Pasts Revisited

Karina Constantino – David

Magdiwang! Sa ika-80 anibersaryo ng kapanganakan ni Karina Constantino-David, handog namin ang ???????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????, ang unang awit sa album na ????????????????: １８９６-１９９６ ng kanyang grupo, ang ???????????????????? ????????????????, sa pakikipagtulungan sa grupong pinamunuan niya mula 1988 hanggang 1998, ang Harnessing Self Reliant Initiatives & Knowledge, o HASIK, Inc. Dugtong ang kaarawan ni Karina Constantino-David sa taong ito, ang ika-130 taong anibersaryo ng pagsiklab ng Himagsikang pinamunuan ng Katipunan na nagpatalsik sa kolonyalismo ng Espanya at naglayong makamtan ng sambayanan ang kaginhawaang pinaglaban ng Rebolusyon ng Filipinas. Ang boses sa kanta ay mula kay Becky Demetillo Abraham, matalik na kaibigan at katuwang ni Karina sa ???????????????????? ???????????????? at HASIK.

Ayon sa ????????????????: “Sinasabing ang orihinal na musika nito ay isang awit ng mga Guwardiya Sibil. Noong 1896, nilapatan ng mga Katipunero ang musika ng sarili nilang titik at ginamit [READ]

RENATO2026-03-19T14:25:43+08:00March 19, 2026|

Renato Constantino

March 10 is the 106th birthday of the historian Renato Constantino. We share a warning he issued two years before the EDSA uprising against the dangers of merely replacing faces and names without changing the very economic policies that has kept our nation poor and underdeveloped. #RenatoConstantino #UsableHistory [READ]

RENATO2026-03-09T08:24:53+08:00March 9, 2026|

Apolonia Catra

Today is the 121st death anniversary of the Filipina hero, Apolonia Catra. She was killed in combat by U.S. occupation forces on March 5 in 1905. Her date of birth is unknown and there is no known portrait or photograph of the revolutionary. With pride we share with you three images created by Mari Laila Tulio and Chris Jerald Ubaldo, students of the esteemed teacher, Prof. Mitzi Mari Reyes, in their UP Diliman Fine Arts class in 2020, just before the pandemic lockdowns were imposed. The students were asked to imagine how Apolonia might have looked like. (Discover more in the coming Alas ng Bayan 2.0 exhibit at the UP Manila Museum of a History of Ideas from March 10-21.)

Catra is the only named woman officer in the armed forces of General Macario Sakay, President of [READ]

RENATO2026-03-05T11:55:24+08:00March 5, 2026|

The nation will soon mark the 40th anniversary of EDSA, a time of simplicity, complexity, and mythmaking. Four days before the Snap Election of February 1986, Renato Constantino wrote insights in the fortnightly paper WE Forum that deserves our pause today: “I view the current electoral exercise with ‘amiable skepticism.’ The frenetic activities have diverted the attention of the people from basic issues. Both Marcos and Aquino view the economic situation within the parameters of the IMF program. Economic issues have been depoliticized. . . . “The opposition is performing a useful service in the general struggle against authoritarian rule and therefore is contributing to an aspect of the protest movement. But unless they present this question and the attendant violations of human rights as consequences of an economic program that benefits foreign interests and unless they propose concrete measures that will reverse [READ]

RENATO2026-02-18T19:41:25+08:00February 19, 2026|

Pedro Abad Santos

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

These are the timeless words of the hero Pedro Abad Santos, born 150 years ago on 31 January 1876. He was a fighter for the welfare of his people even early in his life.

Abad Santos stopped going to school to join the Katipunan, where he eventually held the rank of komandante or major. He fought in 1899 as the aide-de-camp of the great Gen. Maximino Hizon in the war against the invading American forces.

Pedro Abad Santos was “an elderly nationalist lawyer” from a landowning family in Pampanga. He was called “Don Perico” by his clients, “a term of both respect and endearment, the formality of ‘don’ and the familiarity of the nickname.” He offered “his legal expertise pro bono to protect the rights of peasants and workers, which composed a [READ]

RENATO2026-01-31T09:42:52+08:00January 31, 2026|

Emilio Jacinto: Bayani ng mga Bayani

Nakataas ang baso at tasa para sa iyo, sa ika-150 araw ng iyong kapanganakan, dakilang intelektwal at makata na katuwang ni Supremo Andres Bonifacio.

Patnubayan mo ang bayang ninanakawan, ang bayang pinipilayan ng mga ganid, ang bayang malilimutin na pinipilayan ang sarili.

Hindi malayong kahit sa panaginip madalas kayong magsama ni Lean Alejandro, Pedro Abad Santos, at Remedios Gomez-Paraiso habang nagtatawanan, nalulungkot, at nang-uusig sa bayan niyong sinisinta.

Malamang nag-aalay din ng awit para sa iyo si Gloria Capitan sa videoke sa langit kasama ng mandirigmang Gregoria Lakambini.

Patuloy kang nabubuhay sa dibdib ng bawat mamamayang nagsasabuhay sa ikawalong kalatas ng Kartilya ng Katipunan na iyong sinulat: Ipagtanggol mo ang inaapi, at kabakahin ang umaapi:

[READ]

RENATO2026-01-28T12:53:07+08:00December 15, 2025|

Bapor! Paris!

Strands of Philippine history and climate change are more tangled than you think.

Many Filipinos still use the word “bapor” when they see huge sea-faring vessels, but most are not aware of the word’s origins. Bapor is from “vapor” which is another way to describe “steam” that powers up engines fueled by the dirtiest of fossil fuels: coal.

The new introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of The Philippines: A Past Revisited shows how closely intertwined our past is with the climate crisis. It was coal, for instance, that enabled British textile factories to produce the flood of super cheap cotton fabrics in the 19th century that decimated Filipino sinamay, jusi, and piña industries.

Coal is also what powered warships of the United States when it annexed and invaded the Philippines when Filipino revolutionaries had just defeated Spanish colonial rule.

U.S. steamers would bombard defenders of the Philippine republic then off-load American imperial troops across the archipelago [READ]

RENATO2026-01-28T12:58:02+08:00December 10, 2025|

Renato and Letizia Roxas-Constantino 50th wedding anniversary

Love for country and people, and for one another: Letizia Roxas Constantino wrote her husband, Renato, a letter on 21 November 1993, their 50th wedding anniversary. #PastsRevisited

RENATO2025-11-25T14:59:56+08:00November 21, 2025|

A NATIONAL TREASURE: LEONARD L. CO (1953-2010) By Perry S. Ong and Nina Ingle

Leonard L. Co, unparalleled plant scholar and a scientist for the people, died last November 15, 2010 in Leyte from gunshot wounds obtained during an alleged crossfire between the Philippine Army 19th Infantry Battalion and the New Peopleís Army. Co had pioneered the writing of manuals on Philippine medicinal plants for community-based health care in the 1970s and worked as a pharmacologist of Chinese medicinal plants in the 1980s. At the time of his death, Co was doing research on native forest species for reforestation. He was also assembling a digital herbarium and writing an update of The Enumeration of Philippine Flowering Plants written by Elmer Merrill at the turn of the 20th century.

Leonard [READ]

RENATO2025-11-15T00:28:01+08:00November 15, 2025|

We Can Choose Honor

A sense of honor is one of the simplest lessons our nation’s mightiest heroes can impart. But it’s a teaching we can absorb only by remembering better, by wielding our usable past.

This month marks the 114th year since Jose Abad Santos, the nation’s fifth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, passed the Bar Exams in October 1911. The occasion is an auspicious reminder, for we cannot avoid the subject of law given fresh revelations of plunder perpetrated, yet again, by the country’s so-called lawmakers, in connivance with criminals in the bureaucracy and private contractors.

Part of a storied family in Pampanga, at 10 years-old Jose Abad Santos served as a courier to the fledgling forces of the Philippine Republic during the Philippine-American War. His father, Don Vicente, was tortured and killed by Spanish authorities, who dragged his lifeless body from town to [READ]

RENATO2025-10-02T12:19:37+08:00October 1, 2025|