115
CHAPTER FIVE
THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE TAGALOG CHALLENGE TO ENGLISH

One of the most inspiring stories in Philippine history is the story of the “seditious plays”
of the first decade of the 20
th
century. Following in the heels of the American military occupation
was the imposition of a strictly enforced censorship against any utterance against the American
government and any expression of independence. As the press was rigidly monitored, brave
Tagalog writers who wanted to express their desire for independence turned to the theater.
Using the Tagalog zarzuela form, a drama that included singing, the playwrights wrote
allegorical stories, intentionally made with a thin plot so as to pass the American censors and so
as to encourage adlibbing. Vibrant sets, music, clandestine attempts to show the Philippine
flag
315
, thinly-veiled characters meant to represent the Filipino motherland or the oppressive
American government, adlibbed, emotional speeches about the oppression by America of the
Filipino, emotionally involved audiences: all these make the rise of “seditious plays” one of the
most colorful moments in Philippine history. Add to this the way in which riots broke out in
many of the performances or the sensational way in which playwrights, actors, stage hands,
theater managers and sometimes even the members of the audience would be hauled off to jail in
the middle of the performance and you have an example of when the production of the drama
becomes even more dramatic than the drama itself.
Hindi Aco Patay (I Am Not Dead) by Juan Matapang Cruz caused a riot during its
performance of May 8, 1903 because American soldiers attempted to stop the performance after
the flag of the Katipunan was raised. Ten actors and the playwright were arrested later.
316
Also

315
Though the Flag Law became an official law only in 1907, the display of the Philippine flag
was considered an act of disloyalty to the United States. The studies of the seditious plays recount how the
display of a flag during a performance would spark either an arrest or a riot. In one of her lectures during
my university days, theater scholar Doreen Fernandez talked about how the performers would come up with
inventive ways to display but the also quickly dismantle the flag. It would be used as a woman’s kerchief
which could easily be flashed and then withdrawn throughout the performance or it could be “assembled”
by two women standing side by side with the designs of their long skirts containing the two halves of the
flag.
316
Tomas Capatan Hernandez, The Emergence of Modern Drama in the Philippines (1898-1912),
Philippine Studies Working Paper, (Honolulu: Asian Studies Program, University of Hawaii, 1976), 113.

116
in 1903, Juan Abad, author of Tanikalang Guinto (Golden Chain), was arrested during the
performance of the play.
317
The most famous of the seditious plays is Kahapon, Ngayon at
Bukas, (Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow) which caused a riot during its initial performance on
May 14, 1903 and caused its author (who also acted in the play), Aurelio Tolentino, to be
sentenced to life in prison. The description of the reaction of the audience of Kahapon, Ngayon
at Bukas points to the deeply felt sentiments Filipinos had against the Americans and for
independence:
The audience on the night of May 14 was receptive and responsive. They
cheered the enumeration of revolutionary martyrs’ names (not in the script, but they could
have easily been inserted during one of the many eulogies delivered in the play). They
applauded whenever Tolentino and ‘the woman accompanying him’ spoke, and they kept
silent or hissed every time the actors playing America and the American government
delivered their pieces. In the course of the performance, they frequently called for
Tolentino, who stepped out of character to take a bow of acknowledgement. ‘The

audience displayed its greatest pleasure during that part of the play which showed the
Filipino people up in arms against the Government.’
318


These three plays and many others like it have achieved an iconic status and are very well-
documented in Philippine history
319
, Philippine literary history
320
, and even Philippine novels
321
.
The plays themselves continue to be produced by many of the major Philippine theater
companies.
322

Along with the long-haired revolutionary leader, Macario Sakay, these seditious plays
have become the great symbols of Filipino tenacity, courage and creativity during the first ten
years of the oppressive American occupation.
This is a recent phenomenon, however, brought about by efforts of recent “nationalist”
historians to shed light on the resistance to America. Reynaldo Ileto, in discussing history up until
the time he wrote Pasyon and Revolution says: “Even today, the period from 1902 to 1910 is very

317
Ibid, 117.
318
Ibid, 131. Hernandez recounts the riot based on newspaper articles of the time.
319
See Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Milagros C. Guerrero, History of the Filipino People, 290-291.

320
See, for example Bienvenido Lumbera, Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema
and Popular Culture, (n.p.: Index Press, 1984), 36-43; 125-126.
321
One such seditious play is the setting in which the main character of Nick Joaquin’s novel, The
Woman Who Had Two Navels, meets her first husband.
322
Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas was produced by Tanghalang Ateneo in 1999 and Tanikalang
Guinto was produced by Dulaang UP in 2002.

117
little understood and, in some respects, clouded in secrecy.”
323
The historical figure of Macario
Sakay, in particular, has recently enjoyed not just a renaissance but a popularity even to the point
of commodification. His image is reproduced on t-shirts and the posed photo of Sakay and his
generals taken shortly before their surrender has been spoofed on posters.
Without a doubt, the “nationalist” historians have done much to highlight Filipino
resistance to American occupation. In the 1960s and 1970s and in reaction to decades of
American-sanctioned knowledge production, the humanties and the social sciences focused their
attention on recovering knowledge from the margins. Historians were now investigating figues
like Sakay who had been part of a comprehensive movement of resistance against the Americans
and who had been previously demonized. Scholars and critics produced new knowledge that
reinvested local literature and culture, that had been previously branded as inferior, with a new
respect and inderstanding.
And yet many, many events of the early years of American occupation are still not known
and not easily comprehended. One such neglected topic of this period is the topic of this chapter.
The Tagalog essays on the Tagalog language published in the daily Muling Pagsilang from 1903-
1908 were the first printed articulations of opposition to the English language policy. Yet, these
essays are hardly mentioned even in historical accounts of language.


The First Articulations Against the English Policy
It is a bit of a mystery how Lope K. Santos, known as the Ama ng Balarila (Father of
Philippine Grammar) does not mention in his autobiography the work he did for the Kapulungan
ng Wikang Tagalog (Convocation of the Tagalog Language), of which he was clearly the moving
sprit. Neither are the Kapulungan’s early (1903 and 1904) essays on Tagalog published in Muling
Pagsilang mentioned. The reasons for this are varied. One possible reason is that the Samahan
ng mga Mananagalog (Organization of Tagalog users), which evolved from the Kapulungan after
1904, was a bigger and more active and thus more easily remembered. Also, much of Santos’s

323
Reynaldo Clemeña Ileto, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-
1910. (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1979). 172.

118
later work on Filipino, the national language (such as the first official grammar book to be used in
all schools) were institutionalized on a national level and thus entered the realm of the material
that historians are compelled to include in their national histories. The writer of the
autobiography might, understandably, focus on this official nationalism of which his is a very
distinguished part. Finally, Santos himself was a bit of a renaissance man who was a journalist,
linguist, novelist and poet, labor leader and politician (he was a senator from 1910-1913 and
Governor of Nueva Ecija from 11918-1920). The diversity and intensity of his life, a testimony
to how, during his time, language and culture issues were indistinguishable from material and
political issues, was probably itself the reason why the story of these essays written over just a
few months gets left out.
Santos does recount his days as Muling Pagsilang editor. The focus of his narrative,
however, is, again understandably, on the reputation of the Muling Pagsilang and its Spanish
counterpart, El Renacimiento, as great anti-American newspapers and on the very famous libel
case that eventually brought about the papers’ demise. The case, described by writer Loreto
Paras-Sulit as “one of the most fiercely contested libel suits of the age,”

324
caused an upheaval
and polarized nationalists and supporters of America.
325
Commissioner Dean Worcester brought
the charges (Santos was initially included in the charge) as he (Worcester) felt an editorial piece,
which appeared in El Renacimiento, “Aves de Rapina”
326
(Birds of Prey), alluded to him and was
an insult to his honor and dignity. Both the criminal and the civil cases were lost by El
Renacimiento/Muling Pagsilang and the newspapers were forced to close down and were sold at
public auction in January of 1910. The libel suit, a symbol of America’s severe oppression and
disregard for human rights, is an incident that is now studied by all students of Philippine history
and “Aves de Rapina,” made their required reading.

324
Loreto Paras-Sulit, “Birds of Prey: A Document of Human Rights,” in The El Renacimiento
Libel Suit, ed. Teodoro M. Kalaw (Manila: n.p., 1950), 39.
325
Pura Villanueva Kalaw, wife of Teodoro M. Kalaw, editor of El Renacimiento at the time and
one of two who were eventually tried and found guilty (the other being martin Ocampo, the periodicals
founder and owner) described the event as having a “passion reminiscent of the political trial of Dreyfus,
during which the French nation demonstrated the capacity for hate and generosity in its great heart” and
through which “the Filipino nation suffered.” Quoted in Teodoro M. Kalaw’s autobiography Aide-de-Camp
to Freedom (translated from the Spanish by Maria Kalaw Katigbak), page 79.
326
published in El Renacimiento in 1908.

119
Though the libel incident overshadows much other knowledge about El

Renacimento/Muling Pagsilang, it does serve as a good introduction to understanding the
suppression placed by the Americans on the expression of national sentiment during the first
decade of the twentieth century. In the early days of occupation, when there was as yet no
organized nationalist party, El Renacimiento/Muling Pagsilang and the Cebu-based El Nuevo Dia
“acted as vehicles of nationalist views, tempered . . . by the circumstances of the time, the
Sedition Law and the censorship of the press.”
327
The founders, editors and writers of both El
Renacimiento/Muling Pagsilang and El Nuevo Dia were active during the revolution of just a few
years before. It is therefore not surprising that these newspapers “’embodied the ideals of the
Revolution in all their purity.’”
328
The authors of these papers were therefore fearless in their
attack and criticism of American policy. However, maybe as a concession to the censorship laws,
the authors sometimes tempered their discussion of issues.
In its engaement of the language issue, Muling Pagsilang was both bold and moderate,
almost always, however, pro-Tagalog. The essays in Muling Pagsilang about language were of
two kinds. The first were the published output written by the members of the Kapulungan ng
Wikang Tagalog (Convocation of the Tagalog Language) which was convened in June of 1903
and the second were a good number of opinion pieces, many of which were writen under
pseudonyms. The essays published under the Kapulungan were lengthy pieces that were
serialized, the pages of which were not published in proper sequence because they were meant for
cutting out and folding into little pamphlets. The essays of the Kapulungan present a range of
opinions and expertise; some express a keener interest in the relation of language to society while
others are concerned with the technicalities of linguistics (creation of an alphabet, spelling, etc.).
The opinion articles are shorter, less linguistically technical, and express stronger political
opinions. The signed pieces are written by relatively well-known Tagalog writers. They include:
Santos himself, playwrights Patricio Mariano and Severino Reyes, grammarians Sefronio G.
Calderon and Eusebio Daluz, and novelists Faustino Aguilar and Valeriano Hernandez Peña (who


327
Maximo M. Kalaw, The Development of Philippine Politics, 1872-1920, (Manila: Oriental
Commercial Co, Inc., 1926), 284.
328
Ibid, 283, (quoting Jaime de Veyra).

120
wrote the first Tagalog novel, Nena at Neneng). The unsigned pieces were probably written by
Lope K. Santos, Faustino Aguilar, Valeriano Hernandez Peña, and Patricio Mariano, members of
the Kapulungan who were also part of the editorial staff of Muling Pagsilang.
Given that these essays were written by well-known literary figures, that they were
published in a relatively accessible forum
329
, and that they were the first articulations against the
English policy, and therefore of great historical importance, it is a mystery that they have figured
little in the our linguistic histories. There are several possible causes for this grave oversight.
However, the most obvious one is the general attitude of disregard for articulations made in local
languages, especially if the study is done in English. This attitude is evident for example even in
the assessment sometimes made of Muling Pagsilang. For example, in The History of Journalism
in the Philippine Islands, much is made of the historical importance of El Renacimiento but no
mention is made of Muling Pagsilang. This book has a short section that discusses “the
vernacular press” and describes it as “not usually reckoned with in questions of greatest national
magnitude” even while it acknowledges that “the circulation of most of them is greater than that
of newspapers in either English or Spanish.”
330
As this section on the vernacular press is part of a
description of the newspapers that were current during the time the study was made, Muling
Pagsilang (which had closed down with El Renacimiento more than twenty-five years after this
study was published) is never once mentioned.
Though this particular study of Philippine journalism was done in 1933, it carries with it

an attitude about writing in local languages that persists to today. This same kind of linguistic
discrimination—where articulations in English are given more importance than those in the
vernacular—exists in literature as well. Philippine literature in English stands high above

329
The newspaper in which these essays were published, Muling Pagsilang, and its Spanish
counterpart, El Renacimiento, are widely acknowledged as the most vocal and most
consistent critic of the American colonial government. The two newspapers were twice involved in legal
sedition charges brought by the American government. The first one involved 1906 reports in Muling
Pagsilang about abusive practices of the constabulary in Batangas and Cavite. The second, more famous
case was brought by Dean Worcester against El Renacimiento for its “Aves de Rapina” (Birds of Prey)
editorial. El Renacimiento and Muling Pagsilang were forced to close down in 1912 because of the loss of
this case. The “Aves de Rapina” is like Emile Zola’s “J’accuse!” in that they are both journalistic opinion
pieces that played important roles in history. The text of “Aves de Rapina” is often reproduced in history
textbooks and essay anthologies.
330
Jesus Z. Valenzuela. History of Journalism in the Philippine Islands, (Manila: Jesus Z.
Valenzuela, 1933), 160-161.

121
literatures in the vernaculars in terms of the number of literary awards and in greater publication
venues as well as in its position in the educational system.
331
Thus, it is probably with some sort
of blinders that linguistic historians tend to construct their histories; focusing more on the
campaigns carried out in English.

Ommisions and Misnomers
The first important linguistic history of the Philippines, Ernest J. Frei’s The Historical
Development of the Philippine National Language takes the general view that the Filipinos

happily and widely accepted English. Frei’s discussion of the Filipino reaction to the language
policy focuses on the likes of Camilo Osias and Isidro Panlasigui who zealously defended
English. The interest in the vernacular languages are discussed from the perspective of American
linguists such as Frank Blake and David Doherty and thus Lope K. Santos and his “Academy of
Philippine Lingustics,”
332
of 1903 is mentioned only as a result of the discussion of Doherty’s
fusionist view of language.
This attitude is repeated in Andrew Gonzalez’s Language and Nationalism, which
devotes a mere paragraph to the subject of Santos and the Kapulungan. The full text of that
paragraph reads:
Doherty persuaded Lope K. Santos, already an established novelist, poet, and
journalist at the time, during this same year to call editors and writers to a
conference to make an attempt to ‘fuse these dialects into a uniform or common
one.’ Thus, in 1904, Santos founded the Kapulungan ng Wika (Conference on
Language), although, subsequently, Santos dropped the fusionist proposal in
favor of Tagalog and became president of the Samahan ng Mananagalog
(Association of Tagalog Users) in 1908 and in 1911 became the president of the
Academia de Tagalistas (Academy of Tagalog Scholars) and subsequently vice-
president of the Kapulungang Balagtas (Association of Balagtas Followers), a
decidedly pro-Tagalog association.
333


331
The CCP Encyclopedia of Art defines Philippine literature in English as constituting “in the
overall literary landscape, a larger stream than that written in Spanish, a much smaller stream than that
written in the vernacular languages like Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilongo, Ilocano, Waray, Pampango, Pangasinan,
Bicol, but certainly the most visible one because of its exposure in the educational system and its
accessibility through publications.”

332
The organization formed by Lope K. Santos in 1903 was the Kapulungan ng Wikang Tagalog,
which can be translated as the Convocation or Meeting for the Tagalog Language, since “pulong” from
“kapulungan” means meeting. Frei’s mistranslation that removes the word “Tagalog” from the name is
significant and will be discussed below.
333
Andrew B. Gonzalez, Language and Nationalism: The Philippine Experience Thus Far,
(Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1980), 36-37.

122

The name of the organization founded in 1903 (and not 1904 as Gonzalez claims) is not the
“Kapulungan ng Wika” but the “Kapulungan ng Wikang Tagalog.” This exclusion of the word
“Tagalog” makes a world of a difference when reconstructing the origin of linguistic nationalism.
Whereas the misnomer makes it appear that the organization was interested in languages in
general, its actual name shows it was committed to Tagalog at the very outset. In the context of
the colonial situation where the Americans instituted an overwhelming and unrelenting English
campaign and American colonial officials were predicting the disappearance of local languages,
the existence of such an organization in 1903, was vitally important as it points to an active stance
of upholding and promoting Tagalog. The misnomer also wrongly hints at the fusionist views of
Santos and of the Kapulungan.
Gonzales also gets the date for the establishment of the Samahan ng mga Mananagalog
wrong. Gonzales claims it was founded in 1908, however, Faustino Aguilar, in 1904, mentions
preparations for the establishment of the Samahan not in the context of abandoning fusionist
views but as a way of widening the scope of what the Kapulungan had accomplished. In 1906,
Muling Pagsilang published a list of active members of the Samahan. The list had fifty-three
names. All this is important because, as the suceeding chapter will argue, nationalist
articulations, linguistic or otherwise, made before 1907 (the establishment of the Philippine
Assembly; the lifting of the ban on political parties that call for independence) were disitict from
those made after when bans on expressions of nationalist sentiments and aspirations for

independence were lifted.
Gonzalez does not mention this body of essays (about thirty in all) published by Muling
Pagsilang. Their exclusion leads him to attribute the first proposal to make Tagalog the basis of
the national language to Eusebio Daluz in 1915.
334
The idea of Tagalog as the national language
was of course an idea that had much currency during the Philippine revolution. Even Gonzalez

334
Gonzalez, Language and Nationalism, 42. The attribution reads: “The proposal to make
Tagalog the basis of the national language dates back to as early as 1915 and is found in the literature, for
the first time, in Daluz’s Filipino-English Vocabulary.” The first openly signed (versus signed with a
pseudonym) document explicitly calling for a Pilipino language based on Tagalog that I found was P.L.
Stangl’s “Ang Wikang Pilipino, Isang Wikang Isasalig sa Tagalog,” Muling Pagsilang, April 3, 1907, 1.
The idea of a “Wikang Pilipino” is mentioned even earlier in pseudonymed essays.

123
notes this in his chapter on the Spanish period. The exclusion, however of the Muling Pagsilang
essays creates a gap of almost twenty years. It is a period that, as the subsequent section will
show, was actually rife with articulations about Tagalog and its central position in the Philippine
nation.

The Origins of the Idea of Tagalog as the National Language
The search for exactly who first proposed Tagalog as the basis of the national language
during the American period is actually a complex and knotty enterprise. In terms of the context
of their movement, if not in terms of the actual first identifiable statement to that effect, the honor
should rightfully go to the Kapulungan, if not to Lope K. Santos himself. While writing for the
Kapulungan, Santos was very careful never to suggest that Tagalog alone should be the basis of
the national language. When he did mention the idea of a national language, it was always in the
context language fusion. This is seen in the following quote which is one of the first, if not the

first proposal during the American period for a national language. It is taken from his 1903 essay
entitled “Isang Wikang Filipino” published in El Renacimiento (it was only in 1904 that the
Tagalog version of El Renacimiento was given its own name, Muling Pagsilang):
. . . sapagkat yayamang iisa na rin lamang ang tawag sa atin, FILIPINO; iisa ang
ating bayan, FILIPINAS, at malinaw na iisa rin ang pinakaina ng tanang wikang
iyan, ang MALAYO, ayon sa mga pantas na Manunri (?), ay dapat na ring maging
isa na lamang ang pairaling Wika, ang pinaglakpan baga ng lahat, WIKANG
FILIPINO. . . [Lopez’s capitalization]
335


…because we are given just one name FILIPINO; we have one nation FILIPINAS,
and it is clear that the origin of all our languages is one, MALAY, according to the
learned ones, there should just be one language that should be promoted, the
joining together of all, the FILIPINO LANGUAGE.

Santos’s call for language fusion should, however, be seen in the context of the whole project of
the Kapulungan, or, in this case, even within the context of his essay. Language fusion is not the
subject matter of this essay; it is the Tagalog language. Apart from two brief references to fusion
(this one quoted and one more at the close of the essay), the whole essay, all thirty pages of it, is
about Tagalog and the need to modernize it.

335
Lope K. Santos, “Isang Wikang Filipino,” El Renacimiento, (serialized) September 7-16, 1903.
This particular quote appeared in the September 7 issue.

124
Many of the subsequent essays published by the Kapulungan between 1903 and 1904
diplomatically avoid making definitive statements about the national language but certainly
suggest it by the very topics they took on. The essays clearly indicate the Kapulungan was

interested in strengthening Tagalog for its possible future role as national language. For example,
Francisco Makabulos’s essay for the Kapulungan was entitled, “Ang Wikang Tagalog sa mga
Lupang Kapampangan,”
336
(“The Tagalog Language in the Land of the Kapampangans.”) In this
essay, he reaffirms the objectives of the Kapulungan of purifying the Tagalog language in order to
meet the objective of the unity and strengthening of the mother nation. It also describes how
Tagalog is already accepted and widely used in the Kapampangan region as a medium of
communication with people from other regions. Eusebio Daluz’s essay is about the best way to
teach Tagalog to other Filipinos.
337
In this essay, Daluz recalls Jose Rizal and his call for us to
study the Tagalog language. This is important, Daluz tells us, because through the knowledge of
our own language, we will achieve knowledge, freedom, and unity.
If the authors who wrote under the Kapulungan were hesitant about suggesting that
Tagalog should be the basis of the national language, the authors who wrote for Muling Pagsilang
(but not under the name of the Kapulungan) were not. These authors, however, all wrote under
symbolic pseudonyms.
338
This suggests that, given the context of the time, the authors and maybe
the editors of Muling Pagsilang felt that merely writing about strengthening and modernizing
Tagalog was a relatively harmless activity but suggesting that it should be the basis of a national
language was not.
Among several of these essays, Tagalog, in no uncertain terms, is offered as the national
language. One essay calls for Filipinos to:

336
See for example Francisco Makabulos, “Ang Wikang Tagalog sa mga Lupang Kapampangan,”
El Renacimiento, December 17, 1903.
337

Eusebio Daluz, “Alin ang Lalong Magaling na Paraan sa Pagtuturo ng Wikang Tagalog, Upang
Matutuhang Madali at Pag-aralan di Lamang ng mga Tagalog Kundi ng mga Iba Pang Kapatid ng Lahi?,”
Muling Pagsilang, March 1 and 2, 1904.
338
The pseudonyms themselves are beautifully symbolic. Anak-Bayan means “child of the
nation,” Taga-Danaw means “observer,” Isang Guro means “a teacher.” Apo ni Kapampangan means
“grandchild of someone from the region of Pampanga” and indicates that even non-Tagalogs are open to
the idea of Tagalog as the national language. My favorite pseudonym, Mapaninta (from the root word sinta
which means “beloved”) suggests the author’s deep love and commitment to Tagalog.

125
[huwag limutan] ang ating tunay na casaysayan at alamat; siyasatin ang mga
diccionariong Filipino; pag-aralan ang Wikang Tagalog at iba pang mga wikang
catutubo; pag-isahin ang marami at linangin ang wicang magiging pangcalahatan,
na walang iba cundi ang Tagalog, lenguwaheng ina ng tanang mga diyalekto
natin.
339


[remember] our history and our legends, study the Filipino dictionaries, study the
Tagalog language and other local languages, unify the many, and cultivate the
language that will be for all, none other than Tagalog, the mother language of all
our dialects.

The author of another essay which discusses the logic of the American officials for using
throughout the Philippines, schoolbooks written in English. The author of the essay claims this
logic is rotten and poor because learning is best done through one’s own language and because
schoolbooks can be easily and quickly translated into Tagalog. The author claims that: “walang
karunungan at palatuntunang maayos na hindi maisasalin at maisusulat sa wika ni Balagtas, mula
sa a, b c, hangang sa mga malalim at sigasigalot na babasain ng Pilosopya.”

340
(there is no
knowledge and ideas of good principles that cannot be translated and written in the language of
Balagtas
341
, from the a, b, c’s, to the deep readings of Philosophy.) A few other essays discuss the
need to use the local language, and not a foreign language as the medium of instruction. Though
the authors do not make a single explicit statement that Tagalog should be the national language,
they suggest it when they explicitly identify Tagalog as the most prevalent of all local languages.
One argues, “sa maraming wika natin ay isa ang pinaka ina ng lahat, sanhi sa pagkamalaganap,
ito’y ang Tagalog, na sinasalita ng karamihang taga Luson at gayon din, ng puu-puu at daan-
daang mga bisaya at magindanaw.”
342
(Of many of our languages, one is the mother of all,
through its being wide-spread; this is Tagalog which is spoken by most from Luzon and by
thousands from the Visayas and Mindanao). Another describes Tagalog as “ang masanghayang
Wika ni Florante, na siyang pangulong wikang malaganap ng Kapilipinuhan.”
343
(the beautiful

339
Apo ni Kapampangan (pseudonym), “Ang Bayang Pilipino at ang Kanyang Sariling Wika,”
Muling Pagsilang, May 19, 1905, 1.
340
Mapaninta (pseudonyms), “Katutubong Wika.” Muling Pagsilang, May 29, 1906, 1.
341
Tagalog poet who wrote in the early 1800s.
342
Isang Guro (pseudonym), “Ang Pagtuturo sa Isang Bayan,” Muling Pagsilang, November 8,
1905, 1.

343
Taga Danaw, “Pagtuturo sa mga Anak II,” Muling Pagsilang, June 12, 1906.

126
language of Florante
344
which is the leading language, most wide-spread among the Filipino
people).
The vision of one author in particular for Tagalog as national language is a vision that
stems from its role in the past, particularly its role in the recent revolution. The author mentions
an ancient legend that designates Tagalog as the mother language of the Filipinos and that it was
and is currently being used as the common language when people from different regions meet.
Most importantly, the author identifies the recent revolution as one of the causes for Tagalog’s
current status as the language most widely used: “mula ng Paghihimagsic ng Kapilipinuhan
(1896) ay nagging pangcaraniwan na ang Wikang Tagalog, hindi sa paraang pagpilit, cundi sa
talagang pinagcacagawian ng marami.”
345
(from the time of the Philippine Revolution (1896), the
Tagalog language became commonplace, not through force, but through its use by many.) This
sentiment is reprised later in the essay when the author makes a definitive statement about the
eight million Filipinos belonging to different regions but belonging to one nation, a fact
established by a Tagalog legend and strengthened by the Katipunan of 1896 (“ayon sa alamat ng
Katagalugann na pinagtibay niyong di dapat limiting K.K.K. ng mga Bayaning Anak ng Bayan
(1896)”
346
). The essay calls for a national unity based on language unity:
…pagcacaisang lalong matibay cung natatalian ng isang wicang tunay na ating
sarili, na walang iba, cundi ang pinag-isang “Wikang” binubuo ng tanang mga
Wikang Pilipino
347

, o cung hindi mangyari ito ay payabuangin(?) at ilaganap ang
Wikang Tagalog na siyang ipinangungusap ng marami at halos malaganap na
naman.
348


…a unity made stronger if bound by one language which is truly ours and which
is none other than the unified “Language,” made up of all Filipino languages, or,
if this does not happen, then spread the Tagalog language, which is spoken by
many and which is anyway already widespread.


344
Florante is Balagtas’ pseudonym.
345
Apo ni Kapampangan (pseudonym), “Ang Bayang Pilipino at ang Kaniyang Sariling Wika,”
Muling Pagsilang, April 18, 1905, 1. The essay cited in footnote 19 has the same author and the same title
as this one. The essay itself and the publication dates are different.
346
Ibid.
347
Here again is a kind of cursory mention of the option of language fusion. In the context of this
essay, with its numerous referrals to the historical and current status of Tagalog as the mother language and
lingua franca, it is quite obvious that the fusionist option is pro forma. I think this is a good way to read the
Kapulungan essays as well. They are undoubtedly concerned about Tagalog not just for the Tagalog region
but for the whole Philippines but will perfunctorily mention the fusionist option.
348
Ibid.

127

The acknowledgement of the role of the revolution in establishing the idea of a single nation and
the idea of Tagalog as the language that binds the nation is important (the reasons of which are
listed in the succeeding paragraphs). It signifies a continuity between the goals and aspirations of
the revolution and the objectives of the Muling Pagsilang authors. This connection points to
another connection between these early struggles for linguistic-self determination and the
eventual “triumph,” altered and adulterated as it may have been, of the establishment of a national
language. It also establishes the strong awareness of those who would agitate against colonialism
of the importance of agitating against cultural and linguistic imposition and the importance of the
defense and protection of one’s own language and culture.

The Erasure of the Tagalog Campaign
Andrew Gonzales’s misassignment of the first proposal to make Tagalog the basis of the
national language to a later date has serious implications on how we understand the anti-colonial
struggle. Though, at first blush, it seems a harmless mistake to suggest the proposal was made ten
or twelve years later than it actually was, it is in fact serious. By 1915, the strong, anti-American
resistance and the popularly supported guerilla movement of twelve years before had almost
completely dissipated. The ban on political parties advocating independence had long been lifted
and in fact the Nationalistas (who openly campaigned for independence) had won an astounding
victory over the Federalistas (who called for statehood) five years before. This was just a year
before the passing of the Jones law, which guaranteed independence. Expressing nationalist
fervor was no longer dangerous, in fact it was, by this time, quite banal.
What this twelve year misassigned lag accomplishes to do (apart from the obvious
erasures) is to cut out from history a bold and almost prophetic vision that is strongly connected
to the past when Tagalog was the unquestionable language of the revolution and of the imminent
nation.
349
Though the essays in Muling Pagsilang hardly reference the revolution (as censorship

349
The only official statement of explicitly assigning Tagalog as the national language was made

in the Biac-na-Bato constitution, a constitution drawn up in 1897. Article VII reads: “Tagalog shall be the
official language of the Republic.” The full transcript of the constitution is found in Maximo M. Kalaw,
The Development of Philippine Politics, 1872-1920, (Manila: Oriental Commercial Co., 1926), 418-422.

128
at the time was stringent), these essays, when taken in the context of the authors’ participation in
the revolution and in the context of their other anti-colonial agitations at the time, are the
irrefutable evidence of the longevity and continuity of the cultural and linguistic ideals of the
revolution. This exclusion dilutes knowledge about the extent and variety of campaigns of the
early anti-American struggle. It reaffirms the picture of the struggle being mostly an armed,
mass-based, peasant, superstitious, untutored, and hinterland struggle. Finally, it deliquesces the
very strong and steadfast centrality of the Tagalog language to the Tagalog people. What did
language mean for the Tagalogs? The period between 1903 and 1908 was a dangerous time for
those who would insist on asserting their own identity. These essays are evidence that the
Tagalogs would die for language as much as for land.
Both the cause and effect of this exclusion is a kind of facile focus on discussions of the
language issue carried out in English. Gonzalez, himself, devotes a mere three pages to the
“Vernaculars and Vernacular Literature”
350
against roughly twenty-four pages given to the
campaign from 1915 to the 1935, most of which is focused on positions made by colonial
officials who supported a local language campaign and the likes of Eulogio Rodriguez, Maximo
Kalaw, and Jorge Bocobo who carried out their campaigns in English. These campaigns and their
difference from the earlier ones carried out in Tagalog will be discussed in the Chapter Seven.
The time within which these Muling Pagsilang essays were written had a bearing of their
present exclusion from linguistic history. Both the attitudes and the objectives of colonial
scholarship set these essays out on the road to deletion.
351

American colonial scholarship of the period was obviously interested in silencing the

American acts of suppression and in underscoring their acceptance by the occupied people.
“Official history,” Renato Constantino tells us, “influenced by colonial scholarship, has presented
the struggle against the Americans as a short one. It has honored the collaborators and all but

350
Gonzalez, Language and Nationalism, 32-34.
351
Ironically, one attitude of colonial scholarship, obsessive archival collection, also saved them.
The only existing copies of El Renacimiento and Muling Pagsilang are in the American Library of
Congress. The microfilm copies in the Philippine National Library are from the Library of Congress.

129
ignored the resistance of the people.”
352
The bequeathing of colonial attitudes through historical
accounts is evident in Gonzalez’s treatment of the apparent early proposal to fuse the languages.
One other way in which these essays were marginalized in current history was through
their being ignored by the colonial officials of that time. As discussed in the previous chapter, the
American education officials saw Spanish rather than the local languages as the serious threat to
English. The Ninth Annual Report of the Director of Education contains a section called “Spanish
Versus English”
353
while the annual report of the previous year contains a long discussion about
the threat of Spanish to English
354
and the non-threat of “native dialects” because their fate was to
be one of annihilation as “the Philippine languages will disappear from use.”
355

These essays were consigned to future obscurity by the very fact that they were ignored

by the American officials themselves during the time they were written. There were no debates
about language simply because the American colonial officials refused to engage in the debate.
During the 1920s, unlike this time, there were open, published, and engaged debates involving
Filipinos arguing for a national language or that local languages be used as the medium of
instruction and Americans insisting on English. The debates included the odd American official
who supported local languages and the odd Philippine official who supported English. By
contrast, the articulations about language during the first decade of the century were opposed to
each other but also isolated from each other. The situation would be parallel to how official or
“accepted” history ignore or belittle groups who subscribe to conspiracy theories, such as, for
example, the group that insists that the lunar landing of 1969 was a hoax. Official history would
not deign to engage such discourse and thus such discourses are, in the more distant future, more
likely to be marginalized or erased. Such was the fate of the Muling Pagsilang essays. During
the first decade of the century, the dominant American attitude toward the local languages was
one of a combination of derision and pity (for its “primitive state”). Justifying the choice of

352
Renato Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited, 246.
353
Philippines, Ninth Annual Report of the Director of Education of the Philippine Islands,
(Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1909), 204.
354
Philippines, Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education of the Philippine Islands,
(Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1908), 94.
355
Ibid, 99.

130
English as the choice of the medium of instruction because “there were no books in any one of
them [the local languages],” the Bureau of Insular Affairs concluded that had Filipinos succeeded
in learning to read their local languages they would have “found only a barren waste land before

them. . . and very readily fall[en] back into the mental darkness of the semisavage state.”
356
It
was thus impossible for American colonial officials to conceive of engaging local linguists who
were articulating their ideas in the semisavage language their calls for making the semisavage
language the medium of communication in this modern society they were trying darnest to set up.
Finally, one of the possible causes for the neglect of these essays is likely the effect of
making a faulty connection between the anti-American and guerilla independence movements and
anything related to El Renacimiento and Muling Pagsilang. The radical reputation of Muling
Pagsilang leads readers and scholars to think that the essays themselves were radical and rejected
anything and everything that was imposed by the Americans. As the discussion below will show,
these essays actually expressed a range of positions: most were easily identifiable as nationalist
(the category itself has to be nuanced), but some others were pro-Tagalog language but anti-
Tagalog tradition, some were conditional and some were openly pro-English. The easy
association between these essays and independence movements might cause them to be seen as
“nativist,” a category that is anathema to contemporary scholarship that puts a premium on
hybridity. If this speculative correlation is true, then it is a severe and erroneous conclusion.
Nativism, or the call to the return to old indigenous categories, meanings and practices is not a
position expressed by any one of the essays.

Nativism and the Fusionist Detour
These Muling Pagsilang essays and the idea that Tagalog was, from the outset, already
functioning as a national language were marginalized (and continue to be so) through the iteration
of the ideas that the authors of the Muling Pagsilang essays were either nativists or
experimenters. The link between El Rencimiento and a nativist tendency is suggested in Resil

356
Unites States, Bureau of Insular Affairs, Description of the Philippines, (Manila: Bureau of
Printing, 1903), 227.


131
Mojares’s campaign to rescue Trinidad Pardo de Tavera from the “nationalist constructions of the
nation’s birth [where] he is usually cast in a villain’s role.”
357
Pardo de Tavera is most known as
the leader of the Federalista Party that campaigned for the Philippines to be granted U.S.
statehood. Mojares’s project is centered on arguing that Pardo de Tavera was not a collaborator
but instead was “against nativism”
358
and was completely committed to modernization and to
“’extricat[ing] ourselves from the limited circle in which reason and mind have been
confined.’”
359
The validity of this argument rests on the existence of the anachronistic foil of
Pardo de Tavera, the nativist. But who are these nativist thinkers? Mojares is very careful not to
mention a single name but he does suggest who, in his view, they might be. In contrast to Pardo
de Tavera’s ideas that “were not generated in a vacuum,”
360
Mojares mentions the Catholic
Church which “criticized the secularization of education”
361
and (unnamed) “Literary writers
[who] opposed the promotion of English and turned toward “native tradition” as a medium of
nationalism and defense against Americanization.”
362
In the very next paragraph, Mojares even
suggests the source of this nativism as being El Renacimiento:
The question of how the nation should position itself vis-à-vis American rule was
the subject of a running debate between the “pro-independence” El Renacimiento
and Pardo’s La Democracia in which the americanistas were attacked as

“renegades’ and “opportunists” and the nacionalistas were called “dreamers” and
“foolish theorists.”
363


Once the nativist strawman is set up, it becomes quite easy to argue that Pardo de Tavera was also
a committed nationalist, the only difference being that he was “less ‘sentimental’ about the past
[and] sought to hurry the nation into the future.”
364


357
Resil Mojares, Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T.H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo de los
Reyes and the Production of Modern Knowledge, (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2006),
121.
358
Ibid, 221.
359
Ibid, 218, quoting Pardo de Tavera.
360
Ibid, 220.
361
Ibid.
362
Ibid.
363
Ibid, 221. One is inclined to conclude that Mojares is referring to Teodoro M. Kalaw who was
a central figure of El Renacimiento and was Pardo de Tavera’s adversary in “The Filipino Soul” debates
(discussed in chapter six). However, as Mojares, in the following page, argues that “Kalaw was not a
nativist,” it might be justifiable to conclude he had Lope K. Santos and his ilk in mind when he imagined

the nativist nemesis.
364
Ibid, 223.

132
Affixing a nativist label to the nationalism of the early anti-American movements is a
great disservice to them and to scholarship in general. The Muling Pagsilang essays on language
make up a harmonious, though sometimes slightly incongruous, blend of perspectives. The
perspectives advocate a forward-looking modernization, a preservation of tradition and culture, an
openness to change. They manifest heart-felt sentiment alongside an astonishingly sophisticated
understanding of how power works and a profound understanding, both rational and visceral, of
the relation of language to history and culture. What is most striking and admirable about these
essays is how they brim with a courage to fight and struggle for the Tagalog language and culture
and, though unsure yet at the moment of their writing of the relation of “Tagalog” to the
Philippine nation, they are astounding too for how they brim with a confidence in and
commitment to the concept of the Filipino nation.
An example of how knowledge production during the colonial era transmogrifying into
contemporary “objective” data is seen in the so-called “fusionist” idea for a national language, the
idea that the many local Philippine languages could be somehow fused together. The enthusiasm
for the fusionist idea is sometimes portrayed as a kind of detour in the road toward the national
language. The perception of a detour is significant because it erases the fact of the continuity of
the revolution’s cultural and linguistic ideals and aspirations. As the essays themselves
sometimes explicitly express, the existence of the Katipunan strengthened the already existing
fact that Tagalog was the language that unified the diverse Filipino people and linguistic groups
into one nation.
365
Locating the campaign to make Tagalog the basis for the national language at
a much later date, as the myth of the fusionist detour manages to do, depoliticizes our linguistic
history.
According to this myth, Lope K. Santos first prescribed to a fusionist view of language, a

position he supposedly arrived at through the influence of American linguist David Doherty. It is
an idea that has been passed on from American colonial scholarship all the way to contemporary
scholarship. According to this myth, the Kapulungan was created in order to work on actually

365
See Apo ng Kapampangan (pseudonym), “Ang Bayang Pilipino at ang Kanyang Sariling
Wika,” Muling Pagsilang, April 18, 1905, 1.

133
fusing the Philippine languages to come up with a national language. Originating in Doherty
himself, the myth passed on to Joseph Ralston Hayden, the vice-governor of the Philippines from
1933 to 1935, to Ernest J. Frei, writing in 1959, and down to Andrew Gonzalez, writing in
1980,
366
and is replicated again in later studies, repeated often enough for it to be taken now as
fact (see footnote 13 above). This idea will appear to anyone who reads the output of the
Kapulungan as bizarre—the primary objective of the Kapulungan, stated over and over, was the
preservation and improvement of Tagalog. The idea of language fusion plays an infinitesimal
role in the Muling Pagsilang essays. It is sometimes mentioned as a possible option for a way (not
the way) at arriving at a national language but it is never thoroughly discussed.
This myth and the narrative constructed around it—that those who were early interested
in a national language were experimenting with language fusion—is very much part of the
colonial discourse regarding English being the only rational option for Filipinos to take. The
discourse claimed that there were too many Philippine languages, none of which resembled
anything of a lingua franca and that the fusionist approach was a synthetic impossibility. The
discourse also claimed that there was so much antagonism between the language groups that
Filipinos would readily accept English over another Philippine language as the common
language.
367
The discourse was so efficiently and smoothly constructed that it appears, even to

today’s reader, as though the colonial officials of the turn of the century really had no option but
to institute English.

Backward-looking Forwardness
The narrative and the discourse take on new meaning when it is apparent that there was in
fact, an organized group of people who consistently agitated, not for language fusion, which

366
In a footnote, Hayden (page 936) quotes Doherty who claims to have influenced Lope K.
Santos, in 1903, to gather the writers and editors and attempt to “fuse the these dialects into a uniform and
common one.” Ernest Frei has a lengthy discussion of Doherty but briefly mentions Lope K. Santos in
connection to Doherty and in the same vein: “To this end [language fusion] he encouraged Lope K. Santos,
then editor of Muling Pagsilag.” (page 41-42). Gonzalez repeats this idea taking his information from
Hayden. Lydia Gonzales Garcia (1992), citing Doherty, repeats the same information regarding the
Doherty-Santos connection and the fusionist perspective (page 75).
367
See for example, The Board of Educational Survey, A Survey of the Educational System of the
Philippine Islands, (Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1925), 26-27. This is also known as the Monroe Survey.

134
could take several years, but for the immediate use of Tagalog as the common language. The
Muling Pagsilang essays did this. They consistently argued that historical events transpired such
that Tagalog should be the national language and that it was also currently acceptable to all
Filipinos as the national language. This, however, was no nativist call to return to indigenous
categories. The objectives, repeated over and over in many of the essays, call not just for a
pagdadalisay (purification) but for a pagbabangon (upliftment), pagpapayaman (enriching),
pagpapalago (development) and pagtatanghal (exposure and popularization).
368

At the outset, it should be said that the Muling Pagsilang essays do not in any way

represent a single, unified perspective. Muling Pagsilang, though clearly critical of the American
occupation of the Philippines, functioned like a modern newspaper that allowed for different
voices to be heard. As such, on the issue of language, it published essays with disparate positions
including those that were emphatically pro-English
369
and a number that were categorically anti-
English.
370
The essays published under the Kapulungan had an a-political air to them, hardly ever
mentioning the colonial language policy. However, the essays on language that were not
published under the Kapulungan would openly criticize the colonial language policy and had in
common, a deep interest in and concern for the promotion of the Tagalog language.
What seems to have motivated the authors who published under the Kapulungan was a
trepidation over their perception that Tagalog was being erased. Valeriano Hernandez, in his
essay that calls for the establishment of the Kapulungan, describes Tagalog as being sick and at
it’s death bed.
…sa loob ng maikling panahon ay papanatilihing wica sa Sangkapuluan ang
ingles, ay di nga malayong ang sakit na ito ng wikang tagalog na kinagisnan, ay
lalong lumubha at kung magkatao’y mamatay nang tuluyan, pag di naiagap ang
mga ucol na gamot.
371


368
“…bumalak ng pahayagang ito ang isang papulong na bilang simula ng pagtatayo ng dalisayan
ng ating wika…” (this newspaper planned a meeting to start the structure to purify our language), Valeriano
Hernandez, “Ang Wikang Tagalog,” El Renacimiento, August 26, 1903, 1. “”nangangarap kapwa sa
pagdadalisay at pagtatanghal ng sariling wika” (we both aspire for the purification and popularization of
our language), Lope K. Santos, “Isang Wikang Filipino,” El Renacimiento, September 5, 1903, 1. and “Ang
pagbabano in at pagdadalisay ng Wikang sarili ay di lamang katungkulan nating lahat…” (The upliftment

and purification of one’s own language is not the only duty of all…), ibid, September 15, 1903, 2.
369
K. Patid (pseudonym), “Ang Wikang Ingles,” El Renacimiento, April 23, 1903, 2.
370
Simoun (pseudonym), “Pagbabaka ng mga Wika’t Lahi,” Muling Pagsilang, May 19, 1905, 1-
2. and Mapaninta (pseudonym), 1.
371
Hernandez, “Ang Wikang Tagalog,” 1.

135

In a short while English was established throughout the land and it is possible
that the sickness of Tagalog will get worse and might lead to death if the sickness
is not stopped through the proper medicines.

The sickness, caused by a non-vigilance during the Spanish period, is the weakening of Tagalog
by the inclusion of many foreign words. The medicine, according to Hernandez, is the
Kapulungan itself that will purify and promote Tagalog. Patricio Mariano expresses this agitation
through the image of a drowning. He says that it is through the work of the Kapulungan that the
race and the Tagalog language will be saved from drowning: “maasahan natin na ang Lahi at
Wikang Tagalog ay hindi malulunod kahit mapagitna sa mga alon’g tumatabon”
372
(we can trust
that the race and the Tagalog language will not drown even if it is in the middle of waves that
overwhelm it). Andrea Vitan seems distressed over a communication gap that will be created
between children educated in English and parents who speak only Tagalog:
Ano ang unang itinatanong ng magulang sa anak, pagdating nito sa bahay na
galing sa paaralan? Walang iba kun di ang natututuhan niya. Kun sa Maestro o
Maestrang di ipinatalos sa bata ang kahulugan sa Tagalog ng kanyang itinuro,
pano ng maisasagot ng anak sa kanyang magulang? Marahil ay uulitiun na

lamang ang salitang narinig sa maestro, at paano ang pagaalam ng magulang
kung ang anak ay natuto o hindi?
373


What is the first thing a parent asks a child when the child returns from school?
Nothing else than what was learned. If the teacher did not explain the meaning of
the lesson in Tagalog to the child, how will the child answer the parent? The
child will likely just repeat the words and how will the parent know if the child
really learned?

Given this threat and this desperate situation, her call is not for political action nor for the removal
of English. Instead, her call is for a turning toward the language itself, for the study and
improvement of the language. This is the call of the whole Kapulungan; it is not for a return to
the old and indigenous but for a modernization of the traditional language in order to escort it into
this new world.
Though there is much acknowledgement among the Kapulungan essays that popular
education is a good thing (as there is much agreement among the Kapulungan members that that

372
Patricio Mariano, “Ang Wikang Tagalog sa mga Dulaan,” El Renacimiento, November 24,
1903, 1.
373
Andrea Vitan, “Kailangan pa Kayang Pag-aralan ang Wikang Sarili? El Renacimiento,
November 27, 1903, 2.

136
education should take place in Tagalog), in their worldview language does not exist simply to
introduce a population to a new modern, democratic society. It is not modernization for
modernity’s sake but for the survival of tradition and for the ideals of nationhood, and, some

would even hint at, for freedom.
Francisco Makabulos uses the beautiful metaphor of the language as a beacon for national
unity: “upang siyang maging hilagang tutunguhin ng pacay ng pagcacaisa sa icapapasulong sa
paglusog ng Inang bayan.”
374
(so that it [Tagalog] will be the north we will move toward for the
objective of unity in the advancement of the motherland). Liborio Gomez argues for the
inseparability of language and nation. He says: “Samantalang may Wika ay may Bayan, pag
naparam ang Wika, wala tayong bayan.”
375
(While a language has a nation, if the language
vanishes, so does the nation.) Lope K. Santos argues that we of one race should have one
language: “mahirap ang tayo-tayong mga anak ng iisang Lahi at ng iisang Bayan, kung
magkalipatang pulo ay di na makapagusap kundi magdaan muna kapwa sa España o America”
376

(it is difficult that we children of the same race and of the same nation, if we travel around the
country cannot speak to each other except through the Spanish or American language). Eusebio
Daluz goes as far as suggesting that the knowledge of one’s language brings learning and then
freedom: “pamamagitan ng sariling wicang ito ay macamtan nating walang sagwil ang
pagkabihasa sa madlang carunungan, na siyang cahulugann ng sanla ng calayaan”
377
(through our
own language we will gain knowledge which is needed for freedom).
The way through which all this was going to be achieved was through the very tedious
work of strengthening and modernizing Tagalog. The lecture/essay that inaugurates the
Kapulungan, written by Lope K. Santos, is long and comprehensive and articulates the concrete
concerns and objectives of the Kapulungan. This essay, along with several other of the

374

Makabulos, “Ang Wikang Tagalog sa mga Lupang Kapampangan,” 1.
375
Liborio Gomez, “Ang Wika ay Siyang Pag-iisip ng Isang Bayan at Kaluluwa ng Isang Lahi,” El
Renacimiento, December 16, 1903, 1.
376
Lope K. Santos, “Isang Wikang Filipino,” El Renacimiento, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16 September,
1903. This quote appears in the issue of September 15, 1903, 1.
377
Eusebio Daluz, "Alin ang Lalong Magagaling na Paraan sa Pagtuturo ng Wikang
Tagalog, Upang Matutuhan Madali at Pag-aralan di Lamang ng mga Tagalog Kundi ng mga iba pang
Kapatid ng Lahi?” Muling Pagsilang, 1 and 2 March 1904 (serialized). This quote appeared in the March 1
issue, page 2.

137
Kapulungan essays, express a concern that all the extant grammars and dictionaries were written
by foreigners.
…tunay na mahapding sabihin na hangang ngayon’y wala pa kaming
nababasang limbag nang Gramatica o Diccionariong Tagalog na yari ng mga
tunay na tagalog at angkap o alinsunod sa mga kasalukuyang pananagalog.
378


…it is truly painful to admit that up until now, we have not read any published
Tagalog grammars or dictionaries that are made by true Tagalogs and that follow
the rules of contemporary Tagalog.

Up until that time, the many grammars and dictionaries that existed not just for Tagalog but for all
the major Philippine languages had been made by Spanish friars in order to teach the friars the
local language in order for them to carry out their work of proselitization.
379

The Americans were
also on their way toward mastering the local languages, undoubtedly for their own purposes as
well. During this time, Frank Blake was teaching Tagalog at Johns Hopkins.
380
This is a fact
that Santos was aware and proud of. Seemingly unaware that an interest in the language of the
occupied area was a compulsory part of the colonization process, Santos used this fact to argue
that since Tagalog was being studied in venerable foreign institutions like Hopkins then Filipinos
themselves should take an interest in studying their own language.
381

For the first time, Filipinos themselves were actually going to take on the work of
standardizing the language.
382
This is a phenomenal task to take on and is a symptom of an
awareness of the necessary ingredients for nation building. On the one hand, Santos and the
Kapulungan were conscious that Tagalog, with the omnipresent English policy, was under threat
like it had never been during the Spanish period. In this way, the move to modernize Tagalog
was simply a reaction to American language policy. On the other hand, they seemed to be primed

378
Santos, “Isang Wikang Filipino,” September 7, 1903, 1.
379
In the discussion of language and translation during the Spanish period, mention has to be made
of Vicente Rafael’s Contracting Colonialism which examines the politics of translation and how Filipino
translators, tasked with translating prayers and poems from Spanish to Tagalog, subverted meaning and
converted prayers and other instruments of Spanish colonization into sites of struggle,
380
Blake himself reports in a 1902 issue of American Anthropologist that Tagalog was taught in
Hopkins between 1901 and 1902 and was attended by eight students. See pages 793-794.

381
Santos, “Isang Wikang Filipino,” 9 September, 1903, 1.
382
It was work that was started by the likes of Jose Rizal and Trinidad Pardo de Tavera before the
revolution. See Jose Rizal, “On the New Orthography of the Tagalog Language,” La Solidaridad, April 15,
1890. See “A Contribution to the Study of the Old Filipino Alphabet,” in Readings in Philippine
Linguistics, ed. Andrew Gonzales, et al (Manila: Linguistic Society of the Philippines, 1973), 40-53.
Originally published in 1885. See also “Orthografia del Tagalog,” Diario de Manila, August 5, 1888.

138
by the experience of the revolution and the short-lived independent Philippine nation and were
working with an awareness of that a standard and common language was necessary for an
independent nation.
The work of the Kapulungan toward the creation of these grammars and dictionaries was
to start with the standardization of matters like vocabulary and a pedagogy for teaching Tagalog.
For the standardization of Tagalog vocabulary, Santos offers four criteria: first, the removal of
borrowed words for which Tagalog already has substitutes, second, the creation of parallel
knowledge-related words that exist; third, to prioritize the borrowing of words, first from Malay
and Sanskrit before borrowing from Latin-based languages; and finally, setting a procedure for
using borrowed words that follow Tagalog rules. The understanding of these early Tagalog
scholars as being purist and nativist
383
need to be revisited as, the essays clearly show, theirs was
a well-thought out plan, not to simply purge, but to revive. A nativist, one would expect, would
call for a return to a primordial, pre-colonial linguistic formations. Santos seems to anticipate this
instinct among those who are seeking to assert their identity but asserts that a connection rather
than an isolation from the world is necessary and therefore calls for the continued use of
romanized letters.
The Kapulungan authors, because of their concern with the nitty-gritty of necessary work
of linguistic standardization, of identifying specific words that were to be removed from standard

use, became the easy targets for critics like Barrows, who would depict them as backward-
looking. Their vision was in fact a very organic one that sought to create a Tagalog practice that
was in line with current Tagalog use.
By contrast, the Muling Pagsilang essays that were not published under the name of the
Kapulungan were not working with the primary objective of improving Tagalog and thus did not
focus on the language itself. Instead, the authors of these essays deal more openly with the social
aspects of language and discuss such matters as the relationship of language to the progress of the

383
In the Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education (1908), David Barrows refers to the
policy of the “Filipino scholars interested in the development of the Tagalog language” as “shortsighted.”
Barrows describes their activities as “trying to eject from the language all words of foreign origin and to
substitute circumlocutions or words of new invention.” (page 98).

139
nation. In this way they are similar to the American colonial discourse on English that is centered
on the idea of progress. Several of these essays are concerned with the creation of a civilized
society with intelligent and modernized citizens. “Ang sariling wica ay nacacatulong ng malaki
sa pagpagpapatalino”
384
(one’s own language is a great help in making one intelligent), claims
one essay. Another essay calls on mothers not to teach their children superstitions like the
“’asuwang.’mga encanto,’ mga ‘gigante,’ ang mga agimat at kababalaghan ng mga ‘Hari’ at
‘Reyna’
385
(vampires, spirits, giants, talismans, and the wondrous kings and queens) and would
have mothers teach their children history and the story of heroes and martyrs of freedom instead.
The great civilizations of Europe that have many great geniuses and inventors are admired by one
of the authors of these essays: “ang mga ganyang nasyon ay lubhang matalino at marami ang
hinahangaan sa pagka mga inventor ng sarisaring dunong na pawing kababalaghan”

386
(these
nations are very intelligent and many of their inventors are admired for the various knowledges
which are a wonder). Yet the concern here is in achieving a civilization on their own terms and
using their own language:
Kung sisiyasatin ang Kasaysayan ng Sangdaigdig ay makikitang maliwanag pa sa
araw, na buhat pa sa mulang dako hanggang sa mga araw nating kasalukuyan,
ang wika, ang sariling lenguwahe, ay siyang una sa tanang kasangkapan ng
IKADUDUNONG. [author’s capitalization]
387


If one were to analyze the History of the World, one would see, clear
as day, that from the beginning of time, till now, language, one’s own language,
is the first ingredient in learning.

It would be difficult to accuse the authors of these essays of dwelling on the past. Their vision
was very much grounded on bringing in Philippine society forward; but the vision was of
bringing it forward as a whole nation, through the local language.
The term nativism simply refers to a belief in preserving and reviving indigenous culture.
People who actually prescribe to this belief can be as easily lauded as they can be discredited.
However, since the term is a disparaging one; a critic can easily use it on almost anyone without

384
S.G.C. (Sefronio G. Calderon), “Kamahalan ng Sariling Wika,” Muling Pagsilang, February
16, 1905, 1.
385
Taga Danaw (pseudonym), “Pagtuturo ng mga Anak,” Muling Pagsilang, June 7, 1906, 1.
386
Isang Guro (pseudonym), “Ang Pagtuturo sa Isang Bayan,” Muling Pagsilang, November 8,

1905, 1.
387
Ibid.