Introduction to "Mag-inang Mahirap"

In the 1950s, when I was a child who didn’t know how to read and write yet, I remember our mother reading to me and my siblings. It was an after-lunch ritual. Children must have an afternoon nap so they’d grow faster. To put us to sleep, our mother read aloud to us.

Sounds funny, doesn’t it? I do the same thing with my grandkids. I read to them to put them to sleep.

I don’t remember growing up on fairy tales. Instead of the usual children’s books, I remember our mother reading to us illustrated versions of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

She also read to us her favorite novels from popular magazines: Liwayway, Bulaklak, and Tagumpay.

When I went to college, I stopped reading popular magazines because it wasn’t popular with young people my age. Besides, the curriculum was packed with Western literature.

In 1987, I was in search of a topic for a doctoral dissertation. A classmate and friend, Dr. Venancio Mendiola, suggested that I write on Nena at Neneng by Valeriano Hernandez at Peña.

“Who?” I replied with a frown.

“Valeriano Hernandez at Peña,” Dr. Mendiola repeated, articulating every syllable.

“Who’s he?” I asked.

“He’s the Father of the Tagalog novel.”

I was astounded. I was a literature major about to write a doctoral dissertation and I didn’t know the Father of the Tagalog novel. I didn’t know my own literature.

Dr. Mendiola lent me a copy of Nena at Neneng by Valeriano Hernandez at Peña.

The very same night, I burned the midnight oil reading the novel in one sitting. I was gripped by a sense of euphoria.

I felt as if I had been a deaf-mute who suddenly experienced the miracle of hearing and speech.

I felt as if I were an orphan who had suddenly found her living parents.

I felt as if I had been resurrected from death.

At the crack of dawn, I dressed up and went straight away to the National Library in Manila. I found out that a master’s thesis (Naomi Ortiz, 1954) had already been written on Nena at Neneng by Valeriano Hernandez at Peña.

Not to worry. My long-lost ‘father’ had written other novels. Skimming and scanning as fast as I could, I finally discovered Mag-inang Mahirap. I read the 350-page book in two hours. That’s because it could not be loaned out.

Mag-inang Mahirap gripped me even stronger than Nena at Neneng.

In one sweep, I was transported back to my childhood memories of Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

In Mag-inang Mahirap, the Philippine Revolution (1896-1898) against Spain was a consummated historic event. Mag-inang Mahirap was like a sequel to Noli and Fili. In Noli and Fili, it seemed as if every wrong would be made right if we could gain independence from Spain.

I believed with the naivete of a child that the poor were poor and the Philippines was poor because of oppressive foreign rulers. I believed with the simple faith of a child that every wrong would be made right after the revolution.

But Mag-inang Mahirap shattered my naivete and simple faith. It was an obvious truth right under my nose – and so I never saw it. Maybe I was wearing blinders. Maybe I was too wrapped up in Homer’s The Iliad and Odyssey that I failed to see what was around me – my own literature, my own history, my own people.

Mag-inang Mahirap showed that the poor were poor and the Philippines was poor because the Filipino elite oppressed the poor and the Filipino government tyrannized the Filipino people.

There were no Spaniards oppressing Sisa’s and Basilio’s in Mag-inang Mahirap. The oppressed and the oppressors were both Filipinos. The revolution was consummated but every wrong remained wrong.

And so in 1991, I finally earned my Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Santo Tomas. My dissertation? “An Interpretation and Translation of Valeriano Hernandez-Peña’s Mag-inang Mahirap"

I interpreted and translated the 1905 novel from old Tagalog to English because I felt that many young Filipinos cannot read old Tagalog anymore. Also, I realize that there are many Filipinos born and raised overseas who simply cannot read Tagalog, period.

But they remain Filipinos at heart. They long to learn something about their heritage, ancestry, and roots.

More than a century has passed since the publication of Mag-inang Mahirap but it hasn’t lost its relevance. Let me share with you a paragraph from my dissertation’s introduction:

Aside from its power to transport the reader to its time and place, … this novel seems as if it has been written today. Perhaps, it is because the same socio-economic and political problems of the past are the same socio-economic and political problems of the present…

Copyright © 2009 to Carmelita C. Ballesteros. All rights reserved.