Publications

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.

Between 1837 and 1882, the Spanish colonial government in the Philippines deported “undesirable” Chinese—vagrants, drunkards, unemployed, idlers, pickpockets, undocumented, and the “suspicious”—to various parts of the archipelago. Deportation, in this context, refers to the transportation or banishment of individuals deemed “dangerous” by the state to different far-flung areas of the islands or outside the colony but still within the Spanish empire. Deportation primarily served as a form of punishment and a means to rehabilitate and improve the wayward lives of “criminals.” This paper examines the deportation of “undesirable” Chinese in the nineteenth-century Philippines. Using underutilized primary materials from various archives in Manila and Madrid, it interrogates the actors, institutions and processes involved in banishing such individuals. It argues that while deportation served its punitive and reformative functions, Spanish authorities also used it to advance their colonial project in the islands. Chinese deportees formed part of the labor supply the state used to populate the colony’s frontier areas and strengthen its control over its newly-acquired territories.

During the Holy Week in Gasan, Marinduque, women observe an important tradition: the pagsusunong ng pupuwa (bearing of pupuwa). Along with other Christian believers performing their own prayers and acts of mourning, the women devotees carry on their heads a crown of pupuwa leaves while wearing loose black robes and walking barefooted as they partake in the Good Friday procession. This tradition can be connected to the two religious institutions where it has been practiced, the Roman Catholic Church and the Philippine Independent Church; two interrelated Christian institutions that found unity in the said tradition. Through interviews, one may extract some concepts embedded within the said devotion, such as the duality of repentance and wishing, individualistic devotion, and the passing of the tradition to the next generation. The bearing of pupuwa can be located within the traditions and meanings that root back to the precolonial period. Moreover, one may find in the botanical studies and dictionaries the documentation, function, and benefits of the pupuwa plant (Polyscias fruticosus (L.) Harms) to communities such as Gasan. Overall, the bearing of pupuwa by the Gaseña women significantly contributes to the rich culture and identity of Gasan.

This paper examines the lives and circumstances of Chinese fugitives who were arrested and imprisoned for violating certain policies related to registration, taxation, and migration in nineteenth- century Philippines. Using previously unutilized archival source materials, this work explores the dynamic interactions between these outlaws and the Spanish colonial state set against the evolving colonial bureaucratic apparatus of the period as well as the increasing number and physical mobility of the Chinese within the islands. On the one hand, the paper probes the government’s view on flight and its punitive actions against fugitives, the factors within the state apparatus that enabled escapes to occur, and the actors and processes involved in capturing runaways. On the other hand, it deals with the fugitives themselves by describing and analyzing their profiles, motivations, and the subtle means they used, including the geo-spatial factors and the socioeconomic networks within and beyond the Chinese community, which the authorities suspected to have aided their escape. An investigation into these themes highlights how Chinese offenders responded to the government’s various forms of social control by fleeing from the authorities. This work argues that while the state considered fugitives as economic saboteurs, the fugitives themselves employed flight as a necessary and pragmatic means to evade the state’s restrictive and exploitative policies.

This article examines José María Panganiban’s “La Universidad de Manila” columns in La Solidaridad and discusses their five salient points of criticism of the state of higher education at the Universidad de Santo Tomás in the late nineteenth century. In view of the existing historiography, it argues that Panganiban’s critique of the university, although born out of propaganda, finds empirical grounding in his years of study at Santo Tomás from 1882 to 1888. Lastly, it illustrates that Panganiban’s columns represented a wider, liberal campaign for reforms in Philippine higher education that took place in Madrid and Barcelona from 1888 to 1891.

“Undesirable” Chinese – vagrants, undocumented migrants, pickpockets, beggars, drunkards, idlers and the “suspicious” – were considered “dangerous” by the Spanish colonial government because they posed a threat to the financial and political security of the Philippines. Mostly belonging to the laboring classes, these unemployed and marginally employed individuals were arrested, prosecuted and punished for violating policies relating to registration, taxation and migration. While other forms of discipline and punishment were meted out to these “minor” offenders, the state deemed it necessary to expel them from the colony.

This paper explores why and how “undesirable” Chinese were expelled from the Philippines between 1883, when the first expulsion order was issued, and 1898, when Spanish rule ended. Set in the broader political and socio-economic context of the late nineteenth century, it examines the actors, institutions and processes involved in banishing these offenders to China. Using previously underutilized archival materials, it interrogates the relations that emerged among various entities such as the state, the leaders of the Chinese community in Manila, private businesspeople, and Chinese “criminals” in terms of the expulsion process.