Forgeries and false claims in Philippine history

ONE of the typical features of recently created nations is the elaboration of a historical narrative that provides legitimation to the existence of the country. The past gives legitimacy to the present and that search is not carried out innocently. Historians and cultural agents in general need to look for heroes and traitors, great men and women, old myths and legends, archival sources and material culture, etc. When José Rizal published in Paris an annotated edition of Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (1609) by Antonio de Morga, he was trying to feed his own narrative: that the indigenous people of the archipelago had an advanced and industrious culture prior to the arrival of the Spaniards. But when the poem “Sa Aking Mga Kabatá” was attributed to José Rizal when he was only six years old, the creator of the forgery was only trying to exaggerate the genius of Rizal — whose memory, by the way, did not at all need that poem to magnify his figure. The forgery was debunked by Ambeth Ocampo and Virgilio Almario, though.

The same thing happened with the “Will of  Fernando Malang Balagtas,” a document raised by Isabelo de los Reyes and whose dating — 1539! — would be enough to debunk any suggestion of authenticity. The forgery was elegantly proved by William Henry Scott. Better known is the case of Jose E. Marco, whose childishly fabricated documents were believed to be great discoveries by James A. Robertson, director of the National Library. The so-called Pavón manuscripts, dated 1838 to 1839, included Las antiguas leyendas de la Islas de Negros (The old legends of Negros Island), which included the “Kalantiaw Code,” a set of laws supposedly written in 1433. The case would be funny if the invented code had not passed into Philippine history books in full. President Ferdinand Marcos created the Order of Kalantiaw in 1971 and there is today a Kalantiaw shrine in the town of Batan, Aklan, Panay. Scotty, again, debunked the forgery in his 1968 doctoral dissertation for the University of Santo Tomas.