6 a Roosters Egg in Benedict Anderson Under Three Flags

7/26/2019 6 a Roosters Egg in Benedict Anderson Under Three Flags

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UNDER THREE FLAGS t {

policemen and other "security" personnel. the metropolitan police I :

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. . . ; - . - ~ ~ ~ . . . f A reporters that the danger came not from Communists, or even from i

fanatical Muslims, but rather from anarchis ts. At almost the same moment , a f E _ E

monument to the anarchist Haymarket Martyr s was erected in Chicago. The 1\. 47

New York Times

smugly remarked that "only no_w have the passions

1S

SEM

llllfficiently subsided" for this inauguration to take place. It is true, America 1

Prologue: The Rooster's Egg

really

is

a continent.

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In 1887, at the Exposici6n Filipina in Madrid a 23-year-old indio named

lsabclo de los Reyes. living in coloni al Man ila, won

a

silver medal for

a

huge Spanish-language manuscript which he called El folk-lore filipino.

He

published thi s

te

xt in unwitting tandem with co

mpatriot

Jo

se

Rizal

(then aged twenty-five), who,

after

wandering around Northern Europe

for some time, published his incendiary first novel,

Noli me tangere.

in

- Berlin

that

self-same year.

This book

helped e

arn

him

martyrdom in

1896

and. later, the permanent status

of Father of

His Country and Fir_t

Filipino.

Who

was lsabelo'l

1

He was

born

on July

7, 1864

in the still-attractive northern Luzon

archiepisCopal coastal town

ofVigan-

-which faces Viet

nam

across the South

China Sea- to parents of the Ilocano ethnic group, the vast majority of

whom were,

in

tho

se days,

illiterate.

His mother

Leona

Ho r

entino, however,

was evidently a poet

or

some quality, so that

at

the Madrid and later

expositions her poetry was displayed for Spaniards, Parisians, and people

I . Although J ;abelo had a long and hooorable career- aspects

of

which will be

discu55ed in the final chapter of this book- no remotely adeqjl.ilte professional

biography yet exists. The

ac

count of

his

youth that follows is drawn rrom the work

of

his eldest son, Jose de los Reyes y Sevilla, Bioxrufl/t del Smack>r /salwlo tit los .

Rl yes

.r

Florentino, Padre de los Ohrero.r v Prodcmwdor de Ia Jglesiu Filipino

l u d e p l i e u t (Manila:

Nu

eva Era, 1947), pp. 1- 6: Jose

L.

Llanes, The

Lije c{

Senutor lsabclo de los Reyes (monog

raph

reprinted from the Weekly M a g < ~ z i n e of

the Munila Chronicle, July 24

and

31.

and

August 7. 1949). pp. 1- 6: and the entry

under his _name in National Historical Institute, Filipinqs in Histor.1 vol. 2 (Manila:

NHI 1990), pp. 137-

9.

.


2/9

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1 \

I I f o ,., J ,.,.,,:

t

1 alwlo

cle

los

R

erl s

(seated.

riRI

II

).

in

St

L o u i s . ~ This accomplishment did

not

save

her

marriage,

and

the s ix

year-old lsa belo was

entru

s ted

to

a rich relative. Mcno Crisologo. who

later

put

him

into

the

grammar

sc hool

attached

to the local seminary

run

by the

August

inians.

t

appear:;

that ab

usive behavior by the Peninsular

Spanish

friars

a r o u ~ e

in the boy a

hatred of

the C

ath

olic religious

Order

s which

persisted all his life

and

had

serious consequences for his career. In

8HO aeed

sixteen . he esc

aped

to

Manila

, where he quickly acquired a BA

at

the ~ l e ~ i o

de San

Juan de

Letran;

after

that, he studied Jaw, history

and

palaeograpl1y

.

at

the ancien t (Oorninican) Pontifical University

of Samo Tomas,

then the

only university in all

of

Ea

st and Southea

st Asia.

. 2. A

cc


3/9

THE

NEW SCIENCE

The question, naturally, is why? What was the meaning of

el./ 1/k-lore

for a

clerically educated native youth in the 1880s? Much can be learned l'rom the

Introduction

and

lirst pages of his youthful masterwork.

3

There lsabelo

described rotk-lorc. albeit with some hesitation, as a ci< ncia nueta (a new

science), perhaps consciously echoing Giambattista Vico's Sien:a Nueva,

which. thanks to the efforts of

M

ichclet and others, had burst on the trans

European scene

in

the mid-nineteenth century. lsabelo explained

to

his

readers, in both the Philippines and Spain, that the word ''folk-lore''

which he translated ingeniously as ef saber popular had only been invented

in

1846

by the English

antiquarian

William Thoms, in

an

article published in

the London

Athenaeum.

The firstfolk-lore society in the world had been

organized in London as recently as

1878-a

mere six years before he started

his own research.

4

The French had followed suit nationally only in JgR6

just as lsabelo was starting to write. The Spanish typically had been caughl

intellectually napping; when their

turn

came. they had no thought hut

to

incorporate the Anglo-Saxon coinage into Castilian as elfolk-lore. lsahelo

was

starting to

position himself alongside pioneering Britain,

above

and

ahead of the tag-along Peni nsular metropolc. He was like

a

fast

surfer on

the

crest

of

the wave

of

world science's beetling progress; something never

previously imaginable for any native

of

what he himself called this remote

Spanish colony on which the light of civilization only tenuously shines.''

5

This position he reinforced in several instructive ways.

On the one hand. he was quick to mention in his Introduction that some

of

his research had already been translated into

German-then the

lan

guage of advanced scholarly thinking -and published in Ausland and

i/nbus.

which

he

claimed were the leading European

organs

in the field.

L l folk-lore .filipino

also judiciously discussed the opinions of leading

Anglo-Saxon contemporaries

on

the status of the ciencia

n11e1 a,

politely

suggesting

that

they were more serious

than

those

of

Peninsular Spanish

.folklorista.L He must also have enjoyed commenting lhat

Sir

George

Fox

had been in conceptual error

by

confusing folklore with mythology, and

3. References hereafter will

be

mainly to

the

original text. published in

Manila

in

l R9 by

Tipo-Lithografia

de Chofre y C. Where rdevant, comparisons will he made

.wilh

a recent reprint combined with an English

translation by Salud

C. Dizon

and

M


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_

___

cou ld no longer understand one another-opening the way for a much

needed international discussion, in which the Anglo-Saxons appeared both

more modest and more practical.

At

the

other

extreme were those Spanish

folklo[ists who were merely sent imental collectors of vanishing customs and

conceptions for some future museum of the past. lsabelo made clear what he

himself though t

fo

lklo re was about, and how he saw its social value. In the

fir

st

place, it offered an opportunity for a reconstruction of the indigenous

past that was in the Philippines by any other means. given the

absence of pre-spanish monuments or inscriptions.

and

, indeed , the near

absence

of

writlen records. (

When

Rizal tried to

do

the same thing later.

he

saw no other way to proceed

than

to read between

the

lines of he work ofthe

best of the Spanish administrators of the early

Conquest

Serious

research

on

customs, beliefs, superstitions, adages. tongue-twisters. incanta

tions and

so

on would throw light on what he referred to

as

the " primitive

religion of t

he

pre-Spanish past.

But-and

here

the

young I ocano sharply

distinguished himself from amateur costumhristas he also underlined the

importan

ce of comparisons.

He

confessed that before the completion of his

research he had heen sure that the neighboring Tagalogs and llocanos were

ra:as distintas (distinct races) on account of their diiTerenl langlJages.

rhysiognomies, behavior and so on. But comparison had prov.ed to him

that he had been wrong and that

the

two ethnicities clearly derived from

a

single source.

The

implication of the title Elfolk-lorefilipino was

that

further

research would show that all the indigenous inhabitants

of

the archipelago

had a common origin. no matler how many languages they now ,o;poke or

how different their present customs and religious affiliations. All this meant

that,

contra

the colony's clerical historiographers, who began their narratives

with the sixteent h-century Spanish conqtJcst, the real history of the archi

pelago

and

its

pucblofpuehlos

(here he hesitated often) stretched far

fmther

.

back in time, and thus could

no

t be framed by coloniality.

THE RICHES OF LOCAL KNOWLEDGE

On t_

c t ~ c r hand--and

here Jsabelo radically distanced himself from many

of

h1s

Pcnmsulaf colleagues

-the

new science

could not and

should

not

h

confined to sentimental excavations of the quaint. El.folk-lore filipino is

ahove a

ll

the study of he contemporary. in particular what he had termed

cl

saber popular. (Today, we would use the term "local knowledge".) This saher

was real knowledge, not lore, with

its

musty, antiquarian connotations.

He

offered the hypothetical example of a

sellaje

(wlld man. perhaps

a

savage) in

the .forests near his home region of South locos who might any day

(acctdenta\ly, lsabelo said) discover that a certain local fruit provided a

better antidote to the cholera bacillus

than

that currently manufactured at

the instance of the Spanish medical scientist Dr Ferran.

9

The framing for

such claims was the absence of serious scientific knowledge about almost

everything in the Philippines.

for

example,

Flora

e

Filipinas,

a new compi

lat ion by some Augustinian friars, was very far from complete.

1

The

indigenes had a much deeper knowledge or"medicinal plants, of nora and

fauna, of soils and climatic varia tions than did the colonialists, and th is huge

reservoir of knowledge, contained in t

he

soher popular, was still unknown to

the

world.

The

Philippines thus appeared

not

merely as a region

conta

ining a

mass

of

exotica

unknown to

Europeans.

but

also

as

the site

for

a significant

future contribution to mankind, springing from what the common peorle

knew, in their own languages, but of which Spanish had no conception. t

was exactly the unknownness of the Philippines that -gave its folklore a

future-oriented character

that

was necessarily absent in

the

folklore of

Peninsular Spain.

t

was also, however, the living specificity

of

the Ph-ilip

pines that positioned it to otTer something, parallel

and

equal to

that

of

any

other

pai i, to humanity. This is the logic that would much later make the

United Nations both possible

and

plaus ible. So far, so clear.

Too

clear.

probably.

For

fsabelo's text, ut1dcr the bright

li

ghts of its major themes, is

not without its shadowy o m p l i t i o n ~ We might provisionally think

about

them under three rubrics.

First,

what

was lsabelo to himself'?

To

begin

with,

it is necessary

to

underline an amb iguity within the Spanish word filipino itself. Dur

ing

lsabclo"s

youth

this adjective had two distinct senses in common parlance:

ll) belonging to, located in, originating from, Las Islas Filipinas; (2) creole,

of the locally bornbut pure Spanish social stratum . What it did not mean

is what

filipino

means today, an indig.enous nationality-'ethnicity. One can

see how much things have changed over the past century if one compares

just one sentence in lsabelo"s Introduction with its recent translation

into

American by two Philippine schola rs. lsabelo wrote: Para recoger del saco

ro to Ia organizaeion del Folk-Lore regional filipino, juzgue

oportuno

.conteslar al revistero del Comercio y, aprovechando su indirecta, aparente

sostener

que

en Filipinas habia personas ilustradas y estudiosas

que

pudieran acometer

Ia

empresa .

11

This

literally means:

To

save

the

organization

of

the

Folklore of

the

r'eg

ion

of the Philippines, I

judged

it

the

right

moment to rebut the view of El Cmnercio s reviewer, and, taking

advantage of his insinuati

on,

I pretended (presumed??) to maintain

that

9. Dizon--lmson, p. 24.

10

/hid.,

p. II . The editors say that the book, a compilation by various hands

and edited by Fr. Andres Naves. wa s published in Manila in 1877 by Plana y C

II. EFF. p. 13


5/9

in 't Ie Philip pines there exist enlighte ned [iluslrttdliS]

and

studious

persons capable

of undertaking

the task.'' The published

translation

completely anachroni.'>tic-has: I tried to defend the establishment of

Filipino Folklore by answering the/accusation of the columnist of

/

Comercio,

by

bravely stating that there are indeed Filipino scholars ready

and capable of undertaking the task.''

11

Where Isabelo was thinking of a

sort of global folklore which included the regional portion of he h i l i ~ p i n e

l s l a ~ d s and spoke of enlightened persons in the Philippines- no cthnicity

spcc1fied -- he translators have

omitted

.. egional to create

a

folklore of

the Filipinos, and substituted for "enlightened persons the novci Filipino

scholars.

FOREST

BROTHERS

In EJ falk-lore f i / i p i ~ w lsabelo did not describe himself as ' 'a Filipino,

b e c ~ u s e the nahonaltst usage was not yet familiar in the colony. Besides,

un

fi tpmo ~ a s then exactly what

he

was not: a creole. He did, however. describe

h1mself m other ways: s ~ m e t i m e s for example, as an indigene (out never by

the

contemptuous

Spamsh term indio), and sometimes

as an

llocano. In

a

r c m a r k ~ b ~ e passage

he

argued: "Spellking of patriotism, has it not frequently

heen

sa1d

m

the newspapers that, for me. only llocos

and

Jlocanos are good?

E v e r y ~ n e serves his

puC blo

to his

own

manner of thinking. 1believ; 1am

here

contnbutmg to

the illumination

of

the

past

of

my

O\\'n

pueblo ..

F lsc-

~ h e r : however:

he

insisted that so strict had been his objectivity that he had

s a c ~ r ~ c e d

to ~ c 1 e n c c the afTections of the llocanos, who complain that

1

have

p ~ b h c r z c d the1r least attractive practices." Luckily, however, I have re

ceived an e n t h u s i ~ s t i c re.sponse from various savan ts

fsabios]

in Europe, who

say .that, by settmg as1de

a

misguided patriotism, I have offered signal

services to locos, mi patriu admada, because I have provided scholars with

a b u J ~ d a n t materials for ~ t u d y i n g its prehistory and other scientific topics

relatmg

to

th1s provmce [si


6/9

/

"':hich ha

ve

a

clear

po

liticC'tl

char

ac

ter. First,

there is th

e

poss

ibility--the

hope--- of local cultura l renaissance . With a certain

sly

prudence, lsabelo

allowed Asto ll to speak. on

his heha

lf:

Perhe

of

the folkloric r i a l s gathered by D. Alej;md ro Guichot and

D. Luis Montoto

in

Andalusia, by D. Eugenio de Olavarria y Hu

arte

in

Madr

id. hy

D J ~ s e

Pcre1 Ballesteros in

Catalon

ia, by

D

Luis Giner Arivau in Asturias, by

Constghcre Pedroso with his

T m d i { o

p o p 1 1 / m ' ~ portuf Ui : (/Y

in Portugal. as

well

as

others. I have drawn up the following list

of

superstitions which I believe were

15.

EFF.

P- 15. Juan Luna (

185

7-99), whom we shall meet again. was a fellow

llocano who h e ~ < ~ r n c the most famous native painter

of

the Spanish

co

lonial era. His

T ~ e l ~ e u / 1 ~ t / l c u p ~ l r u won the second medal at the IS8t Fine Arts Exposition in

Matlnd, h1s

Spolwrmm

a go

ld

medal at the same venue in 18 4. and his 11 e mfr of

L:_pt

m

t? a gold med?l at the Barcelona Fine Arts Exhibition in

1

888

.

Feli ll Resurrec

Con Httlalgo y_ Padtlla_ ( l853 1913) was o nly slightly less successful. Hidalgo WHS a

Tagalog,

born

m Mamlu and raised there like Luna.

introduceo here hy the

Sp

aniards in past centuries. The list should not surprise

unyonc.

i vc

n that in the early days of Spa

nish

do

l1'lina

tion

the

most ridiculous

e .

111

heliefs lfas c r e e c i t L ~ mcis


7/9

had easy analogues

in

the bi7.arreries of Iberia , Italy, Central E urope

even England. '

The third aim w ~ s political self-cri ticism. lsabelo wrote that he was trying

to show, through

h1s

systematic display

of el

sahl r

popular.

those reforms in

the 1 d ~ ~ s and ~ v e r y d a y practices of the pueblo that must be undertaken in a

s e l f c n t t ~ a l spmt.

He spoke of his work as being about something much

more

senous than mocking my

pai.ran(Js,

who actually will Jearn

to

correct

t h c m s e ~ v e s once they see themselves described.

In this li

ght. folklore would

be a

~ m r o r

held up before a people, so that, in the future they could move

slcadtly along the road toward human emancipation.

It

is clear then that

lsabelo was

wri

ting ror one and a half audiences Span

ards h ' 1 '

1 . , w ose anguage

1e

was

usmg. a_d h i ~ own puebln whose language he was not using. and of

whom only a tmy mmorily co uld read his work.

. Where did lsabelo positi

on

himself in undertak ing this task? At this

Juncture we finally come to perhaps the most interesting part of our enquiry.

For

most

of

the .hundreds

of

pages

of

his book. lsabelo spoke as

if

he were

not an llocano

hm

self. or. at least, as

if

he were standing outside his people.

The

llocanos almost always appear

as

thev ., not

we

" F . . . 1 .

"TI . . , . . 1 examp e.

1erc rs

a.

beliefamong los llocanos that fire produced by lightning can only

be cxtmgurshcd

by

vinegar,

not by water.

Better sti

ll

:

Los iiocanos no pueden

d ~ m o s

perfecta

idea

acerca

de

Ia

naturale7.a de

los

man= k'k d.

.

.. ang

1

Y

J(.'en que no son demonios

, scg(m.

Ia

idea

que

)Qs cat61icos

henen de los

denwn

ios

.

The llocanos cannot give us a

complete

idea

about

the

ll


8/9

. C . 1 ~

1 :hr.ee ill-fitting sil uatio

ns

therefo re Outside they cannot give

us

a

complete idea); Inside there

is

no Spanish

equivalent of huri-han):

and

Outside Inside even

thou

gh I am an lloca

no

myself, l do not underst

n

d Ihis

llocano-/anguage refrain;

but I

am telling this to yo u, " not

to us ).

COMPARATIVE

RE FLECTIONS

From

the

end of

the

eighteenth century down to our haggard own. folklore

st udies. even

if

not always selfco nsciously defined as such. have p roved a

fundam

ental re

source

to

nationalist

movem

ents. In

Europe

, they provided a

powe

rful im

pu

lse for the development

of

vernacular c

ultur

es linking espe

cia lly

pe

asa ntries. a rtists and intellectuals,

and

bourgeoisies in their compli

.ca ted

stru

ggles against the forces

of

egitimacy. Urban composers foraged for

folk songs.

urban poets

captured and tra n

sform

ed the styks and themes of

folk poetry.

and

novelists

turned

to the depiction of folk countrysides. As the

newly imagined national com muni ty headed

towards

the magnetic future,

nothing seemed

more

valuahlc

than

a useful and

authentic pa

st.

Printed vernacu lars were almost always central.

No

rwegian folklor ists

would write in New

Nors

e ' (against Danish and Swedish) to recu perate

the

No rwegian sober popular; Finns

would

write in Finnish. not Swedi sh

or

Russian; and

the

pattern would be rei terated in Bohem ia. H ungary, Rtnna

nia,

S c r b

~ a .

and so on

. Even where this

was

no

t

en

ti rely tile

case

:.- a slr ik.ing

exa mple is the frish revivalist movement which operated both

through

Gae lic

and through a colonially imposed English well understood by

many

Irish

men and women -- the ultimate object was na tio nal self-ret rieval. "awak

en

ing and liberation.

At first sight. lsabelo's .

endeavor

s trikes

one

as quite different, as

he

was

wri_ing

as

much as anyth

ing for non-nationals, an d in an imperial languagc,

winch perha

ps

3 perce

nt of the

indios

of

the Philippines unders

tood

, a

nd

maybe only I

per

cen t

of

his fellow llocanos

co

uld follow. I f in Eu

rope

folklorists wrote mostly for their

paisanos,

lo show them their

com

mon and

authentic

origins, e l o wrote mostly

for

the early globalizing world he

f

ou

nd himself within - to show how lloca nos and other indios were fully ab le

lUld

eager

to enter that

world,

on

a basis

of

equality

and au tonomous

cont

ribution.

~ c l o 's

study

also marks his

country off

from the many ne1ghboring '

colomes rn the Southeas t Asian region.

In

these ot her colonies, most

of what

we can informally classify as

folklor

e s tudies" was ca rried on by in telligen t

colonial officials with too much time

on

the ir

hands

in an

age

still innocent of

radio

and televisi

on;

they were i

ntended

ma inly

to

be

of us

e to

the

colonial

rul

ers

, not

to the

studied p

opu

lations themselves. After independence

w : ~ s

achieved , these ex-colonies' folklore studies have _led a ~ a r g i _ n ~ l :xistence.

while they have done significantly better . n the p o s t c o _ l o n a . l I O e s W ~ Y

shou ld this have been

so

?One possibl e answer is that m a ll

t ~ c

o t ~ c r col omes

there survived a

substa

ntial written r

ecord

from precolomal

umes

-roy_ l

~ : h r o n i

Buddhist cosmologies. monastic records, Sufi tr a

cts

,

court

_

ht

eratures . etcetera . . a nd

it

was th ese, more than folkl?re. that provtded

a b o r i ~ t i n a l i t y and glorious authenLicity when- natienal.rst movement.,. got

way.

The rem

ote Philippines h

ad no

tradi io_n_of ~ e r f ~ l .

n t r a i J

and

literate

states.

an

d

nad

een

so

tn

ii1ly

tou

ched by

l a m

and

Bud

dh

_sm

t

ha

t

most of

the ir)habitari,_s

we

re ,Ch_risliani

zcd

r e ~ a r k a b \ y Jtlt\e

violence. Seen f ~ o m th is (ollclore

co-Old

substi _ncie

nt

grande

uc

An ot her, maybe

better

, answer lies in

the

na ture

of

m e t e ~ n t h c c n t u r y

I b e r i a ~ imperialism.

Spain

and

Portugal,

once the

great

tmpenal c e n ~ e r s

of

the

world

.

ha

d

been in

decli

ne sinc

e

the mid

-sevcnlecnth_

entury.

W1th t

he

loss

of

l atin America, the Spanish empi re

had

been drasttcally reduced - ..

to

Cuba, Puerto Rico.

the

Philippines. and Rio de Oro. _Throughout _

he

nineteenth ce ntury, Spain was rent by the mos t violent ~ n l e r n a l _

c o n f l

as it struggled to make the trans

ition from

feudal to rndustnal

modernity.

In

the

eyes

of

many

or

its own

inhabitants. Sp

am_was a c k ~ a r d

supe rstitious. and ba rely industrializing. This

t a n d t ~ g

was wtdcly

shared not

only

in Eu r

ope

generally.

but

al

so

by the

young

m tellectua ls

the residual Spanish colonies .

(Thi

s is why lsabclo was

p ~ o u to

have

writings pub lished in Germ

any,

while

his

la

ter

eq uivalents mother col omes

ten ded to seek

publication

in their own'' imperial m e t r ~ p o l e s Pr

og

r

ess

was thus the nag of an Enlightenment

Jlustwci


9/9

abroad, they might acquire some English and German as well.) Nowhere

.does

one

detect any marked avers ion or distrust towards this Rom ance

language

so

heavily mar'(ed by Arabic, the

common

vehicle

of

both

reaction and enlightenment. Why this should have been so is a very

interesting question. One answer is surely

that

, in complete contrast to

almost all of Latin America. ~ p a n i s h was never even close to being a

majority language in the Phi lippines. Dozens of mainly oral o c a l ~ ~ u a g e s

flourished then, as indeed they do today;

n o t h i ~ g

in lsabelo's writing

suggests that he

thought of

Spa nish

as

a deep

m e n a ~ e

to

the

futur

e

of

Ilocano.

Furt

hermore, Castilian

ap

peared

to

him as the necessary linguist ic

vehicle for speaking not only to Spain

but

also, through Spain, to all the

.centers

of

modernity, science, and civilization. It was more

an internationa

l

/ l a n ~ J a g e

than it was a colonial one. l is

s t r l k i ~

-that lsabelo never

considered the possibility

that,

by writing

in

Spanish. he was somehow

betraying

hi

s

pueblo

or had been sucked into a dominant culture. I think the

reason for this seemingly innocent stance is that, in the 1880s, the future

status

of

tas Islas Filipinas was visibly unstable,

and

some kind

of

politi

ca

l

emancipa tion was looming

on

the horizon.

This instability

had

everything

to do

with local circumstance

s,

but it was

ultimately grounded in the emancipation of L1tin America mo

re

than half a

century earlier. Spain was the only big imperial power that lost its empire in

the nineteenth century. Nowhere else in the colonial world tlid the coloni

ze

d

have such examples

of

achieved liberation before

th

eir eyes. Here one sees a

situation wholly different from that of the twentieth-century New World,

. where Spanish became the

eternal majoritarian master over all the

\ indigenou s languages in Latin America, and over an equally ete rnal ''

op pressed minority in tlie United Stales. No emancipation visible on the

horizon in either case.

Nonetheless, as indicated ahove, there are instructive reticences in lsabe

lo's

youthful work. marked by the uneasy pronominal slippages between

and they ue and you.

He was alw;tys thinking about two audiences, even

when writing for one and a halt: The worst of me;, is tiie wretdi who

is

ot

endowed with that noble

and

S lered sentiment which they call patrioti

sm:

he wrote. Spanish was not for him a national language, merely international.

But was there a national language to which it could be opposed? Not exactly.

The

local languages with the largest numbers of spcakcrs--llocano in the

north,

Taga

l

og

in the middle, and Cebuano in the south- were all relatively

small minority languages, and only just starling to burst into print. Was there

a clear-cut p fri to which his own language could be attached? A hypothe

tical llocano-la nd? He never spoke of it as such. Besides. there were those

Aetas and lgorots, with their own languages. who were his hermanos. There

were also those Tagalo.gs who, his investigat ions had shown him, were not a

race distinct from the llocanos; but he knew, as the discoverer of this truth.

that as yet few Tagalogs or llocanos were aware of it. Thi s state of fluidity

thus led him

ba

ck, at twenty-three years old, to the obscurely bordered

culture out of which he grew,

and

which he sensed he

had

partly outgrown,

11ocaJ1o popular

n o w t ~ d g e .o.r

culture_ titus came to

.Young

p a t ~ i o t as

something .to_ e. v ~ t i

i a t ~

from the ~ i d ; as " I V ~ ~ 1 9 ..

x ~ n e ~ c e d

from within, to tie displayed to the whole world, but also.somethmg l.o

e

r r e c t e d _ : : o f

co

.urse:

y

the llocanos themselves. His mother tongue.

llocano, thus became something to be translated, yet partly untranslatable.

And at some points

it

even slipped quietly away beyond the sunlit horizon of

the Enlightened young bilingual himself.

Documents

6 a Roosters Egg in Benedict Anderson Under Three Flags