The most notable of good Spanish influences was the Spanish Cortes or Parliament of 1812 when it promulgated the Cadiz Constitution.
Filipinos were invited as delegates. The first Philippine delegates were Pedro Perez de Tagle and Jose Manuel Coretto who took their oath of office in Madrid. The Cadiz Constitution was officially implemented in Manila soon after.
According to Wikipedia, it established the principles of universal male suffrage, national sovereignty,constitutional monarchy and freedom of the press, and supported land reform and free enterprise.
It also dealt with policies on Spain’s colonies including the Philippines. It issued a decree “granting all its colonies representation as provinces in the Spanish Cortes through deputies chosen by the various capital cities.” This can be said to antedate the contemporary push for a parliamentary federal system states by Bayanko for the Philippines.”
Here is the report on what happened in the Philippines under the Cadiz Constitution.
“Governor General Manuel Gonzales Aguilar called for an election of Manila officials which resulted in the selection of Don Ventura de los Reyes, a wealthy merchant and member of the Royal Corps of Artillery of Manila, as the deputy. The Vigan-born Don Ventura de los Reyes was a son of poor Ilocano parents. He took part in the Ilocos revolt led by Diego Silang in 1762, but later on engaged in the vegetable and indigo business. He was one of the delegates who signed the Constitution but it was only after a year that those in Manila knew about its decrees.
One of the more important creeds embodied in this constitution was the exemption of the natives from paying tributes and rendering public services based on its equality clause. The natives conviction that they should exercise their rights as established by the Cadiz Constitution, created a problem which compelled the governor of the islands to issue an edict on Feb. 8, 1814, explaining the extent of the benefits bestowed by the Constitution.
It is important to note that it was a liberal constitution which vested sovereignty in the people, recognized the equality of all mean and the individual liberty of the citizen, and granting the right of suffrage. But it also provided for a hereditary monarchy and for Catholicism as the state religion.
Not surprisingly, Filipino constitutionalists of the time were more aware of the tenets of the Cadiz Constitution. It can be said that the first attempts for a system of government for the Philippines was parliamentary federal patterned after Spain. Even then there was a partiality of parliamentary government.
It is a pity that not enough study has been made of this crucial period from Spanish to American culture. A useful resource for such studies is the cinema, especially the early struggle of Filipino film makers.
One such movie, really a telenovela is Secreto de Confesion. It was directed by Fausto Galauran and produced by Don Danon. It was written by Manuel de Amechazurria and among its stars were Armando Villa, Rosa Maria, Nita Farias and others. I am especially interested in this film because it was distributed by Parlatone Hispano Filipino with majority shares owned by my late father, Raymundo F. Navarro. I would be grateful for any information on whatever happened to the film. It will be included in a book I am writing about my father’s role in Filipino film making. There were other stockholders, surprise, surprise among them was a Jose Cojuangco. Later, Parlatone Hispano Filipino became a major film producer and funded most of the best films directed by Jose Nepomuceno who is considered the father of Philippine Movies.
“Secreto de Confesión was the first Filipino film in the Spanish language, which was presented at the time as “la primera película hablada y cantada en español producida en Filipinas” (the first film spoken and sung in Spanish in the Philippines)” according to Wikipedia.
Parlatone Hispano Filipino did a good job of distributing Secreto de Confesión worldwide. It was a box office hit in the United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and several other Spanish speaking countries in the American continent. It was also shown in Macau, Hong Kong, Spain and Portugal.
Other Filipino films in Spanish soon followed the success of Secreto de Confesion. Among them wereLas Dulces Mestizas, Muñecas de Manila or El Milagro del Nazareno de Quiapo. According to Wikipedia, these later telenovelas “had an even greater success at the box office, and started to create international distribution channels for the Philippine film industry spoken in Spanish.”
Unfortunately, copies of the film were lost or destroyed during the US bombing of Manila. There are only copies of five pre-war Filipino movies, none of them in Spanish. (CNP: Again I would be grateful for any reader of this column to come forward with information on this films.)
A Tagalog version, produced years later, was screened after the end of World War II in 1945 in major cities throughout the Philippine archipelago, but with very limited box office success.
“Guillermo Gómez Rivera, Spanish-speaking Filipino writer and academic, director of the prestigiousAcademia Filipina de la Lengua Española (Philippine Academy of the Spanish Language), worked to recover this film in the memory of the Filipino film industry.” (Wikipedia)
According to cinema historians, the cinema of the Philippines (Filipino: Pelikulang Pilipino or Sine Pilipino) began with the introduction of the first moving pictures to the country on January 1, 1897 at the Salón de Pertierra in Manila.
The following year, local scenes were shot on film for the first time by a Spaniard, Antonio Ramos, using the Lumiere Cinematograph. Early filmmakers and producers in the country were mostly wealthy enterprising foreigners and expatriates.
But on Sept. 12, 1919, a silent feature film broke the grounds for Filipino filmmakers. Dalagang Bukid (Country Maiden), a movie based on a popular musical play, was the first movie made and shown by Filipino filmmaker José Nepomuceno who later made other films for Parlatone Hispano Filipino.
The formative years of Philippine cinema, started from the 1930s. “Scripts and characterizations in filmscame from popular theatre and familiar local literature. Nationalistic films were also quite popular, although they were labeled as being too subversive.” There is much to learn of our history from films of those days.
