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    Historian's Task

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    14 views5 pages

    Historian's Task

    Uploaded by

    Summer Evangelista
    Historian's Task

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 5
    Stustim and other non-Christian minorities into the tial eommunity the present the effects of somo ofthese disunities con. rnarase the nation, in site ofthe major steps forward since independence, In the continued struggle for @ national unity that will afford freedom and equality to every Filipino, a return to the ‘sion that found ite most thovghtfal articulation in Rizal will epay the effort. It is my hope that these essays of mine may make @ ontibution to that end The Historian’s Task in the Philippines ous controversy i rarely a conducive context for an introduction te serious history. Such content, "onethelss, provided my own Introduction tothe sty of Philip Pine history. In 1948, Catholie bishops opposed the use o govers trent funds to publish Rafvel Palma's biography of Rial beeauee of the book's ant-Catheiiam, One could easily have gotten eavht uP jn the instramentaiztion of history to seore debating points In that controversy and gone no further. Fortunately. ne of my ‘profesor in the seminary, though not hima a professional Hi forian, wat a scholar with a soand histories! sense. He organined {or our dass» philopy seminar on Rizal's fe and thought, not tw provide ammunition fr the controversy, but to understand Ris and his role In Phiipine history by going back to his eters, stoves, and other writings in thelr orginal languages "A study of Rizal's writings led toa sharing of Riza convictions ‘on the centrality of histoncal perspective oF a yea! ungers.anay ‘ofthe problems of the present. Fora young American undergradue Ste seminarian gecently rsived in the Philippines and anxious to ‘become familie with Pipino thought, history, and eature, Rizals insistence on the need fer Filipinos to understand their own past if they wore effectively to shape their fature strock @ sympathetic pote, My subsequent doctoral studi in history and the succeeding ‘years of historical research, writing, and teaching have enly co Firmed the main thrust of Rizal's insight. 1 could hardly have found ‘better intradetion to Philippine history than through the life and Srrtings of that mest historically minded of all Biipinos of Bs, and perhaps even of our own, time Jose Rizal "it wos Real's consciousness ofthe need to knosr his people's past that made him interrupt his work on Bl Fidusterismo, which was to point toward a solution to the country’s problems exposed in the Noli me tingere. Before planning for the fare, as he insisted in the prologue to his edition of Antonio de Morg’s Suess de las Isla Filipinas, one mst unveil that history which had been hidden ‘rom the eves of Filipinos by neglect or distortion, Havin acquired an understanding of their past, Filipinos, Rizal hoped, would be fle to “judge the present” so Una all togther might “dedicate (themselves) to studying the future ‘Driven by thie parpote, he spent long months in London's British ‘Museum, copying ovt painfully by hand More's account as the Dsis for his picture ofthe past, He dug throush ld missionary ‘chronicles that would help him expand on Morga’s narrative. Thus ‘he would show his eouatrymen that, from a Filipino point of view, Spanish rule had failed ta fof i promises of progress for Fil nos. Indeed, in some respects they had even retrogressed under Spanish rule, Thus in the light of their past, the present Jamen- table state of the Filipinos provided moral legitimation for the Strugsla to come, Bit beyond thet, Uhe knowlcdge of their past rareared a consciousness of being a poople with a common origin land e common experience constituting th national identity arcund which the fatare nation could arse. ‘Bt forall the care with which Rizal combed the hibnieles and the asutaness with which he reeaptured from a Filipino point of view the events they narrated, he was ulimataly a self-trained historian, and a part-time one at that, as he lamented in leters to Ii fend Perdinand Blumentritt, Despite his eave to docarent his Interpretation on individual points and the illumination he gave to the period, the book as a whole proves too much, Three centuries of Spanish rule, for all its faults, had not been complete disaster. {aking a new look at that Flipino past and uncovering the rts of ‘what was good and bad in contemporary Filipino society. Above all, hhe was able to share with his people a sense of national identity, Which, a8 he once wrote Blumentritt, “impels nations to do great ends, ‘Anyone who first studies Risals historical writings and then reads Andres Bonifac's call to is fellow Filipinos in his *Ang Gapat mabatid ng mga Tagaleg” will recognize that Rizal's hope that his edition of Merga would lay a foundation for the bailding ofthe nation was not in vain, Bonifacio, Jacinto, and other Filipinos of the Ravolutionary generation foand mach of their literary and Dationalist inspiration in Rizal's writings. Every Filipine historian ean share the basi goals Rizal thought capable of achievement by history—understanding of cur past, cultivation of our national identity, and inspiration forthe future Their achievement, however is not without obstacles. Recovering the Past ‘The reievant Filipino past is not merely the pre-Hliepanie period Rizal naturally undertodk to illuminate, It will not sutfice today, oven less than in his time, to skip over the Spanish colonial period lon the grounds that there was no Filipino history before 1872. Such ‘an allegation, if meant seriously, betrays more a lack of method than a'leck of history. Even with the menger resources. at his Aisposal in the nineteenth eentury, Rizal had shown that Spanish thronicles could be mined to got beneath the Hispanocentricout- look of these sources. With access today to an enormously wider archival documentation, not to speak of the resources afforded by such cogmate disciplines as archeology, linguistics, and anthropol- ogy, a great deal can be learned about Filipino society during both the pre-Hispanic and Hispanic periods William Henry Seott, the distinguished investigator into go meny facets of the Filipino past, has entitled ane of his works, “Cracks in the Parchment Curtain." There is, he says, a documentary curtain ‘of parchment which, at first sight, conceals from modern view the ‘activities and thought of Filipinos and reveals only the activities of ‘Spaniards, But many “cracks” in that parchment allow the percep tive investigator to glimpse Filipinos acting in teir own world. Or to change the metaphor, much can be learned about Filipino ie and secety by reading between the lines of Spanish doeaments, The chroniclers may have aimed primarily ¢o narrate the expivits, ‘cevoun, 26, ana aarusiups o une opanisn missionaries, cue Ley ould not help but speak indirectly of the sixteenthcentary Filipi- fos whom the missionary succeeded in converting or filed to persuade. Those unintended references are often much more en- Tightening to us than any number of explicit analyses of Filipino seciety. For the lattar often reveal as much ofthe writer's paint of view and biases as they do of the people he professes to describe. I's necessary, however, to know how ta put Ure questions ta the documents if they are to give us the anewers we look for in them. ‘The Formative Century ‘An unfortunately disproportionste amount ofthe total research into Philippine history has been devoted ta the evolutionary and the American colonial periods. ‘That ie not to tay that it has not ‘been fruitful in itself, or Chat these periods are undeserving of intensive study. ‘The problem is not whet has been done, but what has not been

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