While Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) written by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry in 1943 now has over 300 translations in different languages worldwide and is now considered the world’s most translated book (not counting religious works), there have been surprisingly only two translations of his book in the Philippines (Filipino and Bicol). El Diutay Principe is only the third edition featuring a Philippine language. The Little Prince is a classic French novella about a pilot who gets stranded in the desert after a plane crash and encounters a little fellow who asks him to draw a sheep for him. Through the course of their meeting, the pilot rediscovers the true meaning of life and what people should value the most. When I came across the book in 2013, I found that I could relate very well to the negative image given to “growing up” in the book. When the idea to translate the book into my mother tongue was presented to me, I didn’t think twice. I thought, ‘a lot of people my ...
The
transportation system in Zamboanga city is very simple to figure out.
All jeepneys go from a certain barangay
to the downtown area or what we call pueblo and
vice versa. Growing up in Zamboanga city and not ever having
left it even for vacations, I have always thought that the downtown
area of all cities in the Philippines are called pueblo.
It wasn't until in high school where some of my classmates came from
nearby provinces that I learned that this was not the case. In
college, I learned that the equivalent of this word in Cebuano is
centro. When I started
working in Manila, I realized that the cities in Manila don't even
have a well-defined downtown anymore which is incidentally, also what
Zamboanga city is currently developing into.
*On May 23, 1899, the Spaniards finally evacuated Zamboanga, after burning down most of the city's buildings in contempt of the Zamboangueños' revolt against them.
I
have always wondered why we called the
downtown area of Zamboanga city as pueblo.
When I checked the meaning of this word in Spanish, I learned that it
meant 'the people or the town'. If we are to believe the
Chabacano-is-parroted-Spanish theory, it does make sense for us to
use the word pueblo
for 'downtown' since the Chabacano and Spanish definitions are almost
the same. But I felt like there was a different story behind it.
Later
on, I realized that pueblo
is not a general term for 'downtown' but a name that our ancestors
have placed on the downtown area of Zamboanga city. But why did they
call Fort Pilar and its environs as pueblo?
I
remember a Spaniard from a Facebook group told me that his great
grandfather was a Spanish soldier born at Fort Pilar. At the time, I
had my doubts because if you look at Fort Pilar today, it's just a
very small edifice and it's hard to imagine people living there. When
I told my friend about it, he told me that there probably was an
adjacent village to the fort which was just unimaginable for me at
that time.
Yes.
Believe it or not, Zamboanga used to be a small village attached to what is now known as Fort Pilar. Everywhere else were probably
heavily forested areas or small tribal villages which farm, hunt, or
fish.
In
fact, if you go to the BIR office in Zamboanga city today, you will
see the remnant of a gate from the walls of the old city. The city or
what was left of it was probably destroyed during the second world
war.
Even
before the second world war, according to a Wikipedia article I read (which I unfortunately, can no longer find), the
Spaniards destroyed several buildings so that the revolutionary
forces wouldn't be able to use them. That is probably a common practice
during war. Growing up, I have always wondered why we didn't have many
Spanish era buildings in Zamboanga city (Fort Pilar is the only
one I know) and after reading that *article (yay, I found it) in Wikipedia, I realized
that most were probably burned down by the Spanish or destroyed in
world war II. In the oldest Chabacano text found, we
could see one of the characters in the dialogues talk about an
incendio. Is this the same incendio that the Wikipedia
article talks about?
When
I asked my late uncle what the difference was between quema
and incendio, he said the former is a regular fire while the
latter is a big one.
Suddenly,
everything fell into place. Think about it. If you live in a farm in
Mercedes in the 1800s and you made reference to the village of
Zamboanga (Fort Pilar and the walled city around it), you will
definitely call it the pueblo (Spanish for town).
That's pretty much how most places get its name. For example, if you
live in an area called kamias, there probably is or used to be
plenty of kamias in that area.
Today,
the pueblo is no longer just the Fort and its environs. When I
visited the uncle of a friend, he told me aqui lang yo na pueblo
ta queda. I was surprised when I later found out that he lived in
Canelar which in my mind definitely was not part of the pueblo.
But when I visited his place, I realized that it had already been
captured by the sprawling urbanization in Zamboanga city with several
banks, hotels, and restaurants along its main roads.
The
term pueblo is also becoming synonymous to the urbanization of a certain locale. For example, you can say ta queda ya pueblo el Santa Maria
which means that Santa Maria is becoming urbanized.
In
Camins' dictionary, he defines the word pueblo as the town,
village, or people. Santos' dictionary has the same definition for
the word pueblo and lists the word centro for the
Chabacano term of 'downtown' in the English to Chabacano section of
his dictionary. It is not until the recent English to Chabacano
dictionary published by the city hall of Zamboanga that we get a more
modern sense of how the word pueblo is used wherein the listed
word for 'downtown' is pueblo and centro del ciudad.
In historical account, there’s two areas of Pueblo: the Pueblo Viejo & Pueblo Nuevo. The PUEBLO VIEJO is what is today’s the area from Ayuntamiento to Fortaleza del Pilar. Whereas, the PUEBLO NUEVO is what’s today the area of MAGAY until Camino Nuevo.
ReplyDeleteMuchas gracias Ronan. Tiene cuidao na virus!
DeleteI'm sad you didn't mention "población" in your essay. Even Makati has a Brgy. Poblacion, as many towns and cities do. In fact, it's so widespread that the "poblasyon" - the nativized word - is synonymous with words like "bayan" or "banwa" in different PH languages.
ReplyDeleteMuchas gracias!
Delete