(SPOT.ph) Before they were household names, they were simply Hochi and Minh—cousins who spent a lot of time together, little children running around during Sunday brunches at their grandparents’ home. What may have seemed ordinary occasions back then would, in fact, serve as foundation for the two girls who would become two of the country’s most admired journalists.

Long before they stood in front of cameras and reported on the day’s events, Kara David and Karmina Constantino were learning the art of storytelling, the power of perspective, and the quiet strength of public service from their grandmother, Letizia Roxas Constantino—writer, editor, and constant collaborator of noted historian Renato Constantino, her husband, with whom Letizia produced The Philippines: A Past Revisited, and The Philippines: A Continuing Past, among other titles.

Who is Letizia Constantino?

Renato Constantino, nationalist, political analyst, and historian, may have been the more famous [READ]

February 4, 2026 marks the 127th anniversary of the beginning of the Philippine-American War, a badly remembered chapter in our history.

We don’t know how many died as a result of the U.S. invasion in 1899. Estimates range from a low 250,000 to as high as one million dead. In a New York Times interview published in May 1901, U.S. Gen. Franklin Bell put the figure of dead Filipinos at 600,000 in Luzon alone. The estimate did not include the slaughter of Samar or ‘pacification’ campaigns in other provinces.

Disregard for Filipino lives was widespread among U.S. troops. For instance, a soldier in the Washington Regiment wrote to his family: “[O]ur fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill ‘niggers’ . . .  We killed them like rabbits; hundreds, yes, thousands of them.” A private with Utah Battery wrote: “The old boys will say that no cruelty is too severe [READ]

The Constantino Foundation invites the public to a Pandesal Forum commemorating the 150th Birth Anniversary of Pedro Abad Santos, an important figure in the history of Philippine social reform.

Featuring insights from Renato Redentor Constantino and Eufemio Agbayani III, with Wilson Lee Flores as moderator.

January 31, 2025 (Saturday)
10:00 AM
Kamuning Bakery Cafe, Quezon City

[READ]

by Renato Redentor Constantino

(The essay was published first in ABS-CBN.)

“If freedom is to be preserved, fascism must be destroyed at all costs.”[1]

These are the timeless words of the hero Pedro Abad Santos, born 150 years ago on 31 January 1876. He was a nationalist, a revolutionary, and a fighter who lived by the principles of the Katipunan’s Kartilya. To forget Abad Santos is to forget who we are and who we can still be as a people. Perhaps this is why so many feel so restive yet so lost today, adrift in a brutal ocean of political noise with no safe shore in sight. Divorced from our own history, we bob and roll with the waves without a rudder.

Apart from the work of theater and movie production crews in 2025, it is difficult to tell which national group or coalition organized public events last year [READ]