WHO IS FILIPINO? (III)
THE OLD PAIRAN AS ANOTHER FACTOR OF THE FILIPINO IDENTITY (3)
14. EL PARIAN; “SECTOR DE MESTIZOS” AS THE CRADDLE OF FILIPINOS
But then there are also the “criollos chinos” who upon hispanization, due to the two-century old galleon trade, settled in the Philippines and embraced Spanish as their language in their own process of filipinization.
A Vigan mestizo or half-breed, for instance, is not a mixture from a Spaniard and a native. Usually, he is a mixture from a Chinese Christian father and an India-Ilocana Christian Catholic mother. Many of these Chinese-indio-Ilocana mestizos, also married pure blooded Spaniards and their offsprings would really be what is called un mestizo terciado or una mestiza terciada, meaning, a Spanish-native-Chinese mestiza. A mix of three stocks.
With a more active and thickly populated Sector de Mestizos or Parián in Manila, this type of miscegenation between Spanish subjects, indio Catholic natives, and Catholic Chinese settlers (sangleyes), was not infrequent. It was common. It was a truly common occurrence in all the local and major Spanish settlements that had a nearby corresponding Chinese Parián as in the cases of Cebu, Iloilo, Silay, Zamboanga, etc...
For instance, in Cebú, the Chinese Parián was situated right next to the Spanish settlement called the “Ciudad”. It is only divided by an estero or creek. In Iloílo, there used to be a Pariancillo de Molo which later became Parian de Molo. Aside from Molo, Iloilo had Jaro as its other Parian. . In Vigan, it was the sector de mestizos, a separate community from the Sector de Naturales or the full blooded Ilocanos.. In Manila, inside Intramuros there was the oldest Parian, and, just outside the same walls of Intramuros, there was the biger Parián at Arroceros which later transferred to Binondo and Baybay de San Nicolas to eventually become El gran Parián de Manila.
Because of the Parian, or Sector de Mestizos phenomenon, the Chinese Christian, involved in the Galleon Trade one way or the other, also became a Spanish criollo upon hispanization. The chino cristiano, as a matter of fact, was also a Spanish citizen or subject. This is best exemplified by Suntuaco or Don Antonio Maria Tuáson, the organizer of the Regiment for Spain against the invading British of 1764. That regiment or battalion was called Regimiento del Real Principe composed of no less than one thousand five hundred (1,500) chinos cristianos who populated the Manila, Cebu, Iloilo, Zamboanga and even the Malolos and Vigan Parianes.
With the advent of popular education in the Philippines and the spread of Castillian (Spanish) as the common language of business and the social graces, the racial factor as a difference among the various peoples, (Spanish, Chinese, native Indio), who lived serenely side by side in the Philippines gradually began to disappear and became one people. Everybody eventually became a Filipino regardless of ethnic background so long as Spanish was his/her language.
Due to this development, to speak in any native language or dialect was to court the label of being from only the Tagalog provinces, the Bícol provinces, the Ilocos region, the Pampanga province, or the Visayas. The use of the native tongues meant division and separation vis-à-vis the Filipino national identity that marked the use of Spanish as a much desired symbol of a great national Filipino unity.
But, the intrusion of the US WASP colonization with its genocidal imposition of the English language as the only medium for education and official transactions, has destroyed this original Filipino identity that had the Parianes as a strong basis.
15. EVEN THE RIZAL NOVELS REFLECT THE REALITY OF THE 'PARIANES' AND THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH AS THE NATIONAL FILIPINO LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY.
Those who read Noli Me Tangere and El Filipbusterismo will see an already toned down racial factor, favoring the fact of having Spanish blood in one’s veins, as still an advantage even as it persisted up to the time of José Rizal (1861-1896).
This is why to explain the origin and identity of Rizal’s fictional principal characters, Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin and María Clara de los Santos, the translator into English of Rizal’s El Filibusterismo, Mr. Charles Derbyshire, defined the Filipinos as “children of Spaniards born in the Philippine Islands.” The definition had to be given in order to distinguish the Filipinos from the indios, who were still the natives in general but already on the way to becoming full fledged Filipinos upon their education in the Spanish language.
It is evident that Rizal, together with all his co-reformers at the turn of the last century, saw in the spread of Spanish (or Castillian) as the initial basis for the institution of social equality among all Filipinos, which already included him and the indios católicos.
The rural Indios, later the provincianos of early Tagalog movies, were the unschooled or illiterate masses who continued talking in their native languages and dialects, like Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano, vis-à-vis an already existing middle and upper class who like Rizal –who was brought up in Spanish by his own mother, a mestiza terciada herself– believed that the Indios had to be further Hispanized through their adoption of Spanish as their language in order to achieve the national Filipino identity along with the social, cultural, economic, and political upliftment of their ownselves and country vis-à-vis the Spanish government personnel and the already existing Ilustrados (the “enlightened” class that were the land owners) who could even afford to travel to Spain to get a higher education. .
16. THE ‘PINÓY’ IS THE ENGLISH-MIS-EDUCATED AND DEBASED AND DENATIONALIZED OR DENATURALIZED FILIPINO VIS-À-VIS THE ORIGINAL SPANISH SPEAKING FILIPINO AS EXEMPLIFIED BY RIZAL
AND RECTO
Most of our English-mis-educated “Pinoy” of today, seem not to understand that the Ilustrados could afford higher education and had Spanish for their daily language at home as well as in school and in their business transactions, because, among other economic advantages, they cultivated the land and harvested sugar cane, tobacco, rice, maize, chocolate, café for export and domestic consumption. This is a reality that gave the original Spanish speaking Filipinos world outlook with their use of their Spanish language.
The attitude toward the learning of Spanish from many contemporary ‘Pinóys’ also deserve the following rebuke from one of our national heroes and the so-called father of our “Filipino Masonry”.
We naturally mean el gran bulaqueño Don Marcelo Hilario del Pilar, a lawyer-journalist from the Malolos Sector de Mestizos or Parian, wrote about the necessary acquisition of the Spanish language, on the part of the Filipino masses, as the solution to their “lack of freedom.” While Rizal harped on education in Spanish, del Pilar wrote:
"The study of Spanish is not a duty in order to excuse the poor and the married women. It is not a useless thing so that the thought can be sacrificed for a joke, or for one of those gracious occurrences very peculiar and frequent in the lips of the Bulacán people. All the days you see are days of difficulties encountered in this country by whosoever ignores Spanish."
And, setting aside other prolix considerations, let us ask many of our old people there who are very worthy and very respectable but who don’t know Spanish. Let us ask them how many tears, how many sighs of despair, have been wrested from them by their ignorance of the Spanish language, and I am sure that they were not able to learn such a very precious tongue."
"Well then, I tell you now that if they had a mother who had it taught to them, the poor ones would not have any reason at all to curse her memory."
(We of course know that today, most of our so-called new-milenials, would not even understand what Del Pilar is talking about since Spanish, due to vile US WASP colonial education in only English, has left no room for any notion of the Spanish language. But then, if only Government will listen, by using the Spanish alphabet in the syllabication and spelling of Tagalog words, or Cebuano, Ilocano, Chabacano words, notions of the Spanish language can be restored painlessly for the better education of the future generations of Filipinos. But the tragedy is that even in the teaching of the so-called Filipino alphabet, its letters are read in anti-phonetic or inconsistent English that defies the “kung anó ang bigkas siyá ang sulat” rule, instead of Spanish with the Batangueño “E”.)
In the matter of the Ilustrado defense of the Spanish language in this country, we can say that the style of del Pilar is direct while the style of José Rizal is allegorical or metaphoric. But both men, representatives that they were of Philippine thought, saw in the Spanish language as the best instrument for the unification of the Filipino as a nation and the advance of the Filipino national culture as the answer to many socio-economic problems facing the Philippines of today and tomorrow.
They embraced Spanish Masonry as an instrument of nationalism because they obviously considered the Spanish religious orders, entrenched in the country, as “rather slow” in the task of propagating Spanish, although such religious orders, through their respective schools, did a pretty good job in teaching Spanish to the Filipino masses.
The ptoblem is that aside from their love of country, many of these propagandists were influenced by the Masonic lodges, and in violation of the basic principle of “UNION of church and state" of the Spanish government, they enrolled in Freemasonry, the world’s oldest –not to mention the world’s most mysterious– “brotherhood of men,” that is widely known to be anti-Catholic. But that is another story.
And so, as the Filipino ilustrados became the more aware of their national consciousness and their basic rights, they were in fact confronted by the Indio problem of not having been fully assimilated as Filipinos due to their lack of Spanish. Rizal immediately saw in education in Spanish, (and not in English as the colonial imposition is now being implemented) as the salvation for the Indios, “in order to des-indianize them and uplift them through Hispanization,” as the only feasible way of fulfilling the true and authentic Filipino ideal – which is the ideal of all the good elements of his class.
But, again, with the systematic abolition of Spanish from the primary grades and phase of the Filipino child’s education, the Filipino people of today are doomed, says the 1840 prophesy of a little known Carmelite nun, ----unless the Philippines is taken in by the USA as an “associate state”, like Puerto Rico, since the signs of a Chinese political and economic hegemony is becoming plain to see with every passing day.
¿Entendido?
(Nest: Who is Indio?)
THE OLD PAIRAN AS ANOTHER FACTOR OF THE FILIPINO IDENTITY (3)
14. EL PARIAN; “SECTOR DE MESTIZOS” AS THE CRADDLE OF FILIPINOS
But then there are also the “criollos chinos” who upon hispanization, due to the two-century old galleon trade, settled in the Philippines and embraced Spanish as their language in their own process of filipinization.
A Vigan mestizo or half-breed, for instance, is not a mixture from a Spaniard and a native. Usually, he is a mixture from a Chinese Christian father and an India-Ilocana Christian Catholic mother. Many of these Chinese-indio-Ilocana mestizos, also married pure blooded Spaniards and their offsprings would really be what is called un mestizo terciado or una mestiza terciada, meaning, a Spanish-native-Chinese mestiza. A mix of three stocks.
With a more active and thickly populated Sector de Mestizos or Parián in Manila, this type of miscegenation between Spanish subjects, indio Catholic natives, and Catholic Chinese settlers (sangleyes), was not infrequent. It was common. It was a truly common occurrence in all the local and major Spanish settlements that had a nearby corresponding Chinese Parián as in the cases of Cebu, Iloilo, Silay, Zamboanga, etc...
For instance, in Cebú, the Chinese Parián was situated right next to the Spanish settlement called the “Ciudad”. It is only divided by an estero or creek. In Iloílo, there used to be a Pariancillo de Molo which later became Parian de Molo. Aside from Molo, Iloilo had Jaro as its other Parian. . In Vigan, it was the sector de mestizos, a separate community from the Sector de Naturales or the full blooded Ilocanos.. In Manila, inside Intramuros there was the oldest Parian, and, just outside the same walls of Intramuros, there was the biger Parián at Arroceros which later transferred to Binondo and Baybay de San Nicolas to eventually become El gran Parián de Manila.
Because of the Parian, or Sector de Mestizos phenomenon, the Chinese Christian, involved in the Galleon Trade one way or the other, also became a Spanish criollo upon hispanization. The chino cristiano, as a matter of fact, was also a Spanish citizen or subject. This is best exemplified by Suntuaco or Don Antonio Maria Tuáson, the organizer of the Regiment for Spain against the invading British of 1764. That regiment or battalion was called Regimiento del Real Principe composed of no less than one thousand five hundred (1,500) chinos cristianos who populated the Manila, Cebu, Iloilo, Zamboanga and even the Malolos and Vigan Parianes.
With the advent of popular education in the Philippines and the spread of Castillian (Spanish) as the common language of business and the social graces, the racial factor as a difference among the various peoples, (Spanish, Chinese, native Indio), who lived serenely side by side in the Philippines gradually began to disappear and became one people. Everybody eventually became a Filipino regardless of ethnic background so long as Spanish was his/her language.
Due to this development, to speak in any native language or dialect was to court the label of being from only the Tagalog provinces, the Bícol provinces, the Ilocos region, the Pampanga province, or the Visayas. The use of the native tongues meant division and separation vis-à-vis the Filipino national identity that marked the use of Spanish as a much desired symbol of a great national Filipino unity.
But, the intrusion of the US WASP colonization with its genocidal imposition of the English language as the only medium for education and official transactions, has destroyed this original Filipino identity that had the Parianes as a strong basis.
15. EVEN THE RIZAL NOVELS REFLECT THE REALITY OF THE 'PARIANES' AND THE IMPORTANCE OF SPANISH AS THE NATIONAL FILIPINO LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY.
Those who read Noli Me Tangere and El Filipbusterismo will see an already toned down racial factor, favoring the fact of having Spanish blood in one’s veins, as still an advantage even as it persisted up to the time of José Rizal (1861-1896).
This is why to explain the origin and identity of Rizal’s fictional principal characters, Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin and María Clara de los Santos, the translator into English of Rizal’s El Filibusterismo, Mr. Charles Derbyshire, defined the Filipinos as “children of Spaniards born in the Philippine Islands.” The definition had to be given in order to distinguish the Filipinos from the indios, who were still the natives in general but already on the way to becoming full fledged Filipinos upon their education in the Spanish language.
It is evident that Rizal, together with all his co-reformers at the turn of the last century, saw in the spread of Spanish (or Castillian) as the initial basis for the institution of social equality among all Filipinos, which already included him and the indios católicos.
The rural Indios, later the provincianos of early Tagalog movies, were the unschooled or illiterate masses who continued talking in their native languages and dialects, like Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano, vis-à-vis an already existing middle and upper class who like Rizal –who was brought up in Spanish by his own mother, a mestiza terciada herself– believed that the Indios had to be further Hispanized through their adoption of Spanish as their language in order to achieve the national Filipino identity along with the social, cultural, economic, and political upliftment of their ownselves and country vis-à-vis the Spanish government personnel and the already existing Ilustrados (the “enlightened” class that were the land owners) who could even afford to travel to Spain to get a higher education. .
16. THE ‘PINÓY’ IS THE ENGLISH-MIS-EDUCATED AND DEBASED AND DENATIONALIZED OR DENATURALIZED FILIPINO VIS-À-VIS THE ORIGINAL SPANISH SPEAKING FILIPINO AS EXEMPLIFIED BY RIZAL
AND RECTO
Most of our English-mis-educated “Pinoy” of today, seem not to understand that the Ilustrados could afford higher education and had Spanish for their daily language at home as well as in school and in their business transactions, because, among other economic advantages, they cultivated the land and harvested sugar cane, tobacco, rice, maize, chocolate, café for export and domestic consumption. This is a reality that gave the original Spanish speaking Filipinos world outlook with their use of their Spanish language.
The attitude toward the learning of Spanish from many contemporary ‘Pinóys’ also deserve the following rebuke from one of our national heroes and the so-called father of our “Filipino Masonry”.
We naturally mean el gran bulaqueño Don Marcelo Hilario del Pilar, a lawyer-journalist from the Malolos Sector de Mestizos or Parian, wrote about the necessary acquisition of the Spanish language, on the part of the Filipino masses, as the solution to their “lack of freedom.” While Rizal harped on education in Spanish, del Pilar wrote:
"The study of Spanish is not a duty in order to excuse the poor and the married women. It is not a useless thing so that the thought can be sacrificed for a joke, or for one of those gracious occurrences very peculiar and frequent in the lips of the Bulacán people. All the days you see are days of difficulties encountered in this country by whosoever ignores Spanish."
And, setting aside other prolix considerations, let us ask many of our old people there who are very worthy and very respectable but who don’t know Spanish. Let us ask them how many tears, how many sighs of despair, have been wrested from them by their ignorance of the Spanish language, and I am sure that they were not able to learn such a very precious tongue."
"Well then, I tell you now that if they had a mother who had it taught to them, the poor ones would not have any reason at all to curse her memory."
(We of course know that today, most of our so-called new-milenials, would not even understand what Del Pilar is talking about since Spanish, due to vile US WASP colonial education in only English, has left no room for any notion of the Spanish language. But then, if only Government will listen, by using the Spanish alphabet in the syllabication and spelling of Tagalog words, or Cebuano, Ilocano, Chabacano words, notions of the Spanish language can be restored painlessly for the better education of the future generations of Filipinos. But the tragedy is that even in the teaching of the so-called Filipino alphabet, its letters are read in anti-phonetic or inconsistent English that defies the “kung anó ang bigkas siyá ang sulat” rule, instead of Spanish with the Batangueño “E”.)
In the matter of the Ilustrado defense of the Spanish language in this country, we can say that the style of del Pilar is direct while the style of José Rizal is allegorical or metaphoric. But both men, representatives that they were of Philippine thought, saw in the Spanish language as the best instrument for the unification of the Filipino as a nation and the advance of the Filipino national culture as the answer to many socio-economic problems facing the Philippines of today and tomorrow.
They embraced Spanish Masonry as an instrument of nationalism because they obviously considered the Spanish religious orders, entrenched in the country, as “rather slow” in the task of propagating Spanish, although such religious orders, through their respective schools, did a pretty good job in teaching Spanish to the Filipino masses.
The ptoblem is that aside from their love of country, many of these propagandists were influenced by the Masonic lodges, and in violation of the basic principle of “UNION of church and state" of the Spanish government, they enrolled in Freemasonry, the world’s oldest –not to mention the world’s most mysterious– “brotherhood of men,” that is widely known to be anti-Catholic. But that is another story.
And so, as the Filipino ilustrados became the more aware of their national consciousness and their basic rights, they were in fact confronted by the Indio problem of not having been fully assimilated as Filipinos due to their lack of Spanish. Rizal immediately saw in education in Spanish, (and not in English as the colonial imposition is now being implemented) as the salvation for the Indios, “in order to des-indianize them and uplift them through Hispanization,” as the only feasible way of fulfilling the true and authentic Filipino ideal – which is the ideal of all the good elements of his class.
But, again, with the systematic abolition of Spanish from the primary grades and phase of the Filipino child’s education, the Filipino people of today are doomed, says the 1840 prophesy of a little known Carmelite nun, ----unless the Philippines is taken in by the USA as an “associate state”, like Puerto Rico, since the signs of a Chinese political and economic hegemony is becoming plain to see with every passing day.
¿Entendido?
(Nest: Who is Indio?)
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