Publications

As the Philippines progresses further into the 21st century, the unpredictability of security conditions creates multiple possibilities in terms of future threat scenarios. This ambiguity emphasizes the need for the country’s defense institutions to adapt and evolve through the development of defense capabilities, and as necessary, a redefinition of security policies, doctrines, and strategies. In exploring the future of Philippine ground warfare, current threats encountered by the Philippine Army are examined vis-à-vis the trend of hybridization, due to globalization, mass communication, and rapid technological innovation. To contribute to the discourse on the Philippines’ theory of victory, this paper argues that the concerted efforts of Army units, utilizing Landpower Maneuver, to supplement the actions of the Joint Force, will lead to enemy forces abandoning the idea of conflict in its entire spectrum due to loss of capability or will. The objective is to achieve an end-state where threats are deterred to start or continue conflict, by exploiting opportunities in all domains and dimensions of the security architecture. To further demonstrate the Philippine Army’s theory of victory, multiple future scenarios involving hybrid threats to the ground force are employed in this paper. Towards the end, an overview of how Philippine Army’s ground defense strategy and capability development direction are highlighted to describe the Army’s path to victory.

Opium was one of the issues that had to be resolved by the Americans upon their colonization of the Philippines. The debate on the potentialities of opium dates back to the Spanish colonial period, when the colonial government framed the opium issue as both economic and moral in nature. In the end, the economic potentialities of opium outweighed its moral repercussions because the Spanish colonial government allowed its regulated use among the Chinese. In contrast, the American officials in Manila crafted a progressive prohibitionist policy based on the recommendation of the investigative Opium Committee in 1905. In terms of opium in the Philippines, the majority of research has focused on the American policies on opium and their international consequences. This study focuses on the aftermath and challenges of the American prohibitionist policy from 1910 to 1935, particularly as they related to smuggling. Using archival documents such as annual reports from the governor-general of the Philippines and other government records, the paper aims to demonstrate how and in what ways opium was smuggled in the Philippines and to analyze the various motivations, reasons, and methods used by smugglers. Furthermore, the paper explores the involvement of the Chinese in various notable opium-related cases in the Philippines. I also argue that an increase in the smuggling of opium was an unwanted aftermath of the American prohibitionist policy. The present study hopes to contribute to the growing body of literature on narcotics, drug policies, and empire building.

This paper narrates a history of the August 2, 1968 Luzon earthquake that severely hit the capital city of Manila in the Philippines. The central site of this earthquake disaster was the collapse of a premiere, high-rise residential building in downtown Manila, the Ruby Tower Apartments. This tragedy reflects the projection of nationalism in terms of collective disaster response, and the Philippines’ complicated dealings with a specific segment of the population. The Ruby Tower tragedy was an emblematic representation of the country’s disaster response capacities and Filipino society’s perception and treatment of the Chinese and Filipino Chinese residents in Manila. Using newspapers, magazine articles, and scientific reports about the earthquake, this study aims to present a microhistory of a cultural minority in Manila, specifically on how the sordid story of earthquake disaster survival projects a poignant picture of ethnic dynamics and disaster politics in the country in the 1960s.

Despite the persistent relevance of mental health in the lives of Filipinos and the long tradition of mental health care in the Philippines, scholarly works on the history of mental illnesses and mental health institutions, particularly during the colonial period, remain scarce. This paper aimed to explore the various policies implemented by the American colonial government in the Philippines to address issues regarding insanity from 1903 to 1928. As a historical inquiry, the paper employed historical analysis in examining sources of data such as archival documents, official reports, bulletins, and statistics produced by the various offices of the American colonial government in the Philippines. Three specific policies were identified – the establishment of the Insane Department at the San Lazaro Hospital in 1904 as a response to the overcrowding and inadequate treatment methods at the Hospicio de San Jose, the Insane Department's adherence to the principles of moral treatment, and enactment of different laws pertinent to insane persons, most notably the Insanity Law of 1912.

The historical narrative shows that these policies had been used by the American colonial government to showcase their alleged benevolence and preserve public order. It was also demonstrated that the colonizers ultimately failed to develop the Insane Department as a modern insane asylum, as indicated by persistent problems such as overcrowding, lack of proper facilities, and outdated treatment methods.

This paper explored the emergence and development of the macanista or Cantonese community in the Philippines from the late eighteenth century to the end of the Spanish regime. It aims (1) to examine how the Spanish colonial state viewed the Chinese community in general, and the Chinese dialect groups like the Cantonese in particular; (2) to provide a historical overview of Cantonese immigration to and settlement in the Philippines; and (3) to describe the economic contributions of Cantonese laboring classes in Manila and in the provinces. The paper intends to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the economic and socio-cultural differences within the Chinese community in the Spanish Philippines.

Details constituting the sound environments in the island province of Marinduque can be extracted and reconstructed from the H. Otley Beyer Ethnographic Collection papers written by Asunción M. Arriola, Nieves Hidalgo, Eduardo E. Palma, Serapio Rolloqui, Cornelio C. Restar, and Miguel Manguerra (1916-1928) and the writings of Rafael J. Semilla (1970- 71). With these sources one will be able to examine places identified with or produced by silence, which are here called “silencescapes”. Given the challenges on defining, reading, and historicizing silences and silencescapes, there is a need to situate these places of silence within meanings and functions in a culture and society. As a study that examines how silences produce places, it attempts to contribute to the current scholarship on geo- narratives, local history, and countermapping.

This essay intends to show that the state-science nexus during the Commonwealth period mobilized the Filipino scientific community through the NRCP’s research exploits despite limited government support and other challenges beyond the council’s control. It expounds on the nature of state-science engagements in other countries in order to understand how this operated within the Philippine setting. It then examines the Commonwealth’s vision for economic independence and how the Philippine state mobilized the NRCP by providing important but very limited support for the council’s research projects and activities. Finally, it probes into the council’s research works published in selected NRCP Bulletins from 1934 to 1941 in order to demonstrate how Filipino scientists tried to influence policy-making. This essay is an attempt to assess state-science engagements during the Commonwealth period as seen in the example of the NRCP which contributed not only to the national endeavor but most especially to the progress of Filipino science.

The few existing historiography generally regard the establishment of the Escuela-Colegio de Santa Isabel as one of Francisco Gaínza’s greatest initiatives and accomplishments during his seventeen-year episcopacy in the Diocese of Cáceres. They argue that Santa Isabel forms part of the bishop’s ecclesiastical and educational legacies for Bikol. While these accounts underscore Gaínza’s role in the school’s foundation, they obscure his rationale and the wider backdrop of the Spanish Empire that conditioned its possibility. This article locates Gaínza and the establishment of Santa Isabel within Spain’s wider efforts to reorganize primary education in the Philippines in the 1860s. It argues that Santa Isabel was established to serve the purposes of Spain’s civilizing mission of Hispanizing the native population, and that Gaínza, an agent of the Spanish Empire by virtue of the Patronato Real (Royal Patronage) operated within this colonial discourse.

This paper aims to provide a general overview of epidemics/pandemics in Philippine history as an interpretive backdrop to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is undertaken to illustrate that “a study of epidemics/pandemics within their broader cultural, political, scientific, and geographic contexts can offer insights on how diseases are not necessarily functions of pathogens” alone, but also of how society is structured at a particular time.

This paper explores the lives of “undesirable” Chinese—vagrants, undocumented, idlers, beggars, drunkards and pickpockets—who were incarcerated in various prisons in the Philippines during the nineteenth century. Using criminal records from the National Archives of the Philippines, it examines the actors, institutions and processes involved in confining these criminals and interrogates how they lived within the confines of these penal institutions. It demonstrates that their lives were shaped by the policies imposed by the Spanish colonial state and prison administrators. There were instances, however, when some of these prisoners articulated their concerns towards prison authorities. Their verbal and physical responses illustrate how they utilized the resources inside the prisons to their advantage. On some occasions, the leaders of the Chinese community also represented to the authorities the concerns of these prisoners.