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Rizal’s Parallel And Contemporary Pedro Paterno and the Writing of Philippine History by MICHAEL CHARLESTON “XIAO” CHUA If there is one thing that is not debatable about Pedro Paterno is that he surely rocked the boat. Despite being kindly touted on history textbooks as a “peacemaker,” the broker of the Pact of Biak-na-Bato between the revolutionaries and the Spaniards in 1878, he remains a controversial figure in Philippine history. More so after the release of the 2015 film “Heneral Luna” in which people perceived him to have been cast in a bad light because of his stance to make peace with the Americans during the Philippine-American War even if he was part of the cabinet of the First Philippine Republic. But even National Artist Resil Mojares, in a major work, placed Paterno among the “Brains of the Nation.” Thus, there’s more to Paterno than the caricature we have of him. In the 1880s, Filipinos did not have much access to their own history. Bits and pieces were scattered in the friar accounts and other chronicles of Spanish colonizers, and also found somewhat in the newspaper articles of the Spaniard José Felipe del Pan, who once said that someday Filipinos should be able to write their own history, in their own perspective. It seems that Pedro Paterno was the first Filipino to answer del Pan’s challenge book length. And it all began in 1887, with a general exposition on colonial Philippines in the heart of Madrid, Spain. Where native Filipinos were brought there for display. The European attendees were discriminating the indios. Then, the wife of one of the Muslim leaders from Jolo died of pneumonia three months in the expedition. Paterno, who was part of the Royal Committee organizing the expedition, took this as an opportunity to show Europeans that Filipinos ought not to be treated as savages. He produced an easy-to-read companion to the exhibition in what is considered one of the earliest, if not the earliest book ever about the history of the Filipinos, La Antigua Civilizacion Tagalog, which is his synthesis of various old accounts of Filipino beliefs and culture. A copy of the book is part of the lot. Herein, he classified Filipinos into three versions, which would raise eyebrows today for being outdated, even racist. The first is the ita (aeta) or the Negrito, a topic he expounded in his next book Los Itas (1890), also one of the books in the lot; second, the cultured Tagalog; and third, the Civilized Tagalog, having been Catholicized. Yet, Paterno is making a case that the Filipinos, having acquired Catholicism, should be treated an equal of the Spaniard, in a very Propaganda Movement fashion, we are becoming like the Spaniards. Jean Marie Yap Paterno and Miguel Roces Paterno, authors of the two-volume By Their Deeds: The Paternos of the Spanish Era, said about the arguments in the book, “Pedro proposed that the mix-bred or mestizo was superior because this group benefitted from multi-racial strengths, much like how the Spanish, French, German and other Western European people were themselves of combined stock. Prcaticing the finest Western conventions and concurrently extolling high Asian culture, the author identified himself as of the superior blend.” Yet, it also makes a case that we were not savages before colonialism. It seems that Paterno anticipated Rizal’s annotations to Morga by two years. According to historian Dr. Portia Reyes, author of Panahon at Pagsasalaysay ni Pedro Paterno, 1858-1911: Isang Pag- aaral sa Intelektwalismo, “...La Antigua was organized around the themes of prehistoric individual, the family and Tagalog society, with the aim of impressing upon the reader that Tagalogs had enjoyed an ancient civilization on par with that of China, India, Egypt and Greece.” He associated baybayin and other Filipino scripts with the world’s scripts. He also noted the monotheism of early Filipinos with the worship of the Supreme Being “Bathala” which is similar to European Christianity. He will expound this in a later work El Cristianismo en la Antigua Civilizacion Tagalog (Christianity in the Ancient Tagalog Civilization—1892) arguing that the belief in the Bathala Mei Capal and other related rituals and practices are the seeds that will make Christianity more acceptable to Filipinos. Contrary to other propagandists who wrote that colonialism was a disruption of culture, for Paterno, it was a continuum. In another work, La Familia Tagalog en la Historia Universal (The Tagalog Family in Universal History—1892), he expounded earlier themes further and tackles the connection between Christian and early rituals of the Filipinos. What was notable was his differentiation between the Spanish understanding of the “Pacto de Sangre” to the Filipinos’ more familial understanding of “sandugo” which was a deeper brotherhood than a mere agreement. Yet he was not only an ethnologist and historian, but was also a man of literature and of course, a law professor. Another work in the lot would be his annotations to what historians famously refer to as the Maura Law, in the volume entitled El Regimen Municipal en las Islas Filipinas: Real Decreto de 19 de Mayo de 1893. In his acknowledgment, he noted how the Spaniards adopted what is believed to be the system of our ancestors, the Barangay, as the basic unit of society, in the most comprehensive restructuring of the local governments in the country. And even though the Spanish Empire in the East only lasted three years after the implementation of the law in 1895, it became the basic structure that was copied, revised and strengthened by the American Regime and the succeeding governments thereafter. His views can be summarized from his statement culled from the catalogue of the 1892 exposition, “...we are dealing with a civilization that was advanced enough to have its own alphabet, a very rich language; that knew iron and fired weapons; whose arts were extraordinarily developed. This is confirmed by the precious objects found in remote ancient burial sites and towns. It is in a geographical crossroad that makes trade inevitable, hence its trading partners would certainly validate the existence of this ancient currency.” It is in this sense that Jean Marie and Miguel Paterno said that Pedro 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. But both saw the importance of history and culture to present their case. But if that is so, why did he show a distinct Filipino culture and identity, yet he still wanted to be part of Spain. Historian Zeus Salazar posits the idea that the way people like Paterno understand the idea of “nationhood” was not in the sense we have now of being an independent country, but of being a nation like the peoples of Spain under one Kingdom (e.g. Castile, Catalonia, Basque were actually distinct “nations” under one flag). Yet, despite this, the ideas from these volumes will sow some seeds of what eventually would become one of the most nationalist schools of thought in historiography in the country, the Pantayong Pananaw. Zeus Salazar, its main proponent, read and quoted La Antigua in his University of Paris dissertation about the religion of our Austronesian ancestors and eventually, Paterno’s ideas about the similarities and syncretism of the old religion and Catholicism and the difference between pacto de sangre and sandugo, will be part of the discourse of its adherents, but not anymore to prove to the Spaniards that we are becoming like them, but to show the dynamism and strength of our culture. That despite everything, the concepts of our ancestors endure until today, as a continuum of mentalities.