BS ARCHITECTURE - 5A

SOC SCI 1 – RIZAL AND OTHER HEROES AND HEROINES

RIZAL’S ANNOTATION OF SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS

About:
 Events in the Philippine Islands
 By Antonio de Morga
 Published in 1609 in Mexico
 One of the most important works on the early history of the Spanish colonization of the Philippines.

A. THE BOOK

B. ANTONIO DE MORGA SANCHEZ GARAY (1559 – July 21, 1636)

A high ranking colonial official in the Philippines, New Spain and Peru. He led the Spanish in
one naval battle against Dutch corsairs in the Philippines, in 1600. He wrote the first lay formal
history of the Philippines conquest by Spain. (Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas)

His history is valuable in that Morga had access to the survivors of the earliest days of the
colony and he. Himself, participated in the many of the accounts that he rendered. The book
(Sucesos…) narrates the history of wars, intrigues, diplomacy and the evangelization of the
Philippines in a somewhat disjointed way.

Modern historians (including Rizal) have noted that Morga has a definite bias and would
often distort facts or even rely on invention to fit his defense of the Spanish conquest.

C. MORGA’S PURPOSE FOR WRITING SUCESOS

Morga wrote that the purpose for writing Sucesos was so he could chronicle “the deeds
achievedby 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
people surrounding the islands.”
CHAPTER 1: Magellan and Legazpi’s seminal expiditions.
CHAPTER 2 – 7: Chronological report on government administration under Governor –
General.
CHAPTER 8: Philippine Islands, the natives there, their anquity, custom and government.

D. RIZAL’S ANNOTATION OF MORGA

 The original Spanish text of 1609 had never been printed in full.
 Rizal’s edition came off the press of Garnier Hermanos in Paris in 1889.
 Reissued in photo-offset reproduction in 1958.
 English translation of Rizal’s Morga in 1961, Jose Rizal National Centennial
Commission.
 Everything is reproduced in full with no censorship.
  The annotation to Morga should be made not by a foreign but by an indio.

E. RIZAL’S CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE CHOICE OF MORGA

First Consideration
1. The oriinal book was rare
2. Morga is a layman not a religious chronicler
3. Rizal felt Morga to be more ‘objective’. (Than the religious writers who included many
miracle stories.)

 Second Consideration
It was the only civil, as opposed to religious or ecclesiastical, history of the
Philippines written during the colonial period.

Analysis: Rizal wants to write an edition of Morga, for there was no history that as written
by an Indio, or one written from the viewpoint of the Indio.

When Austin Craig an American historian pointed that the history of the Philippines
written during the colonial period was nothing but a chapter in the larger history of Spain.

Analysis: Rizal doesn’t want that the idea because for Rizal, Philippine history must from the
point of view of Filipino.

 Third Consideration
It was more objective, rather than liberally with tales of miracle, devils and
apparitions written by the religious missionaries. These are two categories in Rizal’s
Annotation
1. Rizal corrects the original one. “The straight forward historical annotatios”
2. “Historical based reflects his anticlerical bias”

 Fourth Consideration
 For Rizal, Morga was sympathetic to the Indios because it contrast the friars point
of view in which the Philippine histories must only be written by a foreigner not by
an Indio.
 Rizal wrote a letter for Blumentritt to express his preferences for Morga.

“The Morga is an excellent book; it can be said that Morga is a modern

learned explorer (modern sabio explorador). He has nothing of the
superficiality and exaggeration so typical of present day Spaniards. He
writes very simple, but in reading him there is much between the lines
because he was governor general in the Philippines and after, head
(Alcalde) of the Inquisition (Epistolario, 5:308).
 Fifth Consideration
 Rizal emphasizes that Morga was the evidence and the primary source of the
history of the Philippines.
 Rizal argued that Filipinos before has their own culture, and did not require a new
religion or civilization from Spain.

F. IMPORTANCE OF RIZAL’S ANNOTATION

To create a sense of national consciousness or identity.
 G. TWO DEFECTS OF RIZAL’S SCHOLARSHIP WHICH HAVE BEEN CONDEMNED
1. An ahistorical use of hindsight
2. A strong anticlerical bias.

H. BLUMENTRITT:
“These new points of view give your notes an imperishable value, an undeniable value even
for those who dream of an inaccessible superiority of race or nationality. The scholar will
salute your erudite annotations with enthusiasm, the colonial politician gratitude and
respect. Through these lines run a flood of serious observations equally interesting and
important to historians and ministers of overseas colonies alike”

“My great esteem for your notes does not impede me from confessing that, more than
once, I have observed that you participate in the error of many modern historians who
censure the events of past centuries according to the concepts that correspond to
contemporary ideas. This should not be so. The historian should not impude to the men of
the sixteenth century the broad horizon of ideas that moves the nineteenth century. The
second point with which I do not agree is against Catholicism. I believe that you cannot find
the origin of numerous events regrettable for Spain and for the good name of the European
race in religion, but in the hard behavior and abuses of many priests”

I. RIZAL:
“You wish that the Spaniards embrace us as brothers, but we do not ask for this by always
imploring and repeating this because the rest is humiliating for us. If the Spaniards do not
want us as brothers, neither we are eager for their affection. We will not ask for fraternal
love as if it we like alms. I am convinced that you wish too much and also wish the good of
Spain. But we do not solicit the compassion of Spain. We do not want compassion, but
justice…. Fraternity like alms from the proud Spaniard we do not seek. I repeat, you only
have the best intentions, you want to see the whole world embraced by means of love and
reason but I doubt if the Spaniards wish the same”

In his preface to the Morga Rizal addressed his countrymen:

In the Noli me tangere I began the sketch of the present state of our motherland. The effect that
my exercise produced in me was the understanding that, before proceeding to unfold before your eyes
other successive pictures, it is necessary to give you first a knowledge of the past in order to enable you to
judge the present better as to measure the road we have traveled during the last centuries (Rizal 1890,
preface).”