Abstract

There are threads that undoubtedly bind us, but we Southeast Asians are accurately described as pluricultural and multi-ethnic. We have lived thus for several centuries now and most of the histories of the nations that constitute our part of the globe bear the marks of attempts of various colonizers to deal with ethnicity and to make us more “manageable” by bringing us Islam first, then Christianity—though in various forms as well, and attempting to cope with the Babel of our many languages through some imposed common medium—in the case of the Philippines, Spanish, marginally, and English, considerably!