Gemma Cruz Araneta
WHENEVER I write about the American occupation of Filipinas, I receive angry letters accusing me of blaming the USA "for our ills." It never fails; there are fellow Filipinos out there (some living overseas) who are incensed because they think I am calling the USA bad. Aside from these "Americanistas," there are "Hispanistas" who are just as enraged at my constant delving and think that I am up to no good, Frankly, I am baffled by such negative reactions, which compel me to burrow even more relentlessly into the forbidden chambers of our history.
I think the problem lies in that very few bother to make the difference between people and policy that is why emotions ran high whenever they come across a more critical analysis of our history. Furthermore, an investigative outlook, vital to journalists who take this discipline seriously, is often mistaken for heaping blame on someone to justify one’s failures, instead of for discovering root causes in order to explain and clarify and learn from one’s mistakes.
Why are we afraid of our own history? The deeper I dig into the roots of this chronic fear the more answers I have unearthed. For example, I found a copy of Felipe Calderon’s MIS MEMORIAS SOBRE LA REVOLUCION FILIPINA, published in 1907 but written a couple of years earlier. After reading the authors prologue, I knew I had to acquire that bundle of brittle yellowed pages. F. Calderon, writer of the Malolos Constitution, was deeply pained to know that the majority of students who took the entrance exams to the Escuela de Medicina del Gobierno failed because they did not know Philippine history and graduates from private schools did worse than those from public institutions. Shocking indeed because that was less than a decade after the First Republic, the Philippine-American War was still raging in the countryside and already a generation of Filipino students did not know their history. What happened?
At another bookshop browse, I came across a history textbook first published in 1919 and reprinted all throughout the 1950’s by Ginn & Company, authored by Dr. Leandro Fernandez. The preface of a revised edition of A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PHILIPPINES had a rather cryptic message:: "Controversial views have purposely been omitted on the ground that such discussions, though they may be of advantage to maturer students , serve only to confuse young pupils. One of the chief objects of a text on national history is to give pupils an idea of the development of the country and the people. Consequently, stress has been laid on the development of the Philippine Islands and the Filipino people." In other words, historian Fernandez meant that there were things he had to withhold from Filipino students. The biography of this nation, our very own story could not be told as it happened because it will only confuse us. Doesn’t that make you wonder why we had to learn only the abridged version of our own history?
No I am not old enough to have used the Fernandez textbook but I did cut my scholar’s teeth on Zaide’s PHILIPPINE HISTORY FOR CATHOLIC SCHOOLS with the required imprimatur and nihil obstat of the Archbishop of Manila. No wonder my mother was laughing when we bought the book. Can you imagine anything more absurd? To be continued… (gemma601@yahoo.com)a
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