Gemma Cruz Araneta By Gemma Cruz Araneta   He was only 18, a conscientious student of the Ateneo Municipal in Intramuros, when the Jesuit schoolmasters assigned him to write a play for the annual celebration of the feast of the Immaculate Conception. He gladly obliged with a one-act piece entitled “ Along the Pasig.” The young man was Jose Rizal; the play was about a boy his age who bumped into Satan on his way to a fluvial procession in honor of the Blessed Virgin. He must have enjoyed writing that play. I am speculating, of course, but anyone who knows history can perceive its mischievous intent. Rizal used Satan as a mouthpiece; beneath the Devil’s perorations about how beautiful these islands were and how happy its people used to be, we can detect Rizal’s dissatisfaction and a burning curiosity about our pre-Hispanic past. Using Satan was a protective device; he could not be accused of subversion or heresy. This educated young man did not want to believe that his ancestors were nothing more than savages of an inferior race who had to be civilized and Christianized. In the play, when Satan appeared to Leonido, he was dressed like a shaman of the old religion: “I am he who in a fairer age ruled with grandeur and power, venerated and feared, the absolute god of the natives.” To which the flabbergasted Leonido dutifully replied that the god of his ancestors had obscene altars where natives offered chants of ill omens, and that they now have only contempt for all the broken promises of the ancient god. Relentless, Satan tells Leonido that these islands were once rich, its bounties enjoyed by all, “…but are now, disconsolate and afflicted; it groans under the rule of alien people, and slowly dies at the impious hand of Spain. I shall liberate it, if it bends the knee to my cult, which shines with splendor still…”. Then Leonido taunts Satan, “If you say the wind is your humble hireling and obeys your command, why were not the frail Spanish caravels,which you deride, swamped and buried underneath the waves?” Infuriated, Satan retorted, “I reserve for your race which follows this profane religion tragic calamities, pestilence, wars, and cruel invasions by various nations in coming ages not far distant….” Now, where could an 18-year-old Atenean, studying in the heart of Intramuros, have gotten such frightful ideas? Acording to Rizal biographer Leon Maria Guerrero, there was an enormous mass of historical information about the Philippines, “…forgotten, unpublished, unorganized, scattered in a hundred archives, museums, libraries, convents, private collections… from Acapulco to Sevilla, Simancas, Madrid, Paris, London, Berlin, and only God knows where else…,” none of which were accessible to Rizal and his contemporaries, not even the ones available in Manila and other parts of the Philippines. I doubt if Rizal had the gift of prophecy; he must have heard stories from his elders, which piqued his curiosity. In Europe, he found what he was looking for – works by chroniclers and historians without religious bias. Among his finds was Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, by a Spanish official of the Audienca, Antonio de Morga, published in Mexico in 1609. Dr. Morga was a layman. Rizal once told his friends Ferdinand Blumentritt and Maximo Viola that it was indeed pathetic that Filipinos had to learn about themselves when abroad, by reading works of European scholars and researching in European museums and libraries. He wanted to write a history of the Philippines (in between novels) but felt he was not qualified to do so. He tried to persuade Blmentritt to take on the task because he felt the Austrian scholar could remain objective and non- partisan. When he found a copy of Morga’s book in the British Library, out of print for centuries, he copied it by hand with the objective of publishing a new edition with his annotations. That was as close as Rizal could get to writing a history of the Philippines. As a preface, he used Blumentritt’s letter which ended with a rather foreboding message for Spain: “If then they still do not listen to the Filipinos, then the Philippines will be lost to them through their own fault. They claim to be noble, and do not know how to be just; they claim to be a superior nation, and yet do not understand how to pursue a prudent policy; they fear separatist ideas, and yet compel the Filipinos to seek their safety in revolution.” Young as he was, a penniless Asian in Europe, Rizal had great plans for an International Association of Philippinologists, an idea that germinated while he was annotating Morga. Among its illustrious members were F. Blumentritt, Edmund Pauchet, Rost, Virchow, Normann, and Jagor. He was also organizing an international conference on the Philippines in time for the 1889 International Exposition In Paris, but France was limiting the number of conferences. Rizal was determined “to carry the book of the past into the future.” We can do no less.   ([email protected])