What Is History (Philippines)

What is History?

The “Toward a History From Below” from the book Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines by Reynaldo Ileto began with the Lapiang Malaya affair in May 1967, which is uncommonly known as the “Black Sunday massacre”. The Lapiang Malaya was led by Valentin de los Santos, a Bicolano, whose major goals were true justice, true equality and true freedom for the country. The Lapiang Malaya matter is an infamous part of the Philippine history. With further notice of the symbols used by the Lapiang Malaya, it can be observed that they stemmed from the Katipunan movement. From The Revolt of the Masses by Teodoro Agoncillo, he pointed out that the Katipunan was first led by the uneducated and subordinate workers of Manila. It was only later that the involvement of the educated Filipinos was put into story. The main aim of Agoncillo was “to rectify the tendency of historians before him to regard the revolution as the handiwork of upper-class, Hispanized natives”. The common interpretation to revolutions in the Philippine society is that the aspirations of the intellectual elites are the accepted records that shape our history and culture. That is why Ileto regarded the society as “patron-client oriented”. What he wanted to impart on us, modern Filipinos, is that we should level ourselves to the world of the non-elites because they, too, have made great contributions in our history. In order to pave way to new and modern ideas of social reforms and cultural transformations, we should first understand how the traditional thinking responds to questions of change. To be able to know the “history from below” would require us to view and understand the sources of information “from below” such as their narratives, songs, etc. Example of which is their celebration of the Holy Week. It was believed that this formed the idea of peasants’ uprisings and brotherhoods. One of the main goals of the Spaniards was to colonize the Philippines through...