UNIT IV: SELECTED WRITINGS AND THEIR IMPACT ON TODAY’S SOCIETY

LESSON 1: ANNOTATION OF ANTONIO MORGA’S SUCESSOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS

Objectives:

1. Analyze Rizal’s ideas on how to rewrite Philippine history.

2. Compare and contrast Jose Rizal and Antonio Morga’s different views about Filipinos
and Philippine culture.

Rizal’s Annotation of the Book

In 1888-1889, Rizal largely spent his many months of stay in London at the British Museum
researching from its Filipiniana Collection, looking for Morga’s book that was recommended
by his friend Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt, a knowledgeable Filipiniologist. Even then, this
history had the impressions among many scholars of having the most honest description of
the Philippine situation as regards the era covered.
Rizal, having no copying technology present during those times, had to carefully hand-copy
the 351 pages of Morga’s work. In 1889 Rizal left London for Paris and continue to work for
the Sucesos until it was published in 1890.
Meticulously, Rizal annotated every chapter of the Sucesos, commenting even on Morga’s
typographical errors, for instance, the cuisine of the ancient Filipinos which according to
Mogra “Filipinos prefer to eat salted fish which begins to decompose and stinking”. The fish
that Morga described does not taste better when it is beginning to rot; on the contrary: it is
“Bagoong”. Rizal also mentioned in his annotation the system of writings, advanced
knowledge of metallurgy, and the shipbuilding industry of the early Filipino natives.
(Mañebog et al., 2018).
The first critic of Rizal’s work was his friend Blumentritt. In his introduction to the book, he
cited hindsight and anticlericalism as fatal defects in purely scholarly work. Rizal used
history as a propaganda weapon. It was deemed too much propaganda for his historians
and too historical for propagandists. By recreating the proud pre-Hispanic civilization, Rizal’s
Morga set the tone for Philippine historiography and Filipino Identity. (Ariola, 2018).
The Preface
Austin Craig, an early biographer of Rizal translated into English the preface of Rizal’s
translation of Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.
To the Filipinos: In Noli Me Tangere I 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 can you fairly judge the present and estimate how much progress has
been made during the three centuries (of Spanish rule).
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 at the beginning of the new
era controlled the destinies of the Philippines and had personal knowledge of our ancient
nationality in its last days.
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 be, we can all pass to the study of the future (General
History, 2012).
The Value of Rizal’s Annotation
The value of Rizal’s annotation of Sucesos is immense as through the work he provided
especially 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 proved and showed that the Philippines was an advanced
civilization before the coming of the Spaniards.
The significance of Rizal’s noble purpose in working on Morga’s book s prophetically
encapsulated in some of his statements in his preface: “if the book succeeds to awaken your
consciousness of our past, already effaced 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
small it may be, we shall be able to study the future” (Mañebog et al., 2018).