The Philippine Revolution of 1896

Editor’s Preface

Florentino Rodao

1        Gender, Warfare, and Patriotism in Southeast Asia

and in the Philippine Revolution

          Barbara Watson Andaya       1

2    Gender and Kinship in the Philippine Revolution, 1896–1898

          Mina Roces             31

3    Ethnicity in the Philippine Revolution

          Leonard Y. Andaya                49

4    The Colonial Origins of Philippine Military Traditions

          Alfred W. McCoy 83

5        The People in the Revolution: Civilian Flight

during the Philippine Revolution of 1896

          Glenn Anthony May              125         

6    Letters from a Spanish Soldier in the Filipino Revolution

          Fernando Palanco Aguado

          Translated from the Spanish by Luis Antonio Mañeru        142

7        Lt. Commander Paul Hintze’s Visit to the Revolutionary

             Headquarters in Cavite

          Karl-Heinz Wionzek              165

8    The Franciscans and the Philippine Revolution in Central Luzon

                   Cayetano Sanchez Fuertes, OFM

                   Translated from the Spanish by B. F. Cadwallader               179         

9    Provincial-Level Corruption in the Nineteenth Century

1. Huetz de Lemps

      Translated from the French by Ma. Luisa Camagay                                              217     

10    Colonial Justice and Provincial Governors in the Nineteenth Century

          Luis Angel Sanchez Gomez

          Translated from the Spanish by Luis Antonio Mañeru        231

11  “Intra-Asian Trade” at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

          Yoshiko Nagano    253

12  A Critical Bibliography and Philippine Historiography of 1898

          Bernardita Reyes Churchill  277

Transcription of:

Round Table Discussion:  Andres Bonifacio

Tordesilla, 28 November 1997

Rodao: Good afternoon for all of you in the Treaty Houses of Tordesillas. We are here to discuss about Andres Bonifacio and the conflicting views that the historians here with me have about his deeds, his writings and his own life.  Being in this house which reminds of the period, long time passed, when Spain and Portugal felt themselves the rulers of the world, I wonder what Bonifacio would think, of a  gathering of Filipinos, Spaniards and soon-to-be-dominant Americans. However, we are not now in a period of overconfidence from Spaniards, and the Filipinos don’t feel anymore the need to fight against the colonial power  to win their freedom, and neither American s are tempted anymore to set foot in the Philippines in their way to their increasing expansion towards Asia  Now the gathering is merely of scholars from different nationalities. The main idea is to discuss data and to expose their conflicting interpretations, which are obviously tainted by their personal and academic background, and with this aim the Spanish Association for Pacific Studies has decided to organize this roundtable which will start with Glenn May, the author of the book that has raised the present discussion, “Inventing a Hero”.

May: Yes, can you all hear me?  First I want to repeat something that Vince [Rafael]

said earlier that Tino was not there and that was that I think that this

fellow, we owe a great debt of gratitude for all the things that he’s been

doing

(clapping)

That’s probably the last thing I’ll say that will get any applause I think.

(laughter)

The rest (garbled in the tape).  My mission is to summarize a book in a few

minutes and I realize that not everyone here has read the book.  I’ll just

say it is somewhat controversial.  So to put people in a level playing

field let me just try to summarize here in a few minutes.  The main point

to be made is that the book is not primarily about the Philippine national

hero Andres Bonifacio, it is rather about the writings of a number of

individuals who I feel are responsible for conveying to us most of what we

have in our heads about Bonifacio.  I deal with six people.  Three early

historians of the revolutionary period Manuel Artigas, Epifanio de los

Santos and his son Jose P. Santos, one memoirist who is  also a

revolutionary, that is Artemio Ricarte and two leading post-World War II

historians of the Philippines:  Teodoro Agoncillo and Rey Ileto who is with

us today.  These people and their writings are the subject of the book.  My

principal argument is that much of what we know about Bonifacio cannot

necessarily be credited, which is to say that most of the images that we

have like that we have around in our heads, are problematic.  For example,

my book calls into question, much of the data we have in our heads about

Bonifacio’s early years:  about his childhood, about his vocational

history, and his family relationships, the stories about his reading by the

lamplight, the stories about the books he supposedly read.  It also calls

into question the notion that Bonifacio wrote the literary works that he is

credited with writing:  several poems, some of which are celebrated as

classics, a translation into Tagalog of Jose Rizal’s Mi Ultimo Adios

printed in El Renacimiento, several prose works, it calls into question

several letters that Bonifacio wrote to his fellow revolutionary, Emilio

Jacinto.  Four letters to Jacinto, four letters may not sound like a lot

but in the collection of Bonifacio’s writings edited by Teodoro Agoncillo,

those four letters take up about forty percent of the total corpus of

writings attributed to Bonifacio.  It calls into question the standard

account of perhaps the most famous episode in Bonifacio’s life the Tejeros

Assembly, the meeting of revolutionaries at the Tejeros estate house in

Cavite province.  As I point out, many historians in constructing their

narratives of Tejeros have privileged the version of it found in the

memoirs of Artemio Ricarte.  I argue and I think I demonstrate that Ricarte

dissembled in his account , a strong word, that is what I used.  My book

also calls into question an account of Bonifacio’s personality that found

in the very influential prize winning book The Revolt of the Masses written

by Teodoro Agoncillo.  And finally, my book calls into question the more

recent effort by Rey Ileto to link Bonifacio to the Filipino revolutionary

tradition, the Filipino folk revolutionary tradition, something that he did

in his prize winning book Pasyon and Revolution, a book that I have great

admiration for.  Now, obviously time does not permit me to reconstruct the

evidence that I assembled for each of the points I just made.  But to

oversimplify let me say that what I’ve done in most chapters is simply to

give a close reading, my close reading of these to the texts generated by

the five historians I mentioned.  I look at the evidence they provide, to

determine if the evidence is sufficient to support the statements they’ve

made.  And what I have found is that in some cases as with Artigas, de los

Santos, and Santos, the evidence is either non-existent, or suspect.  The

idea of non-existent or suspect is I think the operative words here.  In

other cases, as with Agoncillo, much of the key evidence is interviews and

as I tried to show Agoncillo’s use of that  evidence strikes me as

questionable.  I don’t have anything against the use of interviews but I do

have concerns about Agoncillo has used them and how much weight can be

placed on them.  Although in this regard I will be the first to concede

that out of my own writings that was the weakest most questionable sections

are those that rely on interviews.  In the case of Rey Ileto, I point out

that Rey and just about everyone else that has written about the

revolution, has relied heavily on texts provided by de los Santos and

Santos, and I have serious doubts about whether those texts can be trusted.

So, let me say finally, that I have also in the book made some tentative

assertions, guesses may be the right word, about why historians I deal with

have written what they have written.  I asserted that most did so because

they had a nationalist agenda.  If I had to be self-critical, at a later

date, I’d say that my own evidence on this particular point is weak and in

the book itself I leave all my statements about the motives of historians

as speculative, that is the self-criticism that I will provide right now.

One more thing, and that is this, I have been criticized for writing a book

that is claimed attempts to denigrate Bonifacio and that is not what I

think the book is about although I can understand that the title got in hot

water and will continue to get me in hot water as one good friend said I

deserve all the criticism I get because of the title.  But I view the book

as a challenge to the historical community.  I don’t say I have all the

answers.  What I say is “Look, here are all these problems with what we

have been told about Bonifacio.  Let’s do something about it.”  In this

book I can make a small effort to say something constructive in a chapter

on Ricarte, I tried to put a new version of the Tejeros Assembly and I’ve

also done a piece here in a collection by Father Arcilla that tries to shed

light on the Bonifacio-Aguinaldo controversy, but I have not done very much

in a positive way constructing the Bonifacio I have deconstructed if you

like.  There is a lot more to be done, the questions I have raised about

the existing sources trouble me, I don’t think they can dismiss something

by reaffirming what has been said in the past, I am curious as to hear what

my colleagues here have to say about the book.

(Applause)

Rodao:  Okay, thank you.  Well, I think Glenn May himself has started to

criticise his own book and I think we are going to continue that. Well, who

is next?

Churchill:  Like Glenn May I am going to thank Florentino because this is I

think the first time every I have been put in a panel back to back so thank

you Florentino.

(Applause)

Rodao:  Enough.

(Applause)

Churchill:   My comments about the book of Glenn May will be a summary of

the papers presented in a recent conference I convened in 1997, the Manila

Studies conference where I had a panel discussion on the book.  And, the

papers have been published in a single volume.  It probably comes as no

surprise that the book “Inventing a Hero The Posthumous Recreation of

Andres Bonifacio”, received a hostile reaction among circles, not

exclusively academic in the Philippines who are familiar or interested in

Andres Bonifacio in the Philippine revolution.  The reason for this

indignation stands from Glenn May’s thesis that not only did we invent a

hero Andres Bonifacio using forged documents about him but that we invented

a hero who was flawed.   The so-called invention of Bonifacio was

attributed to the works of nationalist historians like Epifanio de los

Santos, Teodoro Agoncillo, and my neighbour Reynaldo Ileto and of

participants like Artemio Ricarte. Thus, he wrote “For all historians whose

writing I scrutinized, a primary reason for posthumously recreating and

casting him in a heroic mode appears to have been political.  All were in

their respective days, outspoken nationalists deeply committed to the ideal

of Filipino nationhood.  To such people, every constructed Bonifacio,

idealized and sanitized, served a vital political function as a symbol of

Filipino nationalism and a model for Filipino youths.  More than anything

else, their common commitment to a nationalist agenda probably explains the

liberties they took, and other deficiences of their scholarship.”  As a

commentator pointed out, May’s technique was:  “expose the methods of

nationalist historians, discredit their chosen hero, and you cast grave

doubts on nationalism itself”.   The collection of papers “Determining the

Truth:  The Story of Andres Bonifacio” which is this one consists of

critiques and commentaries on Glenn May’s book by a group of Filipino and

one American, writers from various disciplines who have subjected May’s

thesis to critical analysis and (missing word) practically all the

suppositions in the book.  Rolando Gripaldo whose discipline is philosophy

concludes that while Inventing a Hero is relatively well-researched May’s

arguments are full of fallacies, particularly, hasty generalizations.

Picking up from May’s conclusion, that “The Bonifacio we have is mostly an

illusion, the product of undocumented statements, unreliable, doctored and

otherwise spurious sources, and a collective imagination of several

historians and a memoirist”.  Gripaldo noted that May’s overall strategies

was: “to cite some inadequacies and inconsistencies of an author from some

of his works and then generalize this to include all his other works”.

Gripaldo concludes, after discussing in detail some of the author’s cited

in May’s book, that May has not demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, that

these historians had actually and using his own yardstick definitively

fabricated, historical evidence.  The piece written by Ruel Pepa, also from

the perspective philosophy and logic, underlies further the inconsistencies

he finds in Glenn May’s book, even and including the defense he made in

answer to the critique  of two writers published in a metropolitan daily.

And so while May claims that he did not mean to discredit Bonifacio as a

hero his book however, does so in so many places.  Antonio Hila, a

historian, deals specifically with May’s attacks on Teodoro Agoncillo’s

work The Revolt of the Masses.  Using the private collection of Teodoro

Agoncillo, he explains the providence of the documents used by Agoncillo in

writing his biography of Bonifacio and answers some of the deficiences

Glenn May has charged against Agoncillo’s methodology and sources,

including his supposed bias for Aguinaldo.  The inconsistencies and flawed

logic in May’s book were further exposed in the essay by Manuel K. Tan and

Malcolm Churchill, an economist and occasional historian who in addition to

analzing the faulty logic in Glenn May’s articles, also presented a

rebuttal of May’s notion of Tagalog usage in the revolutionary period on

such grounds as the difference between the active and passive voices.  Both

writers also commented on the possible motivation of May in writing this

book.  The conclusion of all these essays was Glenn May presented flimsy

evidence for the radical conclusions he presented. Indeed, Glenn May could

have contributed to the historiography of Bonifacio and the revolution as

expressed by one of the authors in this monograph:  “Glenn May by dint of

knowledge, an inquiring mind and a great deal of labourious work had an

opportunity to advance our knowledge of Andres Bonifacio and the

revolutionary period.  Instead his approach was to tear down, cast doubt

on, and denigrate all that precedes him, leaving nothing in its place.”  As

far as Andres Bonifacio, his place is indeed secure in the pantheon of

Filipino heroes and the essay by another historian Digna Apilado sums it up

eloquently:  As one writer has aptly put it “the historical factc is that

Andres Bonifacio made revolution.  He was the last supremo and it was

during his stewardship of the Katipunan that Filipinos discovered their

capacity to rise against their oppressor”.  For all that suggested of the

“shadowy, unconfirmed data of his biography, the fact is that until his

death he was a great figure of a great moment in our history”.

(Applause)

Parte 2

Ileto:  I have been asked repeatedly to comment on Professor  May’s book,

particularly since I’m the only one of the so-called nationalist historians

discussed in the book who is able to respond.  The others are long dead.

Before I join the others in their eternal repose  ( audience’s laughter), I

have many things to say about this very impassioned critique about Filipino

historiography.  The book is quite blunt in exposing alleged lies,

inventions, concealments, cynical manipulations, biasses, etc. etc. behind

the nationalist construction of the hero Andres Bonifacio.  It was meant to

expose, condemn and provoke, and not unexpectedly, many writers have taken

sides on the issue.  The majority, mostly Filipinos, have naturally reacted

with anger and deep hurt.  And why not?  For the book strikes, and without

mercy, not at Bonifacio but at one of the foundation narratives of Filipino

nationalism.  Not only that, it insinuates, it insinuates, Filipinos have

had some fundamental problems with remembering, reconstructing and

disseminating the past.  I can only raise a few questions within the short

time allocated to me, so tonight I shall enumerate just nine points for

discussion.

Number one:  No, I can think of twenty five others.

Rodao:  Five minutes.

Ileto:  The fundamental argument in the book is that Bonifacio is the

creation of writers and historians with a political agenda.  The agenda

being the need for authentic heroes in the making of the Philippine nation

state.  The Filipino nationalist writers critiqued by May are lumped

together with other types with a political bias namely “Marxists,

conservatives, liberals, environmentalists and post-modernists”.  In May’s

narrative, these are the bad boys or the bad guys, those who misrepresent

the truth , they are the mythmakers.  The good guys on the other hands are

the truthseekers–professional and scientific historians.  First chapter of

the book presents the author as a professional historian who has taken up

the lonely quest for truth having sniffed a misdeed “for the next three

years” he says “I spun my wheels, I continued to do research, spending many

hours alone with my refractory Tagalog text” trying to find the path

through the documentary scholary force (?unsure of this word).   The first

question I would like to raise is whether it is really possible for

Professor May to claim that he is able to stand outside politics, outside

discourse, in order to describe the world as it really is.  What is the

politics of the book?  The author attempts to conceal this politics by

claiming that he is avoiding theory and merely getting the facts together

or getting the facts straight.  Let me suggest what the politics of the

book might be.

Point number two:  One of the most productive effects of May’s book is that

it draws attention to the Other against which the nationalists have

established themselves.  In constructing one kind of Bonifacio, what is the

other Bonifacio that was being challenged by the nationalists?  What is or

are the other narratives that the nationalists or the writers of history

are engaged with?  The answer is actually provided by May himself.  The

nationalists started by rewriting North American colonial histories of the

revolution.  My suggestion to Professor May then, is that in the second

edition he expand his book to cover American colonial discourse, so that

the writings of Artigas, Epifanio de los Santos,  Agoncillo and others can

be located in a scene of combat of knowledge warfare.  One tends to forget

while reading the book that the Philippines was a colony of the United

States and the generations of Filipinos were being taught a view of history

in a certain way.  So I suspect that the invention of Bonifacio was really

a reinvention of an American invention from the time of David Barrows,

James LeRoy, Dean Worcester and other American writers to the

post-independence period when the textbooks of Filipinos Benitez, and Zaide

were challenged by the UP based nationalists.  I think it would also be

useful for May to locate himself, to state outright his subject position in

this ongoing struggle over interpretations of the revolution.  I am curious

for example, as to whether there is a discernable American tradition of

writing on the revolution and whether May himself may be reproducing

features of a discourse that can be traced back to Barrows and Worcester.

In this context, I think, we can understand May’s concern that the

nationalist school has dominated the Philippines historical establishment

for the last four decades or roughly since the 1950s.  But before the

nationalists came to dominate  what school was in control?  I would even

suggest that Spanish and Filipino ilustrado historiography are implicated

in this combat over knowledge productions.  May’s books can be more

productive and exciting if it avoids reducing the problem to a clash

between good and evil, truthseekers versus mythmakers.  As he himself

admits, all histories are to some extent political.  He should not have

made himself an exception.

Point three:  One of these problems about talking about the nationalist

school is that it collapses differences for instance among Filipinos who

call themselves nationalists for various reasons.   The writers featured in

the book are more or less lumped together into a homogenous and reified

body that is inscribed with a negative sign.  In fact the history of the

revolution has always been marked by contestation.  I would have wanted to

know for example of Catholic schools who were also involved in

nation-building handled the Rizal-Bonifacio issue.  What were their subject

positions?  I myself was a former member of the quote unquote “UP history

department” I experienced the fires of controversy myself.  By

essentializing the nationalists May makes it appear that by his

interpretation from the outside he says, the field is being opened up for

the first time.  But there really is no seamless nationalist school.  Even

the external critics positively hailed by May such as Ricardson, Ocampo,

Nick Joaquin have positioned themselves within the nationalist debate.

Fourth:  Professor May’s suggestion that more non-Filipinos should write

Philippine revolutionary history is an interesting one and merits

discussion.  No doubt we need multiple perspectives on the revolution, and

scholars in Spain and the United States have valuable contributions to

make.  May’s recommendation however, is based on his apparent conviction,

that Filipinos if left to themselves will write less truthful history

because of certain personality and cultural traits such as kinship ties.

Agoncillo is faulted for being blind to the mistakes of Aguinaldo who

happened to be related to his wife.  Basic sources like Ricarte’s and other

memoirs are to be regarded with suspicion because they reflect one

faction’s version of events or they are a fall for a person’s ambitions,

personal ambitions.  The point of view of a clan or family will tend to

prevail over the concerns of the society as a whole.  Lying and deception

are a trait of Filipino writers who are enmeshed in webs of personal

loyalties.  I get the feeling that May  is calling for the development of

a new and modern kind of Filipino self, a self that would be able to speak

the truth.  Apparently, the American education system was not sufficient to

produce this kind of liberated self that can write objective history.

Five:  Because the fact that Filipino revolutionaries or Filipino

historians tend to be located within a continuum of development from

traditional to modern.  For example, May argues that Bonifacio was

essentially temperamental, ruled by his emotions, easily offended,

volatile.  This comes from his own “critical judgement of the differing

testimonies about Bonifactio”. His argument however feeds into another

narrative upheld by critics of the revolution that it was not a rational

movement, that it was led by a fanatical Bonifacio that it needed the

leadership of a more calculating person such as Aguinaldo.  It also feeds

into representations of indios as ruled by emotions and therefore needing

guidance from more advanced tutors.

Sixth:  When it comes to describing behavior in electoral politics, again

an essentialized view comes into play.  May draws on his earlier work on

elections under Spanish rule in order to draw a scenario of what must have

really happened at the Tejeros assembly.  These Filipino heroes were really

just grubby politicians, making deals, bullying rivals, buying votes,

threatening, (missing word), lying, ballot tampering etc.  and losing badly

as Bonifacio did. Because, says May that is essentially what elections

were and are still about in the Philippines. Perhaps.  But perhaps not for

all time and for all places.  But underlying his account I suggest, is the

discourse of democratic development which depended upon American tutelage.

Male liberal enlightenment fantasy of rational politics is positive as the

norm which Filipinos have failed to reach.  Therefore their politics as in

nationalist politics has remained shabby, pretentious and lacking.  It is a

prerational and feminized politics where participants are ruled by their

passions and by kinship ties.  The Tejeros Assembly was therefore a scene

of corruption rather than heroism.

Seven:  The revolutionary and developmentalist scheme is also applied to

the writers of Philippine history.  May’s curious example is Manuel Artigas

de Cuerva.  He was the least developed of the writers because he was an

ordinary Spanish educated clerk not an American trained scholar and because

he did not use proper citations and partly depended on hearsay rather than

using authentic documents.  On the other end of the spectrum lies and May’s

final example and certainly the most developed is American educated

Reynaldo Ileto

_(laughter in the audience)

described as “some degree a product of an intellectual environment and in

that regard a very different historian from the others, none of whom had a

such an intense exposure to outside intellectual influences.”  Ileto, the

most westernized or colonized, is thus really a victim of the previous

mythmakers, rather than  a mythmaker himself.  Thank you.  Earlier in the

book, May remarks that it took some time for Europe-American traditions of

history to establish themselves in the Philippines.  Thus, Ileto represents

for him the end result of the American colonial project.  That Ileto

nevertheless produced this flawed work, is due to continued influence of

the nationalist tradition on historiography on the gullible Filipino.

Point eight:  I’d like to bring out the point that the elements in this

book are organized around or between two poles: one negative, undeveloped,

backward, unhistorical, and Filipino and the other pole the positive,

developed, modern and western of course.  Even the sources of history are

organized along these lines.  Most of the Filipino historians used sources

that are oral, inauthenticated, unobjective, unauthored and therefore

unreliable, while the scientific, modern historians of which May claims to

be a splendid example, have used sources which are written, archived,

catalogued, authenticated, authored and implicitly objective.  What happens

though if we moved beyond such binary oppositions and hierarchies which

after all reflect a certain manner of thinking which we call

post-enlightenment.  The most positive and productive moments in May’s book

are precisely when he identifies the dark features of Filipino nationalist

historiography.  Jose P. Santos, for example has described documents of the

Katipunan secret society survived several fires, floods, termites and even

the Huk rebellion.  “Ang mga kasulatan ukol kay Bonifacio ay parang

himalang muling nakaligtas”.  The documents are likened to religious relics

or anting anting, having the power to survive disasters. May concludes that

such writings having fantastic quality cannot be authentic documents.  But

I think this raises a more important issue of what Katipunan texts have in

relation to the social field in which they circulate.  What was the status

of writing at the turn of the century?   The production, circulation and

conservation of historical memories through oral means is another exciting

field that May draws our attention to even if he regards orality as a less

effective or in fact a more primitive manner of conserving and transmitting

memories of the past.

Finally the whole question of who really authored the letters and other

documents attributed to Bonifacio raises the exciting question of how the

idea of authorship which is another effect of the rise of capitalism and

private ownership in the late eighteenth century was handled by Filipino

writers early in this century.  Finally, in Pasyon and Revolution according

to May, Ileto adopted a text building strategy that might best described as

discursive blurring by which I mean that Ileto constructed his text in such

a way as to blur important distinctions–link things that should not

necessarily be linked.  One effect of this for example, is that Ileto says

May, mistakenly blurred the distinction between the Katipunan and the

Colorum.  Here May expresses dismay at Ileto’s collapsing or blurring of

the clear lines that should have delineated a religious,

Parte  3

backward, premodern and non-revolutionary movements such as the Colorum,

from supposedly secular, forward, modern revolutionary movement, the

Katipunan.  But what Pasyon and Revolution precisely set out to do was

shift the study of the revolution away from the enlightenment foundations

on which it had developed on the hands of the nationalists.  The irony in

Glenn May’s critique of Filipino nationalist historiography is that its

foundations lie squarely in the modernist discourse that underpins

nationalist historiography itself.  Contrary to explainations of being

above politics or above discourse, May’s book merely adopts a different

subject position in relation to the same discourse, it merely reconfigures

for the 1990s the same lines of conflict over meanings of the revolution

that appeared during the American colonial regime.  When May’s book

appeared has appeared just in time for the centennial of the revolution of

1896-1898, I think it really is more suitable for 1999, the centennial of

the Philippine-American War.  This is a book, not about Bonifacio and not

even about sources for his biography, but about effects of American

colonial education on various ways of remembering and transmitting memories

of the past.

(Applause)

Guerrero:  I thank everyone in this room, particularly Dr. Rodao for making

this (missing words).  Dr. May swipes at me once in a while in his book but

we are good friends __-.  I published a crticique of his book in May with

Ramon Villegas a (missing word) historian.  A critic regarded it as a

highly emotional criticism but I am passionate about my work and I’m not

bothered about it anymore.  Happily the eminent journalist Amando Doronila

so this is the work for publication in the premier issue of Public Policy

which is the equivalent of the American Foreign Affairs and I have put it

on the  internet.  I will not be long in summarizing my criticism of the

book.  I am bothered by Dr. May’s frequent conjectural remarks:  These

documents may be, or probably, or are most likely inauthentic and spurious.

As historians we are all allowed some tentativeness and doubt but since

the materials that are being criticized in the book are considered the most

important sources of the first phase of the revolution and are considered

tenets of the Katipunan and the revolution, you would at least expect from

a highly respected historian to provide some more meat to the allegations

that the sources that are suspeted to be inauthentic and spurious and are

contents even fallacious.  The Spaniards have a saying “Para nuestra basta

( Tino can you check this?) un boton, I will provide tres bottones”.  The

(missing word) about the early years of Bonifacio is criticized by Glenn

May but this is perhaps the time for historians of the revolution to look

for other sources and not be content with the traditional data that had

been used by historians and writers of the past 15 years.  The question

might be asked:  how poor was Andres Bonifacio?  The only useful  (missing

word) analysis which may be found in the book of Fast and Richardson but

Dr. May learned that there are still living relatives of Andres Bonifacio

he might be surprised that these relatives hold on to a huge canvas of

Antonio Malantic.  Now, those who are in the collecting business would know

that Antonio Malantic today commands at least 2.5 million in the collective

market.  How did Andres Bonifacio got an Antonio Malantic?  Of course the

relatives don’t know the (missing word) of the canvas so it is probably

deteriorating.  Then there is the remark that Andres Bonifacio did not

write those poems.  Those poems were attributed to Andres Bonifacio.

Whatever historians said that was written by Diego Mojica.  But he cites a

National Historican Institute marker for which there is no attribution to

sources.   From 1900 to the present these poems are attributed to Andres

Bonifacio and no one else (missing several words) think  that they have

played a very important role in the recruitment of Filipinos to the

revolutionaries.  They are attributed to Bonifacio until it can be proven

otherwise that they have not been written by Bonifacio then I don’t think

that we should make a claim to the contrary.  There are four letters in

question.  I will mention only one.  The letter to Emilio Jacinto.  In this

letter, Bonifacio said  “we have a problem here in Cavite. Emilio Aguinaldo

wants to surrender the revolution to the Spaniards.  Nais niyang isuko ang

rebolusyon sa mga Kastila.”  Now even if Andres Bonifacio did not write

that particular letter and we have no evidence to the contrary, are the

contents of the letter false?  For the past two years, whenever time or

whenever university permits I have been doing research in the Spanish

archives.  Two years ago in the Archivo General de Indias (Tino can you

check thi?) just a few days a go in the Archivo National and I think in

both cases I hit the jackpot.  In the Polavieja papers around the time that

Andres Bonifacio had written that letter to Bonifacio, there is  are

reference by Governor Polavieja that Emilio Aguinaldo indeed approached the

parish priest of Pateros proposing that he be allowed to deal with the

Spaniards because he wanted to surrender his army.  And now just two days

ago I found in the (missing word) a correspondencia militar which makes a

reference to Emilio Aguinaldo wanting to surrender the revolution to

Governor Polavieja.  Or perhaps cuarto button, the Tejeros Assembly.  It is

said that Artemio Ricarte dissembled in so far as the proceedings of the

Tejeros Assembly was concerned.  But unknown to Dr. Glenn May, a conference

took place among the scholars in the 1920s which included Cecilio Apostol,

Jose Bantug, Epifanio de los Santos, Cristobal himself, regarding the

authenticity of the documents particularly the Tejeros documents themselves

and no less than Emilio Aguinaldo who is a central figure in the Tejeros

proceedings and who caught the (a couple of words unclear?)-no less than

Emilio Aguinaldo attested to the authenticity of the documents.  The

reaction of the book of Dr. May is an integral part of Philippine

historiography which I would like to share with y ou.  When the book was

published, or rather when the book started to be distributed in the

Philippines of course it hurt and injured a lot of people but placed a

number of historians in a quandary.  There were those who said it is best

not to react to the book.  The book is not part of our discourse and by

discourse they  meant discourse in the Habermasian and Foucaultian terms.

They said we have nothing to do with the book,t is simply an American

historian presenting his findings to his own historical community.  But I

said, one hundred years from now, if noone responds to the book, the

scholars reading the book will say “no one among the Filipinos responded.

__(missing  sentences, tape had to be turned over to side B)

since Dr. May’s book is written in English then it is not part of their

discourse or our discourse as Filipinos.  I am not part of that perspective

because I write in English.  But because I write in English and Pilipino

sometimes they consider me part of their group.  On the other hand since I

wrote my critique in English I am not part of their group.  But they say

that one hundred years from now, if they find out that no one responded to

the book they will not blame us because the issues raised in the book do

not change Philippine history.  And so as a last point I address myself to

their remark, paraphrased of course because I don’t remember the specific

part in Glenn’s last chapter.  He says that after all the exposition has

been done one wonders whether Andres Bonifacio might still be considered

the national hero of the Philippines.  Well, I think I know the answer.

Andres Bonifacio is a national hero.  Perhaps he did not intend it the

meaning but it is the meaning that we get in the last paragraphs of his

book. Andres Bonifacio continues to be in the consciousness of the people.

Rizal is in the consciousness of the people. I find out for example the

other day that Rizal was roaming around in Salitran and Imus two months

after he died and he was inspiring the rebels of Cavite.  How did that come

about?  Is this myth?  In the stream of popular consciousness, Rizal, his

ghost roaming around Cavite is a text, is a truth, is history in the same

manner that if you look at all the demonstrations in the Philippines,

Bonifacio is a moving spirit.  So no matter what is written about Bonifacio

the allegations about the paucity of the sources, particularly about him,

won’t have the effect intended.  Thank you.

Rodao:  Well, as I have been mentioned I have to remark that I thank you

very much for thanking me.  But I have to say this congress would not have

been possible without the organizing committee presided by Professor

Cabrero, continuing with the Secretary Generals (Tino please check this?)

____Ramos, and with Miguel Lugue,  con Juanco Pacheco, con Augusto Soto y

con el resto de la gente, I mean including the rest of the people in the

organizing committee.  Please, thank you very much for without them it

would not be possible.

(applause)

May:  We are discussing here how long I should take and how much time we

should leave for the audience.  My own temptation to be honest is to allow

the audience maximum time if you like.  Let me just say a few things, I

think they may be useful just to summarize.  I thank my friends, my enemies

would even say even stronger things.  I am accused of let me see, faulty

logic, flimsy evidence, Rey accuses me more or less of being a colonialist,

an essentialist, a Sturtevantite, he did not use the term but I know that

is what he had in mind, that is to say I am putting things in the

traditional modern (?unsure this is the word) spectrum I would say, he uses

the term binary I think that is probably not right but since I am being

accused of it I will use it to make the distinction.  Mila hits me on

certain findings and she certainly knows the evidence awfully well, but

along the way she does suggest that I’m insensitive.  So that’s the

summary.

(audience laughter)

One friend has said that perhaps the major effect of this book will be to

drive together the entire Filipino nation and forge nationalism that of

course is always lurking underneath.  Another suggested that it has driven

together a (missing word) they needed person to attack and lord knows I

wandered into this minefield.  So what to say having all those things said

about me?  One is the obvious one that I’m not guilty of most of these

things or any of these things.  But to give my critics their due I’ll say

that I am probably guilty of some of these things.  Almost certainly I am,

I am not an unflawed historian.  Which of these things bother me the most?

Well, yes I guess they all bother me a bit, but let me say this.  When you

write a book that is put in some people call it harsh terms occasionally

Leonard mentioned it the other day, I think that is fair, one would expect

in reply harsh critics some people don’t like it.  And I appreciate my

friends and I call them my friends for letting me know what is on their

minds and their response.  When one writes a book one does expect that you

are going to be loved or that all critics will say you are brilliant,

although I did not hear that word once.  Ya.  The book is I think as I

characterized it, is a rather modest effort to problematize certain aspects

of Bonifacio’s life.  It is seen through my eyes and I perhaps am flawed in

lots of these ways and there perhaps are differences maybe between the way

Americans or colonial Americans think of these things and late twentieth

century Filipinos and that may be the core of the problem.  Let me just

offers this in reply just a thought that just occurred to me.  It seems to

me that there are two things going on.  One is that there is a book which

says certain things and I think it does need to be evaluated on its own

terms and I think that is being done here.  There is also the problem and

here I get the issue that Rey raised along the way of why people do what

they do, what is behind them, why are they saying what they say and the

ways they are saying them.  And I am not pointing any fingers or naming

anything.  What is most interesting about this is not the book but the book

phenomenon.  It’s perhaps what it says about.  The phenomenon being the

reaction to the book in part, the strong response to the book.  I am not

saying I am right about all these issues.  But the strength of the response

suggests to me that there is something going on there that is perhaps has a

good deal to do with Philippine-American relations, Philippine nationalism.

I don’t deny that I am a flawed historian but I think the larger

phenomenon is interesting to the extent that I am able to step back from it

and I can perhaps take some or have some hope that down the road some of

what I say may take and that some time people will look at this and say

this was an interesting point in the development of Philippine

historiography.  That is my illusion perhaps.

Rodao: Okay, thank you very much.

(audience applause)

Right now it is time to participate so if someone wants to participate

please come here and identify yourself please.  Malcolm please come.

Leonard.

Leonard Andaya:  I would just like to say that I am very pleased that Glenn

May has come here to listen to his critics talk about his book.  But as I

mentioned earlier not being a historian specializing in the Philippine

revolution, I am very impressed with what is happening here, what you have

here is a dialogue  between Filipino historians and non-Filipino historians

which is not the case in other historians of Southeast Asia.  It is

happening here and not in any of the others. It is very exciting and I hope

that we proceed from here the kind of sophistication suggested by the kind

of panelists here.  That one look at the whole development of

historiography both the American side and the Philippine side, but we try

to situate Philippine history within this kind of historiography.  I think

this is what is going to make it very important.  Because as was pointed

out, that if you can see how the Americans see it within the context of

Filipino-American relations and also see how Filipino historians related to

their own environment be it American or Spain or Southeast Asia, I think

you have a much closer sense of the history the group.  I think that what

shows already is the sophistication of Philippine historiography is the

fact that you have a group that is just writing in Tagalog and that in only

in this way can we have a really intimate discussion of events in the

Philippines.  So I would just like to congratulate that it is wonderful

that is going on right now, and as I said I would not like to be in that

hot seat–Glenn May –wonderful way that he has responded so I congratulate

you all on a very good panel.

Rodao:  Malcolm .  Someone else wants to participate?  Al McCoy please.

Malcolm Churchill:  I have been waiting for some time to ask Glenn about

what I think we may probably call the Glenn May theory of linguistic

evolution.  The second chapter of the book on Bonifacio makes the claim

that the fraudulent material was written in the wrong Tagalog (—missing

word)  ts reliance on the focus.  It is a question of what in English would

be the active versus the passive voice.  The letters were written in 1897

and they came in possession in the time of Abad Santos in approximately

1906 and  May had some comments on that.   Basically the essence of that is

that it was very short period of time I know of no language and no linguist

who would credit an evolution of language in any time who would credit an

evolution of this magnitude in the period of time that would be necessary

for your thesis about this (missing word).

Rodao:  Al McCoy please.  I

Al McCoy:  Let him first answer that question.

Glenn May:  I think that is somewhat ironic that the person that is making

the strongest case about the linguistic question that does not take up a

large part of the book but which I think is an interesting one is not a

Filipino native speaker as I am too and I’m not sure what that all means,

there is an awful lot that is strange about this book phenonmonen.  I am

not going to try to teach non-Tagalog speakers active versus passive that

is  a topic I learned when I was studying the language.  But let me say

this, I do question whether the letters are true (unclear if true is the

word).  I question on several grounds.  The one that is to me most

persuasive is (—unclear word–provence? Tino can you please check with

Glenn?) and anybody evaluating documents would be most concerned about

provence (?)>  The stories about their origins are very interesting but I

don’t think they are terribly satisfactory.  So that’s in my view the

principal reason.  A second reason I question them is what they look like.

They are clearly written in two hands.  The problems about that which I

can’t go into detail about that right now but you and I can talk this out

all day –.  So physically there is concern there.  Another thing that

concerns me is that the holders of the documents produced a transcription

of them which changed them.  And that is an interesting phenomenon that

this are supposedly very rare documents by the Philippine national hero and

they were changed in the transcription significantly by one on of the

owners.  And the transcription we have right now is not the same as the one

the friend of Mila’s actually owns.  So basically all those things and I

try to come up as to why it was that these changes were made and to clarify

my point.  That is one of the points that I am dealing with.  But as to the

question you raised.  My argument there my observations was that the

principal difference between the transcriptions that were changed and the

originals is the verbs.  For some reason verb forms were changed.  It’s a

puzzle.  I tried to account for it as best I can.  What is very clear is

that they are changed.  I also, and Malcolm knows this, I spent a lot of

time in earlier books reading sources of these period and made the

observation for myself that for this period the documents were written in a

different form that is what I see.  And so I hypothesize that the changes

were made because perhaps it was recognized that they were not the true

kind (unclear if kind is the word).  Now Malcolm says that the documents

were written in 1897 and changed along the way.  The question is when

indeed the changes were made?  The reality is we don’t have clear Tagalog

versions of this until 1935 not 1907 no, not until 1931 no sorry 1947 do we

actually have a Tagalog transcription of this with a few words of the

Tagalog earlier, (missing word) I could get into technicalities but the

point here is that it is not so clear when it was changed in 7  years, I’m

just not sure when it was changed.

Rodao: Okay thank you very much, now Al McCoy please.

Alfred W. McCoy:  Since Rey has asked to be clear  about who we are and

what kind of position I am.  I am the chair of the (missing word) of the

University of Wisconsin that published the book and therefore I am biassed,

having said that about that obvious bias.   I would like to make (missing

words)  some useful points of discussion.  I think the core of the debate

was articulated by Mila Guerrero when she said that until these documents

can be disproved we shall assume that they are valid and real and Glenn is

saying the opposite.  So that there is first of all a very clear empirical

point and a  clear professional issue here.  Let’s look at the broader

context in which we should place this debate about whether or not you

should use a document that is not absolutely clarified.  Mila says we

should use it and Glenn is saying they are bogus so we shouldn’t use it.

So this raises a professional question essential to all historians.  We

take the question of the Philippines. (—an essentializing statement by

Steinberg –a few words unclear on tape)  No field of national history has

a comparable history of debate over fraud that would equal the Philippines.

That the debate over fraud the use of fraudulent documents  (unclear word)

Agoncillo, the whole Rizal detraction, (missing words), the recent debate,

Marcos’s war record, (missing words) national historical establishment in

which forged documents circulated widely have been extraordinary for this

century.  So therefore my own personal position is, that any document

whether Bonifacio papers that has some control in the document and a lot of

a control for a protracted period in the government when some key documents

were being thoroughly fabricated and forged, the Code of Kalantiaw, the

Loba Negra of Father Burgos, that there appear to be a kind of collective

effort to construct in the way that the revolution is depicted and the

question of Filipino public to construct a past through fabricated

documents.  And that raises another interesting question too  and that is

the second point for discussion.  Supposing we could establish that the

documents are forged does that mean they are useless to us?  No, I think

that they are very important. And that is the next step that Glenn and

somebody would find if the documents are dubious and establish who the

forger was and the way they were forged to discuss the way they were used

even spurious is very revealing about the way nationalism was constructed

in post-nineteenth century Philippines.

Rodao:  Mucha gracias.  ?Alguno de ustedes?  Mila.

Guerrero:  But that’s the crux of the question Dr. May must prove because

we are not content with such remarks such as probably, most likely, maybe

because those are important documents.  I concede, I grant without

conceding that many documents in Philippine history, and in American and

Spanish  and French and German history are spurious.  The historians must

prove that they are spurious or inauthentic.  The one good thing about

historians proving for example that an author fabricated a documented is

that we can’t send him to jail or to provide him evil intention for a

criminal offense.  But the important thing is we must look at the history

of the Philippine revolution as a process. When we look at it as a process,

some of these suspected documents can still be useful if looked at in a

complex of other materials.  Perhaps I agree with Al in his question what

is the reason for this guy in fabricating the documents?  What we must look

for a culprit.  For the moment Dr. May has not found the culprit.

Ileto:  I’m perfectly willing to accept that documents can be forged and

all that.  But when reading the book what strikes me is that in the first

part of the book, after the middle of the book, everything is stated in

terms of might, possibly, could be, I suppose, that is probably the case

that such and such is the case.  But of course in the latter part of the

book, what initially is possibility becomes certainty.  So, what allows the

author to turn probability into certainty?  And I don’t think its the

authority of the author if the subject position he takes it’s the fact that

it is not being the logo of the Wisconson Center of Southeast Asian Studies

in it, that says this is something that the author takes seriously

(-missing word).  So I think a lot depends on what I’m saying my comments

on the binary oppositions in this created by the author Glenn May in the

book.  That a lot of his suspicions turn into certainties and facts which

then are used to attack the next set of writings, so it is a cumulative

thing.  So that in the end of the book there seems to be no doubt anymore

that these things are intended, forced, bla bla bla.  So you have to go

back and trace the process by which a truth is itself created by May.

Rodao:  Vince Rafael, Vince come here.  And then Elizabeth Medina and but

no more questions after them.   Vince and Elizabeth Medina.

May:  While Vince is making is way to the stage let me just say quickly

that Rey is pointing out something that is quite interesting, which is that

my text strategy is what I call discursive blurring.  Which is what I keep

accusing him of and there is probably something to that.  What his comments

I think draw attention to I think properly and I can see there is

something to them is that one must look very seriously at author’s and as

we say in America where you are coming from.  I think its very fair to say

these kinds of  comments not necessarily your own (this last word not

clear).

Rodao: Okay, Vince Rafael.

Vince Rafael:  I’m going to take a position slightly different from

Leonard.  I was actually quite disturbed by the heated exchange.  I think

there is actually some of it that is not necessarily healthy.  Anyway,  I’m

going to take up an important point that Al brought up.  The history of

fraud in nationalist historiography and certainly within (missing two

words) and so you have  Two points I’m going to make this was dragged

(unsure if that is the word?)  at a paper I talked about earlier.  The

question of the huge scale, the geneology of nationalism which always can

be traced to imputations of filibusterismo and filibusterismo of course is

linked to notions of criminality or crime and so forth and so on and the

way  in which the nationalists have tried to turn the tables around those

who accused them of being filibustero.  And the point is, this is a

suggestion I would like to make, there is nothing pure about the history of

nationalism in the Philippines or nationalism anywhere.  Nationalism tends

to be certain (missing words) in nostalgia certain nationalist

historiography as of course good.  Nationalism is seen as (missing word)

positive, as synonymous to freedom, as synonymous to (missing word).  And

certainly this  can be seen as a bonus.  But the fact is nationalism is

double edged.  Nationalism has been used to reconstruct and recreate

hierarchies, certainly create and foster inequalities and so in that sense

one has to be very careful about the way one wants to talk about

nationalism and nationalist discourse.  And so the acknowledgment regarding

fraud and the use of fraud.   I would say the use of fraud is not

necessarily bad.  There are some positive uses of fraud.  In what sense is

fraud which is actually Rey’s crucial point is that when one writes history

one is  engaged in an act of politics.  One is engaged in politics, one

does all sorts of tactical moves, those are your position. That’s the first

point.

_The second point I want to make is to go back to Rey’s one of the most

important point that Rey brought up which is that if there is something

positive to address in this debate is that things that Glenn has done and

responses to it, is it opened up the imperative to start thinking about

nationalism in all sorts of complex ways to problematize nationalism, and

to think about nationalism in relation to a whole set of other questions

that have long begged for some kind of serious consideration for example a

history of authorship.  He mentions authorship.  There is no sociological

history of authorship in the Philippines.  Right.  What does it mean to be

an author?   Does it mean the same thing as in the west when authors should

be privileged with one’s work or is authorship taken in the context of an

oral discourse, is authorship something more ambigious, a matter of

dissemination and use, for example, it is very common in the Philippines

gossip and rumours is very important so how do you situate gossip and

rumours within reigning dimensions of authorship where we associate authors

with notions of  (missing word)  etc.  etc.  So these are all questions

that are begging to be examined and a kind of defense of our intensive

search of whether or not nationalism is real or fact, or whether or not

certain heroes are corrupt, about whether nationalism are with tactical

reasons, nonetheless requires some research.  Thank you.

(applause)

Medina:  My name is Cristina Medina and I am  a Filipino author and I am

going to incorporate I hope that  it is very useful to develop the idea

(missing words) as Ms. Guerrero mentioned and also I propose the

incorporation of the (missing words) element in the study of history which

is providing emotions we have to realize we are working with people.

(missing two sentences).  You see if Mr. May were Dutch, if he would be

French it would be blurred, the word I’m working here is composition and

how in 1898 Americans were coopted in Philippine history, (missing words)

your intention Mr. May is the question and that is the problem here.  That

those in the United States are the experts in  legalistic legalistic

(mising words) and it is mostly likely the power relation and that is

really the question here we feel Filipinos that we want to call up our own

history we don’t want people with questionable intentions interfering with

our (missing words) our stories (missing words).

Rodao:  Okay.  Well I think your comments and then .  No more comments?

May:  I’m Hungry.

Rodao:  As always we are late so I think we have to thank all four

participants in the debate and  (audience applause which overpowers Rodao’s

last words)

Mucha gracias. Good.

End of session.

Private conversation between Rodao and May still on tape.

May:  At least I was not called a rapist.

TAPE ENDS.

Contributors

ANDAYA, Barbara Watson: Professor of Asian　Studies　at the Asian Studies program of the University of Hawai`i at Mânoa. She has authored many books and articles on insular Southeast Asia, among them To live as brothers. Southeast Sumatra in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1993)

ANDAYA, Leonard Y.: is a professor in history at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  He received his PhD from Cornell University in Southeast Asian history and is the author of The Kingdom of Johor (Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1975), co-authored (with Barbara Watson  Andaya) A History of Malaysia (Macmillan, London, 1981), The Heritage of Arung Palakka:  A History of South Sulawesi in the Seventeenth Century (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1982), and The World of Maluku (University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1993). 

CHURCHILL, Bernardita Reyes. Professor at the History Department of the De la Salle University, she has taught also at the University of the Philippines. She has authored the book on the Philippine Independence Missions to the U.S.(???)

–HUETZ DE LEMPS, Xavier.  He was born in Bordeaux, France in 1964. In 1994, he obtained a Ph. D. From the University of Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux III for a doctoral dissertation on the history of 19th c. Manila. At present, he is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Nice-Sophia
Antipolis. He is currently researching on the history of 19th. c. Philippines and on Spanish urban history.

-MAY, Glenn A.  He teaches at the Department of History of the University of Oregon. He has done extensive research during the late nineteenth century, especially the Philippine Revolution and the beginning of the American Period, among his books, are A Past Recovered (1987);  Battle for Batangas: A Philippine province at War (1991) and Inventing a Hero. The Posthumous Re-Creation of Andres Bonifacio (1997)

McCOY, Alfred W. Is Professor at the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has been also the director of the South-East Asia Centre. McCoy is the author of extensive research on the Philippines, co-editing books as Philippine Social History (1982) and Philippine Cartoons: Political Caricature of the American Era, 1900-1941 (1985) while editing others as Anarchy of Families (1993) or Lives at the Margin (2000). He has also written Closer than Brothers. Manhood at the Philippine Military Academy (2000)

–NAGANO, Yoshiko . Professor of international relations at Kanagawa University in Yokohama. She holds the Ph.D. in Social Studies from Hitotsubashi University. She has specialized in economic history of  the Philippines and has written extensively on sugar industry and banking history. She has published Firipin Keizaishi Kenkyu: Togyo Shihon to Jinushisei (A Study on Philippine Economic History: Sugar Capital and
Haciendas) (1986) and Sato Ashienda to Hinkon: Firipin Negurosu-to Shoshi (Sugar Hacienda and Poverty: A Short History of Negros Island in the Philippines) (1990).

ORTIZ ARMENGOL, Pedro . Spanish Diplomat, he has been involved with the Philippines since the beginning of his career, in th 1950’s. He has authored many books on history of the Philippines, such as Intramuros de Manila, (1958) Pasyon Filipina del Hermano Pule (1992), Dolores Armijo. Historias viejas de Manila (1991)  and Letras en Filipinas (1999). He has been vice-president of the Spanish Association for Pacific Studies.

PALANCO AGUADO, Fernando . Teaches at the Instituto de la Cabrera, Madrid. He prepares his Ph. Dissertation on popular revolts in the Philippines during the Colonial Period.

–ROCES, Mina She teaches at the History Department of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, having taught formerly at the Central Queensland University, Australia.  She is the author of Women, Power and Kinship Politics in Post-War Philippines. (1998) and plans to publish soon entitled: “Kinship Politics  in Post-war Philippines, The Lopez Family, 1945-2000”  

RODAO GARCÍA, Florentino teaches at the Department of International Relations at the Faculty of Sociology and Political Science at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He holds the Ph.D. in History from the Universidad Complutense and he is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Tokyo (1995), where he will write his diseertation in the Spanish Community in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation. He Is the author of Spaniards in Siam (1540-1939). Una contribución al studio de la presencia hispana en Asia Oriental and Franco y el imperio japonés : imágenes y propaganda en tiempos de guerra. He is preparing for publication When Southeast Asia did not exist; Siamese, Spaniards and the Philippine Islands. Rodao is president of the Spanish Association for Pacific Studies (2000-2003)

RODRÍGUEZ, Felice Noelle, who holds the Ph.D. in History from the University of the Philippines, is associate professor and chair of the Department of History at the Ateneo de Manila University. She is preparing two books for publication: Philippine Warfafe in the Seventeenth Century and Social History of Zamboanga.

SÁNCHEZ GÓMEZ, Luis Angel (He teaches at the Department of Prehistory and Anthropology of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. After having submitted his Ph. Dissertation on Principalias and local power in the Philippines during the 19th century, his research activities focus on ethnohistory of the Philippines.

–SÁNCHEZ FUERTES, Cayetano . Director of the Archivo Franciscano Ibero-Oriental, Madrid. He has researched mainly on the Franciscan presence in the Philippines and its interactions with the society.  He has co-edited España en Extremo Oriente, Filipinas, China, Capón: Presencia Franciscana, 1578-1978 (1979)

WIONZEK, Dr. Karl-Heinz  He works in Düsseldorf, Germany, and has been teaching at De la Salle University in Manila.  His research on the Philippines focuses on the Philippine Revolution and the German participation.