Morga and Rizal's

Search for Origins

SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS

• An account of Spanish observations about the Filipinos and the Philippines.

Background information
• Antonio De Morga - Author of Sucesos de las islas Filipinas.
• This is one of the first books ever to tackle Philippine history.
• Book that describes the events inside and outside of the country from 1493 to 1603, including the history of the Philippines.
• Consist of 8 Chapters.
• Discuss the political, social and economical aspects of a colonizer and the colonized country.
• The content of the book is based on documentary research, observation and personal experience
of Morga.
• Rizal is a secondary source of the book due to his Annotations.

• Dr. Antonio de Morga

• Spanish lawyer and official in the Philippines during the 17th century.
• What is Las Islas Filipinas?
• The Philippines was named in honor of King Philip II of Spain.
• What is Sucesos?
• EVENTS, HAPPENINGS, OCCURRENCE
• The Sucesos is the work of an honest observer, a versatile bureaucrat, who knew the workings of the administration from
the inside.

Rizal’s Objectives
1.To awaken the consciousness of the Filipinos regarding their glorious ways of the past
2.To correct what has been distorted about the Philippines due to Spanish conquest
3.To prove that Filipinos are civilized even before the coming of the Spaniards

Blumentritt’s Influence on Rizal

• Ferdinand Blumentritt has encouraged Rizal to write about the Philippines’ pre-colonial History.

ON RIZAL’s ANNOTATION
• The First Objective
• THE EARLY FILIPINO PRIDE
• Rizal strove to establish that the Filipinos could be proud of their pre-conquest past.
• The Second Objective
• HISTORY AS A PROPAGANDA WEAPON
• Rizal aimed to use history as a propaganda weapon.
• EARLY GOVERNMENT
• Our forefathers in the pre-colonial Philippines already possessed a working judicial and legislative system

 • HIGH LITERACY RATE

• The Spanish missionaries exploited the baybayin for their own ends, learning and using it to translate their goals
• EARLY ARTILLERY
• Our ancestors were very proficient in the art of war. Aside from wielding swords and spears, they also knew how to make
and fire guns and cannons.
• SMOOTH FOREIGN RELATIONS
• The pre-colonial Filipinos had already established trading and diplomatic relations with countries as far away as the
Middle East
• SELF- SUFFICIENT
• In terms of food, our forefathers did not suffer from any lack thereof. Blessed with such a resource-rich country, they had enough
for themselves and their families
• ADVANCED CIVILIZATION
• Our ancestors possessed a complex working society and a culture replete with works of arts and literature

Important Points
• Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas is the first book to tackle the Philippine history.
• The book discusses the political, social and economical aspects of a colonizer and the colonized country.
• The book that describes the events inside and outside of the country from 1493 to 1603, including the history of the Philippines.
• The pre-colonial Philippines already possessed a working judicial and legislative system
• Spanish missionaries put an end to the baybayin written system of the Philippines to translate their goals
• Our ancestors possessed a complex society and culture filled with arts and literature

 Rizal’s 3 Propositions
RIZAL’s Morga’s Sucesos 1.The people of the Philippines have a culture on their own, before the coming of
Annotations the Spaniards

1. Philippines was NOT 1. Philippines was 2.Filipinos were decimated, demoralized, exploited, and ruined by the Spanish
DESERTED and was DESERTED and colonization
actually HABITABLE. INHABITABLE.
3.The present state of the Philippines was not necessarily superior to its past
Importance of Rizal’s Annotations to the present generation
● To awaken in the Filipinos the consciousness of our past
● To devote ourselves to studying the future
2. Spaniards, like any
other nation, treat food
● To first lay bare the past, in order to better judge the present and to survey the
road
to which they are not
2. Beef and sh they trodden during three centuries
accustomed or is
know it best when it
unknown to them with
has started to rot and
● To prove Filipinos had a culture of their own, prior to colonization, that the
disgust. This sh that Filipinos
stink
Morga mentions is were NOT inferior to the white man
bagoong (salted &
fermented sh). ● To shatter the myth of the so-called “Indolence of the Filipinos”
● To reduce those Filipinos who denied their native tongue into rotten fish
● To seriously study Tagalog and produce a comprehensive Tagalog dictionary
● To embrace the generic term “Indio”, or in today’s case, Filipino, with all its
negative
connotations, and turn it into one of dignity and nobility






fi
fi
fi