FILIPINAS: DOLOR DE MIS DOLORES*

A Position Paper on Parliamentary Bill No. 195

REMIGIO E. AGPALO**

First of all, I would like to exp~ess my gratitude to the Chair­ man of the Sub-Committee on Constitutional Law for inviting me to present my views on the important issue of whether we should change the name to as provided in Parliamentary Bill No. 195. My position on this important question may be divided into two parts - a comment on matters I regard as secondary and a pre­ sentation of my main argument. The principal argument involves the problem of the crisis of identity, one of the major crises which confront all developing or modernizing countries. I shall discuss this in Section Ill of this paper after I have considered the secondary matters. I adopt this approach because the main argument ought to be discussed last in order to give it the emphasis it deserves.

II Let me, then, begin with the secondary matters, which are embodied in the argument of the proponent of Parliamentary Bill No. 195: ( 1) That the name Philippines "merely reflects the victories of our invaders," for the Spaniards named our country "after Philip II of Spain" (Parliamentary Bill No. 195); (2) That the Philippines, named after Philip II, connotes the bad or even the worst that could be said concerning man, for Philip II was "a monster of bigotry, ambition, lust, and cruelty;" "ignoble in life as well as in death"1; and (3) That several countries of the Third World, such as the Gold Coast, Congo, and Northern Rhodesia have changed their names to Ghana, Zaire, and Zambia, respectively, in order to cast off taints of colonialism. 2 Considering these points, the proponent of Parliament­ ary Bill No. 195 concludes that "It is high time that we should cor­ rect this stigma" by adopting the name Maharlika, which is not paint­ ed with foreign color," a name which is "reflective of our customs, ideals, and traditions."

*Presented to the Sub-Committee on Constitutional Law, Batasang Pambansa, December 4, 1979. **Department of Political Science, University of the Philippines. 2 /Philippine Political Science Journal December 1980

The conclusion in this argument is not well taken. It is true that the name Philippines is derived from a foreign name. However, adopting Maharlika will not free us from being linked to a foreign term. Dr. Juan Francisco, the author of Indian Influences in the Philippines, says that maharlika is a Tagalog word derived from the Sanskrit word maharddhika, which means "rich, he who has great talent or knowledge."3 Neither will maharlika reflect Filipino ideals today, for one of the principal ideals of contemporary is equality. The maharlika, however, referred to the top stratum of the highly stratified society of the pre-Spanish barangay, the aristocrats, who were distinguished from the or freemen and the or servile persons. I am sure Filipinos today do not believe in reviving the elitist stratification system of the pre-Spanish era, with its aliping namamahay and aliping saguiguilid. With regard to the first point of the proponent of Parliamentary Bill No.195 - that the name Philippines merely reflects the victories of our invaders - I would like to take this up in my principal argument. As regards the proponent's second point, this is fallacious for it derives force from one of the common devices of propaganda - name-calling. In any case, recent scholarship shows that the charac­ terization of Philip II as an immoral, evil, and vindictive monster or tyrant is based on Antonio Perez's Relaciones, first published in 1591 and expanded in 1598, which has been conclusively demon­ strated to have forged or interpolated "almost all the incriminating passages" about Philip 11. 4 Parker states that "A very different picture of the prudent king (Philip II) emerges from a study of his personal papers, of which 10,000 survive although they are seldom used by historians, and from personal accounts of people who knew him well such as the monks of the Escorial."5 The Philip II who emerges from these primary sources is a man who loves the outdoors, gardening, scholarship (his library at the Escorial contained 14,000 volumes, some of which were prohibited by the Inquisition), painting (his various palaces were decorated by over 700 paintings, including masterpieces by Bosch, Breughel, and Titian), and science (he esta­ blished an astronomical observatory and chemical laboratory). He was a great builder, the Escorial - monastery, palace, and mauso­ leum all in one - being his most famous construction. He was also a protector of St. Teresa of Avila. Regarding his public duties, "Philip II was a model of industry and diligence."6 However, owing to his deep faith in religion, he was also a man of rigid principles. 7 Concerning the proponent's third point, this is correct in so far as it states a fact with regard to what several Third World countries . had done with their former names. But it does not follow that be­ cause some or many countries had changed their names, the Philip­ pines ought to follow suit. Moreover, there are great countries which