Foreign literature in the Filipino press

Chapter XI of the novel Margherita Pusterla, by Cesare Cantú

Foreign literature during the Spanish colonization

From the 19th century, the printing press ceased to belong exclusively to the friars and was often linked to the periodical press. Printing presses such as those of the newspapers La Vanguardia, Renacimiento Filipino, Liwayway, Manila Free Press (from 1936), El Porvenir Filipino (1865 - 1877) and its successor, La Oceanía española (1877 - 1899) published books of all kinds, far from the strict selection of the Catholic church. 

An interesting study case is that of the owner of La Oceanía española, the Philippines-based Spaniard José Felipe del Pan, who used to write his own works, publishing a first edition in his newspaper and then bringing out an exempt volume. Some of these publications are: Hay muerte de Amor and Dos meses de licencia (1883); Los pretendientes de Carmen o perfiles de novios (1883); ¡Hay que vivir! O quien la enredó que la desenrede (1884); 10 millones de pesos o el tesoro de las Marianas (1885); Idilio entre sampaguitas (1886). Del Pan developed his whole career in the Philippines and published there all his works, which often dealt with Philippine topics.

In addition to publishing del Pan’s books, the printing house had a collection called Biblioteca de la Oceanía Española, in which works of various kinds were published or reprinted. This library had a literary section in which special editions of translations of European classics were often published, as is the case of the Spanish translation of the novel by German Gustav Freytag, Debe y haber, published in 1892, of works by Shakespeare, Goethe, or the Italian Cesare Cantú, whose most famous novel, Margherita Pusterla, was published in Spanish in Manila in 1892.

By no way does it mean that La Oceanía española was the only periodical committed to the publication of literary works. Literature pieces from all around the world were a must in the pages of most newspapers, including women's periodicals. Almost every issue of El bello sexo, for example, included stories, fragments of novels or articles by the conservative Spanish writer Pilar Sinués de Marco. She was a pioneer in using the term ángel del hogar (angel of the home) in Spanish, in the title of her novel El ángel del hogar, first published in 1857, only three years after Coventry Patmore published the first version of her poem “The Angel in the House”. The term “ángel del hogar” referred to an ideal discreet woman, devoted to her husband and the upbringing of her children and confined to the domestic space. Sinués’ moral tales were compulsory reading in elementary schools in the Philippines.

"Las gotas de agua", by Equatorian poet José Trajano Mera 

I Philippine Republic

In 1899 and after the withdrawal of Spain from the Philippines, the printing press of La Oceanía española ceased its work. In the meantime, other newspapers emerged that propagated the revolutionary and pro-independence ideas of the time. Among these newspapers was Libertas. Published by the University of Santo Tomas, in spite of its brief duration, it had the particularity of often publishing poems by Latin American writers.

This is especially interesting because Latin American literature of the time had a great influence on Philippine literature in Spanish in the early 1920s. Teodoro M. Kálaw, for instance, explicitly mentioned the travelogue by Guatemalan Enrique Gómez Carrillo, De Marsella a Tokio (1906), in his own travel book Hacia la tierra del Zar (1908), and the newspaper Domus Aurea published Filipino poems written in the style of Peruvian José Santos Chocano or Nicaraguan Rubén Darío, and special issues on Latin American poets.

Modernista poems by Fernando María Guerrero

Although we find no Latin American books published in the Philippines between the 19th century and the first twenty years of the 20th century, we do find Latin American poems in Filipino newspapers. It makes perfect sense that these poems would be published in a pro-independence newspaper like Libertas, since most Latin American republics had achieved independence from Spain without severing cultural ties and maintaining religion and language, which was the aspiration and model for many Filipino Spanish-speaking intellectuals at that time.

Gitna ñg Lusak (translation of La dame aux camélias)

American Colonization

In 1902, the liberalization of the press, education and literacy campaigns expanded the reading public and the languages of publication of newspapers. It also brought the definitive banishment of Catholic censorship, which favored the proliferation of printing presses and newspapers in Spanish, English, and Tagalog, as well as in other languages of the archipelago. The pages of newspapers in any language tended to include literary works. Spanish-language newspapers used to feature more and more literary works by local writers, rather than Spanish and Latin American writers, with the exception of missionary magazines, which used to contain articles written by religious men and women from different backgrounds, forming a kind of collage of testimonies from other religious magazines around the world.

Newspapers such as Renacimiento Filipino started publishing serialized European novels translated into Tagalog from Spanish, such as La Dame aux camélias by Alexandre Dumas, which appeared in the pages of Renacimiento Filipino from 28 October 1912 to 7 August 1913. The translation and adaptation was done by Gerardo Chanco and the work had the full title of Kasaysayang Pranses [French story] Sa Gitna ñg Lusak [In the middle of the Swamp] (Haláw sa La dama de las camelias ni Dumas) [after La Dame aux camélias by Dumas]. It was compiled in 1915 and published in a book format at Limbagan at aklatan ni P. Sayo balo ni Soriano, in a process which was very common for serialized novels (Jurilla 2010).

The printing press of La Vanguardia also published European books translated into Tagalog which had been serialized in newspapers, as it is the case of Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Dugo sa Dugo (Salin sa Wikang Tagalog ñg Magandang Nobelang Inglés ni M. E. Braddon), translated from Spanish and serialized in Taliba (the Tagalog language edition of La Vanguardia) between 26 February and 27 May 1921, and then published at the printing press of La Vanguardia at Taliba in the same year (Jurilla 2010). The title of the novel in Spanish was Lucha de razas, which makes us think that the original novel was The Octoroon: Or the Lily of Louisiana, an anti-slave novel pushing for the rights of non-white individuals. The topic was quite appropriate for the time in which it was published when the American government was imposing its power over the Philippines under the excuse that the "little brown brothers" did not have the capacity to govern themselves.

"Fumble", by Katherine Brush

While Filipino writings were most commonly published in Spanish and Tagalog-language newspapers, the Philippine population's lack of skills in English during the first years of the occupation made Filipino literature in English to come just later. For this reason, English-language newspapers published mostly works by American writers, though increasingly peppered with poems and pieces by Filipino authors. 

This circumstance brings up a debate that has been raging in recent years about what a Filipino writer is. For example, Adam Lifshey in his book Subversions of the American Century (2015) argues that any work written during the American colonial era in the Philippines is American literature and should be treated as such. The perspective is not without controversy and makes one wonder if writers like Katharine Brush, who published her works in Philippine newspapers, were really foreigners in the Philippines, in return.

"Las banderas solitarias", transcript of a Manila talk by Spanish author Federico García Sanchiz

1940s

While it is true that Spanish-language newspapers tended to publish mostly literary writings by Filipino authors, during and after the Spanish Civil War, different newspapers and magazines that supported Spanish fascism and the regime of Francisco Franco appeared as a propaganda tool. Some examples of this sort of newspapers are Hispanidad and ¡Arriba España!. These newspapers and magazines had the particularity of publishing texts by Franco's Spanish writers or classical writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the period of Spain's imperial splendor, which recovered colonial values. They were joined by Philippine writers such as Jesús Balmori or Manuel Bernabé, who did support the fascist regime and had a special connection with it. Through them, an attempt was made to win a cultural battle to integrate the Philippines into an ideal of a Hispanic community led by Spain. This sort of neo-imperialism failed.