El Periodismo Filipino, 1811-1910 The First Century of Philippine Journalism

Bibliographical Notes, Biographical Entries, Critical Notes, Extracts and Anecdotes by Wenceslao Emilio Retana

With The History of the Philippine Press, 1811-1910 by Jose Victor Z. Torres
Translated and Annotated by Jaime M. Marco

Wenceslao E. Retana's El Periodismo Filipino captures the glorious struggle of Filipino thought as it strove to break free in public media. Retana's voluminous research on the first century of Philippine journalism is a thrilling documentation of the emancipation of Filipino intellectuality following a surprisingly linear emplotment: from halting ignorance to tentative expressions, then to raging radicalism and freethinking that exploded into the Philippine Revolution of 1896, only for its republican and progressive ideals to be dashed once again by a new and insidious colonial master.

In the book we witness print culture slipping away from two and a half centuries of Spanish friar control, which previously had only emphasized translation and doctrinal dissemination. The nascent colonial press controlled by both public and religious authorities gave rise for the first time to a "reading public" that led to a third sphere of opinion, thus setting the stage for ambivalence, insubordination, and conflict. From being a mouthpiece for elite Spaniards, the Philippine press grew amidst political divisions to become a site of contestation between the regime and a growing nationalistic class of indios, mestizos, and hijos del país who became increasingly united and were supported by liberal Spanish sympathizers.

The discourse and counter-discourse of a Philippines caught between two empires and an independent republic is mirrored in the book's heady mixture of propagandist tracts, racially prejudiced editorials, biting satire, humorous poems, reviews of European novels, bureaucratic reports, stirringly inspirational plays and essays, costumbrista sketches, revolutionary manifestos, and endearing sundry ephemera, all of which resurrect for us the nuanced and deeply layered colonial sphere of ideas that spanned the archipelago, Europe, and the world.

Above this brew towers the sharply critical figure of Wenceslao Retana—as proud a figure as Spain has ever produced—who with his supreme authorial voice as the book's protagonist seduces us with his own personal tales as he himself becomes the news at varying points in the narrative.

This illustrated scholarly book is enriched with over 200 images of rare periodicals and ephemera as well as over 500 notes that offer bibliographical and biographical information and fascinating insights into the era. El Periodismo represents the fourth volume in Vibal Foundation's Seryeng Kinsentenaryo (Quincentennial Series) that commemorates five hundred years of Filipino and Spanish encounters from 1521 to 2021. It also forms the last tome of Retana's three-volume Aparato Bibliográfico de la Historia General de Filipinas, a major study of Philippine print and thought from 1524 to 1905. Highly opinionated, searingly acerbic, yet whimsically humorous and sometimes abject in its mission to win over the reader, this book will certainly occupy a privileged niche in the history of Filipino intellectual thought.