CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- Kapampangan language and culture advocates took to social networking site Facebook on Monday, November 5, to protest the supposed planned Bantayog-Wika of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) in Pampanga.
The said project is initiated by the KWF and the Office of Senator Loren Legarda in partnership with the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, local government units (LGUs) and state universities and colleges (SUCs) in the country, according to KWF briefers.
The KWF said that the monuments “aim to enshrine the country’s indigenous languages by constructing physical structures to symbolize the significance of Philippine languages as repository of Filipino cultures’ wealth of indigenous knowledge, social values, life practices and traditions.”
There are already ten language markers erected as of October and the KWF is almost halfway in installing 22 language markers across the country for this year.
However, for local Kapampangan language expert Mike Pangilinan, the Bantayog-Wika is only supposedly dedicated to the Kapampangan language, but the poem written on the bamboo-like monument is in Tagalog, written in the Tagalog script, Baybayin.
“The symbolism is clear. This monument celebrates nothing more than the lasting subjugation of the Kapampangan language and script, Kulitan, by the Tagalog language and script, Baybayin, that has been elevated to the status of ‘national’ language and script,” Pangilinan said.
Pangilinan is pertaining to the design of the said monuments. The monuments present a supposed bamboo reed with the inscriptions of the poem of hero Andres Bonifacio entitled “Pag-ibig sa Tinubuang Bayan” inscribed in Baybayin script.
“To the generations still to come, this is nothing more than a gravestone to the Kapampangan language and script that is currently being sacrificed at the altar of the Philippine state,” Pangilinan said, adding that there should be an end to state-sponsored linguicide and ethnocide in the country.
Pangilinan also called on the abolition of the KWF and for Kapampangans to denounce local collaborators of the planned project.
Pangilinan posted a petition on Facebook which was immediately re-posted and shared by Kapampangans as well as other Facebook users from other linguistic backgrounds other than Kapampangan.
Facebook user Aurelio Solver Agcaoili called the monuments as merely phallic obsessions of the KWF.
“The phallic obsession of the KWF, an agency of linguistic and cultural fascism, linguicide, and ethnocide. The monies going to waste in erecting phalluses like this one in Pampanga, that seat of Pampanga culture and language, should have been used in helping landless farmers own their land,” Agcaoili said.
Facebook user Tomas Renante posted the petition and called the monument as merely “Tagalog cultural imperialism in action.”
The Facebook petition is addressed to provincial government officials of Pampanga.