Scribd
Upload
4K views4 pages

Task 5 Module 5

Rizal critiqued Spanish historian Morga's descriptions of Filipino culture and customs in his annotations of Morga's work. Specifically, Rizal disagreed with Morga's negative portrayals of Filipino food preferences and attitudes towards dangerous animals. Rizal pointed out that other cultures also have different preferences and traditions. He aimed to correct misconceptions about the Philippines and advocate for Filipino identity and dignity during a time of Spanish colonial rule.

Uploaded by

Mariecris Batas
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
4K views4 pages

Task 5 Module 5

Rizal critiqued Spanish historian Morga's descriptions of Filipino culture and customs in his annotations of Morga's work. Specifically, Rizal disagreed with Morga's negative portrayals of Filipino food preferences and attitudes towards dangerous animals. Rizal pointed out that other cultures also have different preferences and traditions. He aimed to correct misconceptions about the Philippines and advocate for Filipino identity and dignity during a time of Spanish colonial rule.

Uploaded by

Mariecris Batas
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

Mariecris B.

Gumiran
BSA – 2B

TASKS

Critical Reading:
Read the following excerpts from Rizal’s annotation of Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. Answer
the questions that follow.

Excerpt 1

Morga:

Their regular daily food is rice...together with boiled fish of which there is an abundance, and pork or
venison, likewise meat or buffalo or carabao. They prefer meat and fish, saltfish which begin to
decompose and smell.

Rizal’s annotation:

This is another preoccupation of the Spaniards who, like ay other nation, in the matter of food, loathe
that to which they are not accustomed or is unknown to them. The English, for example, is horrified on
seeing a Spaniards eating snails; to the Spaniard eating beefsteak is repugnant and he can’t understand
how raw beefsteak can be eaten; the Chinese who eat tahuri and shark cannot stand Roquefort cheese,
etc., etc. The fish that Morga mentions does not taste better when it is beginning to rot; all on the
contrary; it is bagoong and all those who have eaten it and tasted it know that it is not or ought not to be
rotten.

Excerpt 2

Morga:

In the rivers and streams there are ver large and small scorpions and a great number of very fierce and
cruel crocodiles which frequently get the natives from their bancas on which they ride... However much
the people may trap, catch and kill them, these reptiles hardly seem to diminishin number. For this reason,
the natives build on the border of their rivers and streams in their settlements where they bathe, traps and
fences with thick enclosures and bars of bamboo and timber within which they do their bathing and
washing, secure from these monsters which they were somehow superior to them.

Rizal’s annotation:

Perhaps for the same reason, other nations have great esteem for the lion and bear, putting them on their
shields and giving them honourable epithets. The mysterious life of the crocodile, the enormous size that
it sometimes reaches, its fatidical aspect, without counting anymore its voraciousness, must have
influenced greatly the imagination of the Malayan Filipinos.

Questions:
1. In Excerpt 1, what impression of the Filipinos do you get from reading Morga’s
description of the type of food the natives eat? Which phrase gives you this impression?

- I think Morga was implying that Filipinos at the time were so uncivilized that they
ate "rotten" food. He was probably unaccustomed to the tradition of the Filipinos
since he was from Spain, and he seemed prejudiced about the natives based only on
what he saw them eating. This phrase is where he implies his disgust on what the
Filipinos eat: "saltfish which begin to decompose and smell".

2. What is Rizal’s purpose in writing an annotation about the food preferences of the
English, Spaniards and Chinese?

- Rizal was giving examples of how other people having other cultures eat because he
was trying to point out in the annotation that people who grew up in different
environments have different ways of doing things and have different preferences of
what they like to eat. A foreigner might find what natives eat disgusting because
they've never tasted nor seen such a thing before and a native might find what
foreigners eat, disgusting, because of the same reason.

3. In Excerpt 2, how did Morga portray the Filipinos?

- Again, in Excerpt 2, we can infer that Morga was trying to belittle the Filipinos
instead of just giving an objective description of them. He was quite saying that
Filipinos were odd people who fear and, at the same time, respect the scorpions and
the crocodiles on the waters. It was like he was trying to say that "Why not just bathe
on other places? Why bathe there when there are dangerous creatures?" Perhaps
Morga was implying that Filipinos were not capable of the logic to move to other
places and just endure these creatures.

4. In Rizal’s subsequent annotation, what does he mean when he says, “Perhaps for the
same reason, other nations have great esteem for the lion and bear, putting them on their
shields and giving them honourable epithets”?

- I think Rizal was being sarcastic and mocking Morga's statement, and he was right. If
other nations were displaying heads of animals they hunted on the walls of their
houses and perform rituals on them, why should the Filipinos' treatment for the
crocodiles be any different?

5. In general, what is Rizal’s motive in writing his annotations of Morga’s work/ how does
this fit into the aims of other propagandists working for reforms during this time?

- In general, I think his motive was to give an opinion as a Filipino in writing that is
about Filipinos and disprove or criticize those that were untrue about Filipinos and
those that go against the Filipino culture and values. It fits into the aims of other
propagandists working for reforms during the time by Rizal subtly condemning the
acts and the views of the Spaniards towards the Filipino, that we were not Indios, and
just because we were different from the Spaniards did not mean we should be seen as
something inferior to the colonizers.

REFLECTION

Compare and contrast Rizal and Morga’s different views about the Filipinos and Philippine culture.

RIZAL’S VIEW MORGA’S VIEW


This fish that Morga mentioned, that cannot Their daily fare is composed of: lice crushed
be good until it begins to in wooden pillars and when cooked is called
rot, is bagoong [salted and fermented fish or morisqueta (this is the staple throughout the
shrimp paste used as a land); cooked fish, pork, venieon, mountain
sauce in Filipino cuisine] and those who buffaloes which they call carabaos, beef
have eaten it and tasted it know that it and fish which they know is best when it
neither is nor should be rotten (Rizal 1890, has started to stink (Retana 1909,174).
264).
By the Christian religion, Dr. Morga appears
Christianity was a weapon for facilitating to mean the Roman Catholic which by fire
the political and economic subjugation of and sword he would preserve in its purity in
the native. the Philippines. Nevertheless, in other lands,
notably in Flanders, these means were
Rizal emphasized that native women, ineffective to keep the church unchanged, or
unlike their European counterparts, never to maintain its supremacy, or even to hold its
lost their noble titles. It was the groom subjects.
who gave dowry to the parents because
they going to lost their precious daughter. In Morga’s time, the Philippines exported
silk to japan whence now comes the
Rizal clarified that Morga must have best quality of that merchandise.
meant sinamay. Which was woven
from abaca thread that comes from the Morga’s remark that the Filipinos like fish
banana trunks not from the leaves. better when it is commencing to turn bad
is another of those prejudices which
Spaniards like all other nations have.

Morga said that cotton was grown


extensively in practically all the islands
which the natives sold as thread and
woven fabrics to Chinese and other
foreign merchants.
SYNTHESIS
In this Module, you have studied the Annotation of Morga’s Sucesos delas Islas Filipinas. Make a
synopsis of what you have learned in this topic.

- I have learned that Jose Rizal is doing everything just to uplift the culture of
Filipinos, He will explain everything just to make the knowledge of others will be
clearer. He annotated books just to give confidence to the Filipinos who were
discriminated with others explanation. He is doing everything just to make the wrong
things become right things.

You might also like