By JP
Malig
The Philippines today is
a nation divided, with sharp rifts running along the edges of cultural,
linguistic and religious conflicts.
Centuries of Spanish, American and Japanese occupation, rule and
influence politically united the islands, but they have never doused the ancient
fires of self-determination of several regional peoples and indigenous cultural
communities in many parts and provinces of the
Philippines.
The armed conflict in Mindanao, waged by the Bangsa Moro people in their
struggle for self-determination, began in the 1970s. The war, which has claimed
the lives of thousands of thousands of Moslem fighters, government soldiers and
ordinary civilians, speaks of a historical struggle by the Moslem people in the
southern Philippines.
A proud people, the Bangsa Moro were the first indigenous group to
repulse and resist the Spanish colonial invasion of the Philippine archipelago
in the 16th century.
While the Tagalog-speaking natives of now-present Metro Manila quickly
embraced the cross and Spanish rule, the Moslems in Mindanao bravely resisted
foreign rule for more than three centuries. When the Americans came and bought
the Philippines from Spain at the turn of the 19th century, the move
started a new colonization by another foreign imperial power.
The Moro people, facing an army superior in
firepower and modern military tactics and strategy, would surrender their
political independence but not their culture, language, religion and
traditions.
The Tagalog-speaking people in the Philippines,
mostly inhabitants of modern-day Metro Manila and southern provinces of Luzon
island, quickly rose into political and economic power during and after the
Spanish and American colonial occupations.
Present-day Metro Manila became the national
center for political rule, finance, educational and economic planning and
development, cultural growth and infrastructure development. Strategic economic
and financial alliances of the Tagalogs with Spanish, Chinese and American
immigrants would strengthen their political and economic
base.
The decision of the national government, under
then Philippine president Manuel L. Quezon, to declare Tagalog as the country’s
national language did little to permanently unite the historically ethnic rival
groups in the Philippines, for Tagalog was indigenously spoken only by a
minority population.
The subsequent use of the national educational
system by the Tagalogs to spread the use of their dialect and their culture to
all parts of the country found resistance among other regional ethnic peoples,
the Cebuanos in the Philippines’ southern islands, the Capampangans in Luzon
island’s central region and the Moslems in Mindanao.
Until today, the Cebuano people speak their native
language with pride and have strongly resisted and rejected the use and teaching
of Tagalog – now called “Filipino,” in public and private schools in
Cebu
The Capampangan people, because of their
geographic proximity to Metro Manila, were silenced by the barrage of
inmarriages with the Tagalogs – their indigenous Indo-Malayan culture and
language left to rot until recent times.
One website today, (http://www.balen.net/) run for and by
Capampangans, is devoted mainly at revitalizing the Capampangan language and
correct historical errors imprinted upon the Capampangan people by the
Tagalogs.
Efforts to revitalize and strengthen the
Capampangan language, history, lineage and culture have quickly gained headway
on and off the Balen website.
The rarely-discussed issue on hand is the story of
one historically-ethnic minority – the Tagalogs – hwo have been imposing their
own language, culture, traditions and practices on the Bangsa Moros, the
Cebuanos, the Capampangans, and other regional and indigenous cultural
communities in the Philippines.
The resulting resistance of latter groups are seen
in the armed struggle by the Bangsa Moro people and the strong language used by
Capampangans against Tagalogs at the Balen.net website.
The Bangsa Moros who have taken up arms do not
consider themselves Filipinos because the Philippine government,
largely-controlled for decades by Tagalogs, did little to pour economic
development in Mindanao. The Moslems were left to rot in misery and poverty and
hardly received attention and support from the national government, until they
began their bid for self-determination.
On a national level, efforts of the government
through several administrations to preserve and protect the history and culture,
languages and dialects of regional peoples and indigenous cultural communities
have been at best, a rhetorical cosmetic surgery performed by the Tagalogs, in
order to strengthen the tourism industry, amid the continuous need of the
government for foreign currency to support the economy.
Genuine political representations of the various
regional and ethnic peoples in the Philippines have been largely ineffective, as
development of the Philippine countryside has remained
stagnant.
The lack of genuine economic development in the
countryside has continued to drive tens of thousands of people in the provinces
to seek work or even permanently migrate overseas – or as an impulse – move to
the urban centers of the country, Metro Manila in particular, further congesting
the overpopulated metropolis.
And the ethnocentric Tagalogs keep on complaining
about the “promdis” ( a slur which means “from the province” with a deeper
meaning of “backward” or “ignorant”) who flock to Metro
Manila.
Many families and individuals from the provinces
who blindly move into Metro Manila – lulled by visions of a modern Utopia –
continue to end up as desperate urban poor squatters without any means of stable
employment and their own piece of land.
It is a reality repeated over and over again in
the plight of indigenous Aeta people from the uplands of Central Luzon, native
Ifugao men and women folk from the Cordillera region and the Badjao boat people
from Mindanao, who all continue to end up as homeless beggars and homeless
itinerants in the streets of Metro Manila. The same fate has befallen non-tribal
families and individuals from various parts of the Philippines who have become
homeless nomads and urban poor squatters in the
metropolis.
The racial, religious and cultural tensions and
strife in the Philippines are not phenomena unique only to the country. They are
similar in many respects to the recent ethnic wars in the former European
republics of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, in the armed uprising in Chechnya
against Russian rule, the centuries-long armed conflicts between Palestinians
and Jews, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, the black rights movement
in the United States, the native Indian struggle for human rights, equality and
self-determination in South America and the US, the Northern Irish movement for
independency, the Tibetan struggle for self-determination and freedom from
Chinese rule and the victorious East Timorese struggle for independence from
Indonesian dominion.
There is no swift, end-all solution to the ongoing
ethnic strife in the Philippines today. Struggles for cultural, linguistic,
historical and even religious self-determination will continue to be fought in
the ethnically-diverse republic, with no end in sight.
24 June 2000