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11/11/22, 3:02 PM Philippine Literature During the Third Republic (1946-1972)
Cultural Center of the Philippines
 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
PHILIPPINE ART
Philippine Literature During the Third

Republic (1946-1972)
On 4 July 1946, the Philippines was granted independence by the United States, but the devastation wrought by
World War II—the loss of a hundred thousand lives during the “Liberation of Manila” and the destruction of an
estimated 1.2 billion US dollars’ worth of property, including historic buildings—was not to be erased by a
proclamation.
The war and its aftermath affected Philippine literature in two ways. First, it produced many literary works, oral
and written, that sought to deal with the trauma of war. Among the Cordillera peoples of northern Luzon, oral
histories tend to be triumphalist, and these include accounts of comradeship and small victories amid the
atrocities of war. The Karao, which is a subgroup of the Ibaloy residing in Benguet, have John Beray’s story, “Pagit,”
about two Karao men whose lasting friendship begins when the title character, having just escaped his brutal
Japanese captors, falls into the hands of fellow Filipinos who suspect him of being a spy. The narrator saves his life
and, after the war, is offered a ricefield by the grateful Pagit. Among the Isneg of Apayao, storytelling fare at
postwar social gatherings was the taking of Japanese heads, head taking being a practice which had been
outlawed by the American colonial regime but revived as a war contingency.
In the Tagalog short story, the dehumanizing effects of war are the subject matter of Pedro S. Dandan’s “Sugat ng
Digma” (Wounds of War), Macario Pineda’s “Sinag sa Dakong Silangan” (Rays from the East), and Efren Abueg’s
“Mapanglaw ang Mukha ng Buwan” (Pale Is the Moon’s Face). In “Bughaw Pa sa Likod ng Ulap” (It’s Still a Blue Sky
behind the Clouds) by Genoveva Edroza-Matute, a young boy salvages recyclable objects during the war years, as
he dreams of liberation, receiving an education, and his father coming home, unaware that his father has already
been killed by the Japanese. Cebuano stories about the war are “Sibilyan” (Civilian) and “Kadtong Gabi-ing
Makalisang” (That Tumultuous Night) by Ricardo Labra, and “Ang Garison sa Balugo” (The Garrison in Balugo) by
Lucas de Loyola. “Pagtulon-an” (Lesson), 1947, by Maria A. Kabigon follows a female narrator’s struggle to keep
her virtue intact through World War II and after. Marcel Navarra’s “Paingon sa Bag-ong Kalibutan” (Toward a New
World) poses the question of whether there is any difference between the Filipino guerrillas and the Japanese, as
both seem to exploit the people. In contrast, the Kapampangan story “Ing Dupical ding Kampana” (The Ringing of
the Bells) by Fidel de Castro celebrates the heroism of a guerrilla, whose burial is attended by the entire town. The
devastation of Intramuros by American “carpet bombing” is described in Nick Joaquin’s “The Mass of St.
Sylvestre”; and the psychological terrors that accompany guerrilla life are captured in Edith L. Tiempo’s “The Black
Monkey.” “To Kill the Enemy,” set in the author Roman A. dela Cruz’s home province of Aklan, is an interior
monologue of a guerrilla’s dilemma between killing his Japanese captors and sparing their lives as they had
spared his.
Novels about the wartime experience include Stevan Javellana’s Without Seeing the Dawn, 1947; Edilberto
Tiempo’s Watch in the Night, 1953; Lazaro Francisco’s Sugat ng Alaala (Wound of Memory), 1949; Pedrito
Reyes’s Kulafu: Ang Gerilyero ng Sierra Madre (Kulafu: The Guerrilla of Sierra Madre), 1950; Segismundo Cruz’s
Ang Bungo (The Skull), 1946; Jose Gonzalez’s Panagimpan (Daydream), 1957; and Adriano P. Laudico’s Anghel ng
Kaligtasan (Angel of Safety), 1946. The only Spanish novel to deal with the war, Jesus Balmori’s Los Pajaros de
Fuego (Firebirds), remained unpublished until 2010.
https://epa.culturalcenter.gov.ph/9/72/1540/ 1/13
Bisaya (Cebuano), one of the lines of magazines by

The Ramon Roces (Liwayway Publications, Inc)
Second, the Japanese restricted or suspended publications, consequently diminishing literary activity, especially
outside Manila. In the case of Cebu, the 33 or so Cebuano publications were reduced to one, the Manila-based
Bisaya. They also discouraged writing in English and promoted a common “Oriental” past in place of American
influence. Hence, Tagalog and Niponggo being the official languages, Tagalog fiction might be said to have
gained from the Japanese occupation, for writers in English, such as N. V. M. Gonzalez, Macario Pineda, and
Genoveva Edroza-Matute, were constrained to write in Tagalog, the last two continuing to write in this language
for the rest of their lives. Certainly, Tagalog literature was the first to recover from the war, with Liwayway
publishing prose and poetry alongside rival magazines Sinag-Tala, Daigdig, Ilang-Ilang, Malaya, Silahis, Aliwan,
Bituin, Bulaklak, Tagumpay, Taliba, and Mabuhay within a decade after independence.
Liwayway (Tagalog), one of the lines of magazines by

The Ramon Roces (Liwayway Publications, Inc)
It was the Ramon Roces line of magazines—Liwayway (Tagalog), Bisaya (Cebuano), Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), and
Bannawag (Ilocano)—that provided space for Philippine writings in the native languages after the war. Many
magazines would compete with but fail to dislodge the Roces magazines from their top-of-mind position. Not one
of the Cebuano magazines Lamdag, Alimyon, Silaw, and Bag-ong Suga would last a decade. Hiligaynon,
however, had a strong competitor in Yuhum.
Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), one of the lines of magazines

by The Ramon Roces (Liwayway Publications, Inc)
Other regional languages would fall behind in terms of publications. Bikol writing would be published in Bikolana
and Bikolandia, but both magazines would cease to exist by the mid-1950s. Kapampangan writing would also
suffer the same fate, as magazines like Emangabiran and Baculud Athenas Ding Capampangan would crop up
in the 1950s and 1960s but would soon fade away.
Nonetheless, literary production in the various Philippine languages persisted. At this time, notable stories were
produced by writers like Juan S. P. Hidalgo Jr, Gregorio Laconsay, Constante Casabar, and Marcelino Foronda Jr in
Ilocano; Isabelo Sobrevega, Juanito Marcella, and Ismaelita Floro-Luza in Ilonggo; Eugenio Viacrucis, Godofredo
Roperos, Nazario Bas, and Porfirio de la Torre in Cebuano; and Amado M. Yuzon, Diosdado Macapagal, Fidel de
Castro, Jose M. Gallardo, Canuto D. Tolentino, and Roman Reyes in Kapampangan. Courtship, romance, the
travails of love, and poetic justice for the poor were the subjects of the stories of Ilocano writers Jeremias Calixto,
Narciso Gapusan, Hermogenes Belen, and Maura Peña. The prolific Bicolano writer Ana T. Calixto began
publishing her many love stories in Bikolana and Bicolandia, while Rogelio Basilio began a social realist strain,
highlighting the difficult plight of peasants and often championing the power and dignity of the peasantry and
rural folk as a counterpoint to the eroded values of their urban counterparts.
In poetry, traditional, “oral,” romantic poetry still remained persuasive, as shown in the popularity of such poets as
the Cebuano Vicente Padriga and poet-president Carlos P. Garcia; the Ilocano Leon Pichay, dubbed the “King of
Ilocano Poets,” and Godofredo Reyes; the Kapampangan Amado M. Yuzon and Zoilo Hilario; the Waray poets
Francisco Alvarado, Gabriel Bañez, Cecilia de Achas, Francisco Enfectana, Bagino Katangkatang, Iluminado
Lucente, and Eduardo Makabenta; Bicolano Manuel Fuentebella; and Ilonggo Isidro Escare Abeto, Romulo
Cabales, Ariston Em. Echevarria, Magdalena Jalandoni, Jose B. Magalona, Ernesto Nietes, Augurio Paguntalan,
Emilio Severino, and Joaquin Sola.
After the return of the Americans in 1945, English writing came back in full force and entered its most vigorous
phase, with the weekend magazine supplements of newspapers, campus publications, and the Philippines Free
Press welcoming literary writings in English. Poets like Manuel Viray, Dominador Ilio, Edith L. Tiempo, Ricaredo
Demetillo, Carlos Angeles, Virginia Moreno, Godofredo Burce Bunao, Alejandrino Hufana, Emmanuel Torres, and
Oscar de Zuñiga, and fictionists like Francisco Arcellana, N. V. M. Gonzalez, Nick Joaquin, Bienvenido Santos,
Kerima Polotan-Tuvera, D. Paulo Dizon, Estrella Alfon, Edilberto Tiempo, Edith L. Tiempo, Juan Gatbonton, Aida
Rivera-Ford, Gregorio Brillantes, and Gilda Cordero-Fernando produced work that showed the facility with which
Filipino writers had appropriated the forms and language of English.
Political conditions fostered the premium placed on writing in English. The devastation in the wake of World War
II ensured that the Philippines as a country would continue to be a neocolony under the dictates of the United
States. The need to finance the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the war-torn islands would result in lopsided
treaties like the Bell Trade Act in 1946, the Military Bases Agreement in 1947, the Mutual Defense Treaty in 1951,
and the Laurel-Langley Agreement in 1954. These treaties would ensure the continued economic and military
dependence of the Philippines on the United States and reinforce the political and economic clout of the elite of
the country.
However, post-World War II Philippines was not fully dominated by American and elite interest. The Hukbalahap
movement, short for Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon, constituted an alternative force. Originally organized
during World War II to fight the Japanese, the Huks, as members of the Hukbalahap were known, participated in
mainstream politics by establishing the Pambansang Kaisahan ng Magbubukid. When the union was banned by
the government in 1948, the Huks allied with the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas, the majority of whose members
came from the workers’ unions in the city. The Huks transformed from being the Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon
to the Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan or HMB.
The Huks were particularly influential in Pampanga and nearby provinces.Castro Alejandrino, one of the founders
of the Huks, even briefly served as governor in 1945, before the American forces began eradicating the Huks and
their sympathizers.Huk presence—and the concerns that it represented—may be seen in short stories like
“Mibalic a Paraiso” (Paradise Regained) by Canuto D. Tolentino and the poem “Ing Pamana” (The Legacy) by Jose
M. Gallardo. The persona of the poem is a Huk, who admonishes his family not to mourn his death because his
blood will color the Philippine flag (Hilario-Lacson 1984, 231). On the other hand, agrarian reform, which is an
alternative to the Huk’s radical solution to peasant oppression, is the subject of the Pampango poem “Ing
Ortelano” (The Peasant), 1955, by Amado M. Yuzon.
The rise of anti-Communism brought about by the postwar rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union
resulted in the breakout of hostilities between the HMB and the Philippine military. These conditions informed the
literature produced in the 1950s and 1960s. Amado V. Hernandez took up the cause of the exploited workers and
farmers, becoming president of the Congress of Labor Organizations (CLO), an association of radical worker’s
unions, in 1948 until 1950. With the government suspecting an alliance between the Huks and the CLO, Hernandez
was arrested and prosecuted for subversion by the government. He was imprisoned in 1951-56 and would be
acquitted by the Supreme Court of all charges only in 1964. In the interim he wrote such works as Bayang
Malaya (A Nation Free), 1955, a long narrative poem that depicts the quest of the tenant farmers for social justice
and the heroism of the Filipino guerrillas against the Japanese, and the poems that would be published in the book
Isang Dipang Langit (A Stretch of Sky), 1961. In his attempt to weld together the social imagination of Rizal with
the resources of Tagalog poetry, Hernandez stands as an important writer.
In Iloilo, sarsuwela writer Jose Nava, who had founded the labor union Federacion Obrera Filipina even before the
Commonwealth years, was writing editorials in La Prensa Libre on behalf of laborers. In 1951, he was arrested and
imprisoned for rebellion.
Social realist novel by Lazaro Francisco, 1986

reprint (Ateneo de Manila University Press)
Social realism, which had always been a major force in the novel, was again evident in the 1950s, as, against the
background of chronic peasant and workers’ unrest, novelists grappled with the imperatives of defining society
and clarifying its directions. Social reform began to be discussed in Tagalog novels like Lazaro Francisco’s
Maganda Pa ang Daigdig (The World Be Lovely Still), 1955, and Daluyong (Tidal Wave), 1962; Amado V.
Hernandez’s Luha ng Buwaya (Crocodile Tears), 1962, and Mga Ibong Mandaragit (Birds of Prey), 1959-60;
Brigido Batungbakal’s Ulap sa Kabukiran (Cloud over the Field), 1946, and Mapagpalang Lupa (Bountiful Land),
1960-61. The Hiligaynon novel Pasunaid (Thoughtfulness), 1960, by Abe Gonzales, examines the labor problem in
Iloilo. Cebuano writers Francisco Candia and Tiburcio Baguio co-wrote Adlaw sa Panudya (Day of Reckoning),
1950, which depicts the abuses and humiliations that the rich inflict on the poor and imagines a moral victory for
the latter in the end. Also a story of comeuppance for the poor and downtrodden is Martin Abellana’s Lilo sa
Kasulogan (A Whirlpool of Dilemma), 1947, which charts the harrowing journey of naive wage earners who are
manipulated by scheming foreigners.
Social realist novel by Amado V. Hernandez,

1959 (M & L Licudine Enterprises)
The theme of social justice for the peasant and working class would continue to be taken up by writers from all
over the Philippines. The Bikol poems “Bagas, Mahal an Bagas” (Rice, Expensive Rice) and “Awit nin Paraoma”
(Song of the Farmer) by Zacarias Loreno describe the plight of poor farmers. An Ilocano novel by Constante
Casabar, Dagiti Mariing iti Parbangon (They Who Awaken at Dawn), 1956-57, set in an Ilocano town, shows the
collusion between government officials and the capitalist class, here represented by a usurer, and shows that
unionism and solidarity among the working class are the path toward social change. In Hiligaynon, Ramon
Muzones’s novels, such as Anak sang Umalagsa (Tenant’s Daughter), 1955-56, depict the tensions between
landlord and tenants within the frame of a love story or a family drama. His masterpiece Margosatubig: Maragtas
ni Salagunting (Margosatubig: History of Salagunting), 1946, combines romance, adventure, history, and fantasy
in a story set in a fictional Muslim state where Salagunting struggles to recover the throne which Datu Mohamad
had usurped. Sakada (Seasonal Cane Worker), 1955, by Gregorio Sumcad dramatizes the inhumane conditions of
sugar plantation workers in Negros. Conrado J. Norada’s Hiligaynon novel Bulak nga Ilahas (Wildflower), 1955,
sets a love triangle in an island town politically and economically captive to greedy oligarchs. The novel marked a
departure for Norada, whose early works Ang Likum ni Diana (The Secret of Diana), 1948, and Sekretarya
(Secretary), 1954, were both romances.
The long shadow of the peasant unrest reached Mindanao, when the government tried to placate the rebels in
Central Luzon and the Visayas through a homestead program that gave them land in Mindanao. The move
eventually caused tensions between the Muslims and lumad (indigenous people) of Mindanao and the settlers
who displaced them. Many Cebuano writers would also move to Zamboanga, Iligan, and Cagayan de Oro in
Mindanao. The perspective of the settlers is chronicled in the Kapampangan story “Mibalic a Paraiso” (Paradise
Regained) by Canuto D. Tolentino. Doro, a former Huk, and his wife look forward to moving to a homestead in
Mindanao, a capitulation that, in the purview of history, temporarily solved one problem but would produce
another, more pervasive one.
Social realist novel by Andres Cristobal Cruz, 1959

(Ateneo de Manila University Press)
The Huk movement was crushed after the capture of members of the Communist Politburo in simultaneous raids
in Manila and elsewhere in 1950. The seeming closure of this avenue of radical change, the disillusionment that
followed the initial euphoria that attended the presidency of Ramon Magsaysay, and the realities of the Cold War
fostered a sense of social pessimism among Filipino intellectuals. Such pessimism is revealed in works like Kerima
Polotan’s novel The Hand of the Enemy, 1961, where the protagonist’s failure to find personal integrity unfolds
against a backdrop of a failed peasants’ revolt and a corrupt polity. Poverty and powerlessness, even if
occasionally relieved by a bedrock faith in the dignity of the human person, characterize the social world
portrayed in such Tagalog novels as Andres Cristobal Cruz’s Ang Tundo Man May Langit Din (Tondo Has a
Heaven Too), 1959-60, and Edgardo M. Reyes’s Sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag (In the Claws of Neon Lights), 1967-68.
Some writers turned to history in response to the changing times and the need for social reforms. Writing in
Ilonggo, Magdalena Jalandoni takes her standard subject—forbidden love—and situates it in the larger canvas of
history, specifically the Philippine Revolution, in her novel Juanita Cruz, 1967-68. After a drawn-out separation, Ely
and Juanita are reunited and join the Filipino campaign against Spain, as army general and nurse, respectively.
Other Hiligaynon historical novels are Lorenzo Dilag Fajardo’s Sa Dabadaba ang Gugma (Love Is in the Flame),
1961, about the propaganda movement, and Kalag sang Solidaridad (The Spirit of Solidaridad), 1961, about
Graciano Lopez Jaena.
Bembol Roco and Hilda Koronel in Lino Brocka’s Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag, 1975, a film adaptation of Edgardo M.
Reyes’s novel, Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (Lino Brocka/CCP Collection)
Unlike its counterparts in the local languages, most English writing gravitated toward urban and middle-class
experience in the two decades after World War II, in part because of the class background of the writers, but there
was nevertheless much internal diversity, and the larger social context was not ignored altogether. The range of
social life explored included the old Manila of Joaquin, the Mindoro of Gonzalez, the Tondo of Santos, the Cebu of
Alfon, and the provincial Tarlac of Brillantes. Along with other writers like Ibrahim Jubaira, Sinai Hamada, Rony
Diaz, and Silvino Epistola, short story writers created a rich mosaic of Philippine life. Important story collections in
the 1950s include Joaquin’s Prose and Poems, 1952; Gonzalez’s Children of the Ash-Covered Loam and Other
Stories, 1954; and Santos’s You Lovely People, 1955.
Alienation in many forms haunts the characters of Brillantes’s stories, collected in The Distance to Andromeda
and Other Stories, 1960. Joaquin, who is one of the most distinctive voices in Philippine literature, explored, with
greater energy than any other 20th-century Filipino writer and in an original literary style, the dilemma of Filipino
cultural identity in such stories as “The Summer Solstice” and in his novel The Woman Who Had Two Navels,
1961. Gonzalez, one of the most skillful of Filipino short story writers, is the author of A Season of Grace, 1956,
which is a masterpiece of restraint in its portrayal of frontier life in Mindoro. The Bamboo Dancers, 1959, also by
Gonzalez, is a novel that uses Jamesian techniques to lay bare the sterility of the uncommitted modern intellectual.
Bienvenido Santos’s stories, such as “Scent of Apples,” and novels such as Villa Magdalena, 1965, and The
Volcano, 1965, range through Bicol, Manila, and the United States, and are best known as compassionate
chronicles of the Filipino immigrant experience in the United States.
Economic and political relations between the Philippines and the United States ensured that American influence
would penetrate the intellectual and cultural spheres. A key factor in the persistence of American influence was
the institution of the Fulbright program in 1946 and the admission of Filipinos into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
The Fulbright program allowed Filipinos to study in American universities and transfer American knowledge and
technics to the Philippines. The New Criticism, the Anglo-American version of Formalism, discouraged
sociopolitical commentary and drew attention instead to the craft of writing. It was thus appropriate in the age of
McCarthyism and the Cold War. Such an aesthetic dominated American universities and shaped the Iowa Writers’
Workshop. The same aesthetic would be brought to the Philippines and be entrenched in Philippine universities
and colleges after Fulbright scholars and Iowa Workshop fellows returned to teach and establish writing
workshops.
A changing of the guards could be discerned in nearly all of the dominant regional literatures. By the 1950s, the
younger writers, who were university educated, would challenge the editorial and literary policies of the
mainstream and popular magazines. In 1953, Bisaya became staffed by university-schooled writers like Tiburcio
Baguio and Godofredo Roperos. With editor-in-chief Francisco Candia, they published works of fiction with
experimental qualities. Plotless stories and stream of consciousness, introspective writing, and even social
criticism were published. Roperos and Baguio used the technique of stream of consciousness in their novels
Paghugpa sa Kangitngit (When Darkness Ends), 1951, and Parnaso (Parnassus), 1959. Roperos went on to briefly
lead a group of Cebuano fictionists who, influenced by Hemingway, Joyce, and Faulkner, foregrounded the
psychological dimension in their works, such as Roperos’s short story “Langub sa Panumdoman” (Caves of the
Mind), 1955, and Eugenio Viacrucis’s “Mga Mata sa Dagat” (Eyes at Sea), 1955. Heavily influenced by Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea, “Mga Mata sa Dagat” follows a fisherman’s elaborate battle with a cat. Some of these
authors’ emphasis on the psyche and the interior lives of characters, however, alienated many readers, leading to
a decline in sales. A Cebuano writer who bucked this trend is Marcel Navarra, who had been experimenting in
fiction as early as the late 1930s. In stories like “Ang Hunsoy Sungsongan Usab” (The Empty Clay Pipe), he
effectively used symbolism to portray the deprivations suffered by barrio folk in the hands of guerrillas during
World War II, while in “Si Zosimo” (Zosimo), 1955, he used elements of fantasy to comment on landlord-tenant
relations. Unlike Roperos’s group, Navarra kept his readership because his use of fictional conventions did not jar
his readers’ sensibilities.
Collection of fiction written in Cebuano by

Marcel M. Navarra, 1986 (University of the
Philippines Press)
While didactic, sentimental, and romantic stories continued to be published in the popular magazines, in the
1960s the mood of the times was one that favored experiment and innovation, the testing of the limits of
conventions of technique and thought. Potentiano Cañizares Jr’s Cebuano story “Ang Naghulat sa Kangitngit” (He
Who Waits in the Dark), 1963, follows a dog that witnesses Death arriving to fetch its master. Hiligaynon fictionists
during the decade similarly deployed a range of styles, from straightforward narration to interior monologue, as
may be seen in the stories collected in Bahandi I: 16 Ka Pili nga mga Sugilanon sa Ilongo (Gems I: 16 Selected
Stories in Ilonggo), 1970.
In the Tagalog short story, the appearance of Mga Agos sa Disyerto (Streams in the Desert), 1964, introduced
stories more markedly realist in temper, in their language, treatment of both rural and urban life, portrayal of
characters, and stylistic devices that included the stream of consciousness. Contributors to the volume were
leading Tagalog fictionists Edgardo M. Reyes, Rogelio Sikat also known as Rogelio Sicat, Efren Abueg, Eduardo B.
Reyes, and Rogelio Ordoñez.
In Ilocano fiction, a similar orientation was seen in the works of Juan S. P. Hidalgo, who fuses the devices of folk
narrative with surrealism, psychological realism, and mythical symbolism in his stories, collected in Bituen ti
Rosales ken Dadduma pay a Sarita (Star of Rosales and Other Stories), 1969. He was matched by other Ilocano
writers whose works were collected in Dagiti Kapintasan a Sarita iti Iluko (The Best Ilocano Short Stories), 1969.
Other Ilocano writers, such as Greogrio Laconsay, Constante Casabar, Marcelino Foronda Jr, and Arsenio Ramel,
also tried to improve their craft, either veering away from traditional themes like romance, courtship, and the joys
of rural life or setting them against the backdrop of modern sociopolitical phenomena in the region, like
migration. Bannawag’s annual short story contest, which began in 1961, offered much encouragement toward this
end.
Collection of fiction written in Ilocano by Juan S.

P. Hidalgo Jr, 1969 (Ilokano Publishing House)
The trend was also evident in the Cebuano short story. In Gumersindo Rafanan’s “Kadtong Hanap nga Utlanan”
(Grey Area), 1964, a reporter worries about finances as his wife is about to deliver their child. The story contrasts
the idyllic country with the city, crime-infested because of low wages and abusive politicians. On the other hand,
Ricardo T. Hynson’s “Ang mga Kuyabog sa Lubi nga Layog” (Nestlings on a Wobbly Coconut Tree), 1962, is a love
story set in the countryside, where jobs are scarce and landowners wield total power. Jose Labuga’s “Subay sa
Hagip-ot ug Liko-Likong Hunasan” (Through the Narrow and Winding Tidal Flats), 1965, depicts a seaside
community struggling with natural calamities, rising prices, and the increasing gap between the rich and poor. In
Marcello Geocallo’s “Suot sa Dakung Lasang” (Entering the Wide Jungle), 1966, settlers in Mindanao fear the
beasts lurking in the jungle that is theirs to tame, while among them is a beast of another kind.
Bicolano writer Inday D. Romero’s stories depict human relationships that hewed closer to reality than those in the
romantic mode exemplified by the prolific Bicolano writer Ana T. Calixto.
During the same period, Liwayway would open its pages to younger writers by having a section called “Bagong
Dugo” (literally, “new blood”), edited by Liwayway Arceo. It welcomed, apart from the writers in Agos sa Disyerto,
Domingo Landicho, Ave Perez Jacob, Dominador Mirasol—university-educated writers whose stories bear traces
of modern, Western influences. Other magazines, like Bulaklak, Taliba, and Ilang-Ilang, followed suit. Stories
that received prizes at the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, established in 1951, evince a more
modern aesthetics and sensibility. Such are the stories of Genoveva Edroza-Matute, which are characterized by
restraint and subtlety. Some Cebuano writers continued to write the well-made story, but now with greater
sophistication. These include Fornarina Enemecio’s “Kuwentas nga Manol” (Jasmine Necklace), 1957, about a girl
who is raised in affluence and becomes estranged from her mother; Agustino M. Pujida’s “Lunop” (Flood), 1964,
about the characters’ struggle with a catastrophic storm, and “Ang Gidak-on sa Dagat” (The Immensity of the Sea),
1966, about a male rite of passage.
Exposed not only to the works of their English-writing contemporaries but such foreign authors as Hemingway,
Faulkner, Steinbeck, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky, Filipino writers offered an alternative to a popular fiction that
tended to be idealist and escapist in character. In English fiction, the influence of such Western movements as
surrealism and existentialism led to a great deal of literary experimentation, as in the work of Wilfrido D. Nolledo,
which influenced many young writers who saw in his highly sensuous and surreal pieces both refuge and defense
against social anxieties and the confining rule of formalism in the academe. In the 1960s, fresh work in fiction was
done by then young writers like Ninotchka Rosca, Erwin Castillo, Luis Teodoro Jr, Antonio Enriquez, Norma
Miraflor, Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez, and Renato E. Madrid also known as Father Rodolfo Villanueva.
In Tagalog poetry, the revolt against the strict adherence to rhyme and meter that Alejandro G. Abadilla had
started before World War II culminated in his Ako ang Daigdig at Iba Pang Tula (I Am the World and Other
Poems) in 1955. Although many Tagalog writers, like Teo S. Baylen, Gonzalo K. Flores, Manuel Car. Santiago,
Manuel Principe Bautista, Celestino Vega, Emilio Mar. Antonio, and Jose Domingo Karasig, would continue to write
in the mold of balagtasismo, as Virgilio S. Almario would term the style of the traditional poets, Abadilla’s push
for modernism would be supported by younger writers who started writing after World War II. However, that was
by no means the only or earliest instance of experimentation in Philippine poetry. There had been early attempts
at free verse, called malayang taludturan in Tagalog, hilwaybilay in Ilonggo, and timawang gale or timawang
kawatasan in Kapampangan. An early modernist event in Kapampangan poetry is epitomized by the prolific poet
Jose M. Gallardo, who invented a verse form he called malikwatas, short for “malikmatang kawatasan” (magic
poem), in the late 1920s and 1930s, in which one poem appears in four forms through the rearrangement of verses,
such as his poem “Kalayaan” (Freedom). “Ing Pamana” (The Legacy), 1944, is a prizewinning work of his, included
in his collection Diwa (Reflections), 1982.
Generally, however, there was resistance among writers using the local languages to such avant-gardism, and
traditional didactic and love poems continued to dominate outside these movements. This sentiment was
expressed by the Cebuano poet S. Alvarez Villarino when he insisted in “Sa Tiilan sa Atong Parnaso” (At the Foot
of Our Parnassus), serialized in the 1960s, that Spanish arte metrica, not English metrics, much less free verse,
was most suited to the native language.
Even so, modernism gained ascendancy in the 1960s with the work of young, university-educated poets. The most
self-conscious of the modernists were such poets as Epifanio San Juan Jr, Federico Licsi Espino, Rogelio
Mangahas, Virgilio S. Almario also known as Rio Alma, Bienvenido Ramos, and Lamberto E. Antonio. The
anthology Manlilikha: Mga Piling Tula, 1961-1967 (Creator: Selected Poems, 1961-1967), 1967, was the book that
announced the advent of a “new” poetry in Tagalog. Drawing inspiration from such sources as T. S. Eliot and the
French Symbolists, the poems were experimental in temper, literate instead of oral in orientation, and dense in
metaphoric substance. They were also often mannered and obscure.
The school became the breeding ground for new styles and a hotbed for debates about literature. Campus
publications like the Varsitarian of the University of Santo Tomas, the Dawn of the University of the East, and the
Quezonian of the Manuel L. Quezon University published fiction and poetry in Tagalog that were not given space
in the popular magazines. University-based writing workshops would also be established in the early 1960s,
institutionalizing patronage and mentorship among writers.
The most important of these workshops was the Summer Writers Workshop, based at Silliman University,
established in 1962 and modeled after the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Moderated by Edith and Edilberto Tiempo,
who had been writing fellows at Iowa, it was the crystallization of a sensibility that placed utmost importance on
craft.
With English and Tagalog literature established and gaining institutional or academic validation, writers of the
many regional languages formed organizations to encourage regional language writing. The Cebuano writers
established the Cebuano Writers Organization in 1953 and Lubas sa Dagang Bisaya or Ludabi in 1956. In Iloko,
Gimong dagiti Mannurat nga Ilocano was established in 1947 and would be followed by Kutibeng and Gunglo
Dagiti Mannurat nga Ilocano or GUMIL in the 1960s. Kapampangan writers formed the Agumanding Talasulat
Capampangan or AGTACA, in 1963, led by Jose M. Gallardo, who served as its president until 1977. The group
published Ing Sulu (The Light), 1968, an anthology of Kapampangan poems, with a second volume appearing in
1973, and sponsored literary contests and crissotan, or a debate in verse similar to the Tagalog balagtasan
(Manlapaz 1981, 46, 59). These organizations would hold contests and publish anthologies that would highlight the
best writing in the regional languages and push their respective literatures toward a more modern aesthetics.
The 1960s also saw the rise of nationalism among the young writers. It was in part initiated by the Filipino First
policy of the Garcia administration in the late 1950s. Though envisioned as an economic policy that would benefit
the Filipino economic elite from foreign competition, the Filipino First policy sparked the debate on nationalism
and would cast a different light on American influence, which had hitherto been seen positively. “Filipinization”
became a catchphrase that would embody the desires of the Filipinos. The overreliance on the United States
would come to be questioned.
Even in the elite schools like the University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University, where English was
the dominant language, writing in Tagalog grew. Ateneo de Manila’s Heights would publish the bagay poets:
Rolando S. Tinio, Bievenido Lumbera, and Jose F. Lacaba. Tinio and Lumbera were Fulbright scholars and were
already teaching English literature at Ateneo de Manila when their poems in Tagalog were published. Their shift to
colloquial Tagalog as a language for creative expression would embody the change of attitude toward the
entrenched Americanization of Philippine literature, though the bagay poets were still steeped in Western
aesthetics of imagism.
At Ateneo de Naga, the campus journal An Maogmang Lugar contained Bikol poems of then high school students
Enrico de la Torre, Gabriel H. Bordado, and Tito Valiente.
The deepening social and political crises in the years immediately preceding the declaration of martial law on 21
September 1972 transformed a generation of intellectuals so that writers who, only a few years earlier, had
cultivated Western values of angst and ennui came to be politically radicalized. Writers began to ease away from
the New Criticism that the Silliman Writers Workshop espoused. In the poems of Edith L. Tiempo herself, for
example, there is a development from the tight form and image-metaphor of the early “Lament for the Littlest
Fellow,” 1950, to the looser, freer form of her famous “Bonsai,” 1972 (Abad 2005, 15-16). Reclaiming a more
nationalist tradition was deemed necessary, and that sentiment would set up the seismic changes that would
come in the late 1960s.
 Written by Resil B. Mojares

Updated by Christoffer Mitch C. Cerda, with notes from Vijae Alquisola, Rowena Festin, Paula
Hernandez, May Maravilles, Marina Quilab, Dominic Sy, and Rosario Cruz-Lucero
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This article is from the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine Art Digital Edition.
Title: Philippine Literature During the Third Republic (1946-1972)

Author/s: Resil B. MojaresUpdated by Christoffer Mitch C. Cerda, with notes from Vijae Alquisola, Rowena Festin, Paula Hernandez, May
Maravilles, Marina Quilab, Dominic Sy, and Rosario Cruz-Lucero
URL:
Publication Date: November 18, 2020
Access Date: November 11, 2022
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11/11/22, 3:02 PM Philippine Literature During the Third Republic (1946-1972)

Cultural Center of the Philippines

Philippine Literature During the Third

Bisaya (Cebuano), one of the lines of magazines by

Liwayway (Tagalog), one of the lines of magazines by

Hiligaynon (Ilonggo), one of the lines of magazines

Social realist novel by Lazaro Francisco, 1986

Social realist novel by Amado V. Hernandez,

Social realist novel by Andres Cristobal Cruz, 1959

Collection of fiction written in Cebuano by

Collection of fiction written in Ilocano by Juan S.

 Written by Resil B. Mojares

Realubit, Maria Lilia F. 1983. Bikols of the Philippines. Naga: A. M. S. Press.

Title: Philippine Literature During the Third Republic (1946-1972)

Copyright © 2020 by Cultural Center of the Philippines

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