‘Bayani’ a richer word than ‘hero’

By: Ambeth R. Ocampo - @inquirerdotnetPhilippine Daily Inquirer / 12:26 AM September 02, 2016

Words seem simple until you are faced with more than one meaning and have to choose based on usage
and context. For example, the burial of Ferdinand Marcos would not be an issue in an ordinary cemetery
or memorial park. There are two issues raised against him: First, should we consider him a “hero” fit to be
buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani? And second, is his presidency something we want to remember or
erase from our collective memory?

It is not well known that in the Manila North Cemetery (or the Cementerio del Norte) stands a
whitewashed circular structure commissioned by US Governor-General James F. Smith in 1908 to honor
the veterans of the Philippine Revolution. This used to be known as the “Panteon de los Veteranos de la
Revolucion,” and it used to house the remains of those gallant men (and even Melchora Aquino) who
fought in the Philippine Revolution against Spain and the “Philippine Insurrection” now acknowledged as
the Philippine-American War. There are very few remains left in the Pantheon now because towns and
provinces have since claimed their heroes from Norte. When I first visited the Pantheon in the 1980s, I
found a family who had established residence inside and who had used the empty graves and niches as
compartments for pots, pans, and other domestic objects, even shoes.

In May 1947 a Republic Memorial Cemetery was planned to be the resting place of Filipino soldiers who
died in the service of the nation during World War II. Congress passed Republic Act No. 289 (or an Act for
the Construction of a National Pantheon for Presidents of the Philippines, National Heroes and Patriots of
the Country) that was signed into law by President Elpidio Quirino in June 1948. Quirino’s successor,
Ramon Magsaysay, renamed the Republic Memorial Cemetery as the Libingan ng mga Bayani in 1954. It
is to be noted here that Magsaysay is still buried in the Manila North Cemetery while Quirino was
reinterred this year in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

It is the term “bayani” that is the bone of contention in the Marcos burial. Are all the people buried in the
Libingan ng mga Bayani a hero?

Or does burial there make one, no matter how unworthy, a hero?

If you google the word “hero,” you will get two meanings: one, “a person, typically a man, who is admired
or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities,” and the other, a “submarine
sandwich”! If you look up “bayani,” you will find many meanings. Vito C. Santos in his Vicassan’s dictionary
(1978), gives the following: hero, patriot (“taong makabayan”), cooperative endeavor, mutual aid, a
person who volunteers or offers free service or labor to a cooperative endeavor, to prevail, to be
victorious, to prevail (“mamayani”), leading man in a play (often referred to as the “bida”—from the
Spanish word for life, “vida”—who is contrasted with the villain or “kontrabida” from the Spanish “contra
vida,” against life). These words help us better understand the word for the lifesaver, the inflatable rubber
tube or “salbabida,” from the Spanish “salvar vida,” to save life.

Not content with the hefty Vicassan’s dictionary, I looked up the UP Diksiyionaryong Filipino (2001) that
lists three meanings for bayani: a person of extraordinary courage and ability; a person considered to
possess extraordinary talents or someone who did something noble (“dakila”); a leading man in a play. It
was added that a bayani or hero from mythology were those who had the qualities of the gods,
extraordinary strength, bravery, or ability.

Then there is the Vocabulario de la lengua Tagala by the Jesuits Juan de Noceda and Pedro de Sanlucar,
first published in 1754 but better known for its 1860 edition that can be found in Manila and covered with
pigskin. This once-rare book has been made readily available again by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino in
an edition by Almario, Ebreo and Yglopaz translated from the original Spanish into Filipino. Bayani in this
dictionary has several meanings: someone who is brave or valiant, someone who works toward a common
task or cooperative endeavor (“bayanihan”). It is significant that bayani comes a few words under “bayan,”
which is defined as: the space between here and the sky. Bayan is also a town, municipality, pueblo, or
nation, and can refer to people and citizens (“mamamayan”) who live in those communities, or to those
who originate or come from the same place (“kababayan”). Bayan also refers to the day (“araw”) or a time
of day (“malalim ang bayan”) or even to the weather, good or bad (“masamang bayan”).

I have been opening old dictionaries to find out what bayani meant to people in the past as a way of
figuring out what bayani should mean to Filipinos in the 21st century. Johnnie Walker has begun a
campaign to help us review and define hero/bayani for our time; it proposes ambition as a peg. That may
be one way of looking at the question, but hero and bayani do not have the same meaning. Bayani is a
richer word than hero because it may be rooted in bayan as place or in doing something great, not for
oneself, but for a greater good, for community or nation.

Old heroes were those who contributed to the birth of nation. Maybe the modern bayani is one who
pushes the envelope further by contributing to a nation in a global world.
‘Hero’ vs ‘bayani’
By: Ambeth R. Ocampo - @inquirerdotnetPhilippine Daily Inquirer / 05:05 AM June 18, 2021

First impressions last. Teachers who catch the enthusiasm of their students on the first day of class can
have one or two bad hair days during the semester that will pass unnoticed or be forgiven. But teachers
who fail to hook their students on the first day will toil every meeting till the end of the semester.

Having taught the college-level Rizal course since the 1980s should make me an expert by now, but I
always suffer from stage fright when I enter a classroom for the first time and have a hundred pairs of
eyes following me. I fret over the first day of class, only to see it run smoothly in the end. Over preparation
is respect for the subject matter and my students.

Teaching the Rizal course requires dismantling student resistance. The course is required by law, but
students consider it useless for future employment and irrelevant to their chosen course and
concentration. The greatest handicaps are the presumption that K-12 gave them all they needed to know
about Rizal. And for those who teach chronologically, there is a built-in spoiler: Rizal will be shot dead in
the end.

June 19, 2021 will be Rizal’s 160th birthday. There is no better time to look back on his life and legacy to
ask: Is Rizal still relevant? Are heroes old-fashioned? Filipinos talk about heroes in the past tense, because
they are mugshots who smile at us from banknotes and coins. Their names and deeds are heralded in our
boring textbooks. Their images and likenesses are fossilized in bronze and marble monuments. Come to
think of it, most Filipino heroes are male, old, and dead. Is heroism obsolete? Before the pandemic,
overseas Filipino workers or OFWs were raised to the level of heroes. Now they have been replaced by
medical frontliners as the new heroes. For individuals, we highlight those who bring home foreign honors
like athletes, beauty queens, and singers.

Ever wonder what Rizal would think of the Philippines and the Filipinos of 2021? Would he have given his
life in 1896 if he had foreseen the daily Edsa gridlock, nonmedical interventions to the COVID-19
pandemic, the futile “war on drugs,” the territorial dispute in the West Philippine Sea, and the coming
2022 election carnival? However, we should stop speculating about what Rizal would do today, because
his time was different from ours. Rather, we should try to spot heroes and heroism in our time. Our heroes
don’t look like Rizal and Bonifacio anymore; they come in different forms and shapes, like Patricia Non
and the community pantry.
We often translate the English word “hero” into the Filipino “bayani,” and use these terms
interchangeably. If you trace the development of the word bayani from the 17th- to the 19th-century
Tagalog dictionaries and vocabularies compiled by Spanish missionaries, you’d find that the Filipino
“bayani” is far richer and more nuanced than the English “hero.”

A hero is defined as a “person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or
noble qualities.” A hero can also refer to a leading man in a play or film. In some contexts, a hero may
even refer to a submarine sandwich! On the other hand, before the 20th century, a bayani could mean a
man of extraordinary strength, bravery, ability, usually a warrior; a man who had the qualities of the gods.
Bayani could also refer to a dagger.

Then there are related words, like “taong makabayan,” a hero or patriot; “dakila,” a man who does
something noble; “mamayani,” a victorious man, a man who prevails. And, yes, bayani can also be a
leading man in a play.

In the 1832 edition of the “Vocabulario de la lengua tagala” compiled by the Jesuit fathers Juan de Noceda
and Pedro de Sanlucar, bayani was defined as a person who volunteers or offers free service toward a
cooperative task or common endeavor. These were the people who practiced “bayanihan,” which in olden
times meant physically carrying somebody’s nipa hut from one place to another. It was a community
helping each other out. If we take this meaning and relate bayani to the root word “bayan,” referring to a
community of people, a town, or the nation, a bayani is someone who goes beyond himself by doing
something for the nation.

Rizal, a dead hero, wrote in 1890: “One only dies once, and if one does not die well, a good opportunity is
lost and will not present itself again.” In 2021, we need living heroes. To rephrase Rizal’s line: “One only
lives once, and if one does not live well, a good opportunity is lost and will not present itself again.”