History

“…We must make it the constant job of publicist to write the history of the present day, and to try to write it in such a way that our chronicles will give the greatest possible help to the direct participants in the movement and to the heroic proletarians there, on the scene of action…”
- Revolutionary Days Vol. 8, p. 104

All throughout the Philippine history, we have been gravely affected by our colonizers. These people have tarnished, if not destroyed, our mindsets. From the way we think, the way we talk, down to the way we present ourselves in the community. What is so strange at this is that we have allowed them just enough time to infiltrate our culture that much of how we perceive this culture and the history that comes along with it is ambiguous altogether. That even as they have lifted their hands upon us, we are still and for ever bonded with their lip service—their ability to seemingly swoon us off out feet so we give them the opportunity of thinking for us, and not truly about us.

And that is where we have been all these years. We have been listening to the pulpit, and the people it has shaken its ground upon. We have allowed every waking day for these people to take hold of our tongues and the stories we must remember. It took us three hundred and thirty three years to remember what has been pinned on our foreheads for so long. And it was not enough at that because somehow we have not in fact swallowed down our throats our real identity. Who the Filipinos truly are.

We speak of the people who have directly participated in pulling our identity out of the cliff. The people who have untimely lost their lives for freedom and dignity. The people who have experience the daily struggles of life, and how they cannot seem to sleep without fixing what has been broken the whole time. These people are the true heroes. These people are the true Filipinos. These are the people we have to keep our pens writing about. The people whose stories we are to remember.

- de Ocampo