Del país y sus habitantes: la psicología del filipino

Del país y sus habitantes: la psicología del filipino

1926-10

Norberto Romualdez (1875-1941) was a politician and polyglot writer responsible for writing, for example, the first sarswela in Samareño. The article "Del País y sus habitantes: la psicología del filipino" is part of a series he published in book form in English in 1925 under the title The Psychology of the Filipino. The text deals with different native and pre-Hispanic customs in the style of 19th century anthropologists and folklorists such as, in the Philippine context, Isabelo de los Reyes. 

In this article, tension is created between the scientific distance that places the writer outside the presumably uncivilized customs of his ancestors and countrymen for the Western public, and the certainty of being indigenous to that same area and being as a politician, inserted in the pursuit of a national construction. Such a tension  is seen from the very first lines, in which Romualdez oscillates in his writing from using the third person to using the first person in order to speak about his compatriots: "[if] Christianity were ever to disappear from here, our people, simple given their innate religiosity, would immediately give in to superstition and idolatry". The paradox is that, theoretically, the magazine The Missionary, in which this article is published, had as its target audience the non-Christianized people of the Mountain Province (in the north of the island of Luzon).

In discussing medicine and the role of the Babaylan, he frames the Philippine past in global history, suggesting that cultures around the world shared common traits such as attributing supernatural causes to illness. In line with this, he discusses the mystical and healing role of Filipino women priestesses or "babaylanes," who used the performative power of the word, that is, by means of incantations and sacred words they were able to cast out evil spirits and heal. Those women had a preeminent role in society, which Romualdez, on this occasion, does not write too much about.

de los Reyes y Florentino, Isabelo. 1889. El Folk-lore Filipino (Tomo I). Manila: Litografía de Chofré y Compañía. 

Nono, Grace. Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans on Voice, Gender, and Transnationalism. PhD Dissertation, New York University, 2014.

Romuáldez Norberto. 1925. The Psychology of the Filipino. Baguio: Catholic School Press.

Ma. Florina Yamsuan  Orillos-juan. “Songs of the Babaylan: Living Voices, Medicines, Spiritualities of Philippine Ritualist-Oralist-Healers (2013) Ni Grace Nono”. Saliksik E-Journal 4, num. 1 (2015): 1-1.

Norberto Romualdez

Item held at University of the Philippines Diliman and University of Antwerp VLIRUOS Rare Periodicals Open Access Repository

Rocío Ortuño Casanova

Spanish