This is the second time I hear of a Bicolano who place his being a
Bicolano below being a Filipino. I'm curious what cause these two guys
to give less honor to their region or language than it deserve.

The first one I met in Hongkong, during our chat, he complained ' the
Ilocanos are regionalistic, they speak Ilocano all the time
even in the presence of other Filipinos.This breaks our unity as
Filipinos. I am a Bicolano, but I don't speak my language."

I replied, "What is to be gathered and united is our differences. If we
were one and the same already, then we don't need to unite ourselves..
What is presumed Filipino unity is a fake unity."

Akoy

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=\
112346

THERE’S THE RUB
‘Mindanao Republic’
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 11:50pm (Mla time) 01/15/2008
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That was quite a letter from Gerald Misa
<http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/letterstotheeditor/view/20080112-11\
1869/Ethnic-slur-against-the-Bisaya>
last Saturday in the Letters section. I’ve heard the concept of an
independent Mindanao or Mindanao Republic before but never put forward
this aggressively.

Misa says Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. should have gone beyond merely
complaining about the movie, “Sakal, Sakali, Saklolo” making fun of
Visayans, he should have thundered forth against the general
predilection of Tagalogs to taunt, mock and show prejudice against Visayans.

“Having been born in Marawi City and raised up, studied, and finished my
education in Cebuano-speaking, predominantly Christian Iligan City, I
have never considered myself a ‘Filipino.’ I am known as a ‘Filipino’
only because of an imposed citizenship, but by heart and by choice I am
a proud Mindanaoan who longs to have a separate republic for my fellow
Cebuano or Bisaya-speaking Mindanaoans, who would be better off
governing themselves than the subject of the imperialist North.”

I leave the reader to see the examples he cites of the denigration by
Tagalogs of Visayans. The last though is too rich to pass. He accuses
Tagalogs of being hypocrites or “plastic” in applauding Manny Pacquiao
every time he wins while laughing at him “because of his Bisaya accent.”

I personally am not unsympathetic to the plight of the provinces
relative to the capital, and I join Pimentel and others who are
campaigning to decentralize power by federalism or otherwise. Though not
by Cha-cha, and certainly not before 2010, federalism being the last
thing it will accomplish. I am not unsympathetic to the plight of the
provinces relative to the capital, but I don’t know that that is the
product of Tagalogs discriminating against Visayans or of Manila
wielding imperial rule over the countryside.

To begin with, I don’t know that the language discrimination is there at
all, or if so if it is the vicious variety. Let me hasten to say that I
am myself not a Tagalog, I am a Bicolano, notwithstanding that I was
born in Manila and have lived in Manila for most of my life. My cradle
language is Bicol, and I continue to speak it fluently. I speak Tagalog
just as well. I can understand Waray and a bit of Cebuano. Having said
that, let me say also that I’ve heard more jokes about Visayans talking
in English than about Visayans talking in Tagalog. You hear the same
jokes just as well about Ilocanos talking in English, as well indeed as
of Tagalogs doing so, as in “Pipol op da Pilipins.”

It’s true that sitcoms try to elicit laughter with characters talking
with an exaggerated Visayan accent, but a great deal of it is more
playful than denigrating. You hear the same thing elsewhere, Londoners
poking fun at Cockney or northern accents (which are as thick as they
come) and New Yorkers and Californians poking fun at Midwestern ones.
Very little of it is mean-spirited. A lot of Visayan has already crept
into Tagalog, courtesy of migration (“ambot” is universally understood)
and I do know some people who cultivate a Visayan accent to sound chic
without intending to patronize.

Beyond language, frankly I don’t know what “Manila imperialism” means.
If that means “Tagalog imperialism,” then I don’t see what’s there to
support it. It’s easily refuted by one of the first things you ask
someone you meet in Metro Manila: “Taga saang probinsya kayo?” [“What
province are you from?”] The assumption being that the fellow’s family
at least, if not he himself, came from somewhere other than in Manila.
Which is the case of most Metro Manila residents: The original Tagalogs
are the minority, not the majority. And very probably a tiny majority at
that today. I noted that Misa himself puts his address as Sampaloc, Manila.

The only Tagalog Filipino president since Independence was Joseph
Estrada. Manuel Roxas was from Capiz, Elpidio Quirino was from Ilocos,
Ramon Magsaysay from Zambales, Carlos Garcia from Bohol, Diosdado
Macapagal from Pampanga, Ferdinand Marcos from Ilocos, Corazon Aquino
from Tarlac, Fidel Ramos from Pangasinan, and Gloria Macapagla-Arroyo is
from Pampanga. Of course, many of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s “kababayan”
[province-mates] say she’s not really Kapampangan but Tagalog, and many
more of her kababayans say she’s not really the president. Estrada, the
lone Tagalog from San Juan, in Metro Manila, never even finished his term.

Most of the senators and congressmen are not Tagalogs. Certainly, the
most important committees are not in the hands of Tagalogs. You do find
a “Batangas Mafia” headed by Eduardo Ermita in the Cabinet, but they are
also the minority. So what does “Manila imperialism” really mean? Surely
it can’t mean the imperialism of the Tagalogs?

The notion of an independent Bisaya-speaking Mindanao Republic is an
exercise in self-parody. If the problem is that Tagalog-speaking Manila
is tyrannizing the Bisaya-speaking peoples of Mindanao, then the
Bisaya-speaking Mindanao Republic will be tyrannizing the
non-Bisaya-speaking peoples of Mindanao as well. Why shouldn’t they
secede from that republic and form their own fiefdoms, too?

In the end, well, all this just brings us back to colonial times when
the colonizing power found it the easiest thing to rule this country by
encouraging its inhabitants to divide themselves with their petty feuds.
I do not particularly care that Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio were
Tagalogs, the first coming from Calamba, Laguna, and the second from
Tondo, Manila. What they did they did not just do for the Tagalogs but
for all the inhabitants of their country. They were the ones who gave
meaning to the word, “Filipino,” an identity I personally am proud to carry.

I am a Filipino first and a Bicolano second. Heaven forbid a Bicol
Republic ever gets to be proposed. It can only have Luis Villafuerte as
president and Edcel Lagman as vice president.