Sakal, tingali, ambot nimo

December 29, 2007

 

I haven’t really seen Judy Ann’s movie Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo but I see that it’s making waves, although for a much different reason that its producers would have liked.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel panned the makers of the movie for the ethnic slur targeting the much larger population of the country that speaks Visayan.

Okay, from what I gathered, here’s the scene:

Gloria Romero: “Bakit pinapalaki ninyong Bisaya ang apo ko?”

Judy Ann Santos (Butts in): “Speak to the kid in Tagalog. Parang Pinoy.

Director and scriptwriter Joey Reyes then contemptuously dismissed Pimentel’s remarks as nothing more than the ramblings of a senile and tedious man. 

Make no bones about it, that’s an ethnic slur.  What? Only the Tagalogs are the real Filipinos now? With that said, I’m still quite ambivalent about the whole thing. The term Bisaya, though used homogeneously in pop culture, isn’t a solitary description for people who speak the language. I’m not going to rattle off a lengthy discourse on the difference in inflection, idioms, patois, and colloquialism between regions that are dominated by the Bisayas (the people, not the language); suffice to say that some speak the language better than others.

What’s my point? Well, it would be hypocritical for me to protest now when I’ve been guilty of making fun of others based on their regional genesis, culture, and native tongue. Fair or not, we have our own stereotypes about the Ilonggos (braggarts), the Mandayas (materialistic), the Ilocanos (penny-pinchers), the Moros (traitors) and even the tagalogs (My! how insular and snobbish they are).

We speak of Imperial Manila when referring to the policy decisions that do not undergo a consultation yet directly impact the economic and political direction of Visayas and Mindanao, but Davaoeños, too, are guilty of feeling superior to the residents of the far-flung barangays – the Matigsalogs, Ata-Manuvu, and other tribes — and I haven’t event taken into consideration the adjacent provinces and municipalities yet.

We’re dealing with a microcosm of what ails this country and that’s our regionalistic tendencies. Part of the reason why I couldn’t fully relate to what the senator was angry about is because I don’t see myself as a Bisaya but from Davao City who happens to speak Bisaya.

I’m speaking here of regionalism that’s largely defined by territory. Other factors also come into play, like culture, attitudes, economy, and affinity with the language but not by much. This matrix is quite evident the way we react to travel advisories issued by other countries against Davao City. I remember the two bombings that rocked Davao City back in 2003 when all the business leaders, tourism players, government officials and expats joined forces to employ a massive PR campaign to control the damage. 

Would the same travel advisory illicit a similar reaction among Davaoeños if that was issued against the Philippines in general? I reckon not.

Let’s take Teri Hatcher’s infamous snide remark about incompetent medical practitioners from the Philippines, apart from the official protest made by the Philippine government and Filipino doctors and nurses in the United States, the whole thing went kaput in just a few days until it was consigned to that purgatory called barbershop gossip, something to pass the time by.

I wonder how the remark would have been received if Teri Hatcher had said that medical practitioners from Davao City suck? This certainly would have been a different blog. When you go to Manila for example, you always strain your ears to listen to somebody speaking Bisaya and when you strike up a conversation, the first question you always ask where he or she comes from. Not the name.

But that kind of conversation is not so weird when you consider that it’s not the language that binds us, but our regions, cities, streets, houses, and similar acquaintances.

So no matter how ambiguous the term regionalism is, its interplay in Philippine political and economic dynamics is nevertheless real. When Malacañang calls for unity for a better Philippines, it’s not as simple as Filipinos holding hands towards a common goal. Instead it’s a neck-and-neck race for the distinction as the top performing province or city, whether in the area of peace and order, economy, environment, health, pollution control, or people.    

Sometimes I wonder if federalism is the most suitable political system for us, considering that we compete with each other anyway so why not just share the wealth and empower the regions to help themselves instead of constantly begging for scraps from the national government right?

But a corollary argument could also be made on how federalism could stunt the progression of regionalism from a spatial expanse into a dynamic process, from a pluralistic into an amalgamated society pursuing a much loftier goal than mere kinship and rivalry.  

But hey, who am I kidding? A slur, even if cloaked in humor, is still a slur.