Reflections on Agoncilloʼs the Revolt of the Masses and the Politics of History

Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 49, No. 3, December 2011 Reflections on Agoncilloʼs The Revolt of the Masses and the Politics of History Reynaldo C. ILETO* Abstract Teodoro Agoncilloʼs classic work on Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan revolt of 1896 is framed by the tumultuous events of the 1940s such as the Japanese occupation, nominal independence in 1943, Liberation, independence from the United States, and the onset of the Cold War. Was independence in 1946 really a culmination of the revolution of 1896? Was the revolution spearheaded by the Communist-led Huk movement legitimate? Agoncilloʼs book was written in 1947 in order to hook the present onto the past. The 1890s themes of exploitation and betrayal by the propertied class, the rise of a plebeian leader, and the revolt of the masses against Spain, are implicitly being played out in the late 1940s. The politics of hooking the present onto past events and heroic figures led to the prize-winning manuscriptʼs suppression from 1948 to 1955. Finally seeing print in 1956, it provided a novel and timely reading of Bonifacio at a time when Rizalʼs legacy was being debated in the Senate and as the Church hierarchy, priests, intellectuals, students, and even general public were getting caught up in heated controversies over national heroes. The circumstances of how Agoncilloʼs work came to the attention of the author in the 1960s are also discussed. Keywords: Philippine Revolution, Andres Bonifacio, Katipunan society, Cold War, Japanese occupation, Huk rebellion, Teodoro Agoncillo, Oliver Wolters Teodoro Agoncilloʼs The Revolt of the Masses: The Story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan is one of the most influential books on Philippine history. My essay pursues three questions, which are not always treated separately or in chronological order. One is why a work like this would have appeared right after World War II and the gaining of independence in 1946. We know it was written in 1947 as the authorʼs winning entry in a national Bonifacio biography contest held in 1948. Another focus of inquiry is the publication of the manuscript in 1956 by the College of Liberal Arts of the University of the Philippines. What was it about the mid-50s that made this book timely and controversial? And a third theme, treated in a postscript, concerns my own interest in this book, starting with how my Cornell mentor introduced me to its author in 1967, and how the Cold War thereby impinged upon my formation as a historian. Agoncillo was born on November 9, 1912 in Lemery, Batangas, a Tagalog province southeast of Manila. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of the Philippines (UP) in 1934. His career as historian began quite late. From 1937 to 1941 he worked * Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, 3 Arts Link, Blk AS3#06-18 Singapore 117569 e-mail: [email protected] 496 R. C. ILETO: Reflections on Agoncilloʼs The Revolt of the Masses and the Politics of History as a technical assistant in the Institute of National Language. He began writing in the late 1920s and early 1930s, his earliest publications being Tagalog poems. In fact, most of his writings up to the 1940s consisted of Tagalog poems and short stories in Tagalog and light essays in both Tagalog and English. There is a portent of his career, however, in the still unpublished M. A. thesis he submitted to the UP in 1935 titled “The Japanese Occupation of Manchuria,” for which he earned the Masterʼs degree in History in 1939.1) It was only in 1941 that Agoncillo published a historical work, Ang Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas (History of the Philippines), written jointly with Gregorio Zaide. He continued to devote his time to Tagalog poems and literary essays until the late 1940s when he began to write magazine articles on colorful rebels, bandits and revolutionaries of the past. By 1950 he seems to have decided upon a career as historian, publishing numerous essays on controversial events during Spanish times and the Philippine revolution. The Revolt of the Masses was published in 1956, followed in 1960 by Malolos: The Crisis of the Republic wherein he continued the saga of the revolution up to the fall of Aguinaldo. This same year (1960), Agoncillo published within the UP the first edition of the textbook that would make him a virtual household name: A Short History of the Filipino People (co-authored with Oscar Alfonso). This book, having seen several editions and with Milagros Guerrero as subsequent co-author, is still widely used in the schools. Agoncillo continued to publish books in the 1960s and 1970s, though these have been less influential than his earlier works. Up to his retirement from the UP in 1977 Agoncillo also produced a steady stream of short historical commentaries and essays in various local journals and week-end magazines, presaging the career of the journalist-historian Ambeth Ocampo. The target of Agoncilloʼs historical salvoes even in the late 1940s was history written from a colonial viewpoint. Agoncillo was probably influenced by the Japanese model of (and support for, during the occupation) an autonomous history of “oriental” civilization. He felt, however, that from the standpoint of surviving records alone “Filipinist” historians faced a bleak prospect. How could there be a truly Filipino viewpoint in history if pre-1872 documents were written by Spaniards in Spanish? Agoncilloʼs background in Tagalog literature convinced him that without records in the language of the people their “soul” could not be captured. Ahistory of the Katipunan revolt, for example, cannot be adequately written without materials in the language spoken by the Katipuneros, which for Agoncillo meant digging up Bonifacioʼs poems and letters, and interviewing his family and associates in their language, Tagalog.2) Agoncilloʼs solution was to drastically shorten the textbook treatment of the Spanish colonial period up to 1872.3) This move was highly controversial, particularly outside the secular 1) See Medina and Bauzon [1993: Vol. II, 131-135]. 2) Agoncillo published Bonifacioʼs Tagalog papers, with English translations, in 1963; The Writings and Trial of Andres Bonifacio. In looking over the bibliography of The Revolt of the Masses, one is also struck by the predominance of oral and written documentation in Tagalog. This use of vernacular sources is one of the cues I took from reading Agoncillo in 1969, which I applied to my own work. 3) The bound, mimeographed textbook in my possession states in the preface that this short history was put together “to meet the needs of the freshmen students of the University of the Philippines↗ 497 東南アジア研究 49巻3号 confines of the UP. It meant throwing out the standard lengthy accounts of Spanish contributions to Philippine civilization (such as the conversion to Catholicism), omitting mention of much of the activities of agents of the Church and colonial State to which a negative sign is attached, while glorifying every native disturbance or revolt. Agoncilloʼs construction of history closely followed the model laid down by nineteenth century ilustrados like Jose Rizal and Gregorio Sanciangco, themselves deeply influenced by European liberal writings of their time. It is not surprising that Philippine histories for Agoncillo should begin in 1872 since from this year on the ilustrados are at the forefront of developments. My first acquaintance with the name Agoncillo was not in Manila but in Ithaca, New York, at the office of my postgraduate supervisor Oliver Wolters. Seated behind his desk, he reached back and pulled out of the bookcase behind him the 1960 textbook history by Agoncillo and Alfonso. I didnʼt know much about these Filipino historians in 1967 because I had attended the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila, a rival of the University of the Philippines, and had been assigned the textbook by Jesuit historian Horacio de la Costa. I was unaware of the history wars that raged in some university campuses in Manila from the late 50s on. I couldnʼt grasp the full implications, then, of Woltersʼ warning about this Agoncillo textbook: “Mr. Ileto, you are not going to write history like this!” The admonition against writing like Agoncillo was followed up a year later by encouragement on the part of Wolters and his mentor D. G. E. Hall, who at that time was my acting supervisor during Woltersʼ sabbatical leave, to write like De la Costa. They had found the skills of this Harvard-trained Jesuit historian to be exemplary and surely worthy of my emulation, in contrast to the “bad” historian Agoncillo. Perhaps they knew that De la Costa had earlier challenged Agoncilloʼs emplotment of history that would begin in 1872, arguing instead for the importance of the Spanish legacy, particularly Christianity, in the making of the Filipino nation.4) But I had not known much about Father De la Costa, either. During my Ateneo days, I hardly saw him because he was stationed in Rome most of the time. Being a neophyte in historical studies, I accepted the advice of my British teachers without hesitation.5) ↘ who will, beginning June 1960, come under the General Education Program.” Anticipating criticism, Agoncillo explains that “those who have been reared in the traditional textbooks on Philippine history will be surprised, if not shocked, to find that the Spanish colonial period has been limited to three chapters excluding the one on ʻThe Beginnings of Nationalismʼ. The senior author assumes full responsibility for this limitation. It has been his belief, expressed on many occasions both in and outside the University, that with few exceptions, the documents of the pre-1872 Philippines deal almost exclusively with the history of Spain in the Philippines.” 4) In reference to Agoncillo, De la Costa states in his 1961 essay “History and Philippine Culture”: “It seems to me that this view does more honor to the sturdy nationalism of its proponents than it does to their understanding of the nature of the historical process.

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