Stories Rarely Told: The Hidden Stories and Essays on Philippine History by Augusto V. De Viana (review)

Augusto V. de Viana joins a list of renowned historians, such as William Henry Scott, Luis Camara Dery, and James Francis Warren, who have earned the support of New Day Publishers and been instrumental in contributing to a “history from below.” “History from below” is a growing movement in Philippine historiography that utilizes a plurality of sources to dislodge hegemonic concepts on power, authority, and culture in favor of indigenous-based expressions anchored on localized experiences. Stories Rarely Told: The Hidden Stories and Essays on Philippine History is consistent in content and format with De Viana’s earlier works—Apples & Ampalaya: Bittersweet Glimpses of the American Period in the Philippines 1898–1946 (2001); Kulaboretor! The Issue of Political Collaboration during World War II (2003); Halo-halo, Hardware and Others: The Story of the Japanese Commercial Community of Manila (2008)—which provide pieces of a larger puzzle to enlighten our understanding of how people in the past made sense of the precarious situations they faced.

Stories Rarely Told provides De Viana an opportunity to tackle topics he has taken a keen interest in but which could not form part of his previous books—because, unlike his earlier works, this book neither has a unified theme nor is focused on a single episode. This “polyphonic orchestra,” as Florentino H. Hornedo describes the collection of essays in the foreword, is choreographed through the gamut of stories that are seemingly unrelated to one another but which ought to find their own places in the larger context of a Philippine national narrative. How this objective can be fulfilled and why it must be are not of interest to De Viana. Instead, he makes this work open to the reader’s interpretation and contextualization. Neither a historiographical framework nor a theoretical model is launched in this uncomplicated, jargon-free exposition of events.

Due to the free-flowing and assorted display of information, there is no strict sequence to the chapters each of which stands on its own. Nonetheless, the chapters are roughly arranged based on the periods when particular people, places, and events made the most impact on Philippine history. De Viana delivers a chronology of what he characterizes as “rare” and “hidden” accounts of events that took place in the last decades of Spain’s waning empire until the first half of America’s colonial rule. In this sense the book can be a supplementary resource for history teachers who wish to discuss peripheral yet insightful details that textbooks tend to ignore.

De Viana has a twofold role in this work. On the one hand, as editor and compiler, he captures our interest through eleven short essays on rarely discussed topics, most of which were written by various authors, not De Viana himself. These short essays include, for example, Fidel Villaroel’s piece on the history of women and education, a 1901 report from the US Philippine Commission on night soil and vermin, and a 1907 Manila Times article about church properties. De Viana does not give any rationale for selecting these seemingly unimportant stories. On the other hand, De Viana as author discusses a number of historical events in chapters 5, 17, 18, 24, and 25. These chapters are exemplary of how the short essays in other parts of the book can be broadened had De Viana chosen to do so. In these lengthier parts, De Viana as author does a close reading of his sources, contributes his own opinions about the issues, and investigates thoroughly all points of view. In other chapters, however, De Viana’s own views are not clearly separated from the references he utilizes; researchers will need to validate De Viana’s sources should they find certain accounts relevant to their work.

Some of the short essays relate to wider discourses on nation building, migration, urbanization, and modernity; thus presenting past predicaments that continue to haunt the present. For example, the...