CANO, LEROY AND THE BLACK LEGEND

In Gloria Cano’s article “LeRoy’s The Americans in the Philippines and the History of Spanish Rule in the Philippines, she posited the view that LeRoy’s opus magnum suffers from the so-called Legenda Negra bias. Cano supported her claim through several textual evidences found in the works and letters of LeRoy.

LeRoy committed the negligence in writing history, namely source clipping. Cano states: In order to demonize the Spanish colonial rule, he (LeRoy) did not hesitate to omit important Spanish, American and Philippine texts that contradicted the picture he wanted to portray. He selected his bibliography carefully in order to present to an American audience a particular construction of Philippine history.

In The Americans, LeRoy predetermined his intention to focus on the negative stereotypes associated with the Spanish rule, as Cano took note. He consulted Bartoleme delas Casas’ Brevissima relacion de la destruccion de las Indias. LeRoy suppressed important sources that are against his proposition, which is anti-Spanish. This particular work of LeRoy  was describe by LeRoy himself to be strongly colored. Cano understood this as an admission of a misrepresentation or distortion of facts.

LeRoy was able to establish a line between the illustrados and himself, during his stay in the country. Such was aimed to gather data from these members of the enlightened class (illustrado) such as Leon Ma. Guerrero, Clemente J. Zulueta, Trnidad Pardo de Tavera, Jose Albert, Isabelo delos Reyes and Dominador Gomez.

One principal source of anti-Spanish rule data are the newspapers published in the time of the revolution, namely Filipinas ante Europa, La Solidaridad, and La Independencia. LeRoy considered too these, as mentioned in one of his letters to Isabelo delos Reyes. However, LeRoy would only be using La Solidaridad in his work to minimize the Spanish reformism. The other two newspapers were not used by LeRoy as these two were critical to the American occupation and their agenda. He used La Solidaridad as this was a useful for his construction of an evil Spain.  Another case in point is the omission of “Filipino” newspapers that emerged in Manila during the Spanish times (Diariong Tagalog 1882, La Opinion 1887, El Ilocano 1889, El Resumen 1889). These newspapers ushered in lively discussion of politics, religion, medicine, etc. They were able to do so through the policia de imprenta o Gullon in 1883 by the liberal government. By omitting these newspapers as his sources, LeRoy successfully portrayed the Spanish censorship and her backwardness, highlighting in the process the American modernity.  

Cano further described the work of LeRoy as a result of decontextualization. One example Cano stated is the ‘bringing in arguments from the beginning of the nineteenth century and extrapolating them to the end of Spanish rule, e.g. 1810’s undeveloped state of the Philippines applied to be still true until 1898; 1868 reforms to 1898. The inept development and reforms in the Philippines in the early times that continued, as it appeared in LeRoy’s work, to the latter part of Spanish, supported LeRoy position that Spanish reforms were dead letter, useless, and ineffective. Reforms by the Spanish government in the Philippines appeared to be made but never enforced.

Cano concluded that LeRoy’s considered opus magnum The Americans in the Philippines suppressed important works that contradicted or undermined his (pro American) line of argument. Through such action, he was able to establish a tension between a medieval and decrepit Spanish rule and liberal and modern America. Thus, the black legend regarding the Spanish occupation in the Philippines commenced, through suppressions and omission of truths, iniquities detested by America but not in warfare. 

Using Roland dela Rosa’s Historical Hermeneutic, it can be said that Cano’s conclusion on LeRoy’s The Americans is a valid conclusion. Leroy committed source clipping intentional in order to achieved an anti-Spanish literature, thus depriving his own studies with pivot sources that could revealed a truthful account of the Spanish rule. Consequently, he decontextualized a particular event in its original context; in this case the Spanish reforms of late 19^th century. LeRoy did not truthfully understand and interpreted the events he was investigating. He did not trace these events’ intrinsic relations to other events. Thus he did not properly locate them in their historico-cultral context, presenting a distorted image of the Spanish regime in the Philippines.