BY DR. JOSE MA. EDUARDO P. DACUDAO
TAGALISTAS almost always pride themselves as anti-imperialist. The irony of it is that the imposition of Tagalog (honey-coated as Filipino) was done as a colonial weapon of the Empire of Japan in World War II. (It’s always easier to psychologically control the captive ethnolinguistic peoples of a captive colony by using the language of the colonial center as the enforced lingua franca for education, mass media, state communication and orders. It is suggested to Tagalista nationalists who insist that speaking in Tagalog and banishing English is the anti-Imperialist thing to do that they find a time machine, travel back to World War II, and lick the boots of their Imperial Japanese colonial mentors and enablers.) Fast forward to the present – Tagalog continues to be imposed on the captive peoples of the Philippines as an instrument of the internal colonialism of the Empire of Manila.
The Japanese subsidized the creation of Tagalog literature, financially supporting writers in Tagalog, but ignoring non-Tagalog ones. As a consequence, whereas during the American period Philippine literature consisted of almost equal parts of Cebuano, Tagalog, and Ilonggo writings, plus a smaller but substantial quantity of Ilocano, Kapampangan, Pangasinense, and other non-Tagalog works, Philippine literature during World War II and its aftermath consisted of practically pure mono-cultural monolithic Tagalog. The dearth of non-Tagalog literature post -World War II is one of the signs that these languages are dying.
Another bad sign is this: Since World War II and the imposition of ‘Filipino’, minority peoples are losing territory fast to the center’s ethnolinguistic group. For example, Puerto Princessa in Palawan, which used to speak Cuyonon, no longer does, and the Cuyonons (a Western Visayan people) are being confined to a small group of islands off Palawan and will inevitably die out should we do nothing. Likewise, the rich array of native languages of Romblon (including Romblomanon, Unhan, Asi, Odiongon) are dying out. There are numerous other examples.
In the still predominantly non-Tagalog areas of the Philippines, Tagalog is increasingly dominating the mass media – TV, radio, newspapers. More and more ordinary citizens are being forced by the educational system and mass media under a Manila-based Philippine Unitarian political system to regard Tagalog as the Philippine language with the highest social status, and the non-Tagalog languages as socially inferior. To be ‘Filipino’ one has to be Tagalog. Moreover, also since World War II, the percentage population of the non-Tagalog peoples of the Philippines has been decreasing rapidly. On a daily basis, non-Tagalog citizens of the Philippines have been transformed to second class citizens, social minorities whose languages and ethnic identities have been marginalized.
While the non-Tagalog peoples of the Philippines are being taught by the educational system that they and their languages are socially inferior (commencing at childhood with the despicable habit of Filipino teachers of fining innocent schoolchildren for speaking in their traditional languages, thus gashing into their tabula rasa minds contempt and hatred for their own language and ethnicity), the Tagalogs themselves are acquiring an air of cultural arrogance. Even in traditionally non-Tagalog Philippine areas, the typical Tagalog now expects that the local people adapt to his or her language and not the other way around. Ludicrously enough, many Tagalogs regard Philippine citizens that speak non-Tagalog languages as resistant to being ‘Filipino’, and they cannot understand why there is such resistance, never questioning their own cultural arrogance. In general, it is the educational system that places unwarranted value to the Tagalog language that is responsible for the cultural chauvinism of Tagalogs and the conquered people’s mentality of the non-Tagalogs.
The Philippines essentially was in this state of affairs described above by the 1960s, after a generation of Filipinos had grown up brainwashed by their own educational system to regard themselves as ‘Filipinos’ only if they could speak Tagalog (honey-coated as ‘Filipino’).
Then came the 1973 Constitution. (To be continued)/PN
