Incontro & Encuentro – An Italiano and Española Encounter

Jose Rizal, the National Hero of the Philippines

THE LAST TIME I READ NOLI ME TANGERE AND EL FILIBUSTERISMO was when I was in high school. I did have to face the topic again in Social Science: Rizal and his Writings, as a required minor subject in college. Thankfully, I didn’t have to read all of it over again. Though the class itself was a bore, I rather enjoyed the novels, even though they were written in archaic Tagalog. I still have as yet to reread these books in English. If I could read them in the original Spanish, that would be a plus!

 

My encounters with Jose Rizal were not only limited to the four walls of the classroom. I had the chance also to take part in the Visayas Rizal Youth Leadership Institute (VRYLI) and National Rizal Youth Leadership Institute (NYRLI) conventions during my college years together with my fellow WORDians as representatives for The WORD, our university’s official student publication. Back then, I always ended up not being so convinced with the leadership seminars. I felt the conventions seemed too “unnatural”, that the youth who were there were really not into being ‘admirers’ of Jose Rizal, that they were just there for the fun and the chance to go to Cebu City or Baguio. I don’t think they were really serious about living up to the ideals that shaped Jose Rizal’s mind. I left those conventions with the same level of patriotism that I once had. Nothing was new at all. (I hope that has changed now.)

But things began to change when I went to Italy.

Italiano and Español

When I was far from my homeland, in a foreign land that does not speak my languages (Cebuano, Filipino), one cannot help but get homesick especially for the first three months of adjustment. I had to learn Italian and it wasn’t an easy language to learn. I had to work out my brain from translating words from Cebuano into English and then into Italian. But then, there were many words wherein I didn’t have to pass through English at all. These were words that I had only realized came from Spanish. For example:

Cebuano/Tagalog	Italiano	English
camisa	camice	n. shirt
Kumusta?	Come stai?	“How are you?”
kusina	cuccina	n. kitchen
kutsilyo	cotello	n. knife
laba	lavare	v. to wash
labandero	lavandaio	n. laundryman
merienda	meridina	n. snack
Pasensya!	Pazienza!	Patience! (Have patience!)
plato	piatto	n. plate
sabon	sapone	n. soap
siguro	sicuro	adj. safe, secured, sure

If I were to write it all down, there would certainly be a lot! Without even realizing it, I already had a rich vocabulary in Spanish just because I spoke Cebuano and Tagalog. This helped me a lot in learning basic Italian. But it didn’t stop there.

Whenever we went on pilgrimages, curious locals would come up to us and ask about our nationalities. A group of Chinese tourists suddenly came up to me in Rome and asked me whether I was Chinese. When I was in San Giovanni Rotondo, a father and his two sons did a guessing game trying to figure out my nationality:

The first boy asked, “Lei e’ Cinese?”[1]

I answered, “No.”

It was the second boy’s turn, “E’ Giapponese?”[2]

I laughed, “No.”

Then the father said, “Koreano?”

I shrugged, “No.”

There was a look of disbelief on their faces. They just couldn’t guess out what I was. Before they left, I finally answered, “Sono Filipino!”[3] The expression on their faces seemed to say, “So that’s what he is!”

But something more curious happened to me when I went to Padova (Padua). It was in February 2011 that we made a pilgrimage to Padua because a newly-ordained priest wanted to celebrate a thanksgiving mass in the Shrine of St. Anthony of Padua. After Mass and breakfast, we were given the chance to tour the enormous shrine and also venerate the Saint’s tomb and relics. I was walking alone and was heading towards the side chapel where the Saint’s relics where placed when someone stopped me. It was a young Caucasian with a thin beard, curly hair, and light brown eyes peering through a pair of black eyeglasses. He seemed glad at seeing me. He suddenly broke out in a language I thought was Italian with a Bisaya accent.

I tried to stop him and asked, “Scusatemi, ma non capisco niente. Lei può parlare piano piano?”[4]

He looked at me, seemingly dumbfounded, pointed at me and said, “Español?”

I took like eternity for me to understand what he was trying to say. Suddenly, a light bulb turned on in my head. I replied, “Non sono Spagnolo. Sono Filipino. Parlo soltanto inglese e italiano.”[5]

I don’t quite remember the words that he said. He spoke in Spanish but I understood him because it sounded like Italian with snippets of Cebuano or Bisayan words in them. We both took our leave of each other and I went to Fra. Giles, a fellow Filipino friar, to whom I related the incident. I told him that a Spaniard had just thought I was Spanish. I don’t know what got into him. He then approached my seven-foot tall Italian superior and told him about what just happened.

My superior looked at me, smiled, and said, “Infatti!”[6]

What? Che cosa? Me? Spanish looking? Here in the Philippines, when one comments that you’re Spanish looking, it means you’re a mestizo, a person with Spanish (or foreign) blood. Philippine culture prizes highly the mestizos. They are usually rich, mostly owners of haciendas or large agricultural lands. Even in the mainstream, mestizos and mestizas almost dominate the TV screen because of their beauty.

I realized later on that mine was not an isolated experience. Many of my fellow Filipino friars who one would really consider as truly Filipino-looking were more often than not misidentified as being Spanish. When I was again in Rome to tour the Vatican, I met a mother and son whom I truly thought were Filipinos. I was about to greet them in Tagalog when I realized they were speaking to me and my companion in Spanish! We talked to them in Italian, and they spoke back in Spanish. We somehow understood each other. I even heard them exclaiming “Hoy!” which was so Filipino and so Bisaya, I could hardly believe they were actually Spanish! Once when I attended a convention where there was a Spanish Cardinal giving a talk in Italian, he sounded like a native Bisayan speaking Italian with a truly obvious Bisayan accent. Other Filipino friars who had been staying here in Italy longer than me had also observed this in other Spanish tourists. The Spanish were also very warm towards the Filipinos.

Then it got me thinking, how much Spanish is there in the Filipino?

Incontro e Encuentro with Rizal

Two years have passed since I left Italy and returned to the Philippines. I had brought with me a cultural experience that I could never exchange anything. Rome had made me a Romano. But it also made me realize the richness of my culture, of the heritage I received as a Filipino. The Spanish heritage kept hanging upon my mind, still waiting for a new encounter that would change the way I would see myself as a Filipino.

My long-time friend Djoanna Delima-Wasson, our lay-out artist for The WORD from 2003-2005 had just returned to Bohol after almost a decade living in Canada. She had gotten married, and then also took up Multimedia and Spanish Studies in a prestigious university there. We agreed to meet for a few hours in a local café in Tagbilaran City. I still had to go back to the seminary by 5:30 PM since it was a Sunday. Djei and her sister Orie came. We hugged each other and then broke out in a flood of words and hand gestures—me speaking and gesturing like an Italian, and Djei doing her own thing in Spanish. The café crew could only look at us in wonder.

There were times that we had to ask each other in plain English, Tagalog or Cebuano, what we were trying to say to each other in Italian and Spanish. We still managed to understand each other because the words were quite related. We talked about the beauty of language, poetry and prose, and art. This was one of those conversations which was mutually stimulating and enriching—an encounter between the incontro italiano and encuentro español so to speak.

Then we came to the topic of Jose Rizal. Both of us had attended the VRYLI convention eight years ago. We both had the same impressions. Then she told me how her views about Rizal and his writings changed in a fortnight. Her professor, a native Castellana, lent her a copy of the original Spanish version of Noli Me Tangere. Reading it opened up to her a revelation. She, and almost all of us, have been taught that Padre Damaso was the fat, lazy and evil friar who raped Pia Alba and became the biological father of Maria Clara. But in the original Spanish, Padre Damaso was a tall, comely and a highly cultured friar deeply admired by many most especially for his handsome looks. Furthermore, she told me that it didn’t really imply that Pia Alba was raped. She said that the original Spanish subtly connoted that it was Pia Alba who had seduced Padre Damaso.

Djei could not possibly be wrong. I immediately googled the topic on the experimental browser of my Kindle and found an interesting article entitled “Damaso, Fact and Fiction” written by a Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist, Ambeth Ocampo. It was a very enlightening read and confirmed for me all that Djei had said to me. It left me with a lot to think about.

I could not believe it at first. If this was what Jose Rizal originally wrote, then why have we been taught the wrong thing? Why are we being exposed to a faulty translation of the book? Djei remarked that it was like reading two different stories. She told me that there were so many discrepancies with what she had originally learned about Rizal’s writings. Even though I had not yet read the original Spanish version, I could just simply empathize (not just sympathize) with what she felt after reading it.

For some this may not be a big deal. Who would care if Padre Damaso was ugly or not? Who cared whether Pia Alba got herself raped or that she personally seduced the priest? Well, anyway, this was just a work of fiction. What can a simple ‘lie’ do harm to us Filipinos who barely even care about Jose Rizal and his writings?

(More often than not, Padre Damaso has been caricatured as a stereotype of the corrupted and hypocritical priest. Critics use the image of Padre Damaso to throw dirt at the Catholic Church in the Philippines. Oh come on! This just goes to show how ‘miseducated’ we all are. Just read Noli Me Tangere to see that Padre Damaso wasn’t the primary villain. If you don’t have the time, just read the shorter article of Ambeth Ocampo.)

For us this was not a trivial matter. If there was some kind of conspiracy behind this, then this would be tantamount to a national, educational and cultural deception! What ‘powers’ were there that have been depriving us of the real content and intent of Jose Rizal in what he had written? A nation, especially its youth, is formed by the quality of education that it gives. Jose Rizal, being our national hero, was the spark that ignited a revolution although he originally wanted a peaceful and non-violent one. His thought is the fiber that has held this country together and has shown that indeed, as the adage attributed to him goes, “the pen is mightier than the sword.” But if we were being taught a distortion of his thought, then we have been deprived of the richness of what he had wanted to convey to us.

The Elusive Filipino Identity

I still remember the days when I had to drag myself into writing essays in Filipino on the regular topic “Sino ba ang Pilipino?”[7] These were the ‘infamous’ Kathang Pormal and Kathang Di-Pormal that our Filipino teachers always required of us to write from middle school years till high school. These were pure torture! (But I have to thank my last Filipino professor, Dr. Ethel Doria, who was the only one who was able to draw out my creative writing skills in Filipino and got me to read El Filibusterismo from beginning to the end.)

Who is the Filipino, may we ask? Is he the Aeta or the Negrito who arrived first in the Philippines? Or is he the Malay or Indonesian who came next? Is he the Chinoy, of Chinese merchant descent? Is he also the Mestizo born of a native, fathered by a Spaniard? Is he also the Fil-Am or Fil-Aussie of contemporary times?

Whatever our racial backgrounds may be, the Filipino Identity seems to remain elusive. Nowadays, we just suck up to foreign brands, most especially Stateside ones. Most of us always yearn for Uncle Sam’s pat on the back. No wonder our national politics remains a mere show of puppetry! And the most troublesome effect of this is that we have begun to reject the heritage we have received from our ancestors. The effect of our ‘miseducation’ has made us look upon Spain as the iron rod that has brought us down to slavery and oppression. That has not always been the case.

We owe to Spain so much of our culture, our education, and most especially our faith. Spain never considered us as native baboons. When they first came to the Philippines, they noted that our ancestors were already a cultured and highly civilized race.

Djei told me that the Philippines was the last colony that Spain held on to. When she lost the Philippines, she had lost her last daughter.

This explains a lot. This explains why Spaniards still feel the Spanish blood that flows through our veins. No wonder Spanish tourists always treated us Filipinos in Rome rather warmly. And no wonder why we could see the Filipino in the Spaniard. No wonder why there remains so much similarities in our culture, our way of life, and even our perception of time. (“Filipino time” was always “Spanish time”.) No wonder Spain has been more generous than the US in giving us financial aid during the devastation wrought by typhoon Pablo (Bopha).

A mother cannot forget her child. That’s why she will always seek her out, help her if only her daughter would recognize her as her mother once more. We cannot deny this: we Filipinos still remain the lost children of Spain.

After we were lost to Spain, we got occupied by the Americans, then by the Japanese, and then by the Americans once again. (With all due respect to the US, I am thankful that we never became its 51^st state. I guess the feeling is also mutual.) Our present generation looks upon itself as being so “Americanized”. But in my dealings with Americans and Europeans, we Filipinos are more European than we think. We were under Spanish rule for 300 years. The US has barely spent more than 50 years on our land.

We cannot escape the fact that we are still a young nation in its teenage years trying to weather through an identity crisis. If the US took upon itself to act as our ‘foster father’, Spain remains and will always be our Mother.

Who then is the Filipino?

This question, albeit elusive, is something that each of us has to answer one day. As for me, I have already found the answer.

P.S.

Before Djei and her husband Tim left for a tour in Japan, I was able to call her as I was on my way back to Bohol after a religious and cultural exposure in the cities of Bacolod, Talisday and Silya, Negros Occidental. There, I also had the chance to enter old Hispanic houses, meet real hacienderos and hacienderas, see miles of sugarcane plantations and savor a ‘pocket’ of Hispanic cultural heritage of our country! We spoke to each other in Italian and Spanish for the last time before she was leaving. In her last message, she said to me:

Gracias por tu llamada y me allegro de que hemos podido pasar tiempos juntos. Muchas suerte con todos tus planes a tu vida. Ojala que en mi siguente visita puedas hablar conmigo en castellano- que es parte de nuestra herencia y se corre en nuestras sangres. ;) Cuidate mucho precioso!

(Loose Translation: Thank you for your call and I was glad that we could spend time together. Lots of luck with all your plans for your life. Hopefully in my next visit, you can talk to me in Castilian (Castilian Spanish), which is part of our heritage and it runs in our blood. ;) Take care of yourself!)

Sto studiando lo Spagnolo. Esto estudiando Español. It is high time we started relearning Spanish! To think that Cebuano has a working vocabulary of 10,000 Spanish words!

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[1] “Are you Chinese?” (Addressing me in the third person, as a form of respect)

[2] “Japanese?”

[3] “I’m Filipino.”

[4] “Excuse me, but I don’t understand. Can you speak slowly?”

[5] “I’m not Spanish. I’m Filipino. I only speak English and Italian.”

[6] Literally translated as “In fact” but when used as an interjection, implies agreement.

[7] “Who is the Filipino?”