Publications

Renowned as the pioneering figure of Philippine folklore studies, Isabelo de los Reyes exhaustively documented and wrote about the Filipino people’s customs and ways of life, including popular knowledge about health and medicine. Considerably his magnum opus, Isabelo’s El Folk-Lore Filipino (1889–90) houses an abundance of folkloric notes relating to Philippine medicine, exhibiting the wide ranging varieties of folk medical knowledge from the natural to the supernatural. Despite this, numerous scholarly engagements with Isabelo’s intellectual endeavors have yet to carefully delve into the many mentions of medical knowledge present within his works on folklore. In response, this essay explores El Folk-Lore Filipino as an overlooked archive of Philippine folk medicine, covering folk medical knowledge existing by the late nineteenth century. This essay also attempts to locate El Folk-Lore Filipino within the rising professional medical community at the time, particularly the reception of Isabelo’s work on folk medicine. Against a backdrop of colonial rule, Isabelo’s keen attention to medicine in his research not only fulfilled his proposed understanding of folklore, but also contributed to his aspirations toward the development of the Filipino people’s conditions at the time.

In his analysis of Isabelo de los Reyes’ Historia de Ilocos (1890), Ubaldo (2012) makes a case for the historiographical contribution of the work in local historical studies by emphasizing the Ilocano intellectual assertion of the participation of the people in precolonial and colonial developments. In this observation, local and folk beliefs and practices were important objects and subjects of historical knowledge production. However, an earlier work made De los Reyes a trailblazer in historical and cultural studies in the country. His 1889 work, El Folk-Lore Filipino (1889) has been appraised as a pioneer scholarly documentation of Philippine folk knowledge. This paper presents a historical dissection of the El Folk-Lore Filipino and identifies the valuable notes, descriptions, and analyses of the physical environment, found in select sections of the book. This work highlights this specific aspect of De los Reyes’ magnum opus and offers another look into how the documentation of folklores and cultural vignettes can shed light on how local communities make sense and create meanings on nature and the environmental processes related to it.

This article examines the relationship between “authorship” and “folk literature” in the case of Ilocano poems by Doña Leona Florentino (1849 – 1884), presented in the first volume of El Folk-Lore Filipino (1889) by her son, Isabelo de los Reyes y Florentino (1864 – 1938). I discuss how Leona became an individual “author” (in the sense defined by the modern West)— yet, much to Isabelo’s ambivalence, she was also made to represent the Ilocano and Filipino “folk literature.” Isabelo’s contextualization, as well as a close reading of the poems, reveals that Leona was partly acquainted with a “Europeanized” literary form and practice. This necessitates a discussion on how Isabelo defined “folk literature.” Despite Isabelo’s failure to qualify and justify an ontological status for the so-called poetica Filipina (Philippine poetics), we can still learn a lot from him about the nature of Philippine folk literature, especially the kind conceived, produced, and performed beyond the nineteenth-century Manila and Tagalog region. The last part consists of two experiments that examine the phenomena of repetition and syllabication in folk literature. By doing a “close(r) reading” of Leona’s poems through a Python program, we may find their place within and beyond the folk literary tradition.

The Civil Code of the Philippines became the foundation of civil law in the postwar Philippines. In legal history, it is a common understanding that the Civil Code was heavily derived from the Spanish legal system. This article aims to highlight the Filipino element and Filipino contribution to the development of its legal system. This article shows that two proverbs (salawikain), “ang lahat ng tao mag-away man huwag ang mag-asawa sa loob ng bahay” (the whole world may quarrel but not the husband and wife at home) and “ang sakit ng kalingkingan, damdam ng buong katawan” (the pain of the little finger is felt by the whole body), were transformed as provisions in the Civil Code (1949) such as “the family is a basic social institution which public policy cherishes and protects” (art. 216) and “the law governs family relations. No custom, practice, or agreement which is destructive of the family shall be recognized or given any effect” (art. 218). The legal luminary Jorge C. Bocobo, who served as Chair of the Code Commission tasked to design a new civil code from 1947 to 1949, has been instrumental in the codification of proverbs in civil law due to his prior interest and engagement in collecting Filipino proverbs. These provisions exist up to this day in the Family Code of the Philippines (1987) and the 1987 Constitution and remain relevant in the governance of Filipino families. Familiarity with Philippine folklore could serve as an unconventional but important way to understand their own laws.

This paper intends to analyze the Philippine folk game known as sungka within the context of an indigenous culture of conflict encountered by the Spaniards in the 16th century. It explores parallelisms between a unique Philippine discourse on war and the game’s ludic dimension, primarily focused on its in-game lexicon and its rules of play. The paper argues that sungka reflected—if not reinforced—specific attitudes and approaches towards competitive activities, including conflict, due to several unique elements of the game: a) a focus on resource acquisition and circulation, b) relatively weak spatial considerations, and c) an ability to reverse prior setbacks in what is usually a drawn-out competition between two individuals. A correlation thus seems to exist between the strategic thinking extant in sungka and the indigenous methods of waging war. The paper is inspired by a gap in the works of Isabelo de los Reyes. His planned multi-volume work on Filipino folklore included a tome on what he referred to as “folk wit.” This volume would have included children’s games—such as sungka—but the currents of history swept Don Belong’s plans aside. This paper contributes to the legacy of his unfinished work by building on Mellie Leandicho Lopez’s studies of Filipino folk games and thus takes a tentative step towards connecting Philippine leisure culture to Philippine warfare.

On 12 June 2023, the Ayala Museum in the Philippines launched an exhibition entitled Splendor: Juan Luna, Painter as Hero for the commemoration of the 125th anniversary of the Philippines’ independence from Spain. It showcased Luna’s long-lost work from 1889, Hymen, oh Hyménée. Equally if not more important, however, was the exhibition’s aim to present Luna himself, his life and achievements, positioning him as a hero and protagonist in the nationalist struggle. The event was preceded by many other activities that commemorated Luna as a national hero. Using concepts derived from public memory studies, this paper examines the formation of public memory and its configurations. It delves into the historical context of the evolution of public memory and the institutions and individuals that contributed to this evolution. The paper argues that the public memory of Juan Luna owed to the nationalist reading of his achievements, promoted first by nationalist writers, then adopted and continued actively by the state. Meanwhile, private museums continue to shape public memory through exhibitions that attach Luna’s name to the national narrative. Moreover, public memory is continually shaped by popular memory that arises through ongoing commemorative activities in Luna’s locality.

“Proto-modern astronomy” in the Philippines pertains either to an astronomical paradigm or a historical phase that mediates the “pre-modern” (i.e., indigenous Austronesian, since the 3500 BCE) and the “modern” (i.e., brought about by the Eurasian “scientific revolution,” 16th century CE). Among the Philippine communities, the existence of proto modern astronomy implies linguistic contact and socio-cultural interaction with Sanskrit, Arabic, and Malay speakers. Moreover, it shows the Philippine reception of foreign astronomical knowledge and practices before the advent of Euro-American colonialism.

To isolate the proto-modern elements, a discussion on pre-modern Austronesian astronomy is provided. Basic astronomical words can be reconstructed into the following protoforms: PAn *laŋiC ‘sky, heaven,’ PAn *qajaw ‘day, sun,’ PMP *qalejaw ‘day, sun,’ PAn *bulaN ‘moon,’ PAn *bituqen ‘star,’ PMP *talaq₁ ‘star,’ PPh *bulalákaw₂ ‘meteor, shooting star,’ PPh *dúlis ‘meteor, shooting star,’ and PPh *dúlit ‘meteor, shooting star.’ By identifying the foundational elements, we can now recognize the latter additions, marked by Sanskrit-Arabic influences through Malay. These additions appear in the form of words for ‘astral science/scientist,’ ‘heaven/hell,’ ‘deity/spirit,’ ‘eclipse,’ ‘Milky Way,’ ‘comet,’ ‘fixed star,’ and ‘planet,’ as well as cosmological, mathematical, and astrological ideas and practices. The period of the study begins in the 10th century CE, the time of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, which contains the important word jyotisha ‘astral science; astrologer’ and ends in the 19th century, when the Spanish intrusion of the Pulangi Valley, mainly through the Jesuit missionaries, led to the documentation of Maguindanaon, whose astronomical loanwords were clearly from Sanskrit-Malay and Arabic-Malay.

During the American colonial period in the Philippines, Americans from different backgrounds made the upland trip to Baguio, the sole colonial hill station in the colony, primarily because of its cooler climate. Through an analysis of American travel accounts, I will show that the pace of traveling to Baguio had a particularly profound influence on American travelers’ multisensory experiences while in transit. Before the Benguet Road was completed and opened in 1905, travelers endured slow and difficult travel conditions, so they saw themselves as resolute individuals who were worthy of the sensory delights that the highland environment offered. When the Benguet Road was opened and motorized vehicle transportation to Baguio was introduced shortly afterward, the faster pace of travel made American travelers captivated by the experiences of an easier and more sensorily overwhelming climb to the hill station.

In 1586, Governor Santiago de Vera (1584-1590) wrote a request to Felipe II of Spain for the pacification of Isla Hermosa (Formosa; modern-day Taiwan), and the King responded by instructing Governor Perez Dasmariñas to pacify the island for the benefit of its people and the safety of the Spaniards in Manila. However, no military expedition commenced in the sixteenth century; and only in 1626 did the governor of Manila send a force to occupy North Hermosa as a response to the Dutch occupation of the South. Half, if not most soldiers that were sent to occupy Hermosa were local soldiers of the archipelago. These indigenous soldiers, who participated in the establishment and maintenance of Spanish Taiwan from 1626 to 1642 when they were expelled by the Dutch, will be the focus of this paper. Examining the Spanish use and mobilization of local soldiers to expand the Spanish empire in Asia will serve as the objective of this research.

Kabilang sa mga kilalang pananaliksik tungkol sa kasaysayan ng polisiyang pangkagubatan sa Pilipinas ang mga pag-aaral nina Ma. Florina Orillos, Inspeccion General de Montes: Isang Institusyonal na Kasaysayan (1999); Ma. Luisa de Leon Bolinao, Perhutanan: Mga Patakarang Kolonyal Hinggil sa Kagubatan ng Malaya at Filipinas, 1900-1940 (2005); at ni Nathan E. Roberts, U.S. Forestry in the Philippines: Environment, Nationhood, and Empire, 1900-1937 (2014). Gayunpaman, pawang sumasaklaw ang mga nasabing pag-aaral sa pambansang konteksto ng mga polisiyang pangkagubatan. Mayroong puwang kung gayon sa pagsusuri ng mga usaping pangkagubatan sa lokal na konteksto ng mga bayan at lalawigan.

Layunin ng artikulong ito na punan ang nasabing puwang sa pamamagitan ng pagsusuri ng kasaysayang pangkagubatan sa halimbawang kaso ng Zambales. Nakatuon ang paksa sa nasabing lalawigan kung saan itinayo ang isa sa mga unang istasyong pangkagubatan sa unang taon ng kolonyal na pamahalaang Amerikano. Gayundin, tuon ng pananaliksik ang muling paggugubat at edukasyong pangkagubatan na naging malawak na programa ng Kagawaran ng Paggugubat at kung papaano naging bahagi sa mga programang ito ang lalawigan ng Zambales. Gamit ang mga opisyal na ulat at mga kaugnay na batis, sasaklawin ng pag-aaral na ito ang taong 1900 kung kailan itinatag ang Kagawaran ng Paggugubat (Forestry Bureau) hanggang 1939 kung kailan huling nagpatupad ng programang pangkagubatan ang pamahalaan bago sumiklab ang Ikalawang Digmaang Pandaigdig.