WEEK 4

The Search for

the Filipino
Origins
GEd 103 Life and Works of Rizal

A.Y. 2019-2020, Midterm

Miss Alyssa E. De Torres, LPT

 THE SEARCH FOR
THE FILIPINO
ORIGINS
POINTS TO TALK ABOUT

Section 1 Pacto De SangreL Why We Were Conquered?

Section 2 Pre-Colonial Philippines: Rizal’s Annotations of Morga

 In 1565, a compact was sealed in
D
a
tu
d S
ik
blood to ensure peace and friendship
a a
tu tu
o n
f a
b
o
h
, between the two nations that they
o
l

Pacto de Sangre
represented.
S
p
a
M n
ig
u
is
h Each made a small cut on his arm and
e C
l a
L p
o ta
p
e
z
in
G
let two or three drops of blood drip
d
e e
le n
e
g ra
a
z
p
l onto a cup of wine, and the both
i

drank from it.

The blood compact between
Legazpi and Sikatuna has often
been among the starting points
in discussing the history of
Spanish colonization in the
Philippines.
The Blood Compact, an

1886 “historic and

historical' painting by

Filipino painter Juan Luna.

Location: Presidential

Museum and Library -

Malacañn Palace
the blood compact served as a solemn
ritual and agreement between two
equals, constituting a pledge of eternal
fraternity and alliance. It is a symbolic
transfusion that wedded Filipinos to
Spanish culture and civilization.
AGUILAR(2010)
the blood compact also became the reason the

Philippines was conquered. As an ancient

tradition in the Philippine archipelago, it was

usually done by parties who were former enemies

and wished to reconcile or those who wanted to

avoid being enemies. In the case of Legazpi and

Sikatuna, the blood compact was initiated for the

second reason.
In an article that appeared in La Solidaridad on September

20, 1889, Marcelo H. del Pilar stated that the blood compact

was a political treaty the Philippines and Spain engaged in

good faith through their representatives.

The treaty, according to del Pilar, was valid but subject to the

fulfillment of its terms, that is, that Spain would annex the Philippines

and in return the Philippines could be assimilated. The Philippines

satisfactorily complied with such terms but Spain reduced the Filipino

race to an inherent position of inferiority.

It was the same point that Andres Bonifacio insisted—the blood compact was

a valid agreement but Sikatuna was misled by the Spaniards in their promise

of enlightenment and prosperity. Bonifacio, in Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga

Tagalog (1896), emphasized that before the Spaniards came, the Filipinos

were living in complete abundance and were able to trade with other

countries. However, the Spaniards deceived Sikatuna and made him believe

that they would treat Filipinos as equals. It was recognizing this deceit that

stirred nationalism among the Filipinos towards the end of the Spanish rule in

the Philippines.

THE SEARCH FOR

FILIPINO ORIGINS
THE SEARCH FOR
FILIPINO ORIGINS
Historically, the Pacto de Sangre between Sikatuna and Legazpi was

integrated in founding of Filipino nationhood. It was also the same

Pacto de Sangre that the ilustrados used in demanding reforms from

Spanish colonial government, a desire for change fueled by what

has been called nationalism.

 PRE-COLONIAL
PHILIPPINES: RIZAL'S
ANNOTATIONS OF
MORGA
SECTION 2
 SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS
FILIPINAS

It is one of the important works on

the early history of the Spanish

colonization of the Philippines

published in Mexico in 1609 by

Antonio de Morga.

It is annotated by Jose Rizal with a

prologue by Dr. Ferdinand

Blumentritt.
 SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS
(EVENTS IN THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS)
 MORGA'S PURPOSE FOR
WRITING THE BOOK

so  he could chronicle 'the deeds taking issues with the scopes of

achieved by our Spaniards i the these claims, 'the conversion and

discovery, conquest, and conquest were not as widespread

conversion of the Filipinas Islands as portrayed because the

- as well as various fortunes that missionaries were only successful

they have from time to time in the in conquering a portion of the

great kingdoms and among the population of certain Islands.

pagan peoples surrounding the

RIZAL'S ARGUMENTS
islands'
Between 1889 to 1890, Dr. Jose P. Rizal spent several months in London as

he tried to improve his mastery of the English language. He stayed as a

boarder with the Beckett Family at 37 Chalcot Crescent, Primrose Hill,

Camden town, Greater London.

During this time, Rizal was greatly interested in studying precolonial Philippines.

He believed that the Philippines already had an established community, way of

life, and society, and was not as backwards and inferior as the Spaniards

claimed. On the contrary, Rizal was resolved that the arrival of the Spaniards

contributed to the decline of the rich pre-colonial Filipino society and culture.
 WHAT LEADS JOSE RIZAL TO
SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS?
Rizal was an earnest seeker of truth and this marked him as a

historian

He had a burning desire to know exactly the conditions of the

Philippines when the Spaniards came ashore to the islands.

His theory was that the country was economically self-sufficient

and prosperous, entertained the idea that it had a lively and

vigorous community.

He believed that the conquest of the Spaniards contributed in

part to the decline of the country's rich tradition and culutre

 WHAT LEADS JOSE RIZAL TO
SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS?
He then decided to undertake the annotation of

Antonio de Morga's Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas.

His personal friendship with Blumentritt provided the

inspiration for doing a new edition of Morga's Sucesos.

Devoting four months research and writing and almost

a year to get his manuscript published in Paris in

January 1890.
As such, through a letter if introduction from Reinhold

Rost, the Director of the India Office Library, Rizal was

granted a reader’s pass to the British Museum where he

stumbled upon Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas

Filipinas (1609).

Rizal laboriously hand-copied the entire 351-page work

while making annotations on every nuance in Filipino

cultural practices that Morga wrote about, and even on

Morga’s typographical errors.

On page 248, Morga describes the culinary art of the

ancient Filipino by recording: '...they prefer to eat salt fish

which begins to decompose and smell.'

Rizal's footnotes: This is another preoccupation of the

Spaniards who, like any other nation in that matter of food,

loathe that to which they are not accustomed or is unknown

to them. The fish that Morga mentions 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 it is not

our ought not to be rotten'

Rizal’s dedication to annotate Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas por el

work was further enriched by the Doctor Antonio de Morga, Obra

promise of publication by a wealthy publicada en Mejico en el ano de 1609,

nuevamente sacada a luz y anatoda por

Filipino exile in London, Antonio
Jose Rizal y precedida de un prologo de
Regidor. Regidor committed to equally
prof. Fernando Blumentritt (Events in the
divided the profits between him and
Philippine Islands by Dr. Antonio de
Rizal as soon as his investments were
Morga, a work published in Mexico in

recovered. Unfortunately, Regidor

the year 1609, reprinted and annotated

backed out of the deal prompting Rizal by Rizal and preceded by an

to publish the manuscript by himself in introduction by professor Ferdinand

Blumentritt).
September 1889 with the title,
According to Ambeth Ocampo (1998), Rizal’s choice of Morga’s work as

his primary source for studying Philippine pre-colonial history instead of

Antonio Pigafetta’s was due to the objectivity and civil nature of the

former in contrast to the religious nature of the latter. Morga was said

to be not only an eyewitness but also a major actor as he narrated his

accounts.
The 1609 original work of Morga was not reprinted in full until

the publication of Rizal’s work in 1889 in Paris. In 1909,

Wenceslao Retana made a reproduction of the original

including the misprints drawn from the Archivo General de

Indias in Seville. Rizal’s Spanish version was republished in

1958 in the Philippines, and an English translation was

commissioned and published in 1961 by the Jose Rizal National

Centennial Commission.
THREE MAIN PROPOSITIONS IN RIZAL'S NEW
EDITION OF MORGA'S SUCESOS

the people of the Philippines had a culture on their

own, before the coming of the Spaniards

Filipinos were decimated, demoralized, exploited,

and ruined by the Spanish colonization.

The present state of the Philippines was not

necessarily superior to its past.

 RIZAL'S ANNOTATION

In his historical essay, which includes the narration of Philippine

colonial history, punctuated as it was with incidences of agony,

tensions, tragedies, and prolonged periods of suffering that many

of people had been subjected to, he correctly observed that as a

colony of Spain, 'The Philippines was depopulated, impoverished

and retarded, astounded by metaphor sis, with no confidence in

her past, still without faith in her present, and without faltering

hope in the future.'

 RIZAL'S ANNOTATION

'... little by little, they lost their old traditions, the mementoes of

their past; they gave up their writing, their songs, their poems, their

laws, in oder to learn other doctrines which they did not

understand, another morality, another aesthetics, different from

those inspired by their climate and their manner of thinking. They

declined, degrading themselves in their own eyes. They become

ashamed of what was their own; they began to admire and praise

whatever was foreign and incomprehensible; their spirit was

damaged and it surrendered.'

 RIZAL'S ANNOTATION

To the Filipinos: 'In my Noli Me Tangere, I commenced to sketch

the present conditions obtaining in our country. The effect

produced by my efforts gave me to understand - before

proceeding to develop before your eyes other successive scenes

- that is necessary to first lay bare the past, in order the better to

judge the present and to survey the road trodden during three

centuries'
 RIZAL'S ANNOTATION

Like almost all of you, I was born and brought up in ignorance of

our country's past and so, without knowledge or authority to

speak of what i neither saw nor have studied, i deem it necessary

to quote the testimony of an illustrious Spaniard who in the

beginning of the new era controlled the destinies of the

Philippine and had personal knowledge of our ancient nationality

in its last days.

 RIZAL'S ANNOTATION

It is then 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

rectify what has been falsified or is calumny, then i shall not have

labored in vain. With this preparation, slight though it may be, we

can all pass to the study of the future.

Jose Rizal