CARL MATTHEW OCAMO

BSBA-MM 1B
ASSIGNMENT
FAKE HISTORY
ONE of the typical features of recently created nations is the elaboration of a historical
narrative that provides legitimation to the existence of the country. The past gives
legitimacy to the present and that search is not carried out innocently. Historians and
cultural agents in general need to look for heroes and traitors, great men and women,
old myths and legends, archival sources and material culture, etc. When José Rizal
published in Paris an annotated edition of Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (1609) by
Antonio de Morga, he was trying to feed his own narrative: that the indigenous people of
the archipelago had an advanced and industrious culture prior to the arrival of the
Spaniards. But when the poem “Sa Aking Mga Kabatá” was attributed to José Rizal
when he was only six years old, the creator of the forgery was only trying to exaggerate
the genius of Rizal whose memory, by the way, did not at all need that poem to magnify
his figure.
https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/06/02/opinion/columnists/forgeries-and-false-claims-
in-philippine-history/728685
REAL HISTORY
However, there is no evidence to support authorship by Rizal and several historians
now believe it to be a hoax. The actual author of the poem is suspected to have been
the poets Gabriel Beato Francisco or Herminigildo Cruz.

According to this statement, Rizal’s poem “Sa Aking mga Kabata” was not his work and
this was just a hoax, because they didn’t imagine that just an 8-year-old child already
saw the wrong doings of Spain in our country. And in his created poem he stated
already about the freedom of our own country from the conquerors.

SOURCE:
https://www.manilatimes.net/2020/06/02/opinion/columnists/forgeries-and-false-claims-
in-philippine-history/728685
https://raychaelmora04.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/hoax-or-truth/