Philperiodicals

"Revista de la decena" was a section within the satiric newspaper in Spanish called La Puya. It intended to feature current affairs in the Philippines with sarcasm, following the fashion of satiric newspapers in Spain. According to Wenceslao Retana, it was founded in 1892 by the Spaniard Adolfo Puya y Ruíz."Revista de la decena" spearheaded several numbers as an editorial. It featured a dialogue between two people, a Spaniard and a Filipino of lower status, who addresses the Spaniard as señor. They talk casually about the state of affairs in the Philippines. At a given moment, the dialogue addresses a clash between Moros and Spanish troops, and one of the speakers expresses that it would be better to wipe out the Moros for their “not being Christian, not paying taxes, and not being good for anything”, to which the other agrees. 

The section 'Portrait of the Week' briefly notes important events, both local as well as international. A succint note on the left column of this third page of these Portraits refers the fact that Moros paying land taxes voluntarily.

Excelsior, a Spanish newspaper, prints a portrait of suffragist Rosa Sevilla de Alvero in its 818th issue. She was the founder and director of the Instituto de Mujeres of Manila, the first Catholic school for women in the Philippines. In addition, she was a strong advocate for women’s right to vote and often gave discourses at important public gatherings defending equality between the genders, family as a social institution, and stressed the importance of women’s role in society. 

La Vanguardia was the Spanish-speaking diary of the Roces group, which also owned The Tribune. Forcefully sold to the Japanese, it served during the Japanese occupation as a propaganda tool. In one of its latest numbers, on 20 October 1944, La Vanguardia announced an early victory of the Imperial Navy the first days of the biggest naval battle of the war, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, publishing that the US had lost 45 warships, 25.000 lives, and 500.000 tones, as well as 52 airplanes. That day’s issue opened with a picture of a shot-down US bomber and its burned crew, and another of the skies of Manila burning with anti-aircraft warfare, meant to convince the readers of Japanese military hegemony. 
The conflict, which was divided into a series of smaller battles, started that day but would finish on the 25th with the destruction of the Japanese fleet and the break of Japanese supply lines to South Asia. A massive Us victory (although La Vanguardia would still announce their defeat on the 26th) would pave the way to a US landing in the Philippines and the bloody Philippines campaign, which ended with the destruction of Manila, and the newspaper.

Graphic was an English-speaking illustrated magazine, owned by Ramon Roces and edited by A. C. Fabian. It included sections targeted at both men and women, which made it suitable for a broad public. It had several social sections through the years, which gave contemporary readers an image of Filipino society, such as “Who is Who In the Philippines” or “People”, which focused on prominent local figures from across the archipelago. 
On January 4, 1934, “People” published a small piece about Antonio Bollozos, a veteran of the Philippine National Guard (PNG). This document offers us a rare testimony of the impact of the conflict on the lives of common Filipinos. Some veterans, like Bollozos, made the most out of the demobilization to look for a better life outside of the Philippines. Even though Bollozos made his America’s quest to “save the world for democracy” by joining the US navy and later prosecuting rum­ runners on the coast of Maine (probably as a U.S. Coast Guard), he was still racialized as a “brown boy”. Bollozos would end up having a career as a racialized performer, working as a “Chinese extra” in a Hollywood studio and changing his name to Tony Lee.

Of the 176 Philippine newspapers and magazines held at the University of the Philippine Diliman’s repository, the greatest part are in English and Spanish, a few are in Tagalog and even less are bilingual. 
Some magazines, like Sinag-Tala or Ilang-Ilang, chose to print in the language of the people. Similarly to Excelsior or Semana, the magazine published articles, poems, short stories and even serialized novels. In this particular issue of Sinag-Tala, there are various poems, short stories, and parts of two different novels. Only one of those, though, has a woman author, namely, Rosalia A. Aguilar, who signed the short story “Pagpapakasakit”.

The Republic was one of the official publications of the Second Republic of the Philippines, a one-party puppet state established by the Japanese after the archipelago was formally granted independence under the presidency of José P. Laurel, Secretary of Justice at Manuel Quezon’s Cabinet. The first number of The Republic opened celebrating the first year of Laurel’s administration and reporting the commemoration organized in Manila on 14 October 1944. The presence of the plenipotentiary ambassador of Japan and the commanders of the Japanese army and navy made clear who was profiting from the “orientation of the people to meet the war situation”, the priority of Laurel’s administration. 
In fact, this was nothing but a totalitarian mobilization of Filipino resources and industries to “survive” only within the limitations of the Greater East Asia War, which meant total subordination to Japanese Imperialism. This “galvanization” not only meant an economic effort, but also a drastic revision of Filipinos' outlook and modes of living, a policy of “enlightened nationalism” and “cultural renewal” serving the supposedly Rizalian ideal that “the welfare of the community transcends that of the individual and in all cases the individual should be willing even to sacrifices his own”.

For years, cooking recipes and literary texts written by women were relegated, in the Philippine newspaper La Vanguardia, to the section called " Hogar" (Home). In spite of the marginalization that this implied, the truth is that in the issue of July 9, 1932, the most promising women writers of the country were proudly shown, and even equated to the level of men with these words: “The woman writing seems to be very close to the man - what an inspiring picture! To write for an Ideal is to place oneself at man's level or at a higher level than man. But that does not make her less of a woman; on the contrary, it makes her more of a woman”.
Some of the women who were included among the promising Philippine writers of the time happened to be prominent personalities in the public life of Manila. This is the case of Paz Mendoza Guazon, an important physician and suffragist who traveled around the world and gave frequent lectures and appears here as a prose writer and author of a travel book. It is also the case of Rosa Sevilla de Alvero, director of the first institute for women in Manila, a playwright, and an inspired conference speaker. The rest of these women mainly wrote in newspapers. Two groups stand out: those who only wrote in Spanish and those who wrote in Spanish and English, as is the case of Josefina Opus Silvestre, "Sylvia", whose short story is included on the same page.

The Cross: National Catholic Magazine was the official bi-monthly organ of the Knights of
Columbus in the Philippines, a catholic order brought to the Philippines in 1905 and filipinized
in 1918. The Cross included all kinds of opinion articles, but also reader’s contributions, prayers,
news digest, and book reviews. During the Cold War, it followed a strong anti-communist line,
following Piux XII's encyclical Summi Maeroris (1950).
On May 1950, it expressed the fears of Asian Catholics, after the victory of Mao Zedong in the
Chinese civil war and the establishment of the People's Republic of China on 1 October 1949 with
an editorial cartoon, “No Footsteps coming out” from the Moscow Cave. The image, portraying Mao
dressed like a Mandarin, suggested the end of traditional Chinese culture, to be devoured by the
Soviet Union, and the submission of the Chinese State to the Soviet strategy as it had happened in
Eastern Europe. In March 1950 the Chinese government launched a Stalinist anti-
counterrevolutionaries campaign the image interpellated the reader's fear of an enemy now at the
doors of the Philippines. As the front page of the number shows, the Catholic Church saw itself
especially menaced by these soviet victories.

Luis Quibranza discusses the reasons why unnamed Moro datus (local term for ‘ruler’) do not accept compulsory military training by the Philippine government. One of the interviewed datus noted that, even though compulsory military training went against traditional customs, the Moros would answer any call from the government to defend their lands. The author also explains that a few Moros educated in public schools were in favor of the National Defense Act.

The comic depicts an interaction between a young girl and the owner of a corner shop (sari-sari store). The young girl, angry at her superior, who has pranked her earlier with a type of firework called a “lebentador”, plots revenge against him. She buys fireworks from a Chinese vendor, who is portrayed speaking in a stereotypical phonetic accent and warns the girl she must not let the police know he sells fireworks–implying he is running an illegal business. She pranks her superior back, and the comic ends with a greeting for the new year.

Since the birth of national consciousness in Philippine writers and intellectuals, the retrieval of folk stories was present in their narratives. At the end of the 19th century and until independence in 1946, at a time when attempts were being made to discern what the Filipino essence was beyond the history of successive colonizations, the return to indigenism was a useful resource as counter-literature, outside the Western canon and what was taught as "correct literature" in the schools. Folk tales appeared in places and genres as disparate as newspaper editorials, the speeches of the suffragette Rosa Sevilla de Alvero or the scholarly texts of Isabelo de los Reyes. And in literature: in novels and short stories like "My Blind Old Yaya", by Ramon D. Soliman.As a student, Soliman recounts his personal experience of how he came to know the mythical figure of the "Aswang" through his yaya. In this, he connects with Adelina Gurrea's book Cuentos de Juana, which also unpacks a series of mythological stories through the tales of the narrator's yaya. As opposed to other mythological stories told by Americans or by Spaniards, who take them as curiosities or objects of study and sometimes even as justification of the "difference" of the Filipino people from the West, Soliman's story introduces the mythological characters in his day-to-day life, explains his personal experience with the idea of the aswang, and how it affected his routine. It can be confronted with the account of Francis Lewis Minton, an American citizen living in the Philippines, who in an article in The American Chamber of Commerce in 1929 spoke of the same being, the Aswang, from a disbelieving distance to highlight the obscure beliefs and backwardness of the Filipino people.

Just in passing, as if noting but the obvious, this brief reference about Moro protests in Jolo and Lanao against compulsory military service (the first one in this 'weekly mosaic') argues that rather than pacifism, what motivates Moros is their willingness to only fight against peace and order.

The article describes the state of education in Moro areas, specifically the eagerness of Moros to send their children to government schools despite their previous opposition. Alongside the article are two photos of Moro schoolchildren with their Christian teacher as well as datus with Christian officers.

The article fictionalizes clashes between the army and Moro rebels, characterized as the villains. A portrait of “Captain Leon Angeles” is captioned as “conquers moro outlaws”. The Moros are described as ringing agongs, a gong-like musical instrument, wearing barongs, and being armed with spears, contrasting the army who are armed with modern weaponry.

The article was published in the Bangon newspaper under the pseudonym PA-SA-BE. Besides the pseudonym, not much is known about the author. In addition to writing about travels to other countries, travelogues were also written about traveling within the Philippines itself. For instance, smaller parts of the country were visited with the aim of showcasing the country's modernity and economic strength. This particular article reports on a trip to Marikina in 1909. Notable is the emphasis placed on the American way of life. More specifically, it recounts a game of baseball, a popular game played in America. Here, the game was played between de Mandaloya Club and the Marikina Club.

Jesús Balmori (1887-1948) was a Filipino poet, playwright, and novelist who wrote in Spanish. One of his most celebrated works is the collection of poems called Mi Casa de Nipa, with which he won first prize in the national literary contest in 1938. Seven years earlier, in 1931, Balmori had traveled to Mexico with the aim of making Spanish-Filipino literature known in Latin America and of delivering a conference in verse about Japan. He chose a very bad moment for doing so: his references for poetry in Mexico were modernistas, such as Amado Nervo or Salvador Díaz Mirón, who were long outdated and almost despised by the more avant-garde generation of poets of the early 1930s, called Los contemporáneos. This frustrated him up to a point that he ended up saying (in an interview by his friend Manuel Bernabé) that there were no real poets in Mexico, none that could be compared to Filipino poets. Furthermore, at that time Japan had invaded Manchuria and there was a negative view of a country that was trying to colonize another one, in a kind of rehearsal of the colonizing attempts that Japan would carry out later on in the Asian Pacific. Being Mexico an ex-colonial country, they were not very keen to listen to accounts about the idealized wonders of Japan. 
When he got back to the Philippines, he wrote a very interesting travelogue in different installments about his trip. The first part is a classic narrative account of his stops in Japan, Hawaii, and the US. In the second part, Balmori narrates his stay in Mexico in poems describing his expectations and experiences in a critical manner. These poems could be read in the Philippine newspaper Excelsior –different from the famous Mexican newspaper of the same name. In this particular poem, Balmori evokes a boat trip in Xochimilco. He does not describe Mexico in an entirely positive way, but still, he points out several similarities between the country and the Philippines, such as "There are restaurant-boats with a Filipino-like aroma that makes us hungry". That Balmori finds similarities between Mexico and the Philippines is not completely unexpected as both countries share the Spanish language and colonial history, the Philippines being a capitanía from the viceroyalty of Nueva España (now Mexico and Guatemala).

On the 14th of May 1936, different women organizations of the Philippines celebrated the first anniversary of the right given to women to vote for a constitution with parades, meetings and programs in various provinces The Constitution of 1935 stipulated that in two years after its adoption, a plebiscite shall be organized in which qualified women could vote in favor or against the extension of the right to vote to women. During the celebration women were urged to participate in this coming plebiscite which would take place on the 30th of April of the following year. That would be the day in which the right to suffrage was extended to women in the Philippines.

In Spanish at least, one of the most popular genres of Philippine literature is poetry. The fondness comes from pre-Hispanic times when in order to remember epics and songs, the text was given a musical form that favored its memorization. Very often the poems were only published in the periodical press and were never compiled in anthologies or collections of poems by a single author. 
This poem by Jacinto Suban called "Magtiis ka" (Be patient) is a religious poem, related to what has been called sapiential literature. It was published in a Protestant newspaper that advocated US interests in the Philippines, entitled Ang Tanglaw (The Torch). The text mimics the message of the Old Testament’s Book of Job. It uses numerous biblical images –also from the New Testament– to illustrate the need to be patient in the face of adversity. Interestingly, it mentions poverty, a social scourge that hardly appeared in the more idealistic literature of the 1920s. As a reference, the first stanza translates as:
Can the shoulder of your life bear no moreunder the cross of poverty that you drag with so much difficulty?Is it all failures?Are you the one who always cries out at night, day and night?Turn your forehead to the sky for support.No matter what comes, you will be able to endure!
Jacinto Suban was a Seventh-day Adventist who published several books of sermons, proverbs and Christian teachings applied to family life, such as Aklat ng ina (Mother's book, 1940), Ang tinig ng kaibigan (The Voice of a Friend, 1940) and Itong sanglibutang pabagobago: saan kaya patungon (This Changing World: Where to Go, 1937). The publication of this poem in a newspaper shows the popularity of the genre but also the thematic diversity of these poems, which range from epic to love and sapiential tone, like this one.

In line with the recuperation of revolutionary figures in the 60’s, Panorama published an article by Cesar Adib Majul where he outlined the principal thesis of his book on Mabini (1960), the standard biography of Apolinario Mabini, Emilio Aguinaldo’s closest adviser, “Brain’s of the revolution” and Prime Minister of the Republic of Malolos. Mabini was an uncomfortable figure during the American period, and he was deported to Guam and only swore an oath of allegiance shortly before dying of cholera in 1903.
Majul argued that, for Mabini, the Philippine Revolution was a continuation of the American and the French Revolutions, and therefore part of the same universal history of progress. The Revolution was for Manini evidence of the people’s enlightenment, the exercise of reason that showed that Filipinos were civilized, defending their “natural right” to be free. Although Mabini understood revolution as natural and necessary, his democratic temper might have led him to consider the revolution against the U.S. unjustified when this wasn't the desire of the majority, defending instead a peaceful concession of rights which would end up with full independence. Mabini, as Majul put it, was a product of European rationalism and nineteenth century liberalism.

Leona Florentino (1849-1884) was an Ilocano poetess who apparently composed works in Spanish and Ilocano. She was the mother of the intellectual Isabelo de los Reyes (1864-1938), who in his work El folklore filipino (1889) included as an appendix some of his mother's poems originally written in Ilocano and translated into Spanish by himself. The poems collected by her son are divided into festive compositions and erotic compositions. The whereabouts of most of Leona Florentino's work and all that was written in Spanish are unknown.
Leona Florentino left her husband, to whom she had been married at the age of 14, and went to live alone. This unusual attitude for the 19th century earned her, together with the poetic work she was known for, recognition and exaltation as a feminist symbol in the Philippines. Hence, these articles report on the unveiling of a statue in her honor in Vigan in 1930, in the midst of the public discussion on women's suffrage in the Philippines.

In the midst of the Philippine War of Independence, and in a process of almost constant struggle against two colonizers that lasted from 1896 to 1902, the University of Santo Tomas de Manila published the newspaper Libertas. It was a Catholic newspaper, but it also repudiated the American invasion. In many of its issues, page 3 (of the four pages of the newspaper) included a section called "Pasatiempos" with poems, usually by contemporary (and therefore, modernist) Latin American authors. 
The poems fulfilled a double function. On the one hand, many implicitly spoke of themes related to freedom, liberation, or could be related in some way to the desire for independence. For example, this poem by the Equatorian poet José Trajano Mera (1862-1919) deals with drops of water that, by dint of falling, end up piercing the rock, a metaphor for constancy and for how things are achieved.Moreover, by noting the drop responsible for the final crumbling, it gestured towards the endurance, on the part of the people, of disdain injustice until the revolution breaks out. On the other hand, Filipino authors of the time were inspired by Latin American modernism in writing their own poetry, given the ties that they maintained with South American republics, which had also been Spanish colonies and which had already freed themselves from colonialism years ago.

Federico García Sanchiz (1886-1964) was a Spanish writer who authored several novels and travel books, including Nao española: Asia, América y Oceanía, a collection of fragmentary travel impressions in the form of articles, which included a couple on the Philippines. The reason for this inclusion is that García Sanchiz was in Manila twice, once in 1925 and again in 1938, doing what made him famous: giving talks. In Manila, he was named Doctor Honoris Causa at the University of Santo Tomas. Whereas his talks during his first visit to the archipelago were reproduced in general Spanish-language newspapers to great public enthusiasm, this talk. delieved on December 19, 1938 in Manila was reproduced in the fascist newspaper ¡Arriba España!  During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), García Sanchiz supported the rebels and later, General Franco’s regime. ¡Arriba España! was published between 1938 and 1939 and reported on the progress of the Civil War in Spain from a pro-Franco point of view. One of the main pillars of Franco's regime was the recovery of Spain's world influence during the time of the empire between the 16th and 18th centuries. The talk reproduced here is part of this line, taking up a very popular discourse both in the newspaper Hispanidad, published by UST in the 1940s, and in ¡Arriba España!: the supposedly great advantages that the Spanish empire had left in its former territories –including the Philippines– and the need to recognize, remember and perhaps recreate the brotherhood among all these territories.

Renacimiento Filipino was a nationalistic weekly magazine in Spanish and Tagalog, created in 1901. Since 1903, it was directed by Fernando María Guerrero, with Rafael Calma as its editor. Around 1908, it was the most extended publication in the archipelago. However, it was forced to close in January 1911 due to its constant legal conflicts with the US colonial administration.
One of its last numbers, on September 14, 1911, was devoted to the inauguration of a monument in Balintawak to the heroes of the 1896 revolution. Before the event, a massive procession took place. El Renacimiento did not only report on the events but also documented them with pictures, many of which were included in other articles of the same number. The procession was huge: 20 music bands, 4,000 vehicles, 300 associations, several schools, and most of the cultural elites participated, orchestrated by Guerrero himself. It was a clear statement of Filipino independentism and of the desire to get back “the totality of that precious treasure that was left to us by the paladins and martyrs of our Cause” of course “within peace and order, [but] without giving up anything.”