The triumph of tagalog and the dominance of the discourse on english language politics in the philippines during the american colonial period 8

226
CHAPTER EIGHT
LANGUAGE AND POLITICS

In traditional political histories, it is quite difficult to find references to the anti-colonial
campaign fought on the cultural front. Given the surfeit of powerful evidence regarding the
language campaign and the many examples of other anti-colonial cultural productions (novels,
plays, music, folk literature), it not difficult to conceive that the absence is precipitated by the
very way we frame our histories—predispositions toward certain arch narratives or an emphasis,
for example on elections and elected officials—compel us to exclude other campaigns such as the
language campaign. Is it possible, though, that the popular groundswell for the cultural issue was
just not as powerful in instigating anti-colonial movements?
When one compares the central role of language and culture in the 20
th
Century, anti-
colonial struggle in Burma to that of the Philippines, one finds an astounding difference. The
center of Burma’s anti-colonial movement, as so many historians and linguists have told us was
language and culture; as a matter of fact, the concern for culture and language came first as anti-
colonial politics had its roots in organizations like the YMBA (Young Man’s Buddhist
Organization) and the Dobama Asiayone that was concerned about the drowning out by British
education of traditional Burmese culture, language and religion. The history of these anti-
colonial movements that were centered around culture was also quite sensational—large mass-
movements, strikes, boycotts, the rejection of the colonial education system and the setting up of
their own national schools. In the Philippines, after the Philippine-American War, and especially
after the establishment of the Philippine Assembly and the promise of independence, resistance
movements became enervated and/or isolated.



227

Such a difference is emphasized by historians like Vince Boudreau
587
who characterizes
Philippine anti-colonial movements as essentially fragmented with the nationalist elite separated
from the popular masses. This, according to Boudreau was because of certain American colonial
policies (principally the promise of independence) that diluted anti-colonial movements or
because of the elite’s own class interests. Boudreau argues that the great difference in the
colonial social structure between the Philippines and Burma was that in Burma, because of
various reasons like the abolition of the ruling class at the end of the Anglo-Burmese wars and
because the British policy for the peopling of the bureaucracy favored other ethnicities (Indians
and Chinese)
588
, there was no nationalist elite to serve as a buffer between the British and the
broad masses. The Americans, on the other hand, were so successful in deploying the nationalist
elite that soon enough, social and political tension was not so much directed toward the
Americans as it was more pronounced between the two classes.
589

Boudreau’s discussion includes detailed explanations of the particulars of the Philippine
conditions in 1898 when America embarked on its project and it also includes an account of the
specific American policies that shaped the character of the anti-colonial resistance. However, of
particular importance to this discussion is his depiction of those modes of resistance. Essentially,
he argues that Philippine anti-colonial resistance was different from the Southeast Asian anti-
colonial experience in that it had a nationalist elite class that was alienated from the broad masses
and, because they were very early on given control over a lot of the Philippine bureaucracy and
was cooperating and working with the American colonial officials. “If Philippine collective action
under U.S. rule is in many ways distinct from that in other Southeast Asian colonies,” Boudreau
argues, “the utter absence of a truly integrative and national elite leadership for Philippine
collective action is central to this difference.”
590

In a logic that suggests the tradition of
exceptionalist thinking, he argues that what was really at odds were the American liberal

587
Vince Boudreau, “Methods of Domination and Modes of Resistance: The U.S. Colonial State
and Philippine Mobilization in Comparative Perspective,” in The American Colonial State in the
Philippines: Global Perspectives, ed. Julian Go and Anne L. Foster, (Manila: Anvil Publication, 2005),
256-292.
588
Ibid, 274.
589
Ibid, 263 and 270.
590
Ibid, 263.

228
orientation that “produced support for universal education, broad suffrage, and upward mobility”
(since “its own Civil War helped dispatch the aristocratic ideology on which the U.S. South’s
plantation economy had rested”) with the nationalist elite which “relied on more unequal social
and political conventions” and therefore would gain by “insur[ing] a docile labor force.”
591
Of
course it is inconceivable that American liberal traditions that would wage a violent, uneven war,
occupy a land, alienate its people from its culture by attempting to, among other things, eradicate
the local languages, would itself be interested in creating unequal social and political conventions
and a docile labor force.
The dilution of the anti-colonial movement was brought about by particular colonial
policies. Several policies that America launched (such as the institution of a Department of
Labor) coopted segments of society that were traditionally radical (such as laborers) and diffused
these radical sentiments. Boudreau also claims that there was an anti-colonial struggle in the

Philippines but its character was completely different from that of its neighbors as it essentially
played out through elections, rather than through large protest movements.
If the nationalist elite were unable to forge collective anti-colonial action, then the
corollary to that must be argued: that mass movements, were weak, marginal, small, and
essentially localized. This is how Boudreau depicts the popular struggles, particularly the
agrarian struggles up to the 1930s. The largest of these agrarian movements was the Sakdal
movement headed by Benigno Ramos, that in May of 1935 waged a 65,000 strong uprising in the
provinces of Cavite, Laguna and Bulacan. The Sakdal movement was only one of a series of
other peasant uprisings that had germinated throughout the country. Boudreau depicts such
uprisings as “local affairs with weak national alliances and relatively parochial orientations,”
592
as
“limited affairs of small sections of society,”
593
and as “rebellions [that] never spread beyond their
local points of origin—even in the broadest movement of all, the Sakdal Rebellion of 1935.”
594


591
Ibid, 259.
592
Ibid, 256.
593
Ibid, 264.
594
Ibid.

229
By contrast, Boudreau presents the Burmese anti-colonial movement as containing all the

elements (missing in the Philippine case) for a powerful and unified mass, protest movement.
The nationalist elite in Burma, unlike in the Philippines, had been deprived by the British of their
role in running the government bureaucracy. By the time the British had decided to institute an
electoral process, elections had become associated with capitulation and thus participation in it
had always been poor.
595
Finally, he suggests that a broad alliance was created between peasants,
students, Buddhist monks, the rising middle class, when he talks about the dissatisfaction created
by the British restructuring of Burmese agrarian life.
596

Such a model does paint the Burmese anti-colonial movement in a very brave light, and,
especially for the purposes of appreciating the Philippine understanding of the relation of
language and culture to the nation, features the vital position of language and culture in the
Burmese struggle.

Language and Culture in Burmese Anti-Colonial Movements
The large, anti-colonial protests have their origins in disputes over educational issues, and
in particular in the dispute over the destructive power of English education over Burmese culture.
British efforts as systematizing the Burmese education system began in the 1860s after
the annexation of Lower Burma. Despite the fact that this education was principally based on the
vernacular, there were however, some Anglo-Burmese or even English schools which provided
training for advancement in the British colony: either a training in law, commerce or a preparation
for further study in India or in England itself. By the turn of the century, Burma had developed
its own hierarchy of language with English at the top (it was the language of government and

595
Ibid, 276.
596
Ibid, 274. Burmese anti-colonial movements have been depicted as both fragmented or unified

by various historians. Kratoska and Batson, for example, provide full details of what they call an
“increasingly divided nationalist movement.” See Paul Kratoska and Ben Batson, “Nationalism and
Modernist Reform,” in Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, volume 2, part 1, 253-320, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), particularly on page 283. Robert H. Taylor, on the other hand,
provides a detailed account of the rise of the unified Burmese middle class that “became the main force
behind the development of modern Burmese political nationalism.” See Robert H. Taylor, The State in
Burma, (London: C. Hurst and Company, 1987), page 124-126. Taylor’s explanation for the rise of this
anti-colonial force, unlike that of Boudreau has little to do with a buffer, nationalist elite, but more with a
combination of factors, the most evident of which is the threat posed by Indian workers and traders.

230
higher education) and with Burmese being the language of the rural areas or of domestic life. The
satisfaction with such a system (and the desire for more of Western culture) was held by Burmese
such as Mg Mya, a paragon of the good colonial subject. Mg Mya argued:
In my humble opinion the Burman wants no Burmese school education. His
ability to read and write is enough to all intents and purposes. What he wants is a
thorough and good knowledge of the English language. When he gains a good
knowledge of English, he will have a taste for English literature which cannot but
inspire into him a sense of love and admiration of British justice, of just pride as
a member of the worldwide empire in which the sun never sets. Enjoying the full
privileges of a British subject and of loyalty and devotion to His Most Gracious
Majesty.
597


It is this kind of excited acceptance of English and Western culture and an almost equal
excitement to reject Burmese culture that must have alarmed many budding nationalists. In
reaction to both British policies and the easy Burmese acceptance of Western domination, a
number of associations mostly focused on Buddhism, arose at the turn of the century, the largest
and most popular of which was the Young Man’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), which was

founded in 1906. The YMBA was principally a non-political group (at least until 1917) whose
members were vexed by Western values, language, dress, ideas that were encroaching into
Burmese culture and was thereby focused on the protection of Burmese values, culture, and
traditions and the protection of the Buddhist faith. This organization would eventually become a
political organization but the first impetus for organizing (which remained a concern through to
independence) was a concern for culture and tradition. Initially, however, the resolutions of
YMBA were “framed as polite request[s] and not as demand[s].
598

Student organizations would be moved to action also by the long and contentious process
of creating Burma’s own university. The establishment of Rangoon University was first proposed
in 1910. In this proposal, the existing colleges, Judson College and Rangoon College would
merge to form Rangoon University. Numerous delays—disagreements over curriculum, status,
location, British colonial government’s foot-dragging, World War One—caused a ten year delay.
When it was finally going to be launched in 1920, many Burmese objected to it. The objections

597
Mg Mya. “The Imperial Idea and Sense of Personal Loyalty to the King-Emperor,” typescript,
Myanmar National Archives, series 1/15 (E), accession number 4035.
598
Aye Kyaw, The Voice of Young Burma, (Ithaca, New York: Southeast Asian Program, 1993),
16.

231
were focused on the high cost of the University education, its excessively long preparatory
requirement coursework, the lack of adequate Burmese representation in the University council,
and the fact that the University was not going to be affiliated with any of the colleges outside of
Rangoon. Several newspapers carried articles that expressed objections to the blueprint of the
University. Various groups and associations formulated resolutions and memorials and delivered
them to the colonial authorities. The reaction to these protests, apparently, was simply to ignore

them and the University was inaugurated in December of 1920.
The colonial government’s intransigence would be the cause of a series of popular, large,
and sometimes violent strikes and boycotts.
599
The boycotts would be lead by the senior students
of Judson and Rangoon Colleges, many of whom were members of the YMBA. The boycotts
began in early December, 1920 when a number of students met underneath a tree at the
Shwedagon Pagoda (a beautiful marker that lists the names of the students currently marks the
spot) to plan the boycott. The boycott (in the form of a kind of sit-down strike at one of the
monasteries) was initially attended by about 300 students for the two colleges but within a few
days many more secondary school students had joined in the effort and it had gained massive
public support. This initial strike has been described as: “the first organized attempt by the
intelligentsia in expressing disobedience to the foreign rule.”
600
Although the boycott initially
started as an objection to the University Charter, it quickly turned into a protest against the
general character of education in general under the British. Soon enough the boycott had turned
into a campaign to establish national educational institutions, where instruction would be carried
out entirely in Burmese and much financial support was shown by the general public in the
campaign to raise money to establish such institutions.
Indeed, one may rightly claim that the protest had a national character in that it was
participated in by students from different districts. Aye Kyaw recounts an interesting incident

599
There are numerous accounts of these student strikes. Almost any general history of Burma
will provide a narrative account of them. The most engaging and the most detailed is Aye Kyaw’s The
Voice of Young Burma (see previous footnote). See also Joseph Silverstein, “Burmese and Malaysian
Student Politics: A Preliminary Comparative Inquiry,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1.1 (1970): 3-2.
600
Nyi Nyi, “The Development of University Education in Burma”, Journal of the Burma

Research Society 47 (1964): 11-45

232
about a famous pwe (traditional show) performer based in Mandalay named U Po Sein who had
incensed the Mandalay student boycotters by openly professing his non-support of them. The
Mandalay students called for a boycott as well of U Po Sein’s traveling pwe. They were
boycotted at Mandalay, and then again at Pegu and then finally at Rangoon. Facing the prospect
of financial ruin because of the boycott issued upon him and supported by the general populace,
U Po Sein had to make a public apology (both written and at a mass meeting back in Mandalay)
before the boycott of his pwe troupe would be lifted.
601

Eventually, the boycott would dissipate without concession on the part of the British
colonial government but would morph into an amazing resolve among the boycotters to establish
a nationwide system of national schools. Of course, the boycott is widely credited with being one
of the corner-stones of the Burmese nationalist movement. In response the student strikes, W.
Booth-Gravely, a British colonial official would ironically declare:
No one has ever affirmed that those who are still in the state of college or school
instruction should be accepted as the guides of a race or nation seeking to attain a
larger political independence. The students are without a doubt the raw material
out of which the citizens of the future will be fashioned. Their time is to come,
but for them to attempt prematurely to appropriate to themselves the authority of
mature citizens in any movement which should have its origin and support only
from those of riper age and with experience of the sterner lessons of life, is a
course of action which cannot but meet with the disapproval of all reasonable
persons.
602


Booth-Gravely could not have known that beginning ten years after his avuncular pronouncement

students would actually become the vanguards who would lead Burma into independence. Aye
Kyaw tells us that the mood fifteen or twenty years later would be quite the opposite of the
sentiment expressed by Booth-Gravely: It was the popular belief then [late 1930s] that young
college students had to instruct the people in the ways of democracy and had to lead the Burmese
in their march toward national independence.”
603
The student strikes of 1920 would sow the
seeds for an eventual massive, broad-spectrumed anti-colonial movement.

601
Aye Kyaw. The Voice of Young Burma, 30.
602
W. Booth-Gravely, “Extracts from the Proceedings of the Government of Burma Education
Department dated 20
th
December 1920,” Myanmar National Archives, Series Number 1/15 (D), Accession
Number 1469.
603
Aye Kyaw. The Voice of Young Burma, 80.

233
Although the boycott was the first organized anti-colonial attempt carried out by the
Burmese intelligentsia, it was in no way the first Burmese expression of anti-colonial sentiment.
Drake identifies the three crucial groups that made up the nationalist movement: the peasants,
represented by the village pongyis (religious leaders) and the Buddhist sangha, the student-
oriented associations, and the Western educated elite that banded together to form European-style
political parties.
604
After the boycotts of 1920, the focus of political attention became the
Dyarchy issue, the British plan to grant the Burmese some control of their government (similar to

the Philippines’ Jones Law of 1916 where America retained top leadership of the bureaucracy but
some government departments were to be run by Filipinos). The Dyarchy issue saw the rise of
formal politics, the growth of an elite class that was essentially separated from the masses, and
defections and then splintering of these elite groups into smaller factions, concerned mostly with
party politics. They were, however almost unanimously united in their slow (but sure)
disassociation from the broad masses such that by 1930, virtually none of these politicians lent
their support to the Saya San peasant rebellion.
605

By the 1930s, the students were again to organize themselves into a powerful political
party that was to distinguish itself from the more traditional politics engaged in by the western-
influenced politicians. The students founded the Dobama Asiayone (Our Burma Association),
known for the members’ appropriation of the title Thakin (master) as a prefix to their names. The
principal concern of this party was once again cultural but now also very much political: their
principal objectives were the revival of a national culture and independence. Their campaigns
centered around a wider use of the Burmese language in all aspects of Burmese life and with
literary production in the Burmese language. The excitement of this time and the popularity of
the Dobama Asiayone is described by Ma Ma Lay in her novel Not Out of Hate. In this novel, the
brother of the main character slowly transforms from an indifferent young man to a Thakin who

604
B.K. Drake, Burma: Nationalist Movements and Independence, (Kuala Lumpur and Singapore,
Longman, 1979), 15.
605
Drake lists other campaigns in which these “western-oriented politicians” distanced themselves
from the sentiments of the masses. They are boycott of the Simon Commission (appointed to look into the
India-Burma connection), the revitalization of the anti-tax campaign, and the attitude toward the death of a
pongyi through hunger strike (page 23).

234

advocates independence from Britain and is concerned about the suffering of the Burmese broad
masses.
The Dobama Asiayone slowly organized among the students and soon became a strong
force that could mobilize student discontent. By 1936, the Thakins had control of the Rangoon
University Student Union and was able to launch a successful three-month strike, which like the
boycott of 1920, spread among other colleges and the various secondary schools throughout
Burma.
Though the students of the Dobama Asiayone had sympathy for the broad Burmese
masses and the peasant movements
606
and there was also much popular support for the student
strikes, it was not until 1938 when the students in the Dobama started to organize peasants and
laborers that the anti-colonial protest movement gained its character of having a strong united
front.
It was around 1938, when that Thakins started to involve themselves with the task of
labor organizing that the protest movements really started to grow by massive proportions. There
were various attempts to organize dock workers, bus drivers, and oil company workers and lead
them to strike. The arrest of two students during an oil company rally pushed the students to
organize a large protest action attended by more than a thousand students. The rally turned
violent, a student was killed and many were injured. This was followed by a series of other
massive protest actions some of which also ended in violence; the February, 1939 protest action
in Mandalay saw fourteen students and pongyis killed). It was really only at this point, when
public opposition against the British colonial administration and the Burmese “sell-out”
government was extremely heightened that the students, the Thakins, the radical pongyis and the
broad Burmese masses were united. It would take about ten more years and the Second World
War before independence would be granted and through those ten years the Dobama Asiayone,
supported by the broad Burmese masses, would be at the forefront of the struggle.
What began with a concern for the preservation of language and culture among the
members of the YMBA and then later with the Dobama Asiayone quickly swelled into an

606
Aye Kyaw, The Voice of Young Burma, 66.

235
awareness of the political dimension of the threat to Burmese language and culture. Members of
these organizations soon made the connection between colonial control, marginalization of the
labor and peasants, the imposition of western-style politics and the erasure of Burmese traditions,
culture, and language.

Language, Anti-Colonial Struggles, and National Histories
It goes without saying that the conclusions that you arrive at depend on the way you
approach the problem, on the kind of questions you ask, on the data that you select to include (or
leave out). In presenting the story of the anti-colonial struggle in Burma during the first half of
the 20
th
Century, a united front can be suggested (and would not necessarily be untrue) by
excluding information about Burmese elite politics. To suggest, however, the way Boudreau
does, that Burmese elite politics did not exist (“the vacuum left by the dissolution of the local
Myonthungyis meant that no legitimizing force stood between colonial power and society”
607
) is
to single out the Philippine colonial experience as particularly harsh and particularly exploitative.
Starting the 1920s, Burma did in fact have the Golden Valley Group (similar to the Philippine
Federalista Party) that gave support to the colonial administration and were largely unpopular and
the 21 Party, later the People’s Party (similar to the Philippine Nationalista Party) that advocated
home rule. It seems probable that any society, even those with strong liberal traditions, would
inevitably generate an elite class (complex enough to have both liberals and conservatives within
it) that would put its class interest above all else and would attempt legislation and policy to
protect those interests.
In the Philippines, great interest has been placed on the role of the elite during the

American colonial period. There has been a surplus of writings focused on this privileged class.
Benedict Anderson’s “Cacique Democracy in the Philippines,” Michael Cullinane’s Ilustrado
Politics, and Julian Go’s American Empire and the Politics of Meaning all track the character and
role and political education of the Philippine elite in the shaping of the nation during the
American colonial period. Though informative, such projects are, at worst, restatements of the

607
Boudreau, “Methods of Domination,” 274.

236
colonial discourse of the manifest destiny. At best they are examinations of the range of reactions
to colonialism: from outright assimilation to tepid forms to localization.
For the objective of understanding anti-colonial resistance, such projects are necessarily
incomplete as they exclude an equal, if not stronger force that asserted its own formations in the
creation of meaning. The tendency to focus on elite formations leads to a tendency, as in
Boudreau, to construct a non-elite resistance as isolated and marginal. These two situations (an
alienated elite and an isolated non-elite) are not conditional upon each other as the case of Burma,
with its powerful unity of students, workers, monks despite the alienated elite, shows.
The story of language during the American colonial period also suggests that the non-
elite Tagalog campaign which was an anti-colonial campaign had broad-spectrum support that cut
across class; its support came from the popular masses (Liwayway magazine, Muling Pagsilang,
Balagtasan), the intelligentsia (the English proficient intelligentsia at that), and even the
nationalist elite. It was a massive anti-colonial effort that, up until now, was largely neglected by
history given the general tendency to exclude culture in accounting for a nation’s history and
given the general tendency (proof of the dominance of English) to assign great significance and
respect articulations in the vernacular. This is not to suggest that the story of language during the
American colonial period is one of bifurcation and one that is simply a matter of English (pushed
by the Americans and the nationalist elite) and Tagalog (campaigned for by the true nationalists
and the masses). Although the story of the English policy in the Philippines is, in this thesis, told
depicting it as a relatively inflexible, the same cannot be said of the Tagalog campaign. The most

visible figures of the Tagalog campaign, Manuel L. Quezon and Lope K. Santos are extremely
complex. Quezon was by no means a true defender of Tagalog and at certain points even equaled
David Barrows in his almost aggressive faith in English; Santos, though unwavering in his
dedication to Tagalog, was unlike the stereotype of the anti-colonial hero and in many ways a
proponent of modern and American political formations. The popular understanding of the
history of language in the Philippines, however, centers around these two figures.
In the hero-fixated Philippines where the streets of every little town throughout the
archipelago are always Rizal Avenue or Bonifacio Drive or Del Pilar Lane, Philippine presidents,

237
no matter how ignoble are lionized into the “Father of Filipino this” or the “Champion of Filipino
that.” Enter any bookstore or even supermarket in any part of the country and you can purchase a
postcard with a stately looking painting of a hero or a president printed on one side and a short
biography printed on the other. It is through such media (along with history books, monuments,
national holidays, state rituals) that Manuel L. Quezon, first president of the Philippine
Commonwealth, has become known as “The Father of the National Language.”
Though he is much less well known, Lope K. Santos is also considered one of the
important figures of Philippine history. In some of the larger bookstores, you may sometimes
also chance upon a postcard of him as well. The short biography on the other side of the postcard
will name him “Ama ng Balarila” or “Father of (Tagalog) Grammar.”
The manner in which both these figures have become, in the popular imagination, the
towering figures in the creation and championing of the national language provides for us a venue
for exploring their lives in a bit more detail in order to understand the role language played in
forming the nation during this period under the Americans. These two figures were alike and
were opposite in so many ways. One could say that they began in the same position, went on to
be representatives of different, even opposing sectors of society and assumed rival positions on
language but later found points of agreement such that before the start of the Commonwealth
government they would be allies and work together. This direction of convergence, divergence,
and then convergence again, parallels, in a manner of speaking, the story of language during this
period. This story is a story of power and annihilation, tenacious insistence on the parts of both

the dominant and the marginalized, affection and faith in one’s language and culture, change and
a recognition of this change, failure and a recognition of this failure, and a yielding to what is
inevitable. It is a story of both triumph and domination and also of failure. Tagalog triumphs
against an English policy that (up until the 1920s) had the objective of eliminating it, as David
Barrows and other colonial officials so boldly proclaimed (see Chapter 3 and particularly Chapter
4). Despite this vigorous campaign, Tagalog writers studied, Tagalog, wrote about and wrote in
it, campaigned and advocated for the return of Tagalog to the position it had occupied during the
revolution as the common language of an already realized nation. Writers in English like Bocobo

238
and Lopez joined in as well. And, toward the end of American colonial rule, they triumphed.
The United States dominated (but not triumphed) in that school instruction in English was
mandated in the 1935 Constitution (this was a condition of independence) but then so was the
national language mandated by the 1935 Constitution. Thus, while English dominated, Tagalog
triumphed.

Manuel L. Quezon and Lope K. Santos
The lives of Manuel L. Quezon and Lope K. Santos converge in the Philippine-American
war and in their participation in armed struggle; diverge during the first ten years of the American
Civil Government (such that they came to represent opposite positions); and then converge again
in their (Santos a little later than Quezon) acceptance of modern American ideas of the state, of
thought, and of progress and in their acceptance of the transfer of the struggle for independence to
a purely legal arena and through deep negotiation and lobbying with the Americans, mostly in
Washington, D.C. These convergences and divergences parallel the fate of Tagalog as dominant,
contested, and then dominant again.
Quezon was a mestizo and his family could be considered a rural illustrado family (they
owned some land and was the only Filipino family in town who could speak Spanish) in the town
of Baler, which is quite a distance from Manila but is still considered a Tagalog area. The family
was wealthy enough that they could send Quezon to Manila for his education but not wealthy
enough to send him to Europe. He studied law at the University of Santo Tomas but his law

education was interrupted by the Philippine-American war and upon its declaration in February,
1899, Quezon enlisted himself in the Philippine army. He formed part of the staff of Aguinaldo
and rose to the rank of Captain without any field experience. Eventually, he became one of the
lieutenants of General Mascardo at the time that he had command of Pampanga and then later

239
Bataan and Zambales and for about a year and a half participated in both open combat and
guerilla warfare. He surrendered soon after Aguinaldo’s own surrender in March of 1901.
608

Lope K. Santos had a more humble background and a more humble involvement in the
Philippine-American war. He was born and lived most of his life in or near Manila. His father
was a laborer who set type in a printing establishment in Manila. He got his education through
scholarship at the Normal School in Manila in the late 1890s. During the Philippine-American
war, he was part of the staff of Gereral Pio del Pilar and General Cailles but never participated in
combat. He could never be considered, by his own admission, a guerilla nor of any great
importance to the revolutionary army, though he did serve it in very small capacities.
609
His
reputation as a radical and staunch nationalist would be gained later principally through his work
organizing laborers, his leadership of the Union Obrera Democratica (later the Union Obrera
Democratica de Filipinas), his pioneering work in attempting to organize the first Nationalista
party (with rebel leader Macario Sakay), his articles in Muling Pagsilang and his novel, Banaag
at Sikat, which was a piercing critique of capitalism in the Philippines.
Quezon and Santos, thus, had similar nationalist beginnings, initial distrust of the
American colonizers, and a strong desire for Philippine independence. Their stands on language,
however would diverge during much of the American period and then converge again toward the
end.
Santos was unwavering in his support for and defense of Tagalog. Santos’ class
affiliations were much closer to ordinary folk than Quezon’s was and this may have been part of

the reason why Santos’ loyalty to Tagalog was strong. His first language had always been
Tagalog. In his autobiography he recounts how as a young boy he would stick close to his father
who would teach him about the language and how he would hang out in the printing
establishment where his father worked and ask his father questions about the letters and then the
words that the type would form and about the logic of the spelling of Tagalog and Spanish

608
See Manuel Luis Quezon, A Good Fight, New York: Appleton-Century, 1946), especially
Chapter Three and Carlos Quirino. Quezon: Paladin of Philippine Freedom. (Manila: Filipinana Book
Guild, 1971).
609
Lope K. Santos, Talambuhay ni Lope K. Santos: “Paham ng Wika,” ed. Paraluman S.
Aspillera, (Manila: Capitol Publishing, 1972), 22.

240
words.
610
It seems that even early on, Santos had developed an instinct for Tagalog and for what
it meant to the Philippine nation.
Quezon’s first language was Spanish, in fact, in his autobiography, he reveals where his
true sentiments were at the end of the Spanish-American War.
I confess to a feeling of deep sadness when I saw the old [Spanish] flag come
down forever. After all, I inherited from my mother some Spanish blood, I spoke
from childhood the language of Castile, and although the last Spanish friar, parish
priest of my town, was far from what his vocation required him to be, one of his
predecessors had been my teacher.
611


When Quezon was starting to gain recognition as a politician, he would often be called on to

make speeches. He would hire Lope K. Santos to translate into Tagalog the speeches he would
first write in Spanish. Santos’ analysis of Quezon’s relation to Tagalog is this: “Palibhasa’y hindi
niya lubos na nasasaklaw ang kayamanan ng wikang Tagalog, madalas na siya’y nabibitin sa
pagsasalita at naghahagilap ng tamang salita.”
612
(“He did not thoroughly master the richness of
the Tagalog language, he was often frustrated when speaking it and would frantically search for
the right word.”) This is not to say that the non-mastery of a language automatically translates
into a non-loyalty (or in Quezon’s case a floundering of loyalty) to that language. In Quezon,
however, the cause of his floundering loyalty to Tagalog may not be known but it is nevertheless
a fact, of which, many Filipinos would be quite surprised to learn, given his reputation as “The
Father of the National Language.”
The popular understanding today for why Filipino, the national language of the
Philippines, is based so heavily on Tagalog is that it was what Quezon (who was President at the
time of the official declaration of the national language in 1937) wanted since he was a Tagalog.
The establishment of the National language based on Tagalog had a lot more to do with people
like Lope K. Santos and the Tagalog organizations than with Quezon, who, for many years,
vigorously supported English as the only official language of the Philippines.
One of Quezon’s first declarations of a partiality toward English was made in 1913 when
asked to comment on the state of English in the Philippines. He replied that he felt that the

610
Ibid, 6.
611
Quezon, A Good Fight, 37.
612
Santos, Talambuhay ni Lope K. Santos, 47.

241
Filipinos had “gained by the acquisition of the English language and that it was “more useful to

us than Spanish.” The local languages, he relegates to the home and believes that “English will
never supplant them” yet as the common language of the nation “the adoption of one of our native
dialects as the common language for the Islands would have been less useful than Spanish
because we could not communicate through that language with any other foreign country.”
613

The rhetoric in these statements is simple and reveals a kind of easy practicality in Quezon’s
logic.
The rhetoric in his declarations of support for English, whether he was speaking to an
American audience or a Filipino audience becomes more dramatic when speaking to an audience
and he tended to link English to American benevolence. In 1919, he addressed The Leauge of
Free Nations in New York City
614
and there he declared, much to the delight of the audience, the
continued presence and centrality of English in the Philippines. He declared “It should be a
matter of satisfaction to all of you to know that inside of a few more years there will be but one
language spoken universally in the Philippine Islands, and if I may say so myself, as a Filipino, I
think it will be the Shakespearean language that you have just heard here today.” Quezon’s
approach here is interesting. His object was political independence and his idea was to argue that
through the English language, the Filipinos had learned the meaning of freedom and democracy
and are therefore now desirous of their independence. He claimed that all the Filipino boys and
girls had been educated in “American” schools (he qualifies this not to mean that the schools are
financed by America and only that it was founded by Americans and where English is used as the
medium of instruction) and that if independence was not granted now “ten years hence those girls
and boys will claim in a louder voice their right to be free.” His picture of the relationship
between the Philippines and America was one of mutual care and love “Do you know of any
case,” he asks, “where people who have been under foreign domination seek to be free, not
because they have been mistreated, but because they have been so well treated?”

613

Manuel L. Quezon, Signed letter to H.G. Poblador, August 12, 1913, Camilo Osias Papers,
Philippine National Library, Reel 0145, Image Number 4.
614
Manuel L. Quezon, “Address Delivered Before the League of Free Nations Aassociation at
Hotel Oncorde, New York City, on April 19, 1919.” Manuel L. Quezon Papers, Philippine National
Library, Reel 118, Image Number 5.

242
In his 1921 address to the Philippine Inter-Alumni Union, Quezon demonstrates how he
himself had so expertly taken in the American discourse on English in the Philippines. He
declares:
I have just read your constitution and found that one of the things for which you
are working is to have the English language declared as the only official language
in the Philippines. I have been for that proposition long before I knew English
and I really think it is no longer a debatable question. It was settled long ago by
our own Government and by our people when it was decided that the English
language would be the language to be taught in the public schools, that was
tantamount to a definite declaration of the part of the Government that English
will ultimately be adopted as the only official language of the Philippine Islands .
. . Of course, the English language has to be the official language of the
Philippine Islands. It is out of the question to think of any of our native dialects
for this purpose because we would not be able to come to an agreement as to
which one should be adopted . . . Besides, our native dialects have not the
literature necessary for the education and intellectual training of our youth . . . I
shall simply say that if you want to have a clear notion and conception of liberty
and freedom you have to get it through English literature.
615


Quezon here has adopted all the major points of the discourse on English: that the Filipinos

wanted it, that there is disagreement among the Filipinos as to which local language can be used
as the common language, that the literature from the local languages are underdeveloped and
unsuitable for education, and that English itself is the language of democracy. Quezon must have
sensed in all his dealings with the Americans that the idea of English remaining in the Philippines
was important to them and that the best proof that Filipinos were educated enough as to finally
merit independence was their English proficiency. “It would appeal to the American nation,”
Quezon continued, “to know that even after their flag has been pulled down American institutions
and American ideals will remain as the heritage of the Filipino. They will be assured of this when
they know that the English language has been adopted by the people of the Philippine Islands as
their official language.”
616
Quezon’s commitment to English continued and all the way through
to his lobbying for the Tydings-McDuffy law of 1934 which finally provided for the
establishment of a Commonwealth Government and independence ten years after the

615
“Stenographic Report of the Speech of Hon. Manuel L. Quezon, President of the Senate in the
Third Open Program of the Inter-Alumni Union Held on the Philippine Normal
Auditorium, March 12, 1921.” Manuel L. Quezon Papers, Philippine National Library, Reel 118, Image
Number 7.

616
Ibid.

243
Commonwealth. It was Tydings-McDuffy that stipulated that the Philippine constitution that was
to be drafted the following year had to specify that English would be the medium of instruction in
the soon to become independent Philippine nation.
Although Manuel L. Quezon’s and Lope K. Santos’ position on language would meet
again in 1935 and 1936 when Quezon would make the institution of the National Language on of

the priorities of his administration, in those years before the Commonwealth, Quezon would
manifest his position on language quite clearly and it was not, despite what his speeches declared,
the primacy of English. It would be difficult to reconcile his advocacy of English with his later
advocacy of a national language unless, one understands that Quezon’s commitment was really
not to English but to political independence. English, in his view was merely a tool to arrive at
that independence. It would be fair then to reprise here Santos’ assessment of Quezon that “he
did not thoroughly master the richness of the Tagalog language” (“hindi niya lubos na
nasasaklaw ang kayamanan ng wikang Tagalog”) as, in using English as a tool, and therefore
allowing it dominance over the Philippines, he seems to have missed what the Muling Pagsilang
writers had asserted so many years ago: that Tagalog was the soul of the nation and that nation
was found in Tagalog. Political independence was not the same as nationhood.

The Broad Strokes
The explanation here of the role of language in creating the nation will rely on an outline
made up of broad strokes. To be sure, these strokes are large enough as to be both somewhat
restrictive and at the same time allow for exceptions that may prove it wrong. Nevertheless, it is
in the larger sweep of the events of the forty or so years of American occupation that one may
understand how the actions of oppression and domination, refusal, struggle and resistance and,
inevitably, negotiation moved to establish the role of English and Tagalog within the Philippine
nation.
In this narrative, Tagalog moved from a marginalized position to a relatively dominant
one. At the very opening of the century, the resolute assault launched by American colonial
officials against all the native language in its bid to supplant (by some accounts even annihilate)

244
them and replace them with English united Tagalog writers and thinkers in the cause of saving
their beloved language. Thirty or so years later, the Tagalog campaign would be alive and
sanguine. The Philippine Commonwealth Constitution of 1935 would provide for a national
language based on a local language and two years later Tagalog would be declared as that
language upon which the national language would be based.

English, on the other hand, managed to maintain its dominant position while yielding to
Tagalog. Those first few years of occupation found the Americans insistent upon the imposition
of English throughout the Philippines, in their crusade to depict the local languages as useless or
near death, and in their project of creating an American educated elite who would defend
American ways, American policy and the American language. Yet, their policies would also have
to yield to the inevitability of a people’s devotion to their history, language, and culture.
Independence would be inevitable as would be the continued use of the vernaculars, yet the
colonial project would find a way to endure and English would continue to occupy an essential
part of Philippine society through the constitutional provision the Americans would insist upon:
that English remain the language of education even after independence.
The principal agents in this process—the Tagalog writers (like Lope K. Santos), the
American colonial officials (like David Barrows), the Spanish-speaking, later American-educated
and English-speaking elite (like Manuel L. Quezon) who occupied the most powerful positions in
government—all held fast to their positions but yielded to what they must have seen at the time as
historical inevitability.
The American colonial officials started out like gangbusters in their vigorous attempt to
make English the common language throughout the Philippines. The pinnacle of this certainty
saw Barrows declare the inevitable death of the local languages. Yet, with a realization of the
impossibility of their project, these officials adjusted their proclamation about and definition of
the common language (as the Monroe Report of 1925 did). These officials were forced to accept
that the vernaculars would, forever more, have a place in Philippine society. With the
inevitability of independence, they had to tolerate the idea that a linguistic symbol for the new
nation would have to be erected and that it was not going to be English. Yet, even with the

245
supposed benevolence of the granting of political independence came a chilling reminder of
American colonial desire for control. There was to be no independence for the Filipino in their
choice of the language that was to be used as the medium of instruction. Inscribed in the
constitution that was to stand for almost forty years was the continued use of English as the
medium of instruction. English was something for which there was going to be no negotiation

and, although they had transformed from gangbusters to shrewd negotiators, in effect their policy
from thirty years before stood. It turned out, as David Barrows had predicted in 1908, that
“civilization [was] to be accomplished not by force but by persuasion.”
617

A small, elite group of wealthy influentials controlled business, education, and
government. They were mostly Spanish and English-speaking, well-educated (many in America),
landed or owners of industry. Throughout the thirty or so years before the Commonwealth, they
were divided in their positions about language. Although there had always been a group that
defended the vernaculars, the majority of them felt that it was either Spanish or English that
would claim primary importance in Philippine life. For a great majority of this class (as it is still
with this class today), Spanish and/or English was the language of business and high culture; the
local languages were the languages of the common people. Yet, by the 1930s, the support for
Tagalog (in some it was the support for what it represented in terms of independence) became the
dominant position such that the paragon of this class, Manuel L. Quezon, would champion it and
ensure its place as the national language.
The Tagalog writers worked tirelessly to keep Tagalog alive. The people’s unshakable
devotion to Tagalog and the impossibility of obliging them to take up another language and
culture were what these Tagalog writers drew from and fed into. And yet, in a manner of
speaking, they eventually had to give up Tagalog in order to attain political independence.
America’s tenacity at implementing the policy to make English the common language has
already been discussed in previous chapters. What is left to underscore here is the paradox of the
flexible rigidity of this policy; of how it could extend to a point where it could tolerate dissention

617
Philippines. The Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education. (Manila: Bureau of
Printing, 1908), 101.

246
even among the top officials of the colonial government. This of course is just good old

fashioned American democracy; the rigidity, however belies all the rhetoric of democracy and
exposes the pretense of a “rule by, for, and of the people.” It is, however, within this flexibility
that Philippine writers could imagine and hope that Tagalog and the other Philippine languages
would formally take up an important place in Philippine life. In August of 1931, for example,
Vice-governor and Secretary of Public Instruction George Butte, in an address to the Catholic
Women’s League, declared that “After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that all
instruction in each of the elementary schools in the Philippines should be given in one of the nine
native languages, which is approximate to the locality, as soon as the necessary textbooks can be
provided and qualified teachers obtained.”
618
Although various American politicians and colonial
officials throughout the span of the colonial occupation had expressed this position, it had taken
thirty years for the head of the Secretary of Public Instruction to assume it. It was assumed too
late. In a matter of three years the Commonwealth constitution was going to be written with the
provision that would permanently ensure that instruction was going to be in English.
As the colonial government moved from a military to a civil government (in 1901) and as
the tight grip on expressions of nationalism and a desire for independence slowly loosened (this
loosening corresponds to the gains made in their pacification campaign), Tagalog writers were
given more space to freely express their sentiments regarding their language and their opposition
to English. The Philippine Assembly passed, in 1907, a bill that was to provide for primary
education in the vernacular. The Philippine Commission vetoed the bill but the passage of the bill
demonstrated how important the vernaculars were to the Filipinos. During this period, the local
press became bolder and articulations against the English policy were abundant.
It is no wonder then that the most strident defense of English and the harshest attack on
the vernacular comes during this period from the Director of the Bureau of Public Education of
the time, David Barrows. Barrows is often depicted as one of the most benevolent of the directors

618
George C. Butte, “Shall the Philippines Have a Common Language?,” Philippine Journal of
Education 14, no. 4 (1931): 149.

247
who had a real vision and commitment to Philippine education.
619
Yet from him came the
strongest defense of English, the severest analysis of the condition of Philippine culture, and a
dismal prediction that the local languages would disappear. Barrows would claim approval for
the Corrales bill save for some administrative difficulties
620
and acknowledge in it the destiny of
the Filipinos to endure by “absorbing and fitting to its own purposes the common civilization of
the western world.”
621
Yet, even in these condescensions, Barrows held fast to the English policy.
The 1925 Board of Education Survey, also known as the Monroe Report was quoted in
length in Chapter 3 and held up as the apotheosis of the American discourse on the correctness of
the English policy in the Philippines. However, the discourse is not all that unshakeable and in
some of the details of the Monroe report one finds some contradictions. The Report, for example,
admits, “At one point in the school curriculum some use of the dialect seems desirable.”
622
This
point is ethics education. The Study admits that the understanding of such an important matter as
good morals and right conduct “depends largely upon a familiarity with the language form.”
623

The Survey therefore recommends the “possible use of the dialects in giving instruction to
children in manners and morals.”
624
Here then is an admission of what Bocobo calls the
“axiomatic,” that idea that the comprehension of new concepts will be most efficiently

accomplished if the conveyance is done in the mother tongue. The recommendation is never
heeded but here is one of the first official acknowledgements, tiny as it may be, of an error in the
policy.
Another contradiction of the Monroe report comes in their definition of terms and in their
statement of intention. Although for over twenty years, colonial officials were making
pronouncements about how English would become the common language of the Filipinos and, in

619
In Social Engineering in the Philippines, for example, Glen May idealized Barrows as a
champion of liberal education who had a sincere belief in universal education as a precondition for
development and progress and in a “’literary’ education for young Filipinos [that would] emphasize
academic subjects at the expense of manual training. (pages 98-99). See also Chapter 2 for a discussion of
this.
620
The Eighth Annual Report of the Director of Education. 99.
621
Ibid, 101.
622
The Board of Education Survey, A Survey of the Educational System of the Philippine Islands,
(Manila: Bureau of Printing, 1925), 28.
623
Ibid.
624
Ibid.

248
the case of Barrows, how the local languages would eventually disappear, this report had to admit
differently.
There is no anticipation and no desire to replace the native dialects as a common
medium of communication among the masses of the people. This can only come

about as a natural process through the course of time. By a common language is
meant a language for common intercourse in business, professional, intellectual,
political, and cultural affairs. This language will be a medium of communication
between all the educated members of the dialect group. . .
625


Contrary to how English was previously projected as “the great equalizer” that would unite all
Filipinos, now English is unabashedly admitted as the elite language. Within this short excerpt is
contained the great social divide of “masses of the people” and “educated members.” Given the
history of the enthusiastic predictions of English replacing local languages and uniting Filipinos,
there is an undertone of defeat in this statement. This defeat is not just in the admission that the
local languages cannot be replaced but maybe more so in the realization that English emphasizes
and encourages a sharp division among the social classes, which is exactly the opposite of what it
was supposed to do. Despite this, the Monroe Report is still, after all, a powerful affirmation of
the English policy. Though the members of the board may have been somewhat (infinitesimally
so) attuned to the Filipino sentiment on language, in the end, the recommendations remained
simply recommendations and the English policy remained intact and absolute.
Despite all the protestations of the Anti-imperialist Leauge, and all the Saleebys and all
the Buttes of America, when it was time to stipulate the conditions under which independence
would happen, it was clear that it was only going to happen if English would remain in the same
place carved out for it in 1899. Benevolence and flexibility could be projected and spun but in
the fine print is found the absolute rigidity of the policy. The Tydings-McDuffie law, passed by
the American legislature in March of 1934 and accepted by the Philippine legislature in May of
the same year, was crafted by the American Senate and the Filipino members of the Independence
missions. It was the law that would finally provide for Philippinene independence. In the details
of the independence law is found the ties that would continue to connect the U.S. to the
Philippines, ties that would bind the Philippines for a long time; bind it even till today.

625

Ibid, 26.

249
The stranglehold is most evident in the economic provisions. The law provides for
limited
626
duty free trade on American imports of sugar, coconut oil and hemp products. In order
to protect America’s own industries, the law stipulated that the Philippine government collect an
export tax, the rate of which increased yearly, on these duty free item. The law specified where
the collection of this tax would go—it was to go to “the payment of the principal and interest on
the bonded indebtedness of the Philippine Islands.”
627
This tact is one that would become
increasingly familiar to the Philippines and to most Third World countries. With the exponential
growth of national debts beginning in the 1960s, America and agencies like the IMF-World Bank
would insist on more and more taxes levied on practically every financial transaction no matter
how tiny, in order to pay the “principal and interest of bonded indebtedness.”
The first provision of this law is “All citizens of the Philippine Islands shall owe
allegiance to the Unites States.”
628
The eighth provision, which, in a manner of speaking is a
restatement of the first provision, reads: “Provision shall be made for the establishment and
maintenance of an adequate system of public school, primarily conducted in English.”
629
This
translated into the actual 1935 constitution as: “The Government of the Commonwealth of the
Philippines shall establish and maintain an adequate system of public school, primarily conducted
in the English language.”
630
Given the popularity in the early 1930s of the idea of vernacular

education and of Tagalog itself, this is quite a bizarre provision. Even more than the economic
provisions, the English provision gives one a ghostly sense of the insistence on continued
American presence in the Philippines.

Independence and Philippine Nationalism
The Philippine politicians, those who are acknowledged as the architects of the
independence bills, politicians like Quezon, Osmeña, and Roxas, are often depicted in their bid

626
Exports of these products were to enter the United States duty free up to a specified tonnage.
For refined sugar, for example, it was fifty thousand long tons.
627
Full Text of the Philippine Constitution and the Tydings-McDuffie Law, compiled by Ricardo S.
Sison, (Manila: Ricardo S. Sison, 1935), 40. See pages 39-40 for the full text of the economic provisions.
628
Ibid, 36.
629
Ibid.
630
Ibid, 24. Article 12, Section 1, Number 8.

250
for independence as being not too concerned about political autonomy as they were with
economic dependencies. Free trade between the Philippines and the U.S. was insured while the
Philippines was a colony of the United States and this condition was a mightily profitable one for
manufacturers, traders and (sugar, coconut, and hemp) land owners. Independence for this sector
of society, of which elite politicians were a part of, became undesirable. The motivation for such
politicians in the quest for independence became the insurance of economic dependencies.
Constantino calls this sector of society the “economic and political elite” and describes them as
“coterminous or at least intimately interrelated” and as “becoming increasingly reluctant to trade

their prosperous dependence for the uncertainties of freedom.”
631
It is indeed difficult to argue
against the much-documented political maneuverings and unscrupulous position shifting of such
politicians as Quezon. His record on language policy alone, is cause for extreme wariness of his
motives.
Theodore Friend’s analysis of independence and the quality of Philippine nationalism is
similar in sentiment to that of Constantino. He argues that:
Only in the 1950s, after independence, would the prime expression of Philippine
nationalism become cultural and economic. Before that, during the decades of
American rule, as in the last years of the Spanish, Philippine nationalism was
chiefly social and political.
632


The overdetermined quality of the nationalism of a whole nation is evident in how, on so many
levels, this statement is both valid and questionable.
The Muling Pagsilang essays, the seditious plays, the numerous social novels, the
Balagtasan, the “reign” of Jose Corazon de Jesus, are all testaments to the cultural/linguistic
quality of Philippine nationalism. Though these expressions of nationalism might not have been
the product of the political/economic elite, they were, nonetheless, strong, one dare say even
“prime” expressions of Philippine nationalism during this period “between two empires.”
It is perhaps valid to see the nationalism of Quezon and his ilk as principally political.
After all, with the complicated maneuverings and horse trading in the Hare-Hawes-Cutting bill

631
Renato Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited, 341.
632
Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946, (New
Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965), 35.