Looking Back
The path we have passed
By Ambeth Ocampo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:04:00 08/08/2008
Filed Under: history, Monuments & Heritage Sites
MANILA, Philippines—“Kaagi” is the Cebuano word for history. It is my favorite because it is most descriptive. “Kaagi” literally means “the way or path we have passed,” and it can also mean history. Some people translate history into its Spanish form “historia” and transform it orthographically into Filipino as “historya.” From here one goes further into the word “kasaysayan,” which we take for history, but I have not seen the word used this way in the friar dictionaries of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Reflecting on the Filipino word for history was not part of my Ateneo (Jesuit) education and I’m glad I took the time to cross Katipunan and sit in classes at University of the Philippines, Diliman. Philippine prehistory, handled by the late E. Arsenio Manuel, made me appreciate our past before we had written records. Serafin D. Quiason introduced me to the 17th- and 18th-century Philippines. Milagros Guerrero showed me that there’s a lot more to the Philippine Revolution than Teodoro Agoncillo’s “Revolt of the Masses.” Prospero Covar made me aware of cults honoring Rizal as God. All these classes were memorable because I chose the subjects that interested me. Since I was not being graded, I was not pressured to learn or perform during class discussions.
Most memorable for its energy level was the Philippine historiography class under Zeus Salazar, whose famous pedagogical method was best described in one word: terrorism. Undergraduate students were agitated and scared to be grilled during graded recitation, hence they gave the teacher two nicknames behind his back. Since Salazar taught in Filipino they changed his Greek name Zeus into “Bathala.” Because his class was more rant than rave, they called him “Zeus Sa-lahat-asar.”
In this class Salazar developed his view of historiography better known in academic history circles as “Pantayong Pananaw,” an inclusive Filipino viewpoint that will be discussed in a future column. Salazar began by tracing the word history from its Greek original that means “inquiry” to its present English word whose root word is “story.” He then explained that it was the same for the French “histoire,” German with “gesichte,” and Spanish “historia.” Then he ordered us to always use the word “kasaysayan” over “historya” because the latter was simply rooted in “story” while the former had two root words “salaysay” (narrative or story) and more importantly “saysay” (sense or meaning).
What was the significance of a simple story about the past (salaysay) if it did not have meaning (saysay)? That made a lot of sense.
At the time, I did not consult friar dictionaries because the only time “kasaysayan” appears is in the 19th-century Vocabulario de la lengua tagala by the friars Noceda and Sanlucar. The Spanish word was “historietta” whose meaning in Tagalog was given as “monting salitang ualang casaysayan” (a small [insignificant?] word that has no meaning).
Since then, each time I travel outside Manila, I ask for the word “history” in other Philippine languages. And for literary reasons rather than academic, I am quite drawn to the Cebuano “kaagi,” the path we have passed.
Last Monday, with the stunning Gov. Gwen Garcia of Cebu province, we unveiled two bronze markers on the doors of the Cebu Capitol declaring the structure as a National Historical Landmark now protected by law, a significant historical building whose original features cannot be altered without consultation with the National Historical Institute. When we unveiled the first marker, some people gasped under their breath, “Ay! Tagalog!”
The question of the national language is still an issue seven decades after Manuel L. Quezon declared Tagalog (now Tagalog-based Filipino) as our national language. In most cases people uncomfortable with Filipino request, at their expense, a second historical marker with the Filipino text in English! Not in Cebu. It was agreed that a second marker be made in Cebuano, the language of the place.
Cebuano, like other Philippine languages, is often referred to in a derogatory way as a “dialect.” This stems from ignorance and a colonial mentality that established the primacy of English over all our “local” languages and “dialects.”
This is the first time the National Historical Institute has fabricated a marker in a Philippine language, underscoring the fact that we must all learn Filipino with, and not at the expense of, the other Philippine languages.
The Cebu Capitol, designed by Juan Arellano, is an impressive building etched with text that reminds the officials and employees who work inside that “the authority of government emanates from the people.” Inaugurated in 1938 by Quezon, who traveled to Cebu on the yacht “Casiana,” and blessed by Cebu Archbishop Gabriel Reyes, the Capitol is in a splendid state today. Newspaper accounts of the Quezon visit said rain attended his arrival, but did not diminish the warm welcome of thousands of people who lined the port to catch a glimpse of him. What marred the visit was the news that a Cebu policeman shot civilians, killing one and wounding two.
Quezon arrived in Opon a day before the inauguration and visited the Magellan monument, which still exists today but has become just a detail in what is better known as the Lapu-lapu Shrine that marks the Battle of Mactan in 1521. Even in the interpretation of 1521 we have come a long way, and it is good to know the path we have passed or kaagi.
* * *
Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.
|
