E-mail to Javier Ruescas

2010/3/1 Javier Ruescas ‪<jcrbaztan@yahoo.com>

Dear Isabel,

Indeed, the misconception that Filipinos never spoke Spanish is widespread, and this was one of the points I made during the "Seminario de Cultura e Historia Hispanofilipina" that our group (Asociación Cultural Galeón de Manila) organized last week in the Diplomatic School of Madrid. The seminar, which included speakers from the Philippines and Spain, covered a range of subjects including Spanish-Philippine history, bilateral relations, religion, architecture, and Spanish language in the Philippines, which I presented.

These are some of the points I made:

1) The 1863 public education decree made possible the spread of Spanish across the Philippines, and ultimately gave rise to a class of Spanish-speaking Filipinos (the Ilustrados).

2) By 1890 there were 2,100 schools across the Philippines which taught in Spanish. That is 1 for every 3,300 inhabitants. In 2009 there were 8,400 schools: only 1 for every 9,600 inhabitants. Proportionally, there were more schools in 1890 than in 2009.

3) The Revolution and the First Philippine Republic would not have been possible without a common language or lingua franca, which was Spanish. The Republic (through the Malolos Constitution) chose Spanish as the country's official language in 1899.

4) Philippine literature and newspapers in Spanish flourished during the first decades of the 20th century. Most English-language papers even had a section in Spanish.

5) The Henry Ford Report of 1916 adds to the proof that Spanish was "everywhere the language of business and social intercourse".

Kind regards,
Javier Ruescas


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Date: Monday, March 1, 2010, 10:58 PM

Estimado Javier,

Muchas gracias por tu correo y su contenido tan lleno de sentido común y lógica meridiana.

It is really impressive how easy it is to manipulate information if one controls the institutions and communications media of society. How easy it is to spread a culture of disinformation.

But in the Filipinos' case, because we were a society, a nation suffering post-traumatic stress disorder en masse after the U.S. invasion and the war that lasted a decade (they also lie when they say it only lasted between 1898 and 1901) ... with the loss of the Spanish-speaking generations, whether through war and disease, exile, or the next waves of large-scale violence (World War II, Japanese Occupation), then it is completely understandable how the Filipino people were made to forget who they were, and see a generation of great-grandparents and grandparents who spoke Spanish, and still believe that "Filipinos never spoke Spanish"!!!!

And it is not at all a problem of language, it is much bigger than the mere question of language. But the best way to start revealing the magnitude of the large-scale psychological distortion we were subjected to, is to expose this cover-up. The fact is ENGLISH was NEVER our language. This is very, very comical when one meditates on it. We believe (subconsciously, which is even more incredible) that English is our native language!!!!! And that Spanish was the "Conqueror's language".

But as you say, Spanish was even more widely spoken 100 years ago than English is today. But you have to work with the proper scale. It became so obvious to me that 377 years cannot be compared to 46 years -- even if you add all the years after 1946 = 100 years.

Now think of what happened to the minds and hearts of the Hispanic Filipinos, how they witnessed the agony of their own culture, the disappearance of their language from the psyche of the young generations. It was an incredible bitterness. They realized that there was nothing they could do. Think of the youth, the young Hispanic Filipinos, the flower of our Hispanic Filipino culture, true patriots, and the sadness they lived through for the rest of their lives, as they watched the yankees put their own people to sleep with dreams of justice, prosperity, democracy, freedom. But not of culture. And just a different variant of racism than that of the Spanish.

And we can say that "Oh! Those were just the Christianized (Kastilaloy) Filipinos!" And we can start again with the polemics of: "The real Filipinos are the aetas, the Muslims, the Igorots." Even the Chinese Filipinos who want to push the agenda that Chinese Filipinos are the REAL Filipinos, because THEY built our country while the Malay Filipinos were being lazy ne'er do wells (I am not saying all tsinoys have this agenda, but some do, and they are in positions of wealth and influence). But it is the _Christianized Filipinos_ who often say these things. The North Americanized Filipinos. I was one of them. I have no quarrel with anybody. But through the many years that I lived in Chile, and the study that I undertook of history here, not just of Chile but of the entire Spanish colonization and also the history of Spain's post-colonial and civil war history.....I realized that something had to be done, to disseminate my own process of discovery, and to join in the great awakening. Because this is what we are experiencing: an awakening. And it is so positive, I cannot emphasize enough how positive it is. Because when you are alienated, asleep, to your own real story, you are also alienated, asleep to the stories of your brother and sister nations.

Well...here I am in Chile with the aftershocks still coming. So I had better leave it here.

Tantísimas Javier, un millón de gracias y realmente me ha reconfortado tu correo.

Un abrazo fraterno (y a tod@s),
Isabel