Cracks in the Parchment Curtain

Cracks in the Parchment Curtain, and Other Essays in Philippine History

by William Henry Scott

William Henry Scott is a Filipino nationalist with a white skin. The 17 essays in this new collection - CRACKS IN THE PARCHMENT CURTAIN - give clear proof of this statement. For here we glimpse unknown facets of Filipino life glinting through the shadows of three centuries of Spanis rule and a turn-of-the century struggle against a new night of foreign aggression. Scott's essays make a Filipino proud to be a Filipino. His patient scholarship among musty books and documents in libraries and archives here and aborad, his travels in the provinces to dig out decaying parish records, and his friendship and interviews with surviving historical resources--all provide intimate glimpses of a virile people yearning for dignity and freedom in the face of inexorable odds.

"Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami?"

"Why Did Tupas Betray Dagami?"

by William Henry Scott

The Dagami Revolt was a revolt against Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. It was led by the Chief Dagami of Gabi (now part of Cordova). The revolt actually began in 1565, but is sometimes dated as 1567, the year of Dagami's execution.

On May 22, 1565, a party of 16 led by Chief Dagami and four other chiefs hid themselves outside of the stockaded Spanish settlement in Cebu, intending to kill some Spaniards. At dawn of the following day, May 23, Pedro de Arana, a member of the personal company of Spanish Governor Miguel López de Legazpi, came out of the fort alone. As he walked along the beach near the war party, they speared him and cut off his head. They returned to Gabi and made a great celebration and feast with it. The murder went unsolved at the time, and Dagami continued as Chief of Gabi and continued to foment revolt.

In December of 1566, after two Spaniards were killed and three others nearly died inside the fort after drinking poisoned wine purchased from Cebuana wine-sellers, Legazpi sent for Rajah Tupas and his fellow datus, accusing that some of them were behind the killings. The chiefs protested their innocence , and Legazpi told them that their guilt could only be absolved by handing over the culprits. The following day, Tupas handed over two women who, under torture, implicated two others. Three of the four were sentenced to flogging and deportation, and the fourth sentenced to death. The condemned woman was executed and her body was drawn and quartered, with the pieces of the body displayed along the road between the Cebuano settlement and the Spanish fort. The following day, Tupas betrayed Dagami to Legazpi.

Dagami was condemned to be drawn and quartered the next day in the place where Pedro de Arana had been killed. Dagami's head was displayed on a pole in that place and the four quarters of his body were displayed on poled along the beach.After this was carried out, Tupas lauded Dagami as having been among proudest in the islands, ans said that when they were thinking of making peace with the Spaniards in 1565 had advised him not to make peace, had hindered him from doing that and that after the signing of the Treaty of Cebu, Dagami continued to be rebellious against the Spaniards and in favor of revolts and war, and that the governor had given him his just deserts.

"Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino"

"Looking for the Prehispanic Filipino: Mistranslations and Misconceptions"
by William Henry Scott

This posthumously-published masterwork of the leading scholar of the pre-Spanish Philippines is a wonderful argument for the centrality of Philippine evidence for a reconstruction of Southeast Asian societies. Scott is very cautious himself about drawing parallels or larger pictures, confining himself to answering the question, "What did the Spaniards actually say about the Filipino people when they first met them?". As a long-term resident of the Philippines his primary aim is to correct popular Philippine misperceptions, especially the unfortunate Beyer "wave theory" of migration which enabled "Filipinos who had grown up under Spanish domination [to] consider themselves a different people from those who had not... It is precisely this social amnesia which today stigmatises as cultural minorities those Filipinos who resisted colonial acculturation"