BULACAN

POLYTECHNIC
COLLEGE
Bulihan, City of Malolos, Bulacan

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements in

Rizal’s Life and Works as Mandated by Law

Submitted by: Arellano, Adelaine Aiko A.

Submitted to: Mrs. Estrelita Amaninche
 BSAIS
2-C

Annotation of Antonio de Morga’s

Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas
Group 1
AFABLE ARELLANO BENDOY BOLIVER
SENIT
SUBTOPICS TO BE LOOK FORWARD
1. Background Information About Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas
2. Who is Dr. Antonio de Morga?
3. What is Las Islas Filipinas?
4. What is Sucesos?
5. Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas
6. Chapters of Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas
7. What leads Jose Rizal to Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas?
8. Blumentritt's Influence on Rizal
9. Blumentritt’s critic on Rizal’s annotations
10. Rizal Objectives
11. De Morga's Sucesos vs. Rizal's Annotation
12. Rizal's 3 Propositions
13. Jose Rizal as Philippines’ National Hero
14. Importance of Rizal’s Annotations to the present generation
Sucesos De Las
Islas Filipinas
Background Information
• Antonio de Morga- author of
Sucesos de Las Islas Filipinas.
• An account of Spanish
observations about the Filipinos
and the Philippines.
• One of the first books to tackle
Philippine History
• Consists of eight (8) chapters
(discuss the political, social and economic aspects of
a colonizer and the colonized country)
• It is one of the important works
on the early history of the
Spanish colonization of the
Philippines published in Mexico
in 1609.
• It describes the events inside and
outside of the country from 1493
to 1603, including the history of
the Philippines.
• It is lauded for its truthful,
straightforward, and fair
account of the early colonial
period from the perspective of a
Spanish colonist.
• The content of the book is based
on documentary research,
observation and personal
experience of de Morga.
• Rizal is a secondary source of
the book due to his Annotations.
• Annotated by Jose Rizal with a
prologue by Dr. Ferdinand
Blumentritt.
 ?
Who is Dr. Antonio de
Morga?
Antonio de Morga
• Spanish lawyer, a notable colonial
government official for 43 years in
the Philippines, New Spain, and Peru
and historical anthropologist during the
17th century
• When reassigned to Mexico, he
published the book Sucesos de Las
Islas (Events in the Philippine Islands)
Filipinas in 1609.
 ?
What is Annotation?
meaning: a note of explanation or
comment added to a text or
diagram.
 ?
What is Sucesos?
meaning: events, happenings,
occurrence
 Sucesos

The Sucesos is the Modern historians

work of an honest The book (Sucesos)
(including Rizal) have noted
observer, a versatile narrates the history of wars,
that Morga has a definite
bureaucrat, who knew intrigues, diplomacy and
bias and would often distort
the workings of the evangelization of the
facts or even rely on
administration from the Philippines in a somewhat
invention to fit his defense of
inside. disjointed way.
the Spanish conquest.
 ?
What is Las Islas
Filipinas?
Las Islas Filipinas
The Philippines was
named in honor of
King Philip II of
Spain.
 Sucesos
de Las Islas Filipinas
Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas
● Morga wrote that the purpose for
writing Sucesos was, so he could
chronicle" the deeds achieved by
our Spaniards in the discovery,
conquest, and conversion of the
Filipinas Islands-as well as various
fortunes that they have from time to
time in the great kingdoms and
among the pagan peoples surrounding
the islands.”
Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas

● Taking issue with the scopes of

these claims, Rizal argued that
“the conversion and conquest
were not as widespread as
portrayed because the
missionaries were only successful
in conquering a portion of the
population of certain islands.
Chapters of Sucesos De Las Islas
Filipinas
Chapter 1
Magellan and Legazpi’s seminal
expeditions.

Chapter 2 – 7
Chronological report on government
administrations under Governor-
General.

Chapter 8
Philippine Islands, the natives there,
their antiquity, custom and government.
 ?
What leads Jose Rizal to
Sucesos De Las Islas
Filipinas?
What leads Jose Rizal to Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas?

• Rizal was an earnest seeker of truth and this

marked him as a historian.
• He had a burning desire to know exactly the
conditions of the Philippines when the
Spaniards came ashore to the islands.
• His theory was that the country was
economically self – sufficient and prosperous.
• Entertained the idea that it had a lively and
vigorous community.
• He believed the conquest of the Spaniards
contributed in part to the decline of the
Philippine’s rich tradition culture.
What leads Jose Rizal to Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas?

• His personal friendship with Ferdinand

Blumentritt provided the inspiration for doing a
new edition of Morga’s Sucesos.
• Devoting four months’ research and writing
and almost a year to get his manuscript published
in Paris in January 1890.
• Rizal spent his entire stay in the city of London
at the British Museum’s reading room.
• Having found Morga’s book, he laboriously
hand-copied the whole 351 pages of the
Sucesos
What leads Jose Rizal to Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas?

• Rizal then proceeded to annotate every chapter

of the Sucesos
• His extensive annotations of Morga's work
number "no less than 639 items or almost two
annotations for every page."
• Rizal also annotated Morga's typographical
errors.
• He commented on every statement that could be
nuanced in Filipino cultural practices.
 Blumentritt’s
Influence on Rizal
Ferdinand Blumentritt
• Ferdinand Blumentritt has encouraged Rizal to
write about the Philippine’s pre-colonial History.
• Prof. Ferdinand Blumentritt, once suggested to
Rizal that he should write a Philippine history
book, but Rizal felt he neither had the time nor
the energy, much less a wide knowledge of our
past, so the next best thing was to annotate
Morga’s Sucesos.
• He wrote the prologue in Spanish instead of his
native German language
Ferdinand Blumentritt
• Ferdinand Blumentritt also wrote a preface
emphasizing some salient points:
• The Spaniards have to correct their erroneous
conception of the Filipinos as children of limited
intelligence
• There existed the three kinds of Spanish delusions
about the Philippines:
- Filipinos were an inferior race
- Filipinos were not ready for parliamentary
representation and other reforms
- Denial of equal rights can be compensated by strict
dispensation of justice
Blumentritt’s critic on
Rizal’s annotations
Blumentritt’s critic on his annotations
● Rizal commits the error of many historians in appraising the
01 events of the past in the light of present standards
● Blumentritt observed that Rizal had committed the mistake of
many modern historians who judged events in the past in the
context of contemporary ideas and more.
● Rizal’s attacks on the church were unfair and unjustified
02 because the abuses of the friars should not be considered to mean
the Catholicism is bad.
● Blumentritt perceived as the overreach of Rizal’s denunciation
of Catholicism, that Rizal should confine his critique to the
religious orders in the Philippines who spared no effort to
suppress calls for reform.
 Rizal’s Objectives
01
To awaken the
consciousness of the
Filipinos regarding their
glorious way of past
Rizal strove to establish that the
Filipinos could be proud of their
pre-conquest past.
02 03
To prove that Filipinos are
To correct what has been
civilized even before the
distorted about the Philippines
coming of the Spaniards.
due to Spanish conquest
• Early Government
• High Literacy Rate
Rizal aimed to use history as a
• Early Artillery
propaganda weapon
• Smooth Foreign Relations
• Self sufficient
• Advanced Civilization
Rizal’s Annotation
vs.
De Morga’s Sucesos
De Morga's Sucesos vs. Rizal's Annotation
De Morga's Sucesos
• Philippines was deserted and
inhabitable.
• Beef and fish they know it best when it has
started to rot and stink.
• Tribes whom cannot be safe because of
violence.
Rizal's Annotation
• Philippines was not deserted and was
actually habitable.
• Spaniards, like any other nation, treat
food to which they are not accustomed or
is unknown to them with disgust. This
fish that Morga mentions is bagoong
(salted & fermented fish)
• They will always choose violence until the
Government enters because of their
inhumane ways as answer those who do
not submit to the friars.
 De Morga's Sucesos vs. Rizal's Annotation
De Morga's Sucesos
• Men and Women are money loving and in
capitals so when there is a price, they yield.
• Bathing their body on rivers or streams
regardless of their age.
• Morga was critical of the system of the
government because they are no rulers for myriad
communities, instead one leader for each tribe.
• The ordinary food of the natives is very small fish
which they call “Laulau”
• Natives are always mining for golds but when
Spaniards came, the mining become lesser and
they just treasured what gold jewelry they have
passing it through generations.
Rizal's Annotation
• We find it everywhere in the world even in Europe.
• Indios have hygienic customs which is the proper
way of taking a bath.
• Rizal argued that it was better that way because
having a leader that knows what the tribe needs and
what problems they have is more effective.
• It seems that Morga refers to “Tawilis” or “Dilis”
which is eaten by natives in large quantities.
• The Indios on seeing that wealth aroused the
capacity of Encomienderos and soldiers,
abandoned the work in the mines, and the priest
historians relate that, in order to save them from
vexations.
 Rizal’s 3 Propositions

01 02 03
• The people of the • Filipinos were
• The present state of
Philippines have a decimated,
the Philippines was
culture on their own, demoralized,
not necessarily
before the coming of exploited, and ruined
superior to its past
the Spaniards by the Spanish
colonization
• The "SUCESOS" as annotated by Rizal, appeared for the
first time in the Philippines sixty-eight years later when a
publisher in Manila, published the new work in 1958, to
contribute his bit to the national effort to honor Rizal. The
present work is the sixth volume of the Series of Writings of
Jose Rizal which the Jose Rizal National Centennial
Commission has no published in commemoration of his birth.
Jose Rizal as Philippines’
National Hero
• Rizal gave us freedom using
goodness
• Jose Rizal became the Philippines’
national hero because he fought for
freedom in a silent but powerful
way
• He expressed his love for the
Philippines through his novels, essays
and articles rather than through the
use of force or aggression.
 Importance of
Rizal’s Annotations
to the present
generation
Importance of Rizal’s Annotations to the present generation

• To awaken in the Filipinos, the consciousness of our past

• To first lay bare the past, in order to better judge the present and to survey the road trodden
during three centuries
• To devote ourselves to studying the future
• To prove Filipinos had a culture of their own, prior to colonization, that the Filipinos were
NOT inferior to the white man
• To shatter the myth of the so-called “Indolence of the Filipinos”
• To reduce those Filipinos who denied their native tongue into rotten fish
• To seriously study Tagalog and produce a comprehensive Tagalog dictionary
• To embrace the generic term “Indio”, or in today’s case, Filipino, with all its negative
connotations, and turn it into one of dignity and nobility.
Here are excerpts from Rizal’s annotations to inspire young Filipinos of today.
Austin Craig, an early biographer of Rizal, translated into English

“To the Filipinos: In Noli Me Tangere (The Social Cancer) I started to sketch
the present state of our native land. But the effect which my effort produced
made me realize that, before attempting to unroll before your eyes the
other pictures which were to follow, it was necessary first to post you on
the past. So only can you fairly judge the present and estimate how much
progress has been made during the three centuries (of Spanish rule). Like
almost all of you, I was born and brought up in ignorance of our country’s
past and so, without knowledge or authority to speak of what I neither saw
nor have studied, I deem it necessary to quote the testimony of an illustrious
Spaniard who in the beginning of the new era controlled the destinies of the
Philippines and had personal knowledge of our ancient nationality in its last
days.
“If the book succeeds in awakening in you
the consciousness of our past which has
been obliterated from memory and in
rectifying what has been falsified and
calumniated, I shall not have labored in
vain, and on such basis, little though it
may be, we can all devote ourselves to
studying the future.“
-Dr. Jose Rizal
 "To foretell the destiny of a
nation, it is necessary to open
the book that tells of her past."
-Jose Rizal
 Resources
● https://www.slideshare.net/anandawisely/dr-antonio-de-morgas-sucesos
-de-las-islas-filipinas?fbclid=IwAR1NqlWS6mHrsN-m0n0raiAkdUsJO
r_HkAP2EzhfkEE3jyZqecnkluV2QbQ
● https://prezi.com/qawe8nczviaq/rizals-annotation-of-sucesos-de-las-isla
s-filipinas/?fbclid=IwAR2jTwY8tJ7xrcm4Zx6tnGDW0UzXzCiSunzHK
_6PKtRrXpXa7re937ENefg&fallback=1
● https://www.philstar.com/opinion/2018/10/28/1863744/rizal-annotation
s-antonio-morgas-sucesos-las-islas-filipinas
● https://www.scribd.com/embeds/415702764/content?
start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&access_key=key-
fFexxf7r1bzEfWu3HKwf