‘Underside’ of history

The Bentley Historical Library in the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor boasts of “over 45,000 linear feet of primary source material, 10,000 maps, 80,000 printed volumes, and 1.5 million photographs” that cover US history with a subset on the Philippines and the US colonial adventure in the last century.

A number of Michigan faculty came to the Philippines in the twilight of the Spanish occupation to study natural history. They later collected archeological artifacts from the Visayas that became the core of the University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology. Aside from the Bentley and the Museum, the main library has many Filipiniana items, including a rare set of Audobon’s “Birds of America” that was presented to the university by Ferdinand Marcos after he was conferred an honorary doctorate of laws during his 1966 state visit to the United States, where he and Ms Marcos charmed America.

Unnoticed in the Bentley Library are some very expensive Fernando Amorsolo paintings owned by Frank Murphy, justice of the US Supreme Court who also served as governor general of the Philippines (1933-1935) and US high commissioner to the Philippines (1935-1936). Murphy’s papers and the exquisite Bilibid furniture he used in Manila are on display.

While on a Fulbright senior research grant in 2000, I lived in Ann Arbor, impressed that the university library was open 24/7. Fortunately, many foreign libraries have made their Philippine materials available online, but this is not enough because our history remains to be unlocked in libraries and archives in the United States. Europe, Japan, and even in far-off Chile.

While taking postgraduate classes on Philippine Studies in Diliman under wonderful mentors like Serafin D. Quiason, Oscar Alfonso, Prospero Covar, E. Arsenio Manuel, Petronilo Bn. Daroy, Virgilio Enriquez and Milagros C. Guerrero, it came upon me to shift my research focus to the 20th century—and do the American colonial period because the research materials were in English and easier to access. Doctor Guerrero heard none of this, she invited me into her cramped Faculty Center office (a fire trap filled with papers) and sat me down: “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to do the American period,” she said and advised me to persevere in the Spanish colonial period, “because once you shift we will lose someone who can read primary sources in Spanish and French.”

That conversation set me on a course for life that made me look beyond 20th-century American sources into the European sources in the 19th century and earlier.

While in Ann Arbor, I dipped, out of curiosity, into the papers of Harry Hill Badholtz (1864-1925) who served as chief of the Philippine Constabulary from 1905 to 1913. Boxes and boxes of Bandholtz’ papers await Filipino historians who will see in them the pattern of our present political life. In 1903, while he was governor of Tayabas, he wrote to the executive secretary in Manila, narrating a movement. Teachers of undergraduate Philippine history will find this difficult to impart in the module on the Filipino resistance to US rule, which was invoked recently by the President whose ideas on Magellan, the Filipino-American War, and Adolf Hitler need some further reflection, correction or, at least, fine tuning.

“In July 1902,” Bandholtz reports, “there was discovered an extensive organization which for nearly a year had existed in the neck of the country between Atimonan and Gumaca on the Pacific Coast and Laguimanoc, Unison and Pitogo on the Southern Coast under the leadership of a certain Ruperto Rios. . . . originally bellows-man to the blacksmith at Atimonan. . . a major of bolomen under Lt. Col. Zurbano of the insurrecto forces… elevated himself to the rank of generalissimo; declared himself Viceroy and Hijo de Dios (Son of God).”

It was said that Rios could do miracles. Bandholtz disbanded Rios’ movement by using “more intelligent natives” against his group. These “kolorum” groups form what Reynaldo Ileto calls the “underside” of our history, but we have yet to dig them up from the archives.

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