THE FILIPINO POINT OF YIEW

IN HISTORICO INTERPRETATION
AS ARTICUIATED BY TEODORO A. AG0NCI££O

ANTONIO C. HILA

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION IS NOT done in a vacuum. A point of view is

necessarily adopted by the historian who writes to re-live the past. Precisely
because history can never be objective as Agoncillo has firmly asserted,
interpretation varies according to the varied persuasions of the historians.
This is clearly seen in the writing of the history of a nation like the Philippines
which has undergone successive waves of colonization. Philippine historians
have assumed different ways of interpreting its past indicated by two
opposing viewpoints - one that reflects the perspective of the colonizer, and that
of the colonized.
In writing and interpreting the history of the country, Agoncillo had batted
for the Filipino point of view. The position that Agoncillo had taken was a
strong reaction to the position assumed by historians who viewed Philippine
history largely ‘through foreign eyes”, a phenomenon whj,ph he said, had been
going on up to the 1950's. The Filipino viewpoint is a view which Agoncillo, in
his own words, has stated "countless times". One such time was in 1972 when
he articulated his succinct ideas on this issue in two different lectures. It is “tragic",
he said that Filipino historians still view their history from the colonizer's
viewpoint. A ‘colonial hangover‘, that is a form of conditioning of both tire
“mind and the body‘, is a result of four centuries of colonization. Thus they

* This is part of the author's dissertation entitled “The contribution of Teodoro A.

Agoncillo to Philippine Historiography”, submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate
School of the University of Santo Tomas in September 1998.

Asia-Pacific Social Science Review, Vol 2, No. 1 (May 2001), pp 110- 138
Copyright 2001 by College of Liberal Arts, De La Salle University
 ANTONIO C. HILA 111

“follow blindly the colonial master's subtle and not-too-subtle policies directed
against the attainment of national and/or individual self-interests.” According
to him, ‘It takes courage and a strong sense of nationalism for the Filipinos to
banish the bad effects of colonialism.” '
Agoncillo explained that the stance taken by these historians who wrote
in the perspective of the colonizers was the result of the “most potent techniques‘
that the latter used in conditioning the minds of the colonials to make them
“pliant” and “easy to manage”. Because our historians continued to suffer from a
pervasive colonial hangover otherwise known as “colonial mentality” since
“nominal independence in 1946” was achieved, “the re-writing of Philippine
history”, Agoncillo maintained, is a ‘difficult task that is fraught with danger.”
The difficulty, he sai@fay in ‘overcoming the obstacles that centuries of mental
slavery have erected the people's path." The danger, on the other hand, was seen
in the ‘bristling attitude of obscurantist in our midst who, either because of
ignorance or bigotry or both, condemn everything that does not conform with
traditional thinking and outmoded values” (Agoncillo 1972).
While he admitted that ‘historians differ in their outlook and therefore in
their interpretations of facts”, Agoncillo maintained such a difference is not as
significant as acquiring ‘the habit of thinking as Filipinos not as Spaniards or
Americans.” This, he said, ‘is crucial specially to underdeveloped countries like
the Philippines” because if the Filipinos “cannot think as Filipinos they cannot
expect foreigners to think for them.” Elaborating further on the idea, lie said:

Since in the past and up to the present our people have been
accustomed to the foreign climate of opinion and since our very own
leaders—or misleaders—have had enough time to devote themselves
only to frivolous activities, our people have acquired the habit of
depending on foreigners to think or do things for them. (Agoncillo
19Z2)

Much earlier, in 1961, he harped on the same theme, after having done
preparations for the offering of a basic course, Philippine History, which used a
new textbook that he wrote together with Oscar Alfonso, a junior colleague in
the department of history at the University of the Philippines. The course had
been expanded to include ‘institutions”, hence the title “Philippine History and
Institutions”. As conceived, the course touched not only on the “narration and
interpretation of the significant events in the Philippines that led, directly or
indirectly, to the development of Philippine polity”, but also on its institutions,
the ‘various elements in Philippine society which constitute the essence of the
Filipino's way of life”, which are the “customs, traditions, beliefs, practices,
activities, and agencies of a people's culture”.2
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