Your writing is still around (2)

AFTER publishing the Noli Me Tangere (1887) and making a brief visit to the Philippines, Rizal returned to Europe where he spent nine months researching in the British Library. His most fascinating find was Pigafetta’s account of Magellan’s voyage which gave him an idea of what the natives were like at that “point of contact.” He also came upon Antonio de Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas

Filipinas, a 17th century history of the Philippines, the first written by a layman. Unable to write the history of our country, Rizal meticulously annotated Morga’s work.

He also found Labor Evangélical (1665) by Jesuit missionary Francisco Colin who reported: “They [the natives] wrote on bamboo canes and palm leaves, using pens that are iron sharp. They write their own letters, but also ours on paper and with very finely cut pen... They have learned our language and pronunciation and write as well as we do, If not better because they are so clever, they learn anything with great ease. “He could have been describing how the Buhid or the Hanunoo Mangyans write.

As a result of his studies, Jose Rizal wrote in his essay “Filipinas Dentro de Cien Años” (The Philippines Within a Century): “Every one, friend and foe alike, admits that every Filipino even before the arrival of the Spaniards knew how to read and write.” In his annotations of Antonio de Morga’s book, Rizal asserted that the natives, even before Spanish colonialism was implanted, had schools where they learned to read and write their own script. He lamented the destruction of our written mythologies and genealogies by the Spanish colonizers.

When Jose Rizal was exiled to Dapitan (July, 1892-November,1895) he wrote Ferdinand Blumentritt (an Austro-Hungarian doctor and Filipinologist who became his friend and mentor) that he wanted to study the language and writing of the “Manguianes” (Mangyans) so Blumentritt sent him the erudite works of European ethnologists and linguists whom Rizal had met and worked with in Europe. Lamentably, that project remained unfinished because Rizal was executed by the Spanish colonial government in December, 1896.

I have met real Mangyans since those museum days, during visits to Mindoro Oriental. I have watched Iraya and Alangan women weave symbols into nito baskets and trays. I have met Anton Potsma who seems to have picked up the thread of Jose Rizal’s and Isabelo de los Reyes’ inquiries into Mangyan writing and literature. If Rizal were alive today, Potsma and he would probably be exchanging ambahans.