 Born on March 10, 1919

 Filipino Historian
 part of leftist tradition of Philippine
historiography
 Executive Secretary of Philippine Mission to
the United Nations (1946-1949)
 Counselor for Department of Foreign Affairs
(1949-1951)
 Youngest Editor of UP’s student
publication (The Philippine Collegian)
 Director of Lopez Memorial Museum from
1960 to 1972
 Member of Editorial Board of the Journal
of Contemporary Arts
 Trustee of Focus on Global South in
Bangkok
 Manila’s Diwa ng Lahi awardee in
1989
 Conferred the Doctor of Arts and
Letters (Honoris causa) from PUP in
1989
 Doctor of Laws(honoris causa) from
UP Diliman in 1990
 Wrote 30 book and numerous
pamphlets & monographs
 Died on September 15, 1999
 Quezon city in 1989
 Manila in 1988
 “The Civil Liberties Union” in 1988
 University of the Philippines
Manila 1989
 Recto Reader:
Excerpts from the
Speeches of Claro
M. Recto (1965)
 Veneration Without
Understanding (1969)
 The Making of A
Filipino: A Story of
Philippine Colonial
Politics (1969)
 Dissent and
Counter-
Consciousness
(1970)
The Philippines: A Past Revisited
(with Leticia R. Constantino,
1975)
 Philippines: A
Continuing Past
(1978)
 Filipinohistorians were captives of
Spanish and American historiography
 Spanish colonial policy
 Scholars demonstrated their nationalism
by projecting heroic deed of recognized
heroes
 “Means of escaping a reality too
complex for his comprehension.”
 Advance to the writing of a truly Filipino
history
 No society, no history; no men, no societies
 An individual has no history, apart from
society, and the society is the product of
people in struggle.
 Human being has unlimited possibilities for
development
 Recorded struggle of people for ever
increasing freedom and for newer and higher
realizing of the human person
 Consist of the people’s effort to attain better
life
 Historic struggles provide the people with
lessons in their upward March and give form
and strength to the constantly changing society
 There’s no history without people
 Pyramids of Egypt, The Great Wall of
China, the Parthenon of Greece was
all labor of millions of slave
 French Revolution/American War of
Independence
 Under developed areas- enriched the
literature.
 Responsible for new approaches, new
techniques of viewing events and writing
history
 Philippine historians contribute the
thought by revising Philippine past
 Demythologizing
 To obtain a comprehensive knowledge of the
activities of the masses in our history
 The study used only the same sources open to
traditional and official history
 Real people’s history becomes more urgent as we
Filipino search for truly Filipino solutions to
Filipino problems
 History is a melange of facts and dates, of
personalities and events, a mixture of hero worship
and about our national identity and democracy.
 A people’s history must rediscover the past in
order to make it reusable.
 History can then serve as a guide to present
and succeeding generations in the counting
struggle for change.
 History must deal with the past with a view to
explaining the present.
 History should show how a nation was born
where previously there was none.
 Consciousness interacts with material
life.
 Dissenting ideas emerge to coexist
them when the economic traditions
sharpened the critical degree.
 Participation in mass actions raises the level of
consciousness of the masses.
 Mass actions are also responses toward
international development
 The only way a history of the Philippines can
be Filipino is to write on the basis of the
struggles of the people, for in these struggle
the Filipino emerged.
LEADER: Nicole Mananap
ASSISSTANT LEADER: Kareen Briones
MEMBERS: Hermione Alexandra Asirot
Jerna Dioses
Jonah Mae Samatra
Jobilee Trisha Joaquin
May Oreña