Francis Kristoffer L. Pasion
Senior History Researcher
On the night of 12 February 1932, in the halls of the Philippine Normal School’s auditorium, on the occasion of the 20th Annual Oratorical Contest hosted by the University of the Philippines College of Law, a young student leader from Bicol stood up at the podium and delivered a thundering speech, and one so peculiar and so attuned to the geopolitics and anti-imperialist sentiments of the time that when it was printed in a form of a booklet translated in Bahasa and distributed in Indonesia, the Dutch colonial government there had it banned.
Map of Southeast Asia entitled “Malay Archipelago” by John Bartholomew & Son, Ltd. from The Times atlas, 1922.
The speaker was none other than Wenceslao Vinzons. The speech was entitled “Malaysia Irredenta” or Malaysia Redeemed, a vision of the future so ambitious and of similar mode as the one made by Jose Rizal in his “Filipinas dentro de cien años” (The Philippines within a Hundred Years). It attempted to set the trajectory of a possible future where all the peoples descended from the ancient Austronesian seafarers, including the Philippines, would unite to remove the shackles of imperial bondage and become one people.
It was a Pan-Malayan movement that was predicated by an earlier Pan-Asian movement of the generation before Vinzons, when Mariano Ponce, Sun Yat-sen and a host of leaders in different parts of Asia attempted to unite as leaders of their respective nations towards the common goal of emancipation.
Mariano Ponce (standing) and Sun Yat-sen (seated), from the collection of Ambeth Ocampo.
Vinzons begins:
“In our struggle for emancipation from foreign control, during the centuries that ournationality has been repressed, our political outlook was circumscribed by narrow boundaries. Towards the waning years of the regime of Spain, our enlightened patriots reconstructed our history and envisioned for us a future.”
Here, he described where the Philippines was, still under American colonial rule, at the cusp of a new chapter.
“…in the thirty years that we have grappled with internal problems, events have transpired in international relations which we, ignorant of their significance, have failed to notice. We do not comprehend the recurring changes in the evolution of nations which have transformed the Pacific Ocean into a vast stage of the world’s unfolding drama. The destiny of the nation and of the allied races in the oceanic islands is inextricably linked with these world affairs, in this stupendous political readjustment now beginning in the Far East.”
In Vinzon’s bold attempt, he casts a vision of a “brown” skinned people, bonded by history (he recalls the Sri Vijaya and the Madjapahit empires) on “four continents and connected by the rest of the globe by the eddying currents to waters equally vast.” Vinzons, in this attempt cites the rationale of such a unity– that while the United States have kept the country “away from the conflict,” we are closely linked to our neighbors than we think, that it is folly to not plan for the defense of our nation because we are contented with the “policy of isolation.”
Portrait of Wenceslao “Bintao” Vinzons
Almost prescient, Vinzons saw the Japanese encroachment in East Asia as a threat:
“Imperialistic Japan is making her last bid for Asiatic leadership. If she succeeds in her Manchurian venture, she will have the Orient at her feet and the ocean for her dominion. Failing in this, she will cast her eyes to the south and mark for her only possible preys the weak and disunited oceanic islanders, the small brown peoples living in a hundred thousand miles from the rugged shores of Madagascar to the beetling crags of Easter Island.”
Like the good orator that he was, Vinzons paused, and offered a strange prediction that would happen in nine years time:
“I have portrayed for you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, our national dilemma. We cannot ignore the magnitude of this problem. We are situated where shot and shell will rain that hardest in a Pacific war. We are impotent by reason of our number and our lack of means of protection and defense.”
With Vinzon’s grasp of the history known during his time, he was able to make a conclusion that the “Malays have slept the sleep of the condemned,” and that they are “unmindful of their brilliant history,” that had stopped them from conceiving “the dream of a free united states of a redeemed Malaysia.” He went on, reviewing the consolidated territories of Sri Vijaya empire from “Formosa to Ceylon,” and how the Madjapahit Empire fought the invading troops of Kublai Khan, and how Polynesians were already engaged in “nation-building” prior to the coming of the “white man” with “his Bible and rum bottle.”
Citing all these, Vinzons concluded that despite Western colonization, depopulation, and the eradication of “all of the natives’ past,” the Malays have:
“… evolved into a race well-fitted for self-government and state-building. We have a splendid heritage of sufferings and persecutions under alien rulers; a heritage of the noblest and the best of Western religion and thought superimposed on the best traditions and customs of the inscrutable East. Add to these advantages our generous endowments from nature: the fertile lands that await the hands of the toiler.”
And thus he envisions the dream, which he believed was a lasting solution against any empire that would establish dominion over all the Malay peoples:
“A unified Malaysia extending from the northern extremity of the Malay peninsula to the shores of New Guinea, from Madagascar to the Philippines and to the remotest islands of Polynesia, will be a powerful factor in the oceanic world. Such an achievement will vindicate us from the contumely of the alien peoples. It will belie the charge that we are densely incapable of organization, a race devoid of the genius of government…
“… by our renewed racial vitality, we may give birth to a new nationalism, that of Malaysia redeemed.”
Although Vinzons’ racial categorizations were a product of his time (as today’s parameters would always refer to ethnicity than to “race”), his audacious vision was a reflection of the optimism of a generation eager to take the reins of leadership. Remember that it was also the time the Philippine Legislature under the American rule was already sending delegates to the U.S. Congress to lobby for Philippine independence. The prospect of independence opens a lot of possibilities.
This speech won Vinzons the Quezon Gold Medal in the said oratorical contest. And not even content to just say what he just said, as a student leader, Vinzons established a Pan-Malayan organization, the Perphempoenan Orang Malayoe, whose members in the University of the Philippines, hailed from the Philippines, Siam (now Thailand), the Malay peninsula, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), and Polynesia. It was where Vinzons befriended Prince Osman Hussein, a nephew of the Sultan of Sumatra, who also became the vice president of the organization. Upon Vinzons’ graduation, he established the political party, Young Philippines, whose aim initially was to establish diplomatic ties with Malay nations and foster cooperation, but soon became the libertarian youth opposition to the Quezon administration under the Commonwealth.
Scholars say this speech, while unfulfilled due to numerous historical circumstances of the recent past, helped set the stage for potential diplomatic cooperation in Southeast Asia, that eventually led to the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Vinzons’ command of language, familiarity with history and current events, his emphasis, as well as his’ contagious motivation to move towards a future that one can vividly imagine–these are the qualities that made him the great leader that he was: a youth leader described to have always been “in a hurry,” an impassioned lawyer for justice and equality, a voracious reader, a legendary orator and debater, a mass organizer, the youngest delegate (age 25) of the 1934 Constitutional Convention, a guerrilla fighter, and finally a martyr for freedom.
Ultimately Vinzons lived out what he preached. And his death at the hands of the invader only cemented a legacy he has bequeathed to us for posterity– a one-of-a-kind leadership that was motivated by a vision larger than one’s age or lifespan. Such a leadership is so rare and yet so direly needed.
Bibliography:
De Viana, Augusto V. “The Philippine View of Indonesian Independence: As Reported in Philippine Newspapers.” Jurnal Kaijan Wilayah Vol. 4, No. 1, (2013): 3-24.
Gaite, Ranavalona Carolina V. “Wenceslao Q. Vinzons: A Youth to Remember.” NHCP Collection, 1977.
Mago, Mauricio B. “Mga Edeolohiya ni Wenceslao Q. Vinzons na may kaugnayan sa Pagbabagong Republika.” Diss., Mabini Colleges Graduate School, 1985.
Pasion, Andrea. “Wenceslao Vinzons, from Parliament and Into the Hinterland.” Philippine Collegian, 26 November 1991. https://phkule.org/article/344/wenceslao-vinzons-from-parliament-and-into-the-hinterland
Yambot, Efren M. Wenceslao Q. Vinzons, the Hero the Nation Forgot. Manila: Upsilon Sigma Phi Alumni Association, 2016.