I MENTIONED in my previous article that the Philippines has produced a considerable amount of great writers in the Spanish language. Many of these outstanding intellectuals have been unfairly condemned to oblivion despite their fight against United States colonialism and their remarkable efforts to build the nation of Filipinos. Among these was the Philippines’ most reliable expert on constitutional law during the first half of the 20th century — Teodoro M. Kalaw (1884 to 1940).

Kalaw was still a teenager when he became involved in journalism in his hometown, Lipa in Batangas. He came to Manila to study law at the Escuela de Derecho. He had not finished his studies yet when he started working with Fernando María Guerrero — his mentor — as an editor of El Renacimiento, the main anti-American newspaper of the time. He was just 23 years old. Three years later, he was selected by President Manuel Quezón to accompany him to an international conference in St. Petersburg, Russia in a bizarre and adventurous trip that took them from Manila to the then English colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore, the Japanese-occupied Formosa, Japan, Vladivostok and — via the recently inaugurated Tran-Siberian railway — Moscow. The young Kalaw collected his impressions in a travel book that he published back in Manila: Hacia las Tierras del Zar (To the Lands of the Czar). In this tiny work we can already find the main ideas that he developed and worked on until the end of his days: a critical analysis of the political situation and the history of the countries he visited, a compilation of ideas to be brought to the Philippines in order to improve the administration of the country, the certainty of an existent link between religious fanaticism and ignorance, liberalism as the only set of political ideas that could bring freedom and prosperity to the country, and the need to build a constitution — out of the US oppression — that would set up the rules for the development of the life of all Filipinos.

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