El pasado se compra

Literary awards were an important way of promoting literature in the Philippines during the 20th century. It is said that the Filipino poet Jesús Balmori won the first three prizes in the contest organized to celebrate "Rizal's day" in 1908 and that this sparked a bitter controversy between Balmori and another Filipino poet, Cecilio Apóstol. The Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature began to be awarded in 1950 to texts in English, Tagalog and Spanish (it still exists today,though awarding texts only in English and Tagalog). For its part, the Zobel Prize was awarded between 1921 and 2000 for the best works in Spanish written by Filipinos. In addition to these awards, institutional and commemorative of events, there were awards promoted by newspapers. In contrast to the award created Liwayway, the one subsidized by the newspaper La Vanguardia is not so well known. 

La Vanguardia awarded prose texts of different subgenres: socially-oriented stories, psychological stories, folk tales, tales of love and pain, tales of moral background, and tales of animal life. Curiously, despite participation of a series of well-known names in Philippine literature in Spanish, the jury (solely composed by the director of the national library Teodoro Kalaw) decided to award the short story submitted (under a pseudonym) by Jose Maria Lasala del Mar (1896-1982), a Cebuano journalist who was not so much at home in the capital. 

The story, entitled “El pasado se compra”, is about the social rise and fall of a woman in financial straits. This woman, Margarita, marries a Chinese-Filipino who lifts her out of poverty but she ends up in jail. She then returns to misery and to engage in sinful and illegal activities to get ahead. The text connects in several ways with two stories published by an Ilongo writer, Guillermo Gómez Windham, in 1921: on the one hand with “La aventura de Sing-a”, about a Chinese boy who moves to Manila to make a living and ends up embarking in criminal activities related to the trafficking of explosives, just like Margarita's husband; on the other hand, with “La carrera de Cándida”, the story of a girl who, influenced by an American education, leaves her tradition aside to study and have a professional life, but ends up prostituting herself to get ahead.

Kalaw, Teodoro M. “Jose Ma. Del Mar Obtiene el primer premio en el concurso” and Del Mar, Jose Ma. “El pasado se compra”. La Vanguardia. January 16, 1937, pp.23 and 34. In Global Press Archive.

Brillantes María Lourdes. 2006. 81 Years of Premio Zóbel : A Legacy of Philippine Literature in Spanish. Manila: Georgina Padilla y Zóbel: Filipinas Heritage Library.