Genealogy of Filipino thought
Resil Mojares, eminent scholar from Cebu, has spent the past two decades writing up lives, biographies of 19th-century Filipino thinkers culled from years of reading and note-taking. The tip of the iceberg is a timely and surprisingly readable book, “Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T. H. Pardo de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes and the Production of Modern Knowledge” (Ateneo de Manila University Press). It clearly shows that “nationalist history”—or a history written and understood from a Filipino point of view—did not begin in the 1960s with the works of Teodoro A. Agoncillo and Renato Constantino. Rather, the writing, or rewriting, of Philippine history from a Filipino viewpoint began earlier, in the late 19th century, with a generation of expatriate Filipinos in Europe.
Those expatriates formed a constellation whose shining star was Jose Rizal, who published in Paris, in 1890, an annotated edition of Antonio de Morga’s “Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas” (Events of the Philippine Islands), which was first published in Mexico in 1603. Unfortunately, this groundbreaking work is overshadowed by Rizal’s novels “Noli Me Tangere” (1887) and “El Filibusterismo” (1890). His edition of Morga is seldom read today because he did not write a history but annotated one. Still, his notes, though obsolete, reveal the first Philippine history from a Filipino viewpoint.
Embarking on a project that traces the genealogy of Filipino thought, Mojares highlights others of that enlightened generation who had long languished in Rizal’s long shadow. Retrieved from the dustbin of Philippine history, Pedro Paterno (1858-1911), T. H. Pardo de Tavera (1857-1925), and Isabelo de los Reyes (1864-1938) are given their due. Like Rizal, these men wrote a lot for a nation that does not read. But unlike Rizal, the few times Paterno, Pardo and De los Reyes are taken out of the dustbin, they are exposed to ridicule for the political, ideological, or religious positions they took in their time. Not till now have their works been given competent and impartial study.
The neglect of their works is due to three factors. First, their published works and manuscripts are rare and quite hard to find due to the destruction of the National Library, the National Museum, the University of the Philippines Library, and many private Filipiniana collections during World War II. Second, their works are largely in Spanish, a language alien to a successor generation educated in English. Spanish used to be a bridge that connected Filipinos from different times and places, but today it separates a young generation from its past. Third, these men have been oversimplified and painted as eccentrics with unpopular politics and, in the case of De los Reyes, an odd mix of politics and religion. Worse, these men were overshadowed by others in the national pantheon, like Apolinario Mabini, Marcelo del Pilar, Mariano Ponce and Graciano Lopez Jaena, whose works were compiled as a series known as “Documentos de la biblioteca nacional de Filipinas” begun by Teodoro M. Kalaw before World War II.
Paterno was prominent in his lifetime but is best remembered in school history today as the archetypal “balimbing,” the starfruit with many sides that has become the symbol of turncoats and opportunism prevalent in current Philippine politics. Pro-Spanish during the Spanish colonial period, Paterno changed spots and rose to become president of the Malolos Congress during the short-lived Philippine Republic, only to shift loyalties during the early years of the American administration, trying in vain to get into the good graces of William Howard Taft.
Pardo de Tavera was largely associated with the Federal Party and is often painted as a traitor to his own people for distancing himself from the Aguinaldo government and serving in the US colonial administration, thus obscuring his competent and pioneering works on bibliography, history, philology, linguistics, and even the use of Philippine medicinal plants.
De los Reyes was known to Ferdinand Blumentritt before the latter corresponded with Jose Rizal, but his many works on history and folklore were overshadowed by his involvement in the labor movement and the Philippine Independent Church.
The lives of these three men make for an interesting read. Rizal commented on De los Reyes and his Ilocano point of view. Pardo de Tavera called Paterno a fake and a plagiarist in annotated entries for his 1903 bibliography, “Biblioteca Filipina.” It is significant that two of the three subjects in the book served at the helm of the National Library of the Philippines, from that founded by Paterno in 1887 to the cultural agency headed by Pardo de Tavera from 1923 to his death in 1925.
Mojares goes beyond the stereotype caricatures, painting more complete, nuanced portraits in the round of figures we have only seen in sketches, as fleeting references in the standard work by the late E. Arsenio Manuel in four of the 7-volume Dictionary of Philippine Biography (1955-1995).
I rarely recommend academic titles, much less one that is 562 pages long, but Mojares is a delight to read and his book shows us the need for a genealogy of Filipino thought as a first step in finding that elusive thing called national identity.
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