That’s not my point. Have you resorted to nitpicking my words now since you can’t come up with a response to the fact that the colonial mentality that plagues the Filipino attitude towards non-native languages gives one sufficient reason to do away with Latin so they’d have lesser alienation from the Mass?
Personally, I think this is also the same reason why a full comeback of the EF into the mainstream will take a while into the Philippines (I’m not saying it’s impossible, only that it requires a bit of work).
A lot of Filipinos (me included
) are taught in schools of what is obstinately ‘Philippine history’. Which is well and good, though I feel that parts of it
are, in one sense, biased (not that it’s bad; we all have biases, after all).
One thing that I often think about is how we often portray our heroes as saint-like entities, while our ‘enemies’ were often demonized in a way that you kinda find it hard to symphatize with them. For example, Spain. It’s common knowledge that Spain is (this really bad) entity that took away our freedom by putting on us the yoke of imperialism for three centuries. The writings and deeds of the men we call our heroes (say, Rizal) are not much help either, since they portray Spaniards in a negative light.
But many do not know that the Spaniards were not all bad. Beyond fiestas and surnames, Spain also brought to us, first and foremost, Christianity (thanks be to God). Second would be the whole idea of the Philippines being one nation. If Spain never colonized us, then we still probably would have been small and separate kingdoms/sultanates even today. Third would be education. It is oft-repeated that some Spaniards wanted to exploit the ignorance of the
Indios (another trivia: ‘Filipino’ in those days referred to Spaniards born in the islands - the natives are all relegated to the title ‘Indian’ or ‘Indio’
). But the Spaniards did establish numerous primary schools to educate the indios. The reason why university was never widespread in the islands those days was the fact that our economy was primarily agricultural. You won’t really need higher education if you were to become a farmer or a merchant, which is what many became in those days.
Also, we need to understand that a lot of what happened back then was a result of the ‘times’. The exploitation, slavery, and etc. were all a natural order of things. Spain itself was ravaged by numerous wars. Their colonies, Philippines included, bankrupted their national coffers. You can’t expect Spain to put the ‘Indios’ first before their own citizens. I understand that many unjust and immoral deeds (those I can’t really stomach) were committed, but we don’t need to play it up than what was required of us: if we were a superpower, we would have been doing the same things as well.
And BTW, while Spain never did teach the Filipinos Spanish, it wasn’t the reason why we never learned to speak Spanish. At its height, Spanish was spoken by 60% of the populace with varying degrees of fluency. The reason why it became rare is because the Americans (who colonized us next) suppressed it, putting English in its place. As a result, by the 1960’s, only a few knew Spanish. In Latin American countries, the Spanish language never became widely spoken until they gained their independence from Spain. In the Philippines, the same would have happened if not for the American invasion.
This is something I want to discuss next: the American invasion. You don’t find many blaming America, even though they colonized and exploited us such as Spain did. In many of our history books, America is often this great friend who redeemed us from those dastardly Spaniards (and later, the Japanese) and gave us ‘education’ and ‘freedom’. Yes, the Americans were probably less cruel and resulted more to propaganda than force of arms in colonizing the country. However that doesn’t take away the fact that they still exploited our land. But have you ever seen people who actually bear a grudge with America on the same level as Spain (and possibly, Japan)? Not too many, I think.
Most of the men who stood up against the Spaniards at the Philippine Revolution of 1896-1898 are all hailed as heroes who helped win us some freedom (even though it was short-lived, as the Americans came next), but if you’ll notice, many of the folks who fought against the Americans still had some status as insignificant ‘trouble-makers’ and ‘fanatics’. In official history, Miguel Malvar was the last general to surrender to the Americans, but in reality, many people still continued the struggle after the Philippine-American War officially ended. Massive propaganda labeled these men (whom I put on a par with the people who fought in the 19th century Revolution) as mere
bandoleros and were stigmatized until recent research put them in a more positive light. Ever familiar with names such as Macario Sakay and his
Republika ng Katagalugan, Lucio de Vega, the
Pulahanes, Luciano San Miguel, Papa Isio, Artemio Ricarte, and Julian Montalan?
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