LITERATURE UNDER U.S.

COLONIALISM (1898-1945)

The taga-bayan-taga-bukid polarization in Philippine society occasioned by the advent of

Spanish colonization took on a decidedly political color during the Revolution of 1896. At the
Tejeros Convention, taga-bayan meant the ilustrados of Cavite who wrested from Bonifacio and
the masses the leadership of the revolution. Education was put up as a requirement for
leadership and, since at that time wealth was a requirement for education, this meant that the
Filipino native elite had succeeded in reserving for itself the role of determining Filipino
response to independence and nation-building. At the inauguration of the first Philippine
Republic in Malolos, this much was clear - the taga-bukid had been shunted aside by the
maneuvers of ilustrados Pedro Paterno, Benito Legarda and Felipe Calderon.

Taga-bayan culture being a colonial creation, its bearers owed intellectual and emotional
allegiance to the culture of the colonizers. When such allegiance was subjected to a critical test,
the claims of personal convenience, preferential treatment and class interests usually prevailed
over the historical ties that ought to have bound the ilustrados to the unlettered, unpropertied
populace in the course of the revolutionary struggle. When confronted with a choice between
continuing with honor a rigorous struggle alongside the taga-bukid and accommodating itself in
disgrace to foreign control, the ilustrados found it to their interest to abandon the taga-bukid and
found it easy to draw up the rationalization appropriate for collaboration. In 1900, even as the
President of the Republic was still eluding American troops in the Cordillera mountains,
prominent members of Aguinaldo's cabinet had already gone over to the side of the Americans.
When late that year the Partido Federal was founded, its roster included Pedro Paterno,
president of the Malolos Congress; Felipe Buencamino, director of Public Works; Benito
Legarda, vice-president of the Malolos Congress; and Felipe Calderon, the principal author of
the Malolos Constitution. American colonial authorities capitalized on the capitulation of the
ilustrados in urging Filipinos to bring the Philippine-American war to an early end through
surrender. On July 4, 1902, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that the
"insurrection" was officially ended. However, Filipino guerillas led by the remaining officers of the
revolutionary army (Katipunan) like Artemio Ricarte and Macario Sakay continued to inflict
losses on American troops and their local mercenary army. To counteract guerilla activity in
Manila and in the provinces, the colonial administration applied the full force of the law. The
Sedition-Law (1901) imposed the death penalty or prolonged imprisonment on Filipinos who
advocated independence or separation from the U.S. and dealt harshly with anyone who spoke,
wrote or published "scurrilous libels" against the U.S. or the colonial government in the
Philippines. The Brigandage Act (1902) classified guerillas as bandits (bandoleros), making
membership in an armed band or giving aid to such punishable by death or a long prison
sentence. The Reconcentration Act (1903) sought to deprive guerillas of their protective cover
by resettling, in fixed places where they could be watched, residents from rural areas where
guerillas were operating. The Flag Law (1907) prohibited the display of the flags or emblems
associated with the Katipunan and the Republic to slacken military campaigns. Beginning
pacification by The colonial administration started setting up political institutions that would
pre-empt or co-opt nationalist leadership. The taga-bayan-taga-bukid dichotomy was sharpened
by the establishment of the Philippine Assembly in 1907. In the election that was called for the
occasion, participation was premised on qualifications that favored those who owned real
property and could read, write or speak English or Spanish. Along with elections came the
Filipinization of the various levels of the colonial bureaucracy, which drew more and more
educated Filipinos to contribute to the effort of running the colonial government. Political parties
were allowed to operate, developing in a wider section of the populace a sense of participation
in the discussion of public issues and even in the promulgation of orders or laws. In time,
Filipino leaders had begun to take it for granted that the independence of the Philippines would
have to be secured within the limits set by the colonial system put up by the United States.
Against the background of war and efforts by the colonial government to subdue resistance to
U.S. rule, Philippine literature burst forth with vitality and variety indicative of creative energy
unleashed by the Revolution and propelled by the Philippine-American war. Newspapers and
magazines in Spanish, English and the vernacular languages proliferated in spite of threatening
provisions of the Sedition Law, providing many venues for creative writing and socio-political
commentary. Literary forms that had their beginnings in the Spanish period - the essay, the
novel, allegorical drama, narrative poetry and patriotic verse - were firmly grasped by young
writers who harked back to the immediate revolutionary past and trained their sights on the
changing society of the first decades of a new colonial regime. The abundance in output and the
quality of the passion that went into it testified to the welling out of creativity where writers and
audience shared common concerns brought to the fore by a common historical experience

Previous accounts of the growth of Philippine literature tended, through sheer lack of
consolidated data on writing outside the capital, to focus solely of the achievement of authors
writing in Spanish, English and Tagalog. A change in literary historiography has been underway
since the late 1960s. And after thirty years, it has become possible to view literary development
as a nationwide phenomenon, embracing authors and works that colonial education and its bias
against indigenous Philippine languages had marginalized.

The downfall of Spanish colonialism freed the printing press from the stranglehold of religious
censorship. Soon enough, entrepreneurs took advantage of the opportunities for profit offered
by the printing business. Where publishing was in the hands of patriotic investors, the printing
press was also used to counter the inroads of American culture into Philippine life. All over the
country, newspapers and magazines using local languages proliferated. In this manner did
literary works intended for the mass audience become regular reading fare in the various
regions. Among the newspapers that provided space for literary pieces were Muling Pagsilang
(Rebirth, 1903, Tagalog), Ang Kaluwasan (Deliverance, 1902, Cebuano), Makinaugalingon
(Partisan to One's Own, 1913, Ilongo), and Nueva Era (New Era, 1908, Iloko). The best-known
magazines that capitalized on short stories and poems for patronage were Liwayway (Dawn,
1922, Tagalog), Bisaya (Visayan, 1930, Cebuano), Hiligaynon (1934, Ilongo), and Bannawag
(Daybreak, 1934, Iloko).

Although literary historians and critics of literatures in the regions have yet to establish, through
definitive histories and critical appraisals, the significance of the contribution of the leading
names, there have been authors writing in the years of U.S. colonial rule who inevitably figure in
research outputs and studies. Among them, Magdalena Jalandoni (novelist and poet), Angel
Magahum (novelist and dramatist) and Ramon Muzones (novelist) are prominent names in
Hiligaynon writing. Among Cebuano writers Sulpicio Ossorio (novelist), Tomas Hermosisima
(novelist), Vicente Ranudo (poet), Marcel Navarra (short story writer), and Piux Kabahar
(dramatist) have been singled out for significant production. Iloko literature has contributed the
names of Mena Pecson Crisologo (novelist and dramatist) and Leon Pichay (poet).

The Euro-Hispanic Tradition. The "Euro-Hispanic" tradition refers to the literary part of the
cultural heritage of Spanish colonialism which brought over into Philippine writing forms, critical
theory and subject matter/themes in Spanish literature and other West European literatures,
particularly French. It was this tradition that informed literary development during the first half of
the entire period of American Occupation. Principally, writers drew from the works and thought
of the Propaganda Movement and the Revolution to press their call to Filipinos to continue the
armed struggle against U.S. colonialism and their demand from the U.S. for recognition of the
Filipinos' right to self-determination. The demand for independence was supported by a
campaign to make Americans aware of the cultural legacy of the Filipino people, as this was
concretized in the folklore, history and literature of the Philippines.

In theater, the most widely acclaimed playwright was Severino Reyes (1861-1942) who
spearheaded a movement to supplant the komedya with a new type of drama more in keeping
with the new self-image of the Filipino resulting from the struggle against the Spaniards and the
Americans. The sarsuwela, with comment, which Reyes had since been identified, was
originally a Spanish musical theater form that, in the eighteenth century, turned away from
classical lore to depict contemporary life in Spain. When it came to the Philippines in the late
nineteenth century, the Spanish zarzuela was an entertaining mixture of mild social lilting music
and earthy humor on which a slight love story was usually made to rest. On the vernacular
stage of the American Occupation, a Filipino adaptation of the zarzuela took shape in the hands
of Severino Reyes, Patricio Mariano (1877. 1935) and Hermogenes Ilagan (1873-1942) and
their composer-collaborators such as Fulgencio Tolentino, Bonifacio Abdon, Leon Ignacio and
Juan Hernandez.

The oft-anthologized Walang Sugat (Not Wounded, 1902) exemplifies the sarsuwela at the
beginning of the history of the genre. Reyes drew his material from the period of the Revolution,
depicting the cruelty and corruption of friars and the heroism of the soldiers of the Katipunan*.
Tenyong and Julia ate sweethearts, but they have had to part when Tenyong's father dies in jail
and Tenyong leads an attack against the friars. While Tenyong is in the countryside fighting
battles for the Revolution, Julia is promised in marriage to a mestiza Julia writes to Tenyong for
help, and Tenyong and his men arrange a ruse on the day of the wedding. Tenyong is supposed
to be dying and he has asked to be wed to Julia before he expires. Julia's would-be bridegroom
is persuaded to allow the "dying" man his final request. After the ceremony, Tenyong gets up
from his pallet and guests are astounded that the dying Tenyong is actually "not wounded."

The denouement of Walang Sugat would seem to be inexcusably puerile until we see it in
relation to a motif also found in two overtly "seditious" dramas staged a year after the Reyes
play was performed with great success. Hindi Am Patay (I Am Not Dead, 1903) by Juan
Matapang Cruz (no dates available) has a hero named Tangulan (Defense) who is supposed to
have died, and nobody now can stop the marriage of his sweetheart Karangalan (Honor) to the
villain Macamcam (Rapacious). The wedding ceremony is in progress when the funeral
procession for Tangulan passes by. Suddenly, Tangulan stands up and announces, "I am not
dead!" In Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, 1903) by Aurelio
Tolentino, the hero Tagailog (a native) has been imprisoned. When the traitor Dahumpalay
(Poisonous Snake) comes to check on Tagailog, the hero kills him, burns his face and makes it
appear that it is he, Tagailog, who has been killed. Tagailog leads the rebel troops against
Matanglawin (Hawk-Eyed), and the rumor is that the ghost of Tagailog is at the head of the
revolution. The motif of the resurrecting hero is meant to be an inflammatory reference to the
Katipunan or the Revolution, which might seem to have been crushed but had persisted in fact.

A form new in Philippine theater, the sarswwela fitted in nicely with the spirit and concerns of the
times. In contrast to the komedya, which presented to Filipinos a society distant in time and
culture from them, the sarswwela depicted scenes from Philippine life, thereby imparting
patriotic pride even when the subject matter was not political, the times being witness to the
Filipinos' struggle against new colonial masters. The nationalist struggle had brought into
question the appropriateness of theater not only about foreigners and remote times but also
about themes trivialized by repetition and a penchant for fantasy. At this historical moment,
yesterday's taga-bayan drama had been turned into taga-bukid entertainment, and henceforth
the komedya was to retreat to the provinces where it would continue to be popular among the
masses.

Allegory was a genre in the medieval literature of Europe introduced by missionary writers who
found in it a convenient mode for bringing ideas "to life." Human characters were made to
represent ideas to make an abstract message easier to grasp. Thus, nationalist dramatists like
Cruz and Tolentino simply took over a form already familiar to audiences and gave it new
content. Plays like Hindi Aco Patay, Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas and Tanikalang Guinte (Golden
Chain) were the result.

Tanikalang Guinto (1902) by Juan Abad (1872-1932) is about Liwanag (Brightness) and
K'Ulayaw (Soulmate), lovers who stand for freedom and the Filipino. Her uncle and adoptive
father, Maimbot (Greedy, referring to the United States), insists that Liwanag give up K'Ulayaw,
but the young woman remains faithfül to her sweetheart. Maimbot's repeated attempts to
separate Liwanag and K'Ulayaw push Liwanag to open defiance of her uncle's authority. She
takes off the golden chain given to her as a gift by Maimbot and throws it away. Maimbot ties her
to a tree, using the golden chain to bind her. When K'Ulayaw tries to free Liwanag, he is shot by
Nagtapon (one who discards), his half-brother representing renegade Filipinos collaborating
with the U.S. Liwanag has been freed and, grieving over her dead sweetheart, she picks up the
golden chain, severs it, and throws it away. Liwanag is carried off by Diwa (Spirit) to "the other
life" where she is to join K'Ulayaw after Nagtapon dies. A devil comes to take Nagtapon away
and Death comes for Maimbot.
During a performance of Tanikalang Guinto in Batangas, Abad was arrested and charged in
court. He was found guilty, but his sentence was later reversed by the Supreme Court. Abad
wrote more plays, but when another play caused his second arrest, he stopped writing
altogether.

Aurelio Tolentino (1868-1915), like Abad, was to get into trouble with the colonial government for
an allegorical drama that incited the audience to continue the fight against the American
invaders. He had fought in the Revolution and in Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas, he was using the
stage to remind Filipinos of the glorious Revolution and campaign for support for the guerillas in
the countryside. The play is an allegorical presentation of the history of the nationalist struggle
and how the U.S. has frustrated the Philippine Revolution.

Protagonists are Tagailog and Inangbayan (the Filipino and the Motherland), who are pitted
against Haring Bata (Child King, referring to the Chinese), Dilat-na-Bulag (wide-eyed but blind),
Matanglawin and Halimaw (Beast, referring to Spain, the colonial administration and the friars),
and Bagong Sibol (Newly Sprung, to refer to the U.S.)and Malaynatin ('For-All-We-Know', to
refer to the American colonial administration). In the first act, Tagailog leads an armed revolt that
drives away Haring Bata. In the second, Tagailog is imprisoned for insulting Dilat-na-Bulag, but
is able to escape, leaving behind a corpse intended to be mistaken to be a dead Tagailog. The
deception is able to throw off Tagailog's enemies and he is able to organize a revolution that
overthrows Matanglawin. In the third act, Bagong Sibol and Malaynatin, who had come to offer
friendship even as Tagailog and his men were still fighting Matanglawin, turn out to be enemies
of the Filipinos, just like Haring bata and Dilat-na-Bulag. Inangbayan and Tagailog plead for
independence, and when this is denied them, Tagailog organizes his forces for another
showdown. In a dream, Malaynatin has portents of violence that would vanquish him.
Inangbayan pleads anew for independence, and Tagailog displays to Bagong Sibol and
Malaynatin the armed might arrayed against them. Inangbayan leads a crowd of children to ask
Bagong Sibol for freedom, and the latter relents. The play concludes with general rejoicing
among Filipinos.

The daring of Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas and the danger the American military saw in it, might
be gauged from the violent suppression visited upon the play on opening night. The allegorical
characters barely concealed the playwright's message, and the stirring nationalist rhetoric for
Tagailog and Inangbayan combined with spectacular stage effects to prod the audience to pen
defiance of American rule. A sophisticated thinker and a clever theater artist at the same time,
Tolentino had, by his achievement in Kahapon, Ngayon at Bukas, set standards for Filipino
political drama that the best of his contemporaries found difficult to approach.

Published poetry gave the nationalist theater excellent support. The poets looked back to the
example of Rizal, del Pilar and Bonifacio, deriving great inspiration from the content of the
poems of the heroes of the Propaganda Movement and the Revolution. The foremost poets
writing in Spanish certainly showed direct descent from the poetry of Rizal. In the works of
Fernando Ma Guerrero (1873-1929) and Cecilio Apostol (1877-1936), Rizal, the Revolution and
the perfidy of the American invaders were themes that appeared side by side with a new-found
nostalgia for the Hispanic past that the accelerating pace of Americanization was beginning to
blur. Guerrero's Crisalidas (1914) and Apostol's posthumous Pentélicas (1941) were poetry
collections representing Spanish writing at its liveliest. Their younger colleague Jesus Balmori
(1886-1948), on the other hand, represented Spanish poetry as it was beginning to withdraw
from public issues to concentrate on personal themes at a time Spanish as a literary medium
was steadily being eased out by English among the young intellectuals of the late 1920s. Mi
Casa de Nipa (1938) is conceded to be the best of Balmori's four books of verse.

Among the Tagalog poets, looking back to the final years of the nineteenth century did not result
in mere repetition of patriotic subject matter. At the turn of the century, the best of them were
enthusiastically experimenting with a variety of technical effects through innovations in meter,
rime and stanza forms. Foremost among them were Benigno R. Ramos (about whom more will
be said later) and Pedro Gatmaitan (1889-1965). Tungkos ng Alaala (Bouquet of Memories,
1913) brought together Gatmaitan's poems written between 1909 and 1913, and in it we find a
variety of themes reflecting the youthful poet's many concerns and a dazzling adventurousness
in exploring the resources of metrics and riming. The patriotic poems in the book range in tone
from the playfully ironic to the oratorical and exhortative, often interlinking social ills and
inequities and lack of freedom. Gatmaitan had a long career as a poet, but unfortunately his
later works have never been collected.

Jose Corazon de Jesus (1896-1932), popularly known as "Batute," his pseudonym, was not
considerably younger than either Gatmaitan or Ramos, but he created his own generation with
his first book of poems. Mga Gintong Dahon (Golden Leaves, 1920) revealed that a new temper
was at work in Tagalog poetry, for here were poems pre-occupied with such non-traditional
themes as passion- slaying, grief-induced insanity and lover's suicide. "Batute" combined in
himself the attributes of a flashy bard and lover, captivating audiences in the 1920s whenever
he declaimed his extravagantly passionate love poems. As a columnist for Taliba (balita, or
news, spelled backwards), he commented in verse on the social and political scene, and the
constant encounter with the day-to-day realities in Manila served to develop the serious vein in
his poetry. His mature poetry was characterized by a strong anti-colonial streak and a deeply-felt
sympathy for victims of social injustice. Sa Dakong Silangan (Where the East Lies, 1928)
returned to the awit form, and in an allegory, De Jesus re-told the history of the Philippines
under Spain; the Revolution that ended Spanish rule; and the coming of the U.S. under the
guise of friendship to take over from Spain. The narrative poem contained 443 stanzas which
related the travails of Haring (King) Pilipo and Reyna Malaya (Independent Queen) and their
daughters Luningning (Brightness), Bituin (Star) and Mandiwa (Idea) when they fell victims to
the schemes of Haring Iberio (Spain) and Haring Samuel (U.S.). It took a long time for the
legend of the "romantic" poet to wear off, and now Jose Corazon de Jesus' substantial side as a
social and political poet has begun to be appreciated. Two volumes of his verse Jose Corazon
de Jesus, Mga Piling Tula [Selected Poems], 1984, and Sa Dakong Silangan at mga Tulang
Pasalaysay [Where the East Lies and Selected Narrative Poems), 1995) have made accessible
the poet's most substantial works, clinching for him the stature of a major artist among Filipino
poets.
The first novels by Filipinos were in Spanish and written during the previous period. In the first
two decades of the twentieth century, the Tagalog novel emerged full-blown as a genre indebted
to Rizal's Noli and Fili and Paterno's Ninay. Among the novelists who took up Rizal's critical
portrayal of social conditions created by colonial repression were Gabriel Beato Francisco
(1850. 1935), Iñigo Ed. Regalado (1888-1976) and Juan Lauro Arsciwals (1889-1928).
Francisco is best known for the trilogy consisting of Fulgencia Galbillo (1907), Capitan Bensio
(1907) and Alfare (1909), in which the novelist goes back to the last 30 years of Spanish rule in
the Philippines to depict colonial repression, especially as the depravity of the friars had abetted
it. In Madaling-Araw (Dawn, 1909), Regalado's first novel, the complex interrelations of issues
and people in contemporary Philippine society emerge from what is ostensibly a story of several
pairs of lovers. Regalado's anti-clerical and anti-colonial sympathies give his narrative power
and direction in spite of the seeming looseness of the structure of the novel. Arsciwals was a
newspaperman and labor leader and these capacities were evident in the short novels he wrote.
Lalaking Uliran o Tulisan (Exemplary Man or Bandit, 1914) was a direct allusion to the colonial
law that branded Filipino patriots as bandits to discredit among the masses Filipinos who
continued to fight the Americans as guerillas. Along with poetry, drama and fiction that drew
their impetus from literary works produced during the latter part of the nineteenth century, there
was an abundance of literary works with obvious affinities to the ideology and the techniques of
the komedya and the metrical romances (awit and korido). Romantic love and adventure were
subjects that elicited wide appeal, and with the growth of publishing, there were many outlets
open to writers who would cater to the taste and interests of a broadening reading audience.
Suppression had brought an early end to efforts to create revolutionary drama, but the theater
continued to provide popular entertainment in the form of verse and prose dramas that
portrayed domestic problems of families as more and more were feeling the effects of
modernization. Newspaper and magazine pages always featured love poetry. poems dedicated
to real and imaginary women by poets who often chose to hide behind fancy pseudonyms. And
the novel, especially after the appearance of the magazine Liauyway in 1922, devoted
considerable space and verbiage to variations and variations of the poor-boy-rich-girl plot. Anak
ng Dagat (Child of the Sea, 1922) by Patricio Mariano (1877-1935) is representative of the
sarsawela after the first decade. It tells the story of a foundling who grew up among fisherfolk in
a seaside village. A young woman now, she falls in love with a fisherman, and all is well
between lovers until a rich man traces her as his missing daughter. In spite of her
newly-acquired status as a rich girl, the "daughter of the sea" remains faithful to her sweetheart.
The problem is how she and the young man could marry: wealth has put them on two different
and seemingly irreconcilable socio-economic levels. Anak ng Dagat was an example of the
Tagalog sarsuela in decline, a swiftly paced, well-constructed entertainment following a gilded
formula of tradition-based songs and fashionable tunes; contrasting city mores with country
customs; and mixing tears and laughter in a story that affirmed the common pipe-dream that
all's well that ends well.

From the example of Baltazar, Tagalog poetry had learned to prize moments of home-spun
insight woven into felicitous metaphors and mellifluous language. The same poets who wrote
truculently nationalist and social poetry like Ramos and Gatmaitan produced considerable verse
in praise of lovely women and lamenting rejection or death of love. Jose Corazon de Jesus,
among the poets of his generation, was the one who exemplified the poet as bard and lover,
with his private amours confirming his image as a love poet par excellence. Other subjects that
found expression in lyric and narrative poems were human mortality; social and economic
barriers that separate people; the decay of traditional values; and a longing for a society
untouched by fear and hate.

Poetry for Filipinos during the American Occupation was, more than a personal art for the
delectation of a small circle of initiates, a popular art practiced by highly skilled craftsmen for the
instruction or delight of a broad public. In 1924, a poetic event that was to become an institution
took place in the Instituto de Mujeres in Tondo, Manila. This was the balagtasan, a poetic joust
patterned after the duplo of the nineteenth century, which was conceived as a tribute to
Balagtas. It was to become such a popular form of entertainment that practically every poet of
the period, if he was to be worthy of the title "makata (poet)," had to display his mettle in
declamation and argumentation as a balagtasan poet. In its original form, the joust was written
by only one poet, with parts assigned, in the manner of a verse playlet, to the intended
participants in the "contest." Such was the first balagtasan written by Jose Corazon de Jesus, in
which a "butterfly" (paruparo) and a "bee" (bubuyog) battled over a "jasmine flower" (kampaper).

Benigno R. Ramos, in his two known balagtasan poems, introduced social content, making of
the "contestants" proponents of specific philosophical/political positions, as in "Dalagang Bayan
Laban sa Dalagang Bukid" (Town Maiden Versus Farm Maiden, 1930) and "Balagtasan ng
Kalayaan (Balagtasan of Freedom)." Later on, the balagtasan assumed the form of debate in
verse where the poets had to improvise in verse while arguing a position that they had been
appointed to defend. It has been asserted that during the early years of the American regime,
daily newspapers were rated less according to the quality of their reportage or commentary but
more according to the quality of the novels they serialized. Exaggerated as the claim might be, it
underscores the broad readership that the novelists were able to reach, which no doubt
influenced their choice of subject matter, knowing as they did that most of those who read
novels had been reared on metrical romances that had remained popular as reading matter up
to the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941.

An early exponent of the romantic novel was Valeriano Hernandez Peña (1858-1922), whom
literary historians have dubbed the "Father of the Tagalog Novel." He was a journalist, poet and
novelist best remembered for the novel Nena at Neneng (Nena and Neneng, 1903). Hernandez
tells the story of two friend and their contrasting experiences with marriage. Nena, the stronger
woman, i able to weather the trials of being in love, finding happiness and fulfillment in he
married life. Neneng, however, proves to be the pathetic wife, faithful and persevering but too
fragile to withstand the domestic crises stirred up by a jealous husband. Reminiscent of Urbana
at Feliza which it recalls in tone and temper Nena at Neneng is a primer on love and courtship
that proved to be most popular with the audience of its time. Later novelists were to try to
duplicate its popularity by repeating the themes and motifs that made Nena at Neneng
tremendously appealing to readers.
The Tagalog translation of Pedro A. Paterno's Ninay was written by Roman Reyes (1858-1926).
It is not unlikely that Reyes' concern with customs and manners in his novels about men and
women facing up to the problems of the changing social scene at the turn of the century is
something that he learned as a result of his contact with Paterno's literary works. Pusong
Walang Pag-ibig (Loveless Heart, 1910) and its sequel Bagong Dalaga (New Maiden, 1910) go
beyond presenting the usual cardboard character types around whom an involved love-plot is
woven. Reyes created a vivid social background for his characters (a woman and her daughter
abandoned by a man whose heart was "without love"), borrowing his method from the
costumbrista (local color) novels that influenced both Rizal and Paterno.

It was, however, in Iñigo Ed. Regalado that the romantic novel found its most substantial artist.
Regalado was fascinated by the figure of the fallen woman, and his novels revolving around this
type revealed keen understanding of female psychology and ironic detachment in exposing the
hypocrisies of conventional society. A fine example of his art as a novelist is May Pagsinta'y
Walang Pu (Heartless Love, 1911) in which the author examines the emotional and intellectual
responses of a young woman who "lost" her heart to a roguish poet. Fidel keeps Sela as a
common-law wife but drops her unceremoniously when he is cornered into marrying another
woman. The stoicism and dignity with which Sela conducts herself after being abandoned by
her lover separates her from other characters in novels with similar plots. Regalado steered
clear of all clichés about the fallen woman, relying for the most part on a depiction of society
with which Sels interacted rather than on an introspective analysis of the character's feelings
Sampagitang Walang Bango (A Sampaguita Without Fragrance, 1918) was to follow up
Regalado's concern with the fallen woman, but this time the character was married, and in spite
of the novelist's sympathy for Nenita, he could not get away from the accepted social norms.

American Imposition, Filipino Response. As a neophyte imperialist power, the U.S. was quick to
learn from the errors of Spain as a colonizer. A major mistake, it was seen, was denying the
Spanish language to the Filipinos, which alienated from the colonial administration all those who
could have been Spain's staunchest local allies. Although there was some debate as to whether
or not a language native to the Filipinos ought to be the language of education, the architects of
the colonial educational system quickly decided it would be to the advantage of the U.S. to
make English the medium of instruction in all Philippine schools. True enough, through English,
the flow of cultural influence was facilitated and an immediate gain for the colonizers was the
progressive deterioration of resistance to American colonial control. English opened the
floodgates of colonial values through the conduit of textbooks originally intended for American
children; books and magazines beamed at an American audience that familiarized Filipinos with
the blessings of economic affluence in a capitalist country; phonograph records that infected
young Filipinos with the same concerns and priorities as American teenagers; and films that
vividly recreated for Filipino audiences life in the U.S., feeding the minds of the young with
bogus images of a just and altruistic government and its wondrously happy and contented
citizens.

The University of the Philippines was founded in 1908 to train young Filipinos for tasks in the
colonial bureaucracy. Its graduates and the graduates of other schools, faithfully observing the
mandates of American and U.S.-trained pensionado educators, were to constitute new
intelligentsia that read, spoke and wrote in English. Unlike the ilustrados of the late nineteenth
century who belonged to the socio-economic elite, the new intelligentsia came from a broader
sector of the populace. The public school system had pout higher education within the reach of
many Filipinos who belonged to families that were less affluent, in a number cases even poor. It
was within the ranks of these intellectuals, whose elevated social standing was usually not
matched with an equally high economic status, that Philippine writing in English had its
beginnings. Although samples of writing in English had appeared as early as the first decade,
only in the latter half of the 1920s did the works of Filipino writers attain the stature of literature.
The short stories, and later, the poems of Jose Garcia Villa (1906-1997), did much to establish
Philippine writing alongside Tagalog and Spanish literatures which had longer histories behind
them. Footnote to Youth and Other Stories (1931) heralded the arrival of a Filipino author
steeped in the Anglo-American literary tradition who had elected to class himself, not with native
writers, but with the literary avant-garde in England and the U.S.' Villa's artistic credo, to be
pursued more aggressively in his poems, would propose the autonomy of art, thus freeing the
artist from any obligations to society, whether moral or political, holding paramount the creation
of the work of art. In the history of Philippine literature, such a credo was a radical break from
tradition as this had been forged by works in Tagalog and Spanish from the nineteenth century
down to the 1920s.

In the 1920s, the sarsuwela, with which Severino Reyes and the post- revolution ilustrados had
banished the komedya, to the provinces, began to lose its audience. From the U.S., vaudeville
and movies came with the rhythm and glitter of "modern" (meaning, "the newest")
entertainment, attracting the young who were eager to be counted among the urbane and the
fashionable. By the 1930, Filipino movies had begun to be made, sealing the doom of Tagalog
stage plays which could not compete with Tagalog movies in capacity for detailed story telling.
With the decline of the sarswwela in Manila, there was a shift in the center of theatrical activity,
with urban centers in the provinces like Cebu and Iloilo providing the stage for the flowering of
the genre in other vernacular languager In the meantime, there was also a shift in venue for
dramatic performances in Manila. When the commercial theaters that housed sarswwela
companies were taken over by vaudeville and movies, the college or university campus
provided the venue. But now the fare offered to a much-reduced audience for drama, consisted
of English-language productions of European, British and American plays mounted by amateur
student groups, which supplemented classroom study of Western drama. From time to time,
original one-act plays written by students were staged. Among the playwrights who found his
audience among the college students was Wilfrido Ma. Guerrero (1917-1995), who turned out to
be the most prolific and the most durable of the Filipino playwrights using English as a medium
of expression. Looking at Philippine society through the eyes of a new middle. class intellectual,
Guerrero demonstrated a wide range in his evocation of urban mores and manners, treating the
subject lightly and sardonically in satires like Wanted: A Chaperon (1940), and attempting high
tragedy in longer works like The Forsaken House (1940) and Frustrations (1944). As a young
playwright on the eve of the Pacific War, Guerrero was most successful in his light plays where
he poked fun at middle-class characters grappling with the problems of Americanization.
A literary form attempted quite early by Filipinos learning to write in English was poetry. Three
anthologies give a fairly comprehensive survey of poem written during the period of American
colonialism. Rodolfo Dato's Filipine Poetry (1924) exhibited 53 poets serving their
apprenticeship to various English and American poets included perhaps in textbooks they used
in college, Pablo Laslo's English-German Anthology of Filipino Poets (1934) revealed a better
command of the English language and of English versification, with Villa's contributions marking
him out as doubtless the most self-assured young poet of his generation. Villa's singular position
as a Filipino poet writing in English was confirmed by Carlos Bulosan's Chorus for America: Six
Philippine Poets (1942) where his poems again stood out among the works of five other poets.
Clearly, from the evidence of these anthologies, poetry in English was taking some time for the
Filipinos to master.

The short story was to be the showcase for the skill and art of Filipino writers using English.
Arturo B. Rotor (1907-1988) and Manuel E. Arguilla (1910 1944) were the finest short story
writers of their time, and between the two of them, they covered a broad range of subject matter
and themes drawn from the experience of Filipinos living in the 1930s. Rotor's The Wound and
the Scar (1937) consisted mainly of stories in which a doctor is led into painful introspection
about himself and his world resulting from contact with patients who bring him to glimpse the
vast distances separating human beings from one another. Where Rotor was the sensitive
chronicler of the inner life of the Filipino in the city, Arguilla was the meticulous painter of country
scenes in his best-loved stories where he captured the gentler aspects of Philippine rural life.
How My Brother Leon Brought Home a Wife and Other Stories (1941) was remarkable for the
author's ability to record in English the speech and gestures of rural Filipinos as though the
characters were using their own dialect.

An early successful attempt to write long fiction in English was His Native Soil (1941) by Juan C.
Laya (1911-1952). An Americanized Filipino intellectual is the central character of Laya's novel.
Martin Romero returns to the Philippines from the U.S. where he had studied and lived for a
number of years. Martin wants to introduce changes in the mentality and lifestyle of his
"backward" hometown. Martin finds himself confronted with such obstacles as the traditional
family system, politico-economic control exercised by corrupt politicians, and the ignorance and
superstitiousness of small-town folk. At the close of the novel, Martin Romero is on his way back
to the U.S., a failure in his self-imposed mission of dragging his hometown into "modern times"
as defined by his experience in American society.

It was not only writers using English who imbibed literary influences coming into Philippine
literature through the schools. Deogracias A. Rosario (1894-1936) was honored by fellow
writers who came after him with the title of "Father of the Tagalog Short Story," a recognition of
his skill as a craftsman who modernized the genre as it had been employed by previous Tagalog
writers uninitiated in the art of the short story as practiced by contemporary American masters.
In Rosario's hands, the Tagalog short story took on a tighter structure and reflected with greater
realism the ongoing process of Americanization of Philippine society. The year before he died, a
group of young Tagalog writers organized themselves into a literary society that prided itself in
being "radical but aristocratic." The society was Panitikan (Literature) founded by Alejandro G.
Abadilla and Clodualdo del Mundo, and it was determined to be "modern," in the sense that it
was to diverge from the traditional along the lines being pursued by the writers of Philippine
English literature. Among the writers in its ranks who were represented in the first issue of
Panitikan magazine in 1938 were Brigido Batungbakal (1910-1996) and Jesus A. Arceo
(1915-1939). It is significant to note that Panitikan was founded the same year that a group of
Filipino writers in English got together as the Veronicans and put out a mimeographed
publication called Story Manuscripts. Both the Veronicans and members of Panitikan saw
themselves as literary-rebels, avant-garde artists.

Intensification of Social Consciousness. The problems of Philippine society under U.S.

colonialism did not arise only after 1898. As a matter of fact, the most critical of them loss of
freedom and the concentration of wealth and, therefore, rights, in the hands of a few Filipinos -
had been carried over into the twentieth century when the U.S. superimposed its own ideology
on the social structure set up by Spanish colonialism. Thus the only change that existing
occurred with the coming of the Americans was a change in the occupancy of the tip of the
social pyramid. Americans now occupied the seat of colonial power, with the Filipino economic
elite still functioning as the colonizers' agents in the pacification of the masses at the base of the
pyramid. On the part of the new colonial master, there was a determined campaign to win over
the elite, giving them greater participation in administering affairs of the colony and in the
enjoyment of economic rewards of leadership. There was, too, a parallel campaign to dissipate
the cohesiveness of the oppressed masses, plying them with illusions of mobility through mass
education, dividing them by denigrating nationalism on the one hand and implanting a
universalist outlook in the young, on the other.

After the suppression of armed struggle by edicts, military campaigns and cultural propaganda,
American colonial authorities did not leave any stone unturned in getting Filipino national
leaders to opt for use of legal channels in secking independence. The educational system was a
most effective tool. As Renato Constantino puts it:

The transformation of the conquerors into the altruistic benefactor through the alchemy of
colonial education was premised on the distortion and outright suppression of information
regarding Philippine resistance to American rule and the atrocities committed by the American
army to crush that resistance English became the wedge that separated the Filipinos from their
past at the same time that it helped to further separate educated Filipinos from the masses.

While cultural Americanization assured easier control of the colony, it must not be forgotten that
its fundamental objective was to enhance economic exploitation The Filipinos became avid
consumers of American products and the Philippines, a fertile ground for American investment.
By 1934, when the constitutional convention called for in the Tydings- McDuffie Law drew up the
constitution of the Philippine Commonwealth, the struggle for an end to U.S. colonial rule had
become a legal waiting game to be terminated after ten years if the Filipinos would prove
themselves worthy of the prize of independence.
While the political aspect of the crisis of colonial control in the Philippines was susceptible to
obscurantist maneuvering by colonial administrators and their agents, the economic aspect
demanded no less than a drastic re-structuring of Philippine society. No amount of propaganda
rhetoric could conceal the fact that exploitation of the toiling masses by landlords and capitalists
was driving the people to the brink of desperation. Workingmen and peasants were organizing.
the two decades before the Pacific War being a period of sporadic peasant revolts in various
places in Luzon and of some massive strikes in Manila and Iloilo

The Great Crash of 1929 had wrecked the economy of the U.S., and the economic depression
that followed had disastrous repercussions on business in the Philippine colony. When the
prices of export crops plummeted, peasants working as tenants in lands planted to these crops
usually found themselves unemployed or underpaid. When factories or business establishments
had to be closed down, workers were laid off or took drastic wage cuts. President Manuel I.
Quezon, early during his term as head of the Commonwealth government, launched the
so-called "Social Justice Program" as a preventive measure for the unrest that was spreading
over Philippine society. In Quezon's inaugural address, he had pledged to act on the pressing
problems of the Commonwealth:

...Protection to labor, especially to working women and minors, just regulation of the relations
between labor and capital in industry and agriculture, solicitous regard on the part of the
Government for the well-being of the masses are the means to bring about the needed
economic and social equilibrium between the component elements of society.

The name of Lope K. Santos (1879-1963) is always linked to any discussion of social
consciousness in Philippine literature by virtue of the celebrated novel Banaag at Sikat
(Glimmer and Plain Daylight, 1904), written with the expressed intent of introducing Filipino
laborers to socialism. Santos had done a lot of reading as labor organizer, and that was how he
picked up ideas on socialism as these had entered the Philippines by way of Spain. The novel is
an ambitious work that tries to be a primer for laborers. It also tries to be a novel about a society
undergoing transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy and emerging from the dark
of superstition and fatalism into the light of science and hope. Santos presents two characters
as the embodiment of the new ideas dawning on Philippine society. The first one is Delfin, a
newspaperman born to poverty whose radical ideas about the rights of labor make him
anathema to the capitalist father of the girl he loves. The other one is Felipe, a more impetuous
radical than Delfin, born rich but has rejected his landowner father, casting his lot with the poor.
The radicals are paired off with women who sustain them in the struggle to make their ideas
prevail - the headstrong, "modern" Meni, daughter of one of the richest men in Manila, for the
quiet, even-tempered Delfin; and the patient Tentay, daughter of a poor laborer who died a
victim of tuberculosis, for the anarchistic Felipe.

Santos interweaves the story of Felipe and Tentay with that of Delfin and Meni for texture and
amplitude, but his focus is clearly on the second couple. Because of the social distance
separating them, Delfin and Meni had to be content with clandestine trysts. Meni becomes
furious father allows Delfin and Meni to marry. Shame and grief drive Don Ramon Ramon is
murdered by a disgruntled servant and his body is returned to the up the deation of inheritance.
It is decided that she can have her share of wealth provided the would leave Delfin. Meni scorns
the offer and prepares to leave with her There is a scuffle when Meni's sister refuses to let her
go. Felipe aids his and is hit by his father. Before the three friends go, Felipe warns those
present of husband.

the impending destruction of their class. The discursiveness of Banaag at Sikat tends to get in
the way of swifter pacing, but satirical wit leavens the book with touches of humor. It is to this wit
that the novel owes its success in exposing the greed and corruption of the ruling class, leaving
the readers vivid character portraits of philanderers, cuckolds and mistresses. Closely observed
scenes depicting Filipino customs and traits that impede social change gain pointedness
through the author's sense of humor which recalls that of Rizal in the Noli and the Fili. The
shortcomings of the novel lie in its failure to give flesh to socialist concepts that are "discussed"
by the author, having failed to find the scenes and situations that would dramatize them. Its
defects notwithstanding, Banaag at Sikat is a landmark showing subsequent authors that the
social novel under the new conditions created by U.S. colonialism could focus attention on
social inequities that had been sharpened by the advent of modernization. More sophisticated
than Santos as a social novelist was his contemporary Faustino Aguilar (1882-1955). In the
novel Pinaglabuan (Eclipsed, 1907), Aguilar demonstrates a firm grasp of the concept of class
struggle and a broad understanding of the historical forces that determine social change. Like
Banaag at Sikat, Pinaglahuan uses the poor-boy-rich-girl plot to put across its historical
message, but it differs from the earlier novel in that Aguilar has been able to particularize the
message in terms of exploitation of workers by capitalists, the feudal family system, the
blindness of religious belief, and the subservience of the Filipino ruling class to American civil
officials and military men.

Aguilar's novel revolves around the rich girl Danding whose love for a factory clerk had to give
way to her parent's wish to marry her off to the business magnate Rojalde who would pull the
family out of certain bankruptcy. The factory clerk is Luis Gat-Buhay, a union organizer in the
American firm where he works Out of filial duty, Danding agrees to marry Rojalde but makes him
understand that she cannot give him her love. Jealousy on top of hatred for a defiant working-
man propels Rojalde's vengeance, which comes when he is able to frame Luis in a robbery
case. Luis is jailed. When Danding gives birth to a "premature" son, Rojalde realizes that Luis
has triumphed over him. Luis, however, is mortally hurt in an accident and he dies in jail
dreaming of the social conflagration that would cleanse the country of economic injustice.

A novel that gives a penetrating analysis of Philippine society at the beginning of American rule,
Pinaglaban displays the art of Aguilar to advantage. The discriminating choice of substantiating
plays the ar and the rich symbolism all indicate the intelligence and seles chara complex
character portraits of a superior novelist. A later novel, Lihim ng Isang Pulo (The Secret of An
Island, 1926), confirms Aguilar's stature as an artist. The novel is an impressive achievement in
which the author experiments successfully with a diction purged of Spanish-loan- words in
telling a pre-conquest love story that mirrors class struggle in Philippine society in the 1920s.
The poetry of Lope K. Santos has been overshadowed by the reputation of Banaag at Sikat, but
if his achievement as an artist were to be measured, it is his poems that will tilt the scales. Ang
Pangginggera (The Pangginge Gambler, 1912) represents Santos the poet at his best,
combining in himself the robust outlook of a realistic novelist, the wry mockery of a mischievous
satirist and the polish of a consummate craftsman. The prevalence of gambling in Philippine
society during the American occupation was a fact that sarsawelas, novels and poems had
repeatedly referred to. Santos saw it as a social evil that had caused the degradation of so
many Filipino families of the lower middle class, and in his long narrative poem, he was warning
women in particular of the consequences of addiction to gambling, not only for themselves but
also especially for their families.

Ang Pangginggera traces the descent into immorality and poverty of a young married woman
who, in seeking to overcome grief over the death of her first- born, finds herself an inveterate
card-player. The game panggingge throws her in the company of men and women who can only
draw her deeper into moral permissiveness and, eventually, loss of scruples. Once panggingge
becomes a passion with her, the wreck of her marriage is certain. A policeman becomes her
lover and the distraught husband loses one job after another as he himself drifts into gambling.
The couple breaks up, but they salvage their marriage when a baby girl is born to them. A
period of domestic peace lasts until the wife goes back to panggingge. Back in the corrupting
atmosphere of card-playing sessions, the wife has become careless with her looks and morals.
She takes up with a married man. The husband has found himself a mistress, and later lands in
jail for misappropriating office funds. The pangginggera, to be able to fend for herself and her
children, turns into an expert card shark. One day, at a card game, she is informed that her
youngest child has been impaled on a stake upon falling from a fruit tree. The pangginggera
rushes home and finds a gruesome sight - the boy with guts spilling out, dead in a pool of blood.

As a character portrait, Ang Pangginggera is saved from the bleak pessimism of its naturalist
view of human fate by the seemingly inexhaustible wit which somehow tempers the harshness
of the poet's judgment on the gambler. Santos' insights into the mores and manners of lower
middle-class life in a semi-feudal society have been concretized through keenly-observed
characters, especially the women, and a social background vividly detailed. Less than a century
away from Florante at Laura, the poem demonstrated that Tagalog narrative poetry need not
confine itself to the lachrymose or the marvelous; it could also serve as a document exposing
and denouncing a perceived social problem.

The appearance in 1930 of the tabloid Sakdal (Radical) opened a for anti-colonial ideas that
was to rally Filipinos seeking an alternative to the colonial administration. Benigno R. Ramos
(1892-1945) was the founder and publisher of Sakdal and around the said tabloid he was to
build what has been described by one historian as "the popular movement with the greatest
impact spawned by the turbulent thirties." forum

Ramos, in his early works, showed himself to be a highly innovative poet with a natural concern
for the oppressed but inarticulate. Although unfortunately his poems have not been collected,
those that have been turned up by researchers indicate an achievement that ought to rank him
among the major poets of the Tagalog language. The blemish on his reputation as leader of the
Sakdalista movement left by his political record as a collaborator during the Japanese
Occupation seemed to have caused his neglect by literary historians and anthologists.
Whatever political errors he might have committed during the last part of his career, Ramos
deserves to be accorded his due as a fine poet who, at an earlier point in his life, had set aside
formalistic experimentation to make his poems easily accessible to the masses in whose service
he had placed his art.

In 1935, a few months before the inauguration of the Commonwealth, the Sakdalistas in 19
towns in Luzon rose in revolt. Although the revolt barely lasted two days and was immediately
put down by the Constabulary, the number of peasants (about 60,000 in all) who participated in
the uprising alarmed land. owners, government officials and the police, for it was clearly an
eruption of bitterness and discontent. The Sakdal revolt was only one among the many
eruptions of violence during the decade, and the warning was clear: the multifarious problems
brought about by economic hardships would have to be confronted soon by the government.
Already, the temper of the masses had been pushing them to gravitate more and more to the
political left, as this was represented by the Communist Party headed by Crisanto Evangelista
and the Socialist Party headed by Pedro Abad Santos.

From the U.S., many literary periodicals reaching local writers had been, over the decade,
discussing "proletarian literature" and what its implications were for writers in a class society.
Given the dire economic straits through which the American people were going, a literary theory
aimed at literature for the working class was finding a growing number of responsive, important
writers. Unrest among peasants and workers in Philippine society was stuff that the newspapers
carried, politicians' speeches decried and conversation on the streets amplified. In the poetry
and stories of more and more writers, the plight of the urban poor, unemployed workers and
dispossessed peasants was becoming the expected topic. Jose Garcia Villa continued to be
regarded with awe as some kind of literary dictator, but his "Art for Art's Sake" creative
philosophy was already being 40 challenged by younger writers whose consciousness had been
shaken by the social unrest around them and who had begun to look for an alternative critical
orientation. The essays on letters by Salvador P. Lopez (1911-1993), later to become part of
Literature and Society (1940), offered such an alternative. It was Lopez who had called attention
to the vacuousness of Villa's aestheticism in one of his essays. Lopez' critical ideas were to
serve as basis for the socially conscious "call to arms" when the Philippine Writers League was
organized in 1939. Manuel E. Arguilla would turn away from the idyllic countryside he painted in
his Nagrebcan* stories and write about rebellious peasants and desperate workers in such
pieces as "Epilogue to Revolt" and "Caps and Lower Case." Brigido Batungbakal, member of
the avant-garde Tagalog writing group Panitikan, rejected the temptations of avant-gardism and
focused his efforts on making readers aware of the problems of their society, such as
"vote-buying" in "Ngayong Gabi" (Tonight) and labor-capital conflict in "Aklasan (Strike)."

The Pacific War broke out in 1941, bringing the Japanese to the Philippines. Exerting every
effort to de-emphasize English, the Japanese military authorities pushed for Tagalog as the
national language. English writing came to a standstill, and the fact that Panitikan writers were
the ones running the only widely circulated literary outlet allowed to operate, (Liwayway [Dawn])
made it possible for modernism to enter Tagalog writing.

A Filipino peasant boy who had landed in the U.S. at the start of the Great Depression, Carlos
Bulosan (1913-1956) taught himself how to write. He had gone only as far as high school when
he left for the U.S., and in that country he came face to face with a side of America that he had
not been told about in school. Discrimination against non-Caucasians, exploitation of ignorant
immigrant workers and violent repression of ethnic minorities - Bulosan's quasi-
autobiographical book America is in the Heart (1946) was a painful record of the experience of a
Filipino who did not find his American dream. But the Filipinos back home were not eager to
listen to Bulosan. The War had just ended and the Americans were being welcomed everywhere
in the Philippines as "liberators." The four years under the Japanese militarists had been years
of violence, hunger and death, and the end of the Japanese Occupation was indeed a veritable
liberation. In Without Seeing the Dawn (1947), Stevan Javellana, relating the story of Carding
whom the atrocities of war brutalized, captured in a stirring novel the nightmare of war and the
heroic sacrifices of those who fought and died in that nightmare.

Philippine literature, at the end of the period of U.S. colonialism, had attained identity as national
literature, largely as a result of the patriotic and resistance literature produced during the early
years of American rule. The growth of English writing signaled the assertiveness of the
Americanized intellectuals being turned out by the universities. For a while, it seemed that
English might lead writers away from the Philippine literary heritage as this had come down to
the twentieth century through Spain and the vernacular literatures. However, realities in
Philippine society and outside pressed hard on the writers' consciousness, and some of the best
writing they turned out came to grips with those realities.

Lumbera, B., & Lumbera, C. N. (2005). Philippine literature: A history and anthology (English
edition). Anvil Publishing, Inc. lead writers away from the Philippine literary heritage as this had
come down to the twentieth century through Spain and the vernacular literatures. However,
realities in Philippine society outside pressed hard on the writers’ consciousness, and some of
the best writing they turned out came to grips with those realities.