7a 7T4 74 Lesson 1 ANNOTATIONS OF ANTONIO MORGA’S SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS Dr. Jose Rizal learned about the ancient history of the Philippines either from his uncle or from his “best friend -Ferdinand Blumentritt or from a historian spanish- Antonio de Morga. Sources claimed that Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Events in the Philippine Islands) was suggested by Austrian scholar Ferdinand Blumentritt for Rizal’s research on pre-Spanish Philippines, its existence and history. Dr. Morga and his ‘Sucesos’ Antonio de Morga (1559-1636) was a Spanish historian and lawyer and a notable colonial official for 43 years in the Philippines, New Spain and Peru. He stayed in the Philippines, then a colony of Spain, from 1594 to 1604. As Deputy Governor in the Philippines, he reestablished the audencia and took over the function of judge (“oidor”). When reassigned to Mexico, he published the book Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas in 1609, considered one of the most significant works on the early history of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. The history is said to cover the years from 1493 to 1603. Discussions deal with the political, social and economic phases of life of both the natives and their colonizers. Morga’s official position as a colonial officer allowed him to access to many government documents. Probably the best account of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines written during that period, Morga’s work was based on documentary research, the author’s keen observation, and his personal involvement and knowledge. Annotation of Rizal of the Book Jose Rizal , as patriotic and nationalistic as he was, had a strong and deepest desire to assess and to know the true events and condition of the Philippines when the Spanish conquered the Philippines. Rizal sensibly stressed a presupposition that the early Filipinos were economically self- sufficient and thriving and culturally lively and colorful. Rizal did not believe that colonizer’s claim that they sociologically improved the islands; instead, Rizal believed that the Spain somewhat deepen the decline and deterioration of the Philippines’s rich culture and tradition. To back his theory up, Jose Rizal looked for a reliable account of the Philippines before and at the onset of Spanish colonization in order to have basis. Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt, a friend and knowledgeable Filipinologist, recommended Dr. Antonio Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Fitipinas.Rizal spent his researching in London and the British Museum from its Filipiniana Collection, looking for Morga’s book, and then copying and annotating this rare book available in the library. Having no high-tech copying technology at that time, he had the conscientiously hand-copy the GEMC 101A - The Life and Works of Rizal “Module V-whoie 351 pages of Morga’s history book and also went to Bibliotheque Nationale to finish it, eventually published it in Paris in 1890. Dr. Rizal precisely annotated every chapter and even checking typographical errors. He provided on every statement, which he believed misrepresenting the local’s cultural practice. An example is:, Morga described the culinary of the ancient Philippine natives by recording: “That filipinos prefer to eat salt fish which begin to decompose and smell.” Rizal’s annotative footnote explains: “This is another preoccupation of tha Spaniards who, like any other nation in the matter of food, loathe that to which they are not accustomed or is unknown to them... The fish that Morga mentioned does not taste better when it is beginning to rot; all on the contrary: it is bagoong, and all those who have eaten it and tasted it know that it is not or ought not to be rotten.” The Preface To the Filipinos: In Noli Me Tangere (“The School Cancer”) | started to sketch the present state of our native land. But the effect which my effort produced made me realize that, before attempting to unroll before your eyes the other pictures which were to follow, it was necessary first to post you on the past. So only you can fairly judge the present and estimate how much progress had been made during the three centuries (of Spanish rule). Like almost all of you, | was born and brought up in ignorance of our country’s past and so, without knowledge or authority to speak of what | neither saw nor have studied, | deem it necessary to quote the testimony of an illustrious Spaniard who in the beginning of the new era controlled the destinies of the Philippines and had personal knowledge of our ancient nationality in its last day. It is the shade of our ancestor’s civilization which the author will call before you. If the work serves to awaken in you a consciousness of our past, and to blot from your memory or to refine what has been falsified or is calumny-misrepresentation, then | shall not have labored in vain. With the preparation, slight though it may be, we can all pass to the study of the future” (“Annotations to Dr. Antonio Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas,” nd Some Important Annotations ‘An early biographer of Rizal, Austin Craig, translated into English some of the more important of Rizal’s annotations in the Sucesos. The following are some of Rizal’s annotations as translated by Craig (“Annotations to Dr. Antonio Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Fitipinas,” n.d.) Governor Morga was not only the first to write but also the first to publish a Philippine history. This statement has regard to the concise and concrete form in which our author has treated the matter. Father Chirino’s work, printed in Rome in 1604, is rather a chronicle of the Mission than a GEMC 101A - The Life and Works of Rizal -Module V-history of the Philippines; still it contains a great deal of valuable material on usages and customs. The worthy Jesuit in fact admits that he stopped writing a political history because Morga had already done so, so one must infer that he had seen the work in manuscript before leaving the Islands. By the Christian religion, Dr. Morga appears to mean the Catholic which by fire and sword he would preserve in its purity in the Philippines. Nevertheless in other lands, notably in Flanders, these means were ineffective to keep the church unchanged, or to maintain its supremacy, or even to hold its subjects. Great kingdoms were indeed discovered and conquered in the remote and unknown parts of the world by Spanish ships but to the Spaniards who sailed in them we may add Portuguese, Italians, French, Greeks, and even Africans and Polynesians. The expeditions captained by Columbus and Magellan, one a Genoese Italian and the other a Portuguese, as well as those that came after them, although Spanish fleets, still were manned by many nationalities and in them were Negroes. Moluccans, and even men from the Philippines and the Marianes Islands. These centuries ago it was the custom to write an intolerantly as Morga does, but nowadays it would be called a bit rude. No one has a monopoly of the true God nor is there any nation or Religion that can claim, or at any rate prove, that to it has been given the exclusive right to the Creator of all things or sole knowledge of His real being. The conversions by the Spaniards were not as general as their historians claim. The missionaries only succeeded in converting a part of the people of the Philippines. Still there are Mohammedans, the Moros, in the southern islands, and Negritos, Igorots and other heathens yet occupy the greater part territorially of the archipelago. Then the islands which the Spaniards early held but soon lost are non-Christian - Formosa, Borneo, and the Moluccas. And if there are Christians in the Carolines, that is due to Protestants, whom neither the Roman Catholics of Morga’s day nor many Catholics in our own day consider Christians. It is not the fact that the Filipinos were unprotected before the coming of the Spaniards. Morga himself says, further on in telling of the pirate raids from the islands had arms and defended themselves. But after the natives were disarmed the pirates robbed them with freedom, coming at times when they were unprotected by the government, which was the reason for many of the insurrections. The civilization of the pre-Spanish Filipinos in regard to the duties of life for that age was well advanced, as the Morga history shows in its eighth chapter. The Islands came under Spanish sovereignty and control through compacts, treaties of friendship and alliances for reciprocity. By virtue of the last arrangement, according to some historians, Magellan lost his life in GEMC 101A - The Life and Works of Rizal -Module V-=a ‘Mactan and the soldiers of Legaspi fought under the banner of King Tupas of Cebu. The term “conquest” is admissible but for a part of the Islands and then only in its broadest senses. Cebu, Panay, Luzon, Mindoro, and some others cannot be said to have been conquered. The discovery, conquest and conversion cost Spanish blood but still more Filipino blood. It will be seen later on in Morga that will the Spaniards and on behalf of Spain there were always more Filipinos fighting than Spaniards. Morga shows that the ancient Filipinos had an army and navy with artillery and other implements of warfare. Their prized krises and kampilans for their magnificent temper are worthy of admiration and some of them are richly damascened. Their coats of mail and helmets, of which there are specimens in various European museums, attest their great advancement in this industry. ‘Morga’s expression that the Spaniard “brought war to the gates of the Filipinos” is in marked contrast with the word used by subsequent historians whenever recording Spain’s possessing herself of a province, that she Pacified it. Perhaps “to make peace” then meant the same as “to stir up war.: (This is an indirect reference to the old Latin saying of Romans, often quoted by Spaniard’s that they make a desert, calling it making peace. - Austin Craig) ‘Magellan’s transferring from the service of his own king (i.e., the Portuguese) to employment under the King of Spain, according to historic documents, was because the Portuguese King had refused to grant him the raise in salary which he asked. Now it is known that Magellan was mistaken when he represented to the King of Spain that the Molucca Islands were within the limits assigned by the Pope to the Spaniards. But through this error and the inaccuracy of the nautical instruments of that time, the Philippines did not fall into the hands of the Portuguese. Cebu, which Morga calls “The City of the Most Holy Name of Jesus,” was at first called “The village of San Miguel.” The image of the Holy Child of Cebu, which many religious writers believed was brought to Cebu by the angels, was in fact given by the worthy Italian chronicler of Magellan’s expedition, the Chevalier Pigafetta, to the Cebuano queen. GEMC 101A - The Life and Works of Rizal “Module V-The Value of Rizal's Annotation The importance of Rizal’s annotation of Sucesos is enormous as through the work, he provided especially the Filipino readers with rich annotative footnotes concerning Philippine culture and society, coupled with complete scholarly referenced resources and full citations. Most especially, through this work, Rizal had proved and showed that the Philippines was an advanced civilization prior to the Spanish conquest. The significance of Rizal’s noble purpose in working on Morga’s book is prophetically summarized in some of his statements in his Preface: “If the book (Sucesos de las Isla Filipinas) succeeds to awaken your consciousness of our past, already effaced from your memory, and to rectify what has been falsified and slandered, then | have not worked in vain, and with this as basis, however small it may be, we shall be able to study the future.” ill, ESSAY 1. Discuss the salient goals of Rizal in writing the Annotations of Antonio Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas? 2, What do you think Rizal meant in his statement, “if the book (Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas) succeeds to awaken your consciousness of our past, already effacted from your memory, and to rectify what has been falsified and slandered, then I have not worked in vain, and with this as a basis, however smalt it may be, we shall be able to study the future”? GEMC 101A - The Life and Works of Rizal “Module V-