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Agustin
Wary Beauty:
Writing at the Margins and the Poems
in Oyzons An Maupay ha mga Wary
Efmer E. Agustin
University of the Philippines Tacloban
ABSTRACT
Voltaire Q. Oyzons f irst Wary poetry collection, An Maupay ha mga Waray (Our
Virtue as Warays), bears the marks of protest and affirmation characteristic
of postcolonial literatures. Though the poems in the collection may often be
read as expressions and views of love and life, they also talk about the
collective experience of the Wary people, the trauma brought about by
foreign colonization, and the imposition of the culture and language of
imperial Manila. The collection asserts in several ways the magnif icence of
the Wary language, dispelling the widely-accepted notion (among its own
speakers included) of the natural inferiority of this tongue. It is an
embodiment both of its authors consciousness of the peripheral station given
the Wary language and literature and of its authors efforts to undermine
this station. The collection also offers itself as proof against the definition of
regional literature as a depiction of specific life experiences seen from a
narrower context, as opposed to national literature, which conveys larger
issues and broader viewpoints distinctions that Oyzon scoffs at. The
collection, written in a regional language, demonstrates Warys capacity to
comprehend reality with lucidity and to articulate the universe with profundity
and extensiveness similar to any other national literature. Solely through its
publication, it also contradicts the proclamation once made that Wary
literature is dead. The poems provide an optimistic vision for the future of
Wary literature and bear the hope that the Waray-Waray people will be
proud again of their own tongue and culture.
Literary writing in Wary has a history that went through many years of nil
production. When looking into the literatures from the Wary speakers of Eastern
Visayas, one will encounter a weak body of worksweak not because it can barely
be called literature (in terms of aesthetics), but weak in a sense that literary pieces
produced in this Philippine language are few, barely extant, and/or unavailable to
the public. This rather moribund state of Wary literature has been, more or less,
the result of the marginal status conferred to the Wary language. Sensitive to this
marginality, Voltaire Oyzons f irst collection of poems in the Wary language, aptly
titled An Maupay ha mga Waray (Our Virtue as Warays), 1 envoices out the
consciousness of a postcolonial subject.
Postcolonial means all the culture affected by the imperial process from the
moment of colonization to the present day (Ashcroft, Griff iths, and Tiff in 2).
Postcolonial discourses include those imaginative or creative and theoretical
and/or critical writings that seek to establish alternative objects of knowledge in
cultural studies and articulate the oppositional/interventionary as well as re-
def ined consciousness of peoples whose identities have been fragmented, whose
cultures have been deracinated by the physical and epistemic violence of imperialist
incursions and colonialist systems of knowledge (Patajo-Legasto, Discourses 8).
Postcolonial discourse is also a literature of resistance (9).
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An Maupay, points this out (9-10). For instance, the use of his local language is a
primary consideration for Oyzon. It was also due to this awareness that he confronted
Bienvenido Lumberas classification of national and regional literaturesLumbera,
in his attempt to negotiate the national and regional classifications of Philippine
literatures said that, The categories regional literature and national literature
ought to be kept separate, with regional literature continuing to depict the
specif icities of life experienced and viewed within a narrower framework, and
national literature expressing larger concerns and broader perspectives (Lumbera).
It was this classif ication that elicited adverse responses from some writers from
the regions, including Oyzon.
kaalo in shame
The poem encapsulates the vitiation that comes with scarcity and the power of
poverty to degrade ones self-worth and even ones origins and identity. Oyzon
would maintain that [o]ne would not think it is a narrow view of life in poverty
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and that the shame it entails is a universal human experience. Any poor man . . .
can identify with its message whether he is in the Katagalogan, in Mindanao, in
Palawan, or even in Colombia or India, and Oyzon would continue, How can [it] be
said to reflect a narrow view or a narrow experience of life? (On the Separation).
Meanwhile, Ini nga Dalan (This Pathway) speaks of (the universal phenomenon of)
forgetting that, from a postcolonial lens, can be very much apposite to historical
and linguistic forgettinghistorical amnesia and language disuse and/or extinction.
This obscuration of a memory, whether of a past or a language will initially be
lamented upon, but will ultimately still be completely silenced by time:
Thus, Oyzons poems are illustrations of his argument that literature from the
regions and written in a local language can def initely carry the weight of various
issues and concerns and does not express a limited view of human experience
(On the Separation). Oyzon and his poems resist an attempt to give them a
def inition coming from the center.
Oyzons awareness of his postcolonial position becomes clear even to those who do
not know him just by reading his poetry collection that embodies a postcolonial
work in the Philippines: 1) it comes from the fringes of literary and critical discourse,
2) it uses a regional language instead of English or Filipino, 3) it is a work in a
literary tradition that was once proclaimed dead, 4) it tackles historical events that
forced the Wary people and their literatures into the margins, and 5) as a piece that
originates from the regions and employs a vernacular language, it resists conforming
to the description of a regional work of literature as one that presents specif ic
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In studying a work of literature from the margins, I would like to view this paper as
but a meek attempt at a response to Patajo-Legastos suggestion of reterritorializing
Philippine literary studiesthe remapping of literary studies in the Philippines to
capture spaces for marginalized literatures (51)a suggestion that appropriates
the concept of reterritorialization by Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari and is also
informed by Caren Kaplans own adoption of the concept in the f ield of Western
feminist writing.
To understand better the marginality of Wary literature and to set the background
for the analyses of Oyzons poems, there is a need to review a little history. Wary
literature was once vigorous but it dwindled and then, later, laboriously forced its
way to survival. Survive it did, however emaciated it had become, but given its
condition, Wary literature was barely felt. When National Artist for Literature
Lumbera said that, Waray literature no longer exists. It is dead, many Wary speakers
became enraged (Alunan, Mga Siday 6). Nevertheless, those who were angered by
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the statement could not suff iciently refute it and the illustrations they gave were
all from the glorious past of Wary writingsuch as those works of literature
mentioned by Alcina in his accounts from the seventeenth century and those written
during the early part of the twentieth centuryand not from the contemporary
period, which Lumbera was referring to. Alunan admitted, rather painfully, that
such a statement from a learned critic was not irresponsible (207). Perhaps Wary
literature, through the sporadic emergence of some of its forms (primarily poetry),
is alive, but is not kicking yet.
The decline in Wary writing, however, did not come completely naturally. It was a
combination of many circumstances in the general history of the Philippines.
According to Victor N. Sugbo, the development of regional literatures (e.g. , Wary)
has always been parallel to the statuses of our languages (201). Of the many
languages in the country, only Tagalog attained a position of high prestige together
with English, while the others became classif ied as low prestige languages, a
classif ication reinforced by the constitution and the law (201). Alongside these
classif ications of languages came the classif ications of Philippine literatures as
well.
Classifying Philippine national literature has long been hotly debated. The
contention is partly due to the identification of works as either national or regional,
which are politically value-laden termsthe former being privileged and the latter
existing in the margins. Lumbera, in Harnessing Regional Literature for National
Literature, implies that national literature is composed of works written in Tagalog,
English and Spanish, which now comprise the canon of Philippine literature. On the
other hand, regional literature is ought to only be those works written in the
vernacular and excludes those written in Tagalog, English or Spanish by writers
from the regions as these are, by virtue of the language used, classified as national.
Sugbo additionally ascribes to regional literature communities, histories and
cultures in subaltern positions. Most of the time, it refers to the literatures of the
Philippines at the margins, whose growth has been marked by stagnation,
discontinuity and neglect (200). With this kind of labeling given to both the
languages and literatures in the country, one can already get a sense of why such
classification has been a factor in the slow growth and the marginalization of Wary
literatureliterature that uses a language that is regional and of low prestige.
During the early part of the twentieth century, the dominant languages in the
country were Spanish and the local languages (Sugbo 201). It was during this time,
in 1909, that Wary writers founded the Sanghiran san Binisaya (Academy of the
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Bisayan Language) which, patterned after the Spanish Academy of Language, aimed
to standardize the Wary language (Luangco 62). However, English, the language of
the new colonial masters, eventually replaced both languages, and Wary started to
have no other legitimate place outside the community, not even on print (Sugbo
201). Following suit, Sanghiran eventually disintegrated.
However, it must also be borne in mind that the eventual marginalization of the
regional languages is the fault of no one in particular. Tagalogs and non-Tagalogs
are both victims of the historical state of affairs. For example, when (largely
Tagalog-based) P/Filipino was declared the national language of the Philippines, it
was because the need to establish a unifying national language was seen as
paramount to the development of a Filipino identity and to nation-building. Tagalog,
the language of the countrys economic and administrative center, was the primary
candidate for being the (base of the) national language. 3
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the many Filipino communitiescultural differences that Tiu calls the vertical
social splits in our society, the geosocial faults def ined along ethnokinship lines
and specific homelands (Tiu). The Philippines is a country with many communities
the Ilocano, the Tagalog, the Manuvu, etc. (Tiu). Indeed, the country was never
ruled under a single government in ancient times and each tribe, even in an island
shared by many others, was usually deemed a different nation from the rest. It just
so happened that the Spaniards made us into a single colonial administrative unit
(Tiu), which has since been accepted as natural and now def ines the borders of the
Philippines. The Spaniards and the Americans have gone, and what endures is the
formation of the Filipino nation grounded on the colonial experiences of the country.
The vertical social splits remain. The country may have undergone Western
colonization as a whole but the colonial experiences of each of the original
communities differ. Despite this, many of the original communities rose from the
ruins of colonization and united, using the collective colonial experience, regardless
of differences, as their source of cooperation and national identity. The common
history, Stuart Hall claims, has thus been profoundly formative, unifying communities
across differences (Cultural Identity 114). National identity is a way of unifying
cultural diversity, where national cultures function as a discursive device which
represents difference as unity or identity, but are still cross-cut by deep internal
divisions and differences (akin to Tius vertical social splits) (Hall, The Question
297). This also concurs with Benedict Andersons claim that the nation is imagined
as a community because, despite the differences and inequality within the nation,
it is still perceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship (15-16).
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Though there were already publications in Waray-Waray in the early years of the
twentieth century, printing in Wary has almost entirely ceased. The last place for
Wary poetry has been in the local radio stations, most notably DYVL Tacloban,
which sponsors daily poetry contests in the language. If not for these radio stations
and for the poems occasionally published in newspapers and journals, Wary
literature would have completely disappeared by now. Lumberas statement could
have been true, without further contestations.
In recent years, there have been efforts in the regions to assert the glory and
dignity of the local languages and to revitalize the literatures produced in these
tongues. In Tacloban, the center of Eastern Visayas, the University of the Philippines
Visayas Tacloban College (UPVTC) Creative Writing Workshop, spearheaded by Sugbo,
Alunan, and David Genotiva, has been instrumental in this rekindling of interest in
writing in the Eastern Visayan languagesWary, Cebuano, and Abaknon, the language
in the island of Capul, Northern Samar. The program has also partnered with other
programs and seminars all over the region, most notable of which are the workshops
in Tiburcio Tancinco Memorial Institute of Science and Technology (now Northwest
Samar State University) in Calbayog City, Samar and in the Naval Institute of
Technology (now Naval State University) in Naval, Biliran (Alunan, Claiming Home).
Adding to this is the support given by the National Commission for Culture and the
Arts to such efforts.
Promising writers have emerged from these workshops, giving Wary literature in
particular a hope for the future. Among these young writers is the poet Voltaire Q.
Oyzon who, in 2008, came up with his f irst collection of poems that is both an
embodiment of the glory denied to Wary literature for using a vernacular language
and an evidence of the beauty of this marginalized tongue. In this regard, his
collection bears the two traits common among postcolonial literaturesthat of
protest (against marginalization) and of affirmation (of the beauty of the local
language and culture). Indeed, Oyzons An Maupay ha mga Waray, though can be read
as poems of love and life, in many points also talks explicitly about the experiences
of being peripheral, of being postcolonial.
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is already in sight. The very f irst poem in the collection, An Pagsidlit han Adlaw ha
Kankabatok: Usa ka Aga (Sun Rise at Kankabatok: One Morning), seems to express
this anticipationa bright new day for Wary literature has dawned:
This poem is followed by An Gugma (Love), which says that, despite efforts to
eradicate the special bond stated in the title, such a bond will persist no matter
whata reference to all the travails the relationship between the Wary language
and its speakers have gone through over the years:
The poems in this regional collection also talk about many other human concerns.
An Nahabilin ha Nasunogan (What was Left of Nasunogan) exhibits that sense of
history and acknowledges the importance of knowing things from the past and
learning from them:
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Buklara an Imo mga Palad (Open Your Hands) presents the beauty of freedom as
well as its vulnerability, as represented by the white dove needing to rest in
someones hands:
Human issues such as poverty and migration to search for a living are the themes in
pieces like Saad (Vow), Didto ha Amon (Back Home), and Hiagi (Fortune). Oyzons
poems portray different facets of the economic struggle common among many
Filipinos. Saad captures the familiar trend among Filipinos of going abroad,
specif ically to Dubai, for pecuniary purposes, also illustrating the common picture
of separation among loved ones and the menace of oblivion brought by this
separation:
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Hi Salvador Magsusundalo (Salvador will Join the Army), on the other hand, presents
poverty in a different light. In some parts of the country, including areas in Eastern
Visayas, life does not give many options to some peoplelive in poverty or join the
revolutionists up in the mountains. This is a fact the poem talks about, laying down
the ironic reality that, for some people, hope is found amidst battle and that only by
endangering ones life is one assured of survival:
Progress has been peoples aim and progress for many means moving from one
point to the next, whether in status or, for some others, in spaces. However, yearning
for the past and for tradition, more often than not, comes with that moving. This
longing for the precedents is also among the subjects of the poems in the collection.
This nostalgia can be viewed as the desire to go back to the roots and the origins of
ancestry, and to f ind solace in its identity. This theme of going back is also an idea
behind the entire poetry collection itselfthe going back to the neglected Wary.
Didto ha Amon (Back Home) tells the story of someone running away from home
to seek better conditions somewhere else only to run back because of nostalgia:
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Hi Uday (Uday), on the other hand, is about a woman named Uday who decides to
leave home, not giving worth to the nuances of home life and even despising some
aspects of it:
In the end, however, she takes back everything she said and feels the hunger to be
connected with her homeland again, even going to extremes such as climbing a tall
coconut tree just to be able to see the island of Leyte from afar.
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Nakausa, dida han akon panhayhay Once, as I was reminiscing the past
han mga naglabay, I chanced to mention poetry at
ha balay ako naghingaday bahin hin home:
mga paaliday:
Hi Timothy nagtaklos han umal. Timothy tied the rusty bolo on his
Nga laong, side. He said:
Magtitiak ako hin sungo. Im off to chop wood.
Intoy, kay may gas pa man. But Intoy, we still have gas.
Tackling such national and universal subjects as the importance of history, the value
of liberty, penury, spatial mobility, and wistfulness, An Maupay attests against
Lumberas def inition of regional literature as narrowly and specif ically focused.
One of the most compelling poems in the collection is Pagbarol (Drying Fish).
The process of preserving f ish referred to in the title is likened to the rape of a
woman and, ultimately, to the colonization of the islands. The poem, in its earlier
parts, presents a seemingly innocent narration of how to make barol out of f ish:
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However, these images are made powerfully dark and grim when, in the following
stanza, foreigners arrive and exploit the woman Binyang, the one making the barol,
as if turning her into barol herself:
Indeed, the images portray the oppression of the colonized subjects, their falling
into disgrace, and the ruptures done to their societies and peoples. The clash of
cultures is further punctuated in the last part of the poem when it talks of the
whirlpools created when the salt water from the shorelines of Cansuguran invades
the freshwater of Amanlara River, where Binyang was doing the pagbarol.
Aside from the images of rape and of colonization, one can note here as well that
the poem also speaks of the colonizers disruption of customary waysthat is,
when Binyang is gruesomely disturbed while doing the traditional practice of
pagbarol. Similarly, one can also notice that the poem has a woman for a main
character who, violated and penetrated, is a reminder that during the age of
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exploration (exploitation), new territories and uncharted lands were more often
than not given feminine images and names.
The f irst three-line stanza is in Wary, imparting at the same time that Wary is the
language of home. The f irst line from Lucentes poem follows it, implying that
home is where ones heart is:
Ha balay At home
An pulong nga nanay the word nanay
An syahan ko nga nabaroan. is the f irst one I learned.
The next stanza is in Tagalog and talks about the personas f irst experience in
school. Lucentes line comes next which, as a continuation of the f irst borrowed
line, describes that at home, everyone is a friend. This is followed by the stanza
that mentions the encounter with the English language in school:
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Because of such education, the Wary persona has become well-acquainted with the
foreign culture, an acculturation brought about primarily by the English language
and with the side effect of the personas distancing from the local culture. Thus, the
penultimate three-line stanza implies the Warys favoring of foreign popular culture,
preferring to use the informal and popular mommy to the local and closer to heart
nanay. True enough, the last single-line stanza that follows the series of borrowed
Lucente lines is a twist on the original done by Oyzon himself, wherein the persona
finally confesses that nanay is already ironically foreign-sounding to him/her. The
original line from Lucente is Hahani hira nanay pati kabugtuan, meaning This is
where mother and siblings live.
Yana, Now,
Well... Well...
I call her mommy. I call her mommy.
Banyaga hira nanay, pati kabugtoan. Nanay and siblings are foreign to me.
Paghimaya (Glory Be) is a mock prayer patterned after a combination of Hail Mary
and The Lords Prayer. It follows the pattern of the Wary version of the original
prayers but it changes many words to relay a message regarding the lost brilliance
of Wary and the preference of its native speakers to use Tagalog instead. It also
implies the standpoint that with language comes culture and, consequently, the
loss of language is the disintegration of the culture that speaks it as well. The
poem starts with a mockery of the words simultaneously uttered by Wary speakers,
the invocation of the Holy Trinity, as they make the sign of the cross before prayer.
Instead of Ha ngaran han Amay, han Anak, ug ha Diyos Ispiritu Santo (In the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit), the poem starts with Ha
ngaran han pagka-urosa, pagdukwag ug pagkauripon (In the name of progress,
unity and slavery), laying out from the beginning what the poem will talk about
later onthat with the imposition of a national language for unity and progress
comes, conversely, a form of slavery on the part of the other languages (and their
speakers).
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The main body of the mock prayer starts with Paghimayaon ka Polano, Polana
(Glory be to you Polano, Polana. . .) instead of Maghimaya ka Maria... (Hail, Mary. . .),
sarcastically implying that the persona is grateful to the unnamed people 4
responsible for the Warys inclination to speaking Tagalog over Wary. Following
its version of the Hail Mary, the poem continues, saying that these unnamed people
are very much blessed by the Wary. And the youth, who are just as blessed because
of their preference for Tagalog, will, however, go out of their minds:
The poem then segues to the pattern of The Lords Prayer. Instead of Tagan mo
kami niyan hin karan-on ha ikinaadlaw... (Give us today our daily bread. . .), it goes,
Papagtinag-alogon mo kami niyan ha amon hirohimangraw ha ikina-adlaw... (You
will make us speak Tagalog in our everyday speech. . .). The succeeding lines, which
are patterned after the part of The Lords Prayer that asks for the forgiveness of
sins (Pagwad-on mo an am mga sala), serve as aff irmation of the fact that when a
language disappears, the culture that speaks it and that cultures memory cease to
exist as well. Here, instead of banishing the sins, the poem talks of the banishment
of local memory:
This is, of course, the fate of Wary language and culture that the persona does not
want to ever happen. The last stanza of the poem, composed of the two-word
Tagalog line of Siya nawa (So be it), is the sarcastic presentation of such a hope, a
sarcasm intensif ied by the use of the language it sees as somehow responsible for
the decline of the glory of Wary.
The analyses of Oyzons collection show that the poems do tackle the marginality
of the Wary languageand, consequently, its people and cultureand how it has
been a subject of both Western colonialism and internal colonialism (Manila-Tagalog).
Furthermore, the collection also serves as a prayer and a hope for Wary literature
to fully recuperate from the ghastly condition it has fallen into.
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On another note, some Warys, especially those in academic circles, have frowned
upon the fact that the local song Waray-Waray, which illustrates the happy and
friendly disposition of the Warys and the beauty and abundance of their
surroundings that never leave them wanting, was turned into a Tagalog song about
the Warys being hot-headed, drunkards, and bullies, helping propagate and popularize
the notion that they are a violent people. Below is the original version of Waray-
Waray and its English translation. (No reliable English translation can be found for
the Tagalog version. The latter, however, can be found online.)
In contrast, the collections title poem displays another kind of resistance to the
negative ethnic branding of the Tagalog version of the song. The poem exhibits an
owning, an embracing of the identity of a strong-willed, brave people who are not
content with doing nothing and only drink to somehow f ill, temporarily, the void of
an empty heart. Here, Oyzon mixes the happy and carefree mood of the original
Waray-Waray song and the hardiness of the Tagalog adaptation:
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Additionally, it must also be noted that the terms Waray and Waray-Waray were
looked down upon by the members of the Sanghiran san Binisaya, the masters
themselves of Eastern Visayan language and literature. Since the word waray
means nothing (or no or none),6 they found Waray rather pejorative as it seems
to refer to a people who are or have nothingand this nothingness is doubled in
the term Waray-Waray. The Sanghiran members were also wary of the terms
negative connotations among other Filipinos so they suggested calling the Wary
people Bisaya and their tongue Binisaya insteadhence the academys name
(Makabenta vii). Through time, however, this Visayan people themselves have come
to own and appropriate these negative terms and now conf idently call
themselves Wary or Waray-Waray. Also, the term Bisaya is all-encompassing of
the people from the Visayan regions as well as many people from Mindanao and
some from southern Luzon. In fact, nowadays, to say Bisaya or Binisaya is usually
understood by some as referring to the Cebuano people and language (or a particular
dialect of it).
With all these in mind, Oyzons utilization of the term Waray and his decision to
name his f irst poetry collection with it can be interpreted as a bold act of embracing
the once derogatory term or as an off icial affirmation that the term is now a source
of identity and pride. The title even takes this boldness further by alluding to the
things beautiful about the Warys. As a postcolonial work, An Maupay asserts a
voice that has been put into a secondary position and speaks of a consciousness of
a minoritized people. It stands as proof to the potentialities of Wary literature,
seemingly saying that despite all the repression history has brought to the Waray-
Waray, they are resilient enough to stubbornly keep on building and rebuilding
their groundsa persistence reflected in the poem Lawa-lawa (Spider):
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Surely, An Maupay sees positivity in separation or, in the case of Wary literature, of
its near-death experience. As stated in the last poem in the collection, Yana (Now),
when in such a state (of separation), the desire to be together again is only further
igniteda hope for the resurgence of pride and being at home in the Wary language
of the Waray-Waray people after several years of alienation from each other:
Finally, being a postcolonial work, An Maupay disrupts the many negative tags
attached to Wary language and literature, showing that: one, it is an evident lifeline
to this Philippine regional literature once given a death warrant; two, Wary
language can absolutely be literary; three, this collection (through its author) is
aware of the peripheral position it has been forcedly givenseveral years before
its conception simply by virtue of it being in a regional languagewhich it now is
subverting; and four, the collection emphasizes the Warys ability to perceive the
world in an illumined consciousness and to express life experiences with great
insight, profundity, and extensiveness, paralleling any other national literature
there is.
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ENDNOTES
1
English translations of the original Waray-Waray materials taken from An Maupay ha
mga Waray are provided by the book. The title can be translated as What is Good about
the Warays.
Voltaire Q. Oyzon is a poet from Barugo, Leyte. He has attended various writing workshops
in the country, such as the Cornelio Faigao Creative Writing Workshop, UP National
Writers Workshop, and the Iligan National Writers Workshop. He was awarded the Jimmy
Balacuit Literary Award for Poetry by the Iligan National Creative Writing Workshop in
2003 and the Gawad Komisyon 2007 by the Komisyon ng Wikang Filipino. He teaches
literature and social science courses at the Leyte Normal University. (From the back
cover of An Maupay ha mga Waray)
2
The use of mother tongues in Philippine elementary education was only implemented
in 2012. Even so, the teachers themselves are f inding it hard to use the local languages
in their classes and, more so, to teach these languages to the children because of their
lack of pedagogical training in these languages and the unavailability of any module in
and about the local languages. Some of these teachers are, sadly, not even fluent in their
own local languages, given that they themselves were taught in the same educational
system that has long disenfranchised the local languages.
Lifelong English teacher and Palanca Award Hall of Fame recipient Leoncio P. Deriada
admonishes people to not teach little children to use English if they themselves do not
know how (150). The idea there is that when the teaching adult does not know the
language well, he/she will only be teaching the young ones illiteracies that may be
diff icult to correct later on as these children have already become used to what they
believe are proper usages of the English language when these are actually pure linguistic
errors. The same idea can also be applied to teaching any other language, including
Philippine regional languages, to the children. For example, if taught improperly, children
may grow up believing that certain words are truly part of their local vocabularies when
these words, for instance, are actually of Tagalog origin.
The phenomenon of Tagalizing the Visayan languages is, in fact, happening nowadays
wherein Visayans, while speaking and casually conversing in Visayan, have started
inserting (rather excessively at that) the words po and opo in their sentences. Moreover,
Tagalog words such as kasi, parang, dapat, sarili, kailangan, gusto (Though not
Tagalog per se, the word is highly associated with the Tagalog language. It has also long
become part of the Cebuano language, but not of Waray.), nangyayari, dati, and di ba,
to name but a few, are also now becoming part of the Visayan lexicon and on their way
to replacing these words Visayan counterparts. On another consideration, recently f iled
is a bill that stipulates that English alone should be taught in the Philippine educational
system. This has the potential to truly kill the local languages of the Philippines.
3
Interestingly, two prominent Waray-Warays, who themselves were ardent advocates of
the Wary language and were members of Sanghiran san Binisaya, were part of the
committee that studied the languages in the Philippines and endorsed the declaration
of Tagalog as the national language.
106
E.E. Agustin
4
Polano and Polana are the names usually given by Wary speakers to whomever they
talk about but whose names they do not know or have forgotten.
5
Translation by Merlie Alunan.
6
The title of this article, Waray Beauty, can then be interpreted (if understood in the
Waray language) as no beautyin reference to the languages supposed marginal
positionor (if understood in English) as the beauty of Warayin reference to the
assertion (reterritorialization) that Waray, even if it comes from the regions, is beautiful
and worthwhile.
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Wary Beauty
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_______________
Efmer E. Agustin (pseudonym Remef E. A.) <eanimee@hotmail.com> of Abuyog,
Leyte teaches literature at the University of the Philippines Tacloban. He is currently
a graduate student of comparative literature at UP Diliman. He produces creative
works and criticisms in Waray-Waray, Cebuano, English, and Tagalog.
108