‘Tsismis’ and intelligence gathering

BY AMBETH R. OCAMPO

NOVEMBER 14, 2025

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Over the years, I have come across surveillance records in libraries and archives. These cover the late 19th century to contemporary lists of drug users, addicts, and pushers used to justify extrajudicial killings in former President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. These records can be sensational, but they have to be read with caution. They contain raw intelligence information that was not subjected to critical analysis or validation. These records can make or break reputations if made public.

Many years ago, I sat beside the director of the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency, the office that supplies the President and the National Security Council with intelligence data that informs policy decisions. I asked him how long their records remain current, or if they have a cutoff date to declassify them. With the magic number usually set at 50 years, or half a century, I asked if old intelligence records could be transferred to the National Archives or the National Historical Commission for research and reference. The director said he would look into it, but he never got back to me. Where are these records, and what do they contain about ordinary persons like you and me? I’ve always been curious to see my dossier, if it exists, just to know what kind of information the government has collected on me.

Many years ago, in the archives of the Spanish Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores (Foreign Affairs Ministry), I found the dispatches of the Spanish consul in Hong Kong, which reported on the Filipinos’ interest in the colony. Rizal and his family were part of the archive, Josephine Bracken, too, and that is where I first found clippings of Hong Kong newspapers that heralded her not just as the widow of Rizal but also portrayed her as a modern-day Joan of Arc who fought alongside the Katipuneros in the first phase of the Philippine Revolution. That Spanish consul, Jose de Navarro, is best described in modern terms as “marites,” who sent all sorts of material to Madrid for the information of the ministry.

In the Philippines, we had the special branch of the guardia civil known as the “Cuerpo de Vigilancia” (surveillance body), which gathered all sorts of news from all parts of the Philippines and sent these to Manila to be collated and analyzed. Will write more about this archive in a future column. While going over my notes on Marcelo H. del Pilar recently, I found the report of Lt. Cmdr. Jose de Senespleda from May 1895 that lays a wide net not just for people associated with Plaridel but also anyone considered suspicious, Masonic, heretical, or anti-Spanish. At the top of the list was:

“Don Manuel Crisostomo, approximately 40 years old … former Gobernadorcillo and present municipal captain. Has little affection for our institutions and is particularly anti-monastic; has a cousin or nephew called Graciano Crisostomo who is a cleric, and being a coadjutant in Iban (Batangas), was sued for leaving the seminary where he had spent two years.”

A lot of material is reported, but it is made clear that: “I have no proof to present as to their being anti-Spanish or not, but I am convinced they are, and that they are anti-friar.” Then as now, such a report is dangerous because rumors can be mistaken for fact, and old scores can be settled by inventing stories about your enemies or people you simply do not like.

Don Vicente Gatmaytan, 40 years old, married, and a former captain in Malolos, was watched because he was the “compadre” of Luis del Pilar, who happens to be a cousin of Marcelo del Pilar. He was an in-law of Manuel Crisostomo, reported above. The intelligence report notes that:

“Don Vicente is shy and reserved, but he reveals his anti-friar sentiments in all his conversations, and I also believe him to be one of the filibusterers. There should also be past information about him.”

What I find interesting is the detail in the descriptions, which can be read more like an ethnography of Malolos rather than an intelligence report, because it details family, church, and social relations. It also notes different occupations, educational attainment, etc. Anastacio de Leon, for example, was 42 years old, married and a lieutenant in charge of livestock:

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“A man with little education, with a bad disposition and great influence in the municipality, a fact that I find strange but that I attribute to his having ties with respectable people … [he] is by nature cunning and cynical. He was head sacristan and choir boy of the [Malolos] church some years ago and was dismissed because of his behavior, and since then, he has been one of the satellites of Marcelo and Luis del Pilar in their plans against the friars. I also think he is anti-Spanish like the rest.”

Other citizens in Malolos are referenced in the report that prompted the governor general in Manila to issue an order of banishment. Manuel Crisostomo was ordered out of Malolos and exiled to Jolo, while Gatmaytan was exiled to Iligan. Others to Davao, Sarangani, and even Puerto Princesa. So much suffering caused by “tsismis” in the guise of intelligence.

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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net

Women on the margins of history

BY AMBETH R. OCAMPO

APRIL 30, 2025

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Maria Luisa T. Camagay, professor emerita of the University of the Philippines department of history, is the scholar who led the charge for the study of women and women’s issues in Philippine history. Beginning with her 1995 book “Working Women of Manila during the 19th Century,” she recast history into “HER-story,” promoting women’s studies until it became accepted as a legitimate branch of Philippine historical inquiry. In 2010, she edited “More Pinay Than We Admit,” a compilation of essays in the field and a second volume this year, a gap of 15 years. The subtitle of the book is “The Filipina Emerges from the Margins,” and while it is a collective of 14 different authors (13 women and one male), it reads coherently and flows well, tracing Filipinas in history from the 16th century to the present.

I read the book in one sitting, lured into the rabbit hole by Gloria Esguerra Melencio’s essay on “Historical Markers on Filipino Women’s Sexuality during Spanish Colonial Times.” Despite its dull academic title, the essay’s content was an exposition of how female sexuality in the Philippines was framed by men, mostly Spanish religious chroniclers, who were understandably shocked to find different customs in their newfound colony: the use of penis implements, slavery of women, notions of virginity, concubinage, marriage, divorce, and polygamy at odds with their imported, Western, male, and Christian norms.

The two pages on the penis implements cite the first reference in Antonio Pigafetta’s 1521 account of the Magellan expedition. Pigafetta described this as a penile piercing with: “a gold or tin bolt as large as a goose quill, and in both ends of the same bolt, some have what resembles a spur, with points upon the ends, and others [have] what resembles the head of a cart nail … In the middle of the bolt is a hole, through which they urinate.” Pigafetta also noted that women would not “communicate” with the men without it!

Unfortunately, Pigafetta did not actually see this and merely relied on his informants. Sometimes, I wonder if the Pinoy informants he encountered agreed among themselves, “gag*hin natin ito.” But that does not explain why accounts of penis implements used by precolonial Pinoys are found in other sources: Miguel de Loarca (1582), Antonio de Morga (1609), and Francisco Ignacio Alzina (1667). The anonymous “Boxer Codex” (circa 1590) has a drawing on the margin of one of the manuscript pages. Twenty-first-century Pinoys, especially Visayan seafarers, boast of penile implants that can probably trace their roots to the ones Pigafetta saw in 1521.

Many of the essays in Camagay’s new book merely show the tip of the proverbial iceberg, pointing readers to the uncharted waters of primary sources in the National Archives of the Philippines. In the essay by Ma. Rita Lourdes Alfaro, she looks at bundles of documents that also caught my eye 40 years ago when I first ran my fingers through the catalog: aborto (abortion), infanticido (infanticide), homicidio (homicide), adulterio (adultery), and prostitucion (prostitution) that also include cases of vagrancy, undocumented women, and so-called “mujeres publicas (public women).” Alfaro shows how these seemingly banal archival classifications frame Filipinas, their passion, and their crimes within the male gaze of the colonial authorities. It is not just the content of the documents, but also the way they were written and understood at the time, that deserves closer investigation and reinterpretation.

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Camagay’s essay “Disarming the Catalonans of Zambales during the 17th Century” deals with the confiscation of ritual vessels of the Catalonans/Babaylans by a priest, attempting to stamp out the precolonial religion by using children of the community to rat on their elders. An inventory of the different types of earthenware vessels used by the babaylan is supplied. This long-lost episode in Philippine history frames the difficulties the Church had in converting Filipinos from their old faith into Christianity. It is to be noted here that not all Catalonans or Babaylans were women, there were some labeled as “bayoguin,” who were male babaylan who cross-dressed or were described as men who “had the nature of women.” This is a footnote that gains relevance in contemporary LGBTQ issues.

Mary Dorothy Jose revisits the way women are represented in accounts of the Philippine revolution, where some led men in battle as “generala” or “babaeng lalake.” Ma. Serena Diokno looks back on silences in history, focusing on Melchora Aquino, or “Tandang Sora,” who was only recognized in the 20th century. She has since appeared on banknotes, coins, stamps, textbooks, and monuments, her nickname is remembered. A far cry from the list of people arrested following the outbreak of the revolution in August 1896, when she was merely described as “a woman, a certain Sora.” From the margins and peripheries of Philippine history, the Filipina emerges to underscore what we now call HER-story.

Ensueños de Amor’ (Dreams of Love)

BY AMBETH R. OCAMPO

DECEMBER 6, 2024

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An object previously described as “priceless” fetched P31,240,600 at auction last weekend. Small and fragile because it is made of plaster, it is one of the last few pieces of sculpture by Jose Rizal that was previously in the possession of his descendants.

Everyone, even history, has a price.

Juan Luna captured his ill-fated wife asleep in a painting known as “Ensueños de Amor” (Dreams of Love). Likewise, Rizal depicted his common-law wife asleep, naked under the sheets, in plaster. Both works are sensuous and suggestively erotic. These works remind us that heroes are not made of marble and bronze, but of flesh and blood. They were human, yet textbook history will never teach us that our heroes were occasionally horny, that they laughed, cried, and even farted.

Holy Week reading

 

By: Ambeth R. Ocampo - @inquirerdotnet

Historians read differently. While most people start with the so-called “Front Matter” (Title Page, Introduction, Table of Contents, etc.) historians usually start at the back of a book; checking out the Bibliography or the list of sources (manuscript, printed, oral, and digital) used in the writing of the book. Historians judge a book not by its cover but by its “Back Matter.” While normal people will consider reading a dictionary as penance for the sins of the past year, I find it an absolute joy browsing through early vocabularios or diccionarios of Tagalog from the 17th to 19th centuries. Added to my unusual taste in reading matter are bibliographies (lists of books or sources, often annotated, that form the basis of a given subject). Bibliographies published in the early 20th century from the likes of Wenceslao E. Retana, Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera, and James Alexander Robertson enabled me to talk authoritatively about books I have not read fully nor handled physically.

Last Palm Sunday, I was invited by a friend to a “pabasa” in his garage in Cardona, transformed into a “kapilya” with an altar dominated by a crucifix and three life-size processional images of saints with their heavy beards and equally heavy velvet vestments embroidered with gold and silver thread. Instead of flowers, the altar was festooned with “palaspas” in many various designs. There was a long table with people reading from, and chanting, the Pasion text in old Tagalog. Christ was being mocked and beaten when I arrived around 1 p.m. and if I cared to stay on until the evening I would hear the burial of Christ, chanted with accompaniment by the town band.

Four decades ago, during my first immersion into Philippine Studies, I assisted a visiting ethnomusicologist who recorded an entire Pasion in Angeles, Pampanga, over two days. At the time, I learned to distinguish different tones and tunes utilized by the readers. There was plain chant, there was one that was lilting, another was used when a penitent or flagellant entered the chapel. We were told that in the Malolos passion play or “sinakulo,” music that accompanied the scene of the death of the Virgin Mary was a rowdy drinking song like “roll out the barrels” that was replaced by “Anchors Aweigh!” when the Virgin ascends into heaven. For the Resurrection, “Lupang Hinirang” or the national anthem. This is the charm of our folk religiosity that is more Filipino than Roman Catholic, when the foreign was “indio-genized” and made our own.

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At the Cardona pabasa last Sunday, I told people at lunch that this time I focused more on the words rather than the tune, fascinated by the unusual turns of phrase in Tagalog difficult to translate into English. The Pasion text in Cardona reminded me of the first time I heard the short-cut passion and death of Christ in a chanted novena during a wake in Poblacion or Old Makati. I heard it again, in the background, while on the phone with a classmate at a wake in Malabon. Of Jesus sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, the novena prompt for a response was “Hesus ko, alang-alang sa masaganang dugo na iyong ipinawis nang manalangin ka sa Halamanan.” When Jesus was slapped on the face, “Hesus ko alang-alang sa tampal na tinanggap ng iyong kagalang-galang na mukha.” When he carried the cross on the road of bitterness, “Hesus ko alang-alang sa paglakad mo sa lansangan ng kapaitan, na ang Cruz ay iyong kababaw-babaw.” When he was stripped of his garments, “Hesus ko alang-alang sa damit mong natigmak na dugo na biglang pinaknit at hinubad sa iyong katawan ng mga tampalasan.”

Included in the novena is the Litany of the Virgin Mary that rendered, “Mother Most Chaste” as “Inang Walang Malay sa Kahalayan.” Most complicated was “Rosa Mystica,” translated as “Rosang bulaklak, na di mapuspos ng bait ng tao ang halaga” (A rose whose worth cannot be known by human reason). Tower of Ivory was rendered as “Torreng Garing” while “Singular Vessel of Devotion” became “Sisidlan ng mahal at tangi na makusaing sumunod sa Panginoong Diyos.” Mother Most Admirable became “Inang Kataka-taka.”

My Holy Week reading was “Pasyon Genealogy and Annotated Bibliography” by Rene B. Javellana, SJ, published in 1983. It lists 31 texts from the earliest extant by Gaspar Aquino de Belen “Mañga Panalañging Pactatagobilin sa Calolova nang tavong nag hihiñgalo: Ang may catha sa vican Castila ang M. R. P. Thomas de Villa Castin sa mahal na Compañia ni Iesus. At ysinalin sa vican Tagalog ni d[on] Gaspar Aquino de Belen. At ysinonod dito ang mahal na Passion ni Iesu Christong P[añginoon] Natin na tolá; at ypinananagano sa cataastaasang poong Iesus Nazareno” (1760), to the most popular that can still be bought on Shopee today being the “Pasion Henesis” because it has an account from Genesis. It is also known as “Pasion Pilapil” for Mariano Pilapil, not the author but a priest who wrote preliminaries to the text “Casaysayan nang Pasiong Mahal ni Hesucristong Panginoon Natin na Sucat Ipag-alab nang Puso nang Sinomang Babasa” (1814). Javellana provides a road map to all these old texts, a real penitence to the uninterested but engaging to the scholar.