The initial geography and history lesson outline below narrates how old the City of Manila is and how varied the culture has been for centuries. With over twelve million inhabitants, the megalopolis now known as Metro Manila (the National Capital Region) is now bursting at the seams as one of the most vibrant, jampacked, overcrowded, dirty, and newest-built megacities of the world.
The City of Manila is the second oldest settlement (after Cebu City) of the Spanish conquistadors in the Philippines and is based on the walled city of Intramuros with Fort Santiago guarding the approaches to the Pasig River. Inside Intramuros is the Manila Cathedral which was the seat of the Spanish Catholic bishops who ruled the country alongside the Spanish governor-generals. Manila also has the world’s oldest Chinatown (Binondo) which is just outside Intramuros (the name means “inside the walls”) and beside the original business district along Escolta and Avenida avenues. The Chinoys of the Filipino-Chinese community (inside and outside of Manila) are the most well-integrated of all the emigre Chinese in Southeast Asia.
To the north of Intramuros are the slums of Tondo, once the ancient residence of Manila’s datus (tribal leaders). To the northeast is the marketplace of Divisoria. To the east, across the Pasig River is the Quiapo Church with its bustling business district and site of the annual procession of the Black Nazarene. A bit farther out is the main campus of the University of Santo Tomas, (established earlier than Harvard University). South of Intramuros was the prime residential district of Ermita in which the “old rich” Spanish immigrants lived after Manila’s population outgrew the confines of Intramuros. There was once a distinctive creole of Spanish, Mexican, and Tagalog called Ermiteño that existed here but most of its speakers were killed off during the Battle of Manila in 1945 and the survivors scattered to other places until this dialect became extinct.
Manila was one endpoint of the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade, the world’s first sustained long-distance trans-oceanic trade route (across the Pacific Ocean and lasting from the 16th to the 19th centuries). With one to three galleons exchanged every year for over two hundred years, it allowed Spanish administrators, Nahuatl Mexican and Filipino tribesmen, seeds and plants, and cargo products of the Philippine archipelago to travel to Mexico and vice-versa. Manila itself was a cosmopolitan hub of trade in Southeast Asia and under the Spanish became known as the “Pearl of the Orient.” For four years in the 18th century, the city was invaded and occupied by the British, and one result of that was a colony of Sepoy soldiers who separated from their colonial masters and intermarried with the locals (they settled in the town of Cainta).
After the Philippine Revolution broke out in 1896 and after several Spanish garrisons in the provinces were overwhelmed and subdued, Manila remained nearly the only Spanish stronghold that was unsurrendered. Then the US Navy’s Great White Fleet (the Asiatic Squadron) under Admiral George Dewey arrived to send the hapless Spanish warships to the bottom of Manila Bay. During the Spanish-American War, the Americans made a deal with the defeated Spanish to let them swap places while keeping the Filipino troops unaware. Ownership of the entire archipelago changed hands almost overnight with the Spanish sailing away with the majority of the archipelago’s wealth and treasures while America bided its time inside Intramuros until it had transported enough soldiers and equipment to conquer Luzon Island (thus starting the Philippine-American War).
The arrival of the Americans brought Manila into the Twentieth Century and Manila became the first country in Asia to experience the wonders of the telegraph, telephone, publications in English, photography, cinema, radio, and then television (after World War II). Manila was, however, almost totally destroyed after the Japanese invaded and occupied the archipelago. The battle to liberate Manila in February to March 1945 made it the second most devastated city after Warsaw during World War II. The Ermiteño Spanish dialect became extinct as its Spanish-speaking families were massacred by the Japanese or killed by American artillery. Over 100,000 Manileños perished.
When the Philippines was awarded independence by the Americans in 1946, Manila again rose to the forefront as its ruins were cleared out and then rebuilt into a modern metropolis. However, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos flocked to it in search of education in its famed “University belt” or for greener pastures. Scholars and graduates of Manila’s universities stayed on to expand the middle class even as the aristocratic rich and landed elite held on to the country’s politics and finances. The slums swelled with poverty-stricken “provincianos” from all the provinces of the country, and they brought their countryside habits with them into a city not yet fully rebuilt or capable of absorbing them.
The Marcos dictatorship (1965–1986) arrested any further growth the Philippines could have attained as the country’s wealth was locked up by the despot and his family or by his cohorts and “warlords” in the countryside. Investments from abroad shied away from the Philippines and went to other countries in Southeast Asia even as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore overtook the Philippines’ initial economic lead and bounded far ahead. This started the diaspora of educated Filipinos to foreign shores in search of better salaries.
The cities surrounding Manila (Quezon City, Caloocan City, Mandaluyong City) together with smaller municipalities squeezed between and around them have now been consolidated administratively into the National Capital Region, also called Metro Manila. This ever-expanding metropolis is squeezed by Manila Bay to its west and Laguna de Bay (a freshwater lake) to its east. So it has nowhere to expand except north and south, into the other Tagalog provinces.
It is only now after a large base (over 11 million of them compared to 105 million national population) of Overseas Filipino Workers and a ten-year period of catch-up growth that Metro Manila has boomed. Business Process Outsourcing and industrial estates sprouted like mushrooms in various districts of the metropolis which have now been modernized but large areas between and around them are still clogged with slums or dilapidated old houses. Meanwhile, new high-rise residential and business towers are being constructed willy-nilly to attract the boom in OFW beneficiaries and call center agents. Also, at least three of the world’s largest malls have been constructed in Metro Manila (SM Megamall, SM Mall of Asia, and SM North EDSA) along with dozens of smaller malls and cineplexes to provide air-conditioned entertainment and respite to all the residents.
NOW TO UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGES OF “MANILA”…
Manila is home to a hodge-podge of one of the most adaptable people on this planet. The people of the entire Philippine archipelago have been flowing in and crowding into the once-spacious towns located north and south of the Pasig River. Manileño Tagalog is the most rapidly changing dialect of the Tagalog language and now comprises a variety of sociolects (dialects used by various social strata or social groups).
- Deep Tagalog — this is the original Tagalog language consisting of many words that are hardly used anymore in the modern world. Variations of it are still used in the small towns of surrounding provinces (Bulacan, Rizal, Cavite, Batangas, Laguna, Quezon, Bataan, Tarlac, Aurora, Zambales, and Pampanga). Comedy actor Leo Martinez uses an exaggerated Batangueño accent while the late Bert “Tawa” Marcelo popularized the Bulakeño accent.
- Taglish — this consists of English words and phrases that are adopted and inserted into Tagalog sentences. This is the most common dialect of Tagalog and is the foremost candidate to become Filipino, the official national language of the country. Most Filipinos who are fluent in both English and Tagalog speak this so often to the point that some can’t speak a straight sentence in either English or Tagalog anymore (they are fluent only in Taglish).
- Filipino English — yes, this is a distinct dialect of English, spoken with a variety of accents derived from various Philippine languages and using its own words and phrases that have now been accepted into the Oxford English Dictionary: comfort room (toilet), kilig (romantic giddiness or butterfly thrills), salvage killing (abduction execution), fiscalizer (prosecutor), carnapping (car theft). Prime examples of Filipino English speakers are BBC newscaster Rico Hizon, ABS-CBN talk show host Boy Abunda, and comedian YouTuber Mikey Bustos.
- Engalog — this is the use of Tagalog words in a primarily English sentence. There are two variations of this: (1) conyo-speak is primarily used by male rich kids who speak English at home and in exclusive schools — well-known examples are radio commentator Mo Twister and singer Martin Nievera; (2) colegiala-slang is the version used by the girls educated at exclusive girls schools (Assumption, Scholastica, St. Paul, St. Joseph, etc.) — the primary example of this is celebrity show host Kris Aquino with her Americanized Filipino accent.
- Swardspeak or Bekingese — this is the “secret” gay lingo of the LGBTQs (male and female homosexuals and transgenders). They continuously create new words to act as code words or synonyms for things they like to talk about that they don’t want straight people to understand. It is like a form of Cockney Rhyming Slang but gathers words from English, Spanish, Tagalog, other Philippine languages, and pop culture then reinvents them with altered or hidden meanings. The popularity of gay comedians like Vice Ganda on television and stage has spread this type of lingo to the mainstream such that books in this sociolect have now been published. No other country has produced such a dialect actively used by the LGBTQ community.
- Streetslang (“salitang kanto”) — this is the harsh Tagalog speaking style of the Manila underworld of istambays (street kids), ambulant vendors, pok-poks (prostitutes), street gangs, assorted bottom-dwellers, pusakals (“street cats”), and criminals, as well as of the policemen trying to stuff them into overcrowded prisons or to leave them lying lifeless in a pool of blood. Beware of the “tokhang” (anti-drug raids) and those “riding-in-tandem” (assassins astride a motorcycle that quickly weaves through stalled traffic after shooting their target).
OTHER CULTURAL TRENDS AND ACTIVITIES…
Metro Manila is known for its excessive traffic congestion which can cause an ordinary drive on a weekend or holiday to become a two-hour one-way commute. Uncontrolled annual sales of imported and locally constructed private vehicles and the lack of a well-planned mass-transport system have flooded the sidestreets and main thoroughfares of Metro Manila with cars, jeepneys, FX shared taxis, buses, trucks, and tricycles. The traditional taxi cabs are now undergoing stiff competition from the part-time Grab and Uber car owners. In this slowpoke traffic scene, motorcycles have taken over as the “king of the road” from the traditional jeepney (a former World War II jeep that has been stretched into an overly decorated mini-bus).
Original Pilipino Music (OPM), launched in the 1970s to counter the influx of American and British music ruling the airwaves, has established itself strongly among today’s Pinoys (as Filipinos like to call themselves). Every Filipino home has a karaoke/videoke machine giving the kids a chance to hone their singing skills. One out of every four Filipinos is able to perform musically. Now Filipino musicians and singers are a huge in-demand segment of the OFWs exported by the country. No self-respecting hotel, theater group, resort, or cruise ship will be without a Filipino lounge singer, stage band, or dance group on their entertainer list. Filipino singers and dance groups have now become popularized by social media and YouTubers to a global audience of millennials who don’t subscribe to traditional giant recording companies.
Filipino food has now been discovered by celebrity chefs and YouTube reactors to be “the next big food craze.” The expansion of Jollibee, with its Chickenjoy, Pinoy Spaghetti, Pansit Palabok, and Aloha Yumburger offerings, and its successful penetration overseas into the US mainland and the Middle East is paving the way for the entry of other Pinoy food brands like Chowking, Red Ribbon, Goldilocks, and Chicken Inasal to set foot on other continents. Filipino fruits and snacks are also becoming popular among international travelers passing through Manila.
There are probably other aspects of Manila’s culture that have not yet been mentioned because it is such a broad topic. The best way to experience it is to stay a few days in Manila and let a Filipino friend or acquaintance guide you around the place and its environs.
No comments:
Post a Comment