Module 1: Indigenous Frameworks and Approaches

Reading 3
MEANING AND HISTORY
Ambeth R. Ocampo. Ateneo De Manila University

The working definition of history with which I live and write was formed in 1986 when
the poet Rio Alma gave me a copy of his book (A)lamat at (H)istorya. It was inscribed, “Para
kay Ambeth Tagapagpalaganap ng (H)istorya.” To this day, I do not know whether he was
praising my work or being sarcastic. This inscription always reminds me of writer’s reaction when
I once toyed with the idea of applying for a slot in the UP Creative Writing Center Summer
Workshop to learn to write fiction. “But,” this writer told me, “aren’t your articles fiction passed
off as fact ?” This s same point of view has been propagated by my critics in academe especially
when I was elected by the UP Creative Writing Center as National Fellow for the Essay (1995-
1996). One constipated academic in a public forum thought he was being witty by saying “Bagay
na bagay sa iyo ang fellowship mo sa sa Sentro ng Malikhaing Pagsusulat dahil lahat ng sinusulat
mo ay pawang lika” (or something to that effect). But then why bother with critics who are neither
creative nor writers?

I don’t understand why people think I am writing new things when all my material is at
least a hundred years old. I am most commonly asked even by academics, “Saan mo ba napupulot
ang mga isinusulat mo?” We all use the same books, but I find something new simply because I
ask questions no one has dared ask before. I rarely have answers, but I am able to tell a story. This
is the first mark of a good historian. One must be a good storyteller.

If you look at the other European languages, you will discover that the word for history, as
in historia (Spanish), histoire (French), and gesichte (German), is the same word in those
languages for story. Don’t we in Pilipino, sometimes use the Spanish word historia, which sounds
the same as istorya? Now what about the word kasaysayan? I do not know how old the word is,
but it is definitely richer than the Western words for history which are based largely on the Greek
historie which means an inquiry. Kasaysayan as it is taught in the University of the Philippines,
Diliman ( or at least when I was teaching there) is rooted in two words: salaysay, which means a
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narrative or a story and, more important, , which means a narrative or a story and, more important,
saysay or meaning.

In my history classes, I always propose the working definition of kasaysayan or history as

a narrative (which can be written, visual, oral or a combination of al three) about past events that
has meaning to a certain group of people in a given time and place. These two components of
kasaysayan --- salaysay and saysay are inseperable. Without both, you cannot have true history.

I feel more strongly about kasaysayan than the Western words for history because in the
latter, history can be a mere narrative of past events while kasaysayan is not just a narrative or
salaysay --- it MUST have saysay or meaning. If we find meaning in history, then it will gain the
power to change our lives. Saysay gives us a way of looking at the world, a Filipino viewpoint that
influences the way we see the past, the present, and hopefully, the future.

Let me give a simple illustration. We usually take memory for granted, seldom realizing
how important and indispensable it is in our lives. I often imagine this morbid scenario. I walk
out of a building. I step out into a busy street, and am run over by a jeepney with a reckless driver.
I bump my head on the pavement and am rushed, unconscious, to a hospital. From the ID cards
that the hospital staff finds in my wallet (granting that it hasn’t been stolen yet!) they are able to
inform my immediate family. The problem arises when I finally regain consciousness. What if
my memory has been erased, like a valuable computer file damaged by a virus? The only clues to
my identity are the ID cards in my wallet. I am confronted by the worried faces of people who
claim to be my loved ones, but I do not recognize them. Worse, I do not even know who I am.
Can you imagine how painful this will be for both sides?

It is memory that has made the person I am today. Without memory we cannot form
relationships, we cannot know who we are, we cannot forge our identities. The same is true for
history. History is not just memorizing unforgettable dates, unpronounceable names and strange
places. History is not just telling our students funny stories. History is making people see their
past, thereby giving them a sense of being Filipinos. If memory gives us our individual identities,
then history will contribute to a national memory and eventually that elusive thing we call national
Module 1: Indigenous Frameworks and Approaches

identity. History gives us a way of looking at the world and dealing with it and its problems.
History contributes to our being Filipino, whatever that is.

In a paper I read at a seminar in London last year, I showed how Jose Rizal in 1890 used
history as a weapon against Spain, how he re-created a pre-Hispanic Philippine past to give his
countrymen a sense of history and a sense of being Filipino. In short, an identity. One hundred
years later, I realized that Rizal had exaggerated some of his assertions, but then as now history
must be used to give a sense of meaning to our lives. History is a tool that, stealing from James
Joyce, “shall forge in the smithy of my soul, the uncreated conscience of my race.”

How do we get salaysay and later saysay? First, we must disabuse ourselves of the notion
that history is a closed book. Our textbooks give us definite data thereby killing off the sense of
wonder and curiosity essential to any thinking person. We could agree about simple facts, like
Jose Rizal being born on June 19, 1861. This is merely sanaysay, but where does saysay come
in? Facts are a very small part of history, the greater part of it being made up of judgments of
events, situations and characters, which are always debatable. History is best described by the
Dutch historian Geyl as “an argument without end.”

Teachers should try the following exercise in their classrooms sometimes. Gather all the
newspapers, including the tabloids for a particular day. Post the front on the blackboard and ask
the class to tell you what the most important news for the day was. As none of the papers will
agree on this point, the students will surely disagree with one another. Now, if we cannot agree
on what was important yesterday, what more on events that happened a hundred or three hundred
years ago! The point here is that history is open-ended and we cannot be sure about the past. So
why study history? Because it teaches us to see connections between events. Knowing how and
why a certain event happened is helpful because in many cases people separated by time and place
can sometimes be in similar situations. They can be mentally contemporaneous without knowing
it. History gives us hindsight.

Let us take a concrete example of salaysay and saysay looking into something rather
scandalous – the rumors of Apolinario Mabini’s syphilis. I once had an argument with an
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overzealous newspaper lawyer who deleted a reference to syphilis and Mabini in one of my
columns. I actually threatened to resign the next time he touched my copy as I am very careful
about my data. Because of that deletion, the whole paragraph built around this historical rumor
lost its power and meaning.

I first heard the syphilis rumor from two venerable members of the National Historical
Institute, the late Teodoro A. Agoncillo and E. Aguilar Cruz. The latter even made a pun on the
suttee of the “Sublime Paralytic” outside the National Library. He said, “Oh, from the sublime to
the syphilitic.”

Years earlier, the novelist F. Sionil Jose had heard the same rumor. When he got
confirmation of it from historians (one of them Agoncillo) he wrote the novel Po-on which, in its
final chapters has a conversation between the village herbolarion Istak and Mabini who, after
resigning from the Aguinaldo Cabinet, had traveled to Pangasinan to rest and lick his wounds. The
scene is reminiscent of the famous chat between Simoun and Padre Florentino in Rizal’s El
Filibusterismo. In both novels the nobility of one’s character shines as he pontificates, but in Po-
on the greatness of Mabini crumbles when he admits an indulgence in his youth that led to venereal
disease. I had always been told that syphilis made one blind or raving mad. In my limited
experience I could even imagine the penitent part of the anatomy falling off, but losing the use of
one’s legs is a bit far-fetched.

A new edition of Po-on is out and it contains an important correction: Mabini’s paralysis
was caused by polio. In 1980 a team of doctors from the National Orthopedic Hospital excavated
the bones of Mabini in Tanauan, Batangas and performed an autopsy. They concluded that
Mabini’s paralysis which struck him when he was 31 years old, was a result of polio. I kept this
information at the back of my mind and five years later I saw a connection between Mabini’s
rumored syphilis and the Malolos Congress.

Although I cannot pinpoint responsibility, I am certain that the syphilis rumor originated
from the elite and mestizo dominated Malolos Congress. On January 14, 1899 Mabini urged
Emilio Aguinaldo to ignore the wealthy mestizos who had wormed their way into power via the
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Constitution they had drafted and approved. Mabini tried his best to delay the promulgation of the
Constitution, at least to get some amendments in, but Felipe Buencamino threatened Aguinaldo
that the latter would lose prestige if he did not approve the Constitution. Mabini countered by
saying:

“Should the constitution be approved without (my proposed) amendments, no one

could be appointed a Department Secretary without the approval of Congress. In my case,
for example, because Congress doesn’t like me, I will be censured for anything I do until I
will be forced to resign, the members will say that I am a despicable weakling who can
swallow all insults. In short, no one can stay in the Department except one who knows how
to regale the Representatives, do what they want, and be in cahoots with them, even to do
such that will be against the country and justice. Such Department Secretaries, even if they
should do badly, would be in the good graces of Congress, while the good ones would not
be.”

Does this sound strangely familiar? Remember how people appointed by the President to
government posts today are made to wait for confirmation by the Commission on Appointments?
Quotations like the above make some silly people claim that Mabini is prophetic because he
foresaw some of today’s political problems a century ago. The words are as painfully relevant as
the ones that follow. Mabini continues:

“What will you do if the Secretaries you appoint be not acceptable to Congress? You
will have to change them. And should new ones be neither acceptable, change them again,
of course. When this happens, no right-thinking person will accept the position except the
one who has an understanding with the Representatives. For this reason you will yourself be
forced to choose their men whether you like them or not; and since you will have no other
choice except to please the Representatives.”

Perhaps Mabini was protecting his own interests, because at one point Aguinaldo had
appointed him Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Congress would not confirm him. They saw
that Mabini, the enemy of Congress, would become acting President in case Aguinaldo died in
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office. Since Aguinaldo was a military president, who was often in the battle field, the chances of
Mabini taking over was rather high. Mabini had to be blocked at all cost.

Representatives remarked that he could not become Chief Justice because he was lame.
When Mabini heard this, he replied, “Why? Does the job entail a lot of walking?” There was more
talk about his paralysis than his intellectual and academic capacity for the office. In the end the
syphilis rumor came out and Mabini’s moral character was undermined. To cut a long story short,
intrigue eventually pushed Mabini out of the Cabinet. So what else is new? Mabini and Malolos is
not history repeating itself; we are repeating history. Mabini’s relevance today underscores the sad
fact that we haven’t changed much in a century.

Some writers oversimplify the factionalism during the revolution, reducing it to a struggle
between the haves and have –nots. I don’t agree wholeheartedly, but if you scan the roster of
names in the Malolos Congress it does read like a society column of that time. All the rich and
famous of Manila were there. At one point it was composed of the following: 43 lawyers, 17
physicians, 7 businessmen, 5 pharmacists or chemists, 3 teachers, 2 engineers, 2 artists, one priest
( Aglipay) and about 5 people who could not be classified according to occupation! Note that
there were no women in that congress. What about gays? The so-called representatives did not
represent the people at all, not only because of their wealth and education, but because the
revolutionary government did not have effective control over the entire archipelago. They did not
even hold it in the capital, Manila, (which was then under the American stars and stripes). This
explains why Malolos had to be the seat of the revolutionary government. There was no way to
hold elections, thus, Aguinaldo had to appoint some delegates to regions they had never even seen!
To further complicate matters, America came in and robbed us of our independence.

Congress was filled with the economic elite. I hesitate to use the term ilustrado, which is
synonymous with wealth and education. Ilustrado literally means “enlightened one”; thus, Mabini
and Bonifacio were poor but I consider them ilustrados, in contrast to some people in the Malolos
congress who may have been rich and educated, but were actually far from enlightened. What I
found particularly disgusting was a bill to float a national loan to finance the government and
continue the revolution to its logical conclusion. The government was authorized to execute an
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interior loan of 20 million pesos payable in 40 years, with the subscribers being paid annual interest
of 6 %, payable every 6 months. The treasury found it feasible, interest could even paid quarterly.

Everything looks all right until you read the fine print and note that the collateral for this
loan happened to be the property of the Republic. What happened then if the government could
not pay? The descendants of the big investors who were, of course, members of congress stood to
inherit the nation. Imagine owning the Philippines, or at least having the republic literally indebted
to you? In short, the opportunists hiding under a false patriotism were out to control Aguinaldo
and his government. Only Mabini saw through all these.

In an undated letter, probably, written in November 1898, he begins by apologizing for

being makulit and thus taxing the President’s patience by telling him the plain and painful truth.
Promising “never to bother you again,” he asked the President to read the entire letter regarding
the creation of a permanent board of 24 subscribers to manage the national law. Aside from the
yearly interests, these men would be paid salaries and they would influence among other things the
formulation of the national budget. Mabini did not expect Aguinaldo to give the elite too many
concessions.

“We worked without pay: but the rich people will not put up their money without having a
voice in the Treasury. And it’s probable that members of the board will asked benefits and the
soldiers will remain hungry …
The administrators will pocket part of the money and only a little will go to the government safe.
As the collection will not be enough to pay the interest and amortization of the loan, the
administrators will even retain the collection from cedula or personal tax.”

Andres Bonifacio, if you remember, tore up his cedula in August 1896 to signify freedom
from oppression. Knowing this, Mabini abolished the cedula but this time, it was back, not
imposed by Spaniards but by Filipinos patriots pa daw. Mabini warned Aguinaldo that in the end,
the people would blame him “ and the rich will have a big laugh.” Fortunately, nothing came of
this national loan.
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Was Malolos really a “glorious page in our history”? From my reading of Mabini’s papers,
I get a view contrary to what I learned in school. I have seen the photographs of Aguinaldo arriving
in Malolos in a carriage that came in complete liveried footmen and I could not help but laugh
knowing that these footmen were borrowed from the neighborhood funeraria. These undertakers
were most apt because the Malolos congress was the death of the revolution. It is high time that
these so-called “glorious pages “in our history be reviewed without the rose-colored glasses.
Perhaps our country is in such a mess because we have a distorted history and thus, cannot find
meaning in and lessons from it.

I have learned the hard way that oftentimes in history it is more fruitful to discuss what did
not happened or what might have happened, rather than what actually happened. Making our
students draw tentative conclusions develops critical thinking. If I believe all the things books and
teachers told me, then I would not have become the historian than I am today. I am not perfect. I
have committed a few errors too, but I rest on the dictum that we should always be courageous
enough to challenge existing beliefs, theories and “facts.” We should try in our own way to push
the frontiers of the knowledge a bit further and encourage our students to think – and to think
critically.

History is a dangerous – some would say subversive – undertaking because by giving

meaning to our lives, it has the power to change and mold it. In our search for meaning in our
history, we will inevitably make mistakes. But as English historian A.J.P. Taylor put it so clearly,
“errors can sometimes be fertile, but perfection is always sterile.” If we do not care to ask
questions, we will never get the answers. The point to remember is that history does not repeat
itself. We repeat history.