Support for Cultural Pluralism in the Philippines

STATEMENT

ON THE NEED FOR MOTHER LANGUAGE EDUCATION

IN THE PHILIPPINES AND THE NEED FOR ILOKANO

IN THE AMIANAN

                                  November 15, 2008

We belong to a language and culture advocacy group, the Nakem Conferences. The organization is composed of various colleges, universities, cultural organizations, writers, cultural workers, academics, educational administrators, and scholars on Ilokano- Amianan Studies and from the Amianan, or Northern Philippines.

Likewise, Nakem Conferences has been responsible for the holding of three international conferences on language and culture education, with researchers and scholars on the various cultures and languages of the Amianan and abroad in attendance.

We are issuing this statement to make it known that we are concerned about the continuing injustice in the respect, promotion, preservation, and teaching of our first and mother languages, our lingua francae, and other indigenous languages. We are concerned because of the cultural denigration that has been the lot of our students in the continuing ‘Tagalogization’ of basic education classrooms of the country. 

Nakem Conferences holds on to the belief in the basic principle of justice and democracy in education. In a multicultural society such as the Philippines, the principle of justice and democracy translates to the access by educands of the knowledge that is pertinent to them through their own mother language.

This principle of educational access through mother language starts off from the idea that formal education in whatever form is always a dynamic movement from the known, which is knowledge mediated by mother language, to the unknown, which is the knowledge mediated by other languages that the educands have yet to learn.

We have looked closely and critically at this issue of knowledge acquisition and education in the Philippines and we have come to the conclusion, based on our experiences as teachers, educators, cultural workers, and researchers, that the present set-up that permits our educands access to knowledge that they have to acquire through Tagalog and English alone and never through their mother tongue and the lingua franca  have closed the door to productive knowledge about themselves, their communities, their relationship to other peoples, and the competencies they need to know as they equip themselves with the skills required in their life of civics and citizenship. 

 

We at Nakem Conferences have given our full support for a congressional legislative initiative to address this need, with the Multicultural Education and Literacy Act of 2008 (or House Bill 3179) proposed by Hon. Magtanggol Gunigundo. Our support for that initiative establishes our commitment to multicultural education and to once-and-for-all zero in on the fundamental issues of Philippines education, issues that have not been given importance in the past but which issues are the main reasons why we are lagging behind in the basic skills that our educands must be equipped with.

We continue to support initiatives to advance the cause of multicultural education and to pursue the ends of cultural pluralism as a way of life in our country.

Multicultural education, and thus, multilingual education as well—in and outside our classrooms, in and outside the educational system—are practices that are not only liberatory but also what social justice and cultural democracy demands of us as a pluricultural and plurilingual society.

It is in this light that we are issuing this statement in order to give full support to all initiatives that advance these ends and to declare that the skewed and continuing two language-education in the Philippines—the education of our people in Tagalog/Pilipino/Filipino and English—is not sufficient to make good with our commitment to a socially just and fair, and therefore, emancipatory education.

Our partnerships and linkage at Nakem Conferences have proven that to insist on the right of our peoples in the Amianan to be educated in their own languages, to be educated in the mother tongue, and to be educated in the lingua franca is the way to go to fight for our indispensable human rights to our own languages and cultures.

In our case at Nakem Conferences and in the Amianan, we are clear about the importance of Ilokano as the mother tongue of many and as the lingua franca in most of the three regions (Region 1, CAR, and Region 2). We are mindful as well of the existence—and the need to assure that they do not only survive but also thrive—of various languages in the Amianan and their indispensable role in the pursuit of a liberatory education that we have been dreaming for so long for our people long deprived of the abode of their souls, their own mother tongue.

DR. ALEGRIA TAN VISAYA

President, Nakem Conferences International Philippines

c/o Mariano Marcos State University

Batac, Ilocos Norte, Philippines

  

DR. AURELIO SOLVER AGCAOILI

President, Nakem Conferences (International)

c/o University of Hawai’i at Manoa

Honolulu, Hawai’i, U.S.A.

 

 

(Statement sent via email from the address of Nakem Conferences, nakemconference@yahoo.com. For questions about this statement, you can write us using this email address.) 

Prolegomena to a Foot-Long Subway Chicken Breast

Prolegomena to our Pop Culture Lives, 1

Today is a Sunday. 

It is the day the Lord could have rested if you are a Catholic.

You could not believe sometimes when the stomach grumbles and you look for bread with the Italian herbs or crispy garlic or honey or oats. 

In the midst of the recession of our sense of selves as if we have not left the country where there every family has contributed to the post-colonial slavery of hands and bodies and minds of lesser people like our own, lesser not because they do not have anything to offer but lesser because they have so much love and kindness and masochism in themselves, you look for that foot-long Subway chicken breast complete with the gay wrappings to hide away our frenzied lives, to hide away our modest inabilities like looking for another kindred spirit who, like you, can mouth expletives on the road to the Nazarene of Quiapo or to the Cathedral of the Angels in Los Angeles and immediately ask for forgiveness from the God who hears and sees and records our deeds. 

You ignore the grumbling of those intestines that remind you of past lives of want in the provinces and cities that had claimed you as its own,  you vagabond man who do not have any permanent address, in the homeland haunted by respectable thieves where they pass your laws about ethics of government service, in the land of your exile where there, you have your anonymity for company, something you lose, something you have lost, something you will never regain in between traffic lights in the busy streets that claim you when you sell your sweat to your work. 

The stomach grumbles and you can hear the cries of your grandparents eking it their imagined newfound paradise in Alicia, in their homestead beyond that Isabela river that swells during the months of the monsoon rains and disaster, in that Linglingay of their dreams, elusive and magical and enchanting dreams that they would live on to imagine they have it pursued only to lose it among soldiers who carried long guns and death, amidst New People's Army and Communist Part of the Philippines cadres who came to teach about nationalism in the Tagalog language because these people are from the cities so far away, and there, in these cities, they speak English, they speak Tagalog, and they speak of strange freedoms and nothing else. 

You can just imagine yourself pointing this out somewhere, some time ago, and you were branded: reactionary. 

That was your 'R'-word, something close to the rotten bugguong you hate when uncooked but you love when boiled to give taste and texture to the marunggay and saluyot and uong of your dreams when you have started to live far away from it all, from the villages that had more real life than what you have got in the cities you have come to know, tentatively at best, and transiently at worst. 

Oh, that bugguong had your guts tested. 

This not the deodorized bugguong every balikbayan from the Ilocos-land is wont to bring back to Honolulu, by hook or by crook, including the patis--the fish sauce that comes out of it to the usual consternation of immigration officers who ask invariably what could that smelly thing on the balikbayan box is all about. 

The pre-deordorized bugguong I remember, of course, came straight from the filthy factories, its salty paste reeking of fish and the labor of its makers: the men who would stomp on the fish, boots on, in factory warehouses by Navotas City by the Manila Bay that has welcomed nothing but filth, the generous sweat of the men profusely dripping on the battered fish, with men and sweat and fish admixing to produce the bugguong for the pinakbet. 

Some would perhaps remember in Laoag public market those Lorenzana bugguong in cans and their other derivatives, imitators and impostors included.  

Their stomping by the Navotas bugguong factory men would become a ritual learned, like that icon of a ceremony of stomping of shrimps by Manila men in one Louisiana bayou down in New Orleans in the 17th century. 

It is the same ritual that lies there buried in the senses without names such that on lazy Sundays when the sun is up over here by the Manoa that looks to the ocean for that refreshing breeze and to the mountains for the industry of clouds to form images of anything one can imagine from abaleng, that larvae that crackles in the mouth for its sheer milky juiciness like the abal-abal and the simmusimmot  to zebra, that animal an infant would love to swallow for each stripes and color and friendliness. 

You sit down to write, but the grumbling begins anew.

You look out the window, and under the heat of the noonday sun, you imagine from the clear skies a scene straight from the Gospels of the Christians: the full course meal of the Last Supper, where the eucharist of sharing was covenanted to the people of God who were supposed to believe, and which someone did, but some would believe to betray the others, as in that man who love to count his silver coins for a reward, and all by trying hard to fake a kiss he offered to the man-god who is Savior. 

Merienda cena, ultima cena, noche buena--heck, all those images of food and you have nothing on your inherited ice box, a two and a half by two cream faded ice box that has seen the sorrow of man and his joys depending on the supply and demand of its contents. 

You open the box again. Two bags of Kona coffee greet you forlornly, reminding you that you have had four cups of coffee already since you woke up, one cup filled to the brim in your Waipahu home twenty five miles away, and three cups you needed to make you awake as soon as your reached your office to pick some writing again, or what passes off for one. 

You did not take a whit of a breakfast, you remembered.

You had a meeting with the writers association you are a part of and you were supposed to take charge of the play to be presented at the cultural program and you were supposed to cast them, the actors and actresses who will say your lines, sometimes unconvincingly as you have seen in the past, and sometimes lacking in nerve as you have always told your dramatists. 

And there, you had the food: katuday flowers, young katuday fruit, young marunggay leaves, young marunggay flowers, young marunggay fruit. 

And put this in: paria or bittermelon leaves cooked dinengdeng-like with aramang-a-kubbo with generous saluyot leaves and equally generous garlic cloves that dotted the otherwise landscape of dark, soupy thing that gave off that aroma of Ilokano life lived far away and in strange places.

And so you had to skip a breakfast, even if you felt like a king on a Sunday morning when you did not have to think of a rush hour traffic on the freeway that has another name: traffic jam, and traffic jam whichever direction you go, with the east-bound traffic towards the Diamond head worst off in mornings and the west-bound, where you go home to roost, worst off in the afternoons. Tough luck, this you have got, bro. 

You gulped your coffee, whitened by that ubiquitous and insistent mate of that morning drink, minus sugar you have learned to hate. 

Except if you have palinang or balikutsa or moscovado, the last one you pilfer from some other peoples parasabo or the balikutsa you get as pasarabo from Dr. Dedicacion Agatep-Reyes and Dr. Godofredo Reyes who never knew that their pasarabo to the Daproza couple eventually came to you. You think of something that is close to the concept of distance as the shortest when you go from point A to point B, you make my poetic day. This is not how it works with the poetry of kindness and generosity and the anonimity  of selfless giving. 

So you take that last drip of Kona coffee you brewed and you run towards the first floor from your fourth floor office. 

You have learned to hate elevators, and you did well, and this does you go, as you pant like mad dogs as soon as you reach the fourth floor as the first floor depending on where you are going.

You decided to vote for your sanity: grab that foot-long of a Subway and live, bro, live.

Forget the wars of Kabul, Baghdad, and Southern Philippines.

You have to listen to your body, appease its spirit, and learn how to feed it with a foot-long of a food people call here Subway.

As you run, you calculate the cost: the gas to drive to the Subway store, the cost of the foot-long, and the energy expended to decide on which foot-long to gobble up to appease the hunger you remembered when you took that four-day bus ride to Williamsburg from Los Angeles, thousands of miles away from the West to the East.

You remember as well what gluttony is all about, and that this has not been removed the list of sins that Christians are supposed to confess regularly so they can earn point for salvation in Heaven. 

You remember too that if you ordered one foot-long, that would be equivalent to about four hundred pesos, in Philippine currency, and about the cost of a one-third cavan of rice.

You felt guilt getting in out of hand, and getting into your soul, into your mind, into your vulnerable conscious and you felt the relentless grumbling of your stomach.

Would you say now the prayers to ask for guidance?

Would you trade in the promise of the foot-long Subway and settle for something in accord with the demands of Sunday?

You said to yourself in whisper, the sound almost imperceptible even to you: Go, grab, bro, grab that fulfillment of your dream.

And which you did.

You ran straight to the store from the parking and you are next in line. 

You surveyed the meal and the list that makes you imagine what American culinary culture is all about even in the Hawai'ian islands far from the Mainland that now experiences the recession of taste buds and beds on the backs of homeowners who have lost their home.

You say with confidence: chicken breast, pepperoni cheese, honey oats for bread and roasted, put in all the oil you can pour, the vinegar you can pour, the salt you can sprinkle, the pepper you can grind, and all the perks of veggies, the better if you can put in all the Subway garden: jalapeno, green pepper, yellow pepper, cucumber, tomatoes, olives, all the leaves, and all the onion rings you can put in that foot-long of a darling of a bread. I could have said as well: tie the bread with a rubber band so you can put in some more of those leaves. Of course, I did not say that, but the Mexican lady, young and college-type, read my mind: she kept putting all those perks and joy filled my heart.

How much, I asked her, and I started to believe in angels. In the meantime, I forgot how starvation wage also known as minimum wage in the United States, as elsewhere including the land of my birth, has kept two kinds of people in this land of milk-and-some-honey: the first kind are the Washington types who can enjoy all what freedom is all about and the second kind are the counter-people type like this maker of my foot-long Subway bread who, despite her backbreaking work, is able to keep an ammunition of grace and smile, her sense of dignified labor despite all an armory of her belief that one day soon, one day soon, she will graduate from all these and she will start to order for herself one foot-long of Subway bread, perhaps the one with the Italian herbs and spices, her toasted bread filled with turkey slices and bacon, and American cheese.

You went back to work by stopping to work: you declared a ceasefire to all these that beset your days of celebration.  

You declared a holy hour of a break from all these that stand in the way of your gustatory delight.

You open your foot-long of a honey oat and you forget your dream of famine and want. You forget Darfur and the Philippines as you told yourself, warned even, that you have to live.

Honolulu, HI

Nov 23/08

    

 

Language Struggle, 7

(Note: This is part of the continuing exchange among advocates of our linguistic and cultural freedom.)

ON MOTHER LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION AND MOTHER LANGUAGE EDUCATION AND THEIR PROMISE 

Dear Ched,

I see that you have been able to quickly come to terms with the sentiment of some language advocates about why they could not picture why MLE is one tentative panacea we can imagine to fire up our struggle for equity and cultural justice and linguistic democracy. 

The literary allusion to the Trojan horse, with Troy and its soldiers at the back of our heads as this protracted language and culture war rages on, is representative of the history of our disenfranchisement, with the concept of 'our' here clearly non-Tagalog peoples and places of the homeland accidentally we call the Philippines. 

In recognizing this historical fact, we cannot say--by force of a sweeping argument--that this sentiment of cautious non-alignment, even non-involvement and non-engagement is moral and valid, legitimate and historically-grounded. 

It is, Ched. And it is real. The politics or its lack of our disenfranchisement has become everyday, even if we refuse to recognize its pervasiveness. 

More than 70 years of marginalization and disenfranchisement is equal to three generations of deprivation: three generations that can be accounted back to my parents and passed on to my children. 

I stand in between as a middling witness to these falsities that have been passed on as truths to my parents, to me, and now, to my children. 

And I am terribly, terribly sad for all our sad peoples and for our sad republic. 

Those of us from the ranks of MLE advocates, by the way, are from the ranks of the middle-aged people who, probably early, had that inchoate unease in our early years of reading "Pepe and Pilar" in Tagalog and English and all other fantastic stories that valorized our feudal sense of things, including this feudal view of language in its early form, with Tagalog as the symbolic 'father' of our abilities and social capacities to communicate to and with each other as a nation-state.

We must see that this feudalism in Tagalogism--not simply the imposition of a language that is incidentally Tagalog but the whole illogicality of that pedagogic and pedantic political exercise by a Tagalog president and his relentless reincarnations even in the country's premier Colleges of Education eventually graduate into fascism, when Tagalog gained ascendancy as 'the' language of the nation--is a symptom to a problem. 

And with Tagalog and Tagalogism being accorded an army and a navy, Philippine linguistic fascism has another name, and it is fetishistically sporting it so: Tagalogism and Tagalogization in the form of the 'nationalistic' fantasies of creative writers, cultural critics, and even national artists who do not represent our sense of 'nationalism' that can account the pluralism that is us, the diversity that is our social resource, and the difference that is our virtue and redemption.

Now, with MLE eliding into something other than its being MLE, with inequity theoretically framing it under the guise of a statist nationalism that is largely viewed from the obnoxious conception of nation-state from the center, you--we cannot--trust an alternative like this one that is not grounded on this long history of inequity and this equally long history of struggle of our marginalized peoples. 

In one of our GUMIL Conferences in the 90's, I was responsible for putting up a conference where Ilokano scholars participated and shared with writers what they thought of the systemic marginalization in the writing of our Philippine literature, with canons that are dubiously pro-Tagalog, except for the story of Lam-ang and other tokens just so they can remind us, these critics and canon writers that they are 'including'. 

But we must remind ourselves that this token inclusion is a neocolonial master's way of saying, here is your carrot and candy, now do not speak up against us because, indeed, we have included your Lam-ang and you have not right to say we forgot.  

The lesson here is the assurance that this decades and decades of systemic and systemic inequity will be addressed squarely by MLE, and sadly, even if you did not care to admit it, one tactic to do that is clearly political. We call this the redeeming power of inclusion so we can do away, once and for all, this exclusion that has marked what we are as peoples of the homeland.

If MLE failed to do that, then rightly so, we have a Trojan horse. 

Let us not forget that we have not been forewarned of the evils of Tagalogism and Tagalogization under the guise of the nation and the state--under the guise of nationalism. What we have been promised is the redemptive power of speaking a common language that has caused not unification but a chasm that has divided us more and more.  

We must remember--and remember with clarity, that the intention to build a nation was what justified the imagination of a 'national' language, however dubious that was, because, among other things, it was grounded on a fossilized view of the nation-state that was largely based on Quezon's idea of the 'polis' as the of the hypervaluated examples of the dancing four sisters of 'egalite, fraternite, liberte' who are at the same time the purveyors of colony and empire--these dancing four sisters being held as exemplars of what we can do to ourselves in terms of state-crafting and nation-building: Germany, Spain, England, and France. 

Remember that we were building up a nation in making 'Tagalog as the basis of the national language' and we paid the salaries of people, who under the guise of that purpose, became the very people who oppressed and continue to oppress us by denying us of our linguistic rights and cultural freedom. 

Remember that we were building a state in making 'Tagalog as the basis of the national language' and we paid for all the Tagalog grammar books (remember Lope K. Santos' 'Tagalog balarila' and its illusions about a universal balarila of our salvation, that dubious grammar of our freedom?) and Tagalog dictionaries (schizophrenic as they are since many of them could not even figure out if they are indeed Tagalog or Pilipino or Filipino, except of course, that dictionary that passed itself off, in the sense of a eureka, that here at last is a 'Filipino' dictionary because some words from Hanunuo Mangyan and other languages have been included, and that 'pinakbet' has entered into its lexicon) and the salaries of teachers of Tagalog in our classrooms. 

Oh, how we venerated Tagalog at the altar of this skewed notion of nation and this equally skewed notion of state!

Here is what we can do: we need to clarify that intentions alone do not make our act ethical.

Intentions are never the final arbiter of what is moral and justifiable because they account the basic freedoms we are fighting for. The ethical adage remains: Bonum ex integra causa malum ex cucumque defectu.

We can keep on announcing our good intentions--as all the Tagalogistic fascists are saying and claiming in the name of the country they cannot even spell in accord with the demands of cultural pluralism because of historical ignorance and because of their ignorance of the notion cultural diversity as the source of our national conversation and ergo, national communication, with that Tagalog logic that says that since Tagalog has no 'F', then, as it is always the case, the spelling of the homeland should be 'Pilipinas' and not 'Filipinas'--but good intentions alone would not advance our cause of human freedom if these intentions did not find their context in the larger view of what we want to achieve with and for our people. 

 

I offer a philosophical questioning that I hope will guide the praxis that we ought to draw up, as this praxis gains ascendancy with the vigor of its truth, first and foremost, and with the energy of its ideology, only secondarily. Or it could be that we forge in our struggle the melding of the two to account our renewed orthopraxis:  

1. We need to establish clearly what this MLE is all about in terms of some basic distinctions we have to do: (a) the role of MLE in redeeming ourselves from all these inequities that have been our lot since 1935, and thus, this act would elevate our pedagogial purposes from plain pedagogial pedantry (which to me, is an inutile imagination as we have to put back politics in our MLE classrooms) and (b) the role of Mother Language in Education (MLIE), which is not the same, conceptually, as plain and simple Mother Language Education (MLE). 

2. We need to eventually trod upon sacred ground when we will work out tactic. We do this by being mindful of some other related concepts, particularly issues related to the community where we find our MLE classrooms. These issues are first language, lingua franca, and second language.

With this MLE initiative, we are going to fiercely guard the ground we have claimed for ourselves. 

It will not be easy guarding it, as many of the enemies are also us--they are, in fact, coming also from our ranks. 

Of course, there are the plain enemies whose intent is to make all of us 'Tagalog-speaking' nationals in the country that is in truth and in fact, linguistically and culturally plural.

One of the points they will raise against us is this: how are we going to communicate to each other as a nation-state, as a people, without Tagalog (well, tell me, let us not kid each other now: ask the respectable linguists and they will tell you that darn truth about P/Filipino, because in reality, we have been held hostage by this equation: Tagalog=P/Filipino)?

Our response should be this: communication is motivation, and the best motivation is equity, justice, fairness, democracy, and respect for human rights. 

And our languages are our fundamental human rights.

And the opportunity to be educated in our languages is one educational motivation--and educational resource--we can put in place. 

Frankly:  I do not understand why every one is so worried about the extinction of the tarsus when no one is crying foul about the extinction of our languages. A report from the Ethnologue says that we have lost four of our languages already. Which language is coming in next?

Now, we have to be continually cautious of Trojan horses. 

We are not playing victim here--but if we do, can we ever blame the victim for what happened to her or him? 

Let the ember of this struggle continue to fire all of us. 

Aurelio Agcaoili

Nakem/UH

 

Marhay na banggi sa indo gabos! 

Benjie, I am not representing Commission on Higher Education or any of its interest. Ched is short for my full name- Maria Mercedes. My family's roots are from La Union, Ilocos, Nueva Ecija, and Pangasinan. I also lived in Benguet, Manila, Laguna, and Bicol. 

Now I understand the wariness of some of you about the MLE initiatives and why you are calling it a trojan horse. I see your point that it is indeed possible that certain interest groups would piggyback on our efforts to promote their own agenda. This warns be to be more careful 
so that such will not happen or else MLE which is supposed to demarginalize pupils will end up reinforcing another marginalizing force. This is why we need your help because you have the eye to discern the tactics of such groups. As I said, our only intent as educators is that all children would be educated in their mother tongue so that they would develop critical minds to discern and address injustice in their midst. Btw, to situate MLE in the larger discourse of education reform, please read the transcript of the UP Centennial Lecture on Education Reform which is linked to our MLE blog http://www.motherto ngue-based. blogspot. com/

Thank you, Apo Maestro Agcaoili, for the Nakem's support for the MLE alliance and for being among the first to sign our online petition. I see that that the alliance would be participated by groups coming from language/culture, education and other development- oriented groups. I 
hope, too, that such alliance would be felt even among virtual communities. 

Sa indo gabos, Dios mabalos sa indong pagtabang.

Ched Arzadon 

Language Struggle, 6

Dear Ched, 

I share the fear that MLE would just be a trojan horse for tagalog education. The entrenched position of Tagalog would make it that way. Unless very concrete policies and institutions to promote other languages in consonance with MLE, Tagalog in the guise of MLE will have its way in this linguistic genocide. My support for MLE is conditional on these pro local languages policies. The operative term is normalization (in general use) of the other languages. These
languages should be officialized, used in print and literature, and in media to protect their vulnerability to Tagalog. Unless concrete steps are taken toward these ends, MLE is a Trojan Horse. 

Raymund 

In DILA@yahoogroups. com, "ched estigoy-arzadon" wrote:

Since there is a continuing discussion about motives underlying the petition I posted for mother tongue based learning or multilingual education (MLE), please allow me to share the context in which the manifesto came to being. I helped craft the manifesto, along with two of my friends from NEDA Education and Manpower Development Division. We're together in the Teacher Education and Development Program yahoogroup where the MLE framework has been the topic for months. We crafted the manifesto as part of our personal advocacy for MLE. Mine was crystallized when I attended meetings sponsored by SEAMEO where MLE programs initiated by DepEd and NGOs were presented. I was drawn to MLE for its efficacy in affecting learning and for addressing the needs of marginalized learners. 
 
Being from the education sector, it was clear in my mind that the manifesto we put together was all about catalyzing EDUCATION REFORM  in the country. It was actually right after the UP centennial lecture on education reform that the manifesto was finalized. Lobbying for a language bill was just a fraction of my concern. If you visit my blog  http://demarginaliz ingeducation. blogspot. com/ you would find that I wrote how MLE as a pedagogical approach would be implemented now (with or without an enabling law) in all learning situations including in catechetical and Sunday school classes. 

In my eagerness to gather support, I sent the appeal to all my e-groups, including those I found in the search engine of yahoo that advocate culture and language development (like DILA). I posted the appeal in this group not knowing fully well the dynamics and extent of language politics that exist among language experts like you. I'm  learning a lot from you. Thanks for those who have patiently explained some historical background. I am sorry if you felt that I was imposing the manifesto in disregard to your experiences of linguistic injustice. That was not my intention. Well, though some of you may not affix your signature, based on your exchanges, I feel that you  are one with us in advocating for culturally and linguistically  responsive education. 

Dios ti agngina.

Ched Arzadon

Quo vadis, Ilokano?

Ti Sungbat iti Saludsod a ‘Papanam, Ilokano?’

(Panglukat a bitla para iti 2008 Fall Drama, Video, ken Musical Festival ti Ilokano Language and Literature Program, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Art Auditorium, Nov. 22, 2008)

Ita a bigat, sungbatantayo ti saludsod a karit—wenno ti karit a saludsod—a tema daytoy a festival ti Programa iti Lengguahe ken Literatura Ilokana iti daytoy a tawen.

Narikur ti saludsod, kas paggaammotayo.

Idi sinaludsod daytoy ni Apostol Pedro ken Jesus iti dalan nga umadayon iti Roma idi mabigbig ni Apostol Pedro ti nagparang a Jesus nga idin ket nabayagen a nailansa iti krus, sinugbatan ni Jesus, segun iti sari-ugma, kinuna:

“No saan a maaramid amin a rumbeng nga aramiden, agsubliakto idiay Roma tapno mailansa manen iti maikadua a daras.”

Ni Pedro ti nagsubli idiay Roma, a kaduana ni Nazarius, a segun iti estoria, ket nakailansaanna met iti krus.

Ngarud kayatna a sawen iti panasaludsodtayo ket daytoy: a ti papanantayo ket addaan pannubok.

Addaan kadagiti karit.

Addaan kadagiti agur-uray a pannakailansa, iti wagas a pangngarig.

Gapu ta iti daytoy a dangadang tapno makapartuattayo iti espasio para kadagiti tattao nga Ilokano ken taga-Amianan iti ili ken iti diaspora ket naruay a naitalali dagiti awan sarday a karit, sakrifisio, ken pannakailansa.

Daytoy ti gapuna a rumbeng koma a kankanayon a sisasaganatayo tapno mabigbig no ania dayta a saludsod maipapan iti no sadinno ti pagturongantayo, no sadinno ti papanan ni Ilokano, no sadinno ti papanan dagiti amin nga Ilokano.

Gapu ta adda dagiti panangtuntontayo iti diversidad ken kadagiti plurikultural a biagtayo.

Kankanayontayo a tuntuntonen daytoy, ditoy Hawai’i ken iti Filipinas.

Ngem agingga ita, ditoy kas met laeng iti pagilian, ket nasken pay laeng ti panagsardengtayo nga agsusususik iti nakaro para iti bassit-usit a suli ti daga a tuntuntonentayo para kadagiti bagbagitayo, ken kanayon, kankanayon a maidurdurontayo iti pader ken iti bukodtayo a bagi.

Panagkunak ket masapul a rugiantayon ti mangsungbat iti dayta a saludsod, Papanam, Ilokano? panangsungbat nga addaan iti tured, takneng, ken awan-panagamak.

Idiay Filipinas, ilablabantayo ita ti pannakaisubli ti Ilokano kadagiti amin siled ti pagadalan nga Ilokano ken kadagiti lugar nga Ilokanosado iti Amianan.

Ditoy Hawai’i, ilablabantayo met dagiti kalintegantayo babaen ti awan ressat a panagexperimentotayo kadagiti amin a posible a wagas tapno iti kasta ket masiertotayo a ti lengguahe ken kultura nga Ilokano ket saan laeng nga agbiag no di ket agbiag a nasaliwanwan ken addaan iti dignidad.

Masapul a rugiantayon to mangirupir ken mangilaban ken mangdawat kadagiti lingguistik ken kultural a karbengantayo uray no sadinno ti ayantayo.

Masapul a rugiantayon ti mamati manen kadagiti kapasidadtayo.

Masapul a rugiantayon ti mamati kadagiti bukodtayo a bagi kalpasan ti adu a tawen a pananglalaistayo met laeng kadagiti kulturatayo, daytoy a naadaltayo a pananggura kadagiti bukodtayo a bagi, kontra iti lengguahetayo, kontra iti kulturatayo.

No adda man banag a mabalintay a maadal manipud iti festivaltayo ita nga aldaw, isu daytoy: a ti sungbat dayta a saludsod, Papanam, Ilokano? ket naigamer iti grasia ken basbas ken panangafirmar ken panagrespeto iti kabukbukodan.

Naimbang nga aldawyo amin.


The Answer to the Question, “Where you going, Ilokano?”

Our distinguished guests, the members of the faculty of the Ilokano Language and Literature Program, students of our program, both Ilokanos and Ilokano-descended and non-Ilokanos, friends, ladies, and gentlemen:

This morning, we respond to the question which is a challenge—or a challenge which is also a question—the theme of the festival of the Ilokano Language and Literature Program this year.

This question is complex.

When the Apostle Peter asked Jesus on the road going away from Rome when the apostle recognized Christ who had since then died on the cross, Jesus answered him, according to the folklore, this way:

“If things are not done just fine, I am going back to Rome to be crucified the second time around.”

The Apostle Peter went back to Rome and there, he was crucified.

Thus, what our questioning means is that ahead of us are trials.

Ahead of us are challenges.

Ahead of us await crucifixion, metaphorically.

For in this struggle to create a space for our Ilokano and Amianan people in the homeland and in the diaspora has been fraught with endless challenges, sacrifices, crucifixions.

This is the reason why we must always be ready to recognize what is in that question about where we are going, about where is the Ilokano going, about where are all the Ilokanos going.

Because we have claims to diversity and pluri-cultural lives.

We always claim this, in Hawai’i and in the Philippines.

But until now, here as well as in the homeland, we have yet to stop fighting fiercely for that small corner of the earth we have claimed for ourselves, and always, always, we are being pushed against the wall and against ourselves.

I guess that we must begin to answer that question, Where are you going, Ilokano? with courage, with boldness, with daring.

In the Philippines, we are fighting for the return of Ilokano in all Ilokano classrooms, in the Ilocos and in the Ilokanized areas of Northern Philippines.

Here in Hawai’i, we keep the fight for our rights by continually experimenting with all possible ways to make it certain that Ilokano language and culture will not only survive but thrive with dignity.

We must begin to assert and fight and demand for our linguistic and cultural rights anywhere we are.

We must begin to believe in our capacities again.

We must begin to believe in ourselves again after years and year of cultural denigration, this learned hatred against ourselves, against our language, against our culture.

If at all there is something we can learn from today festival, it is this: that the response to the question, Where are we going? is one steeped in grace and blessing and self-affirmation and self-respect.

Good day to all of you.

Hon, HI
Nov 22/08

Language Struggle, 5

MOTHER LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION & MOTHER LANGUAGE EDUCATION

(Below is an exchange I had with Ched Arzadon, one of the key advocates of Mother Language Education/Mother Language in Education)

Ched, aloha:

You have our assurance, from the ranks of many enlightened Nakem Conferences, Timppuyog Dagiti Mannurat nga Ilokano Global, America, and Filipinas (TMI Global), and GUMIL Filipinas cultural workers, rsearches, teachers, and creative writers. 

This MLE has been our ranks' concern for so long, and we read this Manifesto in the way it ought to be read from our own end. Many of our people have signed the online petition as you might realize. I have signed, and I am number 25, if you care to know.

This politics of language thing is one concern that we have to look into in the alliance, and I am certain it is not going to be a walk in the park. 

But we will be there, armed with the hoped-for capacity to discourse with other language advocates with a certain humility to be present to others and with openness to truth and its demands before ideology. 

Let us all move on. We go 'divide et tempera', and we are all done in. 

Best to all of us.

Aurelio Agcaoili
Nakem Conferences/ UH Manoa

--- On Fri, 11/21/08, ched estigoy-arzadon <removed> wrote:

From: ched estigoy-arzadon <removed>
Subject: [DILA] Re: PETITION for mother tongue based learning

 To: DILA@yahoogroups. com
Date: Friday, November 21, 2008, 4:23 AM

Since there is a continuing discussion about motives underlying the   petition I posted for mother tongue based learning or  multilingual  education (MLE), please allow me to share the context in  which the  manifesto came to being. I helped craft the manifesto,  along with two  of my friends from NEDA Education and Manpower Development  Division. 

We're together in the Teacher Education and Development  Program  yahoogroup where the MLE framework has been the topic for  months. We  crafted the manifesto as part of our personal advocacy for  MLE. Mine  was crystallized when I attended meetings sponsored by  SEAMEO where  MLE programs initiated by DepEd and NGOs were presented. I was drawn  to MLE for its efficacy in affecting learning and for  addressing the  needs of marginalized learners. 

Being from the education sector, it was clear in my mind  that the  manifesto we put together was all about catalyzing
EDUCATION REFORM  in the country. It was actually right after the UP  centennial lecture  on education reform that the manifesto was finalized.  Lobbying for a  language bill was just a fraction of my concern. If you  visit my blog 
> http://demarginaliz ingeducation. blogspot. com/ you would  find that I  wrote how MLE as a pedagogical approach would be  implemented now  (with or without an enabling law) in all learning  situations  including in catechetical and Sunday school classes. 

In my eagerness to gather support, I sent the appeal to all  my e- groups, including those I found in the search engine of  yahoo that  advocate culture and language development (like DILA). I  posted the   appeal in this group not knowing fully well the dynamics  and extent  of language politics that exist among language experts like  you. I'm  learning a lot from you. Thanks for those who have  patiently expained  some historical background. I am sorry if you felt that I was  imposing the manifesto in disregard to your experiences of  linguistic  injustice. That was not my intention. Well, though some  of you may  not affix your signature, based on your exchanges, I feel  that you  are one with us in advocating for culturally and  linguistically responsive education. 

Dios ti agngina.

Ched Arzadon

Language Struggle, 4

POPULAR CULTURE AND ITS REDEMPTIVE POSSIBILITIES

(Below is an exchange I had with Melanie Lapid on popular culture and the language struggle in the Philippines. Her email has been removed.)

Melanie, aloha:

You are right. Armed with our critical tools and skills, we go the popular culture way. Mindful of what we can and what we cannot do, that is how we are going to advance our cause.

We must admit this: we cultural workers have the ideas but we do not--at least from our ranks at Nakem Conferences--the power of the purse. That is where that 'industry' thing can come to be our ally. 

We need to fund this struggle, and fund it well, in terms of both concepts and currency, this last one meaning the cents that we need to buy the cup of coffee to make us stay awake, so that on the crossroads and on the wayside, we are not going to go astray or fall asleep or both--oh, the cents, the cents, the cents to perk us up so that we will not be enervated by all these wars, big and small, within and out, that we have to contend with each day.  

So there: engage and deploy--deploy and engage--but we are armed as well with the critique for that engagement and deployment. After all, there is war here, really. 

The better soldiers in this war are those who are ready with their ideations about the fundamental things of our struggle.

Best to you in the name of the anito of our languages and cultures.


Aurelio Agcaoili
Nakem Conferences


On Fri, 11/21/08, Melanie Lapid <removed> wrote:

From: Melanie Lapid <removed>
Subject: Re: [DILA] Sisikat no reng amanung rehiun (The regional languages are on the rise)
To: DILA@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, November 21, 2008, 12:24 AM

Thanks for your profound comments and kind words, Prof. Agcaoili. I agree with you on the possible pitfalls of culture as we know it getting sucked into the pop "culture" industry and all that it stands for. And I understand those who are wary about getting "contaminated," the risk of becoming "one of its own."

On the other hand, by not have anything to do with "shabby and inane" shows, we might be leaving the field open to our opponents by default. By holding on to our standards (cultural, literary, etc.), without being too snobbish as to avoid all contact with this sector, we will probably be doing the industry, and society, a service.  It
is there, so we might as well use it for our noble objectives. As you say, the better for us to promote our cause.

Mimi           

El dom, 16/11/08, Aurelio Agcaoili <aurelioagcaoili@yahoo.com> escribió:
De: Aurelio Agcaoili <aurelioagcaoili@yahoo.com>
Asunto: Re: [DILA] Sisikat no reng amanung rehiun (The regional languages are on the rise)
Para: DILA@yahoogroups.com
Fecha: domingo, 16 noviembre, 2008 3:01
 
Melanie:
You are probably right on that one note on the power of popular cultural forms as some kind of a tentative gauge for how much success we have gained. 
 
But believe me: popular culture is one tricky business as it is based on the ugly reality of 'industry' and how this industry turns culture into one of its own to
account what we teachers and students of cultural criticism call 'culture industry.' 

I do agree though that we have a moral duty to penetrate' culture and its industry to make our message known and that the more Kuya Germs we can win to take side with us--and the more of those shabby and inane Wowowee and Eat Bulaga take up our cause, the better for us to promote our cause. 

Between our silence--which can mean acquiescence, in truth, in fact, and in practice--and our getting into the mold of popular culture to tell that this systemic and systematic oppression and internal colonization has to come to an end and soon, this second one is a more productive option. The deal really is: let us roll our sleeves. 

Then again, we need critical minds to do critically-oriented pop culture.

A Agcaoili
Nakem Conference 

On Sat, 11/15/08, Melanie Lapid wrote:

From: Melanie Lapid
Subject: [DILA] Sisikat no reng amanung rehiun (The regional languages are on the rise)
To: DILA@yahoogroups. com
Date: Saturday, November 15, 2008, 3:47 AM
Sasabian dang ing kareng mass media, kareng bageng pangmalda, la lalto deng bayung pangimut.

Mipaintagun (king e ku sasarian) ketang milabasan a Sabadung bengi )(Duminggu na palang ganingaldo) a ayalis ke king Master Showman Presents/Walang Tulugan nang German Moreno ing TV. 

Magsalita ya i Ronnie Liang, metung a finalist king Pinoy Dream Academy. Pakilala ne 
ing kayang bayung CD ing Ngiti (Ayli). Anyang kitnan de ot inabe ne ing Kapampangan kareng kantang atiu karin, sinabi nang usu no reng amanung pang-rehiyun ngeni, masali no kanu kareng malda, uling tatagkil la king pusu. Balamu, bagya-bagya, akukwa ta na ing kekatamung pakirasan. Nung angga kang "Kuya Germs" miraras na iti, tutu pin sigurung malapit ta na karin.

English:
They say that mass media, or popular culture, are a reflection of new movements or currents in society. 

I happened to watch, by accident, German Moreno's Master Showman Presents/Walang Tulugan last Saturday night (or rather, Sunday morning). Ronnie Liang, the Pinoy Dream Academy finalist, was introducing his new CD, Ngiti (Ayli)["ayli" being
the Kapampangan version of Tagalog "ngiti" meaning "smile]. When asked why he chose to include Kapampangan songs in the collection, he said that regional languages are now in, and hot with mass audiences, because they touch the heart. It looks like we are slowly beginning to achieve our objectives. If even "Kuya Germs" is reflecting
the trend, then, maybe we have almost arrived.
 
Mimi
 

Language Struggle, 3

(Note: This is part of an exchange I had with Prof.Ched Arzadon, one of the proponents of Mother Language Education. I removed the unrelated part of her e-mail to account the context of my response. The struggle for language rights in the Philippines has gained currency, again and again, because of the continuing oppression of the linguistic rights of the non-Tagalog peoples of the Philippine homeland.)

Ched, aloha:

Let me be very frank as well with my response to you since we are in the MLE advocacy now.

There are two sides, at the very least,to the debate on whether we have to have a national language or not. My answer to this issue is yes and no.

Yes, if we are philosophically ready to revisit the question of nation, nationalism, and cultural nationalism.

There is a problem: if national language--and the notion of 'nation' in that national language is a statist notion of nationalism, then we are done in: there is no recourse but for other languages and cultures to declare a fight a now. Here is the score: for the last 73 years of oppressive marginalization since the institution of the oppressive provision of the 1935 Constitution, what has ever been done to preserve and sustain and allow the 'othered' Philippine languages to thrive? 

Nothing. 

The thing is this: that we paid our taxes to develop Tagalog and Tagalog alone so that after 73 years of being developed, it now is a force to reckon with in terms of linguistic oppression. You go to the field and you will see the rampant cultural denigration of our languages. No one would like to be caught speaking in Ilokano anymore because even at the Laoag International Airport--as in the Ilokano classrooms--Ilokano is not legal, it is not legitimate, it is not moral. This is how bad the field data is. 
You tell that this is not the fault of Tagalog. Yes, it is not: it is a problem rooted in the Tagalogistic language and culture policies of this government. 

Now, tell me: if our language were accorded the same respect, as a matter of vision and insight, would we be at this stage of self-hatred?

The other side of the debate is: do we need a 'national language' based on a statist notion of nation? No, we do not need one. 

Perhaps, the question needs recasting: Do we need official languages? 

Yes, and the official languages should be the lingua francae of the country. Let justice be served. There is a big difference between 'nationalizing' a language and 'officializing' it. Why get stuck up with that Quezonian fetish for a national language? It does not make sense when many nation-states of the world, despite or because of, globalization, have looked to cultural pluralism as a mark of modernity, civilization, and multicultural competency. 

What about English? 

You talk about demarginalization and its powerful liberatory promise for all our peoples? 

English is not going to be our national language but one of the official languages. We need a language for international communication and Tagalog is not going to be one of them, as a matter of fact. 

I used to believe in Filipino and its promises; in fact, I was the founding president of an advocacy group of teachers and cultural workers called KAGURO SA FILIPINO, Kapisanan ng mga Guro sa Filipino. But the way the Tagalogistic mindset has railroaded our linguistic rights by way of the continuing creeping in of Tagalogism made me realize that this 'Filipino' is not the way to go to offer our people linguistic and cultural redemption.                                                                         

I am not for ethnocentrism. This means that I do not believe in the sacredness of Ilokano and Ilokano alone; there is no such thing. Corollary to that belief is the recognition that Tagalogization/Tagalogism (being passed off as 'Filipinization') is pathologic of the same social malady we all do want to happen. We abhor Gulag, Dachau, and the gas chambers so the Ayran race will be purified. 

This Tagalogization/Tagalogism is one such rite and ritual. God forbid, we will be monolingual in the days ahead. Many countries that have awakened to the reality of diversity and pluralism are beginning to create spaces for other languages to survive and thrive. The United States has been talking of 'English only' educational directions but this is not going to happen, with its commitment to plurality as a way of life. Many countries, if you ask, are doing the same thing while we in the homeland are quickly turning everyone into Tagalog.  

Ched, the field data cannot lie; we only need to be sensitive to what it tells us. 

One last note on your preference to Tagalog, the colonizer language, to English. 

My answer is quite simple that people do not see in this simplicity is the blatant, brutal truth we refuse to admit: that every act of 'colonization' is an act that immorally violent and brutal: the truth of that colonization if forced upon a people and then a cottage industry of promotion and marketing is created, and repeated over and over again until those who listen to that promotional and marketing tactic becomes so numb he can no longer distinguish fact from fiction, and then, and then, like the Goebbels tactic getting the results, we believe--we believe. In this day and age, we are not going to even think about admitting any form of colonization. 

Ask me again, and I will respond to you in frankness what I think about issues deeply affecting us. On the question of the English language, here is my repartee: it links us, as it has done so, with the world. In economic terms, however bad our English is, it became responsible for the billion dollar remittances that makes this country afloat. And Tagalog? What did it give except the 'wakasan' mentality of the Tagalog komiks. And those pulp now, those romance novels that make our lower middle class peoples--people like me--who need to believe in the fantastic possibilities of romance and love and feudal values. Or add here: the capitalist values or unbridled capitalism, the hero with his solo flight to seeking the fulfillment of his individualistic dreams.  

About what would we use to communicate to and with each other? 

That question begs. Because to communicate to and with each other we need, first, to be motivated to enter in a communication with and to each other. Motivation, while mediated by language, is a mindset, a mentality. Even before we were a nation-state with all its faults and weaknesses and artifice, we have always communicated to and with each other. Did we lack interpreters and translators? Did we lack people who were motivated to speak to and with us via interpreters and translators? Why this Quezonian indolence, one that says, in arrogance, that a president like had to be resorting to Ilokano interpreters to speak to the Ilokanos? Why not? Why settle for a disrespect for the language of a people when in the first instance you said you are in for a respect for the language of a people? When we have decided as a nation to go multilingual, let us go multilingual and for real, and not multilingual in one sense while not multilingual in other senses. This idea of not being able to communicate to and with each other lack merit because this is not backed up by what happens on the ground. Here is the useless equation that speaking a national language equals being nationalist/nationalistic while speaking a 'regional' language is betrayal, is being a traitor to the national cause. Herein lies the context: that regionalism is the stumbling block to the economic and other related developments of the Philippines, and thus, regionalism should be wiped out, erased from the vocabulary of the 'othered' peoples of the Republic. I say: there is nothing more murderous that this statement. 

  

Best now in the name of all the languages of the homeland, in the name of the anito of our cultures,

Aurelio


11/18/08, Ched Arzadon 

From: Ched Arzadon
Subject: RE: Translation of Manifesto into Ilokano and Tagalog
To: aurelioagcaoili@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 5:55 PM

Since I find you a kindred spirit (for your passion for MLE) and being a fellow Ilocano and a respected expert in languages, let me share to you my initial reactions about MLE and hope to hear your feedback.

My area is Education (particularly development oriented type like nonformal and informal education) and so I was drawn to MLE because of its demarginalizing possibility. Having jumped into this advocacy exposed me for the first time to the language politics among linguistics people. I never knew that such conflicts and divisions existed. 

Yes, I see the point why Tagalog should not take the privileged position. But what would we use to communicate to each other at this time? Why English? For me I'd rather use one of the languages of the colonized (Tagalog) than the language of the colonizer. I also see that each linguistic group has the responsibility to develop their own language. Maybe I have never understood fully well the insidious nature of the Tagalog linguists that was alluded to by people in DILA. For me, I see myself as a Filipino and I value all languages in the land.

Although Ilocano is my mother tongue, I see that Ilocano is co-equal with other Filipino languages. I also do not see why a God-given gift like our language would divide us. I do not intend to sound offensive or self-righteous. I am just perplexed about the whole thing.   

Agyamanak manen apo kaniayo gapu iti kinaingetyo nga agbaligi iti advocacytayo.

Ched  

Seisenta, Seisenta Uno

(Ken Aristeo Padrigao, periodista ken komentarista iti radio nga impatlida, Nov. 18, 2008, Gingoog City, Filipinas.) 

They trailed him from home to school. As he got off his motorcycle to drop his 7-year-old daughter at the school gate, one of the men shot him in the jaw in front of the girl, police said. C. Rodriguez, Inquirer, Nov. 18/09

1.

Diak ammo no kasano ti mapasag.

Aristeo Padrigao a pudno ti naganmo 

Nga iti sango ti anak ket ti final a pammadso:

Bala iti lasag a kasta unay ti bara,

Tured koma a nabisked

Kas iti darang a narangrang a sagut 

Iti ili a ngem ta tilpakenda

Ti pispis kas iti prinsipio ti wayawaya

Ket ti komunion iti daytoy

Nga imaruda iti ngalay ti dalan

A tanem dagiti masumar a balabala ni ayat.

Sinno dagiti birkog, sinno dagiti mannanakaw

Iti pannagibim iti balasitang, iti panangipateg

Daga a nagrutingan dagiti amin a kita ti balubal

Iti puso man wenno iti palad?

Kabsat a mangiwarwarnak kadagiti peggad

A kasingin dagiti di makapudno a pluma

Dagiti daga a di met kadagaan

Ta agur-uray piman kadagiti karakaran

A maiwa kas iti pannakaiwaris ti utek

A ti gatilio ti makaigapu ti nagabay a salakan?

2.

Saan a gapu iti agsayasay a dara, kakaen iti dangadang.

3.

Ti makaigapu ti saning-i no ti di pannakaipatli ti darepdep

Dagiti sabong a naitani iti balligi. 

Ngem ita, kasano a dagiti petalo ti rosas a nalabaga ken puraw

Ken nagmaris iti daytoy nga am-amangaw 

Ket agbalin a pangontra kadagiti sulisog ti di mamingga

A panagbilang iti pannakatay

Nga iti sango ti anak a kaippusing iti balitang

Ket maysa itan nga ulila kadagiti apros?

Ayna, ti karayo anak koma a dungdungnguen 

Iti panagayat ti ili

Ti santifikado koma nga agas ti bannog 

Iti agmalem a panaggudagod

Iti kasla turumpo a panagwerret a panagpuligos

A pannakigasanggasat iti kalsada dagiti mabayadan

A miron kadagiti idea ti panagwaywayas ti puso

Kas iti isip ken nakem ken ti dulang a namsek

Namnama ti bagas, kilabban a makirog, panaglablabonan

Koma nga iti bigat-aldaw-rabii a mataog.

Wenno mannabidong iti bannawag kadi itan

Ti mangisuno kadagiti panggep nga ita rabii ket

Matagainep: kas iti kinnabsat nga adda iti kunniber

Dagiti nabibileg, dagiti heneral dagiti amin a laingtayo

A di met mangted talgek no di ket saning-i kas iti ibiatmi

Iti ipapataymo nga ipapatay dagiti amin a sasainnek

Nga itan ket agbanag manen nga awan, ampaw

A sabsabong ti dila dagiti am-ammotayo a mangmangkik? 

4.

Saan, kunam,

Ket iti kangitingitan dagiti danag, iwaragawagmo

Ti karbengan nga agbiag iti abstraksion dagiti manglanglangan

A ragsak wenno panagsugel tapno ti kaasi dagiti nakakaasi

A kas kadatayo ket agbalin nga araraw:

Ngem ta gudasenda amin a sayaat

Ania ngamin ta ti tured ket virtud

A mangiwanwanwan iti nasipnget a dalan ti Gingoog

Ti siudad dagiti mabisin a mawaw, mawaw a mabisin

Kadagiti balikas ti ili a sibibiag.

5.

Kasano ita nga isublimi ti angesmo manipud iti tapok,

Manipud iti agsapa a saksi ti pannakagsat ti anges

Tapno iti agmatuon ket maitabon ti gargari

Ti biag a nasayaat, nalimpio, natalged 

Para kadagiti bagyo a kas ita a dumarop iti arapaap,

Maar-arrakattot nga agpaarayat.  

Maikaseisenta daytoy a pannakatay

Henesis amin dagiti ti paltiing ti panagungar.

6.

Agbalingtayo, ket ipatlida uray dagiti aldaw

Iti kangitingitan ti panaglalaaw.

Seisentauno ti sumuno a ranggas

Iti ili dinesgrasia ti barrairong a balikas. 

Hon, HI/Nov 18/08

Language Struggle, 2

Dialogues in Philippine Diversity, 2

(Note: This is an exchange I had with Prof. Raymund Pascual Addun, an authority on translation studies in Spanish and a scholar on Amianan cultures and languages. This exchange was from an e-mail group of language advocates that pursues cultural pluralism as a template for a revisiting of the conception and praxis of public life in the Philippines. Hon, HI, Nov 16/08)

Aloha Raymund, kia ora:

You are right: this is not going to be a walk in the park. 

This patriarchy (you have to understand that Anonuevo and his ilk is a product, plain and simple, of Tagalog patriarchy) has combined with the restive politics of our languages, and the same patriarchy is no longer secure in its perch precisely because its crown and its victory is based on an unstable ground. 

Remember that metaphor about revolutions and the useless victories of a crown when that crown is perched on bayonets--well, Tagalog, Tagalogization, and Tagalogism have an army and a navy, literal and real, as our tax monies are being used to protect these inutile positions of monolingualism when the whole wide world is opening up to cultural pluralism--and the bayonets stand on a quicksand?   

Those in the know about Tagalog aesthetics, particularly Tagalog poetry--which is being passed off as P/Filipino poetry and which is the same kind of poetry that is being vended as THE poetry of the Filipino people at the Palancas--is sired--yes, 'sired' is the term here which is 'putot' in Ilokano, by Tagalog patriarchs, many of them based at the University of the Philippines and whose salaries, from our taxes and from our foreign debts and from our foreign remittances we are paying.

What is this? 

We pay the salaries of people to destroy us via the institutions of our culture, education, and language? 

Where on earth can we find a situation like this except in countries like the Filipinas where the peoples of the periphery have accepted to be docile, subservient, and vigilantes against their own sense of self and interest? 

Obviously, that Tagalogistic guy operates from a position of comfort and convenience. 

Someone ought to tell him to learn--no, force to learn Ibanag or Ilonggo in much the same way we are forced to learn, indeed, his Tagalog language via a subtle tactic we call for want of a better term, Philippine monolingual/bilingual education and let us see what he says.

Oh well, I have heard that some of those in his group--they have a powerful bloc of Tagalistas, some of them are useless Ilokanos, by the way--are afraid to speak up, for reasons that are economic, relational, and, hold your breath now, 'baka tilian sila ng kanilang Tatay--their Tatay might scream at them.' (I am quoting here; I am not inventing.) 

Your guess is as good as mine. 

At a lecture I delivered at the University of the Philippines Los Banos in July 2007--a lecture attended by faculty of that university, the better students, and many teachers and officials of the Department of Education of that part of the country--I challenged them with this: "Let us start to translate the meaning of social justice in our classrooms. 

"The only way to get us into a national conversation is for your Tagalog students or pro-Tagalogistic mindsets to get to learn other Philippine languages. 

"You are doing a disservice to the Tagalog students by pampering them with the idea--and making them believe--that the privilege and entitlement of the Tagalog language is natural, is the state of affairs, and is God-given. It is not."

I only had silence when I said those words in a hall packed with strange spirits and sympathetic souls who could see the points I was raising.

But one professor, Dr. Paul Zafaralla, stood up to say that I was right.

So here is the logic: Why ram into the throat Ilonggo students with Tagalog strange sounds and strange words when you do not do the same to the students of the Tagalog region? 

And in the national assessment, you use the same yardstick? 

Where are the better-educated and the more intelligent teachers of the republic? 

Think of national conversation--and you can only imagine how ignorant many of our teachers are, teachers who have been lobotomized into believing that the 'nation-state' is more important than our cultural communities, as if our cultural communities do not have any sense of nation and state at all, but not in the way the Tagalogistic mind would see it. 

These are the same teachers (and some poets, too, who are products of literary incestuous relationships!) who cannot distinguish Tagalogization from Tagalogism. A person steeped in analytical skills, as the philosophers, particularly the philosophers of human thought and language, should be able to follow the road to the 'distinguo' as a means and a method to clarifying what the issues at hand are. 

That Tagalista guy who fails to distinguish the terms Tagalogization and Tagalogism (and failing as well to imagine that the suffix 'ism' is not always in accord with all the 'isms' he is fantastically enamored with should teach himself to learn another Philippine language for him to understand that he has imprisoned his mind with the world afforded by his Tagalog word. 

Some people do not learn because they cannot. 

Or they refuse to because it is more convenient to do so; because it is more economically rewarding to do so; because it is more comfortable to do so.

Let this struggle be won.

Aurelio Agcaoili
Nakem Conferences

 On Sun, 11/16/08, Raymundo Pascual Addun (email removed)wrote:

From: Raymundo Pascual Addun
Subject: [The DILFED Forum] Re: It is not the name, it is the struggle
To: advocacy group removed

Date: Sunday, November 16, 2008, 2:15 PM

yes indeed prof. ariel. this fight is not over. the first cannon 

salvos scarcely have been heard.  this is a long drawn struggle. 

Lets go the grassroots now. Anonuevo and the Tagalistas have the center. we will have the country. rebbeng laeng to PPW protracted peoples war)to use JM Sison's terminology. Let was go to every local govt and every local organization. And then the Tagalistas, añonuevo included, will soon listen to the cry  of protest and linguistic revolution. 

 
No amount of tagalog  hocus focus can hide the fact the Tagalog is killing the other languages. This, anonuevo cannot see in his distorted logic. We have been saying that the other languages are killled bcause theyre not taught and used in school. Its as plain as that. But Anonuevos mind cannot seem to appreciate this simple fact.   

he even boast thats tagalog (Filipino) has developed on the diligence of its users. The fact is that the development of Filipino was  deliberate and programmatic/systematic through the
educational institutions to the detriment of the other languages.  

Raymund

Again, on the language struggle

DIALOGUES ON PHILIPPINE LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY, PART I

 

(Note: Below is an exchange between Eman Lerona and this blogger. Eman was reacting to my previous reaction to another language advocate, Remy Melendez. Both Eman and Remy know well whereof they speak in this vicious cycle we call neocolonization-decolonization-neocolonization that continues to blight out lives as peoples of the Philippines.)

 

Dear Eman,


You know well how difficult this struggle is, and your letter is a salve in this long and desolate and oftentimes lonely road ahead all of us, we who understand a little bit better about what we should do as non-Tagalog peoples.

 

It is not people here that we are against: it is the hemlock in the ideas of the Tagalist mind and mindset, the hemlock of 'nationalized' language that they force us to drink, as if we ourselves do not have our own drink, much better, much fresher, much more refreshing than somebody else's offer.



 

You remember that faint and vague claim of that guy somewhere: 'nagparaya' is his word, a Tagalog term which he passes off as Filipino, his own definition.

 

That term—nagparaya, as in ‘pagpaparaya ng Tagalog’—alludes to the sacrifice of Christ: Tagalog offering itself for all the peoples of the Philippines!

 

What?

 

That, to me, is pathologic of a complex which, if our resident psychiatrist and mental health workers are reading this piece, they would call as 'messianic'.



 

Heck, they say over here: we do not need a redeemer outside of ourselves.

 

We only need each other, we non-Tagalog peoples—and with each other and because of each other, we can deliver ourselves from the clutches of linguistic death.



 

Best to you with the anito. 



 

 

Aurelio Agcaoili


Nakem Conferences 


 

On Sat, 11/15/08, Emmanuel Lerona <em_lerona@yahoo. com> wrote: From: Emmanuel Lerona <em_lerona@yahoo. com

Subject: [The DILFED Forum]

Re: It is not the name, it is the struggle


To: DILFED@yahoogroups. com


Date: Saturday, November 15, 2008, 1:55 AM


 

Let me be the first to congratulate you for this little
victory, Prof.
 Agcaoili.

 

I am only one of the 90 million or so persons in
 the
 Philippines, but who knows how many "ones" are in
 support of you—our advocacy? Panginbulahan halin sa mga Ilonggo kag
Karay-a kang Panay.


 

Eman Lerona


 

In DILFED@yahoogroups. com, Aurelio Agcaoili
>

 

Remy, aloha:


 

I understand, and you are right.

 

But to spend my day stooping down to his intellect, forget it, not in that way. 


 

I will keep on writing, as I have always done, but not because of
 them and their poison. 


 

I am going to continue to stand for our rights as
peoples of the homeland. I have not stopped doing so. 


 

My blogs are a proof of this position, and you can go figure how, like everyone else at DILFED and DILA and SOLFED and other
 groups, I
 have been a threat to this people, a threat to their false security of
 a statist nationalism and statist language. 


 

Let me tell you that I write in their language too,
 and use their language to hit the head of the nail.

 

On a last note, please help me go on with this struggle.


 

In the meantime, I am bringing this struggle in the
international
arena, my modest way of alerting kindred spirits, in this
kind of
 oppression that we have begun to like, or at least, some of
 the
 supposedly better intellectuals of the non-Tagalog cultures
and
languages.

 

You see them around, and they are many of them as well.


 

You can see in this paper I will present at the First
International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation in
March 2009,
the abstract of which is found below--to illustrate my
commitment to
this struggle.

 

To win a slot in a conference like is a little victory enough for me, with an international audience that I hope will rise up to the occasion of seeing that in the Philippines all is
not well,
that, in fact, many things are wrong including this
abominable
Tagalogism that is killing our sense of self, sense of
 being, sense of becoming, and sense of community.

 

What more does the enemy want to liquidate--systematically salvage--all of us? 


 

I am becoming a pariah, I must say. 


 

But let it be. You check on my blogs where these
positions have
 consistently been on a critique of the patriarchy of
Tagalogism:
asagcaoili-ariel. blogspot. com,
aurelioagcaoili.wordpress. com, and
 nakemconferences. blogspot. com. 


 

To plug: my winning essays in Tagalog, at the
Collantes Prize for the Tagalog Essay, (2006, 2008) are a rebuke of the
position of
Anonuevo and his ilk. These essays are publicly available.


 

So I write
in Tagalog to rebuke Tagalogism. You can say this: use the
 weapon of the enemy to destroy him. 


 

In the meantime, let us not allow ourselves to be
divided by this
powerful group of patriarchs of the 'nationalized'
language. 


 

I tell you: it is not going to be a walk in the park,
not in the
coming years.

 

So there: our endurance, our perseverance,
 our sense of
justice--all these will lead us to our redemption.


 

Or so I hope.


 

In a modest way, Nakem Conferences is our proactive
response to all
these legal oppression of--who is this guy
again?--Tagalogistic
position of convenience and comfort.
Be well.


 

PHILOSOPHICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES IN THE CONSERVATION
 INITIATIVES
OF PERIPHERALIZED PHILIPPINE LANGUAGES

 

By Aurelio S. Agcaoili

University of Hawai’i

 

The paper documents and critiques the initiatives of
advocates of
many minoritized and peripheralized Philippines languages to revitalize and conserve them and draw up from these
initiatives
theoretical and practical issues that must be addressed by
these
advocacy groups and by social institutions mandated to
produce and
reproduce what could be deemed as a just and fair because
equity-based
national and nationalized culture in the Philippines. The
initiatives of advocates of ‘Other because
othered’ Philippine languages have a history that dates back to the imposition from the
center of a counter-productive conception of
 ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ from the center that
prescribed—and continues to prescribe—a national language from the center at the expense
of the ‘other’ languages and without regard
for the rich diversity
of these languages of the country. The public perception of
 a
systematic because
nationwide internal colonization by way of
 ‘Tagalogization’ of
the public sphere that includes the wiping up of other indigenous and community languages in basic education and in national
discourse
grounds these advocacy efforts to contest the
Tagalogization of all
peoples of the Philippines and to actively negotiate a
space for a new
conception of nation and nationalism framed by the virtues
of cultural
and linguistic pluralism. The theoretical and practical
 problems of
revitalization and conservation of minoritized and
 peripheralized
Philippine languages results as well from the two-pronged
 means and
methods to the systemic and systematic marginalization of
 these
languages because of the privileging and entitlement
accorded to
 Tagalog and English. The privileging and entitlement cut
across the
 political, the economic, and the cultural. With the
continuing
migration of Filipinos everywhere including the United
States, these
problems are being
brought over and reproduced in and among the
diasporic and exilic
 communities of Filipinos. This is the reason why there is
the need to
revisit initiatives, in the Philippines and in the United
States, to
re-conceptualize policy and pedagogical approaches to
heritage
language teaching particularly in communities where there
is a heavy
influx of immigrant Filipinos from various ethnolinguistic
groups in
the Philippines. The discussion and analysis is framed by
the urgency
of fundamental respect for cultural democracy and
linguistic rights. 


 

On Fri, 11/14/08, remymelendez


 

remymelendez@ ...wrote:


From: remymelendez

Subject: [The DILFED Forum] Re: Anonuevo's
 Article

To: DILFED@yahoogroups. com


Date: Friday, November 14, 2008, 9:57 PM


 

Mr. Agcaoili,


Anonuevo must be refuted. It's not that he reserves a
response but
what he stands for must be deconstructed. He must
be made
to
understand that he cannot make statements like
this and not
get criticized for them.

 

Anonuevo is not just any
Tagalista.
He and
Almario as I write this post are busy organizing and
poisoning the
minds of young students.

 

They are preparing a
whole generation of
Tagalistas fanatical and determined like
themselves to take over when
they are too old to do their dirty work for
themselves.


 

These people
are organized, they have a strategy, and have the
know how
  to successfully bring fruition to their plans.

 

I have always
said if
language activism has to succeed, it must go into the real
world.
After all, Almario and Anonuevo have succeeded
because they are out
there not in here.


 

Remy Melendez

Alas Kuatro-Translation

ALAS KUATRO

Ti Kansion ni Aguinaldo

 

(Inyulog ni Aurelio Solver Agcaoili manipud iti libretto ken musika ni Elaine M. Hazzard, “Aguinaldo”. )

 

DEL PILAR

 

Alas kuatro, agbannawagen

Maysa laengen nga oras ti ridep.

No agtagainepak, agtugtugawto pay laeng,

Mangsirsirmatat’ para kaniak.

Iti pul-oy, dama de noche,

Ti banglom ti kadkaduak.

Diak mabannog.

Bagik idatonko kenkuana

Saluadakto isuna

A mangwayawaya kenkuana.

 

Iti kada kalman

Masakbayan pumanaw

Ngem ti dismaya

Agpukaw kada bannawag.

 

 

AGUINALDO

 

Umay ti bigat;

Bambantay umaw-awag

Iti sipnget rabii

Agpukawak, mabutengak bannawag

 

Ania ti lalaki  a mangitunda

Peggad iti buyotna?

Maysa nga ili umaw-awag

Daytoy pannakapukaw batibat.

 

Amin a gakat

Para iti sabali

Ikkan idat’ namnama

A mawayawayaandanto

 

Mangidiayat’ tured

Daton a kired

Ta mapilit’ gasat

Ili a nawaya.

 

Iti kada kalman

Masakbayan pumanaw

Ngem ti dismaya

Agpukaw kada bannawag.

 

DOLORES

 

Gregorio

Agkintayegak tagainep

Tuwato a nalabbasit pingping immagek

Ay-ayatennak pay, ammok

Ket ti dalagudog

Ti kabaliom a puraw, maingel

Awan nakalugan

Buya a mangriribuk kaniak

Nakakitaakon

Senias manipud kenka

 

Ipatulodko’t namnama

Pusok para kenka, kararag

Ayat, agan-annadka

Kas iti kinatured

Ket iti sibayko

Agsublika kaniak.

 

Iti kada kalman

Masakbayan pumanaw

Ngem ti dismaya

Agpukaw kada bannawag.

 

 

ALAS KUATRO

Awit ni Aguinaldo

 

(Salin ni Aurelio Solver Agcaoili mula sa libretto at musika ni Elaine M. Hazzard, “Aguinaldo”).

 

Alas kuatro, bubuka na ang araw

Isang oras na lang ang idlip.

Nanaginip ako, nakaupo pa rin siya,

Nag-iisip para sa akin.

Sa simoy, dama de noche,

Ang bango mo ang kasama,

Di ako mahahapo.

Sarili’y alay sa kanya

Iingatan ko siya

Bibigyan ng laya.

 

Sa bawat kahapon

Yayao ang bukas

Ngunit ang balisa

Maglalaho sa umaga.

 

 

AGUINALDO

 

Darating ang bukas;

Kabundukan, ako’y tinatawag

Sa dilim ng gabi

Maglalaho ako, takot sa liwayway.

 

Anong lalaking sa panganib

Ihahatid ang tauhan

Isang bayan tumatawag

Itong pagkawala ng batibat.

 

Lahat ng layon

Para sa iba

Bigyan ng pag-asang

Magiging malaya.

 

Mag-aalay ng tapang

Alay na giting

Mapipili ang palad

Bayang malaya.

 

Sa bawat kahapon

Yayao ang bukas

Ngunit ang balisa

Maglalaho sa umaga.

 

DOLORES

 

Gregorio

Takot ako sa panaginip

Tutubing kaypula humalik sa pisngi

Iniibig mo pa rin ako, alam ko

Ang yabag ng kabayong puti, magiting

Walang sakay

Larawang gumugulo sa akin

Nakalirip na ako

Senias mula sa iyo sa malayo.

 

Ipapadala ko ang pag-asa

Puso kong para sa iyo, dasal

Irog, mag-iingat ka

Tulad ng tapang

Sa aking tabi

Ika’y magbabalik.

 

Sa bawat kahapon

Yayao ang bukas

Ngunit ang balisa

Maglalaho sa umaga.

 

Honolulu, Hawai’i

Noviembre 14, 2008

The following is the original English text from the play, "Aguinaldo: Mark Twain in Purgatory" by Elaine M. Hazzard:

Act II.

DEL PILAR

 

(Sings)

Four o’clock, it’s almost daybreak,

One more hour have I to sleep.

And when I dream, he’ll still be sitting there,

Planning what’s ahead for me.

In the air, dama de noche,

Your fragrant blooms, my company.

I won’t be tired.

I’ll be there for him

And I’ll protect the man

Who’ll set her free.

 

With ev’ry yesterday

The future slips further away

Yet the feeling of dismay

Disappears at ev’ry break of day.

 

(SPECIAL LIGHT on AGUINALDO in hi camp)

 

AGUINALDO

 

(Sings)

Tomorrow come;

The mountains calling me

The shade of night

I slip away, I fear this dawn

 

What is a man who leads his man

Where there is danger?

A nation calls,

This loss for me must be a dream.

 

What I do

I do for others

To give them hope,

That they’ll be free,

 

To offer courage

And gift of valor

That we decide our fate

 Our nation free.

 

With ev’ry yesterday

The future slips further away

 Yet the feeling of dismay

Disappears at ev’ry break of day.

 

(SPECIAL LIGHT on DOLORES HOSES at her home)

 

DOLORES

 

(Sings)

Gregorio

A dream has given me chill

A blood-red dragonfly, it brushed my cheek

I know you love me still

Then came stamping

Your fine white horse, the noble steed

Without a rider

A sight that troubles me indeed

I think I’ve seen

A sign from you so far away

 

I send my hope,

I send my heart for you; I pray

Love, be as careful

As you are brave

And by my side again

Return to me.

 

With ev’ry yesterday

The future slips further away

Yet the feeling of dismay

Disappears at ev’ry break of day.   

Honolulu, HI

Nov. 14/08

 

 

 

 

Saving Ourselves From Teachers

WHY TEACHERS NEED TO BE TAUGHT TO DISPEL THEIR IGNORANCE--OR HOW TO SAVE OURSELVES FROM TEACHERS WHO ARE AGENTS OF OPPRESSION AND INJUSTICE 

(This is my response to the email I got from the advocacy group, DILA, about an Ilongga teacher raising the roof for her students' ability to acquire the competency needed for a Tagalogized mindset. The details in that teacher's position are found below for everyone's reference. This response has been circulated to DILA as well. A Agcaoili, Nov. 8/09)

This is a kind of a repartee to the position of the Ilongga teacher who uncritically praised her students for their borrowed abilities to use a language beyond her Ilonggo world. I can hear her: 'Ang galing-galing na nilang mauto sa Tagalog." Yes, 'mauto' not 'matuto'. Scratch the surface of her arguments and you see the argument of WIKA and all the agents of that group. 

She is one teacher whose credentials have to be won by acquiring the same credentials of the colonizer. 

Hers is a veiled statement of a colonized, who having gained ascendancy because she can now 'talk back' in the language of the colonizer, who now says with pride, Hey, hey, I am good. There is breast beating here for a dramatic effect. 

At our Nakem Conferences, we have met them. 

We have probably more in the Ilocos due to the proximity of the Tagalogista center. 

But we have been checking them, these upstarts who, having gained the competency of the oppressor, is now playing the role of the oppressor in a subtle, tacit way. 

These kinds of people, like Saul of Tarsus who became Paul as soon as he realized the truth of salvation--and for our case, it is the salvation of our peoples--that teacher of something she does not understand herself needs to be blinded by the light of our cause so that with that light, they will come to see a better truth again. 

Think of teachers as agents of ignorance and social injustice and oppression and you have it in that teacher. 

Should she stay in the classroom in the first place? Does she have the moral ascendancy?

Ah, well, she can claim her fundamental right to her ignorance. Then again, seriously, she should really go Socratic this time around. That great guy has said it all that we need to learn as teachers and as cultural workers and as advocates of freedom and justice: we examine our life and good would follow suit, and when good would follow suit, we could say life is worth living. 

At the Nakem Conferences, we tell our teachers to their faces what they need to know and remind them that they have no right to multiply their ignorance via their educands. Fair is fair. Educands pay to get knowledge, not stupidity. 

Her case is pathologic of an ideology we call monoculturalism. At its extreme, it is called linguaphobia. 

Both monoculturalism and linguaphobia are forms of cognitive incapacities, if we broaden the meaning of what human cognition is, particularly that cognition that relates to liberatory practice. 

Doctors of mental health in this advocacy group could confirm what these are. I am certain Jed Pensar can tell us what happens to the psychological/ psychiatric make-up of people like us, to teachers like us who should know better, but sees only the world opened up by the statist center of power but never seeing the world our own languages could reveal. 

Think of internal colonization/ neocolonization and its stranglehold over all of us coming from non-Tagalog languages and cultures. 

The decolonization history of Africa is replete with these challenges. We ony have to read the account of Fanon to learn a lesson. Remember "White Masks, Black Skin"? 

Here is the trick: Tagalog masks, Ilonggo skin. And we can go on and on with other languages including my own: Tagalog masks, Ilokano skin. 

Or remember Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth?" Here is the situation that we must see, and now: we have become wretched, and one of the reasons why is that we allowed this to happen by allowing that teacher  to convert us to her cause. There are more of them in Bacolod, I am sure. Or in Silay City. 

Sartre helped out Fanon; so did Camus. And that guy Constantino who talked about our being 'miseducated' because we are 'spokening' in da American English, ha! There, Constantino commits that blunder of a center, he becoming a spokesperson of that center as well, even if he did not intend to do so. 

Nevertheless, we can revisit him and use him to remind those Tagalistas that Rizal's caution on the 'language' issue cannot be construed immorally as referring only to his Tagalog which, he could not use to put together his "Makamisa" the novel. 

The decolonization history of South America is replete with the same lessons: we need only to read Freire and various authors, from literature to our faith obligations (read: religion, christianity, salvation history). 

We will meet many of those--tragically, we should warn ourselves--and from the ranks of cultural workers like your teacher who has become a spokesperson of ignorance. And as a spokesperson of that abominable tyrannical ideal we call Philippine monolingualism and monoculturalism. 

We are worried about all those animals and plants going extinct and we never worry about the generations of knowledge accumulated by our various peoples through their languages going with the wind.

Even the argument of that teacher seems to be not founded on the real argument of the advocates of our multicultural lives as a 'state of affairs' in this country, and cultural pluralism as a regulative ideal for all of us. 

I rest my case with this teacher. Somebody has to quickly convert that teacher to our cause. What about giving her a blinding light to jolt her to her senses? She is coming from nowhere, indeed!

One final question for that teacher--and please let her see this: Can she say the same about her students raising questions and discoursing in their Ilonggo that equally reveals a redemptive Ilonggo world? Pray, tell, Why did she leave that out?

Or does she ever know about this?

A Agcaoili
Nakem Conferences

--- On Sat, 11/8/08, litogo <litogo@binisaya. com> wrote:

From: litogo <litogo@binisaya. com>
Subject: [DILA] An unthinking Ilongga.
To: DILA@yahoogroups. com
Date: Saturday, November 8, 2008, 4:02 PM
 http://www.thenewst oday.info/ 2008/08/27/ bien.lumbera. and.his.crusade. for.wikang. filipino. html

"The brisk questioning from students and teachers who spoke in very  laudable Filipino made me ask myself: Why is there still  such  hostility of some of our countrymen (notably our Cebuano  brothers) to  the use of Filipino as national language? The Ilonggos have  learned to  use Filipino with aplomb and dispatch, and I am proud of  them." 

I would leave JED on chastising his own sister.---Lito

Doctor Jose Dacudao Responds to the Anonuevo Attack

(Note: This is Dr. Jose Dacudao's response to Roberto Anonuevo's attack on me and Dr. Ricardo Nolasco, the advocacy for multilingualism, and multicultural education. Let history be the judge for this continuing systemic exclusionary tactic of the supposedly 'better brains' of Tagalog aesthetics, like Anonuevo's, a kind of aesthetics being passed off as Filipino, and ergo, 'national'. Dr. Dacudao, a brain surgeon based in Davao City, is one of the leading lights on the movement for linguistic and cultural justice in the Philippines.) 

Trolling Anonuevo

Roberto Anonuevo is a member of the WIKA group, the Tagalista NGO that tried to use the Supreme Court in its campaign to totally replace English with Tagalog in our schools. If Anonuevo and his fellows have their way, they will extinguish every non-Tagalog Philippine language. Below is an article of his that used to be in the blogsite, that reveals the typical mentality of Tagalistas, and my comments. He personally attacks Professor Aurelio Agcaoili and snipes at Dr. Ricardo Nolasco; and also hits at multilingualism and Federalism. As a member of Save Our Languages through Federalism who advocates multilingualism and Federalism, I am obliged to state opposing opinions.

 

(Filipino at ang Kaso ng MultilingguwalismoNobyembre 4, 2008 ni Roberto Añonuevo)

 

(Nakakubli sa kalabuan ng ipinakakalat ni Aurelio Solver Agcaoili hinggil sa kaniyang akdang “Countering Tagalism and Tagalogization.” Ayon sa kaniya, ang “Tagalogism is an attitude—a mindset that has trapped us into a belief of a Philippine nation-state as revolving around a center and only this center is important.” )

 

What else is happening? Professor Agcaoili is essentially correct.

 

(Tinatangka niyang destrungkahin ang pananaw na “Tagalog” at yanigin ito sa posisyon bilang batayan ng Filipino na wikang pambansa.)

 

Of course. If we non-Tagalogs do not start doing this, we will disappear as distinct peoples. Already, we have been marginalized, turned into second class citizens in our own places by the attitude of Tagalistas such as Anonuevo.

 

(Ang ganitong haka-haka ay bulaklak ng dila na nagpapalagay na dominanteng wika ang Tagalog, na nasa Imperyong Maynila, at ang Tagalog na ito ay nakaukit sa kamalayaan at kalooban ng bawat Filipino upang kumilos siyang parang robot na sunod-sunuran sa isang makapangyarihang sistema, sa pambihirang gahum na umiiral nang sarili, at nagtatangkang burahin ang iba pang taal na wika sa Filipinas.)

 

Anonuevo implies that there is no problem at all, that we should continue with the present system. This is typical Tagalista propaganda – nothing is wrong so do not advocate your language rights and right to exist as distinct ethnolinguistic peoples. In fact, anyone who approaches the minority status of the non-Tagalog languages of the Philippines pretending that there is nothing wrong has already revealed his adherence to Tagalog Nationalism, either consciously or not, since by default Tagalog Nationalism  is virtually the only language ideology that is being propagated in our educational institutions and national mass media. He wants this condition to continue. He wants to maintain the idea that to be a good ‘Filipino’ one must be a ‘nationalistic’ Tagalog. Anonuevo and Tagalistas want this to be literally true, to replace every non-Tagalog citizen of the Philippines with Tagalogs.

 

(Kung ang “Tagalogism” ay isang uri ng saloobin, dapat ilugar ni Agcaoili kung ano ang pinag-ugatan nito. Ngunit mabibigo ang sinuman na pigain sa kaniyang artikulo ang ugat ng “Tagalogism” o “Tagalism” at kung ikokompara sa ibang kinabitan ng hulaping “-ismo,” ay kulang na kulang para tawaging ideolohiya, kung hindi man diwaing gumagabay sa kabuuan ng mga Filipino—nasa loob man o nasa labas sila ng Filipinas. Maiuugnay din ang “Tagalogism” sa “Tagalogization” na aniya’y “…is that long juridical, linguistic, political, economic, and cultural process that has made it certain that this trap, this temptation relative to the entitlement, privileging, and valorization of Tagalog, is going to continue to have its stranglehod over all of us, Tagalog and non-Tagalog peoples alike.” )

 

It seems that Professor Agcaoili incurred Anonuevo’s ire, by saying the truth. A man’s worth is often known by the enemies he makes. Kudos to Professor Agcaoili.

 

(Mapanganib ang ganitong mapanlahat na pahayag dahil ang “Tagalogization” ay ipinakita rito na sumasaklaw hindi lamang sa wika, kundi maging sa iba pang aspekto ng lipunan, at kung hindi susuhayan ng mga patunay ni Agcaoili ay mananatiling mito lamang na kaniyang inimbento para yanigin ang Tagalog na pinagbatayan sa pagbubuo ng isang wikang pambansa.)

 

As mentioned, if we non-Tagalogs do not do anything to shake the system, we will disappear. Most of the smaller groups are already ‘moribund’, as defined by UNESCO, ethnolinguistic groups defined by less than 300,000 spekaers. These are likely to die off in less than a hundred years. The biggest non-Tagalog ethnic group, the Cebuano-speaking Visayans, will disappear in about 300 years if present trends based on National Statistics Office surveys continue. Anonuevo, the language killer, regards the preservation of these languages apparently as dangerous.

 

(Hindi isinaalang-alang dito ni Agcaoili ang kasaysayan, at tila ba ang Tagalog ay lumitaw na basta-basta lamang.)

 

It is Anonuevo who does not have the proper historical perspective. Tagalog was enforced into our educational institutions only during WW2 by the Japanese colonial government, as a means to strengthen psychological control from Manila . That is how Tagalog ‘floated’ up. Before WW2, there was a flowering of literature in a variety of Philippine languages including Ilocano, Kapampangan, Cebuano, Ilonggo, and so on. Tagalog was merely one of the Philippine languages. Now if you don’t speak it, people like Anonuevo regard you as worth less than nothing.

 

(Kinaligtaan niya ang mahabang pakikibaka ng Tagalog hindi lamang bilang wika, at ang paglampas nito sa hanggahan ng pook ng Katagalugan upang magparaya sa buong bansa, at gamitin bilang tulay na kayang makapag-ugnay sa iba-ibang wika sa Filipinas.

Ito ang mito na kathang-isip ni Agcaoili at siyang ibig ihain sa lahat ng Filipino.)

 

Talking about forgetfulness, Anonuevo conveniently forgets the struggle of non-Tagalogs to survive the imposition of Tagalog Nationalism. We are in danger of disappearing, and it is even well-documented in National Statistics Office surveys that since WW2 the percentages of non-Tagalogs in the Philippine population have been steadily decreasing.

 

What do non-Tagalogs need Tagalog for anyway? We only need two languages to survive in the world, our native tongue which gives us our ethnic identity and which should be taught as special grammar and literature subjects in their traditional areas so they won’t die out, and English, the international language of science and commerce, which should be taught in at least the Science subjects, as more than 90% of new Science and technology is done in the English language.

 

We certainly can communicate with other Philippine ethnic groups in English and we did so during the American colonial period with no trouble at all, the way Indians until today use English to communicate with each other amidst the diversity of their languages. English functions as a socially leveling tongue in the Philippines, the use of which renders all ethnic groups socially equal for there is no ethnic group that claims an identity defined by English, the same way that French is used as a socially leveling tongue in parts of Africa, thus protecting small ethnolinguistic groups from extinction. English is also a necessary language for our overseas workers, and in science and commerce. The imposition of Tagalog among us has resulted only in a feeling of social inferiority among non-Tagalogs, a degradation of our education since our youth now find it harder to comprehend English Science and other educational books, and has also degraded our English language skills, so that our overseas workers find it harder to communicate abroad. These are the very same workers that keep our economy from collapsing. Without our workers’ knowledge of English, our economy would collapse.

 

Apparently what Anonievo wants is to idiotize and pauperize us, in his campaign to turn us all into Tagalogs.

 

(Ang “Tagalogism” na ginamit dito ni Agcaoili ay dapat ikinabit sa “Inglesismo” na uri ng wikang ibig gamitin bilang tulay ng pagtuturo sa lahat ng antas ng paaralan sa Filipinas. Ingles ang banyagang wika na malaki ang ambag upang makaligtaang linangin hindi lamang ang Filipino, bagkus maging ang mga lalawiganing wika—at kabilang na rito ang Tagalog—sa Filipinas. Ingles at Espanyol ang ipinakalat sa sistema ng edukasyon sa bungad ng siglo 20, at naglagay sa panganib ng pagkabura ng kapuwa wika at kultura ng iba’t ibang lalawigan. Ingles ang humalili sa Espanyol at ang ginamit sa Kataas-taasang Hukuman, na pawang Amerikano ang mga mahistrado maliban sa punong mahistradong Filipino. Ingles ang bumahang teksbuk at aklat na pawang inangkat mula sa Estados Unidos, at kakaunti pa noon ang mga babasahing nasusulat sa mga taal na wika sa Filipinas. Ingles ang ginamit sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas—na paaralang tinutustusan ng estado—at napailalim ang Tagalog sa larangan ng wika ng pagtuturo. Noong bungad ng siglo 20, ang bakbakan ay mauuwi sa panitikan, at nagbigay ng mabuting halimbawa ang mga Tagalog kung paano mapananatili ang kanilang wika, at iyon ay sa pamamagitan ng pagsusulat at paglikha ng iba pang uri ng sining. Sa ganitong lagay, hindi tumupi ang mga manunulat na Tagalog, at patunay ang kanilang mga akda kung paano lumaban sa gahum ng Ingles. Totoong may iba pang lalawiganing wika, gaya ng Bikol, Ilokano, at Sebwano ang nakibaka laban sa Ingles at nagsikap mangibabaw. Ngunit ang mga dapat sanang tagapagtanggol nito—at kabilang na rito ang mga politiko at manunulat—ay sumanib sa Ingles imbes na pagyamanin ang kani-kanilang taal na wika. Taliwas ito sa Tagalog na hindi lamang ipinagtanggol ng mga Tagalog—bagkus kinakitaan din ng potensiyal ng ibang mamamayan—na may kakayahang maging lunsaran ng pambansang wika na magagamit upang pagbuklurin ang mga lalawigang dating binibigkis nang sapilitan ng Ingles. Ang Tagalog ay hindi dapat minamaliit bagkus dapat pa ngang papurihan, dahil kaugnay nito ang kasaysayan sa pagbubuo ng kabansaan, at paggigiit ng kalayaan, mula sa dikta ng mga pasimuno ng Ingles at banyagang edukasyon na ang tuon ay para sa ikagagaling ng merkado at gahum ng dayuhan.)

 

Anonuevo glorifies Tagalog and rants against English. He should seriously try unlearning all of whatever English he knows, and see whether or not people will understand him in the internet. The trouble is that he wants all of us to unlearn English too. That would not be advisable. If Anonuevo wants to make an idiot out of himself by unlearning all the English he knows, fine. Hopefully all other Tagalistas would follow suit. We should not.

 

(Hindi ipinaliwanag ni Agcaoili ang pakahulugan niya ng “Tagalog,” bagaman mahihinuha sa tabas ng kaniyang pananalita na ang “Tagalog” ay siya ring “Filipino” na lumalaganap ngayon sa bansa. Ang pagtanaw na “Filipino” bilang baryedad lamang sa “Tagalog” ay pailalim na panunuligsa sa Filipino upang hindi ito makatayo nang bukod sa orihinal na anyo at laman ng Tagalog. Ang linya ng pangangatwiran ni Agcaoili ay nahahawig sa pahayag ng sinibak na pansamantalang punong komisyoner ng Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino na si Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco, na ang “Tagalog” at “Filipino” ay iisang uri lamang alinsunod sa mga katangian nitong panggramatika, at kaya lamang nagkaiba ay dahil sa pagpapalit ng pangalan. Isa itong simplistikong pagtanaw, at pagtanaw na nagtataglay ng sadyang pagkaligta sa iba pang aspekto, gaya ng kasaysayan, konteksto, kaligiran, panahon, at siyang maaaring makaaapekto sa ebolusyon ng Filipino bilang wikang pambansa.)

 

Well, Anonuevo did not miss a chance to snipe at the patriotic Dr. Ricardo Nolasco, a better linguist than he is, and a man who sincerely wants to preserve the Philippine languages. Dr. Nolasco will be known as a hero by non-Tagalog Filipinos a hundred years from now, while Anonuevo’s name will be a forgotten nightmare. A man like Anonuevo who would throw potshots at a man like Dr. Nolasco who just lost his job in order to protect the ethnolinguistic identities of the peoples of the Philippines fully deserves to be sniped at as well. As said above, a man’s worth is often known by the enemies he makes. Kudos to Dr. Ricardo Nolasco. You have our eternal gratitude for your efforts in trying to save the Philippine languages.

 

Anonuevo also goes back to the old justification to impose Tagalog under the guise of the WW2 Tagalista cliché of ‘evolving Filipino’. This cliché which the Tagalistas of the past have gotten incorporated into the Philippine Constitution exists for that purpose alone, as a justification to impose Tagalog. The ‘Filipino’ that is being used in the school curriculum is nothing more than honey-coated Tagalog, with Tagalog grammatical rules.

 

Let us suppose that a Philippine President or future leader decides that in order to ‘evolve’ Filipino further, it should adopt Ilonggo Visayan grammatical rules, and even the Ilonggo sing-song intonation, which foreign outsiders seem to love listening to. This is not too far-fetched because the present honey-coated Tagalog Filipino has similar although not identical grammatical rules as Ilonggo Visayan and a lot of cognate words, such that it is generally easy for any real Tagalog to learn Ilonggo. I am sure the hypocritical Anonuevo will be the first to protest this new evolutionary trend in the Filipino language.

 

(Ang taguring “Filipino” ay hindi lamang “Tagalog,” at ang Tagalog ay hindi kayang kumontrol sa magiging anyo at laman ng Filipino. Ang mungkahi ng gaya niCarl Rubino na “muling pagsasabalangkas” ng Filipino bilang wikang pambansa ay isang magandang proyekto, ngunit ang ganitong mungkahi ay tumatanaw lamang sa wika na tila walang sariling buhay at nakatiwalag sa mga tao na gumagamit ng wika, at ipinapalagay na ang mga gumagamit ng sari-saring wika ay nagkakaisa sa pagsasaayos ng kolektibong wikang mahihinuhang may labo-labong gramatika at palaugnayan, at yamang walang isang wikang gagawing haligi ng pagpupundar, ay malayang isiping pagtatayo ng maalamat na Tore ng Kalabuan.)

 

Tagalistas like Anonuevo cannot even call a spade a spade. If Anonuevo were to enroll in a Linguistics program in any country except the Philippines (what irony) and insist that the present ‘Filipino’ is not Tagalog, he would flunk out. If ‘Filipino’ and Tagalog are mutually intelligible and are mutually unintelligible with all other languages in the Philippines , then they are the same language, and the other Philippine languages are not ‘Filipino’. Tagalog though may occur variants called dialects, one of which is the language that is being enforced in our schools as ‘Filipino’. ‘Filipino’ is a Tagalog dialect, mutually intelligible with all other dialects of Tagalog such as Bulaceno or Batangueno, and mutually unintelligible with Ilocano, Pangasinense, Kapampangan, the Bicol languages, the Visayan languages, and so on. If Anonuevo were to insist that to be a ‘Filipino’ one must learn to speak ‘Filipino’, then many citizens of the Philippines would not be ‘Filipinos’. This might look like a petty semantic problem, but it is not. Apparently, Anonuevo and other Taglistas want to achieve the ideal ‘Filipino’ by forcing all the future children in the Philippines to learn and speak nothing but ‘Filipino’, thereby effectively killing the Philippines’ ancient ethnolinguistic identities.

 

(Ang Filipino ay pagkilala sa kabansaang may iba-iba mang wika ay tinutuhog ng isang malaganap na wikang may sapat na malig na magagamit ng bawat lalawiganing wika at sa komunikasyon ng mga Filipinong maaaring ang kinamulatang wika ay wikang lalawiganin. Ang Filipino ay paraan ng pagtulay at pag-uugnay sa mga taal na wika sa Filipinas upang pagbukluran, habang masinop na nagbubukas ng pinto sa anumang internasyonal na wikang makapagdaragdag sa kaban ng pambansang talasalitaan, pahiwatig, diskurso, pakahulugan, gramatika. at iba pang kaugnay na bagay. Ang Filipino ay isang natatanging paraan ng pagsagap sa daigdig, ngunit paraan din kung paano titingnan ng mamamayang Filipino ang kaniyang sarili at ang kaniyang bansa.)

 

What Anonuevo means is that everyone should become a Tagalog in the national setting. As mentioned, if ‘Filipino’ were legally defined to be Ilonggo, which theoretically could happen as nowhere in the Philippine Constitutions does it say the ‘Filipino’ should be Tagalog, Anonuevo would be eating his own words and vomiting them out.

 

(Bagaman ang Filipino ay maipapalagay na “ikalawang wika” para sa ibang taga-lalawigan, ang pagiging “ikalawang wika” nito ay malayo sa kapuwa pakahulugan at karanasan ng pagiging “ikalawang wika” ng gaya ng Ingles na banyagang wikang ang Anglo-Amerikanong tradisyon ay kakatwa kung ilalapat sa kaligiran, konteksto, at diskurso ng Filipinas. Bukod pa rito, ang Filipino ay dapat sipatin nang higit sa saklaw ng lingguwistika, bagkus kaugnay ng konsepto ng pakikipagkapuwa, kabansaan, at kasarinlan.

Pinapatay ba ng Filipino bilang pambansang wika ang mga lalawiganing wika? Hindi. Ang palagay na ipinapaibabaw ang “Filipino” para patayin ang mga lalawiganing wika ay walang batayan, at magsisimula ito kahit sa talakayan, saliksik, at pagtatalong naganap nang itatag ang Institute of National Language (INL) noong 1936 para sa planong bumuo ng pambansang wika, at alinsunod sa itinatadhana ng Saligang Batas ng 1935. Mahalaga noon ang pagtataguyod ng pambansang wika, dahil ang Filipinas ay dumaan sa yugto ng digmaan at kolonisasyon, at tanging Ingles at Espanyol ang umiiral na opisyal na mga wika sa Filipinas. Ang pagpili sa Tagalog noon na magiging batayan ng wikang pambansa ay sumailalim sa pag-aaral, pagsasarbey, pagsusuri, at talakayan, kaya hindi makatwiran ang paratang ni Agcaoili na tila tunggak ang mga kasapi ng INL na madaling nilamon ng administrasyon ni Pang. Manuel Quezon.)

 

As usual, Anonuevo pretends there is no problem. He also again makes a statement that degrades English and promotes Tagalog. Anonuevo should try proving his own words by forgetting every English word he has ever learned and see if does not make him look like an idiot. He takes the chance to praise Quezon, one of the fathers of Tagalog Nationalism.

 

(Nakaligtaang banggitin ni Agcaoili na kaya pinili noon ang Tagalog na maging batayan ng wikang pambansa ay dahil ito ang pinakamaunlad na wika nang panahong iyon, mulang estruktura at mekanismo hanggang panitikan at paggamit ng malaking bilang ng mga Filipino, alinsunod sa itinatakda ng Batas Komonwelt Bilang 184. Mula noon, ang Tagalog ay lumampas sa dati nitong hanggahan at gamit, at malayang tumanggap ng iba pang salita, pakahulugan, pahiwatig, at diskursong nagmumula sa lalawiganing wika—sa kabila ng paggigiit na gamitin ang Ingles sa buong Filipinas.

 

Hindi rin totoong purong Tagalog lamang ang nanaig noon. Kahit sa kautusang ipinakalat ni Celedonio Salvador, na Patnugot ng Edukayon, noong 15 Nobyembre 1940, iminumungkahi ang pagpapalawak ng talasalitaan at wikaing idyomatiko, at ang ganitong kabigat na responsabilidad ay hindi lamang tinatanaw na para lamang sa Tagalog bagkus maging sa ibang taal na wika sa bansa. Kung nagkulang man sa paglinang ng ibang lalawiganing wika ay hindi dapat isisi sa Tagalog, kundi sa baluktot na patakaran at programa ng pamahalaang pumapabor sa paggamit ng Ingles. Nang sakupin ng Hapón ang Filipinas, ayon kay Teodoro Agoncillo, sinikap ng Hapón na palaganapin ang Nihonggo sa buong bansa ngunit nabigo dahil sa kakulangan ng mga guro at pagkatanto na ang banyagang wika ay mahirap palitan ang mga naunang banyagang wika bukod sa mahirap burahin ang mga taal na wika sa Filipinas. Nabatid din ng Hapón na tanging ang pambansang wika lamang ang kayang bumigkis sa kapuluan, at nagkataong nakapag-ambag na naman ang Tagalog. Kahit si Pang. Jose Laurel ay nakita ang kahalagahan ng isang wikang pambansa, lalo sa panahon ng digmaan, ligalig, at karukhaan, at ang wikang ito, aniya, ay magagamit upang magkaintindihan ang mga tao na nagmula sa magkakaibang lalawigan. Muli, hindi arbitraryo ang pagpili sa Tagalog bilang batayan ng wikang pambansa. Nagsagawa muli ng sarbey at pag-aaral at talakayan, at napatunayang Tagalog ang may pinakamabisang katangian para maging haligi ng wikang pambansa, na susuhayan ng mga taal na wika sa buong kapuluan.)

 

Naturally the Japanese wanted to promote Niponggo. But that does not change the fact that they promoted Tagalog as well, and it was only during Japanese times that Tagalog was first enforced in our Educational system. Tagalistas before WW2 could not do it because of strong resistance from the non-Tagalog peoples of the Philippines . Before WW2, Tagalog was just another Philippine language at par with Ilocano, Pangasinense, Kapampangan, and so on. Anonuevo should be transported in a time machine back to WW2 where he could lick the boots of the colonial Japanese authorities to lend credence to his words.

 

(Binigyan umano ng pitong dekada ang Tagalog, ani Agcaoili, na maging batayan ng pambansang wika ngunit nabigo ito at winasak pa umano ang milyon-milyong Filipino. Marahas ang ganitong paratang, at ang paratang na ito ay hindi isinaalang-alang ang mga panahon, kaligiran, at kontekstong pinagmulan ng Tagalog na dumaan sa mga digmaan at pag-aaklas; sa diskriminasyon ng Ingles, Espanyol, at Hapones; at kahit sa saliwang pagpapahalaga ng mga politiko at akademiko sa Filipinas. Kahit ang Kumbensiyong Pansaligang Batas noong 1971 ay isang madilim na yugto sa Filipino, dahil ang mga kalahok noon ay nais gawing pambansang wika ang Ingles na nabago lamang nang magprotesta ang mga aktibista at tuligsain ang gayong pakana ng mga demagogong politiko. Pambihira ang Filipinas na ang Saligang Batas—na pagbabatayan ng iba pang batas, kautusan, at kaugnay na patakaran—ay isinulat sa Ingles, at hindi nabigyan ng pagkakataon na gamitin ang Filipino na maging pangunahing wika sa gayong kahalagang instrumento. )

 

What’s wrong with having multiple national or official languages, including English? Nothing, and it has many advantages. Many countries have multiple official languages, including English, as for example in India. It’s high time the Constitution should be amended to one that recognizes multiple official languages; or none at all and leave the language issue to LGUs which no doubt would be prone to pronounce English as one of their official languages.

 

Koreans are even going to the Philippines to learn English. Anonuevo should go to the airport and wave a placard at every arriving Korean and rant at them at how evil English is.

 

(Totoo ngang nakasaad na ang pambansang wika ay kikilalaning “Filipino,” ayon Saligang Batas ng 1972, ngunit ang pagdurugtong ng pariralang “shall be evolved, developed and adopted based on existing native languages and dialects without precluding the assimilation of words from foreign languages” ay pailalim na pinahihina ang estado ng Filipino. Sa pananaw ng mga delegado, walang kakayahan ang “Filipino”—na parang nasa yugto ng pagkasanggol kahit marami nang napatunayan kung pagbabatayan ang mga palimbag na panitikan—at ang pambansang wikang ito ang sinusurot ni Agcaoili na nabigong magsilbi sa buong Filipinas. Ikakatwiran ng mga lingguwista at sosyolingguwista na kailangan ang estandardisasyon ng wika para maitaguyod ang ortograpiya, at makapaglaan ng unipormadong anyo ng mga sangguniang aklat. Ngunit malabo ang ganitong punto kung isasaalang-alang kung gaano kalawak ang nasabing estandardisasyon, na ang paglihis sa pamantayan ay maiisip na kakulungan kung hindi man patunay sa katangahan.)

 

As mentioned above, there is no provision in any Philippine Constitution past or present that says that the National language is Tagalog. Anonuevo would be the first to squeal foul if for example Ilonggo were suddenly defined to be the national Language ‘Filipino’. He cannot stomach the thought of any other language supplanting the Tagalog of his chauvinistic and racist dreams. This guy simply discriminates against all non-Tagalogs in the Philippines.

 

(Nilupig ba ng Tagalog ang iba pang wika sa Filipinas, ayon sa paratang ni Agcaoili? Hindi. Naging ahente ba ang Tagalog para durugin ang lunggati at simulain ng iba pang taal na wika at kultura sa Filipinas, ayon sa paratang ni Agcaoili? Hindi. Ang pagtanaw na nilupig ng Tagalog ang iba pang taal na wika sa Fiipinas ay ibang paraan ng pagsasabing napakahina nga ng mga taal na wika sa buong bansa at kayang diktahan ng isang wika lamang. Walang makinarya, kapangyarihan, at impluwensiya ang mga pasimuno ng Tagalog kung ihahambing sa panig ng mga tagapagsulong ng Ingles, dahil Ingles ay nakalusot na maging opisyal na wika at ginagamit sa iba’t ibang sangay ng pamahalaan, batasan, negosyo, at akademya magpahangga ngayon. Humina rin ang mga taal na wika dahil kulang ang mga manunulat at tagapagtaguyod nito, at isang sanhi ang penomenon ng tinaguriang “pagpapalit-wika” at may kinalaman dito ang gahum ng Ingles. Ang Tagalog kung naging batayan man ng Filipino ay isang pangyayaring dapat tingnan sa positibong paraan. Ang Tagalog marahil ang pinakaprogresibong wika na nangunang magbukas ng pinto para tumanggap ng malawakang pagbabago na halos ikalusaw ng sarili nito, ngunit ginawa iyon ng Tagalog hindi para sa mga Tagalog lamang kundi upang isilang muli sa ibang anyo at nilalaman sa pakikipagtulungan sa iba-ibang taal na wika, at maging batayan ng wikang pambansa. Ang tagumpay ng Filipino ay ngayon pa lamang nakikita, hindi lamang sa tradisyonal na mass media, kundi maging sa internet. Malayo na ang iniungos ng Filipino, at nilampasan na nito ang baryotikong komiks, at humahangga sa matatalim na diskurso. Sinusubok na ang Filipino sa iba’t ibang lárang, at hindi ako magtataka kung maging wika rin iyon kahit sa hukuman, negosyo, medisina, at akademya.)

 

Making a reaction to Anonuevo is admittedly a boring job, for he keeps on repeating the same stuff in various forms again and again. He once again pretends nothing is wrong with the system. Well two can play at that game. So I repeat, instead of imposing Tagalog on people who want to learn English, he should impose it on himself alone. This guy should really try talking laws, business, and medicine to the international community of lawyers, businessmen, and doctors only in Tagalog, and place a video of it in ‘you tube.’ However, I am afraid he would look like an idiot.

 

To my readers, even now, which paragraphs are you reading? The ones Anonuevo is writing in Tagalog or the ones I am writing in English?

 

(Ang nakapagtataka’ y ginagamit na dahilan ang multilingguwalismo upang buwagin ang naipundar nang tagumpay ng Filipino bilang wikang pambansa. Ang bersiyon ng multilingguwalismo na isinusulong ngHB 3719 (2008 Multilingual Education and Literacy Act) ni Rep. Magtanggol Gunigundo ay magpapalakas sa reenkarnasyon ng Ingles, at hindi sa mga lalawiganing wika, dahil wala itong itinatakdang sapat na pondo, impraestruktura, kawani, at iba pang bagay para sa pagbubunsod ng malawakan at sabayang pagpapalago ng mga taal na wika. Ang multilingguwalismo ay mauuwi sa laway, at animo’y nakatuon para sa itatatag na Federalismo—na ang bawat lalawigan ay makapagsasariling estado na bibiyak lalo sa Filipinas—at kaya mahihinuha ang pagpipilit na idikit ang wika sa usapin ukol sa kultura, heograpiya, politika, at ekonomiya. Kakatwa ito dahil ang Filipino, na mula sa Tagalog, ay laging sumusuporta sa pagpapalago ng mga lalawiganing wika at sa pagbibigkis ng mga mamamayan. Kung nabigo man ang gaya ng Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino noon at magpahangga ngayon ay maibubunton ang sisi sa marurupok nitong patakaran, programa, at pamunuang kulang sa bisyon at sigasig na paunlarin ang mga taal na wika sa Filipinas, at kabilang na rito ang mga punong komisyoner na sina Ponciano Pineda, Nita Buenaobra, at Ricardo Nolasco. Ngunit hindi ito kataka-taka. Ang nasabing Komisyon ay kulang din sa badyet, kulang sa mga dalubhasang kawani, kulang sa mahuhusay na pamunuan, kulang sa kasanayan, kung hindi man sadyang kulang-kulang, kaya ang nagiging silbi magpahangga ngayon ay maging katuwang ng Malacañang sa mga hakbanging pampolitika nito.

 

Pilit na pag-uuri ang “Tagalogisasyon” at “Tagalogismo,” at ito ang dapat tanggapin ni Agcaoili. Ang “tiranya ng Tagalogisasyon” at makamandag “na pang-aakit ng Tagalogismo” ay kathang isip lamang ni Agcaoili, at nababahiran ng lihis na pagbasa sa politikang pangkultura, at hinango sa diskurso ng Ingles na pilit iniaangkop bilang paraan ng pagtanaw at pagdestrungka sa Filipino. Na hindi makatwiran. Ang karanasan ng Filipinas ay malayo sa karanasang multilingguwal at multinasyonal na pamayanang nagaganap sa Europa, Afrika, at Amerika, at siyang ibig ipadron sa pagbasa sa karanasan sa buong kapuluan. Wala ring mabalasik na deskriminasyon at prehuwisyo na ipinataw ang Filipino na ikalulusaw ng mga taal na wika sa Filipinas, kompara sa nagaganap sa ibang bansa, kahit pa sabihing ginamit ang Filipino sa pag-aaral ng ilang lárang sa elementarya at hay-iskul. Ang realidad sa Filipinas ay Ingles pa rin ang ibig panaigin bilang wikang opisyal, na mapagbalatkayong taguri sa “wikang pambansa,” at ang pinakabagong halimbawa ay ang patakaran na tanging Ingles lamang ang dapat umiral sa Pamantasan ng Maynila, at gawing midyum sa pagtuturo ang Ingles sa lahat ng antas ng pag-aaral alinsunod sa dikta ngDepartamento ng Edukasyon. Hindi rin isinaalang-alang ni Agcaoili na ang migrasyon, urbanisasyon, at pagpapalit-wika ay kaugnay ng pagkamatay ng mga taal na wika, dahil higit na pipiliin na gamitin ang Ingles para mapangalagaan ang ekonomikong interes at seguridad pampolitika, o kaya’y para makaligtas sa deskriminasyon sa larangan ng hanapbuhay, gaya sa pagpasok sa call center at pagtatrabaho sa ibang bansa.

 

Matagal nang pinapatay ang Tagalog noon pa man kahit sa pagbasa ng kasaysayan, at kahit sa loob ng Maynila na ibig ay Ingles ang manaig sa edukasyon, negosyo, batasan, at hukuman; at ngayong narito na ang Filipino na naghahain ng pambihirang posibilidad bilang pambansang wikang makabibigkis sa mga Filipino ay isasalang muli sa marahas na bibitayan ng prehuwisyo at kaululan. Paunlarin natin ang mga taal na wika sa Filipinas; ngunit huwag naman nating patayin ang alimbukad ng isang wikang pambansa.

 

Ang paglingon sa ebolusyon ng Tagalog tungong Filipino ay makatutulong sa paglinang at pagpapayabong ng mga taal na wika sa Filipinas, at madudukalan ng aral at karanasan, ngunit hindi ito magaganap hangga’t patuloy na ginagamit na wika, diskurso, at pananaw ang Ingles para paikutin ang kapalaran ng mga Filipino.)

 

Anonuevo clearly does not believe in the present UNESCO International Year of Languages. Nor does he believe in the UN drafts that call for the promotion and teaching of the dying marginalized languages of the world, to which the Philippines is a signatory to.

 

In the above rambling paragagraphs, Anonuevo tries to troll the Gunigundo bill which he really hates not only because it rationally promotes English, but also because it mandates the use of non-Tagalog Philippine languages in elementary schools. This is something he cannot openly say. Tagalistas like Anonuevo will always be against elevating non-Tagalog languages to the status of Tagalog.

 

Anonuevo in his rant above manages to troll theGunigundo bill, Dr. Ricardo Nolasco, Professor Aurelio Agcaoli, multilingualism, and Federalism all at the same time. 

 

I use the word troll above, because trolling has nothing to do with right or wrong arguments, but about taking potshots at someone or something. At this end stage,Anonuevo is now venting his Tagalista ire on theGunigundo bill, Dr. Ricardo Nolasco, Professor Aurelio Agcaoli, multilingualism, and Federalism. What do they all have in common? They all are against the idea of Tagalog Nationalism and all promote the preservation of non-Tagalog Philippine languages.

 

Dr. Nolasco is portrayed as lacking in nobility. What baloney. How much nobler can a man get, endangering his life’s career for the sake of an ideal he and his Linguistics teachers in the USA believe in – to save the dying languages of the world?

 

Professor Agcaoili is misrepresented as having a hallucination. Coming from someone who writes rather incoherently, attacking someone of the intellectual caliber of Professor Agcaoili sounds downright funny, especially when he mixes it up with migration, urbanization, tirades against English, the evolution of Tagalog, the fate of Filipino, and pretends all the while that nothing is wrong.

 

What a remarkable trolling technique. Anonuevo should next go to India or Australia and tell the people there that they are idiots for allowing Federalism to split up their countries.

 

Filipino Veterans and Pilgrims

Editorial-2

Filipino Veterans and Pilgrims

The celebration of Thanksgiving Day leads us to the same road in search for that action of grace, the road taken by the Pilgrims who were in search of a new chance to live a life of peace and justice.  

But with the continuing injustice done to the Filipino veterans, many of whom are dying everyday because the benefits that are long overdue have yet to be given them, the Thanksgiving of the Filipino veterans as the new pilgrims comes off as something off tangent. 

With only about 18,000 of them left of the 250,000 who served the United States in order to fight the American War in the Pacific against the Japanese occupiers and invaders, the continuing inaction—despite talks and debates in the United States Senate and in the House of Representatives on how to finally grant them the benefits they deserve—will only exacerbate the kind of treatment given to these soldiers who fought an American war side by side with the American soldiers.

And to think that in that war, more than one million people died in the name of World War II.

The cry of the veterans and those supporting their cause is for the bills S 1315 (The Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act) and House Bill 68097 to be reconciled.  

But when the reconciling would happen is an issue that is as urgent as the need to recognize that more than half a century after the war, these Filipino veterans have yet to receive what is due them. 

"It's long overdue that the United States Senate recognize the contribution made by so many Filipinos in World War Two to the success of ourwar effort," said Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat.

This sums up the fight for justice for these veterans. 

As to their contribution to the cause of fighting alongside the American soldiers, Durbin praised the Filipino veterans: "Our fight in the Philippines was a bitter, long, and tragic battle that ended well but only after great sacrifice by the Filipino people, by Filipino soldiers and by our American soldiers." 

This praise, however, needs to be translated into concrete terms.  

A Solver Agcaoili

FAO November 2009/Editorial

The Giving of Thanks and the Filipino Immigrants

Editorial

The Giving of Thanks—
and the Filipino American 

The constants in the holiday every American awaits each fourth Thursday of November are things that are familiar: a day of celebration, a feast of good harvest, and the memory of the action of grace—action de grace—as the other North Americans, the Canadians, would call it.

It is these same thoughts that connect the immigrant Filipino American to this land, whether that immigrant is a migrant or a local born. 

For the action of grace is in the remembrance of the things of the past that matter to a people, like the motive to that journey of the Pilgrims to come over here and seek a life by eking out something from a land that initially was unfamiliar, strange, and alien.

That act of seeking a life—an act that was returned with grace acting on them—was one fat chance that they needed to completely sever their ties from a homeland sundered by religious wars, religious persecutions, and religious righteousness. 

In their coming to America, the Pilgrims would inaugurate a continuing coming of peoples in search of a chance of a lifetime in the United States, the peoples of the Philippines included. 

As we celebrate this day of giving thanks, the American in the people of the Philippines in this land is celebrating his oneness with all the people of this land, their generous adoptive land. 

It is an occasion of grace, indeed, if by grace we mean the kind of life we celebrate and live, away from the humdrum of the daily life in the country where our ancestors or we come from. 

Then again, part of the grace of coming together in the company of our community is to remember that other people have not had the same chance of a new life that we do have.

Part of that capacity to thank, therefore, is to reconnect with the communities that are in need of this action of grace that we do celebrate each Thanksgiving Day. 

A Solver Agcaoili

FAO Editorial/Nov 2009

Call for Papers-4th Nakem Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS

 4^TH NAKEM INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

 “DAP-AYAN: SHARING AND UNDERSTANDING ETHNOLINGUISTIC WORLDS TOWARDS CULTURAL PLURALISM”

The University of Hawai’i’s Ilokano Language and Literature Program convenes the 4^th Nakem International Conference on “Dap-ayan: Sharing and Understanding Ethnolinguistic Worlds Towards Cultural Pluralism.” The conference will be held at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa on Nov. 11-14, 2009.

The four-day conference is expected to be attended by cultural researchers, heritage language educators, advocates of heritage preservation and promotion, public policy leaders, and cultural artists and workers who are interested in the issues of cultural pluralism, multicultural education, cultural democracy, heritage language teaching, and critical practices related to the pursuit of linguistic rights and social justice.

The conference, the fourth in the Nakem Conference series that began in 2006 during the centennial celebration of the coming of the Filipinos to Hawai’i and the second to be held in the United States, aims to bring into the open a critical and creative discourse—as what happens in the dap-ayan—on what it means to share a heritage in a multicultural Philippines and among peoples of the Philippines in the diaspora.

The conference also hopes to locate Ilokano and various languages in the culturally plural experiences of the peoples of the Philippines and to revisit methods and methodologies that can be deployed to respond to the issues of multicultural education, literacy, cultural production and promotion, the sustenance of living traditions, and the writing and sharing of intangible heritage.

 

Abstract Requirements

The abstract proposals we are looking for are those that zero in on the theme of the conference or those that cover any of the topics listed in this Call for Papers. Any abstract submitted for consideration by the Selection Committee must be 300 words or less and must specify the issue or the issues it raises and the tentative direction it takes to respond to the issue or the issues it raises.

The Selection Committee encourages papers from various ethnolinguistic communities in the Philippines and in the Philippine diaspora. Philippine scholars are encouraged to write their papers in any Philippine lingua franca (Ilokano, Tagalog, or Cebuano) provided that these papers have parallel English translation to be used during the presentation. The translations are required due to the international nature of the conference.

Abstracts must be saved on a document file, on Arial type font 12, and sent as an attachment. Accompanying the abstract is a separate sheet on the proponent, with the following details:

1.    Name:

2.    Organizational affiliation (if applicable):

3.    Complete address including contact number: (work)

4.    Complete address including contact number: (home)

5.    Email address: (a must)

6.    Alternative email address: (we encourage you to have one)

 

Program Abstract

The Selection Committee requires that another abstract of 50 words or less be submitted for inclusion in the program. The abstract should bear the title of the paper, the author or authors, and the institutional affiliation (if applicable).

 

Topics for Presentation

Abstract proposals for full consideration by the Selection Committee must deal with the theme or any of the following topics:

·      Ilokano and heritage language teaching and the world languages curriculum

·      Appreciating ethnolinguistic worlds

·      Tangible heritage from the various ethnolinguistic groups

·      Theories and practices in the sharing and understanding of a heritage

·      Cultural pluralism as a philosophy of education

·      Pathologies of multiculturalism, remedies of cultural pluralism

·      Languages and cultures in the diaspora

·      Subversions of the multicultural Philippines experience

·      Mass media, popular culture, and heritage education

 

Session Format

 

The conference will follow a plenary session format for both the plenary speakers and the paper presenters. Each presentation is limited to 20 minutes maximum, with 5-10 minutes allotted for open forum. There will be separate sessions devoted for workshops, and organizing and advocacy work.    

 

Full Paper Submission

Abstract proposals turned in prior to the deadline get prior consideration by the Selection Committee. This is to allow time for the proponents to prepare their full paper, not to exceed 20 pages including references. Full papers are double spaced, on an Arial type font 12, MLA format, saved on a document file, and sent as an attachment to the Selection Committee. Full papers are due by May 31, 2009. 

 

Conveners and Selection Committee

The conveners and members of the selection committee are made up of Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, Dr. Lilia Quindoza Santiago, and Dr. Raymund Llanes Liongson.

The conference steering committee is made up of Aurelio Agcaoili, coordinator of the Ilokano Language and Literature Program of UHM (conference chair); Lilia Santiago, assistant professor of Ilokano, UHM (co-chair), Raymund Liongson, coordinator of the Philippine Studies Program, Leeward Community College (co-chair); Clem Montero, lecturer of Ilokano and education specialist of the UH Center for Philippines Studies (member); and Julius Soria, instructor of Ilokano at UHM and at Farrington High School in Kalihi (member). 

  

Where to send abstract and deadlines

Abstracts should be sent to nakemconference@yahoo.com, cc to lilias@hawaii.edu and rliongson@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission of abstracts is January 31, 2009. Proponents of abstracts accepted for presentation will be notified on or before February 15, 2009.  

For updates on the conference, please visit nakemconferences.blogspot.com. Or you can visit the Nakem Conference button under the UH Ilokano Language and Literature Program website.

 

 

Waiver

Out-of-state and out-of-country participants are advised to make arrangements with their travel agencies for itineraries and for special services like travel to and out of the Honolulu International Airport. The 4^th Nakem International Conference Steering Committee does not have the resources for lodging and other forms of accommodation to participants. As such, all participants are advised to check in with hotels and lodgings close to the conference site at UH Manoa. The University has a number of hotels and hostels but booking is normally six months prior to the conference. Booking with these hotels and hostels are done individually; an online transaction would be sufficient for all your reservation and booking needs.

Participants need to check with the University of Hawai’i website for these services.

Likewise, the Steering Committee cannot offer any financial assistance or grants to paper presenters. 

 

Linkage

The holding of 4^th Nakem Conference is part of an international linkage of UH Manoa Ilokano Language and Literature Program with Nakem Conferences, Inc. (based in Hawai’i) and Nakem Conferences International- Philippines Chapter (also known as Nakem Conferences Philippines), a language and culture advocacy group whose institutional and individual members come from various universities, colleges, and organizations in the Philippines.  Other organizations and individuals have been invited to take part as co-sponsors in an effort to advance mother language education, cultural pluralism, and linguistic and cultural rights of all peoples of the Philippines in the homeland and in the diaspora.

Contact Us

All questions about the 4^th Nakem Conference should be emailed to the conference chair (Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, nakemconference@yahoo.com) and co-chairs (Lilia Quindoza Santiago, lilias@hawaii.edu and Raymund Llanes Liongson, rliongson@gmail.com).  For scholars in the Philippines, you may write to Dr. Alegria Tan Visaya, President of Nakem Conferences Philippines, atvisaya@yahoo.com.   

 

Response to Dr Abueva

(Note: This is my response to Dr Jose Abueva, former president of the University of the Philippines and now president of Kalayaan College in Marikina. Dr Abueva believes in multilingualism and has seen the cultural denigration that is happening to the Sebuano people. Together with other advocacy groups, he has come to be a voice for the education of our people in their languages. Today, he wrote to me to ask for testimonies pertaining to the claim of one member of the Presidential Task Force on Education that claims that 'only the Visayans are complaining' about the the Tagalog language; the 'Ilokanos' are not complaining. The subtext is that we are happy about this state of affairs. My response is this letter that I have made available to the public (originally part of our private communication). Now, Dr Abueva needs our help to prove that we Ilokanos are not happy about this internal colonization that is happening. I am thus calling all cultural organizations in and about the Ilocos to help support this cause of linguistic freedom and cultural democracy not only among the Ilokanos but of all non-Tagalog peoples of the homeland and in the diaspora.--Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, Honolulu, Hawai'i, November 5, 2008)

Dear Dr. Abueva,

Thank you for involving us in this struggle. 

First, that member of your Task Force is probably a reincarnation of the same 'Tagalogized' mindset that infected the members of the 1935 Constitution. I dare that member for the lack of substance of his/her argument, a lack that is based on something that is baseless, a contradiction in terms indeed, that he/she cannot hold onto. He/she probably is not attuned to the facts of the case, and he/she is conveniently and comfortably callous to the cultural denigration that is so widespread in the Ilocos-land at this time. If he/has any sense at all, he/she has to offer proof. Failing to do that, I say: he/she is a clanging cymbal and has no place in an august body such as yours. 

In sum: how can an argument based on ignorance be passed off as an argument in the Presidential Task Force on Education? 

Second, we have been fighting for recognition and public space relative to our linguistic and cultural rights for so long, and in our country, and in the Ilocos and in the Ilokanized parts of Amianan, the Northern Philippines. In Ilocos, how can it be that we are fighting for our right to be educated in Ilokano? What is the explanation for this except to admit as absolutely true the statist notion of nationalism from the center that valorizes the language and culture from the center? This is one evil that we have had to contend with--and which we continue to contend with. I do not know how long are we going to continue fighting for our basic human rights--for our right to our language, for our right to our culture.

In sum: are we Ilokanos--and by extension, our various ethnolinguistic communities--part of the national conversation?

Third, our 'Ilokano case' is not a matter of 'complaint'--as that honorable member of the Presidential Task Force is saying. The word used is not even correct. The correct phrase is 'we are fighting for our right' to exist, with this existence mediated by our language and our culture, in the homeland as well as in the diasporic communities where we are found. There is a single word for this: struggle. But the real problem is that when we have people in the Presidential Task Force--uninformed and ignorant as that person seems to be--this struggle takes on a new angle, a new form, a new substance. We cannot forever be playing second fiddle to the statist notion of nation that derides our sense of a culturally plural society that takes on, as one of its founding principles, cultural nationalism. Let us remind that person who seems to be misplaced: that cultural nationalism is a form of nationalism that admits plurality and recognizes as undemocratic the cultural and linguistic tyranny of the center. And one more reminder for him: that cultural nationalism that invokes and summons the energy we draw form cultural pluralism is the way to go in creating a liberatory practice of social justice and equality, the cornerstones of a real and honest-to-goodness democratic way of life. 

In sum: we cannot even dignify that dismissive act of your member. He/she does not know his/her facts.

Fourth, the Nakem Conferences, an advocacy group designed to combat this cultural denigration that has defined us, not only us Ilokanos but every ethnolinguistic group of the homeland colonized internally by this vicious philosophy of nation-building and state-crafting called Tagalogism, is one of the first to support the Gunigundo initiative, HB 3719. Our statement of support, in the form of a conference resolution and signed in May 2008 by participants of the Nakem Conference 2008, was given in July 2008 to Hon. Gunigundo personally by me as a convener of the 2008 Nakem Conference and by Dr. Alegria Tan Visaya as president of Nakem Conferences Philippines. The scanned copy of that resolution is on nakemconferences.blogspot.com. This show of support disproves the claim of your honorable member. That member, by the way, needs to explore the field, ask the the universities and colleges, and ask himself/herself clearly if it is right to effect linguistic and cultural genocide among our young. 

In sum: we are going to continue to struggle for our right; we are not going to allow this to happen.

Fifth, I want to stress this: that member of your Task Force is guilty of at least one fallacy, and he/she should review his/her logic: hasty generalization. His/her statement has one quality: sweeping.

In sum: the member of your Task Force argues on the basis of illogicality and lack of evidence. I wonder if the claim to the fantastic is one of the basis for decision-making now. 

No, sir, that person in your Task Force is not in the know. He/she needs to be educated on the various sensibilities of people, on our dream to build a common homeland that respects the many that is us, and our duty to translate into action what social justice is all about. This education that we all ought to have as a condition for our community building is non-negotiable. We non-Tagalog peoples have given up so much. It is high time that we also asked--'demanded' is the right word here--our linguistic and cultural rights from this homeland that never regarded us with dignity and respect. 

I am going to be sending you position papers from our various communities, from our advocacy groups, and from our various studies on the need for a culturally plural society, for mother language education, and for multi-cultural education. I am going to be submitting essays from our scholars that state with clarity our position relative to our position on our inherent right to claim our language and culture. Our Ilokano nation--and all the nations of our homeland--deserve every right to exist side by side with everyone else.

Here are two initial position papers that respond to the falsities vended off as truths by that member of your Task Force. Please expect position papers from various cultural groups.

We are going to be mindful of your deadline--but we will submit to you position of support for your position. 

In the name of our struggle, and in the name of all our peoples,

Mahalo and aloha,

Aurelio S. Agcaoili

Obama the President

Barack Obama the President—
and the Political Future of Filipino Americans

Aurelio Solver Agcaoili


Phenomenal. 

This is the sum of all the excitements and surprises in these last few months of the frenzied and frenetic campaign involving not only money and mind but also a new mentality and vision of presidential politics in the United States.

We have a new president—and like the way the announcement of the election of a new pope is done at the Vatican, the political smoke has cleared and a new beginning is there for us to behold. 

There is a new hope too.  

And a mandate given to the blessed—‘blessed’ is the meaning of his name—the leader of this land, President Barack Obama.

His name says it all: the blessings he gives to that name, blessings the electorate has given to that position of responsibility, and blessings by all those who see that grace and gratefulness continue to visit this land.  

At first, we will witness the honeymoon days, and how they serve to put a context to the inauguration of that leadership.

We can even speculate the short season of the euphoric that may be felt by those who believe in the capability of the new president, and the honeymoon days may go on an extension until things gets settled a bit in Washington after January next year, after the inauguration. 

In the aloneness in any office at the top anywhere else, the leader, after finally taking over, realizes that the demands of his office are an occasion of greatness that he may not squander. 

Even as we congratulate President Barack Obama, and even as we give him our blessing to use this mandate to redefine this country’s directions in the next four years, and even as we see clearly the creativity this presidency has, we have grave concerns about the wars in other countries, some of these wars being fought by Americans. 

We live in the most interesting times—and the times are difficult too—and the challenges to President Obama as the new leader of the most powerful nation on earth are enormous.

With war being fought in several places abroad in order to contain terrorism, the initiation to that presidency will both need detachment and engagement, and the 
constant to-and-fro in both in order to renew everyday some other redeeming ways of looking at the world, and at the difficulties and opportunities that are part and parcel of that world. 

A quiet peacefulness, one President Obama has, is much needed. Warriors, literal and metaphorical, and spiritual and political, need this. 

That quiet peacefulness is the ability to be alone in a crowd and to summon all the energies and inspiration that lead to a creative way of reinterpreting social realities affecting this country. 

One such social reality is the issue of immigration.

The Filipino American community everywhere awaits the development in immigration policy.

Like other immigrant communities, millions of Filipino Americans who have contributed their talents and skills in this country and who have helped this country grow need immigration policies that give prior respect for the human rights of migrants who have followed the rules, but for some other reasons, ended up as undocumented. 

The greatness of the United States of America is based on its welcoming spirit and its generous disposition in opening up this land for migrants. This nation—a nation of immigrants—draws much of its history of greatness from that fact.

While the president is not exactly an immigrant in the way we would define many of Filipinos who came to this country, the fact that his father is not from this land is something that could give him a better perspective on migrant and immigrant rights. 
We expect no less from our president.

Another challenge he needs to look into with speed and precision is the economic downturn that has visited this country. The downturn is not only domestic as it is international because of the globalized nature of developed economies such as the United States. 

For a while, we will reel from this national and international experience of challenges in the economic life of the people. 

For a while, there will be some sacrifices asked of us.

For a while, there will be redirections in government spending in order to spur the economy back to life as it was. 

There will be disappointments and frustrations, as the initial results of presidential pro-action will not come as a ready-made panacea to all that which is wrong in this country at present.  

We will surely be asked to give our share in prodding this country back to where it was before everything went downhill. 

And we will give what is asked of us. 

But as good and fair citizens, we will account, and account we will do. 

This is where the strength of the Filipino American community will be tested, the testing not simply a case of ‘first in something’—like a ‘first mayor’ or ‘first governor’, for instance, with that syndrome of being first more of an exhibit than a commitment.

The inspiration we catch in these joyful days is that of a leader who will work, not for some interest, but for the interest of the ordinary man and woman first. 

President Obama knows where this regular man or woman comes from in terms of the public administration of the common good. His voice—invocatory of the freedoms understood with clarity and grace by the founding fathers of this land—is one that gives recognition and allocates a space to difference. His is a moral voice, indeed, in these difficult and interesting times. 

His election blazes a trail for the Filipino Americans, as is the case for all the various peoples that have come take root in this glorious land.

Soon we can begin to dream: that one day soon, a Filipino American, or one born of the sinews of the hardy, enduring, and persevering people of the sugarcane plantations of Hawai’i or the canneries of Alaska or the hospitals of New York or the factories of Los Angeles or the farms of Stockton will claim this land as its president. 

The dream of the Filipino Americans begins today with President Barack Obama having successfully pursued that same dream. 

Feature story, Fil-Am Observer, Nov. 2009

4th Nakem Conference-2

4^th Nakem Conference Bulletin No. 005/ILOKANO

 

 

4^TH Nakem Conference, maangay

 

Honolulu, Hawai’i—Angayen ti Ilokano Language and Literature Program iti Universidad ti Hawai’i iti Manoa ti maika-4 a Nakem International Conference a “Dap-ayan: Sharing and Understanding Ethnolinguistic Worlds Towards Cultural Pluralism” inton Nobiembre 11-14, 2009 iti UH Manoa.

 

Manamnama nga atenderan daytoy nga uppat nga aldaw a kumperensia dagiti cultural researcher, dagiti edukador ti tawid a lengguahe, dagiti mangitantandudo iti pannakapadur-as ti kannawidan ken kultura, dagiti lider iti pannakabalabala dagiti polisia a para iti sapasap, dagiti mangmangged iti kultura, ken dagiti mannurat ken artista nga interesado kadagiti isyu ti kultural a pluralismo, ti edukasion a multikultural, ti kultural a demokrasia, ti panagisuro iti tawid a lengguahe, ken dagiti kritikal a praktis a mainaig kadagiti karbengan iti lengguahe ken iti nainkagimongan a hustisia.

 

Daytoy a kumperensia, ti maikapat iti serye ti Nakem Conferences a nangrugi idi 2006 iti selebrasion ti sentenario ti isasangpet dagiti Ilokano iti Hawai’i ken maikadua iti Estados Unidos, ket panggepna a luktan ti kritikal ken managpartuat a diskurso—kas mapaspamasamak iti dap-ayan—maipapan iti kaes-eskan ti pannakibinnuray iti kannawidan iti multikultural a Filipinas ken kadagiti amin a tattao a Filipino iti diaspora.

 

Namnamaen pay ti kumperensia ti pannakadiskutir ti lugar ti lengguahe nga Ilokano ken dagiti nadumaduma a lengguahe iti plural a kultural a padas dagiti makipagili iti Filipinas ken kasta met ti pannakatingiting dagiti metodo ken metodolohia a mabalin a mausar tapno masungbatan dagiti isyu maipapan iti edukasion a multikultural, literasi, kultural a produksion ken promosion, pannakasustenir kadagiti sibibiag a tradision, ken pannakaisurat ken pannakaiburay kadagiti tawid a kultural.

 

Tapno makonsiderar dagiti maisumite nga abstrak, masapul a maisentro dagitoy iti tema wenno ania man kadagiti sumaganad: Ilokano and heritage language teaching and the world languages curriculum; appreciating ethnolinguistic worlds; tangible heritage from the various ethnolinguistic groups; theories and practices in the sharing and understanding of a heritage; cultural pluralism as a philosophy of education; pathologies of multiculturalism, remedies of cultural pluralism; languages and cultures in the diaspora; subversions of the multicultural Philippines experience; ken, mass media, popular culture, and heritage education

 

Ni Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, coordinator ti Ilokano Language and Literature Program iti UHM, ti mangipangulo iti kumperensia. Da  Dr. Lilia Quindoza Santiago, assistant professor iti Ilokano, UHM ken Dr. Raymund Liongson, coordinator ti Philippine Studies Program iti Leeward Community College, ti mangasistir ken Agcaoili.

 

Dagiti dadduma pay a kameng ti steering committee: Clem Montero, lecturer iti Ilokano ken education specialist iti UH Center for Philippines Studies ken Julius Soria, instructor iti Ilokano iti UHM ken instructor met laeng iti Ilokano iti Farrington High School iti Kalihi, iti met laeng Honolulu. 

 

Masapul a maipatulod ti abstrak iti saan a naladladaw ngem Enero 31, 2009 iti  nakemconference@yahoo.com, cc iti lilias@hawaii.edu ken rliongson@gmail.com. Mapakaammuan dagiti napili sakbay wenno iti kaaldawan ti Pebrero 15, 2009.  

Maammuan dagiti dadduma pay a pakaammo maipapan iti kumperensia iti dedicated site a nakemconferences.blogspot.com. Mabalinyo pay ti bumisita iti website ti programa iti Ilokano Language and Literature iti UH Manoa. Biroken sadiay a site ti butones ti Nakem Conference.  

 

4th Nakem Conference Bulletin 6

4^th Nakem Conference Bulletin No. 003/English

 

 

4^TH Nakem Conference to be convened

 

Honolulu, Hawai’i--The University of Hawai’i’s Ilokano Language and Literature Program, formerly the Ilokano, Philippine Drama and Film Program, will hold and host the 4^th Nakem International Conference on “Dap-ayan: Sharing and Understanding Ethnolinguistic Worlds Towards Cultural Pluralism” to be held on Nov. 11-14, 2009 at UH Manoa.

 

The four-day conference is expected to be attended by cultural researchers, heritage language educators, advocates of heritage preservation and promotion, public policy leaders, and cultural artists and workers who are interested in the issues of cultural pluralism, multicultural education, cultural democracy, heritage language teaching, and critical practices related to the pursuit of linguistic rights and social justice.

 

The conference, the fourth in the Nakem Conference series that began in 2006 during the centennial celebration of the coming of the Filipinos to Hawai’i and the second to be held in the United States, aims to bring into the open a critical and creative discourse—as what happens in the dap-ayan—on what it means to share a heritage in a multicultural Philippines and among peoples of the Philippines in the diaspora.

 

The conference also hopes to locate Ilokano and various languages in the culturally plural experiences of the peoples of the Philippines and to revisit methods and methodologies that can be deployed to respond to the issues of multicultural education, literacy, cultural production and promotion, the sustenance of living traditions, and the writing and sharing of intangible heritage.

 

Abstract proposals for full consideration by the selection committee must deal with the theme or any of the following topics:

·      Ilokano and heritage language teaching and the world languages curriculum

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