Originally published in Churchill, Bernardita, ed. 1997. Determining the truth: The story of Andres Bonifacio.

Manila: Manila Studies Association, NCCA, and PNHS. THE LOGIC OF GLENN MAY IN

INVENTING A HERO1
There is no doubt that Glenn Mays Inventing a hero is relatively well presearched. However, a good book must likewise entail good reasoning. Unfortunately, Mays arguments are full of fallacies, particularly hasty generalizations and argumetum ad ignorantiam. Moreover, the criteria between historical reconstruction and historical re-creation should be made clear. If the motive alone is the criterion, then it is very problematic.

In the brief, inadequate, digression on historical method earlier in this piece, I deliberately omitted the cautionary words of great historians, reserving them for the conclusion. Charles V. Langlois and Charles Sergnobois described historical study not (as) a science of observation but a science of reasoninghow to construct from imperfect documentary or narrative records some glimpses of what actually happened. The reasoning of the American deconstructionist, I hope have been exposed as faulty. Adrian Cristobal (1997, pt 2:6)

INTRODUCTION It is well known to most, if not all of us, that the complete title of Glenn Anthony Mays work is Inventing a hero: the 81

posthumous re-creation of Andres Bonifacio which New Day Publishers released early this year. It is a very serious work on one of the active leaders of the Philippine Revolution and deserves careful attention. The final conclusion of May (1997a: 161) is that ...the Bonifacio we have...is mostly an illusion, the product of undocumented statements, unreliable, doctored, or otherwise spurious sources, and the collective imagination of several historians and a memoirist. The reasoning used in arriving at this conclusion is limited to three forms: (1) that documentation was inadequate since there were no footnotes and endnotes and bibliographies in the process of gathering some of the data; (2) that the internal analysis of the other data reveals inconsistencies; and (3) that there is the nearly universal tendency of nationalist historians to reshape the historical record. The overall strategy is to cite some inadequacies and inconsistencies of an author, such as Manuel Artigas y Cuerva, from some of his works and then generalize these to include all his other works. This appears to me rather quite hasty. A good research strategy is to discard those works or data which have been shown inconsistent and retain those which have been corroborated on a case to case basis, but one is not entitled to discard those which have not either been corroborated or shown inconsistent. The first form of reasoning simply denies the existence of references in terms of footnotes and endnotes or bibliographies2 regarding Bonifacios works and the description of his prerevolutionary and revolutionary life. This will, however, only show that Bonifacio may or may not have written the works attributed to him and may or may not have the image that we generally know of him, that is, the humble origins, the limited education, the love of books, the list of favorite titles, . . . the employment with foreign commercial houses (May 1997a: 24) and the calm and composed revolutionary who later on became fiery and defiant. One is not entitled to conclude that Bonifacio in fact did not write them, otherwise he will commit the argumentum ad ignorantiam 82

fallacy. What makes May believe that Bonifacio did not write them is his third form of reasoning: since the researchers are nationalists, and nationalists are prone to revise or doctor historical records, then in all likelihood Bonifacio did not write them. In order to present a popular image of Bonifacio, nationalist historians simply invented a mythical Bonifacio. The second form of reasoning fluctuates between the first and third forms. The rejection of the third form will allow usat the most to revert to the position that Manuel Artigas y Cuerva, Epifanio de los Santos, and Jose Santos were honest historians, or even honest nationalist historians, and therefore Bonifacio had that image ascribed to him and he authored the works attributed to him. At the least, it will allow us to hold the agnostic position that we have no way of knowing whether or not Bonifacio indeed has that image or has written those works since the documentation was inadequate or untrustworthy. In the succeeding sections, I will discuss each one of these three forms. NO ENDNOTES AND FOOTNOTES In the Introduction May initially describes his findings. He (1997a: 4) mentions the sources of our mythical and re-created or invented image of Bonifacio: Manuel Artigas y Cuerva, Epifanio de los Santos, Jose Santos, Artemio Ricarte, Teodoro Agoncillo, and Reynaldo Ileto. Later on in the book, May (1997a: 133-34, 162) describes the first three authors as the mythmakers, Ricarte as a dissembler, Agoncillo as an arbitary historian, and Ileto as the victim of the mythmakers. The other authors or historians Jose Arcilla, Gregorio Zaide, Milagros Guerrero, Renato Constantino, and Onofre Corpuz generally rely heavily on the mythmakers and sometimes on each other. There were other names as sourceslike Aguedo Cagingin, Leopoldo Serrano, Esteban de Ocampo, Teodoro Kalaw, and Espiridiona Bonifacio, among othersbut May (1997a: 22-23) dismisses them as of not much consequence.

83

Manuel Artigas y Cuerva (1866-1925) In chapter two May discusses the pre-revolutionary Bonifacio in terms of his early childhood, parents, siblings, education, work, and writings. Manuel Artigas, who was of Filipino-Spanish parentage, was a journalist and journalists generally are popular writers. Explanatory and citation footnotes may sometimes be provided in their works, but not necessarily interview footnotes among his contemporaries who were participants in the Revolution. Artigas himself left the country in 1897 and returned only in 1902. He was born in 1866 and was thirty years old during the 1896 Revolution. He was a librarian and his Bonifacio biography was published in 1911. It is therefore safe to assume that he did conduct interviews among the katipuneros even if he did not say so in his Bonifacio biography. The reasons why Artigas did not provide interview footnotes are: (1) he was a popular writer and popular works are generally not provided with footnotes, and (2) May (1997a: 28-29) himself admits that professional historical methodology was in vogue in the Philippines only at about 1950. One interesting argument which May (1997a: 29) presents is that after recognizing the popular nature of Artigass works by acknowledging that he was a popular historian, he still insists that Artigas should provide footnote references in the case of Bonifacio. Here are the quotations that will demonstrate the inconsistency and irrationality of Mays (1997a: 29) demand: Around the world, a certain amount of well-researched history has always been written by women and men who provide no footnotes and endnotes, and such was certainly the case in the era in which Artigas wrote. Then the inconsistent and irrational demand: ...Artigas, popular historian that he was, did not document most of the important things about which he wrote....[I]n the case of his Bonifacio biography, we have no hints at all about where he uncovered his data [emphasis mine], except for the information about the heros date of birth. 84

If Artigas was a popular historian, then we should not demand that he provide footnotes and endnotes. May tries to deconstruct our image of Bonifacio in order to reconstruct a known Bonifacio. But historical reconstruction includes the bridging of the gaps in historical information or data. Why does not May entairtain the possibility of Artigas conducting interviews? Why does he conclude that Artigas was merely inventing a Bonifacio myth? Another interesting argument which May (1997a: 29-30) espouses is that Artigas had not much time to do extensive research on Bonfacios life because he published five books in 1911 and two in 1912. But note that Artigas became a librarian in 1907 and it is probable that he started his research in that year or even before that year. What makes May think that Artigas did his research on Bonifacio and his other books only in 1911 or thereabout? John Schumacher has shown that despite some copying errors, Artigas did conduct an extensive research on his book Los sucesos de 1872. What corroboration would May (1977a: 29) demand today about the case of Bonifacios prerevolutionary life when in all likelihood it was based on katipunero interviews and the interviewees have long been dead? The issue now lies in the credibility of Artigas as a researcher. But May summarily dismisses Artigass authority as hardly unimpeachable simply because Schumacher has shown some errors and inconsistencies in his other book instead of treating the matter on case to case basis. Could we say the same about interviews? If documents cannot corroborate the data on the early life of Bonifacio, except his birth as shown in the baptism record of the Tondo parish register, then these pieces of information must be the result of interviews, which later on, of course, May disparagesunfairly to my mindas a reliable method of gathering historical information. Epifanio de los Santos (1871-1928) De los Santos was well educated, having finished law at the University of Santo Tomas, and was highly placed in government. He served as provincial secretary of Nueva Ecija and later as provincial governor. In 1906 he became the fiscal of Bulacan and Bataan. Like Artigas, he played no role in the 1896 revolution. 85

De los Santos provided us with information on Bonifacios poverty, canes and paper fans, education, and the like without footnote citations generally. He claimed he conducted some interviews with Bonifacios contemporaries, some of whom were close to Bonifacio like Pio Valenzuela, who was an active Katipunan organizer and was originally the editor of Kalayaan before he gave it up in favor of Jacinto, and others apparently not that close. We find in de los Santos the first attempt to corroborate the information given by Artigas. From de los Santos through Valenzuela we derived some additional information about Bonifacio: nocturnal reading habits, list of books which included Les miserables, The wandering Jew, etc. De los Santos did not interview Valenzuela once but many times and so we assume that he conducted interviews with others also possibly many times. I want to stress this because to interview and reinterview a respondent several times is a good trait of a researcher who is interested in finding out the truth so that he can accumulate a set of reliable data of consistent testimonies from a welter of inconsistent recollections, in this particular case, of Valenzuela. He can in fact cross-examine the respondent. We can safely assume this even in the absence of those interview transcripts. I personally conducted a research work (see 1990: 1-119) for one year which included interviewing and I know this process of gathering reliable information quite well. What is difficult to understand in May is that he disparages Valenzuelas testimonies as unreliable by raising the issue on occasions where Valenzuela changed his mind because, for example, of difficult circumstances like trying to exonerate himself from the clutches of certain death in the hands of the Spaniards after he surrendered to them. May dismisses Valenzuela as untrustworthy for having changed his version when he was no longer under duress. And this attitude of May in effect makes it appear that de los Santos was an incompetent interviewer. We should note, however, that de los Santos was a prosecuting attorney, a fiscal, and he knew how to cross-examine and it is safe to assume that he knew how to determine the legitimacy of Valenzuelas responses during the interviews. For instance, when de los Santos cited a list of books in Bonifacios library, May (1997a: 32) argues that de los Santos was vague about the origins of the list, writing only that we are indebted to Dr. Valenzuela . . . for it. Why is this vague? Clearly 86

the list comes from Valenzuela! Then May (1997a:33) continues that the list was not in Valenzuelas testimony to the Spaniards and did not appear in his memoir of 1914. But why should they appear there? In the context of doing the interviews, the list of books obviously appeared because de los Santos asked Valenzuela about it while the Spaniards did not ask about it and it was not that necessary in Valenzuelas very brief memoir. We do not really have to absolutely know this. In historical reconstruction we are only guided by probabilities and, in some cases, by possibilities. Very rarely are we guided by absolute certainties, like, as May (1997a: 328) claims, the authenticity of the Tondo parish register on Bonifacios baptism of 2 December 1863. Althoughif you will ask meeven this is not absolutely certain in that no one among us now was there to witness the baptism on that date. Historians and philosophers of history accept a lot of historical data as facts on a case to case basis. There is a large amount of belief that is invested in accepting a historical datum as a fact. In short, it is accepted as a probability in varying degrees. That is why hermenuetes stress the argument that there are no historical facts, but only historical interpretations (Elwood 1997:104). Jose P. Santos (1907-64) In the case of Jose P. Santos, the eldest son of Epifanio de los Santos, May (1997a: 35) merely notes that there were additional data in Bonifacios biography, that is, data about Bonifacios children, Espiridiona and Troadio, information on the work history of brothers Ciriaco and Procopio, and juicy stories about Bonifacios love life. Since Santos did not provide footnotes and endnotes, then all these may have been figment of Santoss imagination. Of course, it will take only a little effort to consider that since at least Espiridiona was still alive, Jose in all likelihood had interviewed her. More logical minds know it does not follow that since Santos did not provide his sources that the additional data are not true. And if one accepts probabilities, Jose must have interviewed Espiridiona as his source, aside from Jose P. Bantuga collector of Philippine artifacts, and others. 87

Bonifacios writings May (1997a: 36-47) casts doubt on the authorship of certain works attributed to Bonifacio: four poems, two proclamations, a decalogue, a Tagalog translation of Rizals Mi ultimo adios, and the article, Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog. May mentions six key sources to these works: Manuel Artigas, Pio Valenzuela, Epifanio de los Santos, Jose Santos, and lastly Teodoro Agoncillo as assisted by S. V. Epistola. Wenceslao Retana in 1897 included in his compilation Caro y Moras Spanish translation of Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog and the poem Ang pagibig sa tinubuang bayan. Retana, according to May, could not have known that Bonifacio was the author of those works whose pseudonym was Agapito Bagum-bayan. It was Artigas who linked the pseudonym to Bonifacio and he did not provide any evidential explanation, either oral or written. Valenzuela tried to corroborate this, but made a slip and mentioned that Bonifacio signed the Katipunan documents with the pen name Agapito Laong Laan. Epifanio de los Santos adds one more, the decalogue Katungkulang gagawin ng mga Z. Ll. B. He translated the three works into Spanish and English. It is apparent that he had the original Tagalog works where he based his translations since in 1906, it was believed, he had recovered the Jacinto papers, which included some of Bonifacios works, in Bataan. Jacinto was the editor of the Katipunan newspaper Kalayaan, and therefore he must possess Agapito Bagum-bayans original works as published in Kalayaan, viz., Pag-ibig sa tinubuang bayan and Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog. Now, this is a very significant corroboration. De los Santos in all probability had no idea that Retana had the two works compiled. Glenn May (1997a: 39) admits this when he says, de los Santoss own Spanish version differed so substantially from [Caros translation in Retanas collection] that we might justifiably wonder if he had consulted it at all. So de los Santoss translation into Spanish and English of the two works were in all likelihood independent of the Kalayaan copy which was the basis of Caro y Moras translation in Retanas compilation. That will explain why de los Santoss translation into Spanish is very different from Caro y Moras translation. 88

What is amazing is that after admitting that de los Santos could not have seen Retanas compilation, May (1997a: 158) later on argues that de los Santoson the strength of Agoncillos suspicionmay have actually read Retanas work and subsequently translated the Spanish version into Tagalog. Is this a case of Mays unreliability for having changed his mind, to use the same logic he lodges against the revised testimony of Valenzuela? Emilio Jacinto had also in his possession the decalogue of Bonifacio because Bonifacio allowed it to be replaced by Jacintos. It is apparent that de los Santos got this information from Pio Valenzuela although he did not categorically say so. Agoncillo, who had also interviewed Valenzuela, included the decalogue among the works of Bonifacio. This work could not have been forgeries by de los Santos. But, of course, Valenzuela for May (1997a: 40) was unreliable and untrustworthy for having recalled some texts he had neglected to mention before. Does May suggest that a testimony should be absolutely complete in one setting and for all occasions? Logical researchers do not assume this. What puzzles me is May raises the issue that de los Santos did not tell us where he got these Bonifacio works. The relevant quotations from May (1997a: 39) are: The other two texts [Spanish translations of Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog and Pag-ibig sa tinubuang bayan] were not included in Retanas compilation, and de los Santos did not reveal where he had located them and Where he [de los Santos] found the decalogue is even more of a mystery. However, May (1997a: 61-63) himself admits that de los Santos, through Agoncillo and Jose Santos, recovered the Jacinto papers from a man residing in Bataan. Why does May reject the Agoncillo and Santos explanations? May rejects Agoncillos explanation that Epifanio de los Santos discovered the Jacinto papers from a hens nest as incredible. He likewise considers the survival of the Jacinto papers after several fires, floods, white ants, and the Japanese occupation as miraculous. But if we assume that Epifanio de los Santos, Teodoro Agoncillo, and Jose Santos were honest, then the origin of the Jacinto papers will cease to be incredible and miraculous. The story goes that from Emilio Jacinto the documents were later consigned to a Tondo man who afterwards resided in Bataan and kept the 89

papersprobably in its original vasein a hens nest. (Why in a hens nest? Only that man could explain it and he is no longer around, but anything is possible: to place it, perhaps, out of reach of children?) When in 1904 the Filipino intellectuals decided to locate the revolutionary documents, de los Santos who lived in San Isidro, Nueva Ecija discovered them from this man who now lived in a Bataan town and bought them in 1906, since by that time de los Santos was the provincial fiscal of Bulakan and Bataan. If one does not have an anti-nationalist agenda in mind, then the origin and survival of the Jacinto papers would not become incredible and miraculous. Or if they are, they certainly are not as incredible and miraculous as the survival of the Socratic dialogues and Aristotelian papers way back before the birth of Christ. Artigas did not tell us how he came to the conclusion that Bonifacio was Agapito Bagum-bayan. But de los Santos had the authority of Pio Valenzuela, who in 1918 (May 1997a: 40) had in effect corrected his error in the 1914 biography by unequivocally saying that Bonifacio wrote Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog and the poem. If one makes a memory slip by saying the works at issue were written by Agapito Laong Laan, thereby suggesting it possibly be another man, and subsequently positively correcting oneself and clearly affirming that it was Bonifacio who wrote them, why should this testimony be unreliable (May 1997a: 40)? Are we not entitled in all honesty and sincerity to correct our erroneous testimonies? What remedy is left to Valenzuela to correct his memory slip? Using Mays logic, are our later testimonies unreliable simply because we change our minds? Jose Santos published in 1935 a brief Bonifacio biography and therein added five more Bonifacio works: three more poems, a proclamation, and a translation of Rizals Mi ultimo adios. Again, there is no documentation (May 1997a: 41) as to where he had found the putatively original versions of the texts. Some of the questions raised by May are out of focus. He comments, for example, that Santos was uninformative about the exact nature of the originals and their location and Did he or someone else possess a copy of the texts written by Bonifacios hand? If one reads his Jacinto biography, Jose Santos informs us that he discovered the Jacinto papers from the trunk (baul) he inherited from his father. To quote Santos (1935: 8): 90

Sa kabutihang palad, ang mga orihinal ng mga sinulat ni Emilio Jacinto ay natagpuan ko sa baul na kinalalagyan ng matatanda at mahahalagang kasulatang ari ng aking ama na matapos na ipagkaloob sa akin ay siya kong sinipi at inilakip sa kasaysayan ng kanyang [Jacinto] buhay . . . Obviously there were some works there by Bonifacio such as the Tagalog translation of Ultimo adios, which could not then be identified as Bonifacios by Epifanio de los Santos. At least Aguedo Cagingin and Artemio Ricarte had earlier published this translation in 1927, which could be the basis for Santos to include the translation among the works of Bonifacio. The question is: how did Ricarte know the translation to be Bonifacios? It was a similar question which Fr. Miguel Bernad, S.J., the editor of Kinaadman, raised in 1986 before he published my article, Bonifacio the translator: a critique (1987: 42-56). He said that the first known publication of the Spanish poem was in Hong Kong. My reply to him was based on circumstancial evidence. Shortly after the death of Rizal, Paciano and Trinidad whom Rizal consigned the alcohol stove which contained the Ultimo adios went to Cavite and it was probable that they met Bonifacio there and showed him the poem. Presumably, the Bonifacio translation was published and distributed as leaflets since there was a printing press there. This will explain why Ricarte had a copy which he published in his memoirs and why Cagingin likewise had a copy. Or why, according to Santos, many newspapers had earlier published this Bonifacio translation. Santoss copy might have been the original which Bonifacio sent to Jacinto. Santoss claim that the three other poems, Katapusang hibik ng Filipinas, Tapunan ng lingap, and Ang mga Cazadores, could be located among the documents left by the late Mariano Ponce is dismissed on the ground that Santos did not provide a scrap of evidence that they were authentic (May 1997a: 42). Mays demand for a proof of Bonifacios authorship is rather rigid in that he wants something definitive and not simply circumstancial. He (1997a: 42) says, In the end, therefore, not a single one of the eight writings Santos attributed to Bonifacio can definitively [emphasis mine] be 91

shown to have been composed by him. But under the circumstances, how else can we reconstruct the past? Santos is dead, Bonifacio is dead, Jacinto is dead, Valenzuela is dead, Agoncillo is dead, Ricarte is dead, and only May is alive. Who will definitively answer him? What will be the criteria for historical reconstruction or historical recreation? Should it be the motive of the historian alone? How are we to know or to establish his motive? Why should we not assume, for instance, that Santos had the honest motive in attempting to search for the truth? Would it not be because Mays anti-nationalist agenda is getting the better of him? The internal analysis of the works contents may have probably influenced Agoncillo to agree with Santos that the first proclamation was written by Bonifacio and not by Jacinto, and to disagree with Santos that the second proclamation was written by Bonifacio and not, as Santos says, by Sinforoso San Pedro with the collaboration of Florencio Inocentes (May 1997a: 43). The two proclamations are closely related in style and temperament (see Agoncillo 1963: 4-5). But, of course, we cannot be definitive about this as May himself cannot be definitive about his conclusions. At best the conclusion is the agnostic position that Bonifacio may or may not have been the author of the nine works attributed to him.3 INTERNAL INCONSISTENCIES IN BONIFACIOS WORKS Bonifacio Letters In chapters two to five, May analyses six letters of Bonifacio and the Bonifacio image as presented individually by Artemio Ricarte, Teodoro Agoncillo, and Reynaldo Ileto. Of the six letters, May questions the authenticity of the four letters of Bonifacio to Jacinto. He ignores Bonifacios two communications to Mariano Alvarez. The Bonifacio-Jacinto letters are said to be written between March and April 1897 when Bonifacio was in Cavite. The letters are about the revolutionary activities in Cavite, the effort to obtain arms from Hong Kong, the series of defeats from the Spaniards, the election of Emilio Aguinaldo to the presidency of a new republic, the Batangueos 92

recognition of Bonifacio as their leader, etc. In these letters, according to May (1997a: 59): The Bonifacio that emerged . . . was honorable and patriotic; he was . . . very similar to the idealized prerevolutionary Bonifacio creation by the mythmakers. The Magdalo men, on the other hand, were pictured as dishonest, dangerous, greedy for power, guilty of shady political tactics, and willing to compromise with the enemy. But one should note that if we assume the letters to be written by Bonifacio, then the perspective was his own and therefore the scenario would be pro-Bonifacio. Alleged mythmakers like Epifanio de los Santos need not sanitize the Bonifacio image in these letters. The original letters in Tagalog were partly in the Katipunan code (May 1997a: 60-61, 72-73), which de los Santos had to decipher and translate into Spanish and English. Agoncillo (May 1997a: 60) may have been wrong in saying that the parenthetical insertions which de los Santos made in his translations might indicate that the latter was sure only of these parenthetical insertions but not exactly sure with the others. The alternative explanation might be, as Ambeth Ocampo4 and May (1997a: 73) argue, that the insertions were only indications they were in fact in code in the original. Nevertheless, it is important to consider that in translating, it is highly possible to simply get the sense of the sentence and translate it not necessarily word for word or literally, in which case literal meanings of some Tagalog words would be missing in the Spanish translation. Gregorio Nievas (Schumacher 1994: 94) English translation of Jacintos Pahayag is of this nature. Moreover, one can change the word order and the verb tense in capturing that sense. I find it therefore amazing that May (1997a: 65) should question the differences in word, word order, and sometimes the verb forms between the Spanish translation and the Tagalog original. Agoncillo later simply edited and reedited Santoss version (May 1997a: 68). 93

It seems obvious that Bonifacio wrote one letter which were later copied by some scribes or, more plausibly, dictated a letter to some scribes who penned down the message in the way they understood it after which Bonifacio signed them. A number of couriers may have been assigned to send the letter to Jacinto to ensure that at least one of these versions would reach the latter. And apparently many, if not all, reached Jacinto. I agree with May (1997a: 75-80) at this juncture, however, that the authentication of the various versions of the letters be done.5 Bonifacio Image May (1997a: 100, 117, 118, 126, 130, 134-35) contends that Ricartes image of Bonifacio is unreliable in that his memoir was more of sanitizing his duplicitous role in the fall of Bonifacio in Cavite. He was a dissembler and possibly a plotter. Agoncillos image of Bonifacio is dictated by personal and political reasons. He pictured the prerevolutionary Bonifacio as calm and composed but because of changed surroundings he pictured him in Cavite later as a man with an imperious air. The second half of Agoncillos Bonifacio biography, according to May, is nothing more nor less than an apologia for Emilio Aguinaldo since the latter was his relative, who married in July 1930 Maria Agoncillo of Taal. Moreover, Agoncillo failed to consult other sources like the Philippine Insurgent Records, the Philippine National Archives collections, the memoirs of Santiago Alvarez and Carlos Ronquillo, and the records of the religious orders in the Philippines. May argues that both Ricarte and Agoncillo are nationalists bent at presenting a sanitized image of Bonifacio that is attuned to accepted nationalist historiography. He concluded that Bonifacio was all throughout an irritable man, hypersensitive, hotheaded, etc. I will have an occasion to go back to this when I discuss the nationalist agenda. According to May, Iletos Bonifacio suffers from the fact that he based his analysis of Bonifacio on the manifesto, Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog. Then May (1997a: 157) raises the queer question, Where did Santos find the original? I already mentioned above that the original was among the Jacinto papers 94

in the trunk Santos inherited from his father. It is logical that Jacinto should have it because he was the editor of Kalayaan. Furthermore, May cites Iletos remark about the work of Jacinto, the Pahayag, which was published as a Spanish translation in Retanas collection but which was not included in Santoss book, Buhay at mga sinulat ni Emilio Jacinto that appeared in 1935. Then May uses this fact to show that since the Pahayag, which was published in Kalayaan was not among the Jacinto papers, then Bonifacios Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog must not be there also. May (1997a: 158-59) theorizes that since de los Santos, the father, according to the suspicion of Agoncillo as accepted by Ileto, translated into Tagalog Jacintos Spanish version in Retana, then Santos, the son, must have likewise created the Tagalog text of Bonifacios manifesto as published in Kalayaan in order for him to cover up the wrongdoing of his father. I find Mays logic here as weird. If Santos indeed created the Bonifacio text in Tagalog, what would prevent him from creating the Jacinto text in Tagalog and then including it in Buhay at mga sinulat ni Emilio Jacinto? In this way, Santos, the forger and fabricator, would be consistent all throughout, and not stupid as he would most likely appear to posterity. The fact, it seems to me, is that Santos was honest with the documents in his fathers possession. Among the documents that Jacinto must have should include the Pahayag, and not only Bonifacios Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog since Jacinto was the editor of Kalayaan. Unfortunately, it appears that the original Pahayag6 was lost, and only Bonifacios original manifesto existed. De los Santos, the father, therefore made use of Bonifacios text in his Spanish and English translations while Santos, the son, in all honesty, did not fabricatewhich he could have done if he were indeed a fabricatorthe text of the Pahayag as we do not find a Tagalog version of it in his 1935 book. NATIONALIST AND ANTI-NATIONALIST AGENDA To have an agenda is not necessarily to be dishonest as a researcher: it is not necessarily bad. In fact, having an agenda is generally necessary for a thesis- or hypothesis-oriented research. I 95

do not think that May, in presenting and arguing for his anti-nationalist agenda, is necessarily dishonest. His (1997b: G1) anti-nationalist agenda consists in discarding the testimonies and researches of others because as nationalists they tend to present a misleading picture of the national hero. I think he is serious and very honest about his book. I do not absolutely know this even if he avows it because I cannot actually experience and fathom his own or another persons mind.7 I simply feel it. I simply believe in it. But it is the same feeling and belief that I have in considering Manuel Artigas, Epifanio de los Santos, and Jose Santos as honest and sincere researchers who were interested in finding out the truth about Bonifacio even if they pursued their researches in the name of nationalism. But sincere and honest as they are, they could be mistaken in their findings and conclusions. So it is also in the case of May. According to Hutchinson and Smith (1994: 4): Nationalism was, first of all, a doctrine of popular freedom and sovereignty. The people must be liberatedthat is, free from any external constraint, they must determine their own destiny and be masters in their house; they must control their own resources; they must obey only their own inner voice. But that entailed fraternity. The people must be united; they must dissolve all internal divisions; they must be gathered together in a single historic territory, a homeland; and they must have legal equality and share a single public culture. But which culture and what territory? Only a homeland that was theirs by historic right, the land of their forebears; only a culture that was theirs as a heritage, passed down the generations, and therefor e an expression of their authentic identity. Although autonomy, unity, identity (Hutchinson and Smith 1994:5) are the common themes and ideals of nationalism, there are varieties of nationalists. There are genuine nationalists who are interested in historical truth and pseudo nationalists who are greedy for honor and fame and go to the extent of doctoring and fabricating documents. There are nationalistic ideologues who are 96

honest with their intentions to unite the people in the spirit of freedom or equality and national identity while other ideologues are dishonest and are only interested in obtaining political power. But it is unfair to lump them together and generalize that as historians they are all prone to sanitize the documents to suit a particular nationalistic perspective. The generalization is rather hasty and the samples presented are meagre (see May 1997a: 78). For one, Sir Edmund Backhouse, a China specialist that May mentions, cannot be considered a Chinese nationalist historian; the othersfor all intents and purposesare fake nationalists. Hitler was so discredited among the German people that to fabricate his diaries would not redound to an upsurge of another Nazi nationalism. Jose E. Marco appears far more interested in his personal fame rather than in national pride, which was obviously the unintentional effect rather than his intended goal. In other words, May (1997a: 11) has not validly established his conclusion on the nearly universal [italics mine] tendency of nationalist historians to reshape the historical record. That tendency, though not necessarily universal, or even nearly universal, can be done by nonnationalists who are interested in gaining fame or in financial rewards by selling at exorbitant prices supposedly antique documents. The other thing is that among genuine nationalists, they also quarrel with each other as to what constitutes autonomy, unity, [and] identity. For example, virtually all katipuneros are in varying degrees nationalists. If May discredited the nationalist Artemio Ricarte for sanitizing Bonifacio, why would May recommend the unflattering Bonifacio image of other nationalist memoirists like Mariano Alvarez (1992: 1-476) and Carlos Ronquillo de Valdez (1996: 824)? Is this a matter of prejudice despite his (1997b: G1) claim to the contrary? Why does May single out the nationalism of Ricarte and not those of Alvarez and Ronquillo? Does May want us to believe that Alvarez and Ronquillo are nonnationalists? Or only those who supported the de los Santos-ValenzuelaAgoncillo-Constantino-et al. thesis are nationalists?8 I have argued in my book The Quezon-Winslow correspondence and other essays that I (1994: x), too, am a nationaliston the same tradition as Constantino and Agoncillo. But I strongly disagreed with 97

Agoncillos interpretation of Bonifacio (and so with Iletos) since I (1987: 51, 55) consider Bonifacio as an intellectual, at least, of the lower-middle-class origin. Will I be a rare breed, an exception like Nick Joaquin (May 1997a: 49-50)? The point here is that Mays critique on Bonifacio as plebeian, patriotic, etc. and on historians methodology could still be undertaken without using the nationalist thesis as backdrop because it discriminates against some of us. His criticism, for example, of Agoncillos neglect of other sources like the memoir of Mariano Alvarez is, to my mind, valid. The problem, however, is that May needs the nationalist agenda to get out from the agnostic situation of his first form of reasoning in order to make the committed conclusion that nationalist historians have used spurious documents or fabricated some of them. As I have already shown above, his arguments in this regard are not convincing. CONCLUSION In conclusion, I want to say that Glenn May has not demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that historians like Manuel Artigas, Epifanio de los Santos, and Jose Santosdespite having not presented footnotes and endnoteshad actually and, using his own yardstick, definitively fabricated historical documents. It still remains a matter of faith whether or not these alleged mythmakers were honest and sincere as researchers. Todays historians, nationalists or otherwise, have ample room to do extensive research on the sources and present additional circumstancial evidences as to the provenance of existing documents.9 The line between historical reconstruction and historical invention or re-creation is very thin indeed. And sometimes, such a line is never drawn at all. NOTES 1. Paper read during the Ninth Annual Conference of the Manila Studies Association on 16-27 June 1997 at the NCCA Conference Room, NCCA Building, Intramuros, Manila. The conference is cosponsored by the National Commission on Culture and the Arts 98

Committee on Historical Research (NCCA-CHR), the Philippine National Historical Society, and the National Historical Institute. Originally published in Chruchill (1997: 1-26). 2. According to Turabian (1987: 122, 167), notes have four main uses: ...(a) to cite authority for statements in textspecific facts or opinions as well as exact quotations; (b) to make cross-references; (c) to make incidental comments upon, to amplify, or to qualify textual discussionin short, to provide a place for material which the writer deems worthwile to include but which would in the writers judgment interrupt the flow of thought if introduced into the text; and (d) to make acknowledgments. Notes, then, are of two kinds: reference (a and b above) and content (c and d above). A content note may also include one or more references. The primary purpose of a note then is to inform the reader of the particular location...from which the writer of the paper has taken certain material cited in the text. The secondary purpose is to enable the reader to find the source, which requires a bibliographical or reference entry, that is, to list a work in full bibliographical detail. 3. Critical history is highly polemical, discursive, and interpretative. It is not simply narrative or definitive. With ifs, buts, in all probability, possibly, very likely, may, might, presumably, etc., it is one of the postmodernist modes of historical expression today, or what Guerrero and Villegas (l997: G2) academically refer to as suppository historiography. Another mode, among many others, is simply the death or the abandonment of the author or a perspective without history. For an extensive discussion of skeptical and affirmative postmodernist issues, see Rosenau (1992: 1-229). 4. Ambeth Ocampo furnished me photocopies of the four Bonifacio letters to Jacinto, and other documents on 19 November 1996 at the Philosophy Department, De La Salle University, Manila. 99

5. I want to suggest that the National Commission on Culture and the Arts should intercede on behalf of historical truth and spend for the authentication of these letters. 6. The Jacinto papers which contain some of the Bonifacio works were given to Santoss daughter, Teresita Santos-Pangan, who sold them to Severina de Asis, who in turn sold a portion to Emmanuel Encarnacion. Another collector, Ramon Villegas, also has copies of these letters (May 1997a: 71, 75). Dr. Eden Gripaldo and I communicated to Ms. Severina de Asis in June 1997 about the existence of the original Pahayag and her reply in effect is that she does not have a copy. 7. For an extensive discussion on the problem of other minds, see Chappell (1962: 1-178). 8. May (1997a: 50) tries to qualify the nationalist agenda by identifying three distinctive, common characteristics of it: (a) nationalist historians have tended to glorify the past exploits of native Filipinos, especially Filipinos of humble origins; (b) they have criticized severely the policies and actions of both Spanish and American colonial overlords; and (c) they have also tended to be critical of Philippine elites, often protraying such people as insufficiently patriotic, too interested in promoting their own economic interests, and much too willing to collaborate with the colonial powers. I subscribe partly to (a) and qualifiedly to (b) and (c). But the nearly universal tendency to reshape the historical record appears to be a different argument altogether. However, in his book he seems to be trying so hard to establish it as the fourth distinctive, common characteristic of nationalist historiography, and of whichnaturallyI vehemently object. The way May uses the word nearly in the book and the subsequent discussion of nationalist historians, nationalist memoirists like Valenzuela and Ricarte, and the nationalist thesis is actually equivalent to all. 9. I have started this in the paper I delivered at the national convention of the Philosophical Association of the Philippines last 4 April 1997 on the theme Philosophy and History, St. Louis University, Baguio City. I have critically analyzed Mays arguments on the provenance of Bonifacios and Jacintos manifestoes by presenting circumstantial evidences that would point to Bonifacio 100

as the author of Ang dapat mabatid ng mga Tagalog. The title of the paper is Bonifacio and Jacinto: a critique of the sources and their philosophies of revolution. REFERENCES Agoncillo, Teodoro. 1963. The writings and trial of Andres Bonifacio. Manila: Manila Bonifacio Centennial Commission. Alvarez, Santiago V. 1992. The Katipunan and the revolution: memoirs of a general. Translated by Paula Carolina S. Malay. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Chappell, Vere C. ed. 1962. The philosophy of mind. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Churchill, Bernardita, ed. 1997. Determining the truth: The story of Andres Bonifacio. Manila: Manila Studies Association, National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and Philippine National Historical Society. Cristobal, Adrian. 1997. In search of the hero. Part I. Philippine Graphic, 16 June. __________. 1997. In search of the hero. Part II. Philippine Graphic, 23 June. De Asis, Severina. 1997. Fax to Eden Gripaldo. 22 May. Elwood, Brian Douglas. 1996-97. The giant corpse of history: toward a philosophy of time for our times. Sophia 26. Gripaldo, Rolando. 1987. Bonifacio the translator: a critique. Kinaadman 9. __________. 1990. The singing profession of Iligan City: singers perception of it as a means of livelihood and as a respectable profession. Marawi City: Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Extension, Mindanao State University. [Unpublished manuscript.] __________. 1994. The Quezon-Winslow correspondence and other essays. Manila: De La Salle University Press. __________. 1997. Bonifacio and Jacinto: a critique of the sources and their philosophies of revolution. Paper delivered during the national convention sponsored by the Philosophical Association of the Philippines on the theme Philosophy and History last 4-6 April 1997 at St. Louis University, Baguio City. 101

___________ and Eden Gripaldo. 1997. Fax to Severina de Asis. 16 May. Guerrero, Milagros C. and Ramon N. Villegas. 1997. The ugly American returns. Philippine Daily Inquirer, 5 May. Hutchinson, John and Anthony D. Smith, eds. 1994. Nationalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. May, Glenn Anthony. 1997a. Inventing a hero: the posthumous re-creation of Andres Bonifacio. Quezon City: New Day Publishers. __________. 1997b. Author says hes not questioning Bonifacios heroismbut historians methodology. Philippine Daily Inquirer, 26 May. Ronquillo y Valdez, Carlos. 1996. Paghihimagsik (revolution) nang [sic] 1896-97. Edited by Isagani R. Medina. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. Rosenau, Pauline Marie. 1992. Post-modernism and the social sciences: insights, inroads, and intrusions. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Schumacher, John N. 1994. The civic and religious ethic of Emilio Jacinto. In Morality, religion and the Filipino. Edited by Rene B. Javellana. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. Turabian, Kate L. 1987. A manual for writers of term papers, theses, and dissertations. 5th ed. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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