CULTURAL CENTER OF THE PHILIPPINES, DAY ONE

Because of the uproar raised by the recent tribute that the Cultural Center of the Philippines paid to La Imeldific on its 40th anniversary, I decided to dig up my 40-year-old article about the CCP’s opening.





IF IT’S WEDNESDAY, THIS MUST BE THE CULTURAL CENTER
The Art Of Politics, The Politics Of Art.

by Jose F. Lacaba
Staff Member
Philippines Free Press, September 20, 1969


FIRST there was pre-opening night, really a dress rehearsal with an audience, the audience in this case being the workers who had built the Cultural Center, their families, and a handful of reporters who would later give warning about the bore and the botch that was dularawan. The next three nights were all, according to the calendar of events, “invitational opening nights.”

The first invitational opening night, Monday, was I think supposed to be for provincial governors, small-town mayors, and minor government bureaucrats, but the people at the Center weren’t too strict about invitations. I should know because I was there, though the invitation I got was for the third night, the black-tie-or-formal-barong night. I was with some friends, and we had come from a cocktail party where the drinks really flowed; royally smashed, and seeing the glittering lights of the Cultural Center up the boulevard, we decided to give the old gatecrash a try. As it turned out, there was no need for gatecrash. When we walked into the chandeliered lobby, nonchalant as you please, we heard a loudspeaker blaring out the good news that the show was about to begin and would everybody please go on in and find a seat, there was plenty of room and no invitations were necessary—“hindi na ho kailangan ang tiket!” We got ourselves good seats, right in the orchestra, and during the intermission we disappeared: nobody could introduce us to the lovely usherettes, and Salakot na Ginto had given each of us the craving for a stiff drink.

On gala night, Wednesday, cold sober, all dressed up, and armed with the determination to be fair and give the dularawan a second chance, a fair hearing, I was back at the Cultural Center. This time I sat the dularawan through to the end. The least said about it the better. The craving this time was for five stiff drinks.

The real drama on gala night occurred off the stage, before the show.

My ticket said the show was to begin at 8:30 in the evening. At eight, when I arrived, there was a knot of demonstrators on each side of the doors. To the left of the Center were the dissenters, to the right the defenders, their positions seemingly indicative of ideological leanings. There were some writer friends on the left, and I was trying to stop my taxi before them but a policeman waved it on to the right, where I recognized nobody and nobody noticed me. Everybody was staring at the jewels disgorged by the air-conditioned limousines with tinted windows.

The same lovely usherettes who had graced the first invitational opening night were at the lobby, tearing away ticket stubs and distributing programs, one on the Center itself (reproduced on the cover was the Hernando Ocampo painting reproduced on the outer curtain of the stage), and inside this program a smaller one on the show to be presented. Completing the handouts were two loose-leaf pages, one of acknowledgments, the second defining a dularawan.

“The word dularawan combines three words: dula (drama), awit (song) and larawan (picture). The term signifies a concept of Filipino theater which is at once radically new and deeply traditional.

“A dularawan is basically the presentation of Filipino myth and history in drama, poetry, music, dance and spectacle. In other words, it is total theatre. It is radically new in the sense that it brings together for the first time various elements of indigenous Filipino culture in an integrated composition of grand scale. It is deeply traditional in the sense that it appears to be the logical outgrowth of the development that flowered in the moro-moro and continued to prosper in the Filipino zarzuela.”

Since I couldn’t find the word awit in dularawan (maybe it should have been dularawit?), I looked around. The first thing I saw, shining on the first balcony above the lobby, was David Cortez Medalla’s bright orange shirt. What I didn’t see right away was the Muslin malong that covered his legs. David himself was flanked by two thin young men, Marciano Galang, the painter, and Jose Lansang Jr., the poet. Both were in everyday wear, Mars Galang in a long-sleeved button-down printed polo shirt, Jun Lansang in a white T-shirt and a green jacket.

Uncomfortable in the barong Tagalog I had not worn in ages, I asked enviously: “How did you get in?”

“We’ve got invitations,” said Mars.

Touché. So I said: “But you’re not dressed.”

“What do you mean we’re not dressed!” said David, indignant. “For your information, this elegant malong I’m wearing is the authentic kind used by Muslim royalty, and it’s a gift from the wife of your editor.”

That shushed me up for a while. Then, I said: “Well, what are we standing out here for? Let’s go in and sit down.”

“Stick around,” said David, his voice charged with promise and portent, his manner suggestive of mystery.

“What’s up?”

“Basta stick around,” said Mars.

“Me pakulo yata kayo, ah.”

“Maghintay ka lang, pare,” said Jun.

I was curious (and would be yellow later). So I stuck around and waited. I still didn’t know what was up, but the real drama was already beginning.


AT ABOUT 8:30, there was a flurry of activity beyond the glass doors, the sequins and diamonds in the lobby perked up, and the rumor spread that Imelda and her guests, California Governor Ronald Reagan and his family, the American President’s representatives to the grand night, had arrived. It was a false alarm, but it galvanized the three in the balcony into action, if galvanized is the right word for the very languid, very leisurely way in which they pulled out some folded cartolina sheets from the traveling bag that Jun Lansang always has with him. With a hint of a flourish, they unfurled the cartolina like banners down the sides of the balcony.

“WE WANT A HOME NOT A FASCIST TOMB!” read the red letters on Mars Galang’s placard, for a placard it was, painted in the style of psychedelia.

Jun Lansang made a Joycean pun with “RE: GUN—GO HOME!”

And hanging between these two standards was David Medalla’s cartolina, the most elaborately decorated of all, aswang with rich dark colors, primitive and messy like his paintings; you could barely make out the letters that snaked in and out of the surrounding hues: “A BAS LA MYSTIFICATION! DOWN WITH THE PHILISTINES! (A columnist who wasn’t there would later report that the sign read “Down with the Philippines!”, which gave a rather sinister cast to David’s playful protest.)

Earlier that day, Mars Galang had decided to go to Jet Snack on Mabini for a drink. Jet Snack is a favorite hangout of some young writers and painters who go there for the delicious river snail known as kuhol. When Mars looked in on the restaurant, however, he saw David Medalla and Jolico Cuadra; David, who has been converted to Buddhism, was having a glass of kalamansi juice, and Jolico, who prides himself on his drinking prowess, was having a beer. Galang knew that if he joined the pair he would be drawn into either an argument with the Buddhist or a contest with the drinker. His wife was waiting for him at home, with the new terno she had had made for the gala opening of Imelda’s Cultural Center, and Mars thought it might be wiser to forego that drink. While he was trying to make up his mind, however, David came out. Unable now to get away, Mars walked David to Indios Bravos, where the latter stays, and it was then that Mars learned of David’s plot to infiltrate the citadel of the philistine (for that is how David saw the Center) and strike at its nerve center. The painter was a reluctant accomplice: in the first place, he was thinking of his waiting wife; in the second place, he had joined only one demonstration in all his life and, because he had fled in panic at the first sign of trouble, he had since then kept away from public protest, preferring to experience no reprise of his cowardice. But at the door of Indios Bravos, waiting for a jeepney, was Jun Lansang, who is even more leery of flamboyant display than Mars Galang, and when the poet quietly gave his nod to David’ s plan, Mars felt ashamed of himself and his fears. Anyway, the idea was to stage the protest before the show; he still had time to go home, pick up his wife, and catch a substantial portion of the dularawan. So they had worked feverishly on their posters, which, when dry, they carefully folded and tucked away in Jun’s traveling bag; then they took a cab to the Cultural Center, and now here they were on the balcony with their masterpieces on display.

It was an instant demo!

And in the lobby below, instant commotion! I had gone down to read what was written on the placards, and was shaking with silent laughter and secret admiration when I noticed Kokoy Romualdez authoritatively jerk his white head sideways. A signal; and before you could say Shazam! a policeman in khaki, his face a mask of grimness, the potbelly that is a trademark of his profession shaking above his belt, was half-running towards the escalator.

Cigarette dangling from the side of my mouth, I pretended to be a suave but hardboiled private eye and tailed the cop across the lobby, up the escalator, down the corridor, toward the three musketeers of the arts. When the cop adjusted his holster, I became aware of his gun for the first time, and I slowed down to a dead stop five full steps away from Mars Galang, feeling the skittish flutter of a Judas heart beneath my shirt’s embroidery, a humiliating circumstance I justified to myself with the reminder that I was here as a reporter, therefore not as participant in the event but as impartial, objective, uninvolved spectator.

“Doon sa labas ’yan,” the cop whispered menacingly.

“Bakit?” cried David in a voice as loud as the thunder that said data, dayadhvam, damyata. Those in the lobby who had not noticed the demo now looked up in astonishment and alarm. “Isn’t this supposed to be a home of the arts?” David asked. “Isn’t this supposed to be a home for artists? Do you know who we are? We are artists, and we have come here as artists. This”—raising his placard and pulling it away like a bullfighter’s cape when the cop tried to make a grab for it—“is a work of art, and I have every right to exhibit it here in the home of the arts!”

The cop tried another tack. “Me permit ba kayong mag-demonstrate?”

The three slowly brought out their invitations from Malacañang. “I am a guest of the First Lady,” said David imperiously, “I have been invited to this gathering as an artist, and as an artist I have come to exhibit my work.”

The cop now grabbed David by the arm, the cop was embarrassed now to be the center of so much unwanted attention, and he would allow no wisp of a boy, long-haired and unwashed, to make a fool of him. “Sa labas sabi, e,” he growled between clenched teeth.

About this time, some demonstrators for the Center, men in T-shirts and sombreros, had been allowed into the lobby by a husky man carrying a bullhorn and wearing a denim jacket with the letters F.D.W. stitched on his back. “MABUHAY ANG CULTURAL CENTER!” said their placards. “MABUHAY ANG PHILIPPINE CULTURE!” “MABUHAY SI IMELDA!” The signs were neatly lettered, and down in a corner of each sign were the initials of the labor unions to which the demonstrators belonged: PAFLU, NATU, FDW.

“E, bakit ’yong mga iyon,” cried David, pointing to the counter-protest, “bakit sila pinapasok? Mga artista ba ang mga iyan? Bakit hindi sila pinapaalis? Papaano sila nakapasok? Kami, mga artista, at ito’y bahay daw ng mga artista—bakit kami ang inyong pinapaalis?”

The cop tightened his grip on David’s arm.

“Huwag mong pilipitin ang kamay ko!” David screamed in the most regal manner at his command.

The three spokesmen of the apocalypse were now completely surrounded by security men in dark suits. Juan Ponce Enrile, secretary of justice, signaled the uniformed policeman away. The pro-Center demonstrators, about ten of them, were now directed to go up and stand with their placards on both sides of Mars, David, and Jun.

“Mabuhay ang Philippine culture!” the bullhorn roared.

“Mabuhay ang Philippine culture!” David yelled. “Down with the philistines!”

“Ano ba ito,” whispered one dark-suited man to another, “Kabataang Makabayan?”

“Ang Pilipinas para sa Pilipino,” came the bullhorn, “hindi ke Mao Tse-tung!”

“At hindi rin sa Kano!” bellowed David.

“Iyang si Reagan,” Jun Lansang now interposed, “’yan ang nagsara ng Unibersidad ng California,” but his was a gentle timid voice, Jun Lansang was not used to raising his voice, so David picked up the cry. “Reagan is a fascist!” he screamed. “He closed the University of California, he gassed students, he jailed artists! Why is he here among us? What has he done for Philippine culture? I have gone around the world to spread Philippine culture, and what have you done to me? You twist my arm! You want to drive me away! It is Reagan you treat royally!” And now David lost his cool and ended his polemic with “Putang inang Reagan ’yan!”

Reagan wasn’t around yet, the First Lady had not arrived, and after cooling off a little David turned to the gaggle of glitter in the lobby. He said something in French; then: “You don’t understand that? You’re supposed to be cultured people and you don’t understand that? Let me translate it for you. Yea, I have bathed myself in the finest perfumes from Paris, but what do I know of culture?”—and then: Baka hindi n’yo pa rin naiintindihan ’yan? Tatagalugin ko na!” And he did.

Meanwhile, officialdom was in a fluster, Kokoy Romualdez gritted his teeth, Ernest Maceda’s eyes blazed like a Byzantine ikon’s. Ponce Enrile shook his head. Andres Cristobal Cruz was at David’s side, trying to calm him down, still trying to convince him to hold his protest outside. Reminded that he had been David Medalla’s comrade-in-arms in one of the very first demonstrations staged in this country, Andy Cruz replied, “Oo nga, pero Kano naman ang kalaban namin noon, hindi Cultural Center.” Finally, Andy gave a weary shrug, grabbed a poster from the PAFLU delegate and positioned himself between David and Jun. When he saw that his placard read “MABUHAY ANG CULTURAL CENTER,” Andy grew thoughtful, muttered, “Siguro ’yong MABUHAY ANG PHILIPPINE CULTURE ang dapat kong kunin, ano?”

David had by this time grown tired of yelling and was content with greeting the guests who, he said, “used to come to my barong-barong when my barong-barong was the only Cultural Center of the Philippines.” Some of these friends, like Adrian Cristobal, he taunted openly: “Oy, Adrian, sumama ka rito! Noong araw, kasa-kasama ka namin! Ngayong me atik ka na, hindi mo na kami kilala!”

Finally, the First Family arrived with the Reagans. Flash of bulbs. Applause. Cheers. The spotlight shifted. Nobody heard what Jun, Mars, and David shouted in protest. Imelda saw the posters on the balcony and turned away with an embarrassed half-smile. Ferdinand, ever the skilled practitioner of the art of politics, gave the picketers a wide grin and raised his fingers in a victory sign. Reagan read the posters and never once lost the hearty smile of an embalmer which made his face a sea of wrinkles.

It was now past nine o’clock.


THE UNIQUE DEMO was over, but there is more to our drama, this drama whose theme could very well be the politics of art, or of artists. For politics so pervades our life that even art cannot escape its taint, even culture becomes a political issue, and dissent in whatever form, nonconformity however innocuous, is immediately interpreted as obscene, or subversive, or partisan. David Medalla may flout conventional morality, but can anyone accuse him of being an agent of Mao Tse-Tung or a hack of the Liberals? Yet Mao Tse-tung somehow got into the picture during the gala opening, and the Liberals earlier: if the formal protest outside the Cultural Center was small, part of the reason is that many who planned to join it kept away for fear of being identified with the Opposition. (If the American beat poet Allen Ginsberg had made an attempt to send the Cultural Center levitating with his all-purpose incantation, “OM,” he would surely have been branded a tool of the Liberal Party and an alien meddling in Philippine affairs, for is not his magic syllable made up of the initials of Osmeña and Magsaysay?) Yes, politics so pervades our life that even those artists who shun it like the plague find themselves stricken by it, which is precisely what happened to Jaime Arevalo de Guzman, the painter, who suddenly woke up one morning to find his name in a full-page newspaper ad as part of a Committee on Arts and Sciences making a declaration of support for Marcos and Lopez—this, as he wrote in a strong letter of protest, “without prior notice and consent.” There is nothing intrinsically wrong in any artist’s proclaiming his political allegiance (Michelangelo did magnificent masterpieces for the Borgias, and there is no reason why Filipino artists cannot serve, or simply sympathize with, the present dispensation, whose reputation is surely better than that of the Borgias), what’s wrong is the use of art and the artist by politicians to serve their own ends. This is as bad as the use of political power to force the anti-Establishment artist into submission. The political propagandist who has so little regard for a man’s name that he can use it as freely as toilet paper in a public lavatory is just one side of the coin whose other side is the cop who twists the arm of anyone rude to the established order or contemptuous of it.

The moral of our story having been spelled out, let us get on with the final act of our drama.

On the second floor of the Cultural Center is the art gallery (where hang paintings by Jimmy de Guzman and Mars Galang), and here, at the door, David Medalla listened a few minutes after the demonstration to a gentle reprimand from the Center’s soft-spoken deputy director, Antonio Quintos.

David was incorrigible. “Look,” he said, “they let in all these other people with placards, these paid hacks. Were they even invited? I am a guest here, and I have come to exhibit a work of art!”—here, the placard in his hands shook like a shirt on a clothesline during Typhoon Signal No. 2. “Why should they twist my arm? I am not armed, I am not a criminal; why should men with guns surround me?”

“You call yourself a guest,” said Tony Quintos, repressed anger showing in flare of nostril and flash of eyes. “Is it your custom to insult your host?”

“Did I insult Imelda? Did I even attack the Cultural Center? I said, ‘Down with philistines!’ You are a cultured man, Tony. Do you find anything wrong with that?”

“You should at least have behaved.”

“I did behave, “said David. “I behaved as an artist should.”

The lobby and the balcony were empty of glitter now, only the security men were around, the guests were in the auditorium, the program had begun. Jun Lansang was nowhere in sight (he had gone in), Mars Galang wanted to go home to his waiting wife, and David himself was all set to leave the Center to his philistines; but I had overheard one dark-suited guy whisper to a T-shirted fellow, “Paglabas ng mga ’yan, barugin n’yo,” and fearful for their safety, I persuaded Mars and David to sit out the dularawan; it is better to suffer through a new art form than suffer at the hands of men whose loyalty to Philippine culture is unquestioned, and whose hatred of “all things counter, original, spare, strange” is beyond doubt.

At the door of the lower balcony, the pretty usherette accepted my proffered ticket with a gracious smile, but a security man with a crew cut barred the way when the shaggy-haired pair tried to go in after me. David had his ticket in hand; Mars had lost his sometime during the demo but still had his printed invitation; the security man at the door was as impassive, as immovable, as the Colossus of Rhodes.

Before David could open his mouth, Tony Quintos was at his side. “David, David,” he said, “we’ll let you in, but only if you promise not to make any further disturbance.”

“I never make any disturbance when I am before a work of art,” David replied.

“What if you don’t consider this a work of art?”

“I consider any performance that contains singing and dancing,” David said grandly, “a work of art—no matter how bad.”

“Okay,” Tony Quintos wearily told the security man, waving him away. “I’ll sit with them.”

Inside, Jun Lansang was already quietly and snugly seated. We took our seats in the same row, Tony Quintos between David and Mars: the atmosphere was as tense as a Central Luzon town’s on an election day. On the stage, the director of the Cultural Center, Jaime Zobel de Ayala (who had earlier greeted David from the lobby), was winding up his opening remarks. Very soon, Imelda was walking up the stage; the audience gave her a standing ovation.

And then the dularawan began. In Europe, Maria Callas on a bad night has been booed off the stage; the dularawan was quietly tolerated; the patience of the Filipino is as renowned as Job’s. After a stiff, uneasy silence that lasted for about a quarter of an hour, David could no longer stand it, and began to give a running commentary on the show, in discreet but steadily-getting-indiscreet whispers. If Tony Quintos was annoyed, he said nothing.

“Look, that’s just like a Noh play…. Now this one is a Balinese dance…. It’s a balagtasan…. But that’s a Viking ship, not a barangay!... If our ancestors were as inert as these people, they could never have crossed from one end of the Pasig to the other…. That dance is straight out of Martha Graham…. That’s the kind of acrobatics they have in Chinese opera…. Now we have Cecil B. DeMille…. They have a vaudeville act at the Place Pigalle which is just like that…. Why do those Jewish slaves never get up? What are they doing, taking a shit?... Is that Reli Estanislao? Hey, he’s good. He’s the only good thing so far…. That’s a Senegalese dance, complete with headfeathers…. This is just like the imitation of the Folies-Bergere they put on in Japan, but at least in Japan you see a lot of legs…. Hey, there’s the Teahouse of the August Moon!... Don’t you find the music monotonous?... Walang life, walang joy, walang adventure—all the elements that make theater!”

Actually, on the basis of David Medalla’s remarks, you can describe the dularawan as very Filipino: for do we not say of the Filipino that he is a hodgepodge of cultures and styles?

Down the escalator after the show, David said: “They’ve got a better program at Cine Dragon on Ongpin.” Out of the door a few minutes later, David shouted to the waters of the gigantic fountain and the scattering of the people around it: “It’s a great big bore! The dularawan is a great big bore! There, that fountain is more beautiful, more exciting!” In the taxi on the way to Indios Bravos, David clucked his tongue: “That was 300,000 pesos? Why didn’t they just give Nick Joaquin ten thousand to write another masterpiece?”

Jun Lansang had walked out before the intermission; did he perhaps worry about his newly acquired job at the National Library, where his immediate boss is the assistant director, Andres Cristobal Cruz? Mars Galang stayed behind after the show; had champagne in the art gallery and a discussion with a security man (“I don’t blame you, you were just doing your duty, just as I was doing my duty”); hitched a ride with Bobby Chabet on the way home and had a really heated argument this time, the upshot of which was that he was told to get out of the car (“I lost my best friend”); and thought of his wife at home, his wife who had a new dress made, waiting like Penelope.

And now, an epilogue.


AT INDIOS BRAVOS later in the night, a student who had demonstrated against the Cultural Center had a story to tell.

“The U.P. student council had voted to picket the Center, but then there was this meeting in Malacañang with the President and the First Lady. I wasn’t there, but they told me umiiyak daw si Imelda. She implored them not to embarrass the country before its guests, you know. And the councilors naman, naawa. So the student council had another meeting, and this time they voted that there would be no formal picket. If anyone wanted to demonstrate, he could do so, but he would be there as an individual, not as representative of the U.P. The council chairman, Jerry Barican, did just that.”

And a folk dancer who had demonstrated for the Cultural Center spoke of the experience.

“We walked down the boulevard, all dressed up, and with the torches yet. Then this band of kids came toward us—aaah!—and we dropped our torches and we screamed. Nagtakbuhan na po! Look, I still have mud all over my shoes and pants. But afterwards everything quieted down, and then finally there was nothing more to do, so we decided to go in and see the show. There were I think 35 of us. After the intermission, 34 had disappeared, I was the only one left.”

He must have liked the dularawan, if he stayed behind?

“Ay naku! Before, I was pro-Center. Now, I don’t know any more. Tinulugan ko! Talaga. Mabuti na lang me nakatabi akong lalaki.”

ILANG TALA TUNGKOL SA WIKA

Eto pa ang isang piyesang dapat naipost ko noong Buwan ng Wika.

Binigkas ito sa isang simposyum tungkol sa wikang pambansa. Sa National Press Club ginanap ang simposyum, kung hindi ako nagkakamali. Pero hindi ko na maalala kung anong organisasyon o grupo ang nag-isponsor ng simposyum.



ILANG TALA TUNGKOL SA WIKA


Wala na akong tiyaga sa mga debate at balitaktakan tungkol sa wika. Kung ako ang tatanungin, tapos na ang panahon ng pakikipagtalo. Bilang manunulat ay may desisyon na ako sa isyu ng wika. Karamihan sa sinusulat ko ngayon--tula, dulang pampelikula, kolum sa Mr. & Ms.--ay sa Pilipino.

Hindi ko tinatalikuran ang Ingles. Matagal ko na rin itong ginamit, at patuloy kong gagamitin kung hinihingi ng pagkakataon--lalo na kung ang tagasubaybay o audience na gusto kong maabot ay walang ibang alam na lengguwahe kundi Ingles.

Pero sa ngayon, para sa akin, ang Ingles ay tulad ng isang dating girlfriend na lamang. May panahong minahal ko siya, pero magkaibigan na lang kami ngayon.

Kung tutuusin, ang importante ay hindi ang wikang ginagamit ng isang manunulat. Ang importante'y ang sinasabi niya. Kahit sa Pilipino pa siya magsulat, kung puro kabalbalan naman ang susulatin niya, wala ring mahihita ang mambabasa.

Ano ang wikang dapat gamitin ng manunulat na Pilipino? Depende iyan sa iba't ibang salik o factor. Depende kung sino ang mga mambabasang tinatarget niya. Depende kung saang wika siya mas komportable. Depende kung aling wika ang mas gusto niyang pagbuhusan ng panahon.

Batay sa mga salik na ito, maaaring ipasiya ng manunulat na gumamit ng Ingles, Espanyol, Tagalog, Sebuwano, Hiligaynon, Ilokano, Kapampangan, o kahit Esperanto.

Hindi naman kaya magkaroon ng problema sa komunikasyon? Palagay ko'y hindi. Ang kailangan lamang ay mapalaganap at malinang ang sining ng pagsasalin o translation. Ang mga akda sa Pilipino, halimbawa, ay kailangang isalin sa iba't ibang wikang panrehiyon, samantalang ang mga akda sa mga wikang panrehiyon ay kailangang maisalin din sa Pilipino. Gayundin naman, ang mga mahalagang akda ng mga wikang pandaigdig (hindi lamang Ingles) ay kailangang isalin sa Pilipino at pati na rin sa mga wikang panrehiyon ng Pilipinas.

Gayunman, mangangailangan pa rin tayo ng isang opisyal na pambansang wika. Hindi iyan maiiwasan ng alinmang bansang naghahangad ng isang kakanyahang pambansa o national identity.

Palagay ko'y hindi maaaring maging Ingles ang pambansang wikang kailangan natin. Ang Ingles ay naiintindihan lamang ng tinatawag na elite--ang mga nasa alta sosyedad, ang mga ilustrado, ang mga edukado (o misedukado).

Sa kabilang dako, ang Pilipino, anuman ang sabihin ng mga kaaway nito, ay naiintindihan ng nakararaming mamamayan, ng masa. At naiintindihan ito hindi lamang sa Katagalugan kundi sa buong kapuluan. Patunay ang mga komiks at pelikulang tinatangkilik mula Aparri hanggang Jolo.

Pero iyan na rin ang problema, sasabihin ng mga kaaway ng wika. Pangkomiks at pampelikula lang ang Pilipino. Magagamit bang midyum ng pagtuturo ang Pilipino? Magagamit ba iyan sa larangan ng siyensiya, ekonomiya, pilosopiya, atbp.? Hindi ba't kulang ang Pilipino sa mga angkop na terminolohiya?

Ang kakulangan ay wala sa wikang Pilipino. Ang kakulangan ay nasa mga siyentipiko, ekonomista, pilosopo, atbp. Karamihan sa kanila ay hindi marunong ng Pilipino o walang tiyagang mag-aral ng Pilipino. Pero mayroon nang ilang siyentipiko, ekonomista, pilosopo, atbp., na nagtatangkang gumamit ng Pilipino, at pinatutunayan nila na ang Pilipino ay may kakayahang magdebelop at umangkop sa hinihingi ng pangangailangan.

Sinasabi pa ng mga kaaway ng wika na ang Pilipino ay atrasado at samakatwid ay hindi makakatulong sa pagpapaunlad ng bansa. Pero matagal na nating ginagamit ang Ingles. Umunlad ba tayo? Mas maunlad ba tayo kaysa Hapon at Tsina na gumagamit ng sarili nilang wika sa lahat ng larangan ng kabuhayan?


JOSE F. LACABA
1983.09.11

A, EWAN, BASTA SA PILIPINO PA RIN AKO!

Narito ang isa pang artikulong dapat ay noon pang isang buwan naipost dito sa aking blog. Sinulat ito noong 1978 para sa isang English-language magazine, ang yumao nang magasing Who. Lumabas ito kasabay ng isang artikulong nagtatanggol naman sa paggamit ng Ingles sa Pilipinas.



LANGUAGE PROBLEM

A, EWAN, BASTA SA PILIPINO PA RIN AKO!


JOSE F. LACABA
Who, August 5, 1978


SUMUSULAT ako sa Ingles, at patuloy na susulat sa Ingles kung kinakailangan, pero hindi ko maikakaila ang wika nga’y naghuhumindig na katotohanan: bilang na ang araw ng wikang Ingles sa Pilipinas. Gustuhin ko man o hindi, mawawala itong tulad ng Espanyol—at ang kuwestiyon na lang ay kung kailan.

Sa isang artikulong Ingles na sinulat ko may walong taon na ngayon ang nakararaan (“Pilipino Forever!”, Philippines Free Press, August 29, 1970), pinangahasan kong hulaan na ang itatagal ng Ingles sa Pilipinas ay isang dekada na lamang.

Sa susunod ay ipauubaya ko na ang panghuhula sa mga may bolang kristal. Aminado akong mali ang hula ko. Matatapos na ang dekadang ’70 ay narito pa rin ang Ingles. Ito pa rin ang pangunahing wika ng pamahalaan, paaralan, pamamahayag, at pangangalakal.

Gayunman, hindi nagbabago ang palagay ko. Hindi man sa dekadang ito, sa di malayong hinaharap ay maglalaho ang wikang Ingles sa bansa.

Tingnan na lamang ang nangyari sa Espanyol. Sa loob ng apat na siglo, ito ang opisyal na wika ng Pilipinas, ang wika ng komersiyo at kultura. Nang maghimagsik ang mga Pilipino, ito pa ang ginamit nilang sandata laban sa Espanya.

Nasaan ang Espanyol ngayon? Marami itong naiambag na salita’t parirala sa ating mga katutubong wika, pero ang Espanyol mismo ay 12 namemeligrong yunit na lamang sa kolehiyo ngayon. Nang mawala ang kapangyarihan ng Espanya sa Pilipinas, nawala na rin ang wika nito.

Tingnan naman ang nangyari sa Ingles mismo. Sa loob ng tatlong siglo mula 1066, ang Inglatera ay napailalim sa pananakop at paghahari ng Normandiya. Sa buong panahong iyon, Pranses at Latin ang mga opisyal na wika ng Inglatera, ang mga wika ng pamahalaan at simbahan.

“Kung susuriin ang mga napangalagaang kasulatan ng panahong iyon, at kung isasaalang-alang ang dami at kahalagahan ng nasabing mga kasulatan,” ayon sa lingguwistang si Carlton Laird (The Miracle of Language, 1953), “walang-dudang masasabi na pagkaraan ng panahong iyon ay Pranses o Latin o isang paghahalo ng dalawa ang magiging wika ng bayang Ingles.”

Hindi gayon ang nangyari. Bagamat walang prestihiyo noon ang Inggles sa Inglatera, bagamat ginagamit lamang iyon ng mahihirap at hindi nakapag-aral, iyon pa rin ang nanaig—ang sariling wika ng bayang Ingles.

Kung ano ang kinahinatnan ng Pranses at Latin sa Inglatera pagkaraan ng tatlong siglo, kung ano ang kinahinatnan ng Espanyol dito sa atin pagkaraan ng apat na siglo, ay siya ring kahihinatnan ng Ingles sa Pilipinas. Ni hindi pa nga nakakaisang siglo ang Ingles dito.

Totoo, Ingles pa rin ang pangunahing wika ng edukadong kakanggata ng lipunang Pilipino. Ingles pa rin ang nangingibabaw na wika sa punto ng prestihiyo at impluwensiya. Pero ito’y sa dahilang ang bansa kung tutuusin ay kolonya pa rin ng Estados Unidos—kolonya sa larangan ng ekonomiya, kultura, at maging sa pulitika at usaping militar. Sa sandaling magbago ang sitwasyon (at nagiging malinaw na sa parami nang paraming Pilipino na hindi ito dapat maging permanenteng sitwasyon), maglalaho ang Ingles sa Pilipinas.

Sa mga akdang Ingles na sinulat na at kasalukuyang sinusulat pa ng mga Pilipino, may ilang makikipagmatagalan sa panahon at mananatiling mahalaga’t makabuluhan. Ang mga ito’y babasahin ng mga darating na henerasyon (tulad ng ginagawa nating pagbasa kay Rizal ngayon) sa salingwika.

Malamang na ang wikang pagsasalinan ay Pilipino.

Ang wikang Pilipinong batay sa Tagalog ay may malaking kalamangan sa lahat ng iba pa nating lokal na wika: nakabase ito sa Maynila, luklukan ng pamahalaan at komersiyo, sentro ng kapangyarihan at impluwensiya. Ang wikang sinasalita sa kabisera ng isang bansa ay karaniwang nagiging pangunahing midyum ng komunikasyon ng buong bansa.

Sa kabila ng mga kakulangan at kapintasan ng wikang Pilipino, hindi maitatatwang napakalaki ng isinulong nito sa kasalukuyang dekada. Ngayon higit kailanman, masasabing ito’y siya na ngang pambansang wika ng isang kapuluang sangkaterba ang wika.

Ang mga gumagawa ng pelikula, ang mga sumusulat at kumakanta ng mga bagong awitin, ang mga nagpapakulo ng mga komersiyal at adbertisment, ang mga naglalathala ng komiks—lahat sila’y kumikilala sa katotohanang ang pinakalaganap na wika sa bansa ngayon ay Pilipinong batay sa Tagalog.

Alam nilang kung gusto nilang marating ng produkto nila ang nakararaming mamamayan, ang masa, at hindi lamang ang mga nakatataas sa lipunan, ang dapat nilang gamitin ay hindi Ingles kundi Pilipino.

Alam din nilang kung gusto nilang marating ng kanilang produkto hindi lamang ang isang lalawigan o rehiyon kundi ang buong bansa, mula Aparri hanggang Jolo, ang dapat nilang gamitin ay hindi ang alinmang wikang lokal kundi ang wikang pambansa.

Bukod sa lumalaganap ang Pilipino sa hanay ng masa at sa buong bansa, tumataas din ang prestihiyo at impluwensiya nito. Sa di iilang simposyum at palihang pangkultura at kahit pansiyensiya, Pilipino ang ginagamit sa mga panayam at talakayan. Mayroon na ring mga tesis at librong pang-iskolar na nasusulat sa Pilipino.

Mapapansin pa na na halos lahat ng mga peryodiko’t magasing Ingles ngayon ay naglalathala ng mga akdang Pilipino o kaya’y may regular na seksiyon o kolum sa Pilipino. Totoo, maliit na bagay lamang ito—pero hindi na rin masama ang maliit na bagay, dahil dati’y ni wala naman nito. Ngayon, kinikilala na ng mga patnugot na kahit ang mga mambabasa nilang bihasa sa Ingles ay nagkakaroon ng interes sa sariling wika.

Habang patuloy na ginagamit ang Pilipino sa iba’t ibang larangan, lalo itong napapanday at nahahasa. Lalo itong nagiging isang moderno’t sopistikadong wika na may kakayahang umangkop sa mga pangangailangan ng isang makabago’t siyentipikong panahon.

Darating ang panahong ang Ingles at hindi ang sariling wika ang bibigyan ng kapirasong sulok sa ating mga magasin at peryodiko.

PILIPINO FOREVER!

Dapat noong isang buwan ko pa ito ipinost, dahil Agosto ang Buwan ng Wika. Sa ano't anuman, huli man daw at magaling (magaling nga kaya?), naihahabol din.

This is a slightly revised version of a piece I wrote for an English-language magazine nearly 40 years ago. I decided not to revise the "fearless forecast" that I made back then. Obviously, I am not a good manghuhula. Otherwise, I think the piece is not entirely outdated.


PILIPINO FOREVER!
Or, The Decline And Foreseeable Fall Of English In the Philippines.

by Jose F. Lacaba
Staff Member
Philippines Free Press, August 29, 1970, pp. 6-7

SEVEN YEARS ago, just before I dropped out of college, I liked to annoy some of my friends—intense young writers who dreamt of crashing the New Yorker or the Free Press with labored Nabokov or Nolledo imitations, and who were all under the delusion that they were destined to write what we called the GFN, or the Great Filipino Novel—by telling them they were wasting their time mastering the niceties of English prose, for there was no future in their efforts, posterity would be able to appreciate them only in translation. English in the Philippines was on the way out, I said, and would surely go the way of Spanish. Its days were numbered. I gave it fifty years or less.

Today I am inclined to say “less.” I’m giving English in the Philippines a decade at the most. That’s a fearless forecast based on a concrete analysis of concrete conditions.

Seven years ago, being myself afflicted with the GFN Complex, I wrestled with The Language Problem. In what tongue was I to express my Filipino soul? In what language was I to write the GFN that I thought was struggling to get out of my skin? Part of the reason I became a college dropout—aside from the usual “sensitive adolescent” compound of existential angst, the alienation bit, the crisis-of-faith thing, the complete De Profundis Syndrome—was the conviction I had arrived at, that the language of my GFN could never be English. The characters I wanted to write about were people who spoke no English at all, or spoke it only when drunk. How could I make a jeepney driver curse the cop at the corner in English? I wrote about a housemaid once, and though the story was accepted for publication in this magazine, I thought it was funny to have a maid speak like a Maryknoll coed. None of the attempts made by established writers to render the native speech in English could satisfy me. The narrative portions of stories by the best Filipino writers in English were almost letter-perfect, but dialogue was something else. My ear always told me something was wrong.

What language was I to use then? Spanish was definitely out. Not only was it deader than a dodo; the 21 units of it that I had passed couldn’t even enable me to read Mabini’s memoirs without consulting a Spanish-English dictionary after every other line. Though I was born in Cagayan de Oro, a Visayan-speaking city in Mindanao, and though my father was a Boholano who wrote poetry in his native tongue, my GFN could not be in Visayan either, because I had left my birthplace at an early age and could no longer speak the language; besides, I knew absolutely nothing of its literary tradition.

The only logical choice then, for me if for nobody else, was the only other language I knew besides English, the language my mother had been teaching in school since I was a year old: the national language. At that time, I didn’t want to call it Pilipino; I preferred Tagalog.

I was an English major in a school renowned for its English, or at least for the way its students spoke English—the Ateneo. I should have been happy enough with English Lit., but the Language Problem kept, as we used to say in our philosophy classes in those days, “impinging itself on my consciousness.”

I had a professor in philosophy, a disciple of the Christian existentialists, who liked to tell the class of Tagalog’s strength and beauty as an “existential language.” At its current stage of development, he said, Tagalog was weak in abstract concepts, but in dealing with “existents,” it was more sophisticated than English. I remember one of his examples. Tagalog would say: Umuulan—“Raining”—and have a complete sentence. English, to complete the sentence, would have to say: “It is raining.” What, my professor asked, did it refer to? Nothing that could be measured by hand or eye; nothing that could be found in existence. He told us about the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who, confronted by what in his time was also an existential language, decided to “teach German to speak philosophy.” (This was in a time when the language of philosophy was either Greek or Latin.) I wasn’t too keen on philosophy, but since I was wrestling with The Language Problem, I wanted to prove that the language I was inclined to favor was adequate for 20th-century needs. I decided to teach Tagalog to speak philosophy. I started by trying to translate Kierkegaard, and gave up after a few attempts. It was not that Tagalog could not cope with philosophy, I reasoned out; I could not cope with philosophy.

As an existential language, however, Tagalog was perfect for poetry. I had two English professors who, strangely enough, were passionately interested in Tagalog literature. They wrote Tagalog poetry, as I did. This was, I think, my most fertile period (I was writing at the rate of a tula a night), and after class I would discuss Tagalog poetry with my English professors. Twentieth-century Tagalog poetry, we agreed, not only lacked roots in native tradition, but, worse, was alienated from contemporary world literature. We arrived at the conclusion that the trouble with Tagalog poetry was its addiction to sound and conventional music; it badly needed the ballast of imagery. We thought it was vital to established the importance of the concrete thing, the real object, the image. So we launched, without benefit of manifestoes or any other formalities, the Bagay Movement.

Today, seven years later, other Tagalog poets whom we didn’t know at the time, but who were themselves on a parallel course with us, speak to me of Bagay. I am surprised that they have even heard of it; we published only in the Ateneo’s literary journal and in an avant-garde magazine that folded up after the first issue. There are those who still do not quite understand what we were trying to do at the time, equating Bagay poetry with the “mestizo poems” of one of our members, who was writing a la The Sun before The Sun was ever thought of, and with more ease and naturalness. On the whole, however, as I keep discovering to this day, the Bagay Movement created something of a ripple in Tagalog literature. I like to think that it has, anyway.

So there I was, an English major writing in Tagalog, and all the while still debating in my mind what language to champion unreservedly. In my last year of college, I began to find it more and more difficult to write term papers on “The Archetype in Canterbury Tales” or “The Early Cantos of Ezra Pound,” things like that. Down went my grades and out went my scholarship, and I decided it was time to write, not the GFN, but something, anything, in Tagalog. I dropped out.

This was towards the end of 1964. Early in 1965, an election year, I found work as an interviewer, at the six-peso minimum wage, for Robot Statistics, a survey firm and a subsidiary of the international Gallup Polls. I liked the job: there was something offbeat, adventurous, glamorous about it; it brought me closer to the people I wanted to write about but felt alienated from; and it enabled me to stop wrssh-wrsshing like a goddam Arrnean. The job brought me to the wilds of San Nicolas and Tondo, to the hinterlands of Sapang Palay, to godforsaken barrios in the Tagalog region. I made mental notes of the linguistic quirks, in accent and vocabulary, that could be discovered in Batangas, Bulacan, Rizal, Marinduque. I spoke virtually no word of English during those trips; in the barrios I met nobody who was “English-spokening.”

I left Robot after about five months because I began getting what to me were bum assignments. Robot must have found out I could wrssh-wrssh like the best of its executives, and it put me to work in the plush districts of Manila, where most of the time I had to wait outside a high gate while the maid who had peered at me through a small round hole went into the house to inform the lord and master of my presence. Never was the gap between have and have-not more clear to me than it was in those humiliating hours of waiting—and I could see that language was an important instrument to maintain the gap. Once inside the Class A home, sunk in the soft sofa, surrounded by stereo and television and refrigerator and modern painting and maids in uniform, I found myself once again exercising my Arrneow acent, what little of it I had imbibed by osmosis. After two weeks of Ermita-Malate assignments, I said goodbye to Robot. It was no way to write a GFN.

Ironically enough, I ended up here in the Free Press. Jobs that required a knowledge of Tagalog were hard to come by.

It was here in the Free Press that I became finally and irrevocably convinced that English in the Philippines was in horribly bad shape, so grievously ill I doubted if it had any chances of recovery. I worked at the desk for more than three years, as copyreader and rewrite man, and the most irritating thing I had to do was edit the copy of earnest schoolteachers who angrily insisted that Filipinos had mastered English as a medium of communication and that English was here to stay. What reached my desk was copy that the executive editor already deemed worthy of publication—that is to say, it wasn’t as excruciatingly bad as the usual stuff he received. The stuff that the executive editor rejected outright and didn’t bother to pass on to me for copyreading was simply unbelievable.

Here’s a typical example of the sort of thing that pours daily into the Free Press office (it was passed on to me because it praises one of my articles to high heavens):

“Sunog! (Ang Lagay E…?) FP—June 14/69, by Jose F. Lacaba. Its enough to fervor your feeling against this redden society of ours with all sort of evils. It’s no longer a joked this Nation is really edging to ‘Satan’s’ path. The cunning characters of all government personnel are the inherited facts from the Americans. Their excessived display of their unmannerism and auspicious wheeling of their personal needs, which is not supposed to be conducived within our Nation, plunged those with weaks humors in such dubious weal.”

I wasn’t much of a newspaper reader before I joined the Free Press. Because in the beginning part of my job was to do a weekly news roundup, I found myself reading the papers daily, almost line by line, from front page to back. Reading the papers regularly, I soon found out, was an infuriating experience, a stomach-turning exercise, not only because the news was invariably bad but also because the grammar was worse. Never mind the reporters, but the columnists who were supposed to be tops in the trade! One could count on the fingers of one’s left hand those who could write a straight English sentence without garbling the syntax, putting subject and predicate at odds, misusing words, mixing metaphors, and wallowing in clichés. The mass media were often cited as proof that English was widely understood in the country; as far as I was concerned, they were the best evidence that the language was being debased and would come to ruin.

At the same time that I despaired of the future of English in the Philippines, I became hopeful about Tagalog. It was at this time that I learned to call it Pilipino.

As staff writer for the Free Press, I have done quite a lot of traveling around the country. What strikes me the most whenever I come into a new town is the abundance of theaters showing Tagalog movies, and stands selling or renting out Tagalog comic books. Nora Aunor is everywhere, from Jolo to Sorsogon, and I suppose all the way to Ilocos Sur, where I have not been to yet. I remember a film exchange representative telling me that in the provinces Tagalog movies beat English-language pictures any time, even if the Tagalog moviehouses are mostly rundown and flea-bitten. And everywhere, too, Pogi and Pilipino Komiks and all those little comic books available at every corner in Manila are doing brisk business.

What this proves is that Tagalog-based Pilipino is more widespread than its enemies think. The squealing teenager in Naga who adores Nora Aunor will not endure the fleas and the bedbugs if she cannot understand what Nora Aunor is saying between songs, and the housewife in Samar who buys Romansa Komiks will not throw away 50 centavos of hard-earned money if Romansa Komiks will not make her momentarily forget the routine and the drudgery of housework. Thanks to the movies and the comic books, I have very seldom encountered difficulty in communicating with people born and bred in a different Philippine language. They may not be able to express themselves very clearly in Pilipino, they may not be able to pronounce it properly, but they understand me and we understand each other.

I am talking, of course, of the so-called lower classes, those who have not had much of an education and can only afford the inexpensive pleasures of Tagalog movies and comic books. Higher up on the social scale, one needs English to communicate—and these are usually the people who are opposed to Pilipino as the national language, knowing as they do that it endangers their position as the current elite.

Dr. Bienvenido Lumbera, professor of English at the Ateneo, writing in Pilipino for Pilipino, sister magazine of the Free Press, has this to say on the situation:

“In the bourgeois mind of the power elite, the interests of their small group represent the interests of the entire nation. What is good for their class is good for the entire masses….

“Perhaps the Philippine situation can never be fully understood by someone belonging to the power elite. The Westernization of those who have graduated from the university is practically complete. The students who have learned English easily are the same ones who have quickly embraced the culture embodied by the English language. They are the citizens alienated from their fellow Filipinos because they live in an artificial society, a society built on the principles and objectives imported through the use of English. It is not surprising that many intellectuals believe that nationalism and the language problem are separate, that it is possible to show concern for the country without supporting Pilipino….

“As it is now, English is the language of government leaders, of the rich, of the professionals. While a leader unavoidably stands out from those he leads, the two should never be kept far apart. Neglect of the people’s needs or blindness to the nation’s true situation is the effect of the English language which, instead of being a bridge, serves as a fence separating the leader from the led.”

The students demonstrating in our streets are perceptive in that they realize their need to bring themselves closer to the masses. We keep worrying that Pilipino will cut us off from the world, but we are not bothered by the thought that English has kept us apart from our own people. The students who have turned their backs on the easy life of the privileged few, to which their education naturally qualifies them, and who have instead opted to, as they put it, “integrate with the masses” and “serve the people,” know that they can achieve their objective only by speaking a language known to the masses of the people.

Those who say that Pilipino is inadequate to meet the needs of the modern world are simply unaware that Pilipino has been making great strides in the past 10 years. Those who say that Pilipino has produced no significant literature are only confessing that they have read nothing of the literature written in Pilipino in the past 10 years. Those who say that Pilipino cannot cope with 20th-century science and technology have not heard Filipino engineers, for instance, talking business in Pilipino: their sentences are in Pilipino but they use English terminology when no terms in the language exist, in the same way that English unashamedly incorporated foreign words, spelling, and pronunciation, unchanged, into its own vocabulary. Those who fear that Pilipino will throw us back to the stone age do not know that Pilipino is already advancing into the space age, the age of revolution.

This is a very exciting period for Pilipino. The language is being bent, battered, hammered into shape, molded, to meet the needs of a rising generation. Read through the convoluted manifestoes of student radicals and you will see what I mean. The Pilipino they use may sound strange and artificial now, but that is because they are trying to make Pilipino bear a burden it has never borne before: they are teaching Pilipino to speak political science. Even now, the bright young men and women of the new generation are giving the language a cram course in philosophy, history, the social sciences, the natural sciences, even space technology. Give Pilipino a few more years and it will be the equal of any modern language in the world.


Note, 2009:
The Sun (I don't recall now if this was a tabloid or a broadsheet) was the first Philippine newspaper written in what we now call Taglish. If I remember correctly, it was still called Enggalog back then.