Reynaldo Ileto

Reynaldo "Rey" Clemeña Ileto (born October 3, 1946) is a Filipino historian known for his seminal work Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910 first published in 1979.[1] He is an Honorary Professor at the Australian National University and currently lectures at the Nanyang Technological University and the University of the Philippines.[2][3] Ileto specializes in Asian history, religion and society, postcolonial studies, and the government and politics of Asia and the Pacific.[2] Ileto finished his undergraduate degree at the Ateneo de Manila University and received his Ph.D. in Southeast Asian History at Cornell University in 1975.[2]

Ileto is known for his interdisciplinary approach combining history, literature, anthropology, cultural studies, and politics.[3] In 2003, Ileto received a Fukuoka academic prize for his scholarship.[4]

His father is former Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary and Vice Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Rafael Ileto.[3]

Pasyon and Revolution

In this work, Ileto explored the possibility of understanding the 1896 Philippine Revolution and its peasant following, and subsequently the various popular peasant movements that emerged, through the pasyon, a widely popular religious document narrating in verse Christ’s suffering and eventual redemption. The document’s structure and content [i.e., a pattern of suffering and sacrifice ending in Christ's resurrection, from kadiliman (darkness) towards liwanag (light), from bayang sawi (forsaken land) towards a lost Eden], Ileto argued, may have shaped how the common tao understood the Revolution—in effect, providing the Christianized peoples a "language for articulating its own values, ideals, and hopes of liberation."[5][6] Hence the Christian religion, once an instrument of the Spanish colonizer for the pacification of the islands' inhabitants became the means (through the syncretic, indigenous pasyon) toward the emancipation of the native people.[4]

The book explores the cases of Hermano Pule and the Cofradía de San José (Confraternity of St. Joseph), a millenarian peasant movement in Luzon; revolutionary leader Andres Bonifacio and the Katipunan in 1896 (the leaders of the Katipunan having used a pasyon rhetoric to attract followers to the nascent secret society); Emilio Aguinaldo's elite-led Republican Revolution; Macario Sakay's Tagalog Republic and continued resistance to "benevolent assimilation;" and later peasant leader Felipe Salvador and the Santa Iglesia struggle in the early years of American occupation.

The work challenged the dominant narrative of an ilustrado or elite-led Revolution [i.e., kinship ties, patron-client relationships, utang-na-loob (debt of gratitude); in other words, the pricipalía or the provincial elites and their relationship with their poorer, dependent clients as the "dominant modes of mobilization"] by using an ignored “master text” such as the pasyon which offered an alternative reading of the Revolution. Ileto advanced a "history from below" approach, emphasizing the agency of the common man, and sought for an exploration of an indigenous rationality to discover a wider "possibility of meanings" in Philippine history.[7]

Some historians such as Milagros C. Guerrero challenged the unconventional approach of the work particularly in its use of non-traditional sources such as literary documents, poems, including religious folk traditions and rituals, previously ignored and marginalised in Philippine historiography.[6] In her arguments, Guerrero emphasized the importance of the socioeconomic structures and patterns prevalent at the time such as the spread of ilustrado and secular thought, the entrenched patron-client relationship, and the linguistic Catholic unity among both ilustrado and masa at the time of the Revolution.[6]

Published Books
  • Magindanao, 1860-1888: The Career of Datu Utto of Buayan. Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Series #82. (1971)
  • Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. Ateneo de Manila University Press. (1979)
  • Filipinos and their Revolution: Event, Discourse, and Historiography. (1998)
  • Knowledge and Pacification: On the U.S. Conquest and the Writing of Philippine History. Ateneo de Manila University Press. (2017)

See also

Books and Articles
  • Puaksom, D. (2017). Rēnandō ʻIlētō: mūanchon khon chanlāng prawattisāt hǣng chāt læ khwāmrū bǣp ʻānānikhom [Reynaldo Ileto: Lower Classes, National History and Colonial Knowledges]. ฺBangkok: Sommadhi. (in Thai) ISBN 9786167196787

Filipino Scholars

References
  1. Ocampo, Ambeth R. "Forgetting as part of remembering". opinion.inquirer.net. Retrieved 2019-07-19.
  2. Director (Research Services Division). "Dr Reynaldo C. Ileto". researchers.anu.edu.au. Retrieved 2019-07-19.
  3. Ileto, Reynaldo Clemeña, author. Knowledge and pacification : on the U.S. conquest and the writing of Philippine history. ISBN 9789715507783. OCLC 993630456.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. "Reynaldo C. ILETO｜Laureates". Fukuoka Prize. Retrieved 2019-07-22.
  5. Ileto, Reynaldo Clemeña. (1997, ©1979). Pasyon and revolution : popular movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910. Ateneo de Manila University Press. ISBN 9715502334. OCLC 39911134. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  6. Guerrero, Milagros C. (1981). "Review: Understanding Philippine Revolutionary Mentality". Philippine Studies. 29 (2): 240–266.
  7. Ileto, Reynaldo C. (1982). "Critical Issues in 'Understanding Philippine Revolutionary Mentality'". Philippine Studies. 30. No. 1: 92–119.
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