In 1980, a book “Glimpses in History of Early Cebu” written by Lina Quimat, a newspaperwoman and president of the Cebu Historical Society, was published. Her book presented facts that challenged the conventional history presented to the Filipinos by foreigners. CEBUpedia is reproducing the first few page of her book, and may this enlighten the present generation:
“While Sugbu was a very progressive port as early as the first century A.D. writers of long ago in the country failed to keep their written records because the Spaniards of long ago destroyed all of them so that so that no trace of our importance would be known to us. To the Spaniards, it was important that the natives of the Western Island were ignorant of their greatness. Even contemporary times have historical and cultural treasures of Cebu destroyed by non-Cebuanos. The Parian Church, the Recoletos Church was demolished by the Recollect Fathers and on its site was built the Colegio de San Jose; an old brick house, a typical residence of Cebuanos long ago was destroyed by Cardinal Julio Rosales and on its site the Caritas building now stands; several brick residences were destroyed by wars; and the Church and Convent of Señor Santo Niño was almost wiped out also had not protests against the destructions been already bitter.
“The seemingly uneventful years of Pre-Spanish Philippines, particularly Cebu, would tend to show earnest researchers that there was then peace and prosperity of the people in these islands of ours. As a saying goes: A HAPPY COUNTRY HAS NO HISTORY. Truly, history records wars, pestilence, tyranny, sickness and poverty and usually makes heroes of those who fought against these kinds of wretchedness in their lives. Places without these human calamities never get into historical records; nothing is written about peoples and nations during their days of plenty and peace. And in what is now the Philippines only progressive trading was mentioned about Cebu in the early days by the truthful, unprejudiced authors and writers who were not necessarily historians while the chroniclers of the hungry men who came demanding the natives of their dignity and prosperity and destroying all that were good in them, wrote otherwise.
“When the United States took control of the Philippines which Cebu is a part in the 1900’s, the U.S. government made a research work on just what kind of people were then the Filipinos because they never believed in what the Spaniards presented to introduce us. A team of researchers headed by Dr. Emma Helen Blair and James Alexander Robertson worked to know more accurately just what kind of people the Filipinos were and all that these researchers did was translate into English all the Spanish documents and records of the Spanish travels to our lands which were properly and legally notarized by the Spanish government lawyers. And these researchers produced the 55 volumes of books about the Philippine Islands.” (To be continued)