ALDO NING KAPAMPANGAN. Celebrating the 450th founding anniversary of the Province of Pampanga started with a Holy Mass concelebrated by San Fernando Archbishop Florentino Lavarias and Archbishop Emeritus Paciano B. Aniceto and half a dozen priests at the Capitiol grounds on Monday.
This was immediately followed by the lighting
of the Capitol’s Christmas displays. All other events traditionally included in
the annual celebrations, foremostly the Mutya ning Kapampangan pageant and the
Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awards, have been cancelled for the second
straight year owing to the pandemic.
The pause, the quiet accorded the festivities,
gives a good time to really reflect on the Kapampangan soul.
Rather than go to the breast-thumping “Kapampangan
Ku, Pagmaragul Ku” conceit and think hard of what I can really be
proud of as a Kapampangan, I chose to look at that singular disparagement of
the Kapampangan in the eyes of all the other “nations” of the archipelago –
from the Ilocano to the Bicolano, the Waray and the Ilonggo, the Cebuano, the
Maranaw, etcetera.
Aye, the Kapampangan dog-tagged – it can’t be
any more literal – as dugong aso.
Quick trip through my yellowed archives
brought back this piece written and rewritten some years back –
…DOGS ARE clichéd as man’ts best friend, yet
they tend to get the choicest cuts in the worst insults. “Gone to the dogs,”
for instance.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago riled the
usually cat-cool Sen. Panfilo Lacson (not my relative) not so much for calling
him “Pinky” as for branding him as Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s “attack dog.”
Warranting a reply in kind from the former top cop. A case of “dog-eat-dog”
there?
“Tuta ng Kano (America’s puppy).”
So, the militant Left derided Ferdinand E. Marcos, Cory Aquino, Fidel Ramos,
and all those who followed them to Malacañang down to Cory’s son BS.
Even the venerable Carlos P. Romulo, who
served eight Philippine presidents – from Quezon to Marcos – and who himself
sat as president – of the Fourth Session of the United Nations General Assembly
in 1949-1950, was not spared of a similar epithet. No idle urban legend but a
revealed truth to student activists of the First Quarter Storm was Chou
En-Lai’s dismissal of Romulo as “America’s running dog” at the Bandung
Conference of Asian and African nations in 1955 that helped crystallized the
Non-Aligned Movement.
At the time of Cory too, I remember the
Malacañang Press Corps raising a howl over a presidential factotum’s obvert
reference to them as mongrels when he directed his staff to “feed the kennel” whenever
his office issued press releases.
For too long a time, a collective insult,
indeed, a curse, to the whole Kapampangan race is the branding “dugong
aso.”
In 1981, the political leadership of Pampanga
– from Gov. Estelito P. Mendoza, Vice Gov. Cicero J. Punzalan, down to the
mayors led by the “Big 5” of San Fernando’s Armando Biliwang, Arayat’s Benigno
Espino, Magalang’s Daniel Lacson, Sta. Ana’s Magno Maniago, and Sta. Rita’s
Frank Ocampo, along with Angeles City’s Francisco G. Nepomuceno, raged and
ranted rabidly at then Olongapo City Mayor Richard J. Gordon for citing the
Kapampangans as dugong aso in the context of
regionalism’s ill-effects to nationalism in his nomination speech for Ferdinand
E. Marcos in the KBL party convention at the Manila Hotel.
Actual physical threats were even thrown
Gordon’s way in addition to some persona non grata resolutions. (Gordon’s
topping Pampanga in the senatorial contest of May 2013, is some vindication of
the forgiving-and-forgetting nature of this race.)
Lapid
Even as dugong aso stuck
to the Kapampangan, the insult accruing thereat has largely dissipated. This is
owed to an extent to then Gov. Lito Lapid, as we wrote here some time ago:
“Ikinagagalit nating mga Kapampangan ang pagtawag sa
atin ng ‘dugong aso.’ Subali’t ito ay ipinagmamalaki’t ikinararangal ko. Sa
katapatan, wala nang mauuna pa sa aso: sa kanya iniiwan ng amo ang tahanan
nito, pati na magkaminsan ang pagtatanggol sa kanyang pamilya. Subukin mong
saktan ang amo, at tiyak, dadambain ka ng kanyang aso. Ang katapatang ito ang
iniaalay ko sa inyo.” (We Kapampangans get slighted when told the
blood of dogs runs in our veins. But I find pride and honor in this. When it
comes to loyalty, none beats the dog: to it man leaves the protection of his
home, at times even the defense of his family. Try to hit a man and his dog
will surely attack you. This is the kind of loyalty I off er you.)
Before a beaming President Ramos at the
Mawaque Resettlement Project site in 1997, Lapid pledged his loyalty in
gratitude for the new lease on human decency, on human life itself that El
Tabaco bestowed upon those the Mount Pinatubo eruptions devastated, displaced,
and dispossessed.
Thence, the Bida embraced FVR’s Lakas- NUCD
with a fidelity his wife could only wish he committed to his marital vows with
as much devotion, if not intensity.
Lapid there made a rarity: loyalty being an
uncommon commodity in politics. So, what is it that makes politicians and
adulterers one and the same as a dysfunctional radio? Low fidelity on a high
frequency, dummy…
There too was Lapid giving a novel and noble
meaning to the derogatory dugong aso impacted in the Kapampangan psyche,
extolling it as the virtue of katapatan, of dogged loyalty to an
elder, to a superior, to a friend. No mean feat for the uncolleged Lapid.
But for the title “Of dogs and men,” there is
very little I remember of a column I wrote in The Voice in
the late ‘70s. It would have made a most relevant read in the subject I am
discussing here. The ending of that column though is something I cannot
possibly just easily forget, having consigned it as much to the mind as to the
heart and put out at every opportunity that calls for it, like now.
A lesson in loyalty – of dogs, as well as of
men – perfectly captured in that blurb of an award-winning Lino Brocka movie: “Sa
bawa’t latay, kahit aso’y nag-iiba. Sa unang latay, siya’y magtatanda; Sa
ikalawa, siya’y mag-iisip; Sa ikatlo, siya’y magtataka; Sa ika-apat, humanda
ka!” (At every lash, even a dog changes. At the first, it would
learn. At the second, it would think. At the third, it would wonder. At the
fourth, brace yourself!)
Caveat canis. Beware of the
dog. Yes, there is more to what the Latins of old put up at their gates than
its literal meaning.
Tantingco
GOOD-BYE, Dugong Aso.
Thus, the erudite Robby Tantingco, head of the
Center for Kapampangan Studies at the Holy Angele University, slugged his
Facebook post three years ago.
He wrote: “Have you noticed? There is hardly
any Filipino anymore who calls Kapampangans ‘dugong aso’. We have successfully
asserted ourselves and changed the conversation to the other narratives of the
multi-layered story of our amazing people. So, once and for all, and to put the
last nail on the coffin of this subject matter, let us stop blaming the Macabebe
Scouts alone…for the capture of Aguinaldo in Palanan in 1901…”
And, with their corresponding mug shots and
briefs of their dastardly deed, Robby laid the blame on Spanish Capt. Lazaro
Segovia, Ilocano Cecilio Seguismundo, and Tagalog Maj. Hilario Talplacido as
having betrayed Aguinaldo.
Lamented Robby: “And yet it was the foot
soldiers, the Macabebes, who bore the brunt of the nation’s anger which
resulted in the unfair racial profiling of all Kapampangans as ‘traydor’
and ‘dugong aso.’”
Rightly, and reasonably, Robby: “How could the
Macabebes, who never served in Aguinaldo’s army and therefore could not have
betrayed him, be branded as traitors, and not these three defectors? They were
merely doing their job as hired soldiers of the American military, and were
actually exacting vengeance on a man they hated with all their heart and soul
(for killing Andres Bonifacio whose roots were in Macabebe, and for ordering
the burning of the Macabebe church).”
I commented: From another perspective, the
Macabebe scouts should even be hailed as heroes. Aguinaldo’s messiahnic delusions
deprived the revolution of its father, Bonifacio and its only real military
brains, Luna.
While over a score liked what I said, the
overwhelming majority of reactions were more of relief and gladness at Robby’s
reasoned contextualization of a historical event in expunging from the
Kapampangan race the canard of a canine bloodline.
Luid ya ing Kapampangan!
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