The triumph of tagalog and the dominance of the discourse on english language politics in the philippines during the american colonial period 1

The same casual and banal tone of the articles also belie the fierce struggle over language during this time and the rigid and relentless campaign by the American colonial enterprise to

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

In November, 1911, a grand birthday party was held in Caloocan, a suburb of Manila for

the celebrant, Ninyang Lanuza The affair was tagged by Ang Mithi, a Tagalog daily newspaper,

as an Aklatang Bayan event, Aklatang Bayan being one of several local-language organizations of the time The members of Aklatang Bayan were the most prominent Tagalog poets, playwright,

novelists, linguists, and grammarians The Ang Mithi reporter described, in a rather humorous

manner, the many features and events of the evening including tennis and a bath before dinner, a waltz, a two-step, and a rigodon, copious amounts of food, stylish barong tagalogs worn by the men, poems read, speeches given and songs sung Dinnertime was described as “ang oras ng pagbibigay sa makapangyarihang tiyan” (the hour of giving in to the powerful stomach) and one

of the guests as a Caruso whose singing startled some of the other guests because his singing sounded like “kulog na sa laot” (thunder on the lake).1

In March of the same year, both the weekly Renacimiento Filipino and the daily Taliba,

reported on a party held at the home of Agapito Zialcita in Kalye Moriones in Tondo It was a

party that was attended by, according to Renacimiento Filipino, “ang lalong mga bantog na

manunula sa wika ni Lakandula”2 (the more renouned writers of the language of Lakandula3) These included Isabelo de los Reyes, Rosauro Almario, Lope K Santos, Patricio Mariano, Inigo

Ed Regalado, and many others The celebration was centered on a game called “juegos florales” where each poet was to recite an original poem about a particular virtue (diligence, beauty, goodness, etc.) after which the poet was to crown a lady in the party the queen of that virtue In between the presentation of the poems, musical numbers were performed by the guests: pieces were played on the piano and the violin and songs by Verdi and from the opera Pagliacci were

sung The evening was not without a neglect of civil duties as Isabelo de los Reyes announced

he would take up a collection for the victims of eruption of Taal Volcano

Though it may seem strange to us today that the social activities, indeed any activities of poets, writers, and of language organizations and its members would be of great interest to the general public, it was not so in the Philippines of the early part of the 20th century The popularity

of such local-language organizations is well-documented4 and the popularity of its members is well-known The poets, in particular, were supposed to be the equal of contemporary rock stars and today’s hankering for days gone, the national nostalgia, if you will, includes the legendary stories of throngs of people attending traditional poetic jousts the way people today would flock

to a rock concert

We begin this thesis with this small vignette about the success and popularity of Tagalog and the Tagalog writers because, strangely enough, this is where this thesis ends—with the victory of Tagalog This thesis attempts to tell the story of this victory It is a victory that has to

be vigorously emphasized because its story has generally been neglected Given the aggressive campaigns launched both against Tagalog and other local languages and in Tagalog’s behalf, the story is one of a real triumph of the soul and being of a people

In as much as these light-hearted articles reflect the actual popularity of local-language organizations of the time, they also reveal the systematic and determined campaign to keep Tagalog alive and to claim for it a formal and significant place in the life of the nation This campaign, of which this thesis is principally about, did not isolate language from other social and political issues—language was tied to issues such as labor rights and agrarian reform and was inextricable from the issue of independence from American occupation and American

imperialism

These accounts may seem much like an account found in any current newspaper that describes a social event in its social event section Yet the very casual and banal tone of the articles reflect the matter-of-factness in which the consciousness of language as a cause to be

4

See Virgilio Almario, Balagtasismo Versus Modernismo: Panulang Tagalog sa Ika-20 Siglo,

(Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1984), 52-55

defended permeated prosaic, everyday events like birthday parties and christenings Implicit, however, in the reporting of these ordinary events, was the understanding that its participants were participants as well in the colossal task of creating the nation By the very choice of the organization’s name, “Aklatang Bayan” (translated literally as “national library” but probably more accurately as “Books of the Nation”), one gleans an awareness of the role of its members in not merely representing but also creating the nation The consciousness of the politics of language was present in small, personal events as much as it was in the great nation-building moments Seen in terms of today’s language organizations that meet formally for conferences or for policy formation, these social events seem quite strange and anachronistic

The same casual and banal tone of the articles also belie the fierce struggle over language during this time and the rigid and relentless campaign by the American colonial enterprise to depict local languages as primitive and unsuitable for use in a modern nation This American campaign was, of course, the more benign aspect of the campaign that was violent and bloody—the military occupation of the Philippines and the control of Philippine political and economic life In turn, it also belies the equally fierce resistance launched by such local-language

organizations Such a resistance was not limited to essays on the merits and beauty of Filipino languages and culture but was found in the labor picket line and even in the agrarian uprisings Prominent and active members of Aklatang Bayan included Lope K Santos, an active officer of the labor group Union Obrero Democratica de Filipinas, Faustino Aguilar who wrote scathing anti-American novels and poems, Amado V Hernandez, a journalist, labor leader and, later in World War II, a resistance leader, and Benigno Ramos who would eventually found the

Sakdalistas, a peasant organization that would, in the 1930s launch an insurrection against the Philippine government Santos, Aguilar, Hernandez, and Ramos were writers—poets and novelists—who, like Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio, were part of the tradition of the nationalist writer/activist It is a tradition that hints at how, for these discourse-makers, the questions of language are inseparable from the questions of the modes of production, questions of

independence and questions of the nation

The campaign to establish English as the common language in the Philippines included, among others, such tactics as creating a discourse about the inadequacy and primitiveness of Philippine languages Numerous American officials, linguists, scholars and even Philippine

“experts” had declared the non-existence of a common local language and the insufficiency of any of the Philippine languages for use for modern life One of the first education directors, Fred Atkinson declared that “never was there a common dialect, nor to mention a language; nothing of importance in the way of native literature existed; and there was such a confused number of different tribes, each with its own tongue, that ethnologists themselves have not yet worked out their solution.”5 James Le Roy reprises this sentiment with: “There is, in short, no literature, worthy of being described by that term, in any of the Philippine dialects.”6 Charles Burke Elliott,

an American colonial official, argues that Tagalog is inferior as it “had shown no capacity for growth and had no vitality and little literature worthy of the name.”7 Never had Filipinos had

to face such attacks on their language before and such an onslaught against Tagalog and other local languages precipitated numerous campaigns not just to defend, lobby for and promote the language but to develop, systematize, revitalize it as well Hence, the beginning of the clash between two conflicting forces that played out not just in the battlefield and in legislative halls, although they were definitely played out there as well, but in everyday activities and places like birthday parties, and christenings

The Miseducation of the Filipino

One of the most lasting legacies of American colonialism upon the Filipinos is the enduring idea that anything American—policies, ideas, products, the people themselves—would

be great and good Among Filipinos, there was an awareness of the bankruptcy of this idea and of

how the idea was generated in the first place Surely, the awareness must have been there even when the Americans were still colonizers but many open articulations of it were made after Philippine independence In the 1950s, one of the public intellectuals most openly critical of this American legacy was Claro M Recto In one of his most famous addresses, he connects Filipino economic dependence on America, what he calls the “mendicant foreign policy,” to the Filipino perception that America will always look after the Philippines, because the Philippines is a

“favored child” of America Filipinos, Recto declared, have the erroneous belief that America is

“driven by some strange predilection for our people” and that she would “never forsake us nor sacrifice our interests to her own.”8 Nationalist historian, Teodoro Agoncillo, credits the public education system established by the Americans with accomplishing one of the great turn-arounds

in Philippine history: that the strong anti-American sentiment created by the devastation and suffering of the Philippine-American war was “completely eradicated from the Filipino mind and Filipinos immediately regarded the Americans as their guides and benefactors.”9 Writer S.P Lopez, most famous in literary history for Villa-Lopez debates of the 1940s,10 was cognizant of the objectives of American education, despite all the American proclamations of their

benevolence Lopez called Amercian intentions in the education project “none-too-subtle” and criticized the attempt to create “little brown Americans of Asia” who would be “avid consumers

of American ideas and ideals” and consumers as well of “American goods and services.”11 Lopez affirmed that the English education introduced by the Americans in the Philippines did create a competent class of writers who use English as a instrument to express Filipino creativity Lopez

8

Claro M Recto, “Our Mendicant Foreign Policy,” in Filipino Nationalism, 1872-1970, ed

Teodoro A Agoncillo, 334, (Quezon City: R.P Garcia Publishing Co., 1974)

9

Teodoro A Agoncillo and Milagros C Guerrero, The History of the Filipino People, fifth

edition, (Quezon City: R.P Garcia Publishing, 1977), 338

10

The Villa-Lopez debates consisted of a series of articles published between 1939-40 between Lopez and poet Jose Garcia-Villa regarding the proper objective of literature Villa took the “art for art’s sake” position while Lopez argued great literature reflected social realities The debate was so

controversial that Filipino writers of the time had to openly declare which camp they belong to and had to hue their writing style accordingly Vestiges of this debate exist till today and contemporary writers still see the two persuasions in Philippine writing as existing in a rivalry Lopez’s statements here, critical of this American legacy, are indeed a great contrast to Villa’s own attitude toward American education Villa saw his poetic vision as part of the great Anglo-American tradition

11

Salvador P Lopez, “The Colonial Relationship” in Philippine-American Relations, ed Frank H

Golay, 25, (Manila: Solidaridad Publishing House 1966)

evaluates this, however, as a “limited achievement” that was accomplished at the expense of “the maleducation of the many.”12

This consensus among the thinkers critical of the American educational legacy would be marshalled into a powerful and highly influential essay by Renato Constantino, “The

Miseducation of the Filipino.” “Miseducation” was radical in that it was the first thorough examination and indictment of the American education project in the Philippines Constantino detailed how education, through the production of myths and through the institution of English, created a “colonial mentality.” What was most remarkable about “Miseducation,” however was its emphasis on erasure and on how Filipino education had actually been a “miseducation” that had veiled the truth rather than uncovered it His analysis struck a chord among the young radical students of the 1960s during the burgeoning anti-Marcos movement and his works, but

particularly this essay, became a beacon and a “must-read” for understanding a hidden history of continuing iniquitous foreign relations and its relation to a current chaotic and highly unjust national social and economic situation

“Miseducation” has three key enduring arguments The first is that education during the American period was used both as a means of pacifying a people who were clamoring for

independence and as a tool for expanding and preserving American control The second is that English became an apparatus that emphasized the difference in social classes among Filipinos as well as the device that distracted Filipinos from their nationalist aspirations by making them forget their past The third is that the kind of education imposed on the Filipinos emphasized the idea that the Philippine culture and economy was essentially pastoral which consequently helped

to underscore the idea of the superiority of the West Perhaps the most influential and memorable idea put forth in “Miseducation” was the idea that language, in this case English, could be constitutive of reality In the following lines, probably the most quoted from the essay,

Constantino describes how language becomes, not just a medium of communication but a

medium of creating a new kind of people:

The first and perhaps master stroke in the plan to use education as an instrument

12

Ibid

of colonial policy was the decision to use English as the medium of instruction English became the wedge that separated the Filipinos from their past and later was to separate educated Filipinos from the masses of their countrymen English introduced the Filipinos to a strange, new world With American textbooks, Filipinos started learning not only a new language but also a new way of life, alien to their traditions and yet a caricature of their model This was the beginning of their miseducation, for they learned no longer as Filipinos but as colonials They had to be disoriented from their nationalist goals because they had to become good colonials.13

Constantino’s vision, one that centers on erasure and cultural imperialism, has served as a model and inspiration for a critical analysis focused on investigation of the tools of empire and the instrument of colonialism So influential is “Miseducation” that after forty years scholars would be either herald it as one of the most influential essays of our time or rail against its

dogma.14

In as much as this thesis exists in the shadow of Constantino and “Miseducation,” and its understanding of the language politics of the American period as principally an acquiescing to the English policy, it also struggles to find a away out of the discourse of “Miseducation” and its emphasis on how Filipinos were misled and deceived

“Miseducation” is silent on how Filipinos responded to the imposition of English, in fact, the suggestion is that the response was simple submission In truth, the local response, and in particular, the Tagolog response to the imposition of English was strong, vibrant, militant, and creative It came in the form of organized and individual efforts to study and systematize Tagalog,

to revive and even glorify it, and to lobby for its use as medium of instruction and as official language The abundance, almost profuseness of the evidence for these campaigns came as a surprise to me and to many Filipino scholars and historians whom I showed the evidence to This astonishment, I believe, is evidence of the power of Constantino’s vision, which, while focusing

13

Renato Constantino, The Miseducation of the Filipinio, (Quezon City: Foundation for

Nationalist Studies, 1987), 6 Originally published in the Weekly Graphic on June 8, 1966

14

See for example “La Escuela de Diablo, Iskul ng Tao, Revisiting Colonial Public Education” in

Beareres of Benevolence: The Thomasites in Public Education in the Philippines, (Pasig City: Anvil, 2001)

In this essay, Ick attempts to reevaluate the work of the American teachers who had come to the Philippines

in 1901 to start up the public school system in the Philippines Ick blames “the dogma of our

‘mis-education’ by American colonialism” which taught Filipinos that “American education was the evil that led

to our ‘colonial mentality’ which is, in turn, the root of all our society’s failures” for a kind of automatically negative view of the American colonial project and of such teachers

on investigating American claims of benevolence and exposing actual American interests, inadvertently underscores the idea of blind acquiescence

Without contesting the veracity of Constantino’s discourse and without denying the importance of continually studying and exposing methods of cultural imperialism in both the past and the present, and indeed, while still paying homage to the relevance of such a discourse, this study attempts to examine that other half of the equation; the force that defended Philippine, and

in particular, Tagalog language and culture and in the end had a decisive influence in creating a space for local languages in the life of the nation

Language and the Nation

This study is an attempt to understand the meanings and values assigned to the languages

of Philippine life, principally Tagalog and English but also Spanish and the other local languages, during the first forty years of the American colonial occupation It attempts to understand how these meanings and values clashed but also merged into the official positions that hold to this day: English as an official language and a language based on Tagalog, now called Filipino, as the national language

This study is an attempt to understand the complex role of language in imposing and resisting imperialism, in imbibing or rejecting modernity, and in embodying the nation It aims to identify the relation between language and not just nation-building but nation-demolition, nation-reconstruction, and nation-invention Concretely, this thesis is about:

- the discourse created by American colonial officials about English in their numerous histories, ethnographies, linguistic studies, personal accounts, and government reports, in order to justify its central place in Philippine society;

- the ardent and concerted counter-discourse during the first few years of American occupation that was launched by a number of Tagalog (language) societies that fervently promoted the local language and insisted on the connection between language and identity The discussion of this counter-discourse will be based

principally on a series of Tagalog essays on the Tagalog language published in the

daily Muling Pagsilang between 1903 and 1906 This period (from 1898 to 1906) has

been identified by Maximo Kalaw as the period of suppressed nationalism when American efforts at containing expressions of Philippine nationalism were most stringent and vigilant.15 This discussion is of particular importance because this counter-discourse has, rather bizarrely, been virtually erased from the many historical accounts of language that have been written over the last fifty years;

- the Tagalog campaign carried out in English beginning 1916 as it appeared in letters, speeches, diaries, textbooks, news accounts, published debates, linguistic studies, official government acts and official statements The major figures in this section are such figures as Jorge Bocobo and Camilo Osias, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Cecilio Lopez and a host of others who wrote in English in defense of Tagalog and/or the other Philippine languages The focus here, is in illustrating how, although these

writers were of a similar position to that of the Muling Pagsilang writers who had

written more than a decade before, their objectives, tact, and personal relation to Tagalog were vastly different The suggestion here is that there is a kind of meeting

of form and content in these essays and that English or Tagalog in these essays carry within them an apparent perspective on identity and nationhood; in a much smaller capacity, the discourse about English and the local languages in the Southeast Asian colonies that were also colonized by English at the turn of the century—Burma and Malaya The discussions here of language and colonialism in Burma and Malaya are not extensive but they are used to put into context the ways in which questions and problems of the relation between language, education, colonialism, and anti-colonial protest in the Philippines have been framed by both colonial officials and

contemporary historians Whereas, the motif of “difference” has been used to depict the Philippine case as unique, the discussion here explores the magnitude of this

15

Maximo M Kalaw, The Development of Philippine Politics (1872-1920), (Manila: Oriental

Commercial Co., Inc., 1926), 294

difference and its bearing on the colonial project and post-colonial knowledge production

Essentially, this study does two things First, it reconstructs the Tagalog language campaign (with a specific emphasis on the campaign carried out in Tagalog itself as this has all but been neglected by the scholarship on this topic) which developed dramatically from a seeming death sentence rendered by the American policy of mass, public education in English to a vibrant force that plays an essential role in the life of the nation Second, it describes the specific role played by English and Tagalog (and in passing also by Spanish and the other local languages) in nation-building during the American period Through these two principal projects, this study is also an inquiry into the way in which language history has been presented in the past; an

examination of the nature of the American imperialist and Philippine anti-imperialist projects; and

an exploration of the Tagalog ideas regarding the relationship between language, history,

heritage, and nation

“Its Historic Agents Know Not What They Do”

To understand these language campaigns and their relation to and impact on building during the American period, it might be helpful to situate these campaigns within the debate between the discourse of nations and nationalism as, on the one hand, a modern creation and, on the other, of discourses that challenge it and offer alternatives

nation-The idea of “the nation” as a modern phenomenon is based on the idea that nationalism and the idea of “the nation” are new and appeared only fairly recently as a kind of cultural logic necessary for the functioning and legitimacy of the equally new historical stage of

industrialization The nation and nationalism are thus invented or imagined but invented and imagined in such a powerful and simultaneous way as to make them appear normative This idea

of the nation as a self-evident idea is essential because the idea of the nation and nationalism is actually a method of socializing the units of the state into loyal citizens of a cohesive nation who will, in turn, through their loyalty, legitimize the state The theories about the ways through which this seemingly normative idea is diffused are varied, though similar For Ernest Gellner it is

through the dissemination of a standard “school-mediated, academy supervised” idiom; for Benedict Anderson it is through the rise of print-capitalism; for Eric Hobsbawm it is through the deliberate social engineering of inventing traditions

Many of these theories of the nation as modern invention have come under fire as many theories of modernity have been for leaving no space for human agency or for being grand narratives that promote the idea of a kind of false consciousness Ernest Gellner, however, argues that nationalism is not “an invention of febrile thinkers which has mysteriously captured some mysteriously susceptible nations.”16 Instead he sees nationalism as being built on pre-existing cultures that sometimes get obliterated and sometimes get used as the basis upon which a nation will be invented Gellner argues for nationalism’s organic quality and that “those who are its historic agents know not what they do.”17

For the purposes of this thesis and for understanding the discourse of language created by American colonial officials for the uses of constructing a colony, these theories of the nation and nationalism as modern inventions are quite useful They serve as a complement to understanding American foreign policy during this period which was guided by how America thought about themselves and their relation to other cultures and other peoples

In talking about themselves as a colonizing power, American colonial officials tapped into the idea of America as “exceptional.” Though American exceptionalist thinking has its roots

in Puritan ideas and the idea that American greatness was divinely ordained, more recent versions

of this exceptionalism celebrates, as Michael Adas tells us, “the unprecedented extent to which democracy, individualism, and social mobility, civil society, free enterprise, ingenuity, and inventiveness, and material well-being flourished in the United States.”18 These “exceptional” qualities of American life and culture were to be benevolently extended to America’s colonies and the hallmark of its benevolence was a program for mass, public education in English which was distinguished from the British policy of vernacular education This program was allegedly

Michael Adas, “From Settler Colony to Global Hegemon: Integrating the Exceptionalist

narrative of American Experience into World History,” American Historical Review 106 (2001): 1695

unique in all the world The Americans as colonial masters, were, as they claimed, the only colonial masters who truly had the welfare of their subjects in mind Their benevolence was going to compel them to put themselves in a paradoxical conundrum where they were going to have to colonize in order to liberate; and this through the intervention of public education in English Unable to reconcile the rhetoric of American democracy with the act of colonization, the Americans used the justification of “benevolence” as Atkinson clearly demonstrated in his defense of colonization: “The question of the right of a higher civilization to dominate a lower is one capable of much discussion; the only justification, surely, for such an extension of

sovereignty is the material improvement and the intellectual and moral elevation of the weaker race.”19 The public education system, of which Atkinson was one of its first directors, and the introduction throughout the Philippines of the elements of modern culture (English, democratic values, modern sanitation, etc.) were to be the principal channels through which this “elevation” was to take place

The seemingly benevolent task of creating a new, modern culture that will qualify a race for self-government corresponds quite comfortably with Gramsci’s idea of “hegemony” and “civil society.” It is through the dynamics of hegemony and civil society that individuals absorbs hegemonic culture, align their values and worldview with that of political society/the state and becomes self-governing Modern theories of the nation hue quite closely to Grmasci’s concept of hegemony and civil society This is best seen, for example, in Gellner’s statement that “at the base of the modern social order stands not the executioner but the professor”20 and that for the creation and the preservation of the nation “the monopoly of legitimate education is now more important, more central than is the monopoly of violence.”21 The state controls not so much by coercion but by consent and consent is generated through the creation of modern individuals who are loyal to a shared culture, of which the idea of the nation is a part

In the Philippines, as the American colonial masters precociously saw, the school was to take center stage in the creation of a modern culture Through the schools, modern values—

democracy, free elections, accountable government, freedom of speech, national economic

productivity, industrialization (its many, often contradictory meanings), English as the rising world language—were disseminated Through the schools also, specific values and symbols that were appropriate to the kind of nation the Americans believed the Philippines should be—the idea

of the Philippines as essentially an agrarian society and the symbol of Rizal as the national

hero22—were created and promoted by American colonial officials and disseminated through the public school system

Without a doubt, imperialism is imperialism by any other name The American’s maiden experiment in domination and the discourse of benevolence used to justify it would be repeated several times over during the coming century in Korea, in Vietnam, in Kosovo, in Kuwait, in Iraq Yet, this project that American colonial officials imagined they were embarking on and whatever name that they used to describe it—“establishing a colony,” “civilizing a people,” “preparing them for democracy and self-government”—was in fact a project that participated in the creation

of the modern Philippine nation American colonial officials and agents wore their awareness of their role in creating a modern Philippine nation on their sleeves; it was, from the outset, part of the rationale for the colonial project However, just how this nation was going to be created, what this nation was going to be, they could not possibly have foreseen After all, as Gellner

maintains, “those who are its historic agents know not what they do.” The nation America

imagined was not the nation that was to be

The Nation in Language

The idea that the nation is found in the language and the corollary idea that language is an authentic expression of the nation is not a new idea It was an idea that was present even during the enlightenment and Herder, the enlightenment thinker most associated with the idea of folk culture, believed that the vernacular language and traditional culture (folk art, dance, songs, stories) were the ties that bound a people together and created a nation

22

See Renato Constantino’s essay “Veneration Without Understanding” which argues that Jose Rizal was an American-sponsored hero, chosen because he symbolized a repudiation of mass action

This is of course in stark contrast to the modern theories of the nation that reject any suggestions that the nation is an organic idea Where Herder found the nation naturally

emanating from the volksgeist or the soul of the people, Gellner, around two hundred years later

will argue that nationalism does the opposite Through a kind of deception, nationalism will fervently affirm Herder’s theory of a nation as a primordial, folk culture but actually invent a new, high culture that takes on only token elements of folk culture which are useful.23 The nation

is not primordial, natural and organic It is novel, invented and imposed

The vision of the nation as a tool to channel and control the masses has of course met with some challenge Those who have reservations about these modern grand narratives question their systematic neglect of the part played by pre-modern cultures and ethnic ties in the forging of modern nations and offer other models for understanding the phenomenon of nationalism Anthony D Smith, for example, calls for an ethno-symbolic approach, which foregrounds a popular living past in the understanding of nationalism Partha Chaterjee focuses on the role of anticolonial nationalism and, based on his examples from mid-nineteenth century Bengal, he fashions a theory of an “inner, spiritual domain” of culture that was protected from the imposition and/or influence of Western forms and from which a modern, national culture would be molded Reynaldo Ileto24 attempts to describe the masses’ own understanding of the Philippine

revolution, and of the nation and nationalism through the worldview present in their folk songs, poems, sayings, prayers These alternative models seek to understand the popular roots,

widespread appeal, and emotional intensity of allegiance to nations Unlike Herder who found the roots of the nation in the folk, these historians do not fall back on idea that the nation is to be found solely in the ethno-symbolic, in the inner/spiritual self, and in folk and popular worldviews Instead, they affirm the belief that the nation is by and large, or at least also, a modern

phenomenon Their call, however, is a call for agency; a call to accord myths, memories,

Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910 Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979

traditions, shared histories, and even overt resistance their role in the creation of nations and nationalism

In the same way that the modern view of the nation as a social construct fits this study’s examination of the American discourse on language, so too do these alternative views of

nationalism offer a perspective through which the Tagalog view language and its deep connection

to the nation Many of the Tagalog essays included in this study assert the idea of the bond

between wika (language) and lahi The word lahi is one of those words that is difficult to

translate into a corresponding single-word as it is a word that can mean both a number of things

as well as a combination of these things Lahi can mean of any one of the following: race,

spiritual lineage, historical lineage, blood lineage, and/or community of people who share the same ancestry The vision contained in these essays, therefore, is a vision of a kind of organic unity of language with history, community, and nation

This is most manifest in a 1903 essay with a self-summarizing title, “Ang Wika ay Siyang Pag-iisip ng Isang Bayan at Kaluluwa ng Isang Lahi” (“A Language is the Mind of a Nation and the Soul of a People”) In this essay, the author, Liborio Gomez, seems to tap into the

contemporary debate about the creation of nations by describing a nation that others are

attempting to create but will fail at because the language of the people is excluded He creates a sustained analogy: that of a statue or painting created by a very talented artist The artist’s creation is so realistic that we, the viewers, almost take it to be real and want to speak to it It cannot speak back The artist is able to supply his creation with a machine that will allow it to move but still the statue does not speak

Mangyari rin namang malagyan ang naturang larawan ng mga sangkap o

‘maquina’ upang gumalaw ang mga kasu-kasuan o sakaling makapagsalita ay hindi rin tuos sa ating mga itinatanong, palibhasa’y walang sariling Wika, hindi siya maibibilang na bayan, pagkat wala ang sukat pagkakailanlan.25

If the artist puts the proper ingredients or a machine to make the joints of the figure in the painting move and if this figure is able to speak, it will not be able to communicate with us and answer our questions because it does not have its own language; it cannot be counted as a nation because it lacks that which will make it live

25

Liborio Gomez, “Ang Wika ay Siyang Pag-iisip ng Isang Bayan at Kaluluwa ng Isang Lahi,” El Renacimiento, 16 December 1903, 9

In 1903, when this essay was written, the fate of Tagalog and other local languages was fragile as American colonial officials were loudly and proudly proclaiming and implementing an English language takeover Gomez’s essay functions principally as a warning that portentously hints at a soulless future of a nation that is populated by or is itself a zombie ("bangkay na ang lahat ng ginagawa ng isang gaya natin").26 His vision of a nation, as is that of most of the

Tagalog writers who wrote about language, is one that finds the nation itself in the language It is

an organic vision of the nation and lahi or lineage (here used interchangeably or seen as one and the same) as body and language as both the body's mind and soul Nation, language and lahi are

inextricable from each other

These essays in Tagalog about Tagalog are deceivingly unsophisticated They were written at a time when it seemed as though Tagalog and other local languages might be

eradicated, either forcibly or through legislation Many of them, therefore seem like moving swan songs or militant calls to arms as is this one by Valeriano Hernandez which cries:

Mamatay ang wikag Tagalog! O, isang bagay na nakapanglulumo, gunitain lamang, pagka’t ang pagkakagayo’y isang maliwanag na magiging sanhi ng di napagkaalaala man lamang ng magsisisunod sa atin ng tunay na lahing kanilang pinagbuhatan. 27

The death of the Tagalog language! Oh, a thought that weakens one because the demise

of the language will clearly be the cause of the forgetting by those who will come after us

of the true heritage/identity they carry with them

Here again, expressed with deep emotion, is the idea that the language and identity are

inseparable, the proof of this inseparability offered only though analogies or through cries of desperation Indeed, many of these essays seem to be speaking only from an instinct about or a gut experience of their own language Yet, it is the power of such essays that launched numerous language movements and language revivals such that in a span of just thirty years Tagalog moved from almost eradicated to boisterously alive in novels, newspapers, magazines, films, in everyday speech, and even officially as the national language It is also in the force and sincerity of these

essays that one gleans the enduring energy of the idea of the lahi such that it becomes important

and relevant part of nation-forging

Language in History and in Scholarship

America’s debut as a colonial power was a byproduct of its involvement in the American war In May, 1898, the Spanish were defeated in the Philippine front at the bloodless Battle of Manila Bay It was an easy defeat for the U.S because the Filipinos, through the

Spanish-Philippine revolution which started two years before, had wrested power from the Spanish and were in control of most of the Philippines Philippine independence was declared in June of 1898 but in December of the same year, the Treaty of Paris between Spain and the United States

provided for the sale of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam by Spain to the United States On February 4, 1899 (two days short of the approval of the U.S Senate of the Treaty of Paris), the Philippine-American War erupted over a minor incident involving one Filipino and one U.S soldier

The Philippine-American War was officially declared over by the Americans in 1902 but

a bloody and dogged campaign against the equally dogged Philippine resistance continued for the rest of the decade It was a vicious, violent, and imbalanced war The war itself plus the

malnutrition and cholera epidemic that were caused by it brought about half a million28 Filipino deaths, the great majority of which were civilians (as against about four thousand American deaths)

The brutal war was matched by a repressive military and (later in 1901) civil government Efforts to subdue the Filipino population included a sedition law that prohibited agitation for independence, a ban on political parties that advocated independence and a flag law that outlawed the display of the Philippine flag

Very early on, there seemed to be a great awareness of the role of public education, and

in particular, public education in English would play in creating a tractable and manageable colony Repression and coercion (civilian and military) were also matched by the pacification

28

Some estimates place the number as high as one million

strategy that centered on the establishment of an extensive public school system throughout the islands American public education actually started eight months before any hostilities between the Filipinos and Americans broke out In the recommendations of and instructions to the

Schurman and Taft Commisions29 (both of 1900) there was much talk of English being made official language and of efforts toward promoting it as the common language Act 74 of January,

1901 provided for English as the basis of instruction in all public schools (and this policy

remained virtually unchanged until the 1970s).30 The Thomasites, six hundred American teachers who were brought to the Philippines by the U.S transport ship Thomas in 1901, have become the icons of this pacification campaign Yet, the Americans were already assiduously establishing schools throughout the Philippines long before they formally declared themselves colonizers in

1899 One might argue that mass education was not the handmaiden of the war but that the war was the hatchet man of this indoctrination plan

The American attitude about English in the Philippines was initially vigilant and

aggressive, almost to the point of hysteria Eventually, American enthusiasm over the total and absolute reign of English as the common language over the islands waned about midway through America’s occupation of the Philippines In 1925, an official government report on education, the Monroe report, would review and drastically limit the definition of English as the common language in the Philippines while at the same time continue to affirm its place in Philippine society From the original vision of English supplanting the local languages and becoming the lingua franca, the Monroe report allows for a much more limited idea of the place of English as being merely the language common to the leaders, thinkers, and professionals of the nation The initial gung-ho attitude about English was tempered, twenty-five years in, by a realization that the local languages were just not going away In a manner of speaking, one may see the Monroe report as an admission of defeat

29

The Schurman Commission was an exploratory and recommendatory body and the Taft

Commission was legislative and executive body

30

The current educational language policy is bilingual English is used for instruction in math, science, and of course English and Filipino is used for everything else