OUTING TO THE MOUNTAINS JANUARY 2018

EL CAJÓN DEL  MAIPO, LA CORDILLERA DE LOS ANDES

                      IN MAIPO RIVER CANYON  /   THE ANDES

                             The star cluster on top and a little to the right

                                         is the Pleyades.

                           

WADE DAVIS: LA CULTURA NO ES TRIVIAL

 

INTRODUCCIÓN:  (ALGUNAS PALABRAS MÍAS QUE ESCRIBÍ EN UN CORREO)

De nuevo, Filipinas ha sido la punta de lanza del imperialismo norteamericano (bueno, Cuba también pero los gringos no se la pudieron del todo con ellos, sigo creyendo que tiren toda la mierda que quieran a Castro, da lo mismo, eso tuvo que pasar, y el Ché fue parte de ese fenómeno que en realidad José Martí inició).

Pero para mí Filipinas ha sido el Hiroshima/Nagasaki de la decadencia y desmoronamiento final del imperio español.  Fue un escombro que tiraron por la orilla del camino y nos quedamos allí como vegetales inertes.

Sin embargo, nosotros también somos seres humanos con nuestra cultura e historia e idiomas.

Descubrí las palabras de un antropólogo estadounidense ayer, y coloqué unas palabras que transcribí de su charla en mi blog, acá están en español:

Del vídeo titulado «Wade Davis on Humans» (Wade Davis sobre los humanos)

WIKIPEDIA:   Edmund Wade Davis CM (nacido el 14 de diciembre de 1953) es un antropólogo cultural, etnobotánico, fotógrafo y escritor canadiense.

Davis saltó a la fama con su exitoso libro de 1985 The Serpent and the Rainbow (La serpiente y el arco iris) sobre los zombis de Haití. Es profesor de antropología y titular de la Cátedra de Culturas y Ecosistemas en Peligro de la Universidad de Columbia Británica.



Una de las cosas más importantes que la gente no entiende es que se habla tanto de la pérdida biológica y la gente se olvida de la pérdida de las lenguas.  Esta es mi misión.

La gente olvida que, con toda nuestra preocupación por la erosión de la diversidad biológica, olvidamos que hay un proceso paralelo de pérdida, que es la erosión de nuestro propio legado humano.

 La erosión de lo que podríamos llamar «la etnosfera». Y se podría definir la etnosfera, la esfera cultural o social, como una red de vida que envuelve el planeta y que es la suma total de todos los pensamientos y sueños, ideas y mitos, intuiciones e inspiraciones engendradas por la imaginación humana desde los albores de la conciencia. La etnosfera es el gran legado de la humanidad, es un símbolo de todo lo que hemos logrado y la promesa de todo lo que podemos lograr como especie salvajemente creativa e innovadora.  Y del mismo modo que la biosfera se está viendo gravemente erosionada por la pérdida de hábitats y la concomitante pérdida de vida vegetal y animal, también lo está la etnosfera, pero, en todo caso, a un ritmo mucho mayor.


Ningún biólogo diría que el 50% de todas las formas de vida están al borde de la extinción, porque sencillamente no es cierto. Y sin embargo, ese, el escenario más apocalíptico en el ámbito de la diversidad biológica, apenas se acerca a lo que sabemos que es el escenario más optimista en el ámbito de la diversidad cultural, y el gran indicador de ello es la pérdida de lenguas.

 
Cuando usted nació, se hablaban 6.000 lenguas en la Tierra. Ahora bien, una lengua no es sólo gramática y vocabulario: es un destello del espíritu humano. Y de esas 6.000 lenguas, hoy en día, la mitad no se enseñan a los niños, lo que significa que, efectivamente, están en vías de extinción.

 
Piensen en lo que eso significa.  Significa, por definición científica, que en una o dos generaciones estamos perdiendo la mitad de la sabiduría acumulada de la humanidad, el conocimiento del espíritu, las intuiciones sobre la naturaleza de la vida, las relaciones con el mundo natural. La mitad del repertorio de la humanidad se escapa en una generación.

 
Hay mucha gente que dice, espera un momento, ¿no sería el mundo un lugar mejor si todos habláramos una misma lengua, no se facilitaría la comunicación, no nos sería más fácil llevarnos bien? Y mi respuesta siempre es: «Qué gran idea. Pero hagamos que esa lengua sea yoorban, hagamos que sea haida, hagamos que sea tibetano, hagamos que sea quechua, guaraní». Y, sabes, de repente empiezas a sentir, hablante nativo de inglés, lo que sería estar envuelto en el silencio, no tener forma de transmitir la sabiduría de tus antepasados ni de anticipar la promesa de tus descendientes.  Y, sin embargo, esa terrible situación es, de hecho, la situación de alguien, en algún lugar, aproximadamente cada quince días, porque, de media, cada dos semanas muere algún anciano y se lleva consigo a la tumba las últimas sílabas de la lengua antigua.

 

Y esto es algo muy vital y esencial de entender, porque las mismas fuerzas que están afectando a la diversidad cultural están afectando a la diversidad biológica.

 
Cuando pensamos en la cultura, pensamos que, de alguna manera, estos pueblos son pintorescos y coloridos, pero intentos fallidos de ser modernos, destinados a desvanecerse.  Como si no pudieran seguir el ritmo del cambio.  Pues bien, el cambio es la única constante de la historia.   Todos los pueblos, en todos los valles, han danzado siempre con nuevas posibilidades de vida. El cambio no es una amenaza para la cultura, como tampoco lo es la tecnología.  Es decir, los sioux lakota no dejaron de ser lakota cuando abandonaron el arco y la flecha en favor del rifle, del mismo modo que el granjero americano no dejó de ser americano cuando abandonó el caballo y el buggy en favor del automóvil. No es el cambio ni la tecnología lo que amenaza la integridad de la cultura: es el poder.  Es la cruda realidad de la dominación.

 En todos los casos, no se trata de sociedades frágiles y quebradizas destinadas a desaparecer, como tampoco lo están los bosques en los que viven. Se trata de pueblos dinámicos y vivos que están siendo expulsados de la existencia por fuerzas identificables. Y las mismas fuerzas que afectan a las culturas, las decisiones industriales atroces, las intrusiones que son biológicamente insostenibles, las entidades de enfermedad, la fuerza ideológica de las ideas políticas o industriales --- todas estas fuerzas que barren el planeta son las fuerzas creadas por los seres humanos. Y si los seres humanos somos la fuente del problema, podemos ser la base de la solución.

 Creo que uno de los problemas de olvidar que nosotros mismos somos una cultura, es que olvidamos que, cuando proyectamos por el mundo, digamos, un sistema económico, llamémoslo globalización o lo que sea, lo presentamos como si fuera la ola inexorable de la historia, en lugar de lo que es: un medio de organizar la actividad económica que surgió de nuestra propia forma particular de linaje cultural.  Y lo proyectamos al exterior con la suposición de que, si la gente se lo cree de alguna manera, alcanzarán mágicamente nuestro nivel de prosperidad.

Bueno, como dice E.R. Wilson, sólo en el nivel de consumo de energía, se necesitarían cuatro planetas Tierra para soportar el consumo de energía per cápita que disfrutamos en Estados Unidos, y eso no va a suceder.  Lo que sí ocurre es que, atraídos por el encanto de lo moderno, coaccionados, seducidos, la gente da la espalda a su pasado, esperando quizá alcanzar nuestro nivel de opulencia, pero invariablemente sólo se aseguran un lugar en el peldaño más bajo de una escalera económica que no va a ninguna parte.

 Y si algo enseña la historia, y la antropología en particular, es que la cultura no es trivial.  La cultura no son plumas y cascabeles. La cultura es el manto de valores éticos y morales, (es lo que se podría llamar ) la aislación del individuo que nos permite mantenemos a raya el corazón bárbaro que la historia nos enseña yace justo bajo la superficie de los vivos.

Es la cultura la que nos permite encontrar sentido a la sensación, encontrar orden en un universo que puede no tenerlo, es la cultura la que nos permite hacer lo que Lincoln nos pidió que hiciéramos, buscar siempre los mejores ángeles de nuestra naturaleza. Y si quieres saber qué pasa cuando se pierde la cultura, y sin embargo la sombra, el individuo sobrevive, una especie de... sombra de lo que fue, ya sabes, a la deriva de los cimientos y el confort de la tradición, pero enfrentándose a un futuro incierto, de caos económico, sólo tienes que mirar a Mogadiscio [Somalia], sólo tienes que mirar a Sendero Luminoso a las puertas de Lima [Perú], a los maoístas a las puertas de Katmandú, el caos de lugares como el África Occidental Ecuatorial... de repente ves que la cultura no es trivial, y el mantenimiento tanto de la integridad de la cultura como de la integridad de los sistemas ecológicos de los que dependen las culturas, no es una cuestión de nostalgia romántica, no es... es una cuestión de supervivencia geopolítica.

Wade Davis: Culture is not Trivial

 

           A FASCINATING AUTHOR, ANTHROPOLOGIST, WORLD TRAVELLER, THINKER.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGOJJWVFIyY

I was so impacted by what he discusses and explains in this video about the importance of language and culture that I transcribed part of it.

What he says here completely explains what happened to us, to the Filipinos, when we turned out backs on our past to pursue the North American dream of affluence and modernity.

What happened when we turned our backs on TAGALOG, OUR  MULTICULTURAL  LINGUISTIC HERITAGE,   INTERTWINED  WITH  SPANISH,  AND  OUR  already 333-year-old HISPANIC-FILIPINO CULTURE.

....................

From the video entitled “Wade Davis on Humans”

 Edmund Wade Davis CM (born December 14, 1953) is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and writer.

Davis came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book The Serpent and the Rainbow about the zombies of Haiti. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.

One of the most important things people don’t understand is that there’s so much talk about biological loss and people forget about the loss of languages.  This is my mission.

People forget, in all of our concern for the erosion of biological diversity, we forget that there’s a parallel process of loss, which is the erosion of our own human legacy.

 

The erosion of what you might call “the ethnosphere”. And you could define the ethnosphere, the cultural or social sphere as a web of life that envelops the planet as being the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, ideas and myths, intuitions and inspirations brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness. The ethnosphere is humanity’s great legacy, it’s a symbol of all that we have achieved, and the promise of all we can achieve, as a wildly creative and innovative species.  And just as the biosphere is being severely eroded with the loss of habitat and the concomitant loss of plant and animal life, so too is the ethnosphere, but, if anything, at a far greater rate.

 

No biologist would say that 50% of all forms of life are on the brink of extinction, because it’s simply not true. And yet that, the most apocalyptic scenario in the realm of biological diversity, scarcely approaches what we know to be the most optimistic scenario in the realm of cultural diversity, and the great indicator of that is language loss.

 

When you were born, there were 6,000 languages spoken on Earth. Now a language is not just grammar and vocabulary: it is a flash of the human spirit. And of those 6,000 languages, today, fully half aren’t being taught to children, which means that, effectively, they are on their way to extinction.

 

Think about what that means.  It means, by scientific definition, in a generation or two, we are losing half of humanity’s accumulated wisdom, knowledge of the spirit, intuitions about the nature of life, relationships to the natural world. Half of humanity’s repertoire slipping away in a generation.

 

There are many people who say, whoa, wait a minute, wouldn’t the world be a better place if we all spoke one language, wouldn’t communication be facilitated, wouldn’t it be easier for us to get along? And my answer to that is always to say, “What a great idea. But let’s make that language Yoorban, let’s make it Haida, let’s make it Tibetan, let’s make it Quechua, Guaraní.” And, you know, suddenly you begin to feel, a native speaker of English, what it would be like to be enveloped in silence, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of your ancestors or to anticipate the promise of your descendants.  And yet, that dreadful plight is indeed the plight of somebody, somewhere, roughly every fortnight, because on average every two weeks, some elder dies and carries with them into the grave, the last syllables of the ancient tongue.

 

And this is a very vital and essential thing to understand, because the same forces that are affecting cultural diversity are affecting biological diversity.

 

You know, when we think of culture we think that, somehow,  these people are quaint and colorful, but failed attempts at being modern, destined to fade away.  As if they can’t keep up with change.  Well, you know, change is the one constant in history.   All peoples, in all valleys, have always been dancing with new possibilities for life. Change is no threat to culture, nor is technology.  I mean, the Lakota Sioux did not stop being Lakota when they gave up the bow and arrow in favor of the rifle any more than the American farmer stopped being an American when he gave up the horse and buggy in favor of the automobile. It’s not change, or technology that threatens the integrity of culture: it’s power.  It’s the crude reality of domination.

 

In every case, these are not frail and fragile societies that are destined to fade away, any more than the forests in which they live are destined to be felled. These are dynamic, living peoples being driven out of existence by identifiable forces. And the same forces affecting the cultures, egregious industrial decisions, intrusions that are biologically unsustainable, disease entities, the ideological force of political or industrial ideas --- all of these forces sweeping over the planet are the forces created by human beings. And if human beings are the source of the problem, we can be the foundation of the solution.

 

I think one of the things in forgetting that we ourselves are a culture, is that we forget that, when we project around the world, say, an economic system, call it globalization or what have you, we present it as if it’s the inexorable wave of history, as opposed to what it is:  one means of organizing economic activity that came out of our own particular form of cultural lineage.  And we project it overseas with the assumption that, if people somehow buy into it, they’re gonna somehow magically achieve our level of prosperity. 

 

Well, as E.R. Wilson says, just on the level of energy consumption alone, it would take four planet Earths to support the energy consumption per capita that we enjoy in the United States, and it ain’t gonna happen.  What indeed does happen is, either drawn by the allure of the modern, coerced into it, seduced into it, people turn their backs on their past, hoping perhaps to achieve our level of affluence, but invariably they secure only a place on the lowest rung of an economic ladder that goes nowhere. 

 

And if there’s one thing that history, and anthropology in particular, teaches, is that culture is not trivial.  Culture is not feathers and bells. Culture is the blanket of ethical and moral values that we insulate the individual with, and keep at bay the barbaric heart that history teaches us lies just beneath the surface of the living.

 

It is culture that allows us to find sense out of sensation, to find order in a universe that may have none, it is culture that allows us to do as Lincoln asked us to do, to look for the better angels always of our nature. And if you wanna know what happens when culture is lost, and yet the shadow, the individual survives, kinda… a shadow of his former self, you know, cut adrift from the foundations and comfort of tradition, but facing an uncertain future, of economic chaos, you only have to look at Mogadishu [Somalia], you only have to look at The Shining Path at the gates of Lima [Peru], the Maoists at the gates in Kathmandu, the chaos of places like Ecuatorial West Africa… you suddenly see that culture is not trivial, and the maintenance of both the integrity of culture and the integrity of the ecological systems upon which cultures depend, is not an issue of romantic nostalgia, it’s not… it’s an issue of geopolitical survival. 

2 Examples of Kasabihán from Serrano-Laktaw (Root word KAHOY / LEÑA, MADERA)

 

APHORISM  IN  TAGALOG  IS  KASABIHÁN

Kasabihán (Aforismo): 

 

Káhoy na babad sa túbig

Wood that is wet with water/La madera remojada en agua

Sa apoy huag ilapit,

don't bring it close to fire/no hay que acercar al fuego

Pag naragandang nang init  (Ver nota abajo)

If it is reached by the flame/Si la llamarada la alcanza

Sápilitang magdirikit.

It will inevitably catch fire/Forzosamente se encendiará

 

Kasabihang nagsúsúlit, na kun ang káhoy na sariwa ó babad ay hindî dápat ilapit sa apoy, gayón din namán and tawo, na hindî karampatang pumánḡat sa panḡanib nang pagkakásala, pagka´t anomán ang gawing ínḡat ay sápilitang mararahiyô.

Aphorism that explains that just as wood that's fresh or is wet shouldn't be brought close to fire, same thing with a young person, who shouldn't be exposed to danger of wrong conduct, because it doesn't matter what's done to protect them, inevitably he or she will be seduced.                                                               

____

 

Ang káhoy na liko’t buktot

La madera toda torcida/A tree that is crooked

Hutukin hangang malambot,

Se flexiona hasta que se ablande/Can be trained till it's flexible

Kung lumaki at tumȧyog

Si crece y se vuelve alta/If it grows and becomes tall

Mahirap na ang paghútok.

Ya está difícil de flexionar/It will be difficult to train and straighten

 

Kasabihang nagsúsúlit nang pagkakáwankî nang tawo at káhoy, na kailanḡang pakáalagaan maliit pa at nang hindî lumabás na pakilókilô.

Aphorism that explains the similarity between a person and wood, that when they are still small they must be cared for so they won't end up all twisted.

 

      ____________

VOCABULARIO

 

Dikit = (1) Nakarikit. Pegado.  (2) Magdikit (ang apoy). Arder.  Encenderse. Prender el fuego.

Hutukin = Pagkahůtok, paghůtok. Flexión, sujeción, educación.  Hutukin: Arquear, encorvar, doblegar (la rama).

Tumȧyog = De táyog. Katayugan. Altura, elevación, eminencia. ̶̶̶ ̶  Matȧyog. Alto, elevado.

Pakilókilô = Kilô. Torcido. Sinón. de baluktot.

Pumánḡat = Nakapánḡat, expuesto, comprometido.

Mararahiyô = Márahiyô. Seducirse, incitarse. De dahiyô, seducción, incitación.

Kalupaan = De lupà. Sinón. de Kamunduhan (carnalidad), kalibugan.

Wankî  =  O kawangkî:  semejante, parecido, análogo.

Naraganda = No existe ninguna acepción de la raíz "gandá" que calce con este contexto.  Encontré Andap: Pagandap. Llamarada. Umandap, umandapandap.  Echar llamaradas.

Hay errores de tipografía en el S-L.  "Pag naragandap nang init" hace sentido (si la madera es alcanzada por llamaradas).

 

The Time of No-Change

 The Time of No-Change

A short story by ©Elizabeth Medina.

2004.  All rights reserved.

The family group stood in the jungle clearing. The rosy dawn was just beginning to filter through the trees.  The grandfather and grandmother, their numerous grown children, the wives and husbands and grandchildren old enough to walk with their parents deep into the jungle. They were accompanied by guardian hounds.  They stood before a boulder of amazing proportions, half buried in the clearing.  No large trees grew around it, and the ancients who were no longer had told the grandparents that one night, when the ancestors had yet to be born many many generations ago, fire roared in the sky, roared into the forest announced by deafening thunderclaps and a blaze of lightning that lit up the world. The flash of light swallowed the night so that it seemed day had suddenly returned, the fire destroyed almost all of creation and burned all growth uncounted strides all around the rock. A single tree of gigantic size survived because Bathala needed to be able to go down to Earth and sow new beings, animals and food. Almost beside it, however, a single ancient balete tree of immense proportions towered, Linn’s Ficus Indica. The tree was still there, a many centuries-old mythical tree that withstood the cataclysm.  In it lived a powerful Nono that had to be venerated because It was the Protector of the world. They had to make offerings to It so It would not forget them, because if It did their lives would be snuffed out as the rain smothered live coals during the season of sorrowing heavens. The grandmother, their priestess impo Jaba, began gathering branches, leaves, flowers and fruit. The rest followed suit. Soon the sacred bower had been assembled. With her eldest granddaughter ate Tabgao, impo Jaba set up an altar, after asking for permission from the Nono, the spirits who resided in the boulder and the forest. When the altar was ready impo Jaba sang a prayer chant joined by ate Tabgao and the rest of the family.  Around them the sounds of the forest had fallen into a hush.  No monkeys heard chattering and boisterously rampaging across the trees, no parrots shrieking or birds trilling and flapping in great groups across the cathedral-like canopy.  Not the rasping of a giant python stealthily slithering over leaves and brush on the jungle floor.  No crocodiles roaring --- the river was a morning’s hike away. This space was sacred and powerfully protected: no hostile spirits came near. Impo Jaba ended her singing prayer before the altar, the family group sat down and from baskets took out colorful cloths, in which foods were wrapped.  Some of the men and the older boys had gone off with their long knives and returned with mangoes, guavas, star apples, and coconuts that were cracked open and drunk from.  The group shared their meal and were now talking, sometimes smiling or pronouncing an interjection, laughing, singing.  Impo Jaba, Tabgao always beside her, ate with them.  The simple worship had been done.  They had paid their respects to Bathala and the anitos, given thanks and asked for protection from bad weather, enemies, dangerous animals and insects that destroyed their rice crop, killed their bees, spirits that caused anger, disharmony, illness.

 

After the meal they lay down and slept for a time before trekking back to the river. Barely had the river’s singing waters grown audible than some of the men moved ahead with their bows and arrows and baladaos, long knives, and their hounds trained to detect buayas, snakes, warthogs and tamaraos.  It was the time of day when they knew that few crocodiles would be about, when the monsters slept, but long experience with the beasts had made them naturally wary.  Crocodiles were divinities and periodic ritual sacrifice was necessary to appease them and gain their benevolence.  Periodically also, the men formed hunting parties to kill them, though their numbers never decreased.  The family had lost members and animals to the beasts in the past.  One could not live too near the river for this reason, and they never went to fetch water or wash clothes alone.  When they bathed – they loved the water – they did so inside large cages of stout bamboo stakes.   It was always better to go to smaller streams to bathe and wash in.  Even when family groups lived by the sea, especially near the river mouths, they had to be careful because there were also crocodiles in the sea.  For this reason too, they built their houses atop tall, sturdy poles as a safeguard from floods, and performed a ritual to attract a special anito that protected each house.

 

The river was clear, their large canoes waiting on the bank.  The family group climbed in and set off downstream for their hamlet.  They arrived quickly and before dark reached their huts.  The women began preparing the evening meal, the men fetched water and wood and built a fire.  The evening song of the trees, the chorus of mayas, the cries of multicolored parrots, the fragrance of flowers, the cooing doves, croaking frogs, chirping crickets, and a thousand gentle sounds wrapped around them with the cool moist darkness of night.  Large groups of bats swooped noiselessly through the air, hunting.  The dogs barked occasionally.  Warthogs stayed away.  The boys and girls had gone to and returned from the rice fields, bringing back the carabaos, and fed the dogs.  The girls helped their mothers prepare the meal and serve.  impo Jaba, nono Bitun and the other venerable ancients sat around the fire and tended it, some still weaving on looms in the dimming light, others carving tools out of molave or making rope.  The younger men lounged nearby, chewing betel nut, smoking aromatic tobacco, drinking coconut wine, talking about hunting, visits to nearby hamlets, their fields and animals, unusual sightings, rumors, jungle beasts, stories of marvels both real and imagined – for them, there was hardly a difference.

 

Later they would all eat together with their hands on plates of banana leaf and bark, seasoning their food with salt by rubbing two rocks together over it, the adults speaking about domestic concerns such as the beeswax needed for candles, medicinal herbs to be collected for ailments among them, broken earthenware that needed replacing, cotton, dyes and other things needed for weaving, the next trips to villages where the supplies could be bartered for, who was to go, who was to stay.  The men addressed their dato, the leader of the family, who was the oldest and strongest son and brother, regarding their need for iron for lance tips and knives, which they obtained from Chinese merchants who periodically visited a larger settlement downriver.  The children ate in silence, listening and observing their elders. When the meal was eaten the women cleared and put away while the grandparents formed a circle with the children and told stories about the ancestors and spirits, how the world was made by mythic beings.  The adults listened too, mothers cradling toddlers, nursing infants, men smoking, sharpening spearheads, whittling sticks to make arrows, offering stray remarks or telling stories heard from other family groups, and so on.  The children told their own tales of things they had seen and done, things they had dreamed, and asked questions.  The stories were punctuated by laughter, shouts of fear, squeals of delight, teasing and scolding.

 

“Impo,” said one of the bigger children, “tell us about the anitos, the tauos.”

 

“You know children that everything is alive, because inside them live the anitos, that are two in kind:  good and bad spirits, and our venerated ancestors.  The anitos protect and help us.  There is an anito that lives in every house, there is Apo laki, the anito of war, there are anitos of the jungle, the Tauo sa salugo, and the Tauong-damó.  There is a spirit that lives on the top of every high mountain, another that lives on the plain.  Other spirits live in the branches of the balete tree and at the bottom of the lake.  A spirit provokes storms, and another spirit, Damolag, protects the flowering rice in the field when the bagyó, the hurricane, comes. Whenever you walk in the ricefields, you know you must first say, “Pasing tabe sa nono” so you may walk about freely, and when your elders work in the fields, they also have to ask permission from the nono.

 

“Impo,” said one of the youngest, “Once I did not say pasing tabe sa nono – and I was stung by a bee!”  The children and the adults laughed.

 

As the fire died down they entered their huts and went to sleep.

 

This is how a modern historian or hack might evoke that world, but it was not really like that at all, except in a few details.

 

They must have been quiet, peace-loving people, passionately attached to their homes and their land, who spoke little.  Words were not their vehicle of communication – they sang much more, or used their gaze, clicked their tongues or whistled. Most of all they communicated knowings through feeling – what is felt by the skin:  the breeze, the heat of the sun, the cool of night, the prickly, tight air when spirits rampaged as lightning and wind, the freshness of water, the pain of a gash when one cut oneself accidentally while chopping wood, the burning of fever, the sweet juiciness of a ripe mango, the solid, steady, heaving and swaying of the carabao’s back, the hair rising on the nape and arms as one walked alone through the forest in the dead of night, sensing that the tikbalang, the asuang, or the patianac, a demon thirsty for blood, was following.  Feeling expressed in love and protection, sharing and helping.  They were intuitives as all indigenous are intuitives.  But unlike indigenous of Aztec and Inca civilizations, they had not a culture versed in the rituals and arts of large-scale warring, of power over great lands to control and assure access to scarce necessities or rare luxuries – the only power they understood and made use of was that of natural authority which obeyed the imperatives of collective survival of small groups.  Gold, silver, mother-of-pearl, raw silk, honey were for trade.  Their crafts sustained an elementary level of life that was never devoid of beauty, ease and joy – their beauty, their ease, their joy, that others would later call ugliness, sloth and sin. 

 

Their wealth was time, the peaceful lulling splendor surrounding them, they lived with their dead, their ancestors who protected and anchored them.  They did not starve, the environment was rich, flowing, gentle; the climate relatively mild, not like the barren deserts, the arid high plains swept by icy winds or mantled by eternal snows in lands that did not exist for them. Even sickness was rare but, when it came, there were medicinal plants of great power, and when Death came, It was welcomed with equanimity, the dying prepared for their journey and their memory secured.

 

They lived in a paradise, a beautiful plentiful land, aware that there were other groups considerable distances away from their own nests.  Note that I did not say “they lived in Paradise” – it was a paradise on earth they lived in, indeed, but they had their worries too, and these worries tended to multiply as the centuries passed and the forces active in other worlds began to press down on theirs.

 

First, spirits and demons. Then pirates.  At first rarely, then ever more frequently, invaders.  Finally, lying usurpers.

 

In the future War of Words and Burning Steel they were destined to be defeated and destroyed.  Defeated, because though they knew how to survive in the jungles of beasts and vine-choked trees, in their intimately-known womb of emerald walls and rivers and surging blue seas, they did not know how to track and survive in the jungle of human motives.  They had just been born.  They would be like a baby thrown into a gambling den.  The baby grew up and longed to be free, but when the baby was already a strong young man, he was still a baby in his heart, yet no longer innocent. He had become full of murderous hatred, confused resentment, crippling guilt and shamed longing for the occasional crumbs of love received from his masters -- no longer members of his own family group, but greater chiefs arrived in his land from the Great Unknown, now the owners of the gambling houses, opium dens and brothels where his mother and sisters worked, some like fabled courtesans and others as scullery maids.

 

And they were destroyed. Their resplendent emerald jungles clear cut and paved over. Their names, stories, divinities ceased to be passed on and venerated. As though their world had never been. The children of their greatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgreatgrand-children only heard the echo of their names and their voices calling out to them, for the very first time, at the instant the mudslides entombed them.

 

Indeed, the strong young man was not alone…there were others like him who survived after being abandoned in the doorway of the house of sin. But so many brothers were killed, whether by their own hand or by those of their enemies – among whom were their own fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, neighbors, teachers, priests, servants, and so on.  There were many different kinds of houses at whose doorstep the babies were left by mothers who tried to save them.  In some cases, the mothers were gamblers or courtesans or opium merchants themselves, and they watched their children grow up from a distance.  They provided them with a roof, clothing, even schooling – especially in humiliation or effective servility – and believed this was the right way, that their children would finally grow up to be acceptable citizens.  These mothers amassed fortunes, not on their backs or by planting the poppies, or running the gambling saloons – no, for there were now many ways to become rich, and they were mostly small-timers.  They worked for the big sharks.  The biggest Shark was the conqueror, who not only controlled the small, damaged country our characters were the so-called nation of, but many, many more.  Once the shark had swallowed everything in sight, it would start on its own tail.

 

In the meantime, the baby in its belly, who did not know about the mother shark, did not even know about business, much less why people have a need to gamble, smoke opium or frequent whores, and why other people need to amass wealth (to feel the self-satisfaction of no longer being poor and humiliated, safely watching from afar the spectacle of others’ poverty and others’ humiliation, in the comfort and solace of perfect safety from those horrible tragedies, thanks to their competence and genius – in other words, their superiority), the baby and the others like him, who now were in appearance strong, virile young men and handsome, astute young women – set to building their dreams within millions of rooms; some large, some smaller, but all decently-appointed, even quite modern and tasteful, within the establishments they were born to.  Definitively, they lived in a society of sinners who appeared to be holy.  But… something was wrong, even when they felt self-satisfied and possessed “everything a self-made man could want.”  A void, a dread gnawed away somewhere deep inside the gut.  They thought the problem was they still had to get to the top of the casino industry, or finally become the kingpin of the drug production and distribution networks, or the nation’s First Lady, or even – why not? – Madame President. 

 

In the still of the humid, clammy night, the air heavy with silence now only broken by strange shouts and distant explosions, in the cities patrolled by engines speaking in hard, guttural machine dialect, crawling along streets lined by endless dreary gray walls of cement blocks crowned with thorns, concealing the opulent mausoleums from the eyes of the resentful and hungry. No longer any singing frogs, praying crickets, hooting owls, swooping, chittering bats, all buildings and houses locked shut and dark. Something very wrong.  Everyone knowing it.  And the one who was to blame – Satan, the Anti-Christ, Marx, Mohammed, Che Guevara – who could it be?  The one to blame was faceless, invisible, yet omnipresent, ubiquitous. 

 

So they did what their ancestors did, the only thing they could do when they felt surrounded by evil, by demons, by bloodthirsty spirits or vampires:  they drew out their bolos, their long knives, and attacked the enemy, no matter if he had wooden ships, arquebusses, crossbows, steel lances and cannon or Remington rifles, gattling guns and armored destroyers.   In imitation of their brave ancestors, the great datus, they hired assassins, professional thugs, mercenaries, informers, to weed out their enemies, those who (of course) were the ones who were sowing strife, creating discontent among the masses who could not enter the gambling saloons, buy the whores or dream the languorous Arabian Nights fantasies of addicts.  Surely it was those malcontents who were the One to Blame. 

 

Thus the jungles of fearsome creatures, centuries-old trees and impenetrable underbrush of our ancestors gave way to the jungles of asphalt, cars spewing exhaust, abnormal heat, the atmosphere of impending calamity, resolute denial and mass escape from the land, once a paradise, now a paradise of thieves, ruffians, slave owners and traders, rapists, whores and murderers.

 

But it was always there, from the beginning.  The seeds of it.  Our fall and expulsion from Paradise.  It’s just that…we cannot seem to stop. Hell seems to have eternal concentric circles, spiraling down, down, down….and there is never any bottom.

 

After Paradise Lost, the eternal collective Nightmare.

My Mother Tongue, Tagalog

 

    I put my vanity aside and post this picture of me from March 2023, when my beautiful Serrano-Laktaw arrived from New Delhi, because I want you to see how HUGE it is.

    I was born to an Ilocano father and a Cebuana mother in Kamuning, Quezon City, seventy years ago.

    My adoptive cebuana grandmother, Andrea Seno of Mandaue, took care of me when I grew out of infancy.  Before that, I had a cebuana nanny.

    I learned Tagalog from the maids in the house and from the radio plays and news that were always playing.  

    I learned Cebuano from three summers that I spent in Mandaue, at ages 5, 7 and 8.  I remember that I picked up bisaya very quickly, and when I would return to Quezon City, I was fluent in it and would switch to Tagalog as if I merely changed clothes.

    At age 5, I began my schooling in St. Joseph's College, Quezon City.  I don't remember having any Pilipino classes until I started high school (aged 13) in St. Theresa's College, San Marcelino, Manila.

    I don't remember how often we had Pilipino class, maybe three times per week.  We learned grammar, reading and writing, but we did not read any Tagalog literature.  However, I paid attention and got a good basic knowledge of Tagalog. 

    My education from kindergarten until college was in English.

    So I did not receive any real emotional or psychological bonding with Tagalog past babyhood.  The mother tongue is passed on to the child from the mother during earliest infancy. My mother did breastfeed me but I have no memory of her taking care of me.  I do of my lola Andrea.

    When I became a mother myself, I spoke to my babies in English and a few Tagalog words when I gave them a bath in the tub and played with them with their rubber duck and such stuff (kili-kili, aray!, pating).  I didn't teach them more Tagalog, I realize it now, because my own bonding with it was imperfect.

    However, it was there.  I discovered this when I had my Proustian moment with my Serrano-Laktaw.

    It was when I found the word "mumog".  I did not recognize it at first.  The definition in Spanish is 

Magmumog: Lavarse, enjuagarse r. (la boca).

    Suddenly I remembered how, as a child, my grandmother would have me gargle over the bathroom sink, probably when she had me brush my teeth.

    It was a magical moment.  I relived it.  I was a five-year-old tagala again.  (As I was called in Cebú by my lola's friends.)

    Ever since then, as I have labored lovingly, reconstructing my Serrano-Laktaw, I have experienced the encounter with my 65-year-old memories, up to my 51-year-old memories (I was 19 when I left Filipinas in 1973).

    I've reencountered my past through the Serrano-Laktaw, which is in Spanish.  In 19th-century Spanish, with the words then used by Hispanic Filipinos.  For example, "terneza" instead of the modern "ternura".  But also, Spanish words that are used in Chile and recognized as not-quite-correct, because they are used by the common people, in common language, such as "malear" (turn something bad, as when a good person's character turns bad from being around gangsta types).

    Well, malear is in the Serrano-Laktaw, and actually it is also in the RAE.

    After living in Chile for 41 years though, there are definitely a lot of Spanish words in the Serrano-Laktaw that I am meeting for the very first time.  Even after having read quite a few materials in Spanish documentation on Filipinas from the 16th, 17th and 19th centuries.

    But to return to the Tagalog that I have now bonded with and that I am recovering and learning, thanks to don Pedro Serrano-Laktaw, I have these few realizations that I would like to share with you, my compatriotas:

• Tagalog and Espanyol share a lingüístic soul.  They are married.  To an extent that we Filipinos today are completely ignorant of.  
• The Tagalog taught in school is taught pragmatically and nationalistically, but it is not taught culturally, i.e., with emotional and psychological depth.
• The way to do this is through Spanish, not through English.
• It would be through courses based on the Serrano-Laktaw.

Why do I say the above?

Because quite frankly, the Serrano-Laktaw is MUCH, MUCH MORE than a mere dictionary.

It is a Cultural Artifact.  For us, it is a Sacred Book.

You cannot seriously study its contents without gaining some very basic realizations that are no longer being impressed on the minds of the post-war generations of Filipinos.

1.  The moral and ethical worldview of the Hispanic Filipino people, which was rooted in the pre-Hispanic, pre-colonial past.

There are a plethora of terms in the S-L that refer to the moral sense of Filipinos and the need to practice and protect purity, honor, respect, sincerity, honesty, the importance of training oneself in virtue from a young age.

2.  The Kasabihán are maxims, philosophical principles, popular wisdom, observations regarding profound human nature.  In them there is humor, wit, delicacy of feeling and understanding, irony, and Biblical amonestación - admonishment ( warning · reprimand · caution · admonishment · admonition · cautioning · rebuke · reproof ...).

3.  This is a Tagalog that is characterized by poetic expression, richness of synonyms, meanings, description, lingüístic transmutations (verbs to nouns, nouns to verbs, words like "kuán" which have so many different nuances that to me replicate the many meanings of the chilenismo "huevón / weón").

I am not a linguist or a philologist so I cannot be precise in describing what an amazingly chameleonic language Tagalog is, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

4.  Most of all, the Serrano-Laktaw contains the most profound and moving keys to our Filipino Self, our secret world of Being.

No wonder, my friends, my family, my brothers and sisters, that the Filipino began to have serious problems of identity beginning in the American regime.

I did have an experience with Tagalog-English in 2002, when I returned to California and studied court interpreting.

I had not used my Tagalog for 29 years (I left Filipinas in 1973).

Because I needed to work as an interpreter, and I couldn't get work in Spanish and English --- the native Spanish-speaking interpreters monopolized those jobs --- I had to learn the judicial semantic field in modern Tagalog.  

So I had to study, study very hard, and try and learn judicial terminology and the U.S. court procedures as quickly as I could.  I watched a lot of the news programs in Manila on cable TV

I worked as an interpreter for a domestic violence case, interpreting for the victim in court proceedings.  It impressed on me the fact that I had this language, Tagalog, and that it was a privilege, a gift, an honor to be able to render an important communicational service.

However, this did not touch me at a deep level.  It was an   exercise in professional survival, a utilitarian exercise.

When I returned to Chile in 2003, my most active period of research and documentation in 19th-century Spanish began, which was my preparation for writing essays on our history for publication in Revista Filipina.  My reencounter with Tagalog began when I read Reynaldo Ileto's Pasyon and Revolution (back in 1997 when I visited Manila looking for a publisher for Rizal According to Retana, and I acquired Pasyon), and it continued when I found the two volumes of Correspondencia rizalina in the bookstore annexed to Café Ilustrado in 2000 (don Guillermo Gómez Rivera took me there).

The period of writing academic articles in Spanish was long and extremely difficult.  It lasted from 1997 to 2020.  Of course, I also began writing fiction in English and Spanish, and poetry occasionally.  I had written poems for myself for many years, as a válvula de escape, and gradually it became a bilingual effort.

In the course of those years, I gradually realized that I had a pending problem to resolve:  I needed to learn to speak and write in Tagalog.  

The last time I was in the Manila Metropolitan Area was 2005, when my mother died and was interred in Manila Memorial Park.  I reunited with my brothers and sister, except for my youngest brother Enrico, who did not join us.  My sister Elvira's best friend Cynthia N. told me about a New Age seminar in Banahaw and I decided I wanted to go.  

It was thanks to all I had read in Reynaldo Ileto's book.

Mt. Banahaw is home to around 80 millennial Christian groups preparing for the Apocalypse and the Last Judgment.  

It was a Katipunan stronghold.

I escaped from the seminar (it went from Friday to Sunday, back to Manila Monday) at noon on Sunday.  I just couldn't bear to dance to Barbara Streisand while reconnecting to my inner child.  As it turned out, she wasn't in the encounter group, she was two blocks away.  (My inner child, not BS, valga la sigla).

I found a feria, a street lined with townsfolk selling all kinds of things, from vegetables to rocks to amulets, etc.  And this old man with long white hair began talking to me. He introduced himself as a healer, and as I listened to him I calculated that he was probably in his 80s.  Tata Soro.

He invited me to his home, I met his beautiful wife, his daughter (a teacher and Rizalista, she had an altar to Rizal in her modest bungalow), his granddaughters.  A neighbor lady came over, said her great-grandfather was a Spaniard who had "discovered" Mt. Banahaw.  Tata Soro's grandfather was from Catalunya.  I also met a mountain guide who was a disciple of Tata Soro's.

I realized that I could not speak Tagalog coherently, even before that conversation.  In the compound where we seminar attendees and our instructors were housed (a lovely place), I met our mountain guide, a young man, who had accompanied us on a trek down in the river with sweet healing waters.  I slipped and banged my left shin against the rocks.  He kindly offered to help with a traditional remedy, placing large leaves and rubbing a natural oil over my shin to alleviate the pain and swelling.  We had quite a lengthy conversation that evening, about the social and economic situation.  That was when I realized I was a lingüistic cripple in Tagalog.

Just the same, we were able to communicate, Jun and I.

Fast forward to Chile, years later.  Yes, I realized that one day I might find myself miraculously back in my lupang tinubuang minamahal, sa harap nang aking ginagalang na kababayan.

At some point as well, it came to me that what I was about, was not the promotion of Spanish, the return of Spanish to the educational canon, to the Constitution.

Actually, I was about the recovery of our lost culture, our lost identity, our lost memory. Our lost soul.

The best of ourselves that had been immolated in the chaos, perdition and wreckage of our world, and that merely began 124 years ago --- it was repeated in many stages of internal strife, world wars, diasporas, and the slow, inexorable stripping away of all our spiritual bonds, our invisible moorings ... leaving us as we are today:  a plastic simulation, a succedaneum, an ersatz, cobbled-together at-the-last-minute Frankenfilipino.   

A being that is quite curious, really, but I am not a good-enough writer to describe it in a fictional creation.

I suppose I tried, in the short story "The Time of No-Change".

I'll post it in my next blog entry for those who haven't seen it.

And maybe someone reading this will feel insulted by "Frankenfilipino", but I hasten to add that I include myself in the category, absolutely.

I was born into the same world as you, my contemporary.

However, in all sincerity, the Filipino landscape that is modern-day Philippines (what is it today?  Just Makati and the former Bonifacio Village turned into condominium palace paradise?), is, to me, an aberration.

"BCG", I think it's called.

Truly.  It's so FAKE, so PLASTIC, it's got nothing but $$$$$ plastered all over it.  

The Ugly American created the Ugly Filipino.  Or rather, the Ugly Pinoy.

And by some weird inner movement in my psyche, I don't remember what tripped the switch, I decided to buy the Diccionario Tagalog-Hispano Serrano Laktaw.

A reprint, leather-bound, single gigantic volume with over a thousand pages.  Considered by the cognoscenti a lexicographic jewel.

Naturally, invisible to the Frankenfilipino Nation.

Me included, until then.

It's a copy, i.e., reprint, the paper is gorgeous, thick, I forget the name... vellum. Parchment.  Maybe it's not made from calfskin, but it's that old printing paper, and the type is big.

But in many pages, the letters are faded or the reprint lost a lot of definition.

I immediately got to work restoring by completing the faded lines with fine-tipped marker pens.

In the course of which, I began to have my Proustian experience of The Past Regained.

I have discovered my true Mother Tongue, introduced to me by my Other, historical Mother Tongue, and it could not have been any other way.

Take my word for it.

I am learning to read Tagalog as it is meant to be taught.  It is an archaic Tagalog, hand-in-hand with archaic Spanish (but not really archaic, simply 120 years old, not medieval at all).

One day, I shall find myself back in my lupang hinirang, cuna nang magiting, and I will speak in my native tongue, which is a beautiful, captivating, irridescent, poetic language, taught to me by the magnum opus of don Pedro Serrano-Laktaw.

  

This image of don Pedro is from an iconic group photograph taken in Madrid but that I can't find at the moment.  He was sitting on a step at the bottom of the photo, while Rizal and several more stood at the top of the steps.  They seemed to be in a huge park, maybe El Retiro.

All the flowers have been thrown at Rizal, the Propagandists, Andrés Bonifacio, Antonio Luna, Emilio Aguinaldo, Macario Sakay, Mabini... well deserved, there will never be enough flowers for them.  Especially not for gat Macario and the last katipuneros.

But this unassuming, gentle, erudite, lover of our languages kept toiling away alone, watching the decades roll past, losing his sight, fading into abandonment... but he fought his fight without caring that the entire country was chasing after a false shiny new religion.  He kept on working away quietly to preserve our CULTURE,  keep the votive candles lit in homage to our SPIRIT.  Because he was powered by LOVE, and with love he left us this amazing heritage, this HEIRLOOM.

Time to lay wreaths at his grave, to declare his birthdate a national holiday, to train our teachers and historians in the bedrock of the treasures of our real past.

No more ---please, God, Jesus and the Virgin!--- the fancy fake golden embellishments that have borne the imprimatur of and received innumerable rounds of deafening applause in tribute ----TRIBUTE!!!-- for the American era, a FAIRY TALE turned burden, a dead weight, a rotting corpse we are still carrying on our backs, an impoverishment, a LIE that has been perpetuated for far too long.

Enough.  126 years is enough sliding into decadence.

 

Dig them up now.  The real gold, the real diamonds.  Bring them down from Heaven.

We have so much wonderful work to do!