Letizia Roxas Constantino, historian

Last week, I “met” Letizia Roxas Constantino in her Quezon City home. While I missed meeting her in person (she passed away in 2016), I “met” her through a lovingly curated exhibit of her writings set up for her 105th birthday last April. To describe the exhibit as “immersive” is an understatement. I was overwhelmed by texts in her clear, legible handwriting: notes, notebooks and scrapbooks, letters, drafts of articles and books, memos to self, family, and friends, even recipe cards, and guest lists! It struck me that there were no drawings, sketches, and doodles in any of her manuscripts, her artistic side was expressed through music. A recording of her playing the piano accompanied me as I walked through the exhibition.

I felt like a child in a candy store, not knowing where to start or where to look. Each manuscript text was trivial or irrelevant by itself, but when taken all together as the sum of its parts, the writing revealed a long life fiercely dedicated to Philippine history and the Filipino youth for whom she wrote. It was her collaboration with Renato Constantino that made the influential book “The Philippines: A Past Revisited” possible. First published in 1975, this book formed and informed me, together with two or three generations of students who learned from its pages how to see our “usable past” from a nationalist viewpoint.

In 2002, Letizia left teachers with three thoughts that remain relevant to this day. First, “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory.” Second, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” Third, “Education should make a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” From these lines alone, I asked, “Where was Letizia hiding all these years?” After this, I will never see Renato Constantino or his works the same way again. In a journal entry for June 20, 1977, Letizia wrote:

“He reads, I write.

“He thinks, I organize.

“His the forest, mine the trees.

“He’s the skeleton, mine the flesh.

“He’s the larger dimensions, mine the subsidiary insights.

“(He is inspired; I perspire.)”

Earlier, shortly before Christmas 1976, Letizia wrote: “Though R. is definitely the principal or should I say the real author, I often revise what he writes, even his opinions, but he (illegible) changes or discards what I write … It is a great responsibility for me and dangerous I think, that he should place such reliance on my views because I am poorly read and ignorant, compared to him.”

Reading this made clear to me the saying that behind every successful man, stands a woman. Of the many pieces of advice the historian Teodoro Agoncillo drilled into me, one that stood out had nothing to do with writing or research—it was the judicious and deliberate choice of a life partner. His wife, Anacleta, a physician, kept him whole and writing during the Japanese occupation. I remember telling him that they don’t make wives and partners like they used to. Would F. Sionil Jose have produced even half of his books without his wife Tessie? What about N.V.M. Gonzales without his wife Narita? E. Arsenio Manuel without Magdalena? Armando J. Malay without Paula Carolina (Lola Ayi)? Arturo Luz without Tessie? Arturo Rotor without Emma? Then we have National Artist couples: Lamberto Avellana and Daisy Hontiveros or Amado V. Hernandez and Honorata “Atang” de la Rama.

The woman need not be a wife, she can be a friend, a lover, or a mother. Looking beyond the artists and writers I knew, I turned to our late 19th-century heroes and notables. What would Andres Bonifacio be without Gregoria de Jesus? Jose Rizal was involved with about a dozen women, but the one he loved above all was Teodora Alonso, his mother. Emilio Aguinaldo had Hilaria, his first wife, but always in the background was his mother, Trinidad Famy. Would Juan Luna and Antonio Luna be born without their mother Laureana Novicio? Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo’s muse was Maria Yrritia, but his true inspiration was Maria Barbara Padilla, his mother.

Postwar Philippine presidents had first ladies in both their public and private lives, but in the background were mothers: Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and Josefa Edralin, Bongbong Marcos and Imelda Marcos, Noynoy Aquino and Corazon Aquino, Joseph Estrada and Doña Mary. For all his bluster, would Rodrigo Duterte have been a few shades better if his mother Soledad Roa were alive to twist his ear? All these leads should be enough for a history or psychology major to write a fascinating dissertation on the Oedipal dimension that shaped Philippine history.

I’m kicking myself in regret now why I didn’t ask Gilda Cordero Fernando to introduce me to Letizia Roxas Constantino, who lived across the street from her house on Panay Avenue. At the start of my career writing history, I was bashed by constipated academics who branded my work “trivial” or “tsismis.” At a low point in my life, I received a note from Letizia Constantino, unsolicited advice that encouraged me to keep writing. I never got to thank her personally for that pat on the back; this column is belated gratitude.

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