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The Book That Created A Nation: The Sucesos de Morga, Annotated by José Rizal A Gift from One Pioneer Historian to Another by MICHAEL CHARLESTON “XIAO” CHUA In some monuments, our National Hero José Rizal is depicted meditatively, his bust or statue placed on top of a representation of three books. The obelisk of the first Rizal monument located in Daet, Camarines Norte (1898), also had three sides, representing the three books. But wait — three books, you may ask. All of us are familiar with Rizal writing two novels, the Noli Me Tangere (1887) and the El Filibusterismo (1891); two books which helped create a consciousness, especially among the reading class, that wherever we came from the islands, we had one common misery, and that was Spanish colonialism. Thus Rizal, helped create a nation with his writings. However, Rizal published a third book, the second actually, before the El Filibusterismo. In between the two novels he published in 1889 a book with a rather long title, Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas por el Doctor Antonio de Morga; Obra Publicada en Mejico en el Año de 1609, Nuevamente Sacada a Luz y Anotada por Jose Rizal, y Precedida de un Prologo del Prof. Fernando Blumentritt (Events in the Philippine Islands by Dr. Antonio de Morga; A Work Published in Mexico in the Year 1609, Reprinted and Annotated by Jose Rizal and Preceded by an Introduction by Professor Ferdinand Blumentritt). According to Floro Quibuyen in his book A Nation Aborted: Rizal, American Hegemony, and Philippine Nationalism, one of the reasons why his brother Paciano sent Rizal to Europe in 1882 was to fulfill a mission, to write a book about the history of the Filipinos, from the perspective of Filipinos. This was to help make a case for the Filipinos’ worthiness for reforms and freedoms. Rizal attempted this history book as a group project, but he failed to get support from his compatriots in Europe. He then went on to write the Noli Me Tangere, which he described to his best friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, “The Novel is the first impartial and bold account of the life of the Tagalogs. The Filipinos will find in it the history of the last ten years...” Even though he called his Noli, a “history,” Rizal wanted to dig deeper. Instead of writing his own account, he sought instead to annotate an existing history by a Spaniard and to add his notes. While in the British Museum Library in 1888, he found the appropriate book. He chose a more objective account by a Spanish official from way back 1609, which was different from the usual friar accounts which interpreted everything as miracles from God. Of the eight chapters, mostly containing the accounts of the administrations of the first governors-general, the highlight of his annotations was contained in the last chapter entitled “Narrative of the Philippine Islands and Their Natives, Their Antiquity, Customs and Government, Both During Their Gentility (Non-Conversion) and After the Spaniards had Conquered Them, and Other Peculiarities.” This Spanish account, written a few years from the time of the encounter, is for Rizal clear evidence that we had a culture and civilization before the Spanish colonizers came. It was a different view from what was always emphasized at the time: That the white colonizers were superior, and thus, our subjugation was justified. Through his annotations, comparing other accounts from other historians and chroniclers, he confirmed, denied or clarified the information that Morga cited. It was like a conversation or debate from two different cultures and perspectives. One favorite point of contention among scholars was when Morga wrote about a kind of fish our ancestors were eating, “They prefer meat and fish, salt-fish, which begin to decompose and smell.” In a footnote, Rizal responded: This is another preoccupation of the Spaniards who, like any other nation, in the matter of food, loathe what they are not accustomed or what is unknown to them... The fish that Morga mentions does not taste better when it is beginning to rot, all on the contrary: it is bagoong and all those who have eaten it and tasted it know that it is not or ought not to be rotten. In another footnote, Rizal talked about our maritime culture, something a lot of historians have highlighted only in recent decades: The men of these islands are great carpenters and shipbuilders “who make many of them and very light ones and they take them to be sold in the territory in a very strange way; They make a large ship without covering nor iron nail nor futtock timbers and they make another that fit in the hollow of it, and inside it they place another so that in a large biroco there go ten and twelve boats that they call birico, virey, barangay, and binitan.” They went, “painted, and they were such great rowers and sailors that though they sink many times, they never drown...”. Ambeth Ocampo, in a landmark academic paper on the book, said that Rizal may have committed some exaggerations about his descriptions in the book because of his “committed scholarship”—a scholarship with an agenda. When Ocampo wrote his essay in the 1990s, it was still a debate in the country whether a social scientist can be totally unbiased. Now, we recognize that most of us are committed scholars. I would also point out that whatever shortcomings Rizal had in his work are now filled with the work of Filipino archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians more than a hundred and twenty years later, continuing his mission of searching for the Filipino identity to solidify and strengthen the national sentiment. In fact, some of the accounts he cited like that of the big boat was recently confirmed by the recent discovery of a Butuan mother boat. In a debate on the work with Isabelo de los Reyes, Rizal reiterated how he came up with the annotations, “I never assert anything on my own authority, I cite texts and when I cite them, I have them before me.” The mark of a true historian. In this lot is an original first edition of that work published in Paris by the Garnier Brothers in 1889 — and was signed by pen with a dedication by José Rizal himself, “Al autor de La Antigua civilizacion Tagalog su afmo (afectisimo) amigo y compatriota, Rizal, Paris, 17 Xbre 1889.” (“To the author of The Ancient Tagalog Civilization, his affectionate friend and compatriot, Rizal, Paris 17 October 1889). And who is this author of La Antigua Civilizacion Tagalog? His name is none other than Pedro Alejandro Paterno. Many historians were never kind to him, but notwithstanding his faults and bad decisions; he, too, was a pioneer historian and ethnographer who, despite seemingly being a Hispanista, also believed that Filipinos have their own identity and so he wrote works about our past and our culture. He was endlessly motivated by one belief: that Filipinos will only progress if they develop their own identity and this could be done through education and by educating Filipinos about their culture. Jean Marie and Miguel Paterno underscore this in their recent two- volume work about their kin By Their Deeds: The Paternos of the Spanish Era. In fact, according to the authors, Paterno was actually Rizal’s parallel because the two had the same goals — except that Rizal wanted to ask the government for reforms, while Paterno wanted to join the government so he could implement his reforms. It so happened that Paterno was actually one of the people who helped and even recommended Rizal when he arrived in Europe in 1882. This makes this piece a truly important one: A first- edition copy of the book that helped create the nation through the past, gifted and dedicated by one pioneer historian to another, one author to another, through whose works we know ourselves better as a people. It is a reminder that to our heroes, there is no progress without looking back, and that makes history so important to be treated just as “chismis.” Our heroes tried to be scientific, even with the folklore that they analyze; every care taken, because history is not just any story, it is out story; it is about us.