Bayanihan (being and becoming a hero)

Luzon, Philippines

“Bayanihan”

Pryor Placino

In a peri-urban municipality to the east of Metro Manila in the

Philippines, informal miners devote one Sunday morning to manually
crush tuff rocks. These miners are self-employed and their livelihood
could be generally considered as artisanal and small-scale. Together,
these miners gather rubbles of rocks and sell them to truckers of
building contractors. During the other days of the week, the miners
crush stones on an individual basis to support their respective
families. But during that particular weekend, the miners voluntarily
work as a collective and pool together the money they earn from
selling rubbles. They will contribute their earnings for that day to a
community member who has been sick and needs hospitalization.
This collective and voluntary work is what the informal miners
consider as a form of bayanihan. In this particular example,
bayanihan is mobilized as a way of extending the self to others
(pakikipagkapwa) by giving sympathy and practical aid (pagdamay)
and doing service without asking anything in return (kawanggawa).

Bayanihan  as a collective endeavor among Filipinos had been

documented as early as 1754 in the dictionary “Vocabulario de la
Lengua Tagala” by Noceda and Sanlucar. The authors refer
to bayanihan  as “obra comun”  (p. 72) or common
work. Bayanihan  comes from the root word bayani  and the suffix -
han. Bayani  is roughly translated to hero in the English language. The
suffix –han  when added to a root word such as bayani creates a noun
and an action word. Bayanihan  can then be referred to as being and
becoming a hero.

The idea of bayani  as translated into the English word hero, however,
is not as neat as it appears to be. For Filipino scholar Zeus Salazar
(1997), the local concept of bayani  has a different value and is a richer
concept than its supposed western counterpart. Salazar used the
Spanish translation of hero, héroe, as a heuristic to differentiate it with
the local term bayani. The héroe  could be likened to a martyr who may
or may not think of compatriots when making actions. For Salazar,
a héroe  commonly acts as an individual and is viewed to be
exceptional. On the other hand, bayani  is a counter-discourse to the
western concept of héroe. In Salazar’s words:

“The summary of all of these differences could be distilled from the

individualism and preoccupation of the  héroe  with his own
“persona,” as compared with bayani who belongs to his own group
and focused only and distinctly on advancing the interest of the
group. …The action of the bayani is based on the character of bayan,
wherein humility and being equal with others are valued more.
(Salazar 1997, 3-4)

Salazar problematizes the concept of bayani vis-à-vis héroe through

the lens of Pantayong Pananaw. Pantayong Pananaw constitutes the
indigenization movement in Philippine social sciences. Pantayo  comes
from the prefix pan– (for/for the purpose of) and root
word tayo  (we). Pananaw  is direct translation of the word perspective.
According to Salazar (2000), pantayong pananaw  refers to “one’s
wholeness that is contingent upon the interconnections of cultural and
social elements with each other, which is distributed and understood
by an ethnolinguistic group: the self” (p. 55). In this regard, the self is
not sovereign but always co-exists in relation to others. Pantayong
Pananaw  as a theoretical framework points towards the differentiation
between two Filipino translation of the English words we and
us: tayo  and kami. Pantayo  could be roughly translated as “from-us-
for-us” while pangkami  could refer to “from-us-for-you” (Guillermo,
2003). In pantayo, the speaker and the listeners belong to the same
ethnolinguistic group and are in active conversation with each other.
In the word pangkami, the speaker only speaks of himself and the
group he identifies with while his listeners are only at the receiving
end (Salazar, 2000; Guillermo 2003).

Through the pantayong pananaw, the bayani is argued to be embedded

in the local context and speaks for and together with the people he is
part of (Salazar, 1997). The héroe  on the other hand is somewhere
above and beyond the reach of his others (Salazar, 1997). Unlike
a héroe, the bayani  always identifies him/herself with
the bayan. Bayan  is a complex term in itself. It could refer to multiple
scales that constitute both people and place such as municipality,
province, country, nation, community, citizens and the public. For
Filipino scholar Jaime Veneracion (1998), bayan  has originally refered
to ‘the people’ but later evolved to also refer to a specific place. He
also underlines that if bayan  is used to refer to the Filipino people it
may be translated similar to the concept of nation. A popularized
expression “para sa bayan” (for the bayan) could mean that any
actions, accolades or feat one has persevered to accomplish are
extended to both people and place and offered for their constituted
pride and glory. In this regard, the bayani  is part of bayan  and among
compatriots (kababayan).

The bayani  acts with the collective and with their common concern in
mind. In line with this, bayanihan  can be considered as a form of active
heroism (kabayanihan) of an individual or a group of people by
helping others without expecting anything in return. In bayanihan, one
who volunteers and co-develops a community spirit could emerge as
a hero in his/her own simple ways and take pride of the achievement
of the group of people in common. As illustrated in the opening story,
mining together and extending support as a collective could somehow
bring a community member out of danger, both physically and
financially. Knowing that someone from their neighborhood is not in
good shape affects miners and their community. When they would be
in the same situation as the community member who is in need, the
latter might do the same thing for them as a form of solidarity with
the rest the group (pakikisama), pagdamay  and pakikipagkapwa.
Working together can make any action effective and any task easier to
accomplish. The achievement of one is also an achievement of the
many, and vice versa.