Tag / History

by buglaswritersjournal

T. Valentino Sitoy Jr.’s “Dumaguete in Historical Perspective”

Right up to the very end, the historian Tranquilino Valentino S. Sitoy Jr., who passed away last 8 June 2025, was conscious about finishing some of the many historiographic projects he had meant to accomplish in his lifetime, an indefatigable figure of scholarship and local history. But for what he had already accomplished, his work is already more than enough, a lot of which have contributed to a greater understanding of not just local history but also church history.

Bill to friends and family, Dr. Sitoy was a theologian, a teacher, and a historian who wrote extensively about church history in the Philippines. He was born on 5 July 1939 in Claveria, Misamis Oriental, where he graduated valedictorian from Misamis Oriental National High School in 1954. He soon attended the University of the Philippines in Diliman, earning a degree in electrical engineering in 1957.

He was, however, fascinated with theology, and soon moved to Dumaguete and studied at the Divinity School of Silliman University, graduating in 1963. He began teaching at Silliman University, but pursued further studied abroad. He would eventually earn his M.A. in Religion from the Andover Newton Theological School in 1965, and his Ph.D. at The University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1972.

Between 1963 to 1991, he would become Dean of the Divinity School at Silliman University, and also OIC Vice President for Academic Affairs—a period of time in his life that was of extraordinary ferment, a time when he would manage to churn out important books on church history, including British Evangelical Missions to Spain in the Ninetheenth Century [1972], A History of Christianity in the Philippines: The Initial Encounter [1985], and Comity and Unity: Ardent Aspirations of Six Decades of Protestantism in the Philippines (1901-1961) [1989], becoming an important voice chronicling Protestantism in the country. He would also write, together with fellow literary giants Crispin Maslog and Edilberto K. Tiempo, a new history of their alma mater, Silliman University 1901-1976 [published in 1977], in celebration of the university’s diamond jubilee.

In 1996, after leaving Silliman University, he began teaching at Trinity Theological College in Singapore. He would also become visiting professor/scholar to Overseas Ministries Study Center in Ventnor, New Jersey.; International Christian University in Tokyo; Parkin-Wesley Theological College in Adelaide; and the Union Theological Seminary in New York, as well as Calvin College and Theological Seminary in Seoul. He was Area Dean for the Philippines of the South East Asia Graduate School of Theology. Then, after his Singapore stint, he became Graduate School Dean and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Negros Oriental State University in 1999-2004, until his retirement. He was Metrobank Foundation Inc. Outstanding Teacher of the Philippines (College Division) Awardee in 2002.

Other books include Several Springs, One Stream: The United Church of Christ in the Philippines [1992], and an unpublished history of the Silliman University Divinity School, which he finished in 2022. These works clearly show that the bulk of his scholarship was on church history, but he actually also made a name for himself as a passionate historiographer of Dumaguete City and Negros Oriental. For the publication of Kabilin: Legacies of a Hundred Years of Negros Oriental, edited by Merlie Alunan and Bobby Flores-Villasis in 1993, he contributed a long history of the province from the pre-colonial period until the 1990s. For the Hugkat Journal, he contributed another long piece, this time on the history of Dumaguete, where his assertions about how Dumaguete got its name is probably most interesting, as it differs from the more popular version.

Below is an excerpt from that article, titled “Dumaguete in Historical Perspective”:

It is the general assumption that Dumaguete derived its name from the Visayan verb dagit, meaning “to snatch,” or better yet, to “swoop down and seize,” as when a hawk swoops down and seizes a prey. This same line of thought assumes that “Dumaguete” was derived from the presumed fact that it was where Moro raiding parties used to seize local inhabitants into slavery. The common belief is that its original name was Dumaguit, which the Spaniards transformed into “Dumaguete.”

There are at least three reasons, however, which pose serious difficulties with this idea.

Firstly, according to Spanish records, there were only three villages in Dumaguete in 1565, two along the shore, one with about 25 houses, and another with 50. The third was situated on an elevation visible from the sea and had another 50 houses. With about 100 houses in the area and about 400 or at most 500 inhabitants, who were so situated as to easily escape into the interior, the area did not seem a likely place for habitual seizure of captives. In any case, if it was a place where raiders were wont to snatch local inhabitants, why was it not rather more appropriately called dalagitan or dagitanan.

Secondly, the term dumaguit is an admiring ascription to the actor of the verb dagit. Was it in honor then of the valiant Moro commander, whoever he was, whose process his Christianized victims decided to celebrate with a glowing epithet? At best, this is unconscionably inappropriate; at worst, it is unfathomably absurd.

Thirdly, there is the presumption that there were frequent recurrent raids, so that in time the place came to be given this name as a result. But a Spanish Augustinian record says that one of their members, a Fray Francisco Oliva de Santa Maria, O.S.A., was assigned in “1599” to “Dumaguete,” though later that year he was transferred to the Augustinian’s Panay missions when Negros was handed over to the secular clergy from the cathedral of Cebu.

Yet the Moro raids against Christian settlements in the Visayas and Luzon began only that very same year, 1599, when a Maguindanaon force—3,000 strong—in more than 50 large vessels, attacked the Visayas in revenge for Spanish incursions into Islamic territory in Mindanao. The same marauders returned in 1600, and again in 1602. In annotating Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, Jose Rizal stated that the 1599 raid was “the first piracy of the inhabitants of the South recorded in Philippine history.”1 How can Dumaguete be named as a result of Moro raids, when the Moro raids began in 1599, and in 1599 Dumaguete was already known by the Spaniards as “Dumaguit” or “Dumaguete”?

But there is a Spanish document of 1582, the Relación de las yslas Filipinas written by Captain Miguel de Loarca,2 the Spanish encomendero of Oton, Panay, which mentions the personal name of “Dumaguet.” The pertinent passage reads: “[Q]uando los prinçipales desçendientes de dumaguet … muere El principal de aquella mesma muerte matan a un esclauo el mas desuenturado qe pueden allar para qe los sirua en el otro mundo y siempre procuran, que sea este esclauo estranjero y no natural porqe Realmente no son nada crueles.”

In English, this 16-century Spanish passage reads: “When the chiefs descended from Dumaguet die, a slave is made to die by the same death. They chose the most wretched slave they can find to serve the chief in the other world. They always chose a foreign, not a native, slave, for they are really not at all cruel.”

The phrase prinçipales descendientes de dumaguet (“chiefs descended from Dumaguet”) seems to imply that Dumaguet himself was a great Visayan chief, who seems to have been a folk-hero honored by the epithet “Dumaguit,” and this perhaps because of his prowess in attack with such fury and swiftness that he always succeeded in seizing hapless captives for slavery.

Moreover, he must have lived several generations before 1582 for Loarca to be able to speak of los prinçipales descendientes de dumaguet. If so, then “Dumaguete” does not then carry with it a sense of weakness, ignominy, and defeat. Rather, it is a tribute to the might, valor, and greatness of an ancient Visayan chief who continued and deserved to be long remembered despite the passage of generations.

If so, then Dumagueteños can regard the name of their city with lively disposition and even with justifiable pride, and do not have to paradoxically celebrate the prowess of an enemy chieftain, whoever he was, who had in fact inflicted painful and ignominious defeat on early Dumagueteños.

by buglaswritersjournal

Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez’s History of Negros Oriental

Dumaguete historiographer Caridad Aldecoa-Rodriguez, who died in 2011, played a crucial role in making Negros Oriental one of the country’s most historically introspective localities. A product of the strong historiographic legacy of Silliman University, she stood out for her large body of history books on the province and its capital, making her one of the first “local” historians in a country where historiography, and history teaching, has largely centered on national history.

To wit, she wrote detailed histories of the province during the American Period, during the Japanese Occupation, and during the Third Republic. She also took a look at how the province participated during the Revolution against Spain, principally through the figure of Don Diego de la Viña, whose contributions to local history was mostly forgotten until Aldecoa-Rodriguez started writing about him and made him a central figure in the province’s late 19th century story—which made Negros Oriental one of the few provinces outside of Luzon to look into its role during this crucial period. This four-part collection of the history of Negros Oriental, from the Revolution to the Republic Period, is her magnum opus—a  project largely commissioned by the Negros Oriental Provincial Government under then Governor Emilio Macias II, and was sponsored by the Toyota Foundation.

Born in Dumaguete City in 22 March 1924, Aldecoa-Rodriguez pursued an academic career with a passion for history that led her to both the University of the Philippines and Silliman University, where she spent most of her teaching career. She served as a long-time faculty member and later became Chair of the History and Political Science Department at Silliman, where she mentored generations of scholars and public servants, including Earl Jude Cleope and Carlos Magtolis Jr. Her pedagogical approach was marked by a deep respect for archival research and oral history, which she taught with rigor and enthusiasm.

Her pathbreaking history of Negros Oriental—Negros Oriental and the Philippine Revolution (1983), Negros Oriental From American Rule to the Present: A History (1990, three volumes), and History of Dumaguete City (2001)—was a pioneering work in documenting the region’s transformation from Spanish colonial times to the modern era. Her essays and monographs—often published in regional journals and anthologies—remain key references for researchers and local historians. She was also instrumental in establishing local historical societies and organizing heritage preservation efforts in Dumaguete City and beyond.

In Handulantaw, fellow historian Carlos Magtolis Jr. remembers her love for her students and her teaching: “Her unfailing kindness and generosity made [her] a source of joy to all who were under her,” he wrote in his profile of her. “As a professor of history, she had displayed a remarkable mastery of the subject and skills in teaching it. She had a flair for the dramatic and possessed an imaginative mind, which made teaching and studying history easy and very interesting. Listening to her was like watching a movie, like a war picture or a romantic and dramatic movie. Gone With the Wind easily comes to mind. She would narrate and re-enact very interesting scenes from the Battle of Waterloo, or the American Civil War, or the Japanese occupation of Silliman campus, or her very own war experiences. All her stories, grippingly told, made her students enthusiastic for the day’s lessons. Every day, she would greet with a smiling face all those who entered the classroom quietly and politely—but she would stare angrily at the latecomers and follow them until they reached their respective seats.

“Superior service marked her work,” Prof. Magtolis continues. “She was a superb teacher, skilled in pedagogy—but above all, she was a teacher of students and not merely of history subjects. Her Christian witness was an integral part of her work and a vital force in her life. She joined Silliman University with a deep devotion to the ideals of the institution and with a rich background of teaching experience. During her years at Silliman, from 1947 to 1989, she was an indefatigable worker and took her work seriously, and became a model for many of us. In her work as historian, Rodriguez was an exemplary researcher and writer.”

Her name is also listed down in the 1974 Directory of Selected Manpower in the Philippines, and in Reference Asia’s Who’s Who of Men and Women of Achievement in 1989. For her achievements, she was named an Outstanding Sillimanian Awardee in 2001, Negros Oriental Centennial Endeavor Awardee in 1990, and Outstanding Dumagueteño Awardee in 1998. Dumagueteños have her to thank for modeling a deep and abiding dedication to the education of young people, for her excellent guidance and support, and for her impeccable record as local historian, history professor, administrator, author and writer of history books.

But beyond her academic contributions, she was also a committed civic leader, involved in cultural advocacy and historical preservation. Her legacy thus lives on in the scholars she inspired and the institutions she helped build. She exemplified the scholar as public intellectual, rooted in place yet mindful of the larger national and global context. Her life’s work continues to shape how the Visayan story is told—faithfully, passionately, and with unflinching regard for truth.

by buglaswritersjournal

Justin Jose Bulado’s “We All Must Work, Fight, or Starve”

In the quiet steadiness of Dumaguete historiographer Justin Jose Bulado, we find the unlikely poet of the archives—the kind of scholar who listens for the murmurs beneath the dust. Born on 18 October 1989, in the city that would shape both his sensibility and his vocation, history for him, from the very beginning of his vocation, was never simply the catalog of dates and decrees. It began, as all obsessions must, with a story told by a grandfather—his, a boy in wartime Manila, remembering the Japanese occupation not through the lens of textbooks, but through the sharp scent of fear and the soft ache of hunger. These recollections became the seed of his own historical imagination.

Years later, while most of his generation were seduced by the immediacy of the digital and the disposable, Justin found his own cinema in the sepia. For example, watching HBO’s Band of Brothers did not romanticize war for him—but it made him curious about how ordinary people endure a catastrophe like a devastating war. He followed that curiosity to Silliman University, where he would complete his BA, MA, and PhD—all in history, the university’s corridors becoming both his archive and his crucible. By 2020, he had earned his doctorate in Social Science.

But if there is a word that best defines Justin’s work, it is “local.” In the age of global histories, Bulado’s gaze remains grounded in the soil of Negros Oriental. His scholarly work has revolved around the Japanese occupation of the province—its collaborators and resistors, its hunger and survival, its silences and its hauntings. He writes, as he teaches, from a conviction that the stories of small places illuminate the great movements of history. The world war, filtered through Dumaguete or Siquijor, becomes less abstract and more intimate: a neighbor’s betrayal, a family’s starvation, a child’s lost innocence.

This is what the best local historians do: they remind us that the grand narratives are composed of a thousand small tragedies. Yet Justin is also aware of the danger in this intimacy. “Some people,” he warns, “attempt to write local history by inventing stories or glorifying relatives without basis.” This, he insists, is mythmaking, not scholarship. History demands evidence, not nostalgia. The work of the historian, then, is not to embroider but to excavate—to find, beneath the gossip and legend, the fragile truth that time has tried to erase.

In this sense, his historical essays and journal articles are not mere academic exercises; they are acts of reclamation. His paper “We All Must Work, Fight, or Starve,” published in Philippine Studies in 2023, is emblematic of this. It reconstructs the wartime food crisis in Negros Oriental, showing how hunger became both a weapon and a wound. Another article, a forthcoming one on Japanese atrocities under Colonel Satoshi Oie, has taken him nearly a year of painstaking research to complete—a year spent listening to the ghosts of the past whispering through military reports and faded testimonies. For Justin, writing history is not about being first or being famous. It is, he says, “driven by curiosity and a desire to piece together narratives that have not yet been told.”

To write local history, he believes, is to swim against the current of forgetfulness. It is to labor over scarce sources, to make meaning out of fragments. The difficulty is real: archives are incomplete, memories are frail, and politics often distort the record. Yet this is where the historian’s artistry comes in. The challenge is not only to reconstruct but to interpret, to find the connective tissue between a forgotten town and the larger body of the nation. “Wars have no real victors, nobody wins in wars,” Justin regularly reminds his students. “At the end of the day, it is the civilians who suffer the most.” This moral clarity gives his scholarship both its edge and its empathy.

He amply demonstrates this hardship in his article, “’We All Must Work, Fight, or Starve’: The Food Supply Problem in Negros Oriental during the Japanese Occupation,” published in Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints in 2023:

Dumaguete’s supply of milk was largely obtained from Cebu, and when Cebu fell to the Japanese forces, the supply was cut off. Fortunately, Bais Sugar Central, the largest producer of sugar in Negros Oriental, helped the people of Dumaguete by providing “one hundred cases of their milk,” most of which were rationed to “sick or very small children.” Soon enough, the stocks of flour would run out, primarily due to hoarding. There was a time before the Japanese occupation when the people of Dumaguete did not have a steady supply of bread. Later, it was found out that around a hundred sacks of flour were kept in a certain storehouse in Dumaguete. It was a case of hoarding—perhaps the flour was going to be sold in the black market in the future for a higher price. Eventually, the owner of the storehouse begrudgingly decided to sell the flour, and it was good enough for a few weeks of bread for the townspeople.

It is easy to see why, in 2023, he was chosen as part of the Emerging Scholars Workshop of the Jenny Craig Institute of War and Democracy at the National World War II Museum in Louisiana. Among the North Americans, he was the lone Asian voice—a historian from Dumaguete bringing the war in Negros to an international table. It was not just a career highlight; it was a moment of historical symmetry: a scholar from a once-occupied nation reclaiming his place in the world’s remembrance of war.

What, then, does Bulado teach us about writing local history? That it is a moral act as much as an intellectual one. That to write about one’s town is to love it enough to tell its truth, however inconvenient. That documentation is resistance—against amnesia, against myth, against the lazy habit of thinking that the stories of small places do not matter. Local history, in his practice, becomes a form of justice.

He plans, in the long run, to turn his dissertation on wartime collaboration into a book, alongside a collected volume of essays. But his heart, he insists, remains in teaching—at Negros Oriental State University, where he has found his equilibrium between the classroom and the archive. He teaches not just historical method but historical ethics, the discipline of doubt, the humility of evidence. In a world drowning in misinformation, that may be the most radical lesson of all.

And so, perhaps this is how one should end a story about a historian: not with accolades, though he has many, but with the image of a man at his desk at dusk, the computer light falling on yellowed documents, the city outside quieting into night. In that silence, he listens—for the echoes of wartime Negros Oriental, for the footsteps of people history forgot, for the pulse of a local past refusing to die. Because in the end, history is not merely the study of what happened. It is the ongoing act of remembering—and in Justin Bulado’s hands, remembering becomes a form of devotion.