IN the most extreme of cases, "Ignorance of history can lead to chaos and lawlessness," Dr. Luciano P.R. Santiago wrote 20 years ago in his article "Don Pasqual de Sta. Ana (1762-1827): Indio Hacendero." He was referring to the landownership conflicts in Angono in the late 1990s. Disputed parcels of land were not public land as claimed but formed part of Hacienda de Angono. The vast estate had been acquired by Don Pasqual de Sta. Ana in 1818.
This essay, which first saw print in the March 2002 issue of the Ateneo de Manila University's Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, is one of the 20 essays in Philippine Genealogy & Religious & Art History: The Luciano P. R. Santiago Reader, published by Vibal Foundation and USC Publishing House earlier this month.
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One might say that Dr. Santiago (1942-2019), a psychiatrist by profession, sought to "cure" the Filipino public of ignorance of history. Not in a stern, finger-pointing manner, but by tracing lesser known, smaller paths, to discover stories and fates, forgotten or sidestepped by history, like delicate flowers hidden in the shadows of tall trees.
His works, as presented in The Reader, while referring to numerous historical events, is not an outline of such events or grand personalities to memorize for recitation. Rather, the essays expand our knowledge of the lives of Filipinos — the men and women who lived, worked and died in these islands irrespective of race — during the Spanish era.
The personalities researched by Dr. Santiago do not represent the masa or general population. If the author was able to tell the stories of, among others, Don Mariano Bernavé Pilapil (1757-1818), the first Filipino to have obtained a doctoral degree; Doña Remigia Salazar Talusan viuda de López (ca. 1800-ca. 1860), printer-publisher of the first daily newspaper; and Damián Domingo (1796-1834) whose miniature portrait of his sweetheart, whom he had been admiring from a distance, so impressed the lady's father that the young suitor was allowed to visit her; it is because there were written records detailing various aspects of their lives. The paper trail, however, sometimes abruptly stops due to destruction caused by termites, floods, fires, earthquakes and war. For instance, the municipal hall and almost all the stone houses and nipa huts in central Pila and adjacent barrios "were razed to the ground" by the American invaders in 1899.
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