Tantingco: MTB-MLE and Kapampangan
IT’S all systems go for the government’s Mother Tongue-Based Multi-Language Education (MTB-MLE) program this June!
What a victory for both educators and language advocates—for educators because it’s the long-awaited innovation that will improve student performance, and for language...
Tantingco: Kapampangan First
BEFORE I became a Filipino, I was a Kapampangan.
I was born a Kapampangan, not a Filipino. It was my Kapampangan ancestors’ blood that gave me life, and it was my Kapampangan ancestors’ language that became my mother tongue.
I became a Filipino only later, after learning of my...
Tantingco: Not OK with K-12
WHEN high school freshmen enter school next month, they won’t be called high school freshmen, but Grade 7 students. No big deal yet, because it’s still just a change of name. But wait till 2016—that’s the year these high school freshmen are supposed to graduate from high school, but they won’t,...
Tantingco: Our friendship with Spain
WE FILIPINOS can’t hold a grudge, can we? Despite the long and bitter years of colonization, we still consider our former colonizers as friends. We celebrate a Filipino-American Friendship Day (July 4), a Filipino-Japanese Friendship Day (July 23) and a Filipino-Spanish Friendship Day (June 30...
Tantingco: How Pampanga became Catholic
LUBAO, known to many as the Vatican of jueteng and the town that gave us two presidents (Diosdado Macapagal and Gloria Arroyo) and two movie kings who nearly unseated those two presidents (Rogelio de la Rosa and Fernando Poe Jr.), should now assert itself as the birthplace of Christianity in...
Tantingco: Miracle at the Apu Shrine
SHORTLY after midnight last Holy Wednesday, Fr. Enrique Luzung welcomed the first magdarame (penitents) to the Apung Mamacalulu shrine in Angeles City.
The sight of a Catholic priest openly mingling with mamalaspas (flagellants), mamusan krus (cross bearers) and magsalibatbat (crawlers...
Tantingco: Miriam on my Mind
WHATEVER you say about Miriam Defensor Santiago, I will always remember that summer of 1992 when her ragtag campaign captured the imagination of the entire nation and nearly made her the President of the Philippines. I was her campaign coordinator for Pampanga and I remember getting only...
Tantingco: The Other Side of Kapampangans
THE Kapampangan farmers of Hacienda Luisita who fought tooth and nail to own the land that they and their ancestors have tilled for centuries are only being true to their nature: Kapampangans were, are and will always be… rebels.
Huh?!
Weren’t Kapampangans the Spaniards’ best...
Tantingco: The Ciniong in Apu Ceto
TRUST Kapampangans to go to any lengths to please their prelates.
These people who call their priests "among" (from "amo," master), and would elect one as their governor, now have come up with a tribute for their archbishop that even an emperor or a celebrity would envy.
Last...
Tantingco: Wages of War
HAVE you ever seen a more offensive sight than the video of the four US Marines urinating on Taliban corpses in Afghanistan?
I’ve seen footage and photographs of soldiers desecrating their dead enemies in the heat of battle -- torching them, dragging and parading them in streets, hanging...
Tantingco: Festival of mediocrity
HOW was your holiday season? Aside from stuffing your body with loads of sugar, sodium, calories, carbohydrates, MSG, and fats of all kinds (trans, saturated, unsaturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated), did you also, like the million others, force-feed yourself with this abomination called...
Tantingco: The Crown and his Clown
LET’S first be clear about one thing: the Chief Justice and Renato Corona are not the same. One is the office, the other is merely its occupant.
Tantingco: Blood and Karma
WHEN President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo left Malacañang in June last year, she probably thought that she had signed every executive order, presidential decree and republic act necessary to prevent the long arm of the law from reaching her.
Well, as it turned out last week, she forgot one...
Tantingco: Airports
THERE I was, at the world’s worst airport (NAIA), waiting to board my plane (a PAL Boeing 747-400). Departure time was 10:30 p.m. I had a few minutes left to text my final good-byes to family and friends before inserting a new SIM card with international roaming.
Tantingco: The Undeclared National Artist
“NOTHING is more powerful,” Victor Hugo said, “than an idea whose time has come.”
I can’t remember how many times Nora Aunor has been nominated to the National Artist Award (renamed Order of National Artists recently) since Malacañang declared Fernando Amorsolo the country’s first...
Tantingco: My US Visa
IT WAS raining hard when I lined up in front of the US Embassy to apply for my visa. I had been instructed to show up at 6:30 a.m. which means I had to be up at 3 am to make it on time. When it started to rain, someone offered a small umbrella for P150, but it still wasn’t enough to prevent me...
Tantingco: Written in the Stars
IF PEOPLE who need people are the luckiest people in the world, who are the unluckiest?
They’ve got to be Frane Selak and Henry Ziegland, two real people whose incredible stories of hard luck are hot topics on the Internet.
Frane Selak was a music teacher from Croatia who was...
Tantingco: Let’s Rethink Halloween
IF WE don’t watch out, Halloween will soon replace Christmas as the most anticipated holiday of the year.
As early as first week of September, or two full months before October 31, department stores were already selling costumes, masks and other Halloween paraphernalia.
It’s gotten...
Tantingco: Across the Universe
WHEN I was a little boy, I had a yaya who taught me that the sun and moon were small glowing objects that revolved around the earth.
Tantingco: People from the riverbanks
SO ARE we now going to get these floods every year and are they going to worsen every time?
Tantingco: Ancient OFWs
WOULD you believe there are now 11 million Filipinos living abroad? That’s 11 percent of the total population of the Philippines, or all people of Region III (Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Zambales, Bataan and Aurora) put together.
Every year, one million Filipinos go abroad as...
Tantingco: Rizal’s Execution in the Eyes of a Guardia Civil
LAST WEEK, I chanced upon a rare eyewitness account of the execution of Jose Rizal. It was told by Blas Hizon, a member of the Guardia Civil who was assigned to play the bugle during the execution.
Hizon, a native of Binanongan, Rizal, was rocked with so much guilt that he defected to the...
Tantingco: Crocodiles in Pampanga
IF A 21-foot crocodile, similar to the one captured recently in Agusan del Sur, were found in Pampanga today, we’d also be scared out of our wits. But one thing is sure: we won’t be at a loss for words.
Fray Diego Bergaño, the Augustinian missionary who compiled a Kapampangan dictionary...
Tantingco: Manyaman Kapampangan
FINALLY, after a string of businessmen, politicians, civic and industrial leaders, we now have an advertising executive as Tourism Secretary. And that's how it should be, because marketing the Philippines as a tourist destination is no different from selling a product.
Justifying his...
Tantingco: Two heroes from Mexico, Pampanga
THE town of Mexico (pronounced “mechiku” not “meksiko”) has two good reasons to celebrate this year: it is the 110th death anniversary of Gen. Maximino Hizon tomorrow, September 1, and the 350th death anniversary of Francisco Maniago next month.
