Republic of the Philippines

COMMISSION ON HIGHER EDUCATION

Region V
POLANGUI COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Polangui, Albay

Course Code: GE 09
Course Title: The Life and Works of Rizal
Course Type: GEC
Course Credits: 3 units
Duration: Second Semester 2020-2021
Instructor: ROCHELLE M. BACONG, LPT
Contact Information: rochellebacong22@gmail.com/ 0935-474-0232

Module 9-11
The Search for Filipino Origins

I. Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the students should be able to:

1. Analyze the significance of Pacto de Sangre to Filipino nationalism

2. Discuss the possible reasons why the Philippines was colonized by Spain
3. Analyze Rizal’s ideas on how to read and study Philippine history
4. Compare and contrast Rizal and Morga’s differing views of the Filipinos and Philippine culture

II. Introduction

This module presents a different perspective of Philippine history prior to the arrival of the Spanish
colonizers. The pre-colonial past became one of Rizal’s motivations in writing the sequel to Noli Me Tangere.
Section 1, Pacto de Sangre: Why We Were Conquered presents a view of the blood compact between early
Spanish conquistadors led by Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and community rulers led by Sikatuna and its significance
to the development of Filipino nationalism. Section 2, Pre-Colonial Philippines: Rizal’s Annotations of Morga
discusses insights from Rizal’s research and Annotations of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas.

III. Eliciting Concepts

Give the meaning of the following words:

a. Blood Compact
b. La Solidaridad
c. Colonization

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 IV. Learning Content

Pre- Colonial Philippines: Rizal’s Annotations of Morga

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. 

 What is 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.
- Annotated by Jose Rizal with a prologue by Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt.
 Antonio de Morga
-Spanish conquistador, gov't official, and historical anthropologist; author of Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas (Events
in the Philippine Islands).
-He wrote the first lay formal history of the Philippines conquest by Spain.
-A doctorate in canon law and civil law
-His history is valuable in that Morga had access to the survivors of the earliest days of the colony and he, himself,
participated in many of the accounts that he rendered.
-The book (Sucesos..) narrates the history of wars, intrigues, diplomacy and evangelization of the Philippines in a
somewhat disjointed way.
-Modern historians (including Rizal) have noted that Morga has a definite bias and would often distort facts or even
rely on invention to fit his defense of the Spanish conquest
 Morga's purpose for Writing Sucesos
-Morga wrote that the purpose for writing Sucesos was so he could chronicle "the deeds achieved by our Spaniards
i the discovery, conquest, and conversion of the Filipinas Islands - as well as various fortunes that they have from
time to time in the great kingdoms and among the pagan peoples surrounding the islands. “taking issue with the
scopes of these claims, Rizal argued that the conversion and conquest were not as widespread as portrayed
because the missionaries were only successful in conquering a portion of the population of certain Islands.
 Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas

CHAPTER 1 : Magellan and Legazpi's seminal expeditions

CHAPTER 2 - 7 : Chronological report on gov't administration under Governor-General.
CHAPTER 8 : Philippine Islands, the natives there, their antiquity, custom and gov't.
 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 islandsHis theory was that the country was
economically self-sufficient and prosperous. Entertained the idea that it had a lively and vigorous community. He
believed the conquest of the Spaniards contributed in part to the decline of the Philippine's rich tradition and culture.
He then decided to undertake the annotation of Antonio de Morga's Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas. His personal
friendship with Ferdinand 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.
 Rizal spent his entire stay in the city of London at the British Museum's reading room. Having found Morga's book,
he laboriously hand-copied the whole 351 pages of the Sucesos. Rizal proceeded to annotate every chapter of the
Sucesos.

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Rizal's annotation of Morga's Sucesos

-His extensive annotations of Morga's work number "no less than 639 items or almost two annotations for every page."
Rizal also annotated Morga's typographical errors. He commented on every statement that could be nuanced in Filipino
cultural practices. For example, on page 248 Morga describes the culinary art of the ancient Filipinos by recording: "... they
prefer to eat salt fish which begin 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 or ought not to be rotten“.

1. Rizal commits the error of many historians in appraising the events of the past in the light of present standards.
2. Rizal's attacks on the church were unfair and unjustified because the abuses of the friars should not be construed to
mean the Catholicism is bad.

Ferdinand Blumentritt's Prologue

- Writing in Spanish, instead of his native German language. Praised Rizal's work as "scholarly and well-thought out". He
noted that Morga's Sucesos was so rare that "the very few libraries that have it guard it with the same solicitude as if it were
the treasure of the Incas".

-He criticized Rizal's annotations on two counts:

He first observed that Rizal had committed the mistake of many modern historians who judged events in the past in the
context of contemporary ideas and mores. He perceived as the overreach of Rizal's denunciations of Catholicism that Rizal
should confine his critique to the religious orders in the Philippines who spared no effort to suppress calls for reform.

Rizal's purpose of the Morga's Sucesos

-In Jose Rizal's dedication, he explained among other things, the purpose of the new edition of Morga's Sucesos:
"if the book succeeds in awakening in you the consciousness of our past which has been obliterated from memory and in
rectifying what has been falsified and calumniated, I shall not have labored in vain, and on such basis, little though it may
be, we can all devote ourselves to studying the future". 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.

3 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."
-He went to say: "... little by little, they (Filipinos) lost their old traditions, the mementoes of their past; they gave up their
writing, their songs, their poems, their laws, in order to learn other doctrines which they did not understand, another

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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."

-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.

V. Learning Experiential Activities

Lesson/s Synchronous Asynchronous

Google Slides/ PowerPoint Presentation Individual Activity 1:

Section 1: Pacto de - Search on Juan Luna’s masterpiece Essay:

Sangre: Why We about the Blood Compact (1885).  What is the significance of Pacto de
Were Conquered Make a PowerPoint presentation of at Sangre to Filipino Nationalism?
least 3 significant observations in this
Luna masterpiece. Reading: Bonifacio, A. (1896). Ang dapat
mabatid ng mga Tagalog. Retrieved from
Google Jamboard: http://www.kasaysayan-kkk.info/kalayaan-the-
- What are the possible reasons katipunan-newspaper/andres-bonifacio-ang-
why the Philippines was dapat-mabatid-ng-mga-tagalog-c-march-1896
colonized by Spain?
 Make a content analysis and synthesis
using the guide below:
1. Overall Impression of the Text
a. Author’s Purpose
b. Readers
c. Context

2. Content Analysis
a. Thesis Statement and Main Ideas
b. Supporting Details

Google Slides/ PowerPoint Presentation
- Make a PowerPoint presentation of
Section 2: Pre- the table below:
3. Synthesis:
a. What do you think was the reason why
Bonifacio wrote “Ang Dapat Mabatid ng
mga Tagalog”?
b. What have you realized after reading the
text?
c. Write a response to Bonifacio in the form
of a letter using your pen name.
Collective Memory Struggle: Redrawing the
Philippines
 From past lessons, recall any knowledge

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 Pigafetta Morga you have on pre-colonial Philippine
Colonial Society and Culture. Based on your
Philippines: Rizal’s People recollection, write a descriptive
Annotations of Customs and paragraph of your visualization of pre-
Morga Culture colonial Philippines.
Beliefs and
Religion
Society &
Government
Reamrkable
Practices

VI. Assessment
Activity 1: What are the possible reasons why the Philippines was colonized by Spain?
Activity 2: Instructions: Compare and Contrast Rizal and Morga’s differing views of the Filipinos and Philippine Culture
Activity 3:
Instructions: Give 5-10 importance of Rizal’s Annotations to the present generation?

VII. References
 Aguilar, F. (2010). The Pacto se Sangre in the late nineteenth-century nationalist employment of Philippine history.
Philippine Studies, 58 (1-2), 79-109. Retrieved from
http://www.philippinestudies.net/files/journals/1/articles/3017/submission/original/3017-3409-1-SM
 Bonifacio, A. (1896). Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog. Retrieved from http://www.kasaysayan-kkk.info/kalayaan-
the-katipunan-newspaper/andres-bonifacio-ang-dapat-mabatid-ng-mga-tagalog-c-march-1896
 De Torres, N. (2014). Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=y76p2clvhBE
 Ocampo, A. (1998). Rizal’s Morga and views of Philippine history. Philippine Studies, 46 (2), 184-214
 Pigafetta, A. (1969). First voyage around the world (pp. 23-32). Manila, Philippines: Filipiniana Book Guild
 Rizal, J. (1962). Historical events of the Philippine Islands: published in Mexico in 1609 by Antonio de Morga;
recently brought to light and annotated by Jose Rizal; preceded by a prologue by Ferdinand Blumentritt. Manila,
Philippines: Jose Rizal National Centennial Commission

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