Why Dabawenyos are soooooooo conyo?

Girl 1: Mag-go ka sa birthday niya?

Girl 2. Hindi. Gisabihan ko na siya na hindi ako mag-go.

Girl 1: Ano ka man uy? Gina-expect ko na baya siya na yang mag-go ka.

This is how a normal conversation goes between two Dabawenyo teenagers studying in a private school. Because non-Dabawenyos used to hear this kind of conversation, they can’t help saying, “Pamati ang mga taga-Davao. Sigeg Tagalog.”

But why do Dabawenyos speak Bisaya peppered with Tagalog, sprinkled with English, and marinated in FB-Twitter expressions?

There is a theory circulating among law students. The theory is that today's generations of Dabawenyos are descendants of the women in Villavicencio v.Lukban.

Who were those women? Why were they shipped to Davao secretly?


In the case of Villavicencio v. Lukban, Manila Mayor Justo Lukban ordered in 1918 the closure of “the segregated district for women of ill repute.” Some 170 women were rounded up and confined to their houses by the police for nine days.

Map of the undivided Davao Province

On October 25, 1918, through the orders of Mayor Lukban and the Chief of Police, the police placed the hapless women aboard the steamers Corregidor and Negros. They were to be sent as laborers to Davao.

After four days of sailing, they reached Davao. Francisco Sales, then provincial governor of Davao, Feliciano Yñigo and Rafael Castillo received the women as laborers. Sales, Yñigo, and Castillo did not know the women they received were prostitutes “expelled from the City of Manila.”

Meanwhile, friends and relatives of some of the women went to the Supreme Court and filed a petition for writ of Habeas corpus. They alleged that their relatives were illegally deprived of their liberty by Mayor Lukban, Anton Hohmann, Chief of Police of the City of Manila, and by certain unknown parties.

Mayor Lukban et. al., on the other hand, said that the petition should not be granted because, among others, they “did not have any of the women under their custody or control.” They admitted, however, that the 170 women sent to Davao were deported without their consent.

Yet the Court granted the petition, ordering Mayor Lukban et.al. to bring the women before the court on December 2, 1918. But even before this date, seven women had already returned back to Manila at their own expense.

When December 2 came, Mayor Lukban et.al. failed to produce the women. According to the Fiscal, “the women were contented with their life in Mindanao and did not wish to return to Manila.”

Both Sales and Yñigo answered that it’s impossible for them to fulfill the order because the women were never under their control, that the women were free in the Province of Davao, and that the women had married or signed contracts as laborers.

Days later, the Court made a second order, giving Mayor Lukban et.al. the same mandate—to bring the women back to Manila. If, however, the women did not wish to return, Mayor Lukban et. al. should show, in a written statements made by the women voluntarily, that they renounce their right, or Mayor Lukban, et.al. should “demonstrate some other legal motives that made compliance impossible.” They were given a month to fulfill the order.

On January 13, 1919, Mayor Lukban, et.al. were able to bring eight women from Davao. “Eighty-one women were found in Davao who, on notice that if they desired they could return to Manila, transportation fee, renounced the right through sworn statements; that fifty-nine had already returned to Manila by other means, and that despite all efforts to find them twenty-six could not be located.”

Thus, of the approximately 170 deported women, a total of seventy-four women were able to return to Manila, while 107 opted to stay in Davao.

Could it be that today’s generation of Dabawenyos are descendants of those 107 deported women who never went back home? We cannot tell for sure. For how many of the 107 women got married? Where exactly in Davao did they stay?

Take note that it happened between 1918 and 1919, when Davao was still a big province. Take note, too, that Davao became a chartered city only on March 1, 1937, and it was only in 1967 when Davao was divided into Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, and Davao Oriental.

The women in Villavicencio vs. Lukban, I submit, had little or nothing to do at all with the resulting language so common today among Dabawenyos.

“From the beginning of the twentieth century down to the years before World War II and up to the sixties, when our visions were less global and family ties more tenacious,” wrote Lolita Lacuesta in “The Davao We Know,” “Davao was the dream destination for Filipinos looking for new opportunities and fresh beginnings.”

Davao was the melting pot, she said, “where Filipinos from every region in the country found acceptance and inclusion in the mixing and blending together that was reflected in the language that emerged, which we Dabawenyos called Tagalog sa Mati or Tagalog-slash-Visayan-slash-Dinabaw and –slash-whatever else.”