MMSU SOCSC 01: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

MARIANO MARCOS STATE UNIVERSITY

College of Arts & Sciences
Department of Social Sciences

SocSc 01:
READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Compiled by:
JERRY C. BUENAVISTA

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MMSU SOCSC 01: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Chapter I:

MEANING AND RELEVANCE

OF HISTORY

Outline:
• Meaning of History
• Sources of History
• Locating Primary Sources
• Historical Criticism
• Colonial Historiography
• Philippine Historiography After World War II
• Characteristics of Contemporary Philippine
Historiography

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MMSU SOCSC 01: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

v MEANING OF HISTORY

The Greek philosopher Aristotle used the word history which meant a systematic
account of a set of natural phenomena, whether or not chronological ordering was a factor
in the account; and that usage, though rare, still prevails in English in the phrase natural
history. In the course of time, however, the equivalent Latin word scientia (English,
science) came to be used more regularly to designate non-chronological systematic
accounts of natural phenomena.
History deals with the study of past events presented in chronological order and
often with explanation. Others define it as His story and sanaysay na may saysay.
Individuals who write about history are called historians. They seek to understand the
present by examining what went before. They undertake arduous historical research to
come up with a meaningful and organized reconstruction of the past. But whose past are
we talking about? This is a basic question that a historian needs to answer because this sets
the purpose and framework of a historical account. Hence, a salient feature of historical
writing is the facility to give meaning and impart value to a particular group of people
about their past.
By its most common definition, the word history now means “the past of mankind.”
Compare the German word for history – Geschichte, which is derived from geschehen,
meaning to happen. Geschichte is that which has happened. This meaning of the word
history is often encountered in such overworked phrases as “all history teaches” or “the
lessons of history.”
It requires only a moment’s reflection to recognize that in this sense history cannot
be reconstructed. The past of mankind for the most part is beyond recall. Even those who
are blessed with the best memories cannot re-create their own past, since in the life of all
men there must be events, persons, words, thoughts, places, and fancies that made no
impression at all at the time they occurred, or have since forgotten. A fortiori, the
experience of a generation long dead, most of whom left no records or whose records, if
they exist, have never been disturbed by the historian’s touch, is beyond the possibility of
total recollection. The reconstruction of the total past of mankind, although it is the goal of
historians, thus becomes a goal they know full well is unattainable.
The practice of historical writing is called historiography. Traditional method in
doing historical research focuses on gathering of documents from different libraries and
archives to form a pool of evidence needed in making a descriptive or analytical narrative.
However, modern historical writing does not only include examination of documents but
also the use of research methods from related areas of study such as archaeology and
geography.

v SOURCES OF HISTORY

Classified into two:

1. Primary Sources
2. Secondary Sources

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MMSU SOCSC 01: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Another type of classifications are:

1. written and non-written
2. published or unpublished
3. textual, oral or visual sources

Can also be classified as:

1. documents
2. archaeological records
3. oral and video accounts

Ø Primary Sources
- testimony of an eyewitness
- they are either participants or witnesses
- It must have been produced by a contemporary of the event it narrates (Louis
Gottschalk, Understanding History)

Primary sources are characterized by their content, regardless of whether they are available
in original format, in microfilm/microfiche, in digital format, or in published
format(http://www.yale.edu/collections_collaborative/primarysources/primarysources.ht
ml)

These sources range from eyewitness accounts, diaries, letters, legal documents, and
official documents (government or private) and even photographs

Ø Secondary Sources
- interpret and analyze primary sources. These sources are one or more steps removed
from the event. (http://www.princeton.edu/~refdesk/primary2.html)

Examples of Secondary Sources:

ü History textbook
ü Printed materials (serials, periodicals which interprets previous research)

Ø Published materials
ü Books, magazines, journals,
ü Travelogue
ü transcription of speech

Ø Unpublished materials - any handwritten or typed record that has not been
printed
ü Manuscript
ü Archival materials
ü Memoirs, diary

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MMSU SOCSC 01: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

a. Documents – handwritten, printed, designed, drawn and other composed materials

e.g. books, magazines, maps, journals, architectural perspectives, newspapers, paintings,
advertisements, and photographs

Relacion de las Islas Filipinas Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas

Colonial records such as government reports and legal documents form a significant part
of our collection of documents here and abroad, particularly in Spain and the United States.
In the 20th century and up to now, memoirs of personal accounts written by important
historical personages constitute another type of documents. Philippine presidents such as
Emilio Aguinaldo, Manuel Quezon, and Diosdado Macapagal wrote their memoirs to
highlight their roles as nation-builders.

b. archaeological records – preserved remains of human beings, their activities and their
environment

• fossils – remains of animals, plants and other organisms

In the Philippines, the most significant excavated human remains include Callao
Man’s toe bone (dated 67000 BCE) and the Tabon Man’s skullcap (22000 BCE). Aside
from human remains, other archaeological records are generally categorized as fossils and
artifacts.

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MMSU SOCSC 01: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

• artifacts – remnants of material culture

Laguna Copperplate Inscription Manunggul Jar

c. oral and video accounts – audio-visual documentation of people, events and places

These are usually recorded in video and audio cassettes, and compact discs. Aside
from scholars, media people also use oral and video accounts as part of their news and
public affairs work.

Four examples of primary sources related to visual imagery are the following:
1. maps
2. photographs
3. sketches, drawings, paintings
4. cartoons

v GENERAL KINDS OF HISTORICAL SOURCES

a. Primary – documents, physical objects, and oral/video accounts by an individual or

group present at the time and place being described
- The testimony of eyewitness, or of a witness by any other of the senses, or of a
mechanical device like the Dictaphone – that is, of one who or that which was present
at the events of which he or it tells (hereafter called simply eyewitness)

b. Secondary - materials made by people long after the events being described had
taken place
- The testimony of anyone who is not an eyewitness – that is, of one who was not present
at the events of which he tells

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MMSU SOCSC 01: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

A primary source must thus have been produced by a contemporary of the events it
narrates. It does not, however, need to be original in the legal sense of the word original –
that is, the very document (usually the first written draft) whose contents are the subject of
discussion – for quite often a later copy or a printed edition will do just as well; and in the
case of the Greek and Roman classics seldom are any but later copies available.

“Original” is a word of so many different meanings that it would have been better
to avoid it in precise historical discourse.

A document may be called “original”

1. because it contains fresh and creative ideas
2. because it is not translated from the language in which it was first written
3. because it is in its earliest, unpolished stage
4. because its text is the approved text, unmodified and untampered with
5. because it is the earliest available source of the information it provides

Unfortunately, the phrase “original sources” has become common among

historians, and it is desirable to define its usage accurately. It is best used by the historian
in two senses – (1) to describe a source, unpolished, uncopied, untranslated, as it used from
the hands of the authors (e.g. original draft of the Magna Carta) or (2) a source that gives
the earliest available information (i.e., the origin) regarding the question under
investigation because earlier sources have been lost.

Primary sources need not be original in either of these two ways. They need to be
“original” only in the sense of underived or first-hand as to their testimony. This point
ought to be emphasized in order to avoid confusion between original sources and primary
sources. The confusion arises from a particularly careless use of the word original. It is
often used by historians as a synonym for manuscript or archival.

Most historical narratives today are so reliant on documentary sources due to the
plethora of written records and the lack of archaeological records and oral/video memoirs.
Although having several documents about an event allows for easier counterchecking of
facts, history researchers are confronted with one basic challenge with regard primary
sources – their ability to read and understand texts in foreign language.

Aside from reading the Spanish original documents or translated works, another
daunting task for Filipino historians is to discern the cultural context and historical value
of primary sources because most of these primary documents were written by colonialists
and reflected Western cultural frames. For examples, derogatory terms used to label
Filipinos such as “pagan,” “uncivilized,” “wild,” and “savage” abound in these colonial
documents. Uncovering myths and misconceptions about Filipino cultural identity
propagated by the Spanish and American colonizers is extra challenging for contemporary
Filipino scholars.

If the key function of primary source documents is to give facts, secondary source
documents, on the other hand, provide valuable interpretations of historical events. The

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works of eminent historians such as Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino are good
examples of secondary two phases: the first phase covers the years from the start of the
revolution in August 1896 to the flight of Emilio Aguinaldo and company to Hong Kong
as a result of the Pact of Biak-na-Bato, while the second phase spans from Aguinaldo’s
return to Manila from Hong Kong until his surrender to the Americans in March 1901.

However, Constantino refuted Agoncillo’s leader-centric scheme of dividing the

revolution into two phases by stressing that Agoncillo’s viewpoint implied that the
revolution came to a halt when Aguinaldo left the country. Constantino disputed the
soundness of Agoncillo’s two-phase scheme by asserting that the war of independence
continued even without Aguinaldo’s presence in the country.

Aside from the issue on Philippine Revolution, there are other contending issues in
Philippine history such as the venue of the first Christian mass in the country and the
question of who deserves to be named national hero. By and large, interpretations serve as
tools of discernment for readers of historical sources, but they should be cautious of frames
of analysis for biased, discriminatory, and self-serving ends.

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THE SOURCE: THE BASIS OF OUR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE PAST

Outline
• What is a Source
• Source Typologies, Their Evolution and Complementarity
• Storing and Delivering Information

THE SOURCE & THE HISTORIAN

What are sources?

• Sources are objects that have been left in the past. They exist either as relic…or as
testimonies of witnesses to the past.

• Sources are objects from the past or testimonies concerning the past on which
historians depend in order to create their own depictions of that past.

Relics and Testimonies as Sources

a. Relics - artifacts, ruins, fragments b. Testimonies – oral or written

The Attitude of the Historian towards Sources

1. To consider the conditions under which a source was produced.

2. To consider the intentions that motivated the creation of the source.
3. To always bear in mind that knowledge of the first two items does not reveal
everything about the source’s reliability
4. To read a source, paying attention to both the historical and historiographical contexts
that give it meaning.
5. To distinguish carefully for the readers between info that comes literally out of the
source itself---and that which is a personal interpretation of the material.

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SOURCE TYPOLOGIES, THEIR EVOLUTION AND COMPLEMENTARITY

Written Archaeological Oral New Sources

• Narrative • articles from • tales and sagas • photos
• diplomatic daily life • folk songs and • films/movies
sources • artistic creations popular rituals • videos
• social documents • fortifications • artistic • ICT generated
performances sources
• interviews

Archaeological Evidences
• provide a glimpse of how people lived in the past and reveals interconnections of the
age.
• Advances in technology have made possible the preservation and accumulation of oral
evidences in historiography.

Oral Evidences
• Oral records have been a major historical source of the pre-historic times.

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Complementarity of Sources
• Oral sources can complement written sources and can give us clues on the socio-
political, economic and cultural contexts at play in a specific period being studied.

• Oral sources can be trusted so long as they can be verified through external evidence
of another kind (language, material, non-material culture).

• Interviewing as a method in oral history must be handled skillfully. Interviews must be

analyzed with extreme care against threats of biases

C. STORING AND DELIVERING INFORMATION

1. Archives – considered as the historians principal source of information

a. Living archive – if the archive is growing and acquiring new materials

b. Old, Historical Archive – when a collection is separated from the living archive
because it has no value

2. Museums – usual repositories for archaeological finding, artworks and other similar
objects

Reasons why there is a small number of documents in the archives:

1. few events were actually recorded
2. often occurred that the official who produced or originally collected a given
document did not think it worth saving
3. archives are frequently destroyed in catastrophe, fire and war
4. many institutions and individuals simply do not seek aggressively enough to preserve
their records
5. there are basic technical reasons why an archive does not last, namely the quality of
the material on which the record is kept
6. archives can fail scholars because there is too much to collect; overwhelmed by the
task deciding what to save and what to discard
Source: Martha Howell and Walter Prevenier. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical
Methods

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v LOCATING PRIMARY SOURCES

a. National Library
b. National Archives
c. Academic Institutions
d. Privately owned museums and archives
e. Religious congregations
f. Abroad

v HISTORICAL CRITICISM

Many documents have primary and secondary segments. For instance, examining
a newspaper as a historical source entails a discerning mind to identify its primary and
secondary components. A news item written by a witness of an event is considered as a
primary source, while a feature article is usually considered as a secondary material.
Similarly, a book published a long time ago does not necessarily render it as a primary
source. It requires reading of the document to know its origin.

To ascertain the authenticity and reliability of primary sources to be used in crafting

a narrative, a historian needs to employ two levels of historical criticism, namely external
criticism and internal criticism.

a. External criticism – answers concerns and questions pertinent to the authenticity of a

historical source by identifying who composed the historical material, locating when and
where the historical material was produced, and establishing the material’s evidential value

b. Internal criticism – deals with the credibility and reliability of the content of a given
historical source. It focuses on understanding the substances and message that the historical
material wants to convey by examining how the author framed the intent and meaning of a
composed material.

v COLONIAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

Philippine historiography has changed significantly since the 20th century. For a
long time, Spanish colonizers presented our history in two parts: a period of darkness or
backwardness before they arrived and a consequent period of advancement or
enlightenment when they came.

Spanish chroniclers wrote a lot about the Philippines but their historical accounts
emphasized the primacy of colonization to liberate Filipinos from their backward

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“barbaric” lifeways. In the same manner, American colonial writers also shared the same
worldview of the predecessors by rationalizing their colonization of Filipinos as a way to
teach the natives the “civilized lifestyle” which they said the Spaniards forgot to impart
including personal hygiene and public administration. Colonial narratives have portrayed
Filipinos as a people bereft of an advanced culture and a respectable history. This
perception challenged Filipino intellectuals beginning in the 1800s to rectify such cultural
bias or prejudice. In 1890, Jose Rizal came out with an annotation of Antonio de Morga’s
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (Events in the Philippine Islands), a book originally
published in 1609. He used de Morga’s book, a rare Spanish publication that positively
viewed precolonial Filipino culture, as a retort to the arrogant Spaniards. However, cultural
bias against Filipino culture continued even after Rizal’s death and the end of Spanish
colonialism.

Learning from the fate of its colonial predecessor, the United States did not only
use brute force but also effected ingenious ways of pacification such as the use of education
as a tool to control their subjects and increase political and economic power of the elite
few. These colonial instruments were so ingrained among Filipinos that they perceived
their colonial past in two ways: initially maltreated by “wicked Spain” but later rescued by
“benevolent America.” This kind of historical consciousness has effectively erased from
the memories of Filipino generations the bloody Filipino-American War as exemplified by
the Balangiga Massacre in Eastern Samar and the Battle of Bud Bagsak in Sulu.
Consequently, such perception breathes new life to the two part view of history: a period
of darkness before the advent of the United States and an era of enlightenment during the
American colonial administration. This view has resonated with Filipino scholars even
after the Americans granted our independence in 1946.

v PHILIPPINE HISTORIOGRAPHY AFTER WORLD WAR II

The stark reality of Filipino historians thinking like their colonial counterparts
during the postcolonial period troubled a small group of professors and cultural workers
who were mostly alumni of the University of the Philippines. This spurred the emergence
of Filipino scholars who challenged the narrow view of colonial narratives and developed
historical writing from the viewpoint of a nationalist agenda.

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In the 1950s, Teodoro Agoncillo pioneered

nationalist historiography in the country by
highlighting the role of the Filipino reformists
and revolutionaries from 1872, the year that saw
the execution of the GomBurZa priests, to the
end of the Philippine Revolution as a focal point
of the country’s nation-building narrative. Two
of his most celebrated books focus on the
impact of the Philippine Revolution: The Revolt
of the Masses: The Story of Bonifacio and the
Katipunan (1956) and Malolos: The Crisis of
the Republic (1960). His writings veered away
from emphasizing colonial period and regarded
events before 1872 as part of the country’s “lost
history.”

Teodoro Agoncillo

The discourse of “lost history” was not accepted

by another known scholar, Renato
Constantino, whose published work entitled,
“The Miseducation of the Filipino” became a
staple reading for academics and activists
beginning in the late 1960s. Constantino
advanced the idea of a “people’s history” – a
study of the past that sought to analyze society
by searching out people’s voices from colonial
historical materials that typically rendered
Filipinos as decadent, inept and vile. Following
this mode of historical inquiry, he authored The
Philippines: A Past Revisited (1975), a college
textbook that offered a more critical reading of
Philippine history compared to Agoncillo’s
History of the Filipino People (1973).
Undoubtedly, these two nationalist scholars
inspired or challenged other historians to
reevaluate the country’s national history. Renato Constantino

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Other Filipino historians set new directions in

redefining Philippine historiography in the last
30 years of the 20th century. The first of these
scholars is Zeus Salazar who conceptualized
“Pantayong Pananaw” as an approach to
understanding the past from our own cultural
frame and language. He emphasized the value
of our Austronesian roots in defining Filipino
culture and encouraged other scholars to
conduct outstanding historical researches in
Filipino such as the work of Jaime Veneracion’s
Kasaysayan ng Bulacan (1986).

Zeus Salazar

Equally important is the contribution of

Reynaldo Ileto who wrote about his “history
from below”treatise in his ground-breaking
work, Pasyon and Revolution: Popular
Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910
(1979). In this work, Ileto endeavored to
recognize the way of thinking of ordinary folks
by using alternative historical sources such as
folk songs and prayers. His other works spurred
new interpretations such as common topics such
as Jose Rizal, Philippine-American War, and
American colonization.

Reynaldo Ileto
There is also Samuel Tan, another prolific historian who is best remembered for
mainstreaming the role and relevance of Filipino Muslims in the country’s national
history. His definitive work, The Filipino Muslim Armed Struggle, 1900-1972 (1978),
sought to examine the struggle of Filipino Muslims in the context of 20th century
nation-building dynamics during the American colonial regime and subsequent
postcolonial Filipino administrations. In his book, A History of the Philippines (1987),
Tan attempted to write a national history reflective of the historical experiences not
v CHARACTERISTICS OF CONTEMPORARY PHILIPPINE HISTORIOGRAPHY
only of lowland Christianized Filipinos but also of the other cultural communities in
the archipelago.
a. Political Narratives

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Most of our national histories today favour narratives that deal with the political
aspects of nation-building such as the legacies of political leaders and establishment of
different governments.

Questions such as the following are focal points in these narratives: Who was the
first Spanish governor-general vital in implementing the encomienda policy? Who was the
governor-general responsible for the massive employment of Filipinos on the American
colonial bureaucracy? Who served as the last president of the Philippine Commonwealth
and the inaugural chief executive of the Third Republic? The challenge to the present-day
historian is to present a more holistic history that goes beyond politics by means of
integrating other aspects of nation-building such as its economic and cultural aspects.

b. Colonial Histories in Historical Narratives

Another weakness of most national histories is the importance given to colonial

histories. This continues to breed Filipinos who are more familiar with stories about our
colonial history rather than stories of our precolonial past.

Up to now, some social studies textbooks misrepresent ancient Filipinos as savages

or barbarians by portraying colonizers, especially the Spaniards and Americans, as
liberators of the Filipinos from cultural backwardness. The key to uncover such cultural
prejudices is to examine available historical sources and to write about our past by
understanding the myths and misconceptions that characterize the Filipino culture for
centuries.

c. Elite-centric Perspectives in Historical Narratives

Some historical narratives focus on the contribution of the elite in nation-building

such as what the ilustrados (educated Filipinos) fought for in the 19th century or how local
politicians negotiated with their American counterparts to obtain an independence law
during the first half of the 20th century. Though eminent historians such as Constantino and
Ileto reiterated the importance of a “people’s history” and “history from below,”
respectively, so much has to be done in terms of writing about the roles played by ordinary
people in our country.

d. Patriarchal Orientation in Historical Narratives

Most of the country’s historical narratives highlight the heroism of men in different
ways: leading revolts and liberation wars against colonizers, championing the cause of
independence, and spearheading political and economic development. Women, on the
otherhand, are viewed by several historians as merely support to men. Let us take for
example the women leaders such as Gabriela Silang, Tandand Sora, and Corazon Aquino.
Silang assumed the leadership of the Ilocos revolt after her husband was murdered.
Tandang Sora’s decision to offer her barn and farm to revolutionaries was linked to her
son’s involvement in the Katipunan. Aquino rose to prominence as a martyr’s widow who

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led a movement to depose a dictatorship. These representations show women’s roles as

consequences of their connection to the men in their lives. With this bias in mind, it is
imperative for contemporary historians to use gender-sensitive approaches in
understanding history to avoid typecasting women as dependent, emotional, less important,
passive, submissive and weak.

e. Emphasis on Lowland Christianized Filipinos

National histories tend to show partially toward lowland Christianized Filipinos at

the expense of other national cultural communities such as Muslim Filipinos and other
indigenous peoples. Celebrated figures of our past are all lowlander Christians and
predominantly Tagalogs including Jose Rizal, the leading propagandist; Andres Bonifacio,
the Katipunan founder; and Emilio Aguinaldo, the revolutionary leader who declared
independence. Non-Christians and highlanders remain unrecognized in historical
narratives. Muslim Filipinos, in particular, have been subjected to negative characterization
by lowland Christians in published works such as history books. This is caused by the
culture of mistrust that developed between Christians and Muslims during colonial periods.
Muslim Filipinos are depicted as brutal, cruel, ferocious, and vicious as exemplified by
their attacks of Christian towns. This narrow-minded view has to be reevaluated in order
to correct misrepresentations of Muslim Filipinos in this age of political correctness and
cultural sensitivity.

Sources: Chronicles in a Changing World, Witnesses to the History of the Filipino People

Gottschalk, Loius. Understading History: A Primer if Historical Method, New York: A.A.Knopf,
1969.

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LINK IT

Search the internet for online archives and libraries on Philippine history and
culture. Explore ways of getting historical information from varied digital sources. Present
your findings in a powerpoint presentation with profiles of web sites detailing their
collection of sources and providing important information on how to access their files.

BRING IT ON

1. What are the benefits of using primary sources?

2. Why do you think most history textbooks are secondary sources?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of accessing online primary sources?
4. What are the challenges of understanding our country’s past mindful of the problems
that characterize the writing of our national history?

LEVEL UP!

1.You work as part of a research team at the National Historical Commission of the
Philippines. The team is composed of four to five researchers who will take part in an
annual conference of Filipino historians aimed to analyze the country’s national symbols
utilizing primary sources. Your group should be able to explain the meaning of the different
symbols and colors of the Philippine flag by showing excerpts of the English translation of
the country’s declarations of independence originally written in Spanish. Then you are to
compare and contrast the past and present meanings that we attach to the symbols and
colors of the Philippine flag. Your presentation will be graded based on accuracy of
information and flow of presentation.

2. You work at a broadcasting company. Your station manager has selected you to annotate
for a video highlighting the recollection of veterans during the administration of President
Ferdinand Marcos. You have to conduct an interview or a series of interviews with an
individual or group of individuals who were witnesses to the changes in Philippine society
between 1965 and 1986. Write your script for a three-minute video presentation. Your
presentation will be graded based on its content, creativity, and impact.

3. You have been assigned to write a brief history about your family, organization, school,
or village. The objective of the project is to examine the available primary documents such
as letters, minutes of the meeting, pictures, and other memorabilia that you can use in
making a historical account. It is important to identify and explain the turning points or
highlights of your historical narrative. Your paper will be graded based on extensiveness
of the primary documents to be utilized and organization of the historical account.

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The Method and Skills of History:

A Practical Guide
Outline:
• The Uses of History
• Nature of History: History as Reconstruction
• Process of History
• Methods of Historical Analysis

The Uses of History

v History can be influential and shaping human affairs.
v History provides informed perspective about the world.
v History is a guide on making judgments.
v History provides a better understanding about the present situation.

Nature of History: History as Reconstruction

What is History?
First: History is the sum total of everything that has happened in the past.
§ history-as-actuality

Second: History is an account of the past.

§ history-as-record

“History is not ‘what happened in the past’; rather, it is the act of

selecting, analyzing, and writing about the past…”
(James Davidson and Mark Lytle, 1982)

Nature of History
History is both the past and the study of the past.
…visualize walking at night…
…a companion turns on a search light.
…the landscape represent the past.
…the one with the search light is the historian.

This analogy may give us an idea of the nature of history….

…but it is IMPERFECT.

NO ONE CAN PRESENT THE PAST AS IT ACTUALLY WAS…

HISTORY is an individualized view…
…an act of creation…

AN ACT OF RE-CREATION.

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Louis Gottschalk (1950): Only a part of what was observed in the past was
remembered by those who observed it; only a part of what was remembered was recorded;
only a part of what was recorded has survived; only a part of what has survived has come
to the historians’ attention; only a part of what has come to their attention is credible; only
a part of what is credible has been grasped and can be expounded or narrated by the
historian… Before the past is set forth by the historian, it is likely to have gone through
eight separate steps at each of which some of it has been lost; and there is no guarantee that
what remains is the most important, the largest, the most valuable, the most representative,
or the most enduring part. In other words, the “object” that the historian studies is not only
incomplete, it is markedly variable as records are lost or recovered.

Process of History
Historian must rely on surviving records…
Historians are fallible, capable of error, with personal biases, political beliefs, economic
status, and idiosyncrasies.
Ø There is an element of subjectivity in historical accounts.
Ø Historians are justified in viewing an event from any perspective they wish.
Ø Historians could excessively focus on his or her own viewpoint.

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Methods of Historical Analysis

1. selection of a subject for investigation
2. collection of probable sources of information on the subject
3. examination of those sources for genuineness (either in whole or in part)
4. extraction of credible particulars from the sources (or parts of sources) proved genuine

The Question of the Truth

v Limited records of past events still constitute a tangible link between past and present.
v History is not fiction. History must be based on available relevant evidence.
v History is dynamic or constantly changing.

Conclusion
v The realization that history involves the study of individual interpretations or versions
of the past is unsettling.

v History is not the lifeless study of the dead past.

v Learning how historians think and sharpening the analytical and communication skills
are essentials for success in college and professional life.

v The methods of history are not especially complicated and confusing… still doing
history is not altogether easy.

Source: Conal Furay and Michael Salevouris, The Methods and Skills of History: A Practical Guide

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The Historian’s Task in the Philippines

Political or religious controversy is rarely conducive context for an introduction to

serious history. Such a context, nonetheless, provided my own introduction to the study of
Philippine history. In 1949, Catholic bishops opposed the use of government funds to
publish Rafael Palma’s biography of Rizal because of the book’s anti-Catholicism. One
could easily have gotten caught up in the instrumentalization of history to score debating
points in that controversy and gone no further.

A study of Rizal’s writings led to a sharing of Rizal’s convictions on the centrality

of historical perspective for a real understanding of the problems of the present. For a young
American undergraduate seminarian recently arrived in the Philippines and anxious to
become familiar with Filipino thought, history, and culture, Rizal’s insistence on the need
for Filipinos to understand their own past if they were effectively to shape their future
struck a sympathetic note.

It was Rizal’s consciousness of the need to know his people’s past that made him
interrupt his work on El Filibusterismo, which was to point toward a solution to the
country’s problems exposed in the Noli Me Tangere. Before planning for the future, as he
insisted in the prologue to his edition of Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas,
one must unveil that history which had been hidden from the eyes of Filipinos by neglect
or distortion. Having acquired an understanding of their past, Filipinos, Rizal hoped, would
be able to “judge the present” so that all together might “dedicate [themselves] to studying
the future.”

Driven by this purpose, he spent long months in London’s British Museum, copying
out painfully by hand Morga’s account as the basis for his picture of the past. He dug
through old missionary chronicles that would help him expand on Morga’s narrative. Thus
he would show his countrymen that, from a Filipino point of view, Spanish rule had failed
to fulfill its promise of progress for Filipinos. Indeed, in some respects they had been
retrogressed under Spanish rule. Thus, in the light of their past, the present lamentable state
of the Filipinos provided moral legitimation for the struggle to come. But beyond that, the
knowledge of their past nurtured a consciousness of being a people with a common origin
and a common experience constituting the national identity around which the future nation
could arise.

But for all the care with which Rizal combed the chronicles and the acuteness with
which he recaptured from a Filipino point of view the events they narrated, he was
ultimately a self-trained historian, and a part-time one at that, as he lamented in letters to
his friend Blumentritt. Despite his care to document his interpretation on individual points
and the illumination he gave to the period, the book as a whole proves too much. Three
centuries of Spanish rule, for all its faults, had not been a complete disaster. Rizal himself
was the best proof of that. But he had succeeded in taking a new look at that Filipino past
and uncovering the roots of what was good and bad in contemporary Filipino society.

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Above all, he was able to share with his people a sense of national identity, which, as he
once wrote Blumentritt, “impels nations to do great deeds.”
Anyone who first studies Rizal’s historical writings and then reads Andres
Bonifacio’s call to his fellow Filipinos in his “Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog,” will
recognize that Rizal’s hope that his edition of Morga would lay a foundation for the
building of the nation was not in vain. Bonifacio, Jacinto, and other Filipinos of the
Revolutionary generation found much of their literary and nationalist inspiration in Rizal’s
writings.

Every Filipino historian can share the basic goals Rizal thought capable of
achievement by history – understanding of our past, cultivation of our national identity,
and inspiration for the future. Their achievement, however, is not without obstacles.

Recovering the Past

The relevant Filipino past is not merely the pre-Hispanic period Rizal naturally
undertook to illuminate. It will not suffice today, even less than in his time, to skip over
the Spanish colonial period on the grounds that there was no Filipino history before 1872.
Such an allegation, if meant seriously, betrays more a lack of method than a lack of history.
Even with the meager resources at his disposal in the nineteenth century, Rizal had shown
that Spanish chronicles could be mined to get beneath the Hispanocentric outlook of these
sources. With access today to an enormously wider archival documentation, not to speak
of the resources afforded by such cognate disciplines as archaeology, linguistics, and
anthropology, a great deal can be learned about Filipino society during both the pre-
Hispanic and Hispanic periods.

William Henry Scott, the distinguished investigator into so many facets of the
Filipino past, has entitled one of his works, “Cracks in the Parchment Curtain.” There is,
he says, a documentary curtain of parchment which, at first sight, conceals from modern
view the activities and thought of Filipinos and reveals only the activities of the Spaniards.
But many “cracks” in that parchment allow the perceptive investigator to glimpse Filipinos
acting in their own world. Or to change the metaphor, much can be learned about Filipino
life and society by reading between the lines of Spanish documents. The chronicles may
have aimed primarily to narrate the exploits, devotion, zeal, and hardships of the Spanish
missionaries, but they could not help but speak indirectly of the sixteenth-century Filipinos
whom the missionary succeeded in converting or failed to persuade. Those unintended
references are often much more enlightening to us than any number of explicit analyses of
Filipino society. For the latter often reveal as much of the writer’s point of view and biases
as they do of the people he professes to describe. It is necessary if they are to give us the
answers we look for in them.

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The Formative Century

The unfortunate disproportionate amount of the total research into Philippine

history has been devoted to the Revolutionary and the American colonial periods. That is
not to say that it has not been fruitful in itself, or that these periods are undeserving of
intensive study.

The problem is not what has been done, but what has not been done – to lay the
necessary foundation for the understanding of the Revolutionary period. For instance,
much attention (though little serious study) has been given to the agitation concerning the
friar lands. But relatively little has been done to explore the much bigger growth of the
nonfriar haciendas – Spanish and Filipino – and the impact on Filipino life of the general
nineteenth-century commercialization of agriculture. To take another example, some
modern historians have pointed to the Negros hacenderos’ quickly embracing American
rule as typical of the elite betrayal of the Revolution. But, even as casual reading of the
history of the Recolecto mission work in Negros during the preceding half-century makes
clear, Negros was one of the most atypical of Philippine regions. The Christianization of
the island mostly took place in second half of the nineteenth-century. Consequently, the
island was only organized into fixed settlements during the same period. Hence, whether
or not the Negros hacenderos were typical of the Filipino elite (and there are good reasons
for doubting it), Negros society as a whole was quite different from other regions, even
nearly Iloilo. And unless history is believed to be made only be elites, then the whole of a
society must be studied. To illustrate the point, most of Iloilo’s socioeconomic elite were
close relatives and associates of their counterparts, and like the Negros hacenderos, many
of Iloilo elite soon went over to the Americans. But the war continued in Panay well into
1901, long after Negros was flying the American flag. The differences in response was not
due to different elites, but in a different society below them – the provincial principales,
the Filipino clergy, the wider population. Again, the response of Panay, particularly in its
religious aspects, was also different from that of the Tagalog region. Considerable
differences in this respect likewise marked individual Tagalog provinces among
themselves.

A real history of the Revolution, including the war against the Americans, is still to
be written – one that will study the Revolution not just as it took place in Cavite and
Malolos or Luzon, but in all the regions of the Philippines. Such a history will show the
different degrees and kinds of nationalist response in different regions. It will explore the
variations in different socioeconomic classes of regional societies and the political,
economic, religious, cultural reasons for these differences. But, such a history of the
Revolution will not be possible until further research on a regional basis has been done on
the century before the Revolution.

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Method in History

Can history be objective? Obviously, it is written from a point of view? Documents

are not self-interpreting, and, therefore, need a human interpreter – the historian. Being
human, he brings with him not only his viewpoint, but also his biases and prejudices. The
latter the historian should rid himself of, once he recognizes them. Sadly, this is often not
the case. But that is impossible to write without having a point of view is certainly a truism.

Few historians today would maintain the nineteenth-century view that history is a
science with laws as rigorous as those of the physical sciences. But if “scientific history”
in that sense is a myth, the valid use of critical historical method is not. This method in its
simplest terms, requires the historian to base himself on documentation and to draw the
evidence for his assertions or interpretations from the facts found in documents. But not
only what constitutes a “fact” but also what constitutes a “document” needs definition.
Arriving at the “facts” demands that the historian should demonstrate in detail how he
bridges the gap between the documentation and the conclusions he draws from it. If that is
so done that other historians are able to verify this process, we can speak of scientific
method through reasoned disagreement may exist on the evaluation of the evidence or even
its selection.

“Documents” on the other hand, need not be limited to those emanating from
government offices or even to memoirs and letters. Other types of documents, though not
relating “historical facts,”

Tell us much about the facts of people’s ways of thinking or their perceptions of
reality. These include literary works, books of prayers, even folk art. Since such
“documents” are even less self-interpreting than more conventional ones, their successful
use depends even more on the historian’s ability to put the proper questions to them.
Though historians may argue about the technicalities of determining the exact meaning of
such manifestations of popular thinking and values, Reynaldo Ileto’s Pasyon and
Revolution and other writings have demonstrated that such “documents” are a fruitful
source for the historian.

It is in knowing how to put questions to a document and knowing what questions

to put that the historian’s point of view makes a difference. One may be convinced that
religion is irrelevant to life. Thus, he will not put his documentation the questions which
might reveal that religious values are stronger than economic factors in moving people to
revolutionary action. Another who sees religious history in terms of apologetics will be
unlikely to perceive the social and economic factors in religious movements. By the same
token, a historian’s nationalist commitment, if not too narrowly conceived, ought to make
him put new questions to the past. History never delivers ready-made answers. But the
historian’s questions may shed new light on his people’s problems of the present.

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Nationalist History

In one sense, writing history from a nationalist point of view is to be expected from
every Filipino historian who loves his country. Indeed, why should he bother to research
into his country’s history except for the belief that a more profound and exact knowledge
of the past will help him build the future? But various types of “nationalist history” have
obstructed, instead of promoted, the national cause.

The prototype of all these was the eccentric and ingenious lucubrations of Pedro
Paterno at the turn of the century on the supposed pre-Hispanic past. He tried to show that
everything good that he found in nineteenth-century Filipino society, even Christianity
itself, was the fruit of some mythical inborn qualities of the race and had existed before the
coming of the Spaniards. Contemporary Filipinos like Rizal, of course, laughed privately
at Paterno’s so-called history. Unfortunately, his books were not without influence on latter
textbook writers.

Paterno distorted genuine documents. But more harmful were the early twentieth-
century forgeries of Jose Marco on pre-Hispanic Philippines, the Povedano and Pavon
manuscripts, with the infamous Code of Kalantiaw. These products of perversely creative
imagination were not only accepted but also commented on by respectable American and
Filipino historians. The so-called Code of Kalantiaw, in particular, found its way into
history textbooks for generations until it was exposed in 1968 by William Henry Scott in
his Prehispanic Sources for the History of the Philippines. This, however, did not prevent
a popular college textbook from republishing the code in the 1970s, even while adverting
to its dubious (better said, nonexistent) authenticity. Nor did it prevent older studies based
on Marco’s pseudohistory from being republished in 1979, thus perpetuating further the
distortion of the pre-Hispanic past.

Not satisfied with having provided a spurious national past for the pre-Hispanic
period, Marco also wrote a series of supposed works of Fr. Jose Burgs. Among these were
a pseudonovel, La Loba Negra, an alleged account of Burgos’s trial, and more than two
dozen of other pseudohistorical and pseudoethnographic works, all furnished with forged
signatures of Burgos. Though the first Burgos forgeries were already questioned before the
war, these mixtures of undigested misinformation, and anti-Catholic diatribes continued to
be manufactured and published until shortly before the death of Marco. What is sadder for
Philippine historiography is that even after Schumacher published in 1970 a detailed
exposure of the forgeries, including photographs of the true and forged signatures, these
falsifications of the beginnings of the nationalist struggle continue to be used as if genuine.

Such attempts to make history “nationalist” as those of Paterno and Marco, and
their perpetuators, are clearly futile. Reconstructing a Filipino past, however, glorious in
appearance, on false pretenses can do nothing to build a sense of national identity, much
less offer guidance for the present or the future. More persuasive, at least at first glance,
has been the “nationalist history” of the 1970s. The latter rightly rejects the colonialist and
elitist approaches to national history. But it likewise finds inadequate “objective” studies
of recent professional historians because these allegedly do not involve themselves in the

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total effort to free the Filipino from his colonial mentality. A truly Filipino history, it is
said, cannot be a history of the Filipino masses and their struggles. Those struggles have
been carried on against Spanish oppression and American exploitation, colonial and
neocolonial. They continue against the dominant classes of Filipinos who collaborate in
the imperialist exploitation.

We must indeed investigate the real effects of the colonial experience to free
historiography from colonial myths, such as that which can see in the first half of this
century only American benevolent guidance of the Filipino toward democracy and
progress. This so-called “nationalist” historiography, however, allows only a one-
dimensional consideration of such real and complex issues as Spanish obscurantism and
American imperialism. The deterministic framework its imposes on the history of the
Filipinos, which sees the historian’s task to be merely an analysis of how that history fits
into a presumed general historical process of capitalism and imperialism, creates a new
myth to replace some old ones. For that process has its source in a philosophical construct
rather than in the events themselves. The masses whose story this kind of “people’s history”
professes to unfold, do not always think, feel, and express themselves within this
constricting framework.

To be sure, the historian needs a preliminary hypothesis from which to investigate

the past. But if the contemporary historian is not to fall into the trap of the providentialist
historians who claimed to see the hand of God or the devil in every phase of the historical
process, then the hypothesis must have sufficient breadth of vision to encompass all the
facts. It must be ready, moreover, to alter itself when it does not correspond to the facts.
Only the dogmatist can assert that just one way of looking at reality corresponds to the
genuine consciousness of the people.

A true “people’s history,” therefore, must see the Filipino people as the primary
agents in their history – not just as objects repressed by theocracy or oppressed by
exploitative colonial policies. It will expect to find that the Filipino people, individually
and collectively, have not merely been acted upon, but have creatively responded to the
Spanish and American colonial regimes; that they have assimilated the good as well as the
bad; that they have been moved to action to progress by their creative interaction with other
cultures and not simply been the victims of cultural imperialism. A historiography which
studies the real Filipino people may expect to find that religious values have not simply led
to docility and submission, but also to resistance to injustice and to the struggle for a better
society. It will take seriously people’s movements that articulate their goals in religious
terms, and not merely those that speak in Marxist accents. It will be able to recognize, and
criticize when needed, the role religion – both official and folk varieties of Christianity and
Islam – have played in forming Filipino society. A true people’s history will refuse to treat
the people as an abstraction manipulated by deterministic forces. A truly nationalist history
will try to understand all aspects of the experience of all the Filipino people, as they
themselves understood it. It will acknowledge what is harmful in the Filipino past.

There is valid sense in which Philippine history should be written from the point of
view of the masses. Historical research and writing should aim to undergrid the formation

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of a society that provides justice and participation not only to the elites of power, but to
every Filipino. Tough not the task of history alone or even principally, history’s
contribution is to present the Filipino past that really was, in all its variety. Not all of that
past will provide inspiration for a better and more just society. But by depicting the whole
of reality, history will make it possible to reform and reshape that society toward a better
future. The historian as a nationalist can do no less.

Source: John Schumacher, “The Historian’s Task in the Philippines” in The Making of a Nation: Essays on
Nineteenth-Century Filipino Nationalism, 7-15.

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The Propagandist’s Reconstruction of the Past

The Filipinos had no written history before the Spanish contact, nor is there
evidence of any indigenous account of their past apart from the legends in the orally
transmitted epics that survived long enough to be recorded. There was indeed a system of
writing, more than one early Spanish missionary commented on the almost universal
literacy among the sixteenth-century lowland Filipinos. But usage of the syllabary seems
to have been confined to such practical and ephemeral uses as letters and noting down of
debts. Hence, the only written accounts of the Philippine past before the nineteenth century
are those emanating from Spanish sources.

Though few of the Spanish conquistadores or colonial officials set their hand to
historical writing, there was a vigorous tradition of chronicles among the five religious
orders that undertook the Christianization of the Philippines. By the early seventeenth-
century, the first chronicles had already appeared, Chirino for the Jesuits and Ribadeneyra
for the Franciscans. The other orders soon followed suit, and a series of such chronicles
continued to appear throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By definition
theses had as their primary focus the activities of the missionaries themselves, into which
the Filipinos entered chiefly as those among whom, and for whose benefit, these activities
were carried on. At their worst, they generated into hagiographical catalogues. But among
the better ones a few, such as Chirino, wrote extensively of the Filipinos themselves and
devoted considerable attention to pre-Hispanic Filipino society, of which it has then still
possible to have firsthand knowledge. Though not precisely a chronicler, the Franciscan
Juan de Plasencia also wrote in the 1580s careful descriptions of Tagalog and Pampangan
customs and laws, which were long accepted as normative on pre-Hispanic society in these
regions. Nonetheless, seventeenth century Spanish missionary views were strongly colored
by their views on the unquestioned superiority of Hispanic culture and by their conviction
that the pre-Hispanic animistic religion was a manifestation of the Devil, whose hand they
seemed to see at work almost as frequently as they did the hand of God in the work of
Christianization.

Though by the nineteenth-century the era of the chronicles had largely died out, the
Spanish disdain for pre-Hispanic Filipino culture reappeared in a much more offensive
form, precisely as Filipinos began to assert themselves as equal to Spaniards and to ask for
their rights. In an effort to inculcate loyalty and submission, Spanish writers appealed to
the Filipino sense of gratitude for the benefits conferred by Spanish rule, and in so doing
pictured in even blacker colors the condition of the Filipinos at the coming of the Spaniards.
As one clerical pamphlet intended for popular consumption put it through the mouth of a
fictitious Filipino character: this society ought not to be called peculiarly Filipino “because
we have contributed nothing of what constitutes civilized society; it is the Spaniards who
have done it all.” Imbued with contemporary European racist concepts, other writers spoke,
sometimes condescendingly, sometimes viciously, of the superior white race, which had
done its best to raise up, in spite of obstacles, the inferior brown Malay. Against this
background a nationalist Filipino historiography would come into being.

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Beginnings of the Search for the Filipino Past

An indigenous Filipino historiography became possible through the Western higher

education implanted by the missionaries in the country shortly after their arrival. Though
originally founded for Spaniards, native Filipinos were found in secondary schools of
Manila by the end of the seventeenth-century, and in the universities in the eighteenth.
However, it was only toward mid-nineteenth century that relatively large numbers of
Filipinos sough higher education, first in Manila and then in Spain and elsewhere in
Europe.

Not surprisingly, the relatively widespread access of Filipinos to higher education

coincided with the beginnings of a consciously articulated nationalism. The awakening of
such nationalism can be dated roughly between the years 1880 and 1895. This whole
period, during which increasing numbers of Filipino students arrived in Europe, has come
to be referred to in Philippine historiography as the “Propaganda Movement,” from the
sponsorship given by a Manila organization called the Comite de Propaganda to the
political lobbying and journalism centered in the Filipino newspaper La Solidaridad, first
in Barcelona and then in Madrid. The Spanish word propaganda had none of the derogatory
connotations that its modern English translation has acquired. Hence, the “Propagandists”
dealt with here refer simply to all the activists ilustrados, those Filipinos possessing higher
education, particularly from the universities of Europe. Imbued with the ideas of
nineteenth-century liberalism, their writings prepared the way for the Revolution of 1896.
Though they were often divided over many issues, and not all belonged to a single
organization, all shared in common campaign for Filipino rights that helped prepare the
minds of Filipinos for the Revolution.

The Propagandists shared a common program for programs of reforms and

assimilation – the application to the Philippines of Spanish metropolitan law and rights,
under which all would be recognized equally as Spanish citizens. These common
aspirations, which they presented to the Spanish government and public, represented those
of the majority in the beginning and remained the professed program of the movement right
up to the Revolution. Increasingly, however, these aspirations became a front behind which
a growing number of nationalists prepared the way for more or less proximate
independence. Chief among these was Jose Rizal, and it was he above all who sought in
the Filipino past the pattern for the future.

The search for the Filipino past was both a product of, and a stimulus to nationalism.
Its beginning are to be found in Manila among the first generation of Filipino nationalists
or protonationalists, mostly Catholic priests graduated from the University of Santo Tomas
in the 1860s. Among them the one to articulate in print the aspirations of his generation,
and the chief influence on the next generation, was Fr. Jose Burgos. The catalyst of early
nationalism was the new stage reached in the age-old controversy between the regular
clergy (friars) and the secular clergy. Though mass ordinations of indigenous priests in the
eighteenth century had given some substance to the Spanish contentions as to Filipino
incapacity for the priesthood, the emergence of a university-trained generation of clergy
laid bare the suppositions of racial inferiority and political unreliability, which were the

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real basis of Spanish opposition to giving responsible positions to Filipino priests. It was
in this context that Burgos’s defense of his fellow priests looked to history, to the
accomplishments of Filipinos of past generations, as proof of Filipino native capacity.
Though the references are relatively brief and not all accurate, Burgos’s appeal to history
is significant principally for the influence it had on the next generation, most especially on
Rizal.

The first systematic attempt by Filipinos to explore their historical past, however,
seems to have been occasioned by the general European interest in history in the late
nineteenth century, as filtered into Manila through Spaniards resident there. Though the
Filipinos displaying historical interests were university-educated, there is little reason to
think that their interest grew out of their academic pursuits, since the version of history
taught in Manila schools were more calculated to inculcate Filipino loyalty and gratitude
to Spain to convey accurate knowledge of the Filipino interest in Philippine folklore and
history that began to manifest itself in Manila in the late 1880s. Spanish journalists like
Wenceslao E. Retana began to publish articles on provincial customs and folklore in
Manila newspapers; unpublished chronicles from earlier centuries were resurrected and
began to be published in serial form in the same newspapers, like the Historia by Juan
Delgado, an eighteenth-century Spanish Jesuit. Soon a group of subscribers initiated the
series Biblioteca Historica Filipina, which in the early 1890s published several other old
chronicles as well. Though the project was Spanish, intended as a “national monument
erected to the glories of Spain,” the list of subscribers shows substantial Filipino
participation.

National Identity and Racial Equality

It is against this background that the historical and ethnographical studies of Isabelo
de los Reyes must be seen. From the pen of this prolific and indefatigable Filipino journalist
came a series of works, generally published first as newspaper articles and later as books.
De los Reyes’ books make little overt attempt to glorify the Filipino precolonial past;
indeed, one of them caused a Spanish opponent of the Filipino nationalists to comment:
“the author. . .scarcely concedes anything praiseworthy to have existed among the natives
of old.” Nonetheless, De los Reyes, as his later career as founder of Iglesia Filipina
Indenpendiente would show, was an ardent nationalist, and his purpose may be seen in the
preface to one of his early works, El Folk-Lore Filipino. He says, “Each one serves his
people according to his own way of thinking, and I, with the Folk-Lore Ilocano believe
that I am contributing to establishment the past of my people.” This desire to know the
Filipino past, to establish a Filipino identity, runs through the writings of De los Reyes. As
scholarly history in the modern sense, these works are of limited value, based as they are
the most part on a few Spanish sources uncritically transcribed. The Filipino past is a source
of identity, not a golden age; nor is it clearly presented as a motive for seeking
independence from Spain. His contemporaries, whether Spaniards or educated Filipinos,
did not hold his historical work in high regard, though they found his observations on
Filipino folklore and customs valuable.

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A second strain in Filipino historiography, contemporary to that of De los Reyes

but appearing in Madrid instead of Manila, was that represented by Pedro Paterno. In a
series of books published between 1887 and 1892, Paterno concentrates on the condition
of the Filipinos prior to the Spanish contact. But where De los Reyes had been content to
look for Filipino identity in merely recounting their history, Paterno aims at providing the
equality of Filipino to Spaniards by extolling and magnifying the pre-Hispanic civilization.
Not only does he make lengthy extracts from the early chroniclers, supplementing them
with miscellaneous erudite, if often irrelevant, citations of modern authors; he also employs
his ingenuity in extracting from his sources a demonstration of the high level of Filipino
culture at the Spanish contact. His conclusion, however, is not that colonialism has
destroyed a flourishing civilization, a truly Filipino one. Rather, Paterno accepts Spanish
culture as the norm – only to claim that it had all really existed in the Philippines before
the coming of the Spaniards. The burden of his message is that the Filipinos are Spaniards
no less than those born in the Peninsula, and one might almost say, had been Spaniards at
heart even before the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines. Not only does he attempt in his
first historical work, La Antigua civilizacion tagalog, to parallel the stages of development
of the “Luzonic isles” to the corresponding stages of development of European civilization;
in his El cristianismo en la Antigua civilizacion tagalog he also attempts to show that the
ancient Filipinos had been Christian in all but name long before the coming of the Spanish
Catholic missionaries. Bathalismo, the worship of the Tagalog supreme being, Bathala, had
a body doctrine that contained not only such Christian teachings as the Incarnation and the
Atonement, but even the mystery of the Trinity in inchoate form. It was not then surprising
for Paterno that Spanish missionaries had found evangelization so easy in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries – Christianity was already there in substance. The explanation of this
remarkable coincidence of Bathalismo and Christianity Paterno ingeniously found in a
supposed contact between the Philippines and Indian civilization, itself the product of the
preaching of the Apostles Bartholomew and Thomas in India.

With such a foundation, Paterno’s subsequent works drew expected conclusions.

The moral teachings of Bathalismo exponded in La familia tagalog en la historia universal
turn out to be remarkably coincident with Christian teaching on family and marital
morality. Similarly in El Barangay the pre-Hispanic organization of government under the
barangay system displays a “Tagalog kingdom,” which, though monarchial, was
democratic in organization – thus providentially uniting all the best features of
contemporary Spain!

Such conclusions of courses do not come from the texts cited at great length, but
from the fantastic ingenuity of the author. Perhaps they are best characterized by the
judgment of the Filipino bibliographer T. H. Pardo de Tavera, a contemporary of Paterno,
speaking of his El cristianismo en la Antigua civilizacion tagalog: “A book full of surprises
for history, for science, and for reason!” Other Filipinos in Europe were privately amused
or embarrassed at Paterno’s writings.Though they expressed nationalism in their rejection
of the racial superiority of the colonial masters, and as such received public commendation
from some of the Filipinos in Madrid, their frame of reference is in fact fundamentally
colonial, in which the metropolis provided the standard to measure the cultural

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achievement of the colonized. Paterno does speak of the Filipinos as being “ever-free
allies” of Spain as a result of the blood compact freely entered into between the maguinoos
(nobility) of the Filipino people and the Spaniards of the sixteenth century, but it is difficult
to believe that he himself places great faith in his miscellanies of history, irrelevant
erudition, and outright plagiarism. Nonetheless, his writings do represent, however ineptly,
one strain of Filipino nationalist thought. For many conservative Propagandists, the ideal
was not a separation from Spain, but Spanish recognition of Filipino capacity to participate
freely in the running of their own affairs and to share according to ability, not race, in the
government of that part of Spain in the Pacific called the Philippines. This assimilationist
ideal did not differ essentially from the nationalism of the generation of Burgos.

Legitimation of the Nationalist Struggle

If the role of history in seeking national identity was still vague in De los Reyes
and his collaborators, and if its use by Paterno logically submerged rather than manifested
that identity, Jose Rizal had much more clearly defined ideas. For Rizal history was at the
very heart of his nationalism. It served as a weapon to combat the pretensions to
beneficence of the colonial power. It provided an explanation of the contemporary situation
of the Philippines as well as a picture of the glorious past destroyed by Spanish intrusion.
It offered the key to national identity and corresponding orientations for future national
struggle. Finally, it provided a legitimation of the struggle for freedom and the destruction
of colonial rule. Rizal accepted Western historical research with its vigorous methodology,
and wished his work to be judged by those standards. But at the same time he wrote as a
Filipino and an Asian, and worked intensely to read once more through Asian eyes the
accounts that had come from European pens. European methodology could be used to give
a Filipino meaning to the history of his people.

Rizal’s serious interest in history dated back to his stay in Germany in 1886, where
he was putting the finishing touches to his first novel, Noli Me Tangere. Attracted by
German scholarship on the Philippines, he made contact with various scholars, most
notably Ferdinand Blumentritt. In his correspondence with the latter Rizal expressed his
gratitude to the German scholars who had studies his native land, and his desire to emulate
them. Before long he was plunging himself into these studies, and when preparing to leave
Germany for the Philippines again, spoke sadly of the nostalgia he would feel at his exile
from his “scholarly home” (wissenschaftlichen Heimath). Under the influence of
Blumentritt, Rizal had come to see the need for a scholarly history of the Philippines. At
first he urged Blumentritt himself to write it, in terms that manifest Rizal’s concept of
history’s role in the development of national identity, and the standards he set for it.

The Philippines will be deeply grateful to you if it sees a history of our country, complete and purged
of legend by the critical method. You are, I believe, the only one who can write this history. I have the
boldness to do it, but I do not know enough; I have not read so many books about my homeland; the libraries
of Spain are closed to me; I need time for other things; and my narrative will always be suspect of partisan
spirit.

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He lamented the irony that made it necessary for Filipinos to turn to German
scholars so as to know their own country:

If only I might become a professor in my homeland, I would wake to life these studies of our
homeland, this nosei te ipsum (know thyself) which creates a true sense of national identity [Selbstgefuhl]
and impels nations to do great deeds. But I shall never be allowed to open a college in my native land.

When circumstances in 1887 made it impossible for him to remain in the

Philippines, however, he resolved on putting his hand to the task himself. The inclination
had long been there, but earlier he had lamented the harsh necessity by which, “unlike the
youth of happy nations, our youth dare not give itself to love, nor to silent scholarship; we
must all sacrifice something to politics, even though we have no inclination for it . . .” He
spent most of 1888 in London’s British Museum, poring over the old Spanish chronicles.
If he could not write the complete history of the Philippines that he had urged on
Blumentritt, he would try to illuminate the years of the Spanish conquest and the prior state
of Filipino society. The vehicle he chose for his effort was the early-seventeenth-century
chronicle of Antonio de Morga, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. Written only a few decades
after the conquest by a learned member of the Real Audiencia, Morga’s chronicle gives
much attention to ancient Filipino customs. For Rizal, already committed to the destruction
of the prestige and power of the friars in the Philippines, it had the added attraction of being
the only major chronicle not written by a Spanish missionary. The rare Spanish original
had been translated into English and annotated by Lord Henry Stanley earlier, but Rizal’s
edition, though indeed inspired by the canons of German historical scholarship, was to
serve a more pragmatic purpose – to form the foundation for the new Filipino society. His
first novel, the Noli, had been a merciless critique of the Spanish colonial society and the
subservient Filipinos the decadent system bred; his second novel, already planned but put
aside to undertake his edition of Morga, would complete the critique and point the direction
to be taken for the redemption of the race from the corrupting influence of colonialism.
The edition of Morga was to form the link between these two and lay the foundation for
the struggle to come. In his preface, Rizal makes clear its place in his master plan. The Noli
has revealed “the present state of our Fatherland”; his Morga now attempts to awaken in
Filipinos “the consciousness of our past” in order to be able to “dedicate ourselves to
studying the future.

The twofold purpose implied in this program is implemented by copious

annotations, depicting the advanced state of pre-Hispanic Filipino society and portraying
the destructive effects of colonization on the society. Each point Morga makes concerning
the accomplishments of the pre-Hispanic Filipinos, Rizal contrasts with their subsequent
decline. The Filipinos had exported silk to Japan in the sixteenth century; today the best
silk comes from there. The Filipino Panda [y] Pira had forged cannon before the coming
of the Spaniards; with his death, “there were no Spaniards who were able to do what he
had done, nor were his sons as skilled as their father. The shipbuilding industry – the
growing of cotton and the weaving of various kinds of cloth, even the growing of rice, the
mining of gold and fashioning it into ornaments – had decayed. The reason for all these
decadence is that the natives,

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Seeing that they were molested and exploited by their encomenderos for the sake of the products of
their industry, . . . began to break their looms, abandon their gold mines, their fields, etc., imagining that their
conquerors would leave them alone on seeing them poor, wretched, and unexploitable.

As a result of this exploitation, the population decreased drastically in Mindoro,

Panay, Pampanga, and other formerly flourishing regions.

The moral level of Filipino society “was for that age very advanced:; indeed, in
many respects it was superior to that of Christian Europe. Thus, what the Spaniards called
slavery had none of the degrading aspects of Roman or European slavery; rather, it was
basically a familial relationship and even showed the concern or strict justice among the
early Filipinos by the careful way it was regulated. If nonetheless slavery was to be
deplored, the Spanish conquest had worsened rather than bettered the situation. Unlike her
counterpart in other cultures and even in modern Europe, the Filipina was held in a dignity
she has maintained. If the early chroniclers recorded a lack of appreciation for virginity
before marriage, in this the Filipinas obeyed an instinct of nature; in any case, the Filipina
of today yields to no other race in her chastity, least of all to hypocritical Europe with its
history of fertility cults, prostitution, and other practices. In the past, the witnessed word
sufficed for a binding last will; with Christianity, there is now need of endless litigation.
Theft was unknown in past days; only with Spanish Christian civilization has it become a
major evil.

The Spanish conquest had then been largely a calamity for the Filipinos; the
Spanish pretensions to pacify a province and to entrust (encomendar) it to an encomendero
for its government were cruel sarcasms. “To give a province as an encomienda really
meant: to hand it over to pillage, to cruelty, and to someone’s avarice. As may be seen from
the way the encomenderos later acted.” Pacification meant in reality to make war on or
sow enmities between groups of Filipinos. Rizal saw the conquest itself partly as the result
of the disunion of the Filipinos among themselves. He also viewed it as a result of force,
where the persuasive powers of the missionaries proved inefficacious. Finally, it
represented and acquiescence of Filipinos to alliance with the Spaniards, deceived by the
colonizers’ promises of friendship and loyalty, or won by Christianity. The Filipino chiefs,
themselves tyrannical lords over an unfree society, “finding neither love nor lofty
sentiments in the eslaved masses, found themselves without strength and force” to resist
the Spaniards. In the end, however, the submission to Spanish rule did not come by means
of conquest in the major islands. Rather, it was effected “by means of agreements, treaties
of friendship, and mutual alliances.” Unfortunately, the Spaniards have not kept their part
of the contractual relationship they entered into. This theme of the pacto de sangre – the
blood compact made by Magellan and Legazpi with early Filipino datus according to the
pre-Hispanic custom – would recur frequently in the thought of the Filipino nationalists of
this period. For them it symbolized the historical fact that for the most part of Spanish
sovereignty over the Philippines had been accepted with little blood-shed – not even a
conquest properly so called, as Rizal notes, but an agreement freely entered into, by which
Spain had committed herself to bring the Filipinos along the path of progress and higher
civilization. Though not explicitly expressed, the implications of such a view are visible
throughout Rizal’s book – Spain has failed to carry out her part of the contract; hence, the

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Filipinos are now released from their obligations. History now serves as the moral
legitimation of the coming anticolonial struggle.

Rizal felt deeply that it was in understanding the pre-Hispanic Philippines that the
Filipinos would understand themselves, would find the identity on which a new nation
could rise. Earlier he had urged his colleagues in Barcelona to learn Italian so as to translate
the manuscript of Pigafetta, Magellan’s chronicler, “so that people may know in what state
we were in 1520s. He is, moreover, at pains to show links existing before the coming of
the Spaniards, pointing to Morga’s remarks on the similarity of customs among the
different linguistic groups as evidence “that the links of friendship were more frequent than
the wars and differences. Perhaps there existed a consideration. Elsewhere he points to the
ancient tradition indicating Sumatra as the common place of origin of the Filipinos. “These
traditions were completely lost, just like the mythology and genealogies of which the old
historians speak, thanks to the zeal of the religious in extirpating every remembrance of
our nationality, of paganism, or of idolatry. Not only were the traditions lost, but likewise
much of the artistic and cultural heritage. The early Spanish chroniclers had commented
on the Filipino’s musical ability and graceful dances, which had even been incorporated
into Christian religious celebrations. All this skill, which the Filipinos did not owe to the
Spaniards for they possessed it, “thanks to God, to Nature, and to their own culture,” was
now forgotten. It was lost because of the fault “of the Filipinos themselves, who hastened
to abandon what was theirs to take up what was new. “ Rizal’s concern, therefore, is not
solely to downgrade the Spanish contribution, but to make Filipinos realize what had been
their own, which in an ill-conceived moment they had abandoned.

If Rizal’s history is concerned with leading the Filipinos back to their own national
identity, it does not stop there. In an earlier scientific paper delivered before a society of
German ethnologists, he had pointed out the existence of a common fable of the monkey
and the tortoise, found not only among the various Filipino ethno-linguistic groups but
likewise in Japan, to conclude that “it must be the inheritance of an extinct civilization,
common to all the races which ever lived in that region. Rather remarkably for the period
in which he wrote, he showed concern not only for a Filipino point of view but for an Asian
one. He not only refuted Spanish pretensions to superiority over Filipinos, but asserted
Asian rights and an Asian point of view against that if “Europe, so satisfied with its own
morality.”

Europeans had always applied shifting standards for judging moral conduct of their
own and for that of nations they considered “barbarian” like the Cambodians, the
Ternatans, and the Japanese. Thus, Rizal speaks of the “first piracy of the inhabitants of
the South recorded in the history of the Philippines,” for there had been others before, the
first being those committed by the expedition of Magellan, who captured the ships of
friendly islands, and even of those with which he was not yet acquainted, demanding large
ransom from them. When the historians comment unfavorably on faults or crimes of the
natives, whose conduct they interpret always in the worst possible sense,

they forget that in almost all occasions, the motive for the quarrels has always come from those who
claim to civilize them by force of arquebuses and at the price of the territory of the weak inhabitants.

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What would they not say if the crimes committed by Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, etc. in the
colonies had been committed by the natives?

Though no contacts of Rizal with other Asian nationalists are known, he was
conscious of Filipino links with other Asians, he spent time in Japan studying Japanese
culture and ways, and he increasingly showed signs of his consciousness of Filipino
solidarity with other Malay peoples. Conversely, for all the attraction that European
scientific and technological progress held for him, and his personal nostalgia for the world
of German scholarship, it was not only retrograde and corrupt Spanish colonialism that he
abhorred, but it was Europe’s sense of racial superiority that he likewise rejected.

Though Rizal’s edition of Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas was his major
historical work, his view of Philippine history recurs in various pamphlets and essays,
generally first appearing in La Solidaridad. In “Filipinas dentro de cien años,” he sketches
the same themes of how the people had abandoned their tyrannical native rulers and
accepted Spanish sovereignty, hoping to alleviate their lot. But in the process they had lost
their culture, their ethics, their literature, and their customs, though in their debasement
they were now beginning to awake anew. More especially in “Sobre la indolencia del
Filipino,” he draws on the themes he had emphasized in his edition of Morga to explain
the indolence that was the favorite reproach of Spanish colonialists. The indolence, Rizal
says, is not to be denied, though it is needed even more notable among the colonialists than
their subjects. What must be sought out is why it exists among Filipinos. For “the Filipinos
have not always been what they are, witnesses whereto are all the historians of the first
years after the discovery of the Islands.” Drawing not only from Morga but from the
religious chroniclers, he traces the decay of Filipino mining, agriculture and commerce that
were flourishing before the conquest but were gradually destroyed by Spanish oppression,
on the one hand, and Dutch and Moro wars that devastated the disarmed Filipinos as a
result of colonization, on the other. Just as the past serves as orientation for the future in
the first essay, in this it serves to explain the lamentable present. The themes of Morga’s
history are here brought together in a concentrated and devastating picture.

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Lineage from Propagandists to Revolutionaries

Certain historians tend to see the Propaganda Movement as an essentially sterile

effort, a misconceived reform movement of the wealthy ilustrado class, whose utopian
dreams the masses impatiently thrusts aside to make the revolution under the leadership of
Andres Bonifacio. Such simplistic class generalizations seem rather unhelpful as a closer
examination of the facts reveals numerous ilustrado revolutionaries inconvenient to
account for, to say nothing of counterrevolutionary masses fighting their revolutionary
fellow peasants. The question is too complex to be examined here, but one area of
undeniable continuity is the role of the Propagandists’ historiography in supplying the
legitimation for the actual protagonists of the people’s revolution.

The first manisfesto to the public by Bonifacio, founder of the revolutionary

Katipunan, in his newspaper Kalayaan reads like a summary of Rizal’s historiography:

In the early times when the Spaniards had not yet set foot in this land, under the government of our
true compatriots, the Filipinos were living in great abundance and prosperity. They lived in harmony with
neighboring countries, especially with the Japanese, with whom they carried on commerce and trade, and
their industry produced extraordinarily abundant fruits. As a result, everyone lived in the fashion of the
wealthy. Young and old, and even women knew how to read and write in our own native writing.

Then came the Spaniards, whom the Filipinos received in peace and friendship with
the blood compact, and ever since it has been the Filipinos who have supported the
Spaniards with their wealth and their blood. In exchange, the Filipinos have received only
treachery and cruelty; the time has come to recognize the source of all their misfortunes
and unite to restore the happiness and prosperity of their native land.

The language is the Tagalog of the people rather than the Spanish of the ilustrados,
and the tone is one of an impassioned cry to action rather than that of scholarly
investigation, but the lineage from Rizal to Bonifacio is unmistakable. Other more
inflammatory pamphlets would appeal to the pre-Hispanic kings and to the knowledge
already possessed by the Filipinos of the true God, as proclaimed in Paterno’s treatises.
The Spanish historiography mandating Filipino loyalty to Spain under moral sanctions had
been supplanted by a Filipino history that had provided a rational and moral legitimation
for the new nation. Such legitimation was not merely for the intellectuals, but more
important, for the ordinary people, indoctrinated with notions of obligation to Spain, who
were actually to fight the Revolution.

Ileto’s essay on popular perceptions of the past has raised the question of how this
moral legitimation of revolution elaborated by the Propagandists “provided the impulse for
breaking of ties of utang na loob to Spain that centuries of colonial rule had impressed
upon the indios. His analysis of the Historia famosa ni Bernardo Carpio, which served as
a model for the new identity to be created among ordinary Tagalogs, has provided a partial
answer. But it took a “marginal man” like the self-educated Bonifacio or his close associate
in the Katipunan, the Manila university student Emilio Jacinto, who read and comprehend
at least the main thrust of the scholarly ilustrado portrayal in Spanish of the Filipino past

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but still shared in the awit-shared perceptions of the Tagalog-speaking ordinary folk, to
mediate the ilustrado perception into the thought and value-world of the folk. These factors
explain both earlier outbreak of the Revolution among the Tagalogs and the key role the
latter played to the end.

But this very explanation raises the further question as to how the Revolution
extended itself to the Bikol and the Visayan regions. Though a serious study of the
Revolution in the non-Tagalog regions has scarcely begun, the indications are that, unlike
in the Tagalog provinces, there it was generally ilustrados and principales who initiated
and led the Revolution in their regions, and who mobilized the masses to support it. These
Spanish-speaking provincial leaders were acquainted with, and had been influenced by, the
Propagandists writings during their education in Spain or in Manila. Ileto’s observation
that patron-client ties do not sufficiently explain the breaking of the ties of utang na loob
is also valid here. However, I would suggest that especially in these regions the Filipino
clergy proved to be the complementary and deciding factor. For the remembrance of the
past on which the masses’ utang na loob was based was not the experience of benevolence
on the part of the colonial government, which, at least in the nineteenth century, had offered
little motive for such gratitude. Rather, it was religiously inspired and religiously
sanctioned debt of gratitude to the Spain that had brought to the indios the priceless gift of
the Catholic faith and without whose rule Catholicism would disappear, as inculcated in a
multitude of primary school textbooks and pious pamphlets as well as in the sermons of
the Spanish clergy. In the face of this religious sanction scholarly history was impotent;
only a countervailing religious inspiration and sanction could prevail among the masses.
This, the Filipino clergy could, and in many cases did, provide, even to the extent of
transforming the revolutionary struggle into a “holy war” and a “crusade.” Once the enemy
became Protestant America rather than Catholic Spain, the role of the clergy became even
more crucial and effective in encouraging resistance.

Source: “The Propagandists’ Reconstruction of the Philippine Past” in The Making of a Nation: Essays on
Nineteenth-Century Filipino Nationalism, 102-116.

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CHAPTER II:
CONTENT AND CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS
OF SELECTED PRIMARY SOURCES

Outline:

A. The Importance of the Historical Method

§ Explain what Historical Method is and its importance
§ Differentiate Historical Revisionism from Historical Denialism
§ Historical Criticism: External Criticism and Internal Criticism
§ Contextual Analysis and Content Analysis

B. The Author’s Perspective

§ Identify the author’s background, his main argument for writing the content,
and his point-of-view

C. Content and Context Analysis

§ The Laguna Copperplate Inscription
§ Manunggul Jar
§ Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas – Antonio de Morga
§ The First Voyage Around the World – Antonio Pigafetta
§ Act of Declaration of Philippine Independence of 1898 – Ambrocio
Rianzares-Bautista

Learning Objectives:

1. To relay what the document/artifact is saying.

2. To determine the provenance or source of the document/artifact.
3. To identify the author or writer of the historical source.
4. To highlight the author’s main argument or what he is trying to say about the topic.
5. To discuss the context of the primary source’s production.
6. To share the important learning or connection of the topic in your appreciation of Philippine
History.

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A. HISTORICAL METHOD AND ITS IMPORTANCE

HISTORICAL METHOD

It is the process of critical examining and analyzing the records of the past and survivals of the
past. (Gottschalk, 1969)

It comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other
evidence to research and then to write histories. The study of historical method and writing is
known as historiography.

Others define historical method as the process by which historians gather evidence and formulate
ideas about the past. It is the framework through which an account of the past is constructed.

IMPORTANCE OF HISTORICAL METHOD

1. The historical method helps us in finding solutions for contemporary problems. There are some
problems in the past that might provide solutions to our current situation.

One example is the separation of church and state in the Philippine government. Back then, the
church has absolute control over the government. As the country gained its independence, they
formally agreed upon that the church won’t interfere with government affairs.

2. It also provides an understanding of the trends that have happened before.

An example is the People Power Revolutions of 1986 and 2001, also known as EDSA 1 and EDSA
2. Both had the ultimate goal of removing the president in his position through a movement.

3. It also provides an understanding the importance and repercussions found in cultures.

Back at the EDSA 1, it prompted other countries to fight for their independence from their
government, known in political science as the Third Wave Democracy. By 1989, three (3) years
after the 1986 People Power Revolution (EDSA 1), both Central and Eastern Europe abolished
communism in their regions in their revolution called the Autumn of Nations.

4. Finally, it provides the reevaluation of the historical data and facts already presented.

Before, history classes have taught students that the famous Cry led by Gat. Andres Bonifacio was
done at Balintawak. But, historical inconsistencies contended the already-cemented Cry of
Balintawak, resulting in the Cry of Pugadlawin, and the quest of historians to determine where did
the Cry actually happened.

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Historical Revisionism vs. Historical Denialism

Contrary to popular belief, historical revisionism is not the process whereby “truth” is distorted. It
is the practice of legally amending existing narratives through the discovery of new factual
evidence. Newly found historical data undergoes a rigorous process before being accepted as truth.

Example:

The emergence of the “history from below” approach has allowed historians to provide more space
for the often overlooked figures in history – women, the masses, and the marginalized.

Despite the solid evidence and testimonies from survivors, Nazi sympathizers still argue that the
Holocaust was only a hoax created by the Jews and that the victims were lying about living in
death camps.

These acts of denial imply that we don’t only turn a blind eye to the plight of those who suffered
(and are suffering), but we also lose out on a lot of knowledge that can push us forward in our
development.

Combating denialism takes a concerted and constant effort, but it also helps us learn form our
mistakes and make amends.

Germany has consistently been confronting its atrocious past – they’ve built a Holocaust memorial
and history museums that exhibit the brutality of Adolf Hitler’s regime and memorialize the lives
of its victims.

History is a chronicle of the ups and downs and the triumphs and tragedies of our past. It serves as
a solid reminder that we can only move forward if we start acknowledging the mistakes previous
generations have committed.

“Denying the future generation of the truth denies them the ability and power to direct our society
towards a better future.”

Source: Luis Zuriel Domingo, History Lecturer

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HISTORICAL CRITICISM

The historian’s primary tool of understanding and interpreting the past is the historical sources.
Historical sources ascertain historical facts. Such facts are then analyzed and understood by the
historian to weave a historical narrative. Using the primary sources in historical research entails
two kinds of criticism. The first one is EXTERNAL CRITICISM and the second is INTERNAL
CRITICISM. EXTERNAL CRITICISM examines the authenticity of the document of the
evidence being used while INTERNAL CRITICISM examines the truthfulness of the content of
the evidence.

1. EXTERNAL CRITICISM

The practice of verifying the authenticity of evidence by examining its physical characteristics;
consistency with the historical character of the time it was produced; and the materials used for
the evidence

Examples of the things that will be examined when conducting external criticism of a document
include the quality of the paper, the type of ink used in the material, among others.

The ‘External Criticism’ is of a less intellectual type of criticism of the documents. It includes
examinations of documents like manuscripts, books, pamphlets, maps, inscriptions, and
monuments. The problem of authenticity of document arises more in the case of manuscripts than
the printed documents because the printed document has already been authenticated by the editor.

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Tests of Authenticity of a Document

a. ‘Authorship’ the first question while examining the authenticity of a document is its author.
Even the anonymous writings can provide us useful and important knowledge. But the discovery
of an author’s or writer’s name adds the authenticity of the information because of the character,
connections and trustworthiness of the author determine the authenticity.
e.g. examination of the author’s handwriting, signature, or seal

b. “Date of Document”, i.e. the time, place of publication of the document must be inquired to
determine the authenticity of the document. In the modern publications year and place of
publication is indicated on the book or document on the title page or backside (overleaf). However,
in the old manuscript where the data and place are absent, it can be found out from the language
or from the date of birth and death of the author.
• determine the date of the document to see whether they are anachronistic

e.g. pencils did not exist before the 16th century

c. the historian confronts the textual errors which may be either unintentional or deliberately
committed. Unintentional error can take place in the copies of the documents (originals are not
available). These mistakes may be caused by the scribe, typist or printer.
An intention error may creep in when the effort is made to modify, supplement or continue the
original. This problem can be overcome through textual criticism. Under this technique, the effort
is made to collect as many copies of dubious text as possible and they are compared.
If the ideas and style do not match or resemble the idea and style of the author it can be safely
assumed that they were not parts of the original manuscript and were forged by the later ones.
Further’ more, the textual accuracy can be solved with the help of “sciences auxiliary” to history
such as “Paleographists” have authenticated numerous documents of the medieval period by their
handwriting and have published easily legible printed versions.
The “archaeologists” provides rich information to the historians, the “numismatists” by dating the
coins, medals and deciphering their inscriptions render valuable assistance.

d. after the confirmation of the authenticity of the sources, historians confronted with the different
terms used in the document. The meaning of words often changes from generation to generation.
Therefore historians must find out the meaning and sense in which it has been used in the
document. The misinterpretation of terms may lead to a misunderstanding of historical
development.

In this way, even after the historian established the authenticity of the documents and discovered
the meaning of the text his duty is not over. He is confronted with another important problem with
the credibility of the document.
§ anachronistic style – e.g. idiom, orthography (the art of writing words with the proper
letters according to standard usage), punctuation common in a certain period in history

§ anachronistic reference to events – the document should be consistent with the presence
of lack of elements in history; e.g. too early, too late, too remote

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Technical Tools in Identifying and Authenticating Historical Sources

§ Paleography – study of handwriting, evolution of writing, ability to distinguish the

different traditions of writing styles; types of medium utilized; ability to spot fakes;
nuances in writing through different periods. Humans use many different alphabets to
write, as they use countless languages to speak. The alphabets change over time, as
fashions, aesthetic taste, and the technology of writing develop in different ways. Alphabets
are also determined by social and cultural context. Someone so skilled can, however, often
use these stylistic and morphological variations in script to date an undated manuscript by
comparing these features with dated texts from the same period. A skilled paleographer
can also spot fakes, for such professionals can often identify peculiarities in a script that
betray a date of composition different from the purported date. Paleographers working in
periods when most surviving documents were produced by teams of scribes can often tell
not just when, but where, a document was written.

§ Diplomatics – the science of charters, is the study of the formal properties of such sources.
Each section of such a document employs a style that varies depending upon the legal
conventions and more general stylistic tastes of the age. Diplomatics is used primarily for
textual analysis; writing styles maybe determined by its specific time/period wherein there
is a set of writing conventions and formulas. Scholars who work with such materials
regularly become very familiar with these conventions and can use them, along with more
external characteristics such as ink and handwriting, to help date undated documents (for
an expert will recognize its affinities to those produced at the same time in that chancery.)

§ Archaeology – Archaeologists apply various techniques to help identify the objects they
find. Artifacts are categorized according to the materials which compose them, according
to function, and then further according to peculiarities of form and style, all of which help
in the laborious process of dating. The problem of dating is, of course, the archaeologist’s
major concern. Absolute dating means that the object can be placed in a specific moment
(a year) or century. Relative dating, in contrast, simply relates one object to another,
classifying it as “before,” “in the same period of,” or “after.” Archaeomagnetic analysis,
for example, allows scholars to determine the date at which the clay or limestone used in
an old pot was baked, for the baking set the iron filings in the material in a pattern that was
determined by the electromagnetic force at the moment in time. One of the most widely
used techniques for dating archeological finds is dendrochronology, the study of tree rings.
Each ring in the trunk of a tree (visible when the trunk is cut horizontally) corresponds to
a year of growth, and each ring has individual characteristics that reflect annual changes in
growing conditions.

§ Statistics – Historians in the past few generations have increasingly turned to statistical
methods, in the hope of providing more exact measures of events in the past, to make
history more like a science, and to reduce the impressionistic quality of much of narrative
history writing. Statistics can also help uncover hidden relationships among events, allow
scholars to make historical connections, or reveal historical patterns that would otherwise
not have been seen. One of the most productive applications of statistical methods has been

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in the field of family reconstitution. In these projects, historians mine serial birth and
marriage records, using the computer and statistical programs to construct family networks.
With this information, scholars have been able to plot socioeconomic and political
connections onto kinship ties, showing how particular cultures these networks overlapped
– or did not.

§ Additional Technical Tools

o Silliography (study of seals) – the science and art of identifying and decoding the
seals that were used until modern times to identify issuers and authors of
documents.
o Chronology (study of different ways of people have kept and marked time). The
Hebrew calendar is, we all know, different from the Gregorian (which is based on
Christian dating). In premodern Europe, the year began at different times; in some
places, people reckoned from January 1, just as we do, but in other places, the new
year began with Easter, or on March 25, or on Christmas
o Codicology (study of handwritten books as archaeological objects, including the
study of materials (parchment, paper) of the bindings, of cataloging, and of
preservation problems for manuscripts
o Papyrology (study of writing on papyrus)
o Epigraphy (study of texts written on hard materials, such as stone and metal)
o Heraldry (study of coats of arms)
o Numismatics (study of coins)
o Linguistics (study of grammars, vocabularies, etc.)
o Genealogy (study of family relationships, the basis of studies about social groups
based on blood or marriage ties)
o Prosopography (the use of biographical material to construct group portraits); this
kind of research is regularly done in social history to discover, for example, the
professional or ethnic or residential characteristics that define a group.

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CONTEXT VS. CONTENT

“Is the glass half-empty or half-full?”

Context is the given interpretation of a content. Therefore, when we put meaning in a given
material, it gives us an understanding of what the material is for. Using the same image, a cup is
called as such because we give the meaning that this small container can hold enough water to
quench our thirst, and so on.

Content, on the other hand, is the material given to us that is left for interpretation. Meaning, in
the image presented, the containers will remain as containers without identity if water is not
present, where the water represents the content, literally and figuratively.

Therefore, going back to the “cup half-full or half- empty” scenario, the content remains the same,
being a cup filled halfway with water. The context, however, changes from person to person. Some
people might say that the cup is half-empty because they saw that the water is slowly being spilled,
whereas the ones who saw that the cup is half-full might say that the cup will be slowly filled with
water later on. Others might even see some contexts unheard of in the given choices, complete
with its own unique interpretations.

Context Analysis considers the following:

(i) the historical context of the source (time and place it was written and the
situation at the time),
(ii) the author’s background, intent (to the extent discernable), and authority on the
subject; and
(iii) the source’s relevance and meaning today

The two other questions to consider when doing a context analysis are as follows:
1. How authoritative is the account/source?
2. How is it relevant today?

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Historical sources are written by various authors with different perspectives. Perspective refers to
the point of view of the said writer who was a witness to the event. Though historical sources are
important in the writing of history, the historian is careful in using these sources as the writer may
be biased or prejudiced on the subject he/she is discussing.

For example, missionary chronicles or narratives that were written by the religious missionaries
who came to the Philippines to spread Christianity in the islands usually referred to the early
Filipinos as barbarians or uncivilized. This, of course, is not true as it is known that Filipinos
already had a form of civilization and had contact with Asian neighbors before the Spaniards
arrived. Different participants who also wrote their accounts can also give varied opinions and
statements about a single event. For example, the Philippine Revolution of 1896 can be read from
the point of view of the Filipinos and from the side of the Spaniards. The same event can be viewed
from the lens of foreigners who were in the Philippines at that time and were just passive observers.
In any case, reading a historical event from the points of view of all sides will enable us to form
our own studies about the said event.

SOURCE CRITICISM

Sources must be evaluated not only in terms of those external characteristics on which we have
been focusing, the questions of where, when, and by whom a source was created and whether it is
“genuine” or not. Traditionally, they have also been evaluated in terms of what historians have
thought of as internal criteria. These include questions about the intended meaning of a source –
was the author of the text in a position to know what he reported? Did he intend an accurate report?
Are his interpretations “reliable”?

Chief Elements of Source Criticism:

1. “Genealogy” of the Document

Once a document is determined to be genuine in the sense just describes, the next obvious question
is whether it is an original, or a copy of a copy. Copies contain all kinds of “faults,” most of them
unintentional. Manuscript (and even typed) copies regularly repeat words, for example; they
reverse letters; if the copying was done in scriptorium where copyists wrote down what was read
to them, they can mistranscribe homonyms (“to” and “too); they can drop syllables or words.
Sometimes a copyists did not understand the meaning of what he is copying and thus
mistranscribed the text.

Once the “best” text has been located and its genealogy ascertained (to the extent possible),
historians edit it, seeking to reproduce the text’s meaning as clearly as possible. Here historians
are very often tempted to improve the text, to correct it, to make it conform to the imagined
original. But it is exactly here that they should be very cautious. While some corrections are
obviously necessary – and the burden of all should be made – it is always a great risk to intervene
too energetically. And in any case, editors must base any proposed corrections to the basic text on
another copy of the same text (what is then called an emendation) or on a good argument (called
conjecture). Such care is necessary, not just to respect the original, but to preserve its “errors.”
These “errors” – misspellings, grammatical faults, transpositions, even apparent omission – can be

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significant historical evidence, occasionally about the politics that informed the creation of a
particular text and always about the literary technology of the age, about linguistic conventions,
about the status of the written word itself in that culture.

2. Genesis of a Document
What kind of institution or individual produced a source, with what authority, under what
circumstances? What surrounding events gave the date or the place special meaning? What does
it mean to say that a certain person or institution “authored” a document? Is he the person who
conceptualized the document, ordered its production – the person usually called the “intellectual
author”? Is he the person who gave institutional and juridical impact to the document, by means
of his authority or influence? Historians think of these authors as “juridical.” Or is he the person
who drafted it, crafted its language, rendered it in a form which made it legal – the person referred
to as the “material author”? What is the relationship between the three?

3. The “Originality” of the Document

Most of the documents that come from the past – whether a law code, a contract, a philosophical
text or a hagiography – are products of an intellectual tradition, and historians using an isolated
text must know something about this tradition in order to read their text responsibly. They must
know whether a section in a law code that reserved rule for males, for example, was the first
instance of such principle in the culture being studied, whether it was a convention copied from a
neighboring political system, whether it was a revival of traditions that had lapsed. In some cases,
the historian can address these questions only by comparing the particular text with similar text
from the same period or from the past (if there is no independent record of the legal or institutional
or intellectual history to which this text belongs).

4. Interpretation of the Document

The problem of “interpretation” of a document was one of deciphering its intended meaning. This
was not considered a simple task; indeed it was technically demanding. Today, however, thanks
largely to the effects interdisciplinarity has had on our profession, historians can no longer define
the problem as narrowly, and they employ a wider range of tools to “interpret” a document.

5. Authorial Authority
Authors are usually reluctant to acknowledge that they do not have firsthand knowledge, for the
revelation diminishes their authority. And rightly so, for the greater the number of intermediaries
between the original telling of an event and the version that our source contains, the more change
there is of distortion. Historians thus make strenuous efforts to locate the truly firsthand reports of
an event and to trace the relationship of other existing versions of the report to the original record.

6. Competence of the Observer

Kinds of factors historians consider in deciding on its “competence”. Historians have traditionally
considered this issue from two points of view.
The first concerns the factors particular to the individual observer.
• What was the psychological state of the author of the source? Was he satisfied with life or
bitter about the way it had turned out? Was he a pessimist or an optimist?
• To what extent was the author’s report selective? What particular kinds of things would
have interested this author? What events or nuances would she have been likely to ignore?

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• What prejudices would have informed the account? People unconsciously bring their
assumptions about society to their reports of it, often unintentionally reporting events in
ways that simply confirm their own expectations of human character: women who weep
over dead bodies are “hysterical”; men who do so are “filled with rage.”
• Under what outside influences was the source created, especially those of higher
authorities? Eyewitnesses regularly shape their recollections to accord with reports from
more “authoritative” sources, not out of conscious response to pressure but out of an
unconscious need to conform to the dominant narrative.

A slightly different set of questions about “competence” pertain to the climate of the times in which
the observer lived.

• Was the moment at which he reported one in which people could have absorbed
information critically? In times of emergency – for instance, during natural disasters or
warfare – people lose all objectivity. Every rumor, every absurd story, is taken seriously.
An eyewitness observer in these circumstances is obviously, not “reliable” in the usual
sense.
• Could the observer have understood what she saw? Here we have in mind the incapacity
of people outside of culture to understand events within it.
• Was the observer technically or socially qualified to understand what he saw?
• Could the observer actually believe what she saw?
• Finally, historians must consider the difference between what an observer might
consciously know and be able to report and the way this consciousness is affected by the
culture he inhabits. The latter question concerns the mentality of the age (“mentalite”), the
way the physical, social and cultural environment of a person determines what he “knows”
and how he “knows.”

7. Trustworthiness of the Observer

People – and thus sources – lie, of course, sometimes, consciously but sometimes unconsciously.
Here historians are interested not so much in the lie as in a more subtle form of falsehood, the
suppression or shading of knowledge to conform to orthodox opinion. The personality of the
observer is key here. Hence, the scholar must, to the extent possible, study the life of the individual;
she must compare this observer with others treating the same or related events; she must be
attentive to inconsistencies, lapses, suppressions in the story the document tells.

Source: Howell and Prevenier. From Reliable Sources, pp. 17-68.

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2. INTERNAL CRITICISM

Looks at the content of the source and examines the circumstances of its production

Looks at the truthfulness and factuality of the evidence by looking at the author of the source, its
context, the agenda behind its creation, the knowledge which informed it, and its intended purpose
Entails that the historian acknowledges and analyze how such reports can be manipulated to be
used as war propaganda, etc.

Validating historical sources is important because the use of unverified, falsified, and untruthful
historical sources can lead to equally false conclusions.

Without thorough criticisms of historical pieces of evidence, historical deceptions and lies will all
be probable.

Content Analysis applies appropriate techniques depending on the type of source

(written, oral, visual). In the process, students will be asked, for example, to
identify the author’s main argument or thesis, compare points of view, identify
biases, and evaluate the author’s claim based on the evidences presented or other
available evidence at the time.

It is a systematic evaluation of the primary source that enable an individual to

present and develop an argument based on his own understanding of the
evidences from his readings.

While collecting the material, it must be remembered that a document contains the idea of the man
who wrote. A historian must analyze the contents of the documents with a view to determining the
real meaning. He must try to avoid the laps such as avoid the reading into meaning which author
did not mean to convey, etc., and make a sincere effort to find out the facts even if they are contrary
to his set notions and theories. Historian sometimes comes across documents which contradict
each other. Hence the need for eliminating statements and facts which are obviously wrong and
false arises.

Therefore, historians have come to hold the view that all that cannot be proved must be temporarily
regarded as doubtful because of the incompetence and unreliability of the author which prevents
him from telling the truth even when he knows. To assess the correctness of the fact, the historian
must ascertain whether the author had the opportunity to know the facts as an eyewitness or not.
What was his source of information and how much time elapsed between the event and the record?
But the dependable testimony depends on a number of factors such as ability and willingness to
tell the truth, the accuracy of the report and independent corroboration. However, it may be noted
that there is a possibility that a skillful liar may deliberately create the condition, i.e. ability and
willingness to tell the truth with accuracy to establish the credibility of his statements.

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Therefore, in those cases, the credibility must not be accepted without proper investigation.
Moreover, if there is an agreement between documents, we cannot draw the conclusion that the
facts are definitive but we must ensure that the facts are harmonious and prove each other are
interconnected.

Tests of Credibility of a Document

a. identification of the author

e.g. to determine his reliability; mental processes, personal attitudes

- Did the author make the testimony? Regardless of author reputation, one must consider all
sources regard to be guilty of deceit.
- write about what is known about the author and do reference work

b. determination of the approximate date

e.g. handwriting, signature, seal

- used for sources that do not give explicitly the date and timeframe of the event
- consider the terminus non ante quem (not before which) and post quem (not after which)

c. personal equation

-also called “frame of reference”

- Was the author eyewitness of the events he narrate? If not, what were his sources of
information?
- When did he write the document?
- How much time elapsed between the event and the record?
- What was his purpose in writing or speaking?
- Who were his audience and why?

B. Examination of the Author’s Main Argument and Point of View

When studying historical sources you need to be aware of documents’ sources and their authors’
point of view. Point of view refers to perspective of the author toward a particular person or issue
that has been shaped over a period of time due to his/her experiences, motives, beliefs, origin, age
gender, social status and ideology.

You might mistakenly feel that primary sources are historical facts; that there are no biases; and
are absolutely accurate. To effectively analyze the point of view, you must treat the documents as
personal interpretations and not facts.

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In analyzing the author’s argument and point of view, you should ask yourselves the following
questions:

• Who is the speaker/source? (age, gender, profession/work, social status, etc.,)

• What is the occasion? (Circumstances, current situation, place, time, etc.)
• Who is the intended audience? (written privately or written to be read/heard by others)
• What is the purpose? (Motives, beliefs, ideology, etc.)
• What is the subject? (topic, content, ideas)
• What is the tone? (Emotions etc.)

Perspective provides primary information about the author’s work. It sets up the opinion, attitude,
and background of the writer. It is especially vital to history, since the authors of primary sources
have their own takes of the events.

The author’s background consists of the author’s early life, his educational attainment, and the
kind of environment he or she grew up with.

The point-of-view is the way how the author addresses the content to the reader. It can be first-
person, second-person, or third-person.

The author also expresses his or her content with an argument in mind. This is the main theme
the author intends for the readers to see his or her side of the story.

The author’s attitude reflects the tone or mood of the material at hand. It reflects the current
situation in the material at the time of its conception, or the current emotions the author was feeling
when he made the material.

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SAMPLE OF CONTENT AND CONTEXT ANALYSIS

LAGUNA COPPERPLATE TRANSLITERATION

The Laguna Copperplate Inscription:

An Ancient Text That Changed the Perception of the History of the Philippines

A high-contrast copy of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription.

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Tagalog Translation

Mabuhay! Taóng Siyaka 822, buwán ng Waisaka, ayon sa aghámtalà. Ang ikaapat na araw
ng pagliít ng buwán, Lunes. Sa pagkakátaóng itó, si Dayang Angkatán sampû ng kaniyáng
kapatíd na nagngangalang Buka, na mga anák ng Kagalang-galang na si Namwarán, ay
ginawaran ng isáng kasulatan ng lubós na kapatawarán mulâ sa Punong Pangkalahatan sa
Tundún sa pagkatawán ng Punong Kagawad ng Pailáh na si Jayadewa.

Sa atas na itó, sa pamamagitan ng Tagasulat, ang Kagalang-galang na si Namwarán ay

pinatawad na sa lahát at inalpasán sa kaniyáng utang at kaniyáng mga náhulíng kabayarán
na 1 katî at 8 suwarna sa harapán ng Kagalang-galang na Punong Kagawad ng Puliran na
si Ka Sumurán, sa kapangyarihan ng Kagalang-galang na Punong Kagawad ng Pailáh.
Dahil sa matapát na paglilingkód ni Namwarán bilang isáng sakop ng Punò, kinilala ng
Kagalang-galang at batikáng Punong Kagawad ng Binwangan ang lahát ng nabubuhay
pang kamag-anak ni Namwarán na inangkín ng Punò ng Dewatà, na kinatawán ng Punò ng
Medáng.

Samakatwíd, ang mga nabubuhay na inapó ng Kagalang-galang na si Namwarán ay

pinatawad sa anumán at lahát ng utang ng Kagalang-galang na si Namwarán sa Punò ng
Dewatà. Itó, kung sakalì, ay magpapahayag kaninumán na mulâ ngayón kung may taong
magsasabing hindî pa alpás sa utang ang Kagalang-galang...

The Laguna Copperplate Inscription is the name of an inscription written on an artifact that
has great significance for the understanding of the history of the Philippines during the

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10th century AD – a time when many scholars believed that the area was isolated from the
rest of Southeast Asia.

POLITICAL ENTITIES IN SOUTHEAST ASIA IN THE 10TH CENTURY

During the 10th century, a number of political entities were in existence in Southeast Asia.
One of the most famous of these was the Khmer Empire, which dominated much of the
Southeast Asian mainland. To its east, the modern country of Vietnam was divided between
the Chinese in the north, and the Kingdom of Champa in the south. The seas below the
Southeast Asian mainland were beyond the reach of the Khmers and were largely
controlled by a maritime empire known as Srivijaya.

However, there is little information on the area in the part of this region where the modern
country of the Philippines is now situated. This lack of information led many scholars to
believe that it was isolated from the rest of the region. Thus, the Laguna Copperplate
Inscription is an important artifact, as it has allowed scholars to re-evaluate the situation in
this part of Southeast Asia during the 10th century AD.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LAGUNA COPPERPLATE

The Laguna Copperplate is a thin piece of copper sheet measuring about 20 x 20 cm (7.9
x 7.9 inches), which was discovered around 1987. It has been reported that this artifact was
found during dredging activities with a mechanical conveyor in the Lumbang River, which
is situated in the Province of Laguna. This province is located to the east of Manila, the
capital of the Philippines. It is interesting to note that the Laguna Copperplate only came
to the attention of scholars in 1990, when it was offered for sale to the National Museum
in Manila, after attempts to sell it in the antiques market had been met with little interest.

AN INCOMPLETE ARTIFACT

Investigations by Antoon Postma, a Dutch anthropologist, have revealed that the

inscription on the Laguna Copperplate is incomplete, and it is highly likely that there was
another similar piece of copperplate with inscriptions on it that has been lost. In an article
published in 1992, Postma wrote that:

“Moreover, certain persons, after viewing a photo of the LCI (Laguna Copperplate
Inscription), alleged, without being asked, that they had seen a similar piece of copperplate
with inscriptions around the same time (1987). Its importance, however, was not realized
then, and the possible second page of the LCI might have ended up in a local junk yard
and been irretrievably lost to posterity.”

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ORIGINS OF THE INSCRIPTION ON THE LAGUNA COPPERPLATE

The inscription on the surviving copperplate is in itself intriguing, and has provided enough
material for scholars to analyze. For instance, the type of script used in the Laguna
Copperplate Inscription has been identified as the so-called ‘Early Kawi Script,’ a writing
system that originated in the Indonesian island of Java, and was used across much of
maritime Southeast Asia during the 10th century AD.

In fact, this script is said to have been derived from the Pallava script, which has its origins
in India. As for the language of the inscription, it has been found to be heavily influenced
linguistically by Sanskrit, Old Malay, and Old Javanese. Both the type script, and the
language of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, therefore, shows that this area was not
actually isolated from the rest of Southeast Asia, as had been previously assumed.

THE INSCRIPTION
The inscription begins by providing a date:

“Hail! In the Saka-year 822; the month of March-April; according to the astronomer: the
fourth day of the dark half of the moon; on Monday.”

The Saka era has its origins in India (supposedly marking the ascension of the Kushan
emperor Kanishka), and the year 822 is said to correspond with the year 900 AD in the
Gregorian calendar. The use of this calendrical system is further evidence that there were
cultural links between this area of Southeast Asia and its neighbors, which at that time,
were largely under the cultural influence of India.

As for the subject matter of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, it has been suggested that
the inscription is a “semi-official certificate of acquittal of a debt incurred by a person in
high office, together with his whole family, all relatives and descendants.”

This acquittal is also said to be confirmed by other officials/leaders, some of whom have
been mentioned by name, along with their area of jurisdiction. These officials include “His
Honor the Leader of Puliran, Kasumuran; His Honor the Leader of Pailah, representing
Ganasakti; (and) His Honor the Leader of Binwangan, representing Bisruta.” The recording
of these names suggests that there was some sort of political and social organization in the
Philippines of the 10th century AD.

To conclude, the Laguna Copperplate, which would probably not attract instant public
attention as gold or silver artifacts would, is in fact an immensely important object. This
seemingly insignificant artifact has sparked a re-assessment of the history of the
Philippines prior to the coming of the Spanish, in particular the 10th century AD, and the
archipelago’s relationship with the rest of Southeast Asia.

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Ernesto Legisma Alfredo Evangelista

(sand laborer) Alberto Dealino (Head, Anthropology
(antique dealer) Div. of the National
Museum)
Antoon Postma Dr. Johann de Hector Santos
(Dutch Casparis (Filipino
Anthropologist; (Dutch expert on anthropological
ancient writing scripts Indonesian writing) enthusiast)
in SEA region)
• ancient • old Hindu calendar • Monday, April 21,
Indonesian (900 C.E.) 900 C.E.
writing called
Kavi
• Saka year 822

Wawa, Lumbang River, Laguna

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Map showing
the places
inscribed in LCI
according to
Antoon
Postma

Map showing
the places
inscribed in LCI
according to
Jaime Figueroa
Tiongson

AUTHENTICITY AND SCRIPT

§ genuine and authentic, based on the identical script type known to have existed in the 10th
century
§ the type of script belongs to the early Kawi Script that was also employed in the
inscriptions found in Indonesia (750-925 AD)
§ correctness of the language (s) was observed
§ substantial elements would be hard to imitate or falsify
§ placenames mentioned were situated in the Philippines
§ writing errors with corrections were also noticed (line 3, tra was inserted)

THE LANGUAGE
§ presence of words expressing ceremonious forms of address (pamgat, tuhan)
§ main language is Old Malay containing words closely related to Old Tagalog language
(anak, dayang, ngaran)
§ Old Malay is the lingua franca or trade language of the whole Malayan area during those
times
§ a number of pure Old Javanese words like ngaran, pamgat appear and these could also be
Old Tagalog words as well

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§ LCI was written in Old Malay with the possible intended purpose of communicating with
a foreign country
§ it was in Old Malay because it was issued by Srivijayan authorities in Sumatra where Old
Malay was the vernacular

GOLD, DEBT, SLAVERY AND CLASS

If debt could not be paid, either by money or by temporary servitude, the debtor could be legally
forced to become a slave, often together with his whole family and descendants

CONCLUSION:

1. The LCI can be considered the oldest calendar dated Philippine “document” existing at present
in the Philippines, predating the Pigafetta account by some 620 years.

2. The Philippines can now take its rightful place on the tenth century map of Southeast Asia, in
the presence of the Kingdoms of Sriwijaya (Sumatera), Mataram (Java), Angkor (Kampuchea)
and the Cham Dynasty (Vietnam).

3. The Philippines has now been freed from its pre Spanish isolation, a well-organized form of
government based on customary law has been shown to exist for more than a thousand years.

4. It is an important link in the history of the Malay (and the Tagalog) languages has been
established.

Sources:

Cryer, A. B., 2015. Laguna Copperplate Inscription Explained. [Online]

Available at: http://everything.explained.today/Laguna_Copperplate_Inscription/

Morrow, P., 2006. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription. [Online]

Available at: http://www.mts.net/~pmorrow/lcieng.htm

Postma, A., 1992. The Laguna Copper-Plate Inscription: Text and Commentary. Philippine
Studies, 40(2), p. 183–203.

Santos, H., 1996. The Laguna Copperplate Inscription. [Online]

Available at: http://www.bibingka.com/dahon/lci/lci.html

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Content and Contextual Analysis of Selected Primary Sources

A. MANUNGGUL JAR

The Manunggul jar was one of the numerous jars found in a cave believed to be a burial site
(Manunggul, was part of the archaeologically significant Tabon Cave Complex in Lipuun Point,
Quezon, Palawan) that was discovered on March 1964 by Victor Decalan, Hans Kasten and
other volunteer workers from the United States Peace Corps. The Manunggul burial jar was
unique in all respects. Dating back to the late Neolithic Period (around 710 B.C.), Robert Fox
described the jar in his landmark work on the Tabon Caves:

The burial jar with a cover featuring a ship-of-the-dead is perhaps unrivalled in Southeast Asia;
the work of an artist and master potter. This vessel provides a clear example of a cultural link
between the archaeological past and the ethnographic present. The boatman is steering rather than
padding the "ship." The mast of the boat was not recovered. Both figures appear to be wearing a
band tied over the crown of the head and under the jaw; a pattern still encountered in burial
practices among the indigenous peoples in Southern Philippines. The manner in which the hands
of the front figure are folded across the chest is also a widespread practice in the Islands when
arranging the corpse.

The carved prow and eye motif of the spirit boat is still found on the traditional watercraft of the
Sulu Archipelago, Borneo and Malaysia. Similarities in the execution of the ears, eyes, nose, and
mouth of the figures may be seen today in the woodcarving of Taiwan, the Philippines, and
elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

The Manunggul jar served as a proof of our common heritage with our Austronesian-speaking
ancestors despite the diversity of cultures of the Philippine peoples. Traces of their culture and
beliefs were seen in different parts of the country and from different Philippine ethno-linguistic
groups.

It was also a testament of the importance of the waters to our ancestors. The seas and the rivers
were their conduit of trade, information and communication. According to Peter Bellwood, the
Southeast Asians first developed a sophisticated maritime culture which made possible the spread
of the Austronesian-speaking peoples to the Pacific Islands as far Madagascar in Africa and Easter
Island near South America. Our ships—the balanghay, the paraw, the caracoa, and the like—were
considered marvelous technological advances by our neighbors that they respected us and made
us partners in trade. These neighbors later then, grew to include the imperial Chinese.

Many epics around the Philippines would tell us of how souls go to the next life aboard boats,
passing through the rivers and seas. The belief was very much connected with the Austronesia
belief in the anito. Our ancestors believed that man is composed of the body, the life force called
the ginhawa, and the kaluluwa (soul). The kaluluwa, after death, can return to earth to exist in
nature and guide their descendants. This explained why the cover of the Manunggul jar featured
three faces: the soul, the boat driver, and of the boat itself. For them, even things from nature have

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souls and lives of their own. That’s why our ancestors respected nature more than those who
thought that it can be used for the ends of man.

The Manunggul jar was a symbol of the National Museum’s important role in spearheading the
preservation the cultural heritage—pamana—using multi-disciplinary techniques. It was a
testament of how art can be a vessel of history and culture with the help of scholars. In this light,
a simple jar became the embodiment of the history, experiences, and aspirations of the people and
how the values of maka-Diyos, makatao at makabansa became part the value system of the
Filipinos.

Detailed Information and Description

The Manunggul jar is largely made from clay and it measures 51.5 cm wide and 66.5 cm
high. Its embossed, curved designs especially those at the upper portion of the jar were
painted in pure hematite and iron (National Museum Information).

There are two human images riding a boat located on top of the jar’s cover. The first human
image, holding an oar with a missing blade, is situated at the back area. He seems to be
steering the oar rather than paddling the boat. The second human image, with arms folded
across the chest, is situated at the front. Both human images seem to have a band tied over
their heads down to their jaws. The image of a head complete with carved eyes, nose and
mouth is also seen at the front area of the boat.

The two human images were said to symbolize two souls on a voyage toward the afterlife.
The arms folded across the chest of the second human image and the band being tied from
the top of the head down to the jaw, on the other hand, represented the Philippine tradition
of arranging a dead body (Chua 1-2).

The three main features of the Manunggul jar is composed of the boat itself, the boat driver
and the soul. This was based on the Austronesian belief wherein the soul of a human
separates from the body after death and returns to the Earth in another form for the purpose
of looking after his or her descendants. The souls were believed to travel through boats just
like the one depicted on the jar’s cover (Chua 2-3).

The “ship-of-the-dead” image in the Manunggul jar was found to have close similarities
with the ship motifs of woodcarvings found in Taiwan, East Timor and other places in
South East Asia. Such ship motifs were seen during ancient funerals using boat-shaped
coffins (Tan 89).

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Personal Evaluation

The Manunggul jar was a perfect illustration of the creativity and sense of artistry of the
Filipino people. The fact that Filipinos are natural risk-takers and adventurers was also
embedded in the elaborate designs of this artifact. The Manunggul jar also depicted the
Filipino values of respect for one’s soul, compassion, nationalism and faith. Consequently,
the jar served as a living reminder of the country’s rich history and culture since it existence
during the late Neolithic Period.

Conclusion

The Manunggul jar is considered a living evidence of the Filipinos’ shared cultural legacy
with their Austronesian ancestors since marks of their tradition and culture were seen in
various areas of the Philippines and in numerous ethnic tribes (Chua 2).

Indeed, the Manunggul jar served as a representation of the National Museum’s

responsibility in preserving the Philippines’ rich cultural legacy. It was also a potential
proof of how art can reflect a country’s history, tradition and culture, no matter how simple
or intricate its form is.

1. Early Filipinos believed that there is life after death and that death involved journeys. The boat
on the lid of the jar symbolized the journey to the afterlife.

2. This shows that they were a bunch of loving people. Rich or poor the dead were given a proper
burial worthy of respect from the people around him.

3. Our ancestors were already building boats by 710-890BC which is a brilliant engineering feat
considering that we don’t have technological universities before.

4. the jar with the boat on it is a testament of how important water is to them. The seas and the
rivers are their channel of trade and communication. It is part of their daily life. It is even part of
their afterlife.

5. Other Asian countries also have their own burial jars similar to our Manunggul Jar, which may
serve as a proof of our rich trading history and connection with out eastern roots. This jar is
considered a masterpiece in Southeast Asia, thus, our ancestors were considered very artistic in
the way they do pottery and in the way they designed it.

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Task at Hand: Complete the following concept map about the Manunggul Jar.

Prehistoric
Discovery of Belief
the Jar represented
Make a by the Jar
timeline of Make a
what timeline of
happened what
on 27 April happened
1521 from on 27 April
the point of 1521 from
view of the the point of
Spaniards. view of the
Spaniards.

Description
of the Jar
Purpose
Make a what
timeline of happened
what on 27 April
happened 1521 from
on 27 April the point of
1521 from view of the
the point of Spaniards.
view of the
Spaniards.

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B. SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS (Events of the Philippine Islands)

Antonio De Morga

Sucesos delas Islas Filipinas

(1609)
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 later on in 1890,
to be reprinted with anotation by
Jose Rizal with a prologue by Dr.
Ferdinand Blumentritt.

Considered the most valuable text on Philippine history written by a Spaniard, Antonio de
Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (“Events of the Philippine Islands”) is lauded for its
truthful, straightforward, and fair account of the early colonial period from the perspective of a
Spanish colonist. A lawyer, lieutenant of the Governor-General of the Philippines (second only to
the Governor-General), and judge of the Audiencia (highest tribunal justice) in Manila, Morga the
historian achieved a comprehensive and balanced report and was even critical of his fellow
colonists at times, the missionaries in particular.

The value of Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas has long been recognized. A first-hand
account of the early Spanish colonial venture into Asia, it was published in Mexico in 1609 and
has since been re-edited on a number of occasions. Antonio de Morga was an official of the
colonial bureaucracy in Manila and could consequently draw upon much material that would
otherwise have been inaccessible. As a lawyer, it is obvious that he would hardly fail to seek such
evidence.

Morga's work is based on personal experiences, or on documentation from eye-witnesses of the

events described. Moreover, as he tells us himself, survivors from Legazpi's expedition were still
alive while he was preparing his book in Manila, and these too he could consult.

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The Sucesos is the work of an honest observer, himself a major actor in the drama of his time, a
versatile bureaucrat, who knew the workings of the administration from the inside. It is also the
first history of the Spanish Philippines to be written by a layman, as opposed to the religious
chroniclers. Morga's book was praised, quoted, and plagiarized, by contemporaries or successors.
Filipinos have found it a useful account of the state of their native culture upon the coming of the
conquistadors; Spaniards have regarded it as a work to admire or condemn, according to their
views and the context of their times.

In addition to the central chapters dealing with the history of the Spaniards in the colony, Morga
devoted a long final chapter to the study of Filipino customs, manners and religions in the early
years of the Spanish conquest.

In his words, Morga’s main purpose for writing the book is to commemorate the “achievements
of our fellow Spaniards in these days, in their discovery, conquest and conversion of the Philippine
Islands and the varied adventures they have had at the same time in the great heathen kingdoms
surrounding these islands.”

Chapter 1 – Magellan and Legazpi’s seminal expeditions

Chapter 2-7 – Chronological report on government administration under governor-general
Chapter 8 – Philippine Islands, the natives there, their antiquity, custom and government

Rizal’s consideration for the choice of Morga:

1. the original book was rare
2. it was the only civil as opposed to religious or ecclesiastical, history of the Philippines written
during the colonial period

Importance of Rizal’s annotation:

to create a sense of national consciousness or identity

two defects:
1. an ahistorical use of hindsight
2. a strong anticlerical bias

About the Author:

Antonio de Morga Sanchez Garay

(1159-1636)
• Spanish lawyer
• high-ranking colonial official for 43 years, in the Philippines, New Spain and Peru,
• president of the Royal Audiencia for 20 years.
• Historian

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Observations of Antonio de Morga in his Sucesos delas Islas Filipinas (Chapter 8)

• Luzon
Ø a number of Natives black in color
Ø woolly hair
Ø stature is not very great (read: short)
Ø strong and robust
Ø barbarians (not trustworthy)
Ø little capacity
Ø no permanent residence
Ø hunters
Ø plant rice (temporarily)
Ø attack other settlements
Ø cannot be stopped in attacking other groups (relentless)

• Clothing
Ø Men
ü Cangan: upper garment short collarless garments (blue/ black); chiefs (red/called
chinanas); below the waist bahaques (bahag); potong; gold necklaces; calombigas
(armlets); unshod; strings of precious stones.

• Delicacy
ü in Zambales- they relish meat and fish and are better when it has begun to spoil and
when it stinks.

• Writing
Ø The natives throughout the islands can write excellently with certain characters; Three
are vowels, which are used as are our five. The consonants number twelve. The method of
writing was on bamboo, but is now on paper, commencing the lines at the right and running
to the left

• Dwellings

Ø The houses and dwellings of all these natives are universally set upon stakes and arigues
[i.e., columns] high above the ground.

Ø One ascends into the houses by means of ladders that can be drawn up, which are made
from two bamboos. Above are their open batalanes [galleries] used for household duties

Ø The natives do not inhabit the lower part of their houses, because they raise their fowls
and cattle there

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• Leadership
Ø Succession: male line; father and son
Ø In the absence: brothers and collateral relatives
Ø Duties: rule and govern their subjects
Ø Leaders are held with veneration and respect
Ø Subjects: they serve their leader in the following areas:
i. Wars/voyages
ii. Tilling/sowing/fishing
iii. Building of the leader’s house
iv. The natives also pay their buiz (tribute) varying quantities; in the crops that they
gathered
v. The relatives of the rulers are given the same regard/respect

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• Hierarchy
Ø Principalities/Lordships
Ø Plebeians (Timawas)
Ø Slaves: saguiguilires/saguiguilirs (saguiguilid); namamahay

• Slavery
Ø Whole slaves
Ø Half slaves: father/mother: free
Ø One-fourth slaves

• More than one child

Ø First child (Father’s: free or slave)
Ø Second child (Mother’s: free or slave)
Ø Odd number of children: the last will be half free and half slave
Ø Descendants of these children: one-fourth slave
Ø One-fourth/one-half slaves: serve their master’s during every other moon
Ø Half-slaves/one-fourth slaves may be emancipated (freed) for a just price
Ø Whole/full-slave cannot be emancipated
Ø Price of a sanguiguilir: ten taels* of good gold
Ø Price of namamahay: half of that sum
Ø Origin of Slavery: undetermined; with violent and unjust beginnings; most cases are
related to these;
Ø Presumptions: slavery was made during wars and quarrels
Ø Certainty: the most powerful made the others slaves through: slight causes/occassions;
loans; usurious contracts-the increase is so much that slaves were made out of the
borrowers
Ø Slaves: most important wealth and capital of the natives

• Marriages/Family Life
Ø Chiefs with women chiefs
Ø Timawas with those of that rank
Ø Slaves with those of the same class (e.g. Saguiguilir with saguiguilir)
Ø Ynasaba: legitimate wife
Ø Children of the first wife: legitimate; whole heirs of the parents
Ø Children of the succeeding ones: do not inherit; only left with ‘something’
Ø Dowry: the man provides; woman do not provide dowry

• Marriage and Family Life

Ø Marriage: Agreement between parents and relatives
Ø Dowry: agreed to the father of the bride; assembling at the wife’s parent’s house of all
the relative to eat and drink until they all fall down (waray upay);
the couple stay’s at the groom’s house later at night
Ø There is annulment and marriage may be disolved for slight causes; upon examination
by relatives of both parties (mediators)
Ø Husband’s dowry will be taken back if the wife was at fault; unless it was the husband
Ø Conjugal property will be divided into halves (‘hating kapatid’)

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Ø If the other party has no share; the other party keeps everything for him/her

• Adoption
Ø Adopted person gives everything to the adopting parent; have the same right to inherit
with the other children

• Adulteries
Ø No corporal punishment, maybe paid by and the injury will be pardoned; would continue
living together (read: move on!)

• Inheritance
Ø Legitimate (from ynasaba) children gets equal share; no legitimate children: nearest
relatives

• Succession
Ø Eldest son (from the ynasaba)
Ø Daughters may take the place in the absence of sons
Ø No direct successor: from the direct lineage of the chief (father or mother side)

• Slaves as concubines
Ø Children are free; as the slave
Ø In the absence of children the slave concubine remains a slave
Ø Illegitimate children (from slave and married women) no right to inheritance and
succession to the power but will be ranked as plebeians or timawas

§ Business
Ø Contracts and negotiations are generally illegal, usually dwelling on how one might get
the better part for his own benefit/interest (read: mapanlamang)
Ø Usury was the order of the day (read: panunuba)

• Bartering
Ø Items for bartering: food, cloth, cattle, fowls, lands, houses, fields, slaves, fishing
grounds palm trees
Ø payment: in gold or metal bells (from China)

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• Crimes
Ø Theft: major crime
Ø Insulting words: major crime
Ø Wounding: pardonable
Ø Assault: pardonable
Ø Concubinage, rape and incest were not regarded unless committed by a timagua
(timawa) to a woman chief
Ø Concubinage of a man to the sister of his wife (sister-in-law) is an ordinary practice
Ø Married men can have ‘access’ to his mother-in-law if the bride is very young until
she reaches the right age with the knowledge of the relatives
Ø Single men: bagontaos; Single women: dalagas

• Seedy side
Ø Women of Pintados ( some Visayans) are vicious and sensual; perverse
Ø Sagras (sexual Accoutrement: (creative visualization please) the males make a hole
near the head of his virile member (read: penis) and make an insertion of a serpent’s
head (metal or ivory) and attached to it insert a peg of the same material through the
hole; they have extended copulation because of the inability to quickly withdraw.
Very popular among couples. Christianity eventually made them abandon the
practice. (Oragon Bay!)

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serpent’s head (metal or ivory)

Ø ‘Virgin ravishers’, men paid to de-virginize young girls

Ø The natives consider virginity among young girls is a “hindrance’ (balakid) in their
married life

• Loans
Ø Loans with interest were very common and much practiced, and the interest incurred
was excessive. The debt doubled and increased all the time while payment was delayed,
until it stripped the debtor of all his possessions, and he and his children, when all their
property was gone, became slaves.

• Trading
Ø Their customary method of trading was by bartering one thing for another. Sometimes
a price intervened, which was paid in gold, as agreed upon, or in metal bells brought
from China.

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• Religion
Ø Pagans
Ø Nature worship
Ø Anitos: different types
Ø Crocodiles: nonos (nuno)
Ø Yellow colored bird : batala
Old men and women: catalonas, uses divinations, etc

In matters of religion, the natives proceeded more barbarously and with greater blindness
than in all the rest. The devil usually deceived them with a thousand errors and blindnesses.
He appeared to them in various horrible and frightful forms, and as fierce animals, so that
they feared him and trembled before him. They generally worshiped him, and made images
of him in the said forms. These they kept in caves and private houses, where they offered
them perfumes and odors, and food and fruit, calling them anitos.

Others worshiped the sun and the moon, and made feasts and drunken revels at the
conjunction of those bodies. Some worshiped a yellow−colored bird that dwells in their
woods, called batala. They generally worship and adore the crocodiles when they see them,
by kneeling down and clasping their hands, because of the harm that they receive from those
reptiles; they believe that by so doing the crocodiles will become appeased and leave them.

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They had no priests or religious to attend to religious affairs, except certain old men and
women called catalonas. The catalonas uttered prayers and performed other ceremonies to
the idols for the sick; and they believed in omens and superstitions, with which the devil
inspired them, whereby they declared whether the patient would recover or die.

They believed that there was a future life where those who had been brave and performed
valiant feats would be rewarded; while those who had done evil would be punished. But
they did not know how or where this would be.

Certain natives of the island of Borneo began to go thither to trade, especially to the
settlement of Manila and Tondo; introduced their religion among the natives of Luzon.

• Burial Practices
Ø They buried their dead in their own houses, and kept their bodies and bones for a long
time in chests. They venerated the skulls of the dead as if they were living and present

• Encomienda System
Ø All of these islands and their natives, so far as they were pacified, were apportioned into
encomiendas from the beginning.

Ø The tributes paid to their encomenderos by the natives were assigned by the first
governor, Miguel Lopez de Legazpi; they were equal to the sum of eight reals annually
for an entire tribute from each tributario. The natives were to pay it in their products in
gold, cloth, cotton, rice, bells, fowls, and whatever else they possessed or harvested. The
fixed price and value of each article was assigned so that, when the tribute was paid in
any one of them, or in all of them, it should not exceed the value of the eight reals.

• Classification Of Spaniards

Ø The Spaniards living in the islands are divided into five classes of people: namely:
1. prelates, religious, and ecclesiastical ministers, both secular and regular
2. encomenderos, settlers, and conquerors;
3. soldiers, officers, and officials of war (both on land and sea), and those for navigation
4. merchants, business men, and traders
5. his Majesty's agents for government, justice, and administration of his royal revenue

Source: Antonio de Morga, History of the Philippine Islands

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C. FIRST VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD

Antonio Pigafetta

Background of the Author

Antonio Pigafetta was born in 1491, in the province of Vicenza in Italy. He is also known as
Antonio Lombardo or Francisco Antonio Pigafetta. Antonio Pigafetta also died in Vicenza, Italy
in 1534. He was a scholar and explorer from the Republic of Venice. He was a seafarer and
geographer. One of the facts about Antonio Pigafetta is that he was part of the first world
circumnavigation that was started by the Portuguese explorer named Ferdinand Magellan. He
traveled with Ferdinand Magellan and his crew by order of the King Charles I of Spain on their
voyage to the Indies. During the expedition, he served as Magellan’s assistant and kept an accurate
journal which later assisted him in translating one of the Philippine languages, Cebuano. It is the
first recorded document concerning this language. This first world voyage was one of the greatest
achievements in the history of navy exploration. This voyage began to sail in 1519 with five ships.
However, its leader was killed in 1521, and the next year, only one ship returned to Spain with a
few men. Antonio Pigafetta was one of the few survivors. Many years later, Antonio Pigafetta’s
chronicles about his detailed journey about the first trip around the world was rescued in 1797, and
it is currently considered as one of the most important documentary evidences about various
discoveries in terms of world geography within the sixteenth century. It is known as “First Voyage
Around the World” in English. This is one of the most valuable contributions of Antonio Pigafetta.

II. Historical Background of the Document First Voyage Around the World by Antonio
Pigafetta
a. Objectives of Spanish and Portuguese (European) Exploration
Economy, Religion, Politics / God, Gold, Glory
b. Why were the Portuguese and Spanish first explored?

Spain and Portugal were among the first European nations to explore because they were bordered
by the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.

c. Why did Magellan come to Spain?

Ferdinand Magellan (a Portuguese sea captain sailing for Spain) had an important goal when he
left the town of Seville on the 10th of August, 1519: Find a westward route to the Spice (Maluku)
Islands. The expedition's goal was to find a western route to the Moluccas (Spice Islands).
Magellan left Spain on 20 September 1519, sailed across the Atlantic, and discovered the strait
that now bears his name, allowing him to pass through South America into the Pacific Ocean
(which he named).

III. Situation of Expedition of Ferdinand Magellan

In search of fame and fortune, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521) set out
from Spain in September 20, 1519 with a fleet of five ships to discover a western sea route to the
rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West

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Africa and then to Brazil, where he searched the South American coast for a strait that would take
him to the Pacific.

With that, he discovered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan and became the first
European to cross the Pacific Ocean. V. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Proclamation of the
national shrine On June 19, 1960, Republic Act No. 2733, called the Limasawa Law, was enacted
without Executive approval on June 19, 1960. The legislative fiat declared the site in Magallanes,
Limasawa Island in the Province of Leyte, where the first Mass in the Philippines was held is
hereby declared a national shrine to commemorate the birth of Christianity in the Philippines.
Magallanes is east of the island of Limasawa. In 1984 Imelda Marcos had a multi-million pesos
Shrine of the First Holy Mass built, an edifice made of steel, bricks and polished concrete,
and erected on top of a hill overlooking barangay Magallanes, Limasawa.

A super typhoon completely wiped this out just a few months later. Another shrine was inaugurated
in 2005. Limasawa celebrates the historic and religious coming of the Spaniards every March 31
with a cultural presentation and anniversary program dubbed as Sinugdan, meaning "beginning.".
Yet this has no reference at all to a Catholic mass being held on March 31, 1521. First Mass On
March 31, 1521, an Easter Sunday, Magellan ordered a Mass to be celebrated which was officiated
by Father Pedro Valderrama, the Andalusion chaplain of the fleet, the only priest then. Conducted
near the shores of the island, the First Holy Mass marked the birth of Roman Catholicism in the
Philippines.

Colambu and Siaiu were the first natives of the archipelago, which was not yet named
"Philippines" until the expedition of Ruy Lopez de Villalobos in 1543, to attend the Mass among
other native inhabitants. Historical controversies Masao Some Filipino historians have long
contested the idea that Limasawa was the site of the first Catholic mass in the country. Historian
Sonia Zaide identified Masao (also Mazaua) in Butuan as the location of the first Christian mass.
The basis of Zaide's claim is the diary of Antonio Pigafetta, chronicler of Magellan's voyage. In
1995 then Congresswoman Ching Plaza of Agusan del Norte-Butuan City filed a bill in Congress
contesting the Limasawa hypothesis and asserting the "site of the first mass" was Butuan.
The Philippine Congress referred the matter to the National Historical Institute for it to study the
issue and recommend a historical finding. Then NHI chair Dr. Samuel K. Tan reaffirmed
Limasawa as the site of the first mass. Bolinao Odoric of Pordenone, an Italian and Franciscan
friar and missionary explorer, is heartily believed by many Pangasinenses to have celebrated the
first mass in Pangasinan in around 1324 that would have predated the mass held in 1521 by
Ferdinand Magellan. A marker in front of Bolinao Church states that the first Mass on Philippine
soil was celebrated in Bolinao Bay in 1324 by a Franciscan missionary, Blessed Odorico.
However, there is scholarly doubt that Odoric was ever at the Philippines. Ultimately, the National
Historical Institute led by its chair Ambeth Ocampo recognized the historical records of Limasawa
in Southern Leyte as the venue of the first Mass, held on March 31, 1521.

IV. Antonio Pigafetta’s Historical Background of the Document

Antonio Pigafetta was a key player of one of the most amazing world exploration trips. He was
born in Vicenza in 1492, and he was an Italian seafarer and geographer. The relevance of his own
venture, fundamentally lies in the fact that he took part to the first globe circumnavigation, between

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1519 and 1522, and he was able to accomplish it after the murder of Ferdinand Magellan, leaving
a detailed description of the journey in the Report of the first trip around the world, a lost
manuscript that was rescued later, in 1797, and today is considered one of the most important
documentary evidence relating the geographical discoveries of the Sixteenth Century.

Antonio Pigafetta, fascinating and fleeing personality, for scholars he still represents a partial
mystery. About him too little is known to define a satisfactory profile on the biographical side.
Documents and the testimony of contemporaneous are scarce, and his own character primarily
appears from what he wrote in his own report. His own narration about the first world
circumnavigation was one of the greatest achievements in the history of navy exploration and
discovery. In this narration can be found descriptions of peoples, countries, goods and even
the languages that were spoken, of which the seafarer was trying to assemble some brief glossaries.
Pigafetta tells how, being in Barcelona in 1519, he heard about Magellan’s expedition, and being
wishful to learn about the world, he asked for and obtained the permission to join in the voyage.
Magellan’s fleet weighed anchor from Seville on August 10th of the same year with five smaller
vessels, heading towards Canary Islands and down along the African coast, and across the Equator.
From there they sailed towards Brazil coast, where they stayed for some time, making supplies
and weaving friendly contacts with the cannibalistic natives who dwelled there. Moving on, then
they arrived in Patagonia, where they spent winter months in a desolate solitude. They met local
people, who looked like giants in their eyes full of wonder, because of their robust body types.
They survived the mutiny of one of the captains and some disgruntled sailors, and continued the
exploration of the coast. One of the vessels was drowned, but the whole crew managed to be saved.
They proceeded until the discovery of the strait, named after, Magellan himself, on October 21st
1520, and went through, although one of the ships deserted, sailing back to Spain.

Finally, they arrived in the Philippines, where they became acquainted with the natives who proved
hospitable and welcomed them as guests in the king’s palace. The indigenous people, affected by
the celebration of Mass and the crucifix planted in the island, promised to convert to Christianity.
Quickly they developed commerce and trade, and the king, the queen and other notables of Cebu
were converted, until the entire population rapidly followed them in the new religion. Shortly after,
happened the disastrous episode that changed the course of the expedition. Magellan took part in
a conflict between some local tribes and was killed. The rest of the expedition managed to escape
and retired, preparing to leave, but a trap set by Magellan’s interpreter and the king of Cebu, led
to another massacre of the Europeans.

The surviving ships continued toward Borneo and to the city of Brunei, where they managed to
stock up, then from there, traveling southbound, they came to the Moluccas, 27 months after the
departure from Spain, finding a warm welcome by an astrologer king who had predicted their
arrival. But at this point, despite the perspective of good business and the rich exchanges that
would lie ahead, their desire to return to Spain urged them and pushed them to a quick return.

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D. ACT OF DECLARATION OF PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE OF 1898

Ambrocio Rianzares-Bautista

The Philippine Declaration of Independence occurred in Kawit, Cavite on 12 June 1898 where
Filipino revolutionary forces under General Emilio Aguinaldo proclaimed the sovereignty and
independence of the Philippine islands from Spanish colonization after the latter was defeated at
the Battle of Manila Bay on 1 May 1898 during the Spanish-American War.
The Act of the Declaration of Independence was prepared and written by Ambrosio Rianzares
Bautista in Spanish, who also read the said declaration. The Philippine Declaration was signed
by ninety-eight persons, among them an American army officer who witnessed the proclamation.
The Act declared that the Filipinos “are and have the right to be free and independent,” and that
the nation from ”this day commences to have a life of its own, with every political tie between
Filipinas and Spain severed and annulled”.
Declaration of Independence - contains the country’s aspirations of freedom from the Spanish
rule, sacrifices made, form of governance made by Aguinaldo, symbolisms, and revolution.
Who is the author?

Ambrocio Rianzares-Bautista
• a lawyer
• prepared, written and read the Act of declaration of Philippine independence

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Declaration of Independence

With a government in operation, Aguinaldo thought that it was necessary to declare the
independence of the Philippines. He believed that such a move would inspire the people to
fight more eagerly against the Spaniards and at the same time, lead the foreign countries to
recognize the independence of the country. Mabini, who had by now been made Aguinaldo's
unofficial adviser, objected. He based his objection on the fact that it was more important to
reorganize the government in such a manner as to convince the foreign powers of the
competence and stability of the new government than to proclaim Philippine independence at
such an early period. Aguinaldo, however, stood his ground and won.

On June 12, between four and five in the afternoon, Aguinaldo, in the presence of a huge crowd,
proclaimed the independence of the Philippines at Cavite el Viejo (Kawit). For the first time,
the Philippine National Flag, made in Hongkong by Mrs. Marcela Agoncillo, assisted by
Lorenza Agoncillo and Delfina Herboza, was officially hoisted and the Philippine National
March played in public. The Act of the Declaration of Independence was prepared by Ambrosio
Rianzares Bautista, who also read it. A passage in the Declaration reminds one of another
passage in the American Declaration of Independence. The Philippine Declaration was signed
by ninety-eight persons, among them an American army officer who witnessed the
proclamation. The proclamation of Philippine independence was, however, promulgated on
August 1 when many towns has already been organized under the riles laid down by the
Dictatorial Government.

History of the Filipino People. Teodoro A. Agoncillo

Proclamation of Philippine Independence

The most significant achievement of Aguinaldo's Dictatorial Government was the
proclamation of Philippine Independence in Kawit, Cavite, on June 12, 1898. The day was
declared a national holiday. Thousands of people from the provinces gathered in Kawit to
witness the historic event. The ceremony was solemnly held at the balcony of General Emilio
Aguinaldo's residence. The military and civil officials of the government were in attendance.
A dramatic feature of the ceremony was the formal unfurling of the Filipino flag amidst the
cheers of the people. At the same time, the Philippine National Anthem was played by the
band. Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista solemnly read the "Act of the Declaration of
Independence" which he himself wrote. The declaration was signed by 98 persons. One of the
signers was an American, L.M. Johnson, Colonel of Artillery.

The Philippines: A Unique Nation. Dr. Sonia M. Zaide

Protectorate Proclaimed

Aguinaldo continued his moves for consolidation. The next step was the proclamation of
Philippine Independence on June 12, 1898. Appropriate celebrations marked the event in
Kawit at which the Philippine flag was officially raised and the Philippine National Anthem
first publicly played. The declaration was prepared by Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista who
patterned it after the American Declaration of Independence. Aguinaldo invited Dewey to the

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festivities, but the latter declined the invitation and did not even report the event to Washington.
The declaration was signed by ninety-eight persons, including an American office, L.M.
Johnson, Colonel of Artillery.

The Philippines: A Past Revisited. Renato Constantino

Literal Meaning
In the proclamation of the Philippine Independence Day, they used symbolism to represent the true
meaning of the independence.

Philippine National Anthem which embodies the struggles and glory of Filipino people in search
of freedom from the Spaniards

blue, red and white band – patterned after the flag of the United States of America
white triangle – Katipunan/equality
golden sun in the middle with 8 rays – representing the 8 provinces which first rose in arms
against Spain
3 stars – Luzon, Panay and Mindanao

Today:
blue band on top – symbolizes peace, truth, and justice
red band below – represents patriotism and valor
3 stars – Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao

Why was it written?

With a government in operation, Aguinaldo thought that it was necessary to declare the
independence of Philippines because he believed that such a move would:
• inspire the people to fight more eagerly against the Spaniards
• lead the foreign countries to recognize the independence of the country

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PRIMARY SOURCES

FIRST VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD

Antonio Pigafetta

EXCERPT:

At dawn on Saturday, March sixteen, 1521, we came upon a high land at a distance of three
hundred leguas from the islands of Latroni—an island named Zamal [i.e., Samar]. The following
day, the captain-general desired to land on another island which was uninhabited and lay to the
right of the abovementioned island, in order to be more secure, and to get water and have some
rest. He had two tents set up on the shore for the sick and had a sow killed for them. On Monday
afternoon, March 18, we saw a boat coming toward us with nine men in it. Therefore, the captain-
general ordered that no one should move or say a word without his permission. When those men
reached the shore, their chief went immediately to the captain-general, giving signs of joy because
of our arrival. Five of the most ornately adorned of them remained with us, while the rest went to
get some others who were fishing, and so they all came. The captain-general seeing that they were
reasonable men, ordered food to be set before them, and gave them red caps, mirrors, combs, bells,
ivory, bocasine, and other things. When they saw the captain’s courtesy, they presented fish, a jar
of palm wine, which they call uraca [i.e., arrack], figs more than one palmo long [i.e., bananas]
and others which were smaller and more delicate, and two cocoanuts. They had nothing else then,
but made us signs with their hands that they would bring umay or rice, and cocoanuts and many
other articles of food within four days.
Cocoanuts are the fruit of the palmtree. Just as we have bread, wine, oil, and milk, so those people
get everything from that tree. They get wine in the following manner. They bore a hole into the
heart of the said palm at the top called palmito [i.e., stalk], from which distils a liquor which
resembles white must. That liquor is sweet but somewhat tart, and [is gathered] in canes [of
bamboo] as thick as the leg and thicker. They fasten the bamboo to the tree at evening for the
morning, and in the morning for the evening. That palm bears a fruit, namely, the coco anut, which
is as large as the head or thereabouts. Its outside husk is green and thicker than two fingers. Certain
filaments are found in that husk, whence is made cord for binding together their boats. Under that
husk there is a hard shell, much thicker than the shell of the walnut, which they burn and make
therefrom a powder that is useful to them. Under that shell there is a white marrowy substance one
finger in thickness, which they eat fresh with meat and fish as we do bread; and it has a taste
resembling the almond. It could be dried and made into bread. There is a clear, sweet water in the
middle of that marrowy substance which is very refreshing. When that water stands for a while
after having been collected, it congeals and becomes like an apple. When the natives wish to make
oil, they take that cocoanut, and allow the marrowy substance and the water to putrefy. Then they
boil it and it becomes oil like butter. When they wish to make vinegar, they allow only the water
to putrefy, and then place it in the sun, and a vinegar results like [that made from] white wine.]
Milk can also be made from it for we made some. We scraped that marrowy substance and then
mixed the scrapings with its own water which we strained through a cloth, and so obtained milk
like goat’s milk. Those palms resemble date-palms, but although not smooth they are less knotty
than the latter. A family of x persons can be supported on two trees, by utilizing them week about
for the wine; for if they did otherwise, the trees would dry up. They last a century.

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Those people became very familiar with us. They told us many things, their names and those of
some of the islands that could be seen from that place. Their own island was called Zuluan and it
is not very large. We took great pleasure with them, for they were very pleasant and conversable.
In order to show them greater honor, the captain-general took them to his ship and showed them
all his merchandise—cloves, cinnamon, pepper, ginger, nutmeg, mace, gold, and all the things in
the ship. He had some mortars fired for them, whereat they exhibited great fear, and tried to jump
out of the ship. They made signs to us that the abovesaid articles grew in that place where we were
going. When they were about to retire they took their leave very gracefully and neatly, saying that
they would return according to their promise. The island where we were is called Humunu; but
inasmuch as we found two springs there of the clearest water, we called it Acquada da li buoni
Segnialli [i.e., “the Watering-place of good Signs”], for there were the first signs of gold which we
found in those districts. We found a great quantity of white coral there, and large trees with fruit a
trifle smaller than the almond and resembling pine seeds. There are also many palms, some of
them good and others bad. There are many islands in that district, and therefore we called them
the archipelago of San Lazaro, as they were discovered on the Sabbath of St. Lazurus. They lie in
x degrees of latitude toward the Arctic Pole, and in a longitude of one hundred and sixty-one
degrees from the line of demarcation.
At noon on Friday, March 22, those men came as they had promised us in two boats with
cocoanuts, sweet oranges, a jar of palm-wine, and a cock, in order to show us that there were fowls
in that district. They exhibited great signs of pleasure at seeing us. We purchased all those articles
from them. Their seignior was an old man who was painted [i.e., tattooed]. He wore two gold
earrings [schione] in his ears, and the others many gold armlets on their arms and kerchiefs about
their heads. We stayed there one week, and during that time our captain went ashore daily to
visitthe sick, and every morning gave them cocoanut water from his own hand, which comforted
them greatly. There are people living near that island who have holes in their ears so large that
they can pass their arms through them. Those people are caphri, that is to say, heathen. They go
naked, with a cloth woven from the bark of a tree about their privies, except some of the chiefs
who wear cotton cloth embroidered with silk at the ends by means of a needle. They are dark, fat,
and painted. They anoint themselves with cocoanut and with beneseed oil, as a protection against
sun and wind. They have very black hair that falls to the waist, and use daggers, knives, and spears
ornamented with gold, large shields, fascines, javelins, and fishing nets that resemble rizali, and
their boats are like ours.
On the afternoon of holy Monday, the day of our Lady, March twenty-five, while we were on the
point of weighing anchor, I went to the side of the ship to fish, and putting my feet upon a yard
leading down into the storeroom, they slipped, for it was rainy, and consequently I fell into the
sea, so that no one saw me. When I was all but under, my left hand happened to catch hold of the
clew - garnet of the mainsail, which was dangling [ascosa] in the water. I held on tightly, and began
to cry out so lustily that I was rescued by the small boat. I was aided, not, I believe, indeed, through
my merits, but through the mercy of that font of charity [i.e., of the Virgin]. That same day we
shaped our course toward the west southwest between four small islands, namely, Cenalo,
Hiunanghan, Ibusson, and Abarien.
On Thursday morning, March twenty-eight, as we had seen a fire on an island the night before, we
anchored near it. We saw a small boat which the natives call boloto with eight men in it,
approaching the flagship. A slave belonging to the captain-general, who was a native of Zamatra
[i.e., Sumatra], which was formerly called Traprobana, spoke to them. They immediately

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understood him, came alongside the ship, unwilling to enter but taking a position at some little
distance. The captain seeing that they would not trust us, threw them out a red cap and other
things tied to a bit of wood. They received them very gladly, and went away quickly to advise their
king. About two hours later we saw two balanghai coming. They are large boats and are so called
[by those people]. They were full of men, and their king was in the larger of them, being seated
under an awning of mats. When the king came near the flagship, the slave spoke to him. The king
understood him, for in those districts the kings know more languages than the other people. He
ordered some of his men to enter the ships, but he always remained in his balanghai, at some little
distance from the ship until his own men returned; and as soon as they returned he departed. The
captain-general showed great honor to the men who entered the ship, and gave them some presents,
for which the king wished before his departure to give the captain a large bar of gold and a basketful
of ginger. The latter, however, thanked the king heartily but would not accept it. In the afternoon
we went in the ships [and anchored] near the dwellings of the king.
Next day, holy Friday, the captain-general sent his slave, who acted as our interpreter, ashore in a
small boat to ask the king if he had any food to have it carried to the ship, and to say that they
would be well satisfied with us, for he [and his men] had come to the island as friends and not as
enemies. The king came with six or eight men in the same boat and entered the ship. He embraced
the captain-general to whom he gave three porcelain jars covered with leaves and full of raw rice,
two very large orade, and other things. The captain-general gave the king a garment of red and
yellow cloth made in the Turkish fashion, and a fine red cap; and to the others (the king’s men), to
some knives and to others mirrors. Then the captain-general had a collation spread for them, and
had the king told through the slave that he desired to be casi casi with him, that is to say, brother.
The king replied that he also wished to enter the same relations with the captain -general. Then the
captain showed him cloth of various colors, linen, coral [ornaments], and many other articles of
merchandise, and all the artillery, some of which he had discharged for him, whereat the natives
were greatly frightened. Then the captain-general had a man armed as a soldier, and placed him in
the midst of three men armed with swords and daggers, who struck him on all parts of the body.
Thereby was the king rendered almost speechless. The captain-general told him through the slave
that one of those armed men was worth one hundred of his own men. The king answered that that
was a fact. The captain-general said that he had two hundred men in each ship who were armed in
that manner. He showed the king cuirasses, swords, and bucklers, and had a review made for
him.Then he led the king to the deck of the ship,that is located above at the stern; and had his sea-
chart and compass brought. He told the king through the interpreter how he had found the strait in
order to voyage thither, and how many moons he had been without seeing land, whereat the king
was astonished. Lastly, he told the king that he would like, if it were pleasing to him, to send two
of his men with him so that he might show them some of his things. The king replied that he was
agreeable, and I went in company with one of the other men.
When I reached shore, the king raised his hands toward the sky and then turned toward us two. We
did the same toward him as did all the others. The king took me by the hand; one of his chiefs took
my companion; and thus they led us under a bamboo covering, where there was a balanghai, as
long as eighty of my palm lengths, and resembling a fusta. We sat down upon the stern of that
balanghai, constantly conversing with signs. The king’s men stoo d about us in a circle with
swords, daggers, spears, and bucklers. The king had a plate of pork brought in and a large jar filled
with wine. At every mouthful, we drank a cup of wine. The wine that was left [in the cup] at any
time, although that happened but rarely, was put into a jar by itself. The king’s cup was always
kept covered and no one else drank from it but he and I. Before the king took the cup to drink, he

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raised his clasped hands toward the sky, and then toward me; and when he was about to drink, he
extended the fist of his left hand toward me (at first I thought that he was about to strike me) and
then drank. I did the same toward the king. They all make those signs one toward another when
they drink. We ate with such ceremonies and with other signs of friendship. I ate meat on holy
Friday, for I could not help myself. Before the supper hour I gave the king many things which I
had brought. I wrote down the names of many things in their language. When the king and the
others saw me writing, and when I told them their words, they were all astonished. While engaged
in that the supper hour was announced. Two large porcelain dishes were brought in, one full of
rice and the other of pork with its gravy. We ate with the same signs and ceremonies, after which
we went to the palace of the king which was built like a hayloft and was thatched with fig [ i.e.,
banana] and palm leaves. It was built up high from the ground on huge posts of wood and it was
necessary to ascend to it by means of ladders. The king made us sit down there on a bamboo mat
with our feet drawn up like tailors. After a half-hour a platter of roast fish cut in pieces was brought
in, and ginger freshly gathered, and wine. The king’s eldest son, who was the prince, came over to
us, whereupon the king told him to sit down near us, and he accordingly did so. Then two platters
were brought in (one with fish and its sauce, and the other with rice), so that we might eat with the
prince. My companion became intoxicated as a consequence of so much drinking and eating. They
used the gum of a tree called anime wrapped in palm or fig [i.e., banana] leaves for lights. The
king made us a sign that he was going to go to sleep. He left the prince with us, and we slept with
the latter on a bamboo mat with pillows made of leaves. When day dawned the king came and took
me by the hand, and in that manner we went to where we had had supper, in order to partake of
refreshments, but the boat came to get us. Before we left, the king kissed our hands with great joy,
and we his. One of his brothers, the king of another island, and three men came with us. The
captain-general kept him to dine with us, and gave him many things.
Pieces of gold, of the size of walnuts and eggs are found by sifting the earth in the island of that
king who came to our ships. All the dishes of that king are of gold and also some portion of his
house, as we were told by that king himself. According to their customs he was very grandly
decked out [molto in ordine], and the finest looking man that we saw among those people. His hair
was exceedingly black, and hung to his shoulders. He had a covering of silk oh his head, and wore
two large golden earrings fastened in his ears. He wore a cotton cloth all embroidered with silk,
which covered him from the waist to the knees. At his side hung a dagger, the haft of which was
somewhat long and all of gold, and its scabbard of carved wood. He had three spots of gold on
every tooth, and his teeth appeared as if bound with gold. He was perfumed with storax and
benzoin. He was tawny and painted [i.e., tattooed] all over. That island of his was called Butuan
and Calagan. When those kings wished to see one another, they both went to hunt in that island
where we were. The name of the first king is Raia Colambu, and the second Raia Siaui.
Early on the morning of Sunday, the last of March, and Easter-day, the captain-general sent the
priest with some men to prepare the place where mass was to be said; together with the interpreter
to tell the king that we were not going to land in order to dine with him, but to say mass. Therefore
the king sent us two swine that he had had killed. When the hour for mass arrived, we landed with
about fifty men, without our body armor, but carrying our other arms, and dressed in our best
clothes. Before we reached the shore with our boats, six pieces were discharged as a sign of peace.
We landed; the two kings embraced the captain-general, and placed him between them. We went
in marching order to the place consecrated, which was not far from the shore. Before the
commencement of mass, the captain sprinkled the entire bodies of the two kings with musk water.
The mass was offered up. The kings went forward to kiss the cross as we did, but they did not offer

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the sacrifice. When the body of our Lord was elevated, they remained on their knees and worshiped
Him with clasped hands. The ships fired all their artillery at once when the body of Christ was
elevated, the signal having been given from the shore with muskets. After the conclusion of mass,
some of our men took communion. The captain-general arranged a fencing tournament, at which
the kings were greatly pleased. Then he had a cross carried in and the n ails and a crown, to which
immediate reverence was made. He told the kings through the interpreter that they were the
standards given to him by the emperor his sovereign, so that wherever he might go he might set
up those his tokens. [He said] that he wished to set it up in that place for their benefit, for whenever
any of our ships came, they would know that we had been there by that cross, and would do nothing
to displease them or harm their property [property: doublet in original MS.]. If any of their men
were captured, they would be set free immediately on that sign being shown. It was necessary to
set that cross on the summit of the highest mountain, so that on seeing it every morning, they might
adore it; and if they did that, neither thunder, lightning, nor storms would harm them in the least.
They thanked him heartily and [said] that they would do everything willingly. The captain-general
also had them asked whether they were Moros or heathen, or what was their belief. They replied
that they worshiped nothing, but that they raised their clasped hands and their face to the sky; and
that they called their god “Abba.” Thereat the captain was very glad, and seeing that, the first king
raised his hands to the sky, and said that he wished that it were possible for him to make the captain
see his love for him. The interpreter asked the king why there was so little to eat there. The latter
replied that he did not live in that place except when he went hunting and to see his brother, but
that he lived in another island where all his family were. The captain-general had him asked to
declare whether he had any enemies, so that he might go with his ships to destroy them and to
render them obedient to him. The king thanked him and said that he did indeed have two islands
hostile to him, but that it was not then the season to go there. The captain told him that if God
would again allow him to return to those districts, he would bring so many men that he would
make the king’s enemies subject to him by force. He said that he was about to go to dinner, and
that he would return afterward to have the cross set up on the summit of the mountain. They replied
that they were satisfied, and then forming in battalion and firing the muskets, and the captain
having embraced the two kings, we took our leave.
After dinner we all returned clad in our doublets, and that afternoon went together with the two
kings to the summit of the highest mountain there. When we reached the summit, the captain-
general told them that he esteemed highly having sweated for them, for since the cross was there,
it could not but be of great use to them. On asking them which port was the best to get food, they
replied that there were three, namely, Ceylon, Zubu, and Calaghann, but that Zubu was the larg est
and the one with most trade. They offered of their own accord to give us pilots to show us the way.
The captain-general thanked them, and determined to go there, for so did his unhappy fate will.
After the cross was erected in position, each of us repeated a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria, and
adored the cross; and the kings did the same. Then we descended through their cultivated fields,
and went to the place where the balanghai was. The kings had some cocoanuts brought in so that
we might refresh ourselves. The captain asked the kings for the pilots for he intended to depart the
following morning, and [said] that he would treat them as if they were the kings themselves, and
would leave one of us as hostage. The kings replied that every hour he wished th e pilots were at
his command, but that night the first king changed his mind, and in the morning when we were
about to depart, sent word to the captain-general, asking him for love of him to wait two days until
he should have his rice harvested, and other trifles attended to. He asked the captain-general to
send him some men to help him, so that it might be done sooner; and said that he intended to act

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as our pilot himself. The captain sent him some men, but the kings ate and drank so much that they
slept all the day. Some said to excuse them that they were slightly sick. Our men did nothing on
that day, but they worked the next two days.
One of those people brought us about a porringer full of rice and also eight or ten figs [i.e., bananas]
fastened together to barter them for a knife which at the most was worth three catrini. The captain
seeing that that native cared for nothing but a knife, called him to look at other things. He put his
hand in his purse and wished to give him one real for those things, but the native refused it. The
captain showed him a ducado but he would not accept that either. Finally the captain tried to give
him a doppione worth two ducados, but he would take nothing but a knife; and accordingly the
captain had one given to him. When one of our men went ashore for water, one of those people
wanted to give him a pointed crown of massy gold, of the size of a colona for six strings of glass
beads, but the captain refused to let him barter, so that the natives should learn at the very beginning
that we prized our merchandise more than their gold.
Those people are heathens, and go naked and painted. They wear a piece of cloth woven from a
tree about their privies. They are very heavy drinkers. Their women are clad in tree cloth from
their waist down, and their hair is black and reaches to the ground. They have holes pierced in their
ears which are filled with gold. Those people are constantly chewing a fruit which they call areca,
and which resembles a pear. They cut that fruit into four parts, and then wrap it in the leaves of
their tree which they call betre [i.e., betel]. Those leaves resemble the leaves of the mulberry. They
mix it with a little lime, and when they have chewed it thoroughly, they spit it out. It makes the
mouth exceedingly red. All the people in those parts of the world use it, for it is very cooling to
the heart, and if they ceased to use it they would die. There are dogs, cats, swine, fowls, goats, rice,
ginger, cocoanuts, figs [i.e., bananas], oranges, lemons, millet, panicum, sorgo, wax, and a quantity
of gold in that island. It lies in a latitude of nine and two-thirds degrees toward the Arctic Pole,
and in a longitude of one hundred and sixty-two degrees from the line of demarcation. It is twenty-
five from the Acquada, and is called Mazaua.
We remained there seven days, after which we laid our course toward the northwest, passing
among five islands, namely, Ceylon, Bohol, Canighan, Baybai, and Gatighan. In the last-named
island of Gatigan, there are bats as large as eagles. As it was late we killed one of them, which
resembled chicken in taste. There are doves, turtledoves, parrots, and certain black birds as large
as domestic chickens, which have a long tail. The last mentioned birds lay eggs as large as the
goose, and bury them under the sand, through the great heat of which they hatch out. When the
chicks are born, they push up the sand, and come out. Those eggs are good to eat. There is a
distance of twenty leguas from Mazaua to Gatighan. We set out westward from Gatighan, but the
king of Mazaua could not follow us [closely], and consequently, we awaited him near three islands,
namely, Polo, Ticobon, and Pozon. When he caught up with us he was greatly astonished at the
rapidity with which we sailed. The captain-general had him come into his ship with several of his
chiefs at which they were pleased. Thus did we go to Zubu from Gatighan, the distance to Zubu
being fifteen leguas.
At noon on Sunday, April seven, we entered the port of Zubu, passing by many villages, where we
saw many houses built upon logs. On approaching the city, the captain-general ordered the ships
to fling their banners. The sails were lowered and arranged as if for battle, and all the artillery was
fired, an action which caused great fear to those people. The captain sent a foster-son of his as
ambassador to the king of Zubo with the interpreter. When they reached the city, they found a vast
crowd of people together with the king, all of whom had been frightened by the mortars. The
interpreter told them that that was our custom when entering into such places, as a sign of peace

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and friendship, and that we had discharged all our mortars to honor the king of the village. The
king and all of his men were reassured, and the king had us asked by his governor what we wanted.
The interpreter replied that his master was a captain of the greatest king and prince in the world,
and that he was going to discover Malucho; but that he had come solely to visit the king because
of the good report which he had heard of him from the king of Mazaua, and to buy food with his
merchandise. The king told him that he was welcome [literally: he had come at a good time], but
that it was their custom for all ships that entered their ports to pay tribute, and that it was but four
days since a junk from Ciama [i.e., Siam] laden with gold and slaves had paid him tribute. As proof
of his statement the king pointed out to the interpreter a merchant from Ciama, who had remained
to trade the gold and slaves. The interpreter told the king that, since his master was the captain of
so great a king, he did not pay tribute to any seignior in the world, and that if the king wished peace
he would have peace, but if war instead, war. Thereupon, the Moro merchant said to the king Cata
raia chitathat is to say, “Look well, sire.” “These men are the same who have conquered Calicut,
Malaca, and all India Magiore [i.e., India Major]. If they are treated well, they will give good
treatment, but if they are treated evil, evil and worse treatment, as they have done to Calicut and
Malaca.” The interpreter understood it all and told the king that his master’s king was more
powerful in men and ships than the king of Portogalo, that he was the king of Spagnia and emperor
of all the Christians, and that if the king did not care to be his friend he would next time send so
many men that they would destroy him. The Moro related everything to the king, who said
thereupon that he would deliberate with his men, and would answer the captain on the following
day. Then he had refreshments of many dishes, all made from meat and contained in porcelain
platters, besides many jars of wine brought in. After our men had refreshed themselves, they
returned and told us everything. The king of Mazaua, who was the most influential after that king
and the seignior of a number of islands, went ashore to speak to the king of the great courtesy of
our captain-general.

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THE ACT OF PROCLAMATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE

Ambrocio Rianzares-Bautista

In the town of Cavite-Viejo, Province of Cavite, this 12th day of June 1898:
BEFORE ME, Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, War Counsellor and Special Delegate designated
to proclaim and solemnize this Declaration of Independence by the Dictatorial Government of
the Philippines, pursuant to, and by virtue of, a Decree issued by the Engregious Dictator Don
Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy,

The undersigned assemblage of military chiefs and others of the army who could not attend,
as well as the representatives of the various towns,

Taking into account the fact that the people of this country are already tired of bearing the
ominous joke of Spanish domination,

Because of arbitrary arrests and abuses of the Civil Guards who cause deaths in connivance
with and even under the express orders of their superior officers who at times would order the
shooting of those placed under arrest under the pretext that they attempted to escape in
violation of known Rules and Regulations, which abuses were left unpunished, and because of
unjust deportations of illustrious Filipinos, especially those decreed by General Blanco at the
instigation of the Archbishop and friars interested in keeping them in ignorance for egoistic
and selfish ends, which deportations were carried out through processes more execrable than
those of the Inquisition which every civilized nation repudiates as a trial without hearing.

Had resolved to start a revolution in August 1896 in order to regain the independence and
sovereignty of which the people had been deprived by Spain through Governor Miguel Lopez
de Legazpi who, continuing the course followed by his predecessor Ferdinand Magellan who
landed on the shores of Cebu and occupied said Island by means of a Pact of Friendship with
Chief Tupas, although he was killed in the battle that took place in said shores to which battle
he was provoked by Chief Kalipulako ** of Mactan who suspected his evil designs, landed on
the Island of Bohol by entering also into a Blood Compact with its Chief Sikatuna, with the
purpose of later taking by force the Island of Cebu, and because his successor Tupas did not
allow him to occupy it, he went to Manila, the capital, winning likewise the friendship of its
Chiefs Soliman and Lakandula, later taking possession of the city and the whole Archipelago
in the name of Spain by virtue of an order of King Philip II, and with these historical precedents
and because in international law the prescription established by law to legalize the vicious
acquisition of private property is not recognized, the legitimacy of such revolution cannot be
put in doubt which was calmed but not complete stifled by the pacification proposed by Don
Pedro A. Paterno with Don Emilio Aguinaldo as President of the Republic established in Biak-
na-Bato and accepted by Governor-General Don Fernando Primo De Rivera under terms, both
written and oral, among them being a general amnesty for all deported and convicted persons;
that by reason of the non-fulfillment of some of the terms, after the destruction of the plaza of
Cavite, Don Emilio Aguinaldo returned in order to initiate a new revolution and no sooner had
he given the order to rise on the 31st of last month when several towns anticipating the
revolution, rose in revolt on the 28th , such that a Spanish contingent of 178 men, between
Imus Cavite-Viejo, under the command of major of the Marine Infantry capitulated , the

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revolutionary movement spreading like wild fire to other towns of Cavite and the other
provinces of Bataan, Pampanga, Batangas, Bulacan, Laguna, and Morong, some of them with
seaports and such was the success of the victory of our arms, truly marvelous and without
equal in the history of colonial revolutions that in the first mentioned province only the
Detachments in Naic and Indang remained to surrender; in the second all Detachments had
been wiped out; in the third the resistance of the Spanish forces was localized in the town of
San Fernando where the greater part of them are concentrated, the remainder in Macabebe,
Sexmoan, and Guagua; in the fourth, in the town of Lipa; in the fifth, in the capital and in
Calumpit; and in last two remaining provinces, only in there respective capitals, and the city
of Manila will soon be besieged by our forces as well as the provinces of Nueva Ecija, Tarlac,
Pangasinan, La Union, Zambales, and some others in the Visayas where the revolution at the
time of the pacification and others even before, so that the independence of our country and
the revindication of our sovereignty is assured.

And having as witness to the rectitude of our intentions the Supreme Judge of the Universe,
and under the protection of our Powerful and Humanitarian Nation, The United States of
America, we do hereby proclaim and declare solemnly in the name by authority of the people
of these Philippine Islands,

That they are and have the right to be free and independent; that they have ceased to have
allegiance to the Crown of Spain; that all political ties between them are should be completely
severed and annulled; and that, like other free and independent States, they enjoy the full power
to make War and Peace, conclude commercial treaties, enter into alliances, regulate commerce,
and do all other acts and things which and Independent State Has right to do,

And imbued with firm confidence in Divine Providence, we hereby mutually bind ourselves
to support this Declaration with our lives, our fortunes, and with our sacred possession, our
Honor.

We recognize, approve, and ratify, with all the orders emanating from the same, the
Dictatorship established by Don Emilio Aguinaldo whom we reverse as the Supreme Head of
this Nation, which today begins to have a life of its own, in the conviction that he has been the
instrument chosen by God, inspite of his humble origin, to effectuate the redemption of this
unfortunate country as foretold by Dr. Don Jose Rizal in his magnificent verses which he
composed in his prison cell prior to his execution, liberating it from the Yoke of Spanish
domination,

And in punishment for the impunity with which the Government sanctioned the commission
of abuses by its officials, and for the unjust execution of Rizal and others who were sacrified
in order to please the insatiable friars in their hydropical thirst for vengeance against and
extermination of all those who oppose their Machiavellian ends, trampling upon the Penal
Code of these Islands, and of those suspected persons arrested by the Chiefs of Detachments
at the instigation of the friars, without any form nor semblance of trial and without any spiritual
aid of our sacred Religion; and likewise, and for the same ends, eminent Filipino priest, Doctor
Don Jose Burgos, Don Mariano Gomez, and Don Jacinto Zamora were hanged whose innocent
blood was shed due to the intrigues of these so-called Religious corporations which made the

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authorities to believe that the military uprising at the fort of San Felipe in Cavite on the night
of January 21, 1872 was instigated by those Filipino martyrs, thereby impeding the execution
of the decree- sentence issued by the Council of State in the appeal in the administrative case
interposed by the secular clergy against the Royal Orders that directed that the parishes under
them within the jurisdiction of this Bishopric be turned over to the Recollects in exchange for
those controlled by them in Mindanao which were to be transferred to the Jesuits, thus revoking
them completely and ordering the return of those parishes, all of which proceedings are on file
with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to which they are sent last month of the year of the
issuance of the proper Royal Degree which, in turn, caused the grow of the tree of the liberty
in our dear land that grow more and more through the iniquitous measures of oppressions, until
the last drop of our chalice of suffering having been drained, the first spark of revolution broke
out in Caloocan, spread out to Santa Mesa and continued its course to the adjoining regions of
the province were the unequalled heroism of its inhabitants fought a one sided battle against
superior forces of General Blanco and General Polavieja for a period of 3 months, without
proper arms nor ammunitions, except bolos, pointed bamboos, and arrows.

Moreover, we confer upon our famous Dictator Don Emilio Aguinaldo all the powers
necessary to enable him to discharge the duties of Government, including the prerogatives of
granting pardon and amnesty,

And lastly, it was results unanimously that this Nation, already free and independent as of this
day, must used the same flag which up to now is being used, whose designed and colored are
found described in the attached drawing, the white triangle signifying the distinctive emblem
of the famous Society of the "Katipunan" which by means of its blood compact inspired the
masses to rise in revolution; the tree stars, signifying the three principal Islands of these
Archipelago - Luzon, Mindanao, and Panay where the revolutionary movement started; the
sun representing the gigantic step made by the son of the country along the path of Progress
and Civilization; the eight rays, signifying the eight provinces - Manila, Cavite, Bulacan,
Pampanga, Nueva Ecija, Bataan, Laguna, and Batangas - which declares themselves in a state
of war as soon as the first revolt was initiated; and the colors of Blue, Red, and White,
commemorating the flag of the United States of America, as a manifestation of our profound
gratitude towards this Great Nation for its disinterested protection which it lent us and
continues lending us.

And holding up this flag of ours, I present it to the gentlemen here assembled:

Who solemnly swear to recognize and defend it unto the last drop of their blood.

In witness thereof, I certify that this Act of Declaration of Independence was signed by me and
by all those here assembled including the only stranger who attended those proceedings, a
citizen of the U.S.A., Mr. L.M. Johnson, a Colonel of Artillery.

Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista

War Counsellor and Special Delegate-Designate

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Chapter 3:
CONTROVERSIES AND CONFLICTING ISSUES
IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Outline:

• Site of The First Catholic Mass: Masao or Limasawa?

• Cavite Mutiny: An Insurrection or Mere Labor Issue?
• Retraction of Jose Rizal: Did He or Did He Not?
• Site of The First Cry of 1896 Philippine Revolution:
Balintawak or Pugadlawin?

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A. SITE OF THE FIRST CATHOLIC MASS IN THE PHILIPPINES

The site where Mass was first celebrated on Philippine soil has been a subject of controversy for
several decades. Did it happen in Masao or Limasawa?

The first documented mass was held on March 31, 1521, Easter Sunday. It was officiated by Fr.
Pedro de Valderrama of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition along the shores of what was referred
to in the journals of Antonio Pigafetta as “Mazaua.”

Today, this site is widely believed by many historians and the government to be Limasawa off
the tip of Southern Leyte, However, until at least the 19th century, the prevailing belief was
that the first mass was held in Butuan.

MASAO
LIMASAWA
• the name of the place
• the navigator’s route from • Francisco Albo’s logbook
Homonhon • Antonio Pigafetta
• the latitude • confirmatory evidence from
• the route to Cebu the Legazpi expedition
• geographical features of the
place
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MASAO (Butuan, Agusan del Norte)

Pieces of Evidence to Support the Claim:

• The name of the place
In the accounts of Pigafetta, Albo, the Genoese pilot, and Ginés de Mafra the name of the
island starts with letter M (Mazaua); thus Masao is closer than Limasawa; Masao has three
syllables or something close to it while Limasawa has four syllables.

• Navigator’s Route from Homonhon

The travel from Homonhon to Mazaua took 3 days, yet Limasawa is so near Homonhon.

• The Latitude
Actual latitude of Limasawa is 9 degrees 56 min; Masao’s latitude is 8 degrees 57 min.
The latitudes given by Albo (9 ⅓) and the Genoese pilot (9) point more to Masao.

• The Route to Cebu

On its way to Cebu, the fleet sailed along “Ceylon (Leyte), Bohol, and Baybay, Catighan,
and Canighan.” In Pigafetta’s account,Mazaua-Gatighan distance is 20 leguas (80 nautical
miles). Actual Limasawa-Gatighan distance is only one legua (4 n.m.)

• The Geographical Features of the Place

- bonfire – Mazaua in Butuanon language meaning bright or light
- Limasawa has no significant archaeological relics
- presence of balanghai – excavation of balanghai in barangay Libertad part of Masao,
estimated to be around 800 years old
- abundance of gold – gold mines

LIMASAWA (Leyte)

Pieces of Evidence to Support the Claim:

• Francisco Albo’s logbook

Francisco Albo was the one of the petty officers (“contramaestro”) in Magellan’s ship
“Trinidad” who began keeping a diary or logbook of the voyage when they were sailing
south in the Atlantic off the coast of Brazil. Albo was one of the survivors that returned to
Spain with El Cano on the “Victoria” being therefore one those who first circumnavigated
the globe. In summary, Albo’s account was substantially as follows:

From where they sailed westward and followed the coast of a large island named “Seilani”
in a direction west southwest till they came to a small island named Mazava, inhabited by
very good people. “There we placed a cross at the top of a hill, and there they showed us
three islands to the west southwest. That island is 9 and two-thirds degrees North latitude.
Albo does not mention the Mass but mentions the planting of the cross. Albo does not
specify how long they remained on Mazaua; Pigafetta says specifically “seven days,”
starting Holy Thursday, March 28.

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• The Evidence of Antonio Pigafetta (chronicler of the Magellan expedition)

On Holy Thursday, March 28, in the morning, they anchored near a small island where
they had seen a fire the night before. The island was 25-leagues from Homunu and lay at a
latitude of nine and two-thirds degrees north. The island’s name was Mazaua, and there
they were well received by the natives. They remained at that island for “seven days”: that
is, from Thursday, March 28, till the following Thursday, April 4.

On Easter Sunday, March 31, Mass was celebrated on shore in the morning. In the
afternoon, a large cross was erected on top of the highest “mountain” in the area.

• Confirmatory Evidence from the Legazpi Expedition

Legazpi reached the Philippines on 1565 with expeditions from island to island. Cebu was
first Spanish settlement. Magellan gave Queen Juan, wife of Rajah Humabon, an image of
the Holy Child Jesus or the Sto. Nino. She was the first Filipina queen to accept
Christianity. While Legazi was in Cebu, he sent an expedition to Butuan. This confused
the minds of historians; Magellan did not go to Butuan; Legazpi did.

To end the conflict for the issue about the first mass, the National Historical Commission of
the Philippines (then National Historical Institute) panel adapted the recommendation and
unanimously agreed that the evidence and arguments presented by the pro-Butuan advocates
are not sufficient and convincing enough to warrant the repeal or reversal of the ruling on the
case by the National Historical Institute. It is further strengthen by the evidence that it was only
after 22 years, in 1543—when a Spanish expedition led by Ruy López de Villalobos landed in
Mindanao.

The following conclusions are forwarded:

Conclusion 1 – The first Mass on Philippine soil was offered on Easter Sunday, 31 March 1521,
on the island of Mazaua, which lies at a latitude of 9 and two-thirds degrees North.
Conclusion 2 – The island of Mazaua is identical with what is called in modern maps the island of
Limasawa. The latitude given imprecisely as “9 and two-thirds degrees North” corresponds
substantially to the actual latitude of Limasawa.
Conclusion 3 – From Limasawa (or Mazaua) the fleet sailed north and west of Cebu.
Conclusion 4 – Magellan’s fleet did not touch at Butuan (or any part of Mindanao) on its way from
Homonhon to Cebu.
Conclusion 5 – The first Mass on Philippine soil was not offered at Butuan nor at any other point
in Mindanao.
How important is which was the first mass and where it was celebrated?

For Fr. Antonio Francisco B. Castro, whatever symbolic and theological value the mass had, the
fact remains that “no lasting Christian community was set up” as “Magellan was given on clear
missionary mandate” when he set out on his expedition. He said “it would take another four
decades for systematic and durable evangelization to take place.”

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B. CAVITE MUTINY: AN INSURRECTION OR MERE LABOR ISSUE?

Mutiny, any overt act of defiance or attack upon military (including naval) authority by two or
more persons subject to such authority. Mutiny should be distinguished from revolt or rebellion,
which involve a more widespread defiance and which generally have a political objective.
A revolution seeks to gain powers or rights from an oppressive power, or to gain freedom, whereas
a revolt is where the people disagree with something like rules, or laws, and come together to show
their disapproval. Usually, a revolt is on a smaller scale, or an isolated situation; whereas, a
revolution is generally on a much larger scale.

On January 20, 1872, around 200 soldiers and workers of the Fort San Felipe, the Spanish arsenal
in Cavite staged a mutiny against the Spaniards which became the excuse for Spanish repression
of the embryonic Philippine nationalist movement. The mutineers thought that fellow Filipino
indigenous soldiers in Manila would join them in a concerted uprising, the signal being the firing

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of rockets from the city walls on that night. The plan was to set fires in Tondo in order to distract
the authorities. The mutiny was quickly crushed, but the Spanish regime under the reactionary
Governor-General Rafael de Izquierdo magnified the incident and used it as an excuse to clamp
down on those Filipinos who had been calling for governmental reform. Izquierdo approved the
death sentence on 41 mutineers.
The Cavite Mutiny has two versions.

FILIPINO VERSION
SPANISH VERSION
(labor issue)
(insurrection)
• Trinidad Pardo de Tavera
• Gov. Gen. Rafael de Izquierdo
• Jose Montero y Vidal

1. SPANISH VERSION (INSURRECTION)

The uprising movement of the Filipinos is not an accident but a plan to take down the
government of Spaniards not only in Cavite but in Manila.
• According to Governor-General Rafael de Izquierdo, it is a big conspiracy because it
was predicated by the elite people and among educated leaders including native clergies
who initially provoked the Spaniards to look it as propaganda. Izquierdo blamed the unruly
Spanish press for “stockpiling malicious propagandas grasped by the Filipinos. He reported
to the king of Spain that the rebels wanted to overthrow the Spanish government to install
a new hari in the likes of Fr. Burgos and Zamora.

• According to Jose Montero y Vidal’s account, the conspiracy had been going on in
complete secrecy since the days of Gov. Gen. Carlos dela Torre. There is an attempt of
indios to overthrow the Spanish government in the Philippines. The insurrection was
motivated and planned by native clergy, mestizos, and native lawyers to carry out their
criminal project, the instigators protested the government injustice in not paying the
provinces for their tobacco crop, as well as the usury that some practice in documents that
the Finance department gives crop owners have to sell them at a loss.
- The Three Martyr Priests, namely, Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora
(GOMBURZA) were advocating reforms in the government and were active in the
secularization of Philippine parishes. The central government of Madrid proclaimed that
they want to deprive the friars of all the power of intervention in matters of civil
government and direction and management of educational institutions. Philippine parishes
should be administered by Filipino clergies. With the Cavite Mutiny, the Three Martyr
Priests were implicated; were tried through a military court; and were executed through a
garrote. This tumultuous event was witnessed by Paciano Rizal and the young Jose Rizal.

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Jose Burgos was Paciano’s mentor and confidant. It was Paciano who instilled in the minds
of the young Jose Rizal about the abuses and injustices of the Spaniards.

2. FILIPINO VERSION (LABOR ISSUE)

• The Filipino version as stipulated by Trinidad Pardo de Tavera asserts that it is just a
mere labor issue. The mutiny was caused by the abolition of usual privileges such as polo
y servicios/forced labor and tribute of Cavite soldiers and workers of the Cavite arsenal.

The Spaniards used the mutiny as a cover to execute those who advocated for governmental
reforms such as secularization, which was led by Padre Burgos. Anyone who acts in a way
that has contradictory implications about Spain’s government is considered a personal
enemy.
Based on Sgt Bonifacio Octavo’s interrogation, which can be considered a primary source.
The following September interrogation of Octavo revealed that the revolt had been planned
at least as early as November or December 1871, when Octavo claims he was approached
by the marine corporal, Pedro Manonson, who urged him to sign a list on a document
urging Filipino soldiers to rebel against Spain.

The revolt and revolution of troops and workers in Cavite where Filipino laborers battle
led against Spanish troops in response to by the Spanish. These incidents serve as a source
of inspiration and caution for Filipinos who want to speak up against the government and
other organizations that are mistreating our country and citizens.

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C. RETRACTION OF JOSE RIZAL: DID HE OR DID HE NOT?

\

Jose Rizal is identified as a hero of revolution for his writings that center on ending colonialism
and liberating Filipino minds to contribute to creating the Filipino nation.

Rizal had an unjust death on December 30, 1896 in Bagumbayan or also known as Luneta Park
nowadays. There is one issue in Dr. Jose Rizal’s life that historians have debated on several
occasions but remains unsettled. That issue is whether Rizal, on the eve of his death, re-embraced
the Catholic faith and disassociated himself from Masonry. The retraction document has been a
controversy since 1935. The original copy of the document was found in the archdiocesan archives
after 4 decades of disappearance.

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In appraising the worth of a document, certain standards or criteria were used to determine:
1. its genuineness or authenticity
2. the accuracy of the writer of the document
3. the author’s truthfulness and good faith

From Rizal’s statement: "I retract with all my heart whatever in my words, writings, publications
and conduct have been contrary to my character as a son of the Catholic Church." Some say that
this document is a forgery while others are asserting that it’s authentic and Rizal was the only who
wrote and signed the retraction paper. There are arguments that defend both claims.

RETRACTED DID NOT RETRACT

• retraction documents discovered

in 1935 • the document is a forgery
• testimony of eyewitnesses • the acts and facts do not fit
• Testimony of the press well with the story of the
• testimony of historians and retraction
writers • lack of marriage certificate
• “Acts of Faith, Hope and • out of Rizal’s character
Charity” and Acts of Piety
performed by Rizal
• Rizal’s Roman Catholic
marriage

RETRACTED

Four confessions were certified by five eyewitnesses, ten qualified witnesses, seven
newspapers and twelve historians and writers including Aglipayan bishops

• Retraction documents discovered in 1935

- In 1935, Fr. Manuel Garcia, found the “original” retraction document about Rizal. Teodoro
M. Kalaw, a Mason and the director of the National Library at the time, examined the
document and declared that it was “authentic, definite and final.”
- the actual manuscript he had written from the book stating that he declares himself as a
Catholic and with the religion he wants to live and die
- the actual hologram of Rizal’s personalities namely Monsignor O'Doherty and Manuel
Luis Quezon. Dr. Carlos P. Romulus, then editor of the Philippine Herald Letters to the
Director of the National Library showed it to Teodoro Kalaw, and the following night the
Herald ran the headline over the document titled Rizal's Retirement Found. To add to the

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validity of said document, two unknown calligraphers have thoroughly examined the
documents and agree that the document is far from being fake and genuine.

• testimony of eyewitnesses
- the testimonies of the three Fathers Vicente Balaguer (tells about the detailed story of the
last moments of Rizal in Fort Santiago), Fr. Luis Visa of the Society of the Jesus (said that
December 29,1896 Rizal wrote his own writing on the retraction) and Capt. Rafael
Dominguez (it consists of the notes of the events of the last moment of Rizal in the last 24
hours); Federico Moreno – eyewitness, neither a member of the Catholic hierarchy nor a
known mason, the narrative may be deemed objective

• Testimony of the press

- five reports have been published namely the Diario de Manila, La Voz Espanola, El
Espanol, El Commercio en la Ociena Espanola
- Reports: El Imparcial, Heraldo de Madrid

• testimony of historians and writers

- Nick Joaquin, Nicolas Zafra, Leon Maria Guerero lll, Gregorio Zaide, Guillermo Gomez
Rivera, Ambeth Ocampo, John Schumacher, Antonio Molina, Paul Dumol and Austin
Craig. They take the retraction as authentic having been examined by the handwriting
experts recognized in our court of justice.

• “Acts of Faith, Hope and Charity” and Acts of Piety performed by Rizal
- it has been cited that Rizal signed and recited the “Acts of Faith, Hope and Charity” which
was amongst the documents discovered by Fr. Manuel Garcia along with Rizal’s retraction
- he signed a Catholic prayer book, recited the Catholic prayer and kissed the crucifix before
his execution
• Rizal’s Roman Catholic marriage
- The retraction of Rizal was of grave importance for them to be wedded, because without
that retraction, they’re marriage wouldn’t have been possible, it was made clear that No
retraction, no marriage.”

Rizal have taken Josephine Bracken as his wife, as he had signed “To my dear and unhappy
wife, Josephine/ December 30th, 1896/ Jose Rizal” in the book titled “Imitation of Christ
by Thomas a Kempis” given to her in the day of his execution. Moreover, Fr. Vicente
Balaguer, S. J also claimed that he performed the canonical marriage in the morning of
December 30, 1896 hours before his execution, with the presence of one of Rizal’s sister.

Ø The retracted document of Dr. Jose Rizal is authentic and not a forgery.
Ø Rizal retracted for a four well-known reasons:
1. he wanted to marry Josephine Bracken and to make her his wife legally
2. he wanted to protect his family
3. he wanted reforms from the Spanish government
4. he wanted to heal the sickness of the Catholic Church

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DID NOT RETRACT

• the document is a forgery
- only replicas of the original document were revealed to the public
- the handwriting of Rizal in the document varies to his original handwriting based from
other documents
- Roman Roque- believed to be the forger of Rizal’s handwriting
- the authenticity of the document was carefully scrutinized Dr. Ricardo R. Pascual, who
was one of the people that was given the permission by the archbishop to examine the
document. Upon comparing the font or handwriting of Jose Rizal with his other documents
written days before his execution, including the Mi Ultimo Adios, Dr. Pascual identified
inconsistencies in the slants of the handwriting, Rizal’s signature, inks used, the
handwriting itself- the individual letters that way that it is written, and the margins.
- the document is doubtful based on the principles of textual criticism
- the retraction in the content is in part strangely worded

• the acts and facts do not fit well with the story of the retraction
- the document of retraction was allegedly signed by Rizal and not made public until 1935
- dubious factors like the numbers of commas used in the forged copy in comparison to the
original one are different. Another is the nonexistence of the list of names in the
newspaper, and the addition of notarized testimony only after 20 years

• lack of marriage certificate – lack of credible evidences about the marriage of Rizal and
Josephine Bracken; Bracken never used Rizal’s surname

• out of Rizal’s character

- Rizal’s behavior as a whole during his last days at Fort Santiago and the last 24 hours in
particular does not point to a conversion or even indicate a religious instability
- Rizal is a man of one word; he had never distorted his thoughts, and never will be.
- In the evening when his sister and mother arrived, he never mentioned about the retraction,
contrary on Father Balanguer’s account who wrote a detailed story of the last moments of
Rizal in Fort Santiago

• execution of Rizal and burial

- the execution should have not happened
- not buried in a lot outside of the Roman Catholic cemetery in Paco

Ø Rizal did not dispute his Masonic convictions and re-professed his Catholic faith
Ø Rizal’s retraction was “spontaneous”
Ø Rizal would not have been killed if he had truly retracted

The issue whether Rizal retracted or whether the document was forged or real, is still a subject
of continuous debate between historians and Rizal scholars. Yet, despite this controversy, it
does not make Rizal less of a hero. It does not devalue him for he made significant things that
opened the eyes of many Filipinos.

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D. SITE OF THE CRY OF 1896 PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION:

BALINTAWAK OR PUGADLAWAK

The term "Cry" is derived from the Spanish el grito de rebelion (cry of rebellion) or el grito for
short. El grito de rebelion strictly refers to a decision or call to revolt. It does not necessarily
connote shouting, unlike the Filipino Sigaw.
It is marked as the beginning of Philippine revolution or seeking of the independence of the
Philippines from the Spanish rule with the use of violence and arms.

BALINTAWAK
PUGADLAWIN
• Guillermo Masangkay
• Julio Nakpil • Dr. Pio Valenzuela
• Sofronio Calderon • Teodoro Agoncillo
• Isagani Medina

BALINTAWAK
• Guillermo Masangkay, an eyewitness of the event, who is known as the general and friend
of Andres Bonifacio supports the claim that the first "cry" happened in Balintawak.

According to Masangkay, a big meeting was held at Balintawak on August 26, 1896,
specifically in the house of Apolonio Samson, the captain of Revolution and one of the
founders of the Revolution. Masangkay said that the big names present in the meeting are
the leaders of Katipunan namely Bonifacio, Jacinto, Pacheco and Carrion, delegates from
Bulacan, Cabanatuan, Morong and Cavite are also present.

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August 26, 1896 at 9am in the morning, Andres Bonifacio started the meeting with Emilio
Jacinto as the acting Secretary. The meeting is about when and where the Revolution will
happen. But Teodoro Plata, Briccio Plantas and Pio Valenzuela opposed starting the
Revolution too early. Because they believed that the Filipinos are not yet ready for the
Revolution. Bonifacio then asked the people to pledge that they were to revolt.
He told them that the sign of slavery of the Filipino's were the cedula-tax charged in each
citizen. With tears in their eyes, the people as one man, pulled out their cedulas and tore
them into pieces. With their cedulas destroyed, they can no longer go back to their homes
and they must start the Revolution already.
• Katipunan composer Julio Nakpil, second husband of Gregoria de Jesus, deposited his
handwritten notes on the Philippine Revolution in the National Library under Teodoro M.
Kalaw in 1925.

Here he wrote, “swearing before God and before history that everything in these notes is
the truth”: “The revolution started in Balintawak in the last days of August 1896.” On
another page he wrote, “Bonifacio uttered the first cry of war against tyranny on Aug. 24,
1896.” Finally, he remembered that “the first cry of Balintawak was in Aug. 26, 1896 in
the place called Kangkong, adjacent to Pasong Tamo, within the jurisdiction of Balintawak,
Caloocan, then within the province of Manila.
Pugad Lawin has yet to appear on any modern map or document. It was remembered as an
open field near Samson's house in Kangkong by one veteran (Cipriano Pacheco), and as a
wooded knoll near Pasong Tamo by others (Pio Valenzuela et al).
In historical sources, the name Balintawak comes from the fact that in 1896 and well into
the middle of this century, small settlements like Kangkong, Bahay Toro or Pasong Tamo,
Banlat, and Daang Malalim were within the boundaries of a real jurisdiction entity called
Greater Balintawak.
• According to the research of Writer Linguist Sofronio Calderon, there are no municipal
records or census for Pugadlawin in the years 1903 and 1918. For starters, the "Pugad
Lawin" was never officially recognized as a place name on any Philippine map prior to
WWII. Second, it did not appear in historiography until 1928, or 32 years after the events.
Finally, the revolution was always thought to have taken place in the region of Balintawak,
which was distinct from Kalookan and Diliman. As a result, the Cry of Pugadlawin is an
imposition and an incorrect interpretation, contrary to indisputable and numerous historical
facts.

PUGADLAWIN
• Pugadlawin is located at Brgy. Bahay Toro, Quezon City. This place is believed to be the
location where Katipuneros tore up their cedulas together that symbolizes their revolt with
the colonial government of the Spanish. The “Cry of Pugadlawin '' has been authorized by
none other than Dr. Pio Valenzuela, who happened to be the eyewitness himself of the
event. In his first version, he told that the prime staging point of the Cry was in Balintawak
on Wednesday of August 26, 1896. He held this account when the happenings or events
are still vivid in his memory. On the other hand, later in his life and with a fading memory,
he wrote his Memoirs of the Revolution without consulting the written documents of the
Philippine revolution and claimed that the “Cry” took place at Pugad Lawin on August 23,
1896.

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Furthermore, the event was divided into three sections: decision-making, cedula tearing,
and the first battle. First, Katipuneros' decision to fight the Spanish government. Second,
there was the tearing of cedulas in Jose Ramos's backyard. Finally, the first battle, the first
meeting of the Spanish and the Katipuneros. The first battle was the Spanish's first
suppression of the Katipuneros. Furthermore, while it is true that the battle took place in
Balintawak, what we are discussing is where the first cry occurred and where they tore up
their cedulas into pieces.
• Additionally, while the first cry is included in decision-making and cedula tearing, it is not
included in the first battle. Thus, according to historian Teodoro Agoncillo, Balintawak is
not the location of the first cry. He strongly believes Pio Valenzuela's account that the first
cry occurred on August 23, 1896 in Pugadlawin.

The prevalent account of the controversy of the cry is that Teodoro Agoncillo in Revolt of
the Masses in 1956 said that and I quote “It was in Pugad
Lawin, where they proceeded upon leaving Samson’s place in the
afternoon of the 22nd, that the more than 1,000 members of the Katipunan met i
n the yard of Juan A. Ramos, son of
Melchora Aquino,…in the morning of August 23rd.
• According to Isagani Medina, a historian, the tearing of the cedulas, a symbol of Spanish
slavery towards the Filipinos, demonstrated that this was the start of their revolution against
Spanish colonialism, and it is thus said that to cry is to pagpupunit (Tearing). Furthermore,
as part of Medina's evidence collection, he discovered a letter from Noel Ramos, son of
Melchora Aquino, in which it was stated that the First Cry occurred in Pugad Lawin.

With the evidence and analysis presented by Medina, Agoncillo, and other historians, it
was clear that the first cry of revolution occurred in Pugad Lawin, but it was not enough to
end the debate over where the first cry occurred.

As a result, in 2001, The National Historical Institute re-examined and studied the provided
evidence again; three historians and one Supreme Court official were involved in this re-
examination. Following this, the National Historical Institute confirmed that the first cry
of revolution occurred on August 23, 1896 in Pugad Lawin.

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CHAPTER IV:

Social, Political, Economic and Cultural

Issues in Philippine History
(Integration of Sustainable
Development Goals)

Outline:

• History of Land Reform in the Philippines

• Philippine Constitution
• Taxation in the Philippines

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HISTORY OF LAND REFORM IN THE PHILIPPINES

• Distinction between Land Reform and Agrarian Reform

• History of Agrarian Reform under Different Presidents
• Comparison between Different Agrarian Reform Laws in the Philippines

Land Reforms

Land reforms refers to a wide variety of specific programmes and measures to bring about
more effective control and use of land for the benefit of the community as a whole. Land reforms
generally comprise the takeover of land by state from big land lords with partial compensation
and transfer it to small farmers and landless workers.

Land reforms are aimed at changing the agrarian structure to bring equity and to increase
productivity. The structure includes both the man-land relationship and man-man relationship
(tenant and landlord). In India, the land reforms aim to follow the ideal of socialistic and
democratic society. The land reforms in India are envisaged to bring reforms through abolition of
intermediaries, tenancy reforms, ceiling on land holdings, and consolidation and encouragement
of co-operatives.

Agrarian Reforms

Agrarian reform is a broader term. Along with land reforms it also includes measures to
modernize the agricultural practices and improving the living conditions of entire agrarian
population. It also covers the establishment of cooperatives; development of institutions to provide
agricultural credit and other inputs; processing and marketing of agricultural produce; and
establishment of agro-based industries etc.

Land Reform Agrarian Reform

• the process of redistributing land from the • the rectification of the whole system of
landlords to tenant-farmers in order that agriculture
they will be given a chance to own a piece
of land to improve their plight • concerned with the relation between
production and distribution of land among
farmers

• the processing of raw materials that are

produced by farming the land from the
respective industries

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Timeline History
• Pre-colonial Period
• Spanish Period
• First Philippine Republic
• American Period
• Commonwealth Period
• Japanese Occupation
• Philippine Republic

a. Pre-Colonial Period

“This land is Ours God gave this land to us”

Before the Spaniards came to the Philippines, Filipinos lived in villages or barangays ruled
by chiefs or datus. The datus comprised the nobility. Then came the maharlikas (freemen),
followed by the aliping mamamahay (serfs) and aliping saguiguilid (slaves).

However, despite the existence of different classes in the social structure, practically
everyone had access to the fruits of the soil. Money was unknown, and rice served as the medium
of exchange.

b. Spanish Era

“United we stand, divided we fall”

When the Spaniards came to the Philippines, the concept of encomienda (Royal Land
Grants) was introduced. This system grants that Encomenderos must defend his encomienda from
external attack, maintain peace and order within, and support the missionaries. In turn, the
encomendero acquired the right to collect tribute from the indios (native).

The system, however, degenerated into abuse of power by the encomenderos The tribute
soon became land rents to a few powerful landlords. And the natives who once cultivated the lands
in freedom were transformed into mere share tenants.

c. First Philippine Republic

“The yoke has finally broken”

When the First Philippine Republic was established in 1899, Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo
declared in the Malolos Constitution his intention to confiscate large estates, especially the so-
called Friar lands.

However, as the Republic was short-lived, Aguinaldo’s plan was never implemented.

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d. American Period

“Long live America”

Significant legislation enacted during the American Period:

• Philippine Bill of 1902 – Set the ceilings on the hectarage of private individuals and
corporations may acquire: 16 has. for private individuals and 1,024 has. for corporations.
• Land Registration Act of 1902 (Act No. 496) – Provided for a comprehensive registration
of land titles under the Torrens system.
• Public Land Act of 1903 – introduced the homestead system in the Philippines.
• Tenancy Act of 1933 (Act No. 4054 and 4113) – regulated relationships between
landowners and tenants of rice (50-50 sharing) and sugar cane lands.

The Torrens system, which the Americans instituted for the registration of lands, did not solve
the problem completely. Either they were not aware of the law or if they did, they could not pay
the survey cost and other fees required in applying for a Torrens title.

e. Commonwealth Period

“Government for the Filipinos”

President Manuel L. Quezon

espoused the "Social Justice" program to
arrest the increasing social unrest in Central
Luzon.

Significant legislation enacted during Commonwealth Period:

• 1935 Constitution – "The promotion of social justice to ensure the well-being and
economic security of all people should be the concern of the State"

• Commonwealth Act No. 178 (An Amendment to Rice Tenancy Act No. 4045), Nov. 13,
1936 – Provided for certain controls in the landlord-tenant relationships

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• National Rice and Corn Corporation (NARIC), 1936 – Established the price of rice and
corn thereby help the poor tenants as well as consumers.

• Commonwealth Act. No. 461, 1937 – Specified reasons for the dismissal of tenants and
only with the approval of the Tenancy Division of the Department of Justice.

• Rural Program Administration, created March 2, 1939 – Provided the purchase and
lease of haciendas and their sale and lease to the tenants.
Commonwealth Act No. 441 enacted on June 3, 1939 – Created the National Settlement
Administration with a capital stock of P20,000,000.

f. Japanese Occupation

“The Era of Hukbalahap”

The Second World War II started in Europe in 1939 and in the Pacific in 1941.

Hukbalahap controlled whole areas of Central Luzon; landlords who supported the
Japanese lost their lands to peasants while those who supported the Huks earned fixed rentals in
favor of the tenants.

Unfortunately, the end of war also signaled the end of gains acquired by the peasants.

Upon the arrival of the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942, peasants and workers
organizations grew strength. Many peasants took up arms and identified themselves with the anti-
Japanese group, the HUKBALAHAP (Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon).

g. Philippine Republic

“The New Republic”

After the establishment of the Philippine Independence in 1946, the problems of land
tenure remained. These became worst in certain areas. Thus the Congress of the Philippines revised
the tenancy law.

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President Manuel A. Roxas

(1946-1948) enacted the following laws:

• Republic Act No. 34 -- Established

the 70-30 sharing arrangements and
regulating share-tenancy contracts.

• Republic Act No. 55 -- Provided for a

more effective safeguard against
arbitrary ejectment of tenants.

Elpidio R. Quirino (1948-1953) enacted

the following law:

Executive Order No. 355 issued on

October 23, 1950 -- Replaced the National
Land Settlement Administration with Land
Settlement Development Corporation
(LASEDECO) which takes over the
responsibilities of the Agricultural Machinery
Equipment Corporation and the Rice and
Corn Production Administration.

Ramon Magsaysay (1953-1957)

enacted the following laws:

• Republic Act No. 1160 of 1954 --

Abolished the LASEDECO and
established the National Resettlement
and Rehabilitation Administration
(NARRA) to resettle dissidents and
landless farmers. It was particularly
aimed at rebel returnees providing
home lots and farmlands in Palawan
and Mindanao.

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• Republic Act No. 1199 (Agricultural Tenancy Act of 1954) -- governed the relationship
between landowners and tenant farmers by organizing share-tenancy and leasehold system.
The law provided the security of tenure of tenants. It also created the Court of Agrarian
Relations.

• Republic Act No. 1400 (Land Reform Act of 1955) -- Created the Land Tenure
Administration (LTA) which was responsible for the acquisition and distribution of large
tenanted rice and corn lands over 200 hectares for individuals and 600 hectares for
corporations.

• Republic Act No. 821 (Creation of Agricultural Credit Cooperative Financing

Administration) -- Provided small farmers and share tenants loans with low interest rates
of six to eight percent.

President Carlos P. Garcia (1957-1961)

Continued the program of President Ramon

Magsaysay. No new legislation passed.

President Diosdado P. Macapagal (1961-

1965) enacted the following law:

Republic Act No. 3844 of August 8, 1963

(Agricultural Land Reform Code) -- Abolished share
tenancy, institutionalized leasehold, set retention
limit at 75 hectares, invested rights of preemption and
redemption for tenant farmers, provided for an
administrative machinery for implementation,
institutionalized a judicial system of agrarian cases,
incorporated extension, marketing and supervised
credit system of services of farmer beneficiaries.

The RA was hailed as one that would

emancipate Filipino farmers from the bondage of
tenancy.

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President Ferdinand E. Marcos

(1965-1986)

Proclamation No. 1081 on September 21,

1972 ushered the Period of the New Society. Five
days after the proclamation of Martial Law, the entire
country was proclaimed a land reform area and
simultaneously the Agrarian Reform Program was
decreed.

President Marcos enacted the following laws:

• Republic Act No. 6389, (Code of Agrarian Reform) and RA No. 6390 of 1971 -- Created
the Department of Agrarian Reform and the Agrarian Reform Special Account Fund. It
strengthen the position of farmers and expanded the scope of agrarian reform.
• Presidential Decree No. 2, September 26, 1972 -- Declared the country under land reform
program. It enjoined all agencies and offices of the government to extend full cooperation
and assistance to the DAR. It also activated the Agrarian Reform Coordinating Council.
• Presidential Decree No. 27, October 21, 1972 -- Restricted land reform scope to tenanted
rice and corn lands and set the retention limit at 7 hectares.
•

President Corazon C. Aquino (1986-1992)

The Constitution ratified by the Filipino

people during the administration of President
Corazon C. Aquino provides under Section 21 under
Article II that “The State shall promote
comprehensive rural development and agrarian
reform.”

On June 10, 1988, former President Corazon

C. Aquino signed into law Republic Act No. 6657 or
otherwise known as the Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Law (CARL). The law became effective on
June 15, 1988.

Subsequently, four Presidential issuances

were released in July 1987 after 48 nationwide
consultations before the actual law was enacted.

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President Corazon C. Aquino enacted the following laws:

• Executive Order No. 228, July 16, 1987 – Declared full ownership to qualified farmer-
beneficiaries covered by PD 27. It also determined the value remaining unvalued rice and
corn lands subject of PD 27 and provided for the manner of payment by the FBs and mode
of compensation to landowners.
• Executive Order No. 229, July 22, 1987 – Provided mechanism for the implementation
of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP).
• Proclamation No. 131, July 22, 1987 – Instituted the CARP as a major program of the
government. It provided for a special fund known as the Agrarian Reform Fund (ARF),
with an initial amount of Php50 billion to cover the estimated cost of the program from
1987-1992.
• Executive Order No. 129-A, July 26, 1987 – streamlined and expanded the power and
operations of the DAR.
• Republic Act No. 6657, June 10, 1988 (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law) – An act
which became effective June 15, 1988 and instituted a comprehensive agrarian reform
program to promote social justice and industrialization providing the mechanism for its
implementation and for other purposes. This law is still the one being implemented at
present.
• Executive Order No. 405, June 14, 1990 – Vested in the Land Bank of the Philippines the
responsibility to determine land valuation and compensation for all lands covered by
CARP.
• Executive Order No. 407, June 14, 1990 – Accelerated the acquisition and distribution of
agricultural lands, pasture lands, fishponds, agro-forestry lands and other lands of the
public domain suitable for agriculture.

President Fidel V. Ramos (1992-1998)

When President Fidel V. Ramos formally took over

in 1992, his administration came face to face with
publics who have lost confidence in the agrarian
reform program. His administration committed to the
vision “Fairer, faster and more meaningful
implementation of the Agrarian Reform Program.

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President Fidel V. Ramos enacted the following laws:

• Republic Act No. 7881, 1995 – Amended certain provisions of RA 6657 and exempted
fishponds and prawns from the coverage of CARP.
• Republic Act No. 7905, 1995 – Strengthened the implementation of the CARP.
• Executive Order No. 363, 1997 – Limits the type of lands that may be converted by setting
conditions under which limits the type of lands that may be converted by setting conditions
under which specific categories of agricultural land are either absolutely non-negotiable
for conversion or highly restricted for conversion.
• Republic Act No. 8435, 1997 (Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act AFMA) –
Plugged the legal loopholes in land use conversion.
• Republic Act 8532, 1998 (Agrarian Reform Fund Bill) – Provided an additional Php50
billion for CARP and extended its implementation for another 10 years.

President Joseph E. Estrada (1998-2000)

“ERAP PARA SA MAHIRAP’. This was the battle cry

that endeared President Joseph Estrada and made him
very popular during the 1998 presidential election.

President Joseph E. Estrada initiated the enactment of the following law:

Executive Order N0. 151, September 1999 (Farmer’s Trust Fund) – Allowed the
voluntary consolidation of small farm operation into medium and large scale integrated enterprise
that can access long-term capital.

During his administration, President Estrada launched the Magkabalikat Para sa

Kaunlarang Agraryo or MAGKASAKA. The DAR forged into joint ventures with private
investors into agrarian sector to make FBs competitive.

However, the Estrada Administration was short lived. The masses who put him into office
demanded for his ouster.

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President Gloria Macapacal-Arroyo

(2000-2010)

The agrarian reform program under the

Arroyo administration is anchored on the vision “To
make the countryside economically viable for the
Filipino family by building partnership and
promoting social equity and new economic
opportunities towards lasting peace and sustainable
rural development.”

Land Tenure Improvement - DAR will remain vigorous in implementing land acquisition
and distribution component of CARP. The DAR will improve land tenure system through land
distribution and leasehold.

Provision of Support Services - CARP not only involves the distribution of lands but also
included package of support services which includes: credit assistance, extension services,
irrigation facilities, roads and bridges, marketing facilities and training and technical support
programs.

Infrastructure Projects - DAR will transform the agrarian reform communities (ARCs), an
area focused and integrated delivery of support services, into rural economic zones that will help
in the creation of job opportunities in the countryside.

KALAHI ARZone - The KALAHI Agrarian Reform (KAR) Zones were also launched.
These zones consists of one or more municipalities with concentration of ARC population to
achieve greater agro-productivity.

Agrarian Justice - To help clear the backlog of agrarian cases, DAR will hire more paralegal
officers to support undermanned adjudicatory boards and introduce quota system to compel
adjudicators to work faster on agrarian reform cases. DAR will respect the rights of both farmers
and landowners.

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President Benigno Aquino III

(2010-2016)

President Benigno Aquino III vowed

during his 2012 State of the Nation Address that
he would complete before the end of his term the
Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program
(CARP), the centerpiece program of the
administration of his mother, President Corazon
Aquino.

The younger Aquino distributed their family-owned Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac. Apart from
the said farm lots, he also promised to complete the distribution of privately-owned lands of
productive agricultural estates in the country that have escaped the coverage of the program.

Under his administration, the Agrarian Reform Community Connectivity and Economic
Support Services (ARCCESS) project was created to contribute to the overall goal of rural poverty
reduction especially in agrarian reform areas.

Agrarian Production Credit Program (APCP) provided credit support for crop production
to newly organized and existing agrarian reform beneficiaries’ organizations (ARBOs) and
farmers’ organizations not qualified to avail themselves of loans under the regular credit windows
of banks.

The legal case monitoring system (LCMS), a web-based legal system for recording and
monitoring various kinds of agrarian cases at the provincial, regional and central offices of the
DAR to ensure faster resolution and close monitoring of agrarian-related cases, was also launched.

Aside from these initiatives, Aquino also enacted Executive Order No. 26, Series of 2011,
to mandate the Department of Agriculture-Department of Environment and Natural Resources-
Department of Agrarian Reform Convergence Initiative to develop a National Greening Program
in cooperation with other government agencies.

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President Rodrigo Roa Duterte

(2016 – 2021)

Under his leadership, the President wants

to pursue an “aggressive” land reform program
that would help alleviate the life of poor Filipino
farmers by prioritizing the provision of support
services alongside land distribution.

The President directed the DAR to launch the 2nd phase of agrarian reform where landless
farmers would be awarded with undistributed lands under the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform
Program (CARP).

Duterte plans to place almost all public lands, including military reserves, under agrarian
reform.

The President also placed 400 hectares of agricultural lands in Boracay under CARP.

Under his administration the DAR created an anti-corruption task force to investigate and
handle reports on alleged anomalous activities by officials and employees of the department.

The Department also pursues an “Oplan Zero Backlog” in the resolution of cases in
relation to agrarian justice delivery of the agrarian reform program to fast-track the implementation
of CARP.

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B. PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTION

Outline:

§ Evolution of Philippine Constitution

§ Bill of Rights

§ EVOLUTION OF PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTION

a. 1897 Constitution of Biak-na-Bato
b. 1899 Malolos Constitution
c. 1935 Commonwealth Constitution
d. 1943 Japanese-Sponsored Constitution
e. 1973 Marcos Administration Constitution
f. 1986 Freedom Constitution
g. 1987 Philippine Constitution

Constitution
§ a set of rules that guide how a country, state or other political organization works
§ written instrument (document) by which the fundamental powers of government are
established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several
departments for their safe and useful exercise for the benefit of the body politic
§ fundamental law of the land

Importance of Constitution
• maintain law and order
• impose rules and regulations
• protect individual rights and freedom
• limits the power of the government

a. 1897 Constitution of Biak-na-Bato

• provisionary constitution of the Philippines during the Philippine revolution
• it was borrowed from Cuba, written by Isabelo Artacho and Felix Ferrer in Spanish, and
later on translated in Tagalog
• Salient Feature: Supreme Council –headed by the president and four department
secretaries
• This constitution was never fully implemented, since a truce, the Pact of Biak-na-Bato,
was signed between the Spanish and Philippine Revolutionary Army

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b. Malolos Constitution
Salient Features:
• popular, representative government
• unicameral legislation
• separation of church and state
• bill of rights
• compulsory and free basic education
• Not fully implemented due to eruption of Philippine-US War

c. 1935 Commonwealth Constitution

Salient Features:
• bicameral legislation
• 4-year term for the president and vice-president with reelection
• right to vote – 21+male citizens; extended to women
• The implementation was interrupted due to Japanese occupation

d. 1943 Japanese-Sponsored Constitution

Salient Features:
• strong executive powers
• unicameral national assembly
• Short-lived constitution because the Americans came back and gave us our independence
• Upon liberation from the Japanese forces, many succeeding governments reverted back to
the 1935 Constitution until Marcos came into picture

e. 1973 Constitution
• Marcos was elected president in 1965
• Marcos was reelected president in 1969
• Con-Con (Constitutional Convention) began to meet in 1971
• Marcos declared Martial Law in 1972
• 1973 Constitution

Salient Features:
• Parliamentary government with Prime Minister and a President
• Legislative powers was vested in a unicameral National Assembly elected by the people
• Legalized all decrees, proclamations and orders of the president

f. 1986 Freedom Constitution

• Assassination of Ninoy Aquino
• Snap election
• EDSA People Power I
• Corazon Aquino became president
• 1986 Constitution

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Salient Features:
• A verbatim copy of the 1973 Constitution minus the provisions of the Batasang
Pambansa
• Aquino vested in herself both executive and legislative powers
• A transitional constitution that lasted for a year

g. 1987 Philippine Constitution

4 Themes:
1. promotion of social justice
2. upholding of national sovereignty
3. democratic governance and the prevention of another dictatorship
4. respect for human rights and civil liberties

§ The highest law of the country, binding all Filipino people.

§ Since its passage in 1987, it has succeeded the "Freedom Constitution."
§ It has announced a National Policy to carry out the changes required by the people, to
preserve their Basic Rights, to approve a Provisional Constitution, and to ensure an orderly
transition to a government governed by the new constitution.
§ It has adopted some provisions of the 1973 Constitution, provided that they are not in
conflict with the proclamation, such as the principle of separation of powers, the proper
method of converting a bill into a law, and the bill of rights, which includes our political,
cultural, social, spiritual, and civil rights.
§ It gave the President considerable authority to restructure government and dismiss officials,
as well as requiring him to convene a commission to prepare a new, more formal
Constitution. It has been a document truly reflective of the ideals and aspirations of the
Filipino people.
§ The Republic form of government by virtue of the 1987 Constitution was the same type of
republican government prior to Martial law by virtue of the 1935 Constitution and provided
for three governmental powers or 3 branches:
o Executive Branch
o Legislative Branch
§ Divided into two houses (House of Senate and House of Representatives)
o Judiciary Branch
§ Powers of the government were separated from one another
§ Had a system of Checks and Balances

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ARTICLE III of the 1987 PHILIPPINE CONSTITUTION: BILL OF RIGHTS

Objectives:
a. to observe utmost respect for one’s life, liberty and property; and the adherence to the
rule of law
b. to enable students to acquire legal knowledge about their constitutional rights as citizens
and persons living in the state
c. to understand and appreciate the right granted by the constitution to a person who stands
as accused in any legal/court proceedings
d. to understand that liberty/freedom is not absolute but may be restrained by law on the
basis of public order, safety, moral, health, and national interest.

Distinction between Human Rights from Bill of Rights

The United Nations defines human rights as those rights which are inherent in our nature
and without which we cannot live as human beings.
The Philippine Commission on Human Rights (CHR) defines it as those rights that are
supreme, inherent and inalienable right to life, liberty, and self-development.
The Bill of Rights in the Constitution is the article that articulates and enlists the rights of
an individual that the government is duly bound to protect, respect and carry out.
It embodies statements of individual rights and immunities to protect persons or citizens
from the government excesses and oppression.

Human Rights Bill of Rights

A human rights law establishes rights that A bill of rights is a collection of rights granted
should belong to all humans. to a particular population.

For instance, a law against torture doesn't just The Bill of Rights in the Constitution outlines
say that Filipino citizens have the right not to the rights of the Filipino People, limiting the
be tortured, but that torture in itself is wrong government from passing certain kinds of
and shouldn't be done to anyone. laws.

A human rights act establishes rights of being In other words, a Bill of Rights establishes
human. rights of citizenship, civil rights.

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RIGHTS PROTECTED BY THE BILL OF RIGHTS

Ø THE RIGHT TO DUE PROCESS

Section 1. No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of
law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.

LIFE – attributed to the physical appearance and

existence of a human form
Example: right to self-preservation

Deprivation of life includes the loss of any of the various physical and mental attributes
which man must have to live as human being

LIBERTY – means not only the right of an individual to be free from physical restraint of
his person, such as by imprisonment or detention, but also the right to be free in the use of
his faculties in all lawful ways.
Example: freedom of expression, speech, and travel

Deprivation of liberty means the prevention, suppression and restriction of human

freedom and expression

PROPERTY – may refer to a thing itself or the right over the thing
Example: right to own, use, transmit and even destroy the property, subject to the
right of the state and of other persons

Deprivation of property exists when the property is unlawfully confiscated or when the
exercise of the right over a property is unreasonably prevented

Power of Eminent Domain – the power of the state to acquire private property for public
use upon payment of just compensation

Ø RIGHT AGAINST UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES

Section 2. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
against unreasonable searches and seizures of whatever nature and for any purpose shall
be inviolable, and no search warrant or warrant of arrest shall issue except upon probable
cause to be determined personally by the judge after examination under oath or affirmation
of the complainant and the witnesses he may produce, and particularly describing the place
to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Search Warrant – an order in writing, issued in the name of the Republic of the
Philippines, signed by a judge and directed to a peace officer commanding him to search
for personal property and bring it before the court

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Warrant of Arrest – a command in formal writing issued against a person; to take him in
the custody of law in order that he may be bound to answer for the commission of an
offense.

Warrantless Arrest
q in flagrante delicto arrest
q hot pursuit
q arrest of escaped prisoners

Ø RIGHT OF PRIVACY OF COMMUNICATION

Section 3. (1) The privacy of communication and correspondence shall be inviolable except
upon lawful order of the court, or when public safety or order requires otherwise, as
prescribed by law.

(2) Any evidence obtained in violation of this or the preceding section shall be inadmissible
for any purpose in any proceeding.

The new constitution protects and safeguards the privacy of communication (by telephone
and similar devices) as well as correspondence (letters and telegrams).

Exceptions:
1. Upon lawful order of the court, as when the judge orders that the communication or letter
be testified to as being material to a pending case.
2. When public safety or order shall require otherwise, as prescribed by law.

Republic Act 4200 or the Anti-Wiretapping Act, as a reinforcement of privacy of

communication, is a law which prohibits a person not authorized by all the parties to any
private communication, to wiretap or use any devise to secretly overhear, intercept, record,
or communicate the content of the said communication to any person.

Fruit of the Poisonous Tree Doctrine

The name of the doctrine metaphorically describes what happens to an “evident” (fruit)
taken through “unlawful means” (poisonous tree). The evidence-fruit is discarded because
it may infect or destroy the integrity of the case and forfeit the purpose of the law.

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Ø FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE

Section 4. No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the
press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for
redress of grievances.

Freedom of Speech implies the opportunity to freely utter whatever anyone pleases and
be protected against any responsibility unless such utterances are against the law or against
recognized rights of others

Freedom of the Press implies the opportunity to freely print whatsoever one pleases and
to be protected against any responsibility unless such print is against the recognized rights
of others.

Freedom of Expression is a catch-all phraseology for it may include freedom of speech,

press, religion, association and acts.

Right to Assemble means a right on the part of the citizens to meet peacefully for
consultation with respect to public affairs, not the affairs of other people

Right to Petition means any person or group of persons can complain without fear of
penalty to the concerned government branch or office

Ø FREEDOM OF RELIGION

Section 5. No law shall be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the

free exercise thereof. The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship,
without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed. No religious test shall be
required for the exercise of civil or political rights.

Freedom of religion is meant to protect the broadest possible liberty of conscience, to

allow each man to believe as his conscience directs, to profess his beliefs, and to live as he
believes he ought to live, consistent with the liberty of others and with the common good.

Ø FREEDOM OF ABODE AND RIGHT TO TRAVEL

Section 6. The liberty of abode and of changing the same within the limits prescribed by
law shall not be impaired except upon lawful order of the court. Neither shall the right to
travel be impaired except in the interest of national security, public safety, or public health,
as may be provided by law.

Abode refers to a place or domicile where a person has established his residence.

Travel refers to act of mobility going in or out of places where one pleases.

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Ø RIGHT OF PEOPLE TO INFORMATION

Section 7. The right of the people to information on matters of public concern shall be
recognized. Access to official records, and to documents and papers pertaining to official
acts, transactions, or decisions, as well as to government research data used as basis for
policy development, shall be afforded the citizen, subject to such limitations as may be
provided by law.

Any citizen of the Philippines, and alien to a given extent, enjoys the right to obtain
information on matters of public concern from government records and documents on
public policy, laws passed by Congress, financial report at the Department of Budget and
Management. However, certain records of national interest and confidentiality may be kept
secret by the State.

Ø RIGHT TO FORM ASSOCIATIONS

Section 8. The right of the people, including those employed in the public and private
sectors, to form unions, associations, or societies for purposes not contrary to law shall
not be abridged.

People can form unions, associations, or organizations which are peaceful, purposeful, and
not contrary to law.

Ø RIGHT TO PRIVATE PROPERTY

Section 9. Private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation.
The Constitution respects the rights of citizens to own something that is strictly for their
personal use. The government may need a particular property for, a public project but the
government must pay justly.

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RIGHTS OF THE ACCUSED

• The right to adequate legal assistance

• The right, when under investigation for the commission of an offense, to be informed of
his right to remain silent and to have counsel

Miranda Doctrine – The accused has the right to remain silent; that anything he says can
be used against him in a court of law; that he has the right to the presence of an attorney,
and that if he cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for him prior to any
questioning, if he so desires.

• The right against the use of torture, force, violence, threat intimidation, or any other
means which vitiates the free will

• The right against being held in secret incommunicado, or similar forms of solitary
confinement

• The right against excessive fines. The right to bail and against excessive bail

• The right to due process

• The right to the presumption of innocence, the right to be heard by himself and
counsel, the right to meet the witnesses face to face, the right to have compulsory
process to secure the attendance of witnesses and the production of evidence in his
behalf

• The right against self-incrimination

• The right against detention by reason of political beliefs and aspirations and the right
against involuntary servitude

• The right against cruel, degrading or inhuman punishment and the right against
infliction of death penalty except for heinous crimes.

• The right against double jeopardy – prohibits the execution of any person for a crime of
which he was previously acquitted or convicted.

• right against ex post facto law and bill of attainder

Section 22, Article III provides that “no ex post facto law or bill of attainder shall be
enacted.”

An ex post facto law is one which makes criminal an act done before the passage of the
law which was innocent when done, and punishes such an act.

A bill of attainder is “a legislative act which inflicts punishment without trial

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DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS OF CITIZENS

a. to uphold the Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines and obey the laws

b. to be loyal to the Republic

c. to defend the state

d. to contribute to the development and welfare of the state

e. to cooperate with duly bound constituted authorities

f. to exercise rights responsibly and with due regard for the rights of others

g. to have gainful work

h. to register and vote in the elections

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• TAXATION IN THE PHILIPPINES

1.Objectives

After having gone through this lesson, the students will be able to:

A. To learn and understand the history of Taxation.

B. To demonstrate the ability to understand why the government imposes taxes to the people, its
purpose, and many undertakings to support the projects of the government.
C. To work as a team and learn the intricacies of the taxes instituted by the government.
D. To instill among the students that the revenues come from the people is very crucial in
financing the government projects to move on.

2. Fundamentals of Taxation

The beginning of the idea of taxation cannot be dated in the continuum of our history. It came as
a matter of survival for the government. The development of tax law as a comprehensive and
general system is a recent phenomenon resulting from the evolution of taxes and increasing state-
economy relationship. A tax law is a body of rules passed by the legislature by virtue of which the
government acquires a claim or property as a matter of legal duty or obligation by operation of
law. Taxation may be defined then, as the power of the sovereign to impose burden or charges
upon persons, property or property rights for the use and support of government in order to enable
it to discharge its function.

Nature of Taxation

The power of taxation is both inherent and legislative in character because it has been reserved by
the State for it to exercise. It is an essential and inherent attribute of sovereignty, belonging as a
matter of right to every independent government. The government possesses it without being
conferred by the people. The power is inherent because the sustenance of government requires
contribution from them.

The power of taxation is legislative in character because only the legislature can make tax laws. It
is an exercise of the high act of the sovereignty to be performed only by the legislature upon
consideration of the policy, necessity and public welfare. Having the power to tax, it must also
possess the sole power to prescribe the means by which the tax shall be collected, and designate
the officers through whom it shall be enforced.

The local government units (LGUs) are now allowed to created their own sources of revenue.
Additionally, it is stated in Section 25, Article II that “The State shall ensure the autonomy of local
governments.” This has been implemented with the enactment of the Local Government Code of
199.

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The taxes derived from the community is very crucial for the government function and to finance
the public service. This one way of returning the taxes to the people and returning to them the
services of the government by assisting the economic advancement of the people and also to
meet their social needs.

3. CONTENT: Why is there Taxation?

Taxation is the imposition of a mandatory levy on the citizen and or business of a country by their
government.

In all small country, the government derives a majority of its revenues for financing public
services from taxation. Most individual will feel the impact of quite a number of taxes
during their lifetime. Also, taxes have become a power instrument for policy makers around
the world to use in attaining economic and social needs

Charges refer to pecuniary liability, as rent or fees against person or property.

Fees means a charge fixed by law or ordinance for the regulation or inspection of a
business or activity.

Purpose of taxation – is to accumulate funds for the functioning of the

government machineries. No government in the world can run its administrative office without
funds and it has no such system incorporated in itself to generate profit from its functioning.

The primary purpose of taxation is to raise revenues for public needs so that the people may be
enabled to live in a civilized society. It also serves for a variety of purpose. It may be increased in
order to stabilize prices and stimulate greater production; taxes on imports may be increased to
favor domestic production; or decrease to encourage foreign trade; it can also mobilize capital to
be poured into capital deficient fields of business.

Thus, taxation is an instrument of fiscal policy, and fiscal policy influences the direction and
structure of money supply, prices and of the national economy.

The four “Rs” of tax refer to the key benefits that flow from taxation:
• Revenue, to fund public services, infrastructure and administration
• Redistribution, to curb inequalities between individuals and between groups
• Repricing, to limit public “bads” such as tobacco consumption and carbon emissions
• Representation, to build healthier democratic processes, recognising that higher
reliance of government spending on tax revenues is strongly linked to higher quality
of governance and political representation

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Basis of Taxation

The power of taxation originated from the theory that the existence of a government is a necessity.
No government , whether democratic or despotic, can exist without resources to finance its
operation. A true tax is an exaction for revenue that is for the support of the government.

Inherent Limitations of the Power of Taxation

a. Limitation of public purpose – A tax is for public purpose where it is for the support of
government, or any of the recognized object of the government, or where it will directly promote
the welfare of the community in equal measure.

b. Limitation of territorial jurisdiction – The general rule is that sovereignty of a state extends
only as far as its territorial jurisdiction. It follows that its taxing power does not extend beyond its
territorial limits, but within its limit, it may tax persons, property, income or business.

c. Limitation of double taxation – Double taxation may be understood as direct duplicate taxation
which means taxing twice by the same public authority for the same purpose during the taxing
period some of the property in the territory in which the tax is paid without taking all of them a
secondtime.

d. Limitation of non-delegation of taxing power – The constitution provides sovereignty resides

in the people and all government authority emanates from them. Under a republican government,
the people created a legislative department for the exercise of their legislative power manner in
which those rules shall be given effect. The power cannot be delegated to the President and to local
government. However, it may be delegated to the municipal corporations which are the
instrumentalities of the state for the better administration of the government in matters of local
concerns.

5. Limitation of exemption of government agency or instrumentality – The general rule is that

agencies and instrumentalities of the government is exempted from taxation. So, properties owned
by the Philippine government, any province, city, municipality, or municipal districts are exempted
from taxation. However, government entities performing profit-making activities are not exempted
from taxation.

Basic Principles of Taxation

1. Fiscal adequacy – emphasizes the source of revenue as a whole must be sufficient to meet the
expanding governmental expenses regardless of business conditions, export taxes, trade balances,
and problems of economic adjustments.

2. Equality or theoretical justice – refers to the use of revenues which must be levied based on
the taxpayer’s ability to pay

3. Administrative feasibility – means that the tax system must be clear to the taxpayers, can be
enforced and is convenient and not burdensome or discouraging to a business activity

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A tax may be defined then, as a forced and involuntary burden assessed in accordance with some
reasonable rule of appointment by the authority of a sovereign government upon the persons or
properties within its jurisdiction, to provide public revenues for the support of the government.

It proceeds upon the theory that the existence of the government is a necessity, that it cannot
continue to operate without the means to pay for its expenses, and for those means has the right to
compel all citizens and properties within its limit to contribute.

Essential Characteristics of Taxes

1. it is an enforced contribution
2. it is exacted pursuant to legislative authority
3. it is contribution in money
4. it is levied upon person, property and property rights
5. it is for the purpose of raising revenue
6. it must be for public purpose
7. it must be proportionate in character

Forms of Escape from Taxation

1. Shifting – transfer of the burden of a tax by the original payer on the one on whom the tax was
assesses or imposed to another or someone else.

2. Capitalization – special form of backward shifting. It occurs when the good is durable good,
the whole series of future taxes is to be shifted backward at the time of purchase, and the future
taxes must be capitalized and deducted in a lump sum from the price offered.

3. Transformation – this is effected through the process of production. When the producer pays
the taxes himself and recovers the additional expenses by improving his production thereby turning
out units of his production at lower cost.

4. Tax Evasion – illegal effort to avoid payment of tax

5. Tax Avoidance – use of legally permissible means to reduce tax liability

6. Tax Exemption – grant of immunity to a particular person or corporation from a tax upon
properties or exercise which they are obligated to pay.

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The Tax Code imposes the following:

a. Income Tax
b. Estate and Donor’s Taxes
c. Value-Added Tax (VAT)
d. other percentage taxes
e. Excise Tax
f. Documentary Stamp Taxes
g. others

A. Income Tax

Income tax is imposed on: Individuals, Corporations, Estates under judicial settlement, and
Irrevocable funds.

A.1. Individual Income Tax

Individual taxpayers may be classified into:

a. Citizen: Resident or Non-Resident
b. Alien: Resident or Non-Resident

The Incomes of individuals which are subject to tax are:

a. Compensation income
b. business income and from profession
c. and passive and other sources of income

Taxable Income – refers to the items of gross income less deductions and/or personal and
additional exemptions, if any.

Individuals Earning Purely Compensation Income (including Non-Business/Non-Profession

Related Income and Single Proprietors) can look forward to a higher take home pay in 2023.

This is per Republic Act No. 10963, otherwise known as the Tax Reform for Acceleration and
Inclusion (TRAIN) Law which took effect on January 1, 2018.

Under the TRAIN Law, starting January 1, 2023, those with annual taxable income with less than
P250, 000.00 are still exempt from paying personal income tax, while the rest of the taxpayers,
except those with taxable income of P8, 000, 000.00 will have lower tax rates ranging from 15%
to 30% by 2023. To maintain progressivity, the top individual taxpayers whose annual taxable
income exceeds 8 million were imposed a higher tax rate of 35% from the previous 32%.

The income tax on the individual’s taxable income will be computed based on the following
schedules effective January 1, 2023 onwards:

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Compared to the Income Tax rates imposed during the initial implementation of the TRAIN Law
in 2018, the new annual income tax rates for individuals significantly decreased by 5% for those
with taxable income of more than P250, 000.00 up to P2 million while a 2% decrease in the tax
rate was noted for those individuals with taxable income of more than P2 million up to P8 million.

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Chapter V.

Living History:
Evaluation and Promotion of Local
and Oral History, Museums,
Historical Shrines, Popular Culture,
and Cultural Practices

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LIVING HISTORY SESSIONS

Travelling Classroom: Vigan Heritage Tour
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the tour, the participants should be able to:
1. describe and examine the historical value of Vigan as a key national heritage site;
2. develop competencies in facilitating a heritage walking tour such as skills in guiding
and presentation delivery;
3. demonstrate the ability to use primary sources in writing tour commentaries/scripts;
4. display the ability to work in team and contribute to a group project; and
5. propose recommendations to further improve heritage walking tours as an effective
out-of-classroom activity.

Tour Participants – History Professor

Tour Facilitator
Jerry C. Buenavista – course facilitator
• 1 (one) Vigan history expert
• 1 (one) Vigan heritage tour consultant

Tour Itinerary
Date and Assembly Time:
Assembly Place: MMSU CAS
7:00-8:00 AM Breakfast
8:00 Assembly at MMSU CAS
8:10-9:30 Travel time to Vigan
9:30-10:30 Old Provincial Jail and Burgos Museum
11:00-12:00 Syquia Mansion/Rivercruise
12:00-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:00 Hotel Luna
2:00-3:00 Calle Crisologo
3:00-4:00 Pagburnayan
4:00-5:00 Baluarte
5:00-6:30 Travel time to Batac

General Reminders for Participants

1. Please wear appropriate comfortable clothes and shoes.

2. Bring your own bottled water and umbrella or any personal protection against hear or
in case of unexpected weather condition.
3. Please take care of your personal belongings.
4. Please stay with your group at all times.

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General Presentation Delivery Techniques

1. uses the right tone of voice (not too loud or too weak)
2. makes sure that the quality of word pronunciation is clear and distinct
3. varies voice speed and pitch for emphasis
4. has rich vocabulary and uses comprehensive words
5. engages the participants/clients through eye contact
6. shows positive rapport by smiling and being friendly
7. repeats questions before answering them
8. has poise and stance that shows confidence and good body language
9. be properly attired for the type of tour or activity

General Guiding Techniques on Foot

1. provides a brief introduction of the site

2. herds the clients by showing or leading the way
3. selects shaded areas before giving commentaries
4. waits for most of the clients before giving commentaries
5. establishes eye contact with the audience
6. uses positive gestures when pointing at objects

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ASSESSMENT RUBRIC FOR GROUP PRESENTATION on CHAPTER II

Criteria Outstanding Very Good Good Fair/Pass Failure

91-100 81-90 71-80 61-70 Below 60
Background • The presentation • The presentation • The presentation • The introduction is • There is no
of the includes a clear, includes a clear includes a clear somewhat background and
Primary interesting and introduction that introduction that inadequate in introduction, or
Source effective identifies how the identifies how the communicating the
(20%) introduction that material is related material is related how the material is background/intro
identifies how the to the topic under to the topic under related to the topic duction is not
material is related discussion, as well discussion. under discussion. useful in
to the topic under as to previously- understanding
discussion, as well discussed topic. relevance of the
as to previously- material in
discussed topic. • Information understanding
provided about the Philippine
background of the history.
• The introduction • The introduction material is
• The introduction provides the provides a incomplete or
effectively important sufficient incorrect.
provides all background background on the
important information on the material (who,
background material (who, what, when,
information on the what, when, where).
material (who, where).
what, when,
where) in an • The introduction
accurate and identifies some
detailed manner. relevance of the
• The introduction • The introduction material in
• The introduction discusses the discusses the understanding
effectively relevance of the relevance of the major
discusses the material in material in episodes/themes in
relevance of the understanding understanding Philippine history,
material in major major but the discussion
understanding episodes/themes episodes/themes is largely
major in Philippine in Philippine superficial or
episodes/themes history, and also history. incomplete.
in Philippine attempts to relate
history, as well as the material to
in developing a contemporary
historically- events/themes/iss
grounded ues.
understanding of
contemporary
events/themes/iss
ues.
Contextual • The presentation • The presentation • The presentation • The discussion of • There is no
Analysis of the author’s of the author’s of the author’s the historical discussion of the
(30%) background and background and background is context and historical context
context is context is clear clear and importance of the of the document.
exhaustive, clear and accurate. accurate. document is too
and accurate. general and lacks
specific details.

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• The students • The students • The students

identify and identify and identify the • The background of
analyze the analyze the problems that the the author was not
problems that the problems that the document wants clearly explained.
document wants document wants to address.
to address. to address.

• There is an
attempt to explain
• The students • The students the importance of
explain clearly explain the the document in
the importance of importance of the understanding the
the document in document in issues of the
understanding the understanding the given period.
issues of the issues of the
given period. given period.

• The document is
correlated with
the other
documents
dealing with the
same period.
Content • The important • The important • The important • Some important • There is no
Analysis elements of the elements of the elements of the elements of the adequate
(30%) document are document are document are document are discussion of the
correctly identified and identified and identified and content of the
identified and analyzed. analyzed. analyzed. document.
analyzed.

• There is a • There is a • There is a little • There is an attempt

thorough discussion of the discussion of the to discuss the
discussion of the value and value and value and
value and contributions of contributions of contributions of
contributions of the contents of the contents of the contents of the
the contents of the document in the document in document in
the document in understanding the understanding the understanding the
understanding the issues prevalent issues prevalent issues prevalent
issues prevalent during the period. during the period. during the period.
during the period.
• The contents of • The contents of • There is an
the document are the document are attempt to
correlated with correlated with correlate the
the events that the events that contents of the
happened before happened before document with
it was written. it was written. the events that
happened before
it was written.
• The students are
able to identify
the
inconsistencies

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and shortcomings
of the document.
Organization • The presentation • The presentation • The presentation • The presentation is • The presentation
and is very well- is well- is adequately- loosely-organized. is done in a
Presentation structured, structured, and structured. It is not evident haphazard
Style providing a there is a logical Transitions how one topic is manner, lacking a
(20%) logical sequence sequence to the between topics related to another clear
to the discussion discussion. help in in the presentation. organization and
within the understanding the structure.
prescribed time overall
period. discussion.
• Presenters are
confident, • Presenters lack
• Presenters are sometimes using • Presenters are confidence but • Presenters were
confident, gestures, eye somewhat there is occasional unable to capture
effectively using contact, and tone confident, using use of gestures, the attention of
gestures, eye of voice that keep occasional eye contact, and students.
contact, and tone the class engaged gestures, eye tone of voice to try
of voice that keep in discussion. contact, and tone to capture the
the class engaged of voice to attention of
in discussion. engage the class students.
in the discussion.
• Audio-visual aids
are effective
• Audio-visual aids leading to an • Audio-visual aids • Audio-visual aids
are well- appropriate • Audio-visual aids are mostly not are not used, or
executed, paying understanding of are helpful in helpful in the are not really
careful attention key information generating an presentation. helpful in the
to the and ideas. understanding of Visual aids either presentation.
combination of key information lack important
elements (e.g., and ideas. information or are
text and graphics) too text-heavy.
that lead to both
an effective
understanding of
key information
and ideas, and • Presenters are • Presenters are • Presenters • Presenters cannot
continuing articulate. In articulate. In encounter some effectively
interest in the general, there is general, there is difficulties in communicate
discussion. use of use of communicating information and
grammatically- grammatically- information and ideas, relying on
• Presenters are correct language. correct language. ideas. The use of a verbatim-
highly articulate, Language used is Occasional grammatically- reading of notes
using precise and also respectful of grammatical incorrect language or text-heavy
grammatically- diversity, and lapses do not tends to be visual aids to
correct language. sensitive to the prevent an pervasive. convey
Language used is conditions of the understanding of information and
also respectful of different groups. information and ideas. The use of
diversity, and ideas that are grammatically-
sensitive to the conveyed. incorrect
conditions of the language is
different groups. pervasive.

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 MMSU SOCSC 01: READINGS IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

COMPOSITION OF DEBATE in CHAPTER III

Introduction of Members and Mechanics (1 member)

Introduction/Context (1 member/4 mins)

1
First Affirmative – constructive speech (1 member/3 mins)
First Negative – interpellation (2 mins)

First Negative – constructive speech (1 member/3 mins)

First Affirmative – interpellation (2 mins)

2
Second Affirmative – constructive speech (1 member/3 mins)
Second Negative – interpellation (2 mins)

Second Negative – constructive speech (1 member/3 mins)

Second Affirmative – interpellation (2 mins)

3
Third Affirmative – constructive speech (1 member/3 mins)
Third Negative – interpellation (2 mins)

Third Negative – constructive speech (1 member/3 mins)

Third Affirmative – interpellation (2 mins)

Rebuttal

Rebuttal of the team captain of the Negative Side (1 member/3 mins)

Rebuttal of the team captain of the Affirmative Side (1 member/3 mins)

Relevance of the Topic and Conclusion (1 member/ 4 mins)

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