November 5th is a province-wide non-working holiday in Negros Occidental. This is in commemoration of our courageous forefathers literally bamboozling the Spaniards into handing us our freedom.

There were some notable events leading up to the bloodless revolt and declaration of the Republic of Negros, but the highlight, to me, is this: just the sight of Generals Juan Araneta and Aniceto Lacson marching into Bacolod with their troops, convinced that the Spaniards should no longer hold the city. From the belfry of the San Sebastian Cathedral, the Negrense forces seemed well-equipped, with nipa stalks carved into rifles and bamboo mats rolled up to resemble canons.

I live seven minutes away from the very cathedral where the Spanish authorities stood and considered laying down their arms a century ago, and yet my province’s history has always been overridden by histories of other places, of other people. For many, Cinco de Noviembre remains as just a government-issued opportunity to sleep in and laze about. The only pieces of Negros history I was familiar with were from the anecdotes of my lolos and lolas, overheard at family get-togethers. My textbooks never mentioned anything about my province establishing itself as an independent republic. At one point, our teachers even fined us one peso for every Hiligaynon word uttered in class.

It frustrates me that I didn’t get to learn my own history in my high school social studies classes. It frustrates me that all provinces—that is, places that aren’t Metro Manila—are lumped together as an image of mountaintops half-shrouded by clouds, with sugarcane fields laid out like a blanket at your feet (although, to be fair, this is exactly what greets you when you peer out the windows of Bacolod-Silay International Airport). It frustrates me that every time I tell people I’m from Bacolod, I get wrongly used “gid ya”s and “bala”s in response—not because I think everyone should learn Hiligaynon, but because it doesn’t feel fair that this is the only thing people will ever know about my province. It doesn’t feel fair that even people born and raised in my province will never properly learn our own history; that we will never come to fully appreciate our own heritage.

Everyone knows the stereotype: Ilonggos are malambing. But Ilonggos are more than just that. We are to the Philippines what the South is to the United States, as one of my professors once said—warm, genteel. We are easy-going, as you can tell from the sing-song of our dialect. We love food more than your average Filipino, which is inevitable since the province boasts some of the best delicacies in the country.

I love my home. I just wish everyone else, especially those who inhabit the sock-shaped island, would learn to love it, too. Learning about our history is the first small but significant step to appreciating how rich our provinces’ cultures are and being proud about upholding it—just as our forefathers proudly marched into the city of Bacolod on November 5, 1898, fake firearms and all.