti an-anek-ekenda iti kalsada, iti publiko, iti Plaza Miranda, iti Roxas Boulevard.

Kinitana manen dagiti naidasar a pammigat: ti kabus a bulan, ti lenned a bulan, ti mababain a bannawag, ti bulastog a sipnget, ti agsiuman a lawag, ti malislisayan nga agmatuon—amin dagitoy ket nailaoklaok kadagiti nabanglesen nga innapuy a naidasar iti tallo a dulang, numero tres, daytay bilang ti nasantuan a panaglak-am.

Linawlaw dagiti kuttongi nga ubbing dagiti dulang.

Rumkuas dagiti paragpagda ket sumarot kadagiti basar a kawayan a nabayagen a di napasileng, kadagiti diding a tinidtid a bulo a nabayagen a di nakangngeg kadagiti samiweng, kadagiti pagbagasan a nasingdanan iti baredbed a manto dagiti agminatay.

Anged-angedan dagiti ubbing, ket agpangato nga agpababa ti angedda. Nagtitimbukel dagiti nangisit a matada a kunam la no mata dagiti musan a nabayagen a di nakakita iti manok a kurimaongenda.

Agbubussog dagiti boksit dagiti ubbing: kadagitoy agsarsaraaw a boksit nga agindeg dagiti bisin. Ditoy nga agar-arapaap dagiti kullapit nga ubbing iti naimas a pannangan, iti nalabon a pannangan.

Tamboren ti maysa nga ubing a kaing-ingas ti Santo Nino ti boksitna ket kunaenna, iti boses a nasinggit, boses ti awanan gaway, mabisbisinan, Siak, siak ti Santo Nino a patron ken dios ken salakan dagiti malislisayan.

Agmulagat dagiti sabali pay nga ubbing, rungiitanda ti karuprupa ti ubing a dios, sada kunaen, Ay, kunam sa! Saraaw ti adda iti tianmi!

Adda ni Bannuar iti tangatang a mangkikita amin kadagitoy.

Dina maawatan no addaan isuna iti payak wenno adda bileg dagiti sakana a mangikusay iti dagsen ti bagina tapno mapukaw ti dagsen ket makatayab a kas kadagiti billit ket sarangtenna ti bigat, ti rabii, ti lawag, ti sipnget, ti kabus, ti lenned, ti agmatuon, ti agsapa, ti bannawag, ti sardam, ti dagaang ti amian.

Sarangtenna amin dagitoy, tiliwenna a kasla agtiltiliw iti lames iti maysa nga agay-ayos a lipnok ket ipisokna iti supot, kay iti supot ti ugaw, ket agtayab nga agsubli iti nairanta a panganan dagiti kullapit nga ubbing nga addaan met kadagiti kullapit a tian.

Igamerna amin dagitoy kadagiti gawat ken kisang a naidasar met, sa iti nagao nga innapuy a naluyak ken kalanglanga ti kiraos ti boksit.

Bigat idin, agis-isem ti init iti dayta a panawen ti gawat ken iti dayta a bigat ti tagainep, makikinkinnumpas ti dulang kadagitoy a seremonia iti baro a bigat: ti seremonia ti mabilbilang a subo.

Sursuruen dagiti dulang dagiti ritual ti panaglak-am kadagiti bendision dagiti tudo ken arbis ken bayakabak ken bagyo ken angin ken ginggined ken gawat ken init ken arapaap.

Sursuruen dagiti dulang dagiti antigo a kararag, Degdegam, Apo, ti lames ti daga ken ti taaw tapno manayon ti biagmi iti inaldaw-aldaw.

Amen, inkoro dagiti agsaraaw itan a pinggan.

Amen, kinuna dagiti kasla rurog nga ubbing.

Masaksian amin ni Bannuar dagitoy.

Ket partuatenna ti maysa-dua a binatog iti isipna, dagullitenna tapno maikabesana, tapno iti sipnget a pagbulodanna iti inana para iti agkatangkatang a kararuana, sadiay, sadiay, iti sulinek dagiti kuadrado a sipnget nga ikur-itna, Siak, siak ti ama dagiti sipnget a pinanawan ti lawag. Ket inayonna, Siak, siak ti ama ti sipnget a kamalala ni ayat ket sika, sika ti ina ti lawag nga agsiuman iti sipnget. Wenno sika, sika ti lawag a pinanawan ti sipnget.

Maysaak a metapora, kunana, kas iti metapora nga adda kadagiti sipnget ken lawag, kadagiti panaginnagaw ti sipnget ken lawag, kadagiti kabus ken sellag ken bannawag ken lenned.

Siak ni Bannuar a pimmanaw tapno agsubli iti ili, pumanaw tapno agkawili a mangisagut kadagiti amin a dandaniw ken sarsarita maipapan iti panaginnagaw ti sipnget ken lawag kadagiti dulang, kadagiti bendahado, kadagiti latok, kadagiti kammet.

Intag-ayna ti makannigidna: uppat a tawen, kinuna. Aguppat a tawen a panaglangan iti dangadang ti ili.

Pagammuan ta iti ngiwatna ket rimmuar ti uloulo ti maysa nga uleg, maysa a nagita a karasaen, kaing-ingas ti palapal nga agindeg kadagiti narukbos a kayo kadagiti maatianan a baresbes. Sadiay, iti gumawgawawa a danum, sadiay nga aguray ti palapal nga uleg, ti karasaen nga uleg, kasla maysa a takiag, sadiay, iti pantok dagiti bulala wenno dagiti nabangsit a bangar a no agiburay iti angot ket agadiwara ti buyok ti rugit ti tao, isu met laeng a kinabuyok nga iti maysa a rali a nakikuyoganna ket imbaberda iti umuna a babai.

Pinaglaokda ti rugit ti tao ken ti narugit a danum.

Impanda kadagiti selopeyn ti naglaok a rugit ti tao ken ti narugit a danum, sada binalon iti martsa manipud iti Welcome Rotunda aginggana iti Roxas Boulevard, iti embahada dagiti imperialista a kinagurgurana, sada nagtunda iti Mendiola a nakapasagan dagiti dua a kakaduana.

Winananawangan ti bala ti barukong dagiti gagayyemna ket nagwaras ti pulbura iti bagisda, sa iti utekda, sa iti pusoda.
Idi kangitingitan ti rinnupak dagiti soldado a para bantay iti patingga ti poder ti Malakaniang ken dagiti umili a mabisbisinan ken inaramid a pimpiman ti kusit a rehimen, impalladawda a kas pallatibong dagiti nakasupot a rugit ti tao nga inkanawda iti narugit a danum.

Iti apagapaman, nagadiwara ti buyok ket iti Mendiola. Ti Mendiola daytay sementado a kalsada nga agtunda iti wangawangan ti sentro ti poder ti pagilian.

Nagsaknap ti makadul-o nga angot, insaknap ti angin a naggapu iti karayan Pasig, ti angin a naggapu iti baybay ti Manila, ti angin a naggapu kadagiti kaiskuateran a nanglikmot iti palasio ti pangulo ti pagilian, ti angin a naggapu kadagiti kumbento a pagkarkararagan dagiti annak ti Mannakabalin, isuda a ministro ti marigrigat ken agtutuok a Mannubbot.

Naadak aminen ni Bannuar dagitoy a lugar ti pagkararagan: ti simbaan ti San Judeo, kas pagarigan, nga adda iti igid ti palasio mismo, a kaduana ni Laya, daydi Ka Wayawaya, ni Laya iti nagtagisugat a lagip ken pusona.

Iti santuario ti Namarsuada nga agkararag sagpaminsan, kas iti maysa nga aldaw a nalpas ti maysa a prayer rally nga indauluan dagiti organisasion ken eskuelaan ti saan a marigrigat a simbaan.

Wenno ti simbaan ti San Beda, sadiayda nga agparintumeng, agunnoy iti bendision, iti taklin, iti inana, iti gasat, iti kinalinteg, iti ayat—adu, adu a panagun-unnoy.

Iti daydiay a duogan a simbaan, sadiayna a natimud ti ulimek nga aggubuay iti barukong, ti ulimek ti pulso, ti giteb ti puso, ti kebbakebba nga awanan nagan. Daytay ulimek ken talinaay kalpasan ti panagalimpatok a kadua ti ay-ayaten.
Addan baro a tao iti saklotko, kinuna idi ni Ka Laya.

Addada iti utit dagiti antigo a tugaw a pagkararagan, iti asideg dagiti benditado a danum a pangisawsawan kadagiti makannawan a ramramay.

Malagipna ita ti ritualisado a panangisawsawna iti kikitna, sa ti pasiraw-itna, sa ti pattungaganna, sa ti tamudona, sa ti tanganna. Kalpasanna ket paggigiddanenna nga iraremna dagiti lima a ramayna iti benditado a danum tapno riknaenna ti bendita iti templo ti sibibiag a Mannubbot.

Makarikna iti lamiis.

Sumarot ti lamiis ti benditado a danum iti pulsona, sa iti sikona, sa iti aglingling-et a kilikilina, sa iti tengngedna, sa iti pispisna agingga nga agtunda ti lamiis iti utek, iti lagip, kadagiti rikna a pagtibnokan ti pungtot ken panagayat: pungtot iti nagan ti pagilian ken dagiti umili; panagayat met iti nagan ti pagilian ken dagiti umili.

Praise the Lord, insungbat ni Bannuar ken ni Laya.

Awan Kristiano a komunista! Inkatawa ni Laya. Adda biag kadagitoy a katawa, biag nga awan patinggana. Iti kuridepdep a silaw ti nakaul-ulimek a simbaan, maanninag ni Bannuar ti sileng ti buok ti ay-ayatenna, ti kinapalangguad ti tengngedna, dagiti agsumbangir a kallid a kunam la no naikitikit kadagiti pingpingna. Dumerosas ti kudilna a lumabbaga, maris dagiti naglalaok a puli a naggapuanna.

Mamatiak iti Dios Ama a Mannakabalin amin! Ni Bannuar, iti nabangag a timek, kas pangtulad kadagiti born-again iti kalkalsada ti Kamanilaan.

Ateista! Ni Laya. Kineddelna ti takiag ti kaayan-ayatna.

Atenista, kunam, saan nga ateista! Agrungrungiit itan. Addada pay laeng iti simbaan ti San Beda ket ditoy, iti ulimek ti awanan-tao a templo ti sibibiag a Mannubbot, ditoy nga impalgak ni Laya ti baro a kapitulo ti biag ni Bannuar a kas mannaniw a mannakigubat.

Iti dangadangda a nagkallaysa, iti basbas dagiti kakadua, iti sirok dagiti pinagikisda nga armas. Iti nagan ti dangadang, ti rebolusion iti nagan dagiti umili a mapadpaidaman, agassawada.

Kadagiti agtutubo ti responsibilidad ni Bannuar.

Kadagiti babbai met ni Laya.

Daniwan ni Bannuar ti amin-amin.

Amin a rikna.

Ti panagibiraatda iti islogan ti martsa, kas pagarigan.

Ti panaggiinnuray dagiti ralista iti pagkikitaan.

Ti pannakapasutsotda iti de-kolor a danum ti bombero tapno al-alisto a makemmeg isuda dagiti pulis ket maideretsoda iti pagbaludan.

Ti panagbalonda kadagiti pagsukatanda tapno kadagiti eskinita a pagkamanganda ket idiay nga agpelles ket apaman a makapagpellesda ket agsublida iti Mendiola, iti kalsada, iti sadinno man a nagtutulaganda a pagkikitaan.

Daniw ti panagkita ni Bannuar iti rebolusion, iti amin a kita ti rebolusion.

Daniw ti panagkita ni Bannuar iti liday, leddaang, ladingit.

Daniw ti panagkita ni Bannuar iti ray-a, ragsak, rag-o.

Daniw ti panagkita ni Bannuar iti sirkulo ti biag: ti panagtao, sa ti pannakatay, santo ti panagungar.

Agsarsaragisag ti agpakpakadan nga init kadagiti muyong iti agsumbangir a templo ti sibibiag a Mannubbot.

Iti nalidem nga altar, agkidemkidem ti silaw ti Nasantuan a Sakramento nga adda iti kuadrado a pagikkan a naarkosan kadagiti gumilapgilap a babato ken nasileng a balitok. Nakarikep ti paggianan ti Nasantuan a Sakramento ket ammo ni Bannuar, paggaammona a nakatulbek daytoy.

Iti rigat ti biag, tinakawen dagiti birkog ti antigo a Santo Nino idiay Tondo a nakaigapuan, kuna ti kaaduan, ti panagsagaba dagiti tattao idiay Bulacan, Pampanga, Rizal, Nueva Ecija, ken Tarlac.

Ingkipas ti tudo ken layus ken bagyo amin a kari dagiti talon, baybay, ken kabambantayan aginggana a nagari ti panagbisin, aginggana a ti Umuna a Babai iti dayta a panawen ket nagpakpakaasi iti telebision, impakpakaasina ti panangisubli koma dagiti nagbirkog iti antigo nga anak ti Dios.

Impakaasi ti Umuna Babai ti panangisublida iti rebulto iti balayna iti simbaan ti Tondo tapno agsardeng ti didigra, tapno agkalma ti panawen, tapno saanen nga agsaknap pay ti panagsagaba dagiti adu a kailian.

Kineddel ni Laya ti bakrang ni Bannuar, nakapimpino a keddel a naglaokan iti suron ken panangipateg.

Tiniliw ni Bannuar ti kanawan ni Laya. Inagkanna ti ima ti babai, sa ti buokna, sa ti bibigna. Inaprosanna ti tian ti asawana iti dangadang, iti daniw, iti biag.

Addada iti makinkannigid a parte ti naggudua a kadaklan ti duogan a simbaan. Iti sikiganda ket dagiti nagan dagiti patron ti pammati ken patron iti daytoy a simbaan a naikitikit iti lapida a marmol.

Maysa a lapida ti nagkuna: Naitao ken natay iti isu met laeng nga aldaw. Adda kintayeg marikna ni Bannuar no kasta a makabasa iti kasta a lapida.

Saan a gapu ta mabuteng ken patay.

Saan a gapu ta tagtagikukuen ni patay ti kinaagkabannuagna.

Saan a gapu ta mabuteng a matay no di ket gapu ta iti dayta a kanito, makuriro ti panunotna. Maysa a pilosopo ti nagkuna nga apaman a maitao ti tao ken mangrugi metten a matay.

Pesimistiko a panagpampanunot, kunana idi damo. Ngem itan, iti kastoy a kasasaad ti pagilian, iti kastoy a kasasaad dagiti umili, naamirisna itan ti agdadata a kinapudno iti daytoy a panagipapan maipapan iti relasion ti biag ken pannakatay.

Nalamuyot dagiti ima ni Laya. Saan a mailemmeng ditoy ti klase ti biag a nakasanayanna, ti gimong a naggapuanna, ti kapampanunotan a tinubay dagiti adda iti alta sosiedad a no agmandar kadagiti katulong ket kunam la no agmandar iti adipen.

Pinetpetan ni Bannuar ti makannawan nga ima ni Laya sana inlaga dagiti ramayna iti kannigidna iti ramay ti kaayan-ayatna nga asawana a kapisi ti pusona.

Ibagata kadin? saludsoden koma ni Bannuar ngem kinigtot isuna ti kanalbuong iti ruar ti simbaan. Kadagiti dadakkel ni Laya ti kayatna a sawen a pangibagaanda.

Manen, naulit ti kanalbuong ken panakapak dagiti napipigsa nga armas. Kadagiti barbed wire ti Mendiola ti paggapuan dagiti riaw, dir-i, kanalbuong, ket aglalaok nga ariangga.

Ay-ayatenka unay-unay, Laya.

Korni, kinuna ni Laya. Basta dinak ik-ikkan iti sabsabong. Ken no matayak, diak kayat nga agluaka. Daniwannak lattan.
Saan a nagtimek ni Bannuar. Inagkanna ti bibig ni Laya.

Maulit dagiti panakapak dagiti armalayt.

Nairuamdan kadagiti kakastoy a pasamak. Ordinario laengen kadakuada dagitoy nga eksena. Namin-adu kadin a nakigubgubalda kadagiti militar nga agtirgas ken agbatuta—dagiti militar a no mangisaknapda iti panagulaw ket kunam la no agtubada iti ikan iti waig, a no agmaloda ket kunam la no agdusada kadagiti dingnguen nga agpagungga.

Nagpayak dagiti sakada a rimmuar.

Sakbay a simrekda iti simbaan ket awanen nabati nga agralrali iti Mendiola. Isuda itay ti naudi iti dispersal. Ngem adda grupo dagiti agad-adal iti unibersidad ti nagkuna nga agsublida tapno serkenda ti palasio, tapno kasaoda ti babai a pangulo, daytay babai a duyaw ti panagkitana iti amin: duyaw ti daradara nga init, duyaw dagiti daradara a talon, duyaw ti daradara a Mendiola a nakagsatan ti sangapulo ket uppat a biag dagiti mannalon a mangilablaban iti karbenganda a maikkanda iti bengkagen tapno didan maad-adipen, tapno didan makikakaasi kadagiti hasiendero, tapno didan umadayo iti ili tapno birokenda kadagiti disierto dagiti estranghero a pagilian ti naimbag a gasatda a dida mabirokan kadagiti kataltalonan dagiti di met agtaltalon a babaknang.

Iti labes dagiti barbed wire manipud iti sango ti Centro Escolar, agririnnapukrapok dagiti pulis ken dagiti nagsubli a ralista.
Maysa a konsierto ti ariangga.

Iti angin ket ungto dagiti batuta a maipang-or kadagiti agkabannuag a babbai ken lallaki iti unibersidad ti estado. Sipud pay, dagitoy nga agkabannuag ket idurduron isuda ti regget ken gagar a makakita kadagiti bambannogda nga agmartmartsa.

Am-ammo ni Bannuar ken Laya ti kaaduan kadagitoy. Kasadarda isuda no di man ket kapadada iti kananakem para iti ili.
Agpingki ti lasag ken batuta ket maisawang dagiti balikas a ti laeng panaginnagaw ti sipnget ket lawag ti makangngeg: Berdugo! Berdugo ti ili! Mabaybayadan a berdugo ti ili!

Rabsuten dagiti pulis dagiti agkabannuag a ralista, rabsuten met dagiti agkabannuag a ralista dagiti pulis.
Iti adayo, panay met ti klik dagiti kamera dagiti ti retratista, agur-uray kadagiti nadara nga eksena tapno madokumentoda ti kinadangkok ti baro a rehimen a nagkari iti panagbalbaliw, iti nasayaat a panagbiag, iti kappia ken panagdur-as ti amin.

Nanalpaak ti batuta iti teltel ni Bannuar ket nakakita kadagiti bituen. Riaw ni Laya ti maudi a timek a natimudna sakbay a naawanan iti puot.

Addan isuna iti pagbaludan idi makariing. Daradara ti pagan-anayna, ngem timmangkenen ti dara iti barukongna, iti gayadan ti kamisetana a kiaw a namarkaan iti rupa ti nagawid a mangipatpateg iti umili ken pagilian tapno laeng maipatli ti biagna iti tarmak dagiti adu a buteng.

Mannaniw idin ni Bannuar idi madusa iti pannakatay daytoy a mangipatpateg iti umili ken pagilian a ti rupana ket nadaraan itan iti dara ni Bannuar. Inkari daytoy a tao ti panangidatonnda iti biagna, amin a biagna, para iti pagilian. Tinungpalna dayta a kari, ket ti karina ket nagbalin a sagrado nga estoria ti pannakaipatli.

Adu’t dinukotda, kinuna ti maysa a tibak. Dadaulo daytoy iti pagadalan iti university belt. Adu dagiti naitaray kadagiti ospital. Adu dagiti napakaruan. Nagaramat dagiti pulis iti paltog. Adu dagiti nadangran. Didigra, Bannuar.

Ni Laya? sinaludsodna. Naganikki iti sakit iti bakrangna.

Maysa kadagiti dinukotda, kinuna ti dadaulo a tibak. Imbaw-ingna ti matana iti adayo, kadagiti naikuadrado a kaiskuateran iti tawa ti ospital.

3. Ariangga ni Ayat

Nakaruaren ti ulo ti karasaen iti ngiwat ni Bannuar.

Agbalbalikas ti karasaen a nagsinankulibangbang itan.

Nasantuan dagiti karina ti karasaen a kulibangbang. Maipapan daytoy iti wayawaya, iti demokrasia, iti panagkaykaysa, ken iti pinnakawan.

Iruar sagpaminsan ti karasaen ti dila sana baliksen ti adu a daras ti pannakadusa dagiti nagbasol iti nagan ti wayawaya.
Agbariwengweng ti karasaen ket aglemmeng iti utek ni Bannuar.

Manglagip ti mannaniw, iti lagip nga ita, iti lagip a masakbayan.

Rebo, Rebo ti ipanaganta iti anakta, kinuna ni Bannuar kenni Laya.

Nagpintasen a nagan, insungbat ni Laya. Nakaulay iti tubao dagiti taga-Mindanao a kailian, agis-isem, agay-ayat. Adda iliw ken karinio iti timekna.

Addada iti kabambantayan iti Kailokuan. Linamut isudan ti agin-innagaw a sipnget ken lawag. Iti panagsaknap ti sipnget kadagiti kataltalonan, ballasiwenda ti peggad kadagiti agsipsiput a kabalbalayan iti patag.

Adda dagiti ahente ti pormalin ditoy, impatignaan ni Bannuar. Dagiti komersiante iti lungon.

Kayatko a dumakkel ni Rebo a nawaya, kinuna ni Ka Laya.

Kayatko a makita ti wayawaya iti panagallintok ti ubing, kinuna ni Bannuar. Aprosanna ti tian ni Laya. Aprosanna ti biag nga adda ditoy, ti biag a naggapu iti sellangna, iti pus-ongna, iti paulo dagiti daniwna, iti leddaang ken ragsakna.

Idatonta ken Ina Wayawaya, kinuna ni Laya. Ti Ina Wayawaya a nagpukaw a kunam. Ti Ina Wayawaya iti daniwmo maipapan iti naliday a pagilian.

Iti law-ang, agpakita ti espiritu ni Ina Wayawaya ket awatenna ti ubing. Ipaiddana daytoy iti takiagna a takiag dagiti adu pay nga agur-uray nga Ina Wayawaya iti pakasaritaan dagiti adu a dangadang ti naliday a pagilian.


4.0 Panagsubli

Agpigergeren ti eroplano iti pannakigubalna iti narungsot a pul-oy ti Manila bay. Uppat a tawen, kinuna ni Bannuar.

Ipalpalawag ti piloto dagiti malabsanda a lugar, ti kari a langit ken ragsak ti Manila, ti sorpresa dagiti rabii para kadagiti turista.

Iti atiddog a dalan a kumamang iti eropuerto, rinibu a tao ti agmartmartsa tapno sarabuenna iti rungsot ti maysa a bisita a mangitantandudo iti gera.

Daniw, kinuna ni Bannuar. Ariangga. Ayat iti panawen ti ariangga.

Inruarna ti bassit a kuadernona ket sadiayna nga inkur-it ti paulo ti daniw iti panagsublina.

--30--


A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/2007

Barangabang

Barangabang. ti panangikabil wenno panangkalub iti nakapudpudot a dapo wenno sibebeggang a beggang wenno panangiyasideg iti apuy tapno pabaraen wenno ipapudot wenno lutuen ti maysa a makan iti wagas a mabayag, in-inut, ken kasla manglinlinay.

Antigo daytoy a rikna.

Derrep kadagiti apuy
wenno beggang
wenno aminen a kita ti temtem
wenno paginudo wenno atong
ket iti sellang ti agpatnag,
ditoy nga agindeg ti rugso
dagiti ridaw a marikpan
dagiti papag nga agsala
dagiti bagi nga agkumpas
dagiti anges nga agadda nga agawan.

Residente ni ayat kadagiti rekkang ti dakulap.

Residente ni ayat kadagiti rikki
dagiti di aglunit a sugat.

Residente ni ayat kadagiti bara iti piditpidit
wenno lammin kadagiti ima
wenno kutukot kadagiti ubing a tumeng
wenno ti panagdanum amin a regta.

Agtibbayo ta agtibbayo ti barukong
ket marba amin a kastilio a darat
kadagiti kapanagan ti agragut a rikna.

Ti tangsit iti kinaagkabannuag, a, awan
maaramidam no kidagennaka
ti buteng iti pannakakitam ti musam
ket iti panagbugsot dagiti tagainepmo
idiayam lattan ti pannakadusam:
anges iti anges ngem
pus-ong iti pus-ong.



Uray matayak, kunam.

Sangaribu ket maysa a pannakaidasay
la ketdi ta ti palludipmo
ket matagikuak
bukbukodak.

Ulsak daytoy iti agpatnag
ket diak paturogen
ket duakami a manguray
iti aguttog a bannawag.

Kas iti dalluyon wenno layus
wenno allawig a narungsot
no ruk-atam ti rikna
no ibulosmo kadagiti kabakiran
wenno wayawayaam
kadagiti kataltalonan:
agbugi nga agbugi dagiti sardam
agmandi dagiti tektek dagiti saltek
matnag dagiti kutsara a di masagid
matnag dagiti tinidor a di maaprosan
wenno ti kakaasi a pusa, manglanlana
nga aguray iti kartaang.

Kalay-aten ti residente ni ayat
amin a bessang,
iti man sulinek dagiti essem
wenno iti purok ti pagbabakalan.

Nabileg ti balikas ti sellang.

Ari ti balikas iti amin nga ari:
itundanaka iti pakatayam
tapno agbiagka, agungarkanto
kalpasan ti panangidayyeng iti samiweng
kalpasan ti buribor ti ulo
ti kankanayon a sairo dagiti dakulap
wenno barukong wenno pulso
wenno dagiti bibig
nga agbirbirok iti sabali pay.

Wenno tay aggurigor a kulding,
kas iti panangkulding
ti mannamay iti kantaridas,
wenno ti babato, wenno ti anting-anting
ti O Apomi nga Kitingkiting,
daytay krusmo nga agbibitin.

Iti puso nga agindeg ni ayat,
iti ayat a mainaw ti sabali pay nga ayat
iti sirkulo nga awanan keltay.

A Solver Agcaoili
UH Manoa/2007