The late National Artist Néstor Vicente Madali González, always greeted me with the question, “what’s new?” As a historian, I should have replied, “nothing, everything is old.” News is supposed to be shorthand for “Notable Events, Weather, and Sports.” I thought it...
If we have National Heroes Day, why don’t we have National Villains Day? If we have a pantheon of Pambansang Bayani, why can’t we have Pambansang Kontrabida? What are heroes, after all, without villains? Can we learn as much from our forgotten villains as we would...
Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. escaped death and injury during the Plaza Miranda bombing of a Liberal Party rally on Aug. 21, 1971, but his luck ran out 12 years later—killed by a bullet to the head on Aug. 21, 1983. What would have happened if Aquino was deported,...
A historian writing on the assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. will not want for primary source material from the period. Much of it was published as a special supplements to Mr. & Ms. Magazine under Eugenia Apostol and Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc that later...
Last Wednesday, Daniel Hernandez, the ambassador of Mexico to the Philippines, arranged a most memorable birthday for me aboard the Mexican training ship, Cuauhtémoc, that was in a Manila stop-over in a voyage around the world. Before boarding, I witnessed the...
Sentiment is one of the hurdles to our understanding of Philippine history. It is set early on when Araling Panlipunan makes students choose between Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio. Who is better? More worthy of being the national hero? Some learn that Emilio...
When in Dapitan, I always drop by the Rizal Shrine to look out on a vista that had not changed very much since the hero’s exile there from 1892-1896. It is not well known that Rizal was a licensed land surveyor, who made the most of money he won at a lottery to...
A Filipino book historian would probably know how many copies of Jose Rizal’s novels have been printed from his lifetime to the present. If he were paid, even a peso, for each book printed, he or his estate would be raking in millions in annual royalties from required...
When I did K-12 in the last century, the commemoration of the national language only lasted a week. It was then known as “Linggo ng Wika.” In 1997, President Fidel V. Ramos extended it to cover the whole month of August by creating “Buwan ng Wika.” Twelve years ago,...
Cruising down Roxas Boulevard some years ago, my publisher pointed to a yellow street sign across Aristocrat Restaurant and asked, “Who is Ped Xing?” Using my formal tone, and speaking ex-cathedra from an endowed professorial chair in the Ateneo, I declared: “Ped Xing...