THE LAST KAPAMPANGANS ON EARTH
By ERNIE C. TURLA
The year is 2112. I've just woke up from a deep slumber as part of a secret experimental project. The brains among scientists who initiated it have been dead for sometime now and their followers took over to continue with the experiment. As I recollect the past, the last thing I remember was being given an elixir injection that would make me sleep for a hundred years inside a time capsule.
I, along with hundreds of other "guinea pigs", have participated in this experiment which scientists thought could become a breakthrough in their efforts to find ways by which life could be preserved. During the time gap which was a full century, I was fed intravenously and placed in a sealed container similar to that of Ripley in the movie, Alien. It was like being in an HG Wells time machine, except that I was not awake but rather asleep with no awareness at all for all the passing time. Well, the experiment has proven to be a success, me and the others having survived the lapse of time. But what is amazing is its wonderful side effect. It seems that a reverse trend has occurred for I've even grown younger-looking, and my vitality as a teen-ager is revived. My muscles are once again intact, the deep lines of my brow faded, and my white hair, black again and with no more sign of balding. Now, after being given a physical exam, and under observation for a week, we are being released from their custody and are free to go anywhere and do whatever pleases us, and with the hefty sum of money we received as part of the benefit package bestowed upon us for volunteering in the experiment, we want to catch up with what we have missed during the last hundred years.
As I get out of the giant laboratory building in New York City, I am amazed to see skyscrapers one thousand stories tall and with lots of flying conveyances buzzing all over the metropolis! I can't believe my eyes when I see the place so different from how it was a hundred years ago then when the restored twin towers towered over most of the buildings, compared to now when they are the ones dwarfed by these many skyscrapers erected all around Manhattan.
With anxiety I hail a taxi and head for the airport. Then
I hurriedly board a huge jet bound for the Philippines, and to my amazement, the trip just takes 45 minutes! What a vast improvement in technology, and in transportation! I alight from the jet at the old Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (formerly, Clark) and take a taxi to nearby Angeles. I decide to visit my good friend Josie Henson who I know had also gone to New York to participate in the same experiment I have been in, though belonging to the batch a month ahead of ours.
At Villa Gloria, I am surprised to see modern houses four times bigger than how they were when Josie invited us over to their place during our medical mission a century ago. I ring their doorbell and I am met and greeted in Tagalog by her great grandson. Josie, looking like a mere 30-year old Linda Carter, comes out of her quarters and we hug each other like long lost friends. She quickly whisks me to her art gallery where her now antiquated paintings still emblazon the marble walls. I notice conspicuously displayed in a showcase some masterpieces that have gathered the dust of time: the books by Evangelina H. Lacson, Rafaelita H. Soriano, Rosalina Icban Castro, Edna Zapanta Manlapaz, Jose Gallardo, Vedasto Ocampo, John Larkins and my own Classic Kapampangan Dictionary. I also get to take a passing glance of a grand portrait she painted of her loving husband, Dr. Ruben Henson, nearby. Well, we start talking about the experiment and its success, how we find it quite a thrill to still be alive and young after a hundred years. We are delighted to know about all the changes that have taken place in the world. Yes, very happy until the topic turns to be about the Akademyang Kapampangan which we both head - she in the Philippines, and me, in the U.S. She says, "Do you know that the two of us are the only remaining Kapampangan speakers here on earth?"
"Well, just what do you mean by that?" I say.
"You heard it, we are the only Kapampangans left, everybody here in Pampanga now speaks Tagalog!"
"You gotta be kidding! What happened to our cabalens, did they leave the province on exodus?"
"No. They just all became Tagalog-speaking. Just like my 75 year old great grandson here, he can't utter a word in Kapampangan."
"So, we're survivors? Incredible!"
"Let's go out and you can take a look for yourself."
So we take a stroll. There are many tall buildings, a lot of businesses, and the place is teeming with people. As we inch our way into the crowd, I try to listen to the people around us. But true to what she says, I can't hear any Kapampangan. Everything I hear is in Tagalog! Even inside the restaurant where we eat, everybody speaks Tagalog, including the waitresses! I am as bewildered as Charlton Heston in that movie I saw 130 years ago, "The Planet of the Apes", when he realized he did not land on another planet but was just back on earth and that the place was now dominated by those war-like apes!
"Let's find out if the same thing has happened all over the country," I say to Josie. "Let's go to the north."
"Very well," Josie agrees. "Let's find out if the Ilocanos are still around."
So, we rent a space-bug and fly to Laoag. Once there, we head for the marketplace, and to our disbelief, the language we hear is also in Tagalog! We ask the people we meet if there are still Ilocanos there, and we are told that they had been so greatly reduced in number in recent years that they doubt if there are still any left! They are, according to a history professor we luckily meet there, members of the cultural minorities. To that, I say, what about the Ibanags, the Igorots, the Ilongots? Being much fewer before, they must have all vanished by this time.
And he says, "Oh no, as a matter of fact, those are still around. They are left untouched by society as they had been during the Spanish times. They kept to themselves so much, and so they survived. The ones that were gravely affected by ethnic weeding were the most civilized groups as they were the ones most susceptible to changes and who acquired education the most. If you go to to the Visayas, you will see the same situation. Cebuanos who used to even outnumber Tagalogs have been wiped out completely. Same way with the Hiligaynons, Warays and Bicolanos. You see, 99.9 per cent of people here in the Philippines now speak Tagalog. Everybody here in the Ilocos is proud of the Tagalog language and has forgotten Ilocano completely.
"Just how did all this come about? Did people lose their love for their native languages?" Josie queries.
"In what I've read, the government at first tried to kill all the minority languages softly, but later on decided to exterminate them once and for all to pave the way more easily for a one-language nation. It declared martial law and forced all people to switch to Tagalog and become monolingual. It is said that it was all done in one click, since all Filipinos then could already speak the language quite fluently because of the schools and the media. Getting rid of their own languages was at first painful, and in fact many die-hard language proponents committed suicide. But nowadays, as you see, everything is just normal. There hardly is any regret or mental reservation. People don't miss what they never learned at all, just like in my case, whose grandfather spoke the Zambal language. By the way, you have quite an accent. I hope you won't take offense if I ask what your mother tongue is."
And we say, almost in unison, "Kapampangan".
Appearing quite shocked he exclaims, "Oh, the Pampanguenos I thought, have also completely disappeared, along with the Pangasinenses. Their nearness to Manila made them the most vulnerable to getting swallowed by the Tagalog language. I'm sure the National Language Commission and the Department of the Interior would take an interest in you. They want to capture and study remnant specimens like you, find out how you have survived the so-called ethnic cleansing, and probably detain you in the national exhibits."
Before I can even reply, he presses a button on his belt,
sending a bunch of policemen rushing to the scene in no time.
Quickly, Josie and I head back to the space car, get aboard
and take off. We fly through the stratosphere in zigzag
fashion to elude some ten patrol space cabs behind us in pursuit. We zoom past Pampanga and on to Manila. At one
point in our maneuver to escape them, we suddenly twist in a different direction causing two space cabs to collide and come crashing on the slope of Mt. Arayat! With the ray guns we have equipped ourselves for protection against terrorist attack, Josie and I take turns shooting at the space cars
behind us, causing two others to catch fire and plummet.
Having mastered the trade in our youth as experts in Hatari
and Nintendo war games, we easily dodge all the bullets coming our way. Then, upon reaching Manila we look for a place to
land and luckily, we find a spot on the roof of a new SM building. We jump off from the conveyance and scurried like Flash Gordon and Dale Arden as I remember them in comic strips. The remaining cops are relentless in their chase, aware of
the bounty waiting for them if they capture prize specimen like us! Running as fast we can, we are able to succeed in getting away, up until we accidentally enter a darn dead-end
alley where we get cornered. As they come charging, Josie and I apply the skills we learned as karate students at one time, giving them chops and kicks that send them swirling in various directions. But as we make our way for another attempt to escape, a reenforcement group of cops arrive, blocking our only exit. Then their captain turns on a siren as he he signals
us to surrender. At that same instant, I hear some loud
ringing. It is my alarm clock. How I jump up in a hurry to escape from an ugly world! I've been in total shock and perspiring profusely, notwithstanding such relief. I am not
even able to say good bye to Josie, because I've been rushed back into the present time. But thanks God, I sigh, it was
just a nightmare! A nightmare that is somehow significant in that it portends what the future holds in store for us.
"Could this be a wake-up call or a warning?" I whisper as I
walk slowly into the bathroom for a hot shower.
The End
(To prevent a language holocaust in the Philippines,
Tagalog should be replaced as medium of instruction by
the particular language indigenous to the region served by
the school. In Cebu for instance, Bisaya should be used in schools to replace Tagalog. Because English was replaced in Hawaii, the dying Hawaiian language has pretty much recovered and there are now twice as many speakers of it as there were in 1985.)
The Last Kapampangans On Earth
Defenders of Indigenous Languages in the Archipelago
Send E-Mail to: eiturla@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 Ernie Turla. All Rights Reserved