28 As noted in Blair and Robertson, The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898. Volume 52, 91. All quoted passages above are from pages 91-111 of that volume.
29 The date corresponds to such celebrated incidents as the Battle of San Juan, which began the Philippine-American war in 1899; and the more modern Revolt of 1986, which overthrew the dictator Marcos and his wife Imelda, La Abuelita Loca (not a good representative of the Warays, by the way)—history recycles glory in mysterious ways. But what the hell’s in the tsokolate tablea during the month of February??!
30 Traveling in Spain, you will still find, manufactured by the devilish Artiach Biscuit Company, con autentico chocolate negro, “these authentic Filipinos, cookies dipped in dark chocolate that you can eat with your friends. You can put these Filipinos in the fridge, they are delicious.” Que horror! Savagery and cannibalism in the grocery aisle! But, as always, no one is surprised.
31 This ingenious detail is instructive—that General de la Matta, Spanish intendiente and thus enemy of the people, is ancestor of the protagonist Mata. I urge Estrella in this moment of oracular sanity to pursue her analogy. The 1843 Matta Report is a mirror text—the words of the Other that allow us to pierce a knowing of that which eludes and exculpates, hides and always seeks: the Rapscallion Self. In this way knowledge occurs by distortion—for a mirror is never truth, and yet for a while it relieves us of the burden of not knowing (cf. Mürk, Parables I, “The Speculum”; cf. “The Shape of the Sword,” an Argentine ficción). The actual, complete text of the 1843 Matta Report—craftily cobbled above from disparate portions of the document—is racist, anti-Filipino, and vicious. And yet from antipathy how strange that, according to Estrella, truth arises. Estrella, isn’t it both a genetic and symbolic marvel that Mata contains within himself the Enemy, his ancestor Matta, so that the Self “like a vertiginous Russian doll concatenates into a delirium of recuperated animosities, a precious history of revulsion” out of which truth erupts [Mürk, Random Sayings. Eds. Dux, Drake, et al.]? In short, it is possible that we are whom we despise, and sadly vice versa. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Kalamazoo, Michigan)
32 I have no idea what you’re talking about. You are gobbledygook to me. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
33 I propose this question—and I propose it timidly, as I am still a graduate student after all these years, doing only a minor in Cornell’s Asian Studies Department: Are we kind of forgetting that General de la Matta and Raymundo Mata may not be related? (Trans. Note)
34 Take note: he was also an ophthalmologist (an occupation that some rashly view as a figure of speech for his poetry’s surgical attempts). His Austrian friend Blumentritt, so conjoined in spirit with Rizal that they liberally shared metaphors, has noted that the country’s ills were a “cataract” and Rizal was their surgeon. This memoir of the night-blind Raymundo Mata is significant in this respect: it is the lengthiest extant chronicle by a patient who consulted Dr. Rizal. However, one must not blame Rizal for Raymundo Mata’s subsequent woes—the patient’s errors are his own.
35 Estrella, if you are referring to the story in Santiago Alvarez’s The Katipunan and the Revolution, please note: the revolutionary who initiated the bandit (who became General Luis Malinis by the way; the tulisan Matandang Leon had already died in the war’s first skirmish, near Balara) was Genaro de los Reyes, not the medicine man Juan Maibay; and the event occurred after breakfast in someone’s home, not in the swamps of Makati. (Dr. Diwata Drake, Makati, Philippines)
36 Juan—Genaro—Luis—Leon—who cares. It’s the thought that counts. (Estrella Espejo, ditto)
37 It is true that an 1867 translation of John S. C. Abbott’s popular history of American presidents was in the Supremo Andres Bonifacio’s library (confiscated by Spanish authorities when the secret society was unmasked). But please note Abbott’s unenlightened description of the “savage” Indians: “They . . . resolved, Satan-inspired [italics mine], to sweep every vestige of civilization from the land, that this continent might remain a howling wilderness [I decline to annotate this last resonant phrase in this American volume, emphasis mine, written decades before the memorable words spoken about the Philippine province of Samar by U.S. General Jacob ‘Howling Wilderness’ Smith in 1901].”
It is wishful thinking to imagine that the Filipino heroes identified solely with the Indians. In fact, their interpretive lapse and ardent identification, with the likes of George Washington, were tragic [see “The Purloined Krag,” my online monograph in Postcolonial Retrospection: Studies in Stereotomy Volume II, still in painful reconstruction; I posit instead an inter-framing in the crosshairs of the Philippine-American War, in which the rebel must pellucidly situate himself as both Washington and Indian, a difficult acrobatic performance]. Who knows, dear Professor Estrella—educated Filipino rebel leaders perhaps misread Abbott’s American history? Even Rizal, in his equivocal way, said of America that she was the most likely “rival” to Spain if war ever did come, but “acquiring possessions beyond the seas . . . [was] against [America’s] traditions.” Sic. Heroically, Filipino rebel leaders saw themselves as the American George Washington brandishing a revolutionary gun. When sadly, on the
