Cracks in the Parchment Curtain
• A reference to the “iron curtain” and “bamboo curtain,” referring to the Soviet Union
and to China, respectively.
• State control of information in these states. For the Philippines, there is the
“parchment curtain,” where the Spanish regime used their “official” documents to
prevent modern Filipinos from forming a clear picture of their past.
• Teodoro A. Agoncillo: it will never be possible to write a real history of the Filipino
people under Spain because the colonial government enjoyed a monopoly on the
production of source materials.
• The cracks refer to fleeting glimpses of Filipinos and their reactions to Spanish
dominion. These insights do not generally appear in the official histories.
Some examples:
• Juan Salcedo’s hojas de servicios or “service record,” which is a collection of sworn
testimonies to a man’s service to the King (for some personal reward or pension).
The procedure was for a notary public to swear in a number of witnesses and ask
each of them a series of set questions about the actual deeds of the person involved.
• Notarized document of 18 April 1571, formalizing Legazpi’s occupation of Manila.
• Origin of the word “Igorot.” It was found that their existence and characteristics
were known for some time before the time of writing of one of the documents found.
Insights/Reaction to Spanish dominion:
• From the hojas de servicios and the notarized document of 1571, it was shown that
the native Filipinos back then were very much against or hostile to the Spanish
occupation. The accounts show both the defenses and offenses that the Filipinos
have made against the Spaniards during this period.
• These accounts aren’t really highlighted in official histories, but are available to us
as “cracks in the parchment curtains.”
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