'Nationalist' history

I TOOK up history as a profession because of Teodoro A. Agoncillo, whose textbooks I had read even before we met. I was surprised to meet him in 1983 because I thought he was long dead. An engaging and very opinionated man, his passion swayed anyone who read or listened to him. His sharp book reviews are worth re-reading -- especially where the victim was crazy enough to respond. There must be something in historians that makes them sensitive, or -- as they say in Filipino -- "balat sibuyas" [onion-skinned]. Agoncillo is not alone in this respect.

We have a long tradition that goes all the way back to Jose Rizal and his published tiff with Isabelo de los Reyes. De los Reyes or "Don Belong" (1864-1938) was a journalist, businessman, labor leader, politician and prominent member of the schismatic Iglesia Filipina Independiente [Philippine Independent Church] that "canonized" Rizal. He was interested in aspects of Philippine history and culture, especially those which concerned his home region -- the Ilocos. His fieldwork and compilations of folklore, history and customs have proven to be of great ethnographic value for present-day scholars. De los Reyes had been corresponding with European scholars with research interests in the Philippines long before Rizal came in contact with Blumentritt. De los Reyes published many books, pamphlets and articles including "El Folklore Filipino" in two volumes, which was awarded a silver medal in the Philippine Exposition in Madrid in 1887. He left a "Historia de Filipinas" unfinished, with only one volume completed. He also published "Las Islas Visayas en la epoca de conquista" (The Visayan islands at the time of the conquest); and numerous compilations of his journalistic writings -- "Filipinas articulos varios sobre etnografia, historia y costumbres de los Filipinos" [The Philippines: various articles on the ethnography, history and customs of the Filipinos]; and the two-volume "Historia de Ilocos" [History of the Ilocos]. Some of De los Reyes' works were even translated by Blumentritt into German and published outside the Philippines.

In his "Historia de Ilocos," De los Reyes upset Rizal. De los Reyes called attention to a discrepancy between his own research and some of Rizal's annotations on Morga. These differences of opinion were explained, according to De los Reyes, by Rizal's excessive patriotism:

"But that very laudable patriotism of his, it seems to me, blinds him at times, and as an historian ought to be rigorously impartial ... the optimism of the said author turns out to be passionate in some points, taking exceptions of the general rule and vice versa. The consensus among authors who had no reason to lie in these cases ought to be taken into account. The true character of that [pre-Hispanic] civilization and what is still preserved of it in the present customs of the people..."

Rizal was so irritated that he responded by attacking De los Reyes in the Oct. 31, 1890 issue of La Solidaridad, using the sarcasm he normally reserved for racist Spaniards and friars:

"I do not know how discreet it is to raise oneself as a judge of others ... [when] neither one or the other was an eyewitness or more or less an influential actor. But this, which anyone else could be censured as vain presumption, ceases to be so in Mr. Isabelo de los Reyes who knows very well how to interpret the historians of the Philippines."

As De los Reyes was fond of using Philippine terms in his works, especially words from his mother tongue, Ilocano, Rizal took him to task for (mis)translating Morga's "principales" into its Ilocano equivalent, "agturay."

"I have read Morga about seven times and I do not remember that he had ever mentioned agturay. I do not know if Mr. de los Reyes in his laudable desire to Ilocanize the Philippines thinks it convenient to make Morga speak Ilocano. It is true that this author, in describing the customs of the Tagalogs, said that they were generally current in all the islands; but this does not mean that Ilocano customs are the ones that prevail."

Not content with this, Rizal flaunted his familiarity with the primary sources in Philippine history, finding fault with De los Reyes for using "unreliable" sources. Rizal even belittled De los Reyes' scholarship by claiming that the latter had used a mere French translation of a manuscript, while he had used the original. Rizal also claimed he read all the extant early accounts of the Philippines, cover to cover, except that of Plasencia, which was unavailable:

"I never state anything on my own authority. I cite texts and when I cite them, I have them before me...As I based my assertion on seven contemporary writers, I do not know if in this case I shall be the exception and De los Reyes the general rule. I know that the authority of De los Reyes is worth seven times more than mine; but with my seven authors, and he with his Fr. Rada, we can balance ourselves, if he does not take offense ... dealing with historical facts, only the testimony of contemporaries can be authoritative, a testimony that ought to be subjected to the process of criticism."

Underneath this sour exchange, beneath the historiographical argument, lies not scholarship or the reliability of sources, but patriotism. It is high time we ask whether "nationalist" history clouds the eyes and the mind.

Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu.