A scrapbook on Philippine history by a Spanish author

MANILA, Philippines - Old newspapers record the changes in our history in a vivid way, as they happen, providing us with a unique sense of its immediacy, according to reviews of a recently launched book titled Front Pages of Philippine History.

Written by veteran Spanish journalist Jose “Pepe” Rodriguez, the book was formally launched last Sept. 30 at the Writers Bar, Raffles and Fairmont Hotel Makati. Prominent writers and journalist colleagues of the author attended the event.

“It is a ‘hard-copy’ of history...not an interpretation,” Rodriguez insists. “Historians, researchers, and students can make use of (the material) in understanding the transformation of a people and nation — from a colony to a republic, to dictatorship and democratic restoration.”

Rodriguez “did not suppress any relevant facts or distort them in the reporting,” agrees Teodoro L. Locsin Jr., well-known columnist and friend of Rodriguez. “He did not close his eyes to truth about both sides in the 1986 Philippine People Power Revolution, but he knew which side had the overwhelming moral advantage and there he stood, where it was dangerous to be, even as a journalist.”  

“Designed to look like a 19th century scrapbook, it is a book-lover’s delight,” says Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, historian.

“A uniquely useful book,” is how journalist Vergel O. Santos describes the handsomely illustrated tome, “something only someone with his professional and cultural background — once Manila bureau chief of the Spanish news agency EFE and director of Instituto Cervantes — could have conceived and done justice to.”

Historian and Jesuit priest Jose Arcilla, on the other hand, says that historians and journalists both “satisfy the human need to know and be in control, not just be the toy of whimsical fate or doom.”

Rodriguez, who is also the author of Cronicas and Philippine First Ladies Portraits, has also won the praise of Nobel Prize Winner in Literature Mario Vargas Llosa, who lauds the book for its “rigorous investigation of Philippine history” and for its many surprises.

A long-time Manila correspondent of Agencia EFE, Rodriguez was once president of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) and the Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC). He is married to Filipina portraitist Lulu Coching, daughter of the recently named National Artist for the Visual Arts Francisco Coching.