Teresa Magbanua Part 1 - Origins

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Hello everyone! Kumusta ka! Welcome to today’s episode. And you already know what the topic is: Teresa Magbanua, the Visayan Joan of Arc which was a nickname I didn’t exactly like but the one I did like was Nanay Isa. For reasons.

But honestly, just to give you a little more information about where I’m coming from. Or more than I mentioned last week. I come from a line of very strong Filipina women. Fighters, is how my dad always said it, but this was especially for my mom who was the first person in her family to really leave the province, and when she left, she didn’t go a streets over. Rather, she went to a completely different country and made her way in life. 

My grandmother, her sisters, my mom, and her sisters have created a family legacy of not being afraid to go their own and right way. But it goes even beyond that. I remember hearing stories of women in our province walking around armed with knives just in case. All in all, there was just a strength that just found different and new ways to materialize depending on the context. 

Except, sometimes anyway, I think that might have skipped over me. And hey, I don’t even look all that Filipino, so maybe I’m right in different ways. But even when I can’t really take up that mantle, I’ve always been aware of this trend. Or I’ve always speculated there was a trend. I was the only Filipina in my school for the longest time, and it felt like this strength was part of what it meant to be Filipino. I mean, my mom and I were already the “others,” and this was a trait that kind of existed in the “other” category. None of my friends had moms like mine. And they were all kind of shocked to hear her stories and to hear about how far she had travelled.

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And maybe that could have been interpreted some other way or with some other schema, but I don’t want to think about that too much. Or I didn’t. And still don’t because these are the adults I grew up around and yeah that’s the sort of emotional reckoning that I’m not quite ready for just yet or ever. But I will admit that there’s something speculative about that. I could, however, go into more depth and try to do some sort of analysis. Add that to the list of shows for Hugot Podcasting--a socio-historical investigation into notions of gender within the geographic bounds of the Philippines. And I have no idea if any of that makes sense or not. Actually that sounds more like a dissertation if I had decided to go back to get my PhD, which I could have done and sometimes still think about, but yeah, that would have been a rough time.

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Anyway, I think that’s partially why I was so drawn to Teresa Magbanua’s story. Of all the heroes I was looking at, she fit right into the narrative I told myself as a child. She’s almost like a stepping stone of sorts, you could say. Or a blending of what I felt and what I could point to.

And here’s another fun aspect of this. In Source 3, yes the third one, because working on scripts is seldom a linear experience for me. Or… Okay, maybe it’s not fun, but that’s how I feel about it. Whether or not it is that way might be a bit complicated. Basically, while my family is Tagalog--and yes, it can get confusing with the language having the same name, I get it--in Visayan folklore women have always had a high position. They were celebrated for being brave, creative, and wise. And that matters in this context because Teresa is Visayan. Remember? The Visayan Joan of Arc. 

I read that with a sense of joy, and well, it was like I was proven right. However, I was then quickly deflated because this was folk literature. Not history. And cue the age old theory and practice distinction. It’s literally on the first page of this same article that women in Western Visayan history tend to get the same treatment women in a lot of histories do: simply as the accompanying party to the deeds of men.

Call it an effect of colonialism. Call it a case of the ego. Whatever you want to call it, it’s definitely an issue.

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Because now, in some ways, Teresa Magbanua and other Filipina women didn’t escape the pitfalls history and its processes leave out for people of their sex. Like, and this is kind of comical, no one being entirely sure when you were born. Or at least, it not being consistently reported accurately. Not even in the sense of whether you were born on the first or a second of a given month in a set year because--you know--time zones are a thing. And sometimes communications and registrations can get delayed, things happen. I mean, I’ve seen conflicting dates that conflict by over five years. Which to me, is just… Well, like there are things that have to happen according to certain schedules, like her education, or marriage, so how are we shooting that far off the mark? And I mean it when I say it is not a problem unique to Teresa Magbanua. Even if by the late 1800s the odds of this happening were slightly reduced. One of King Henry VIII’s wives for example doesn’t have a clear birthdate recorded probably because she was born to the lesser noble of a not royal house. But you know, I need to stop pulling on random threads here.

Regardless, to go off of an article published by Philstar to commemorate women’s history, which I’m choosing because it’s--from what I can gather--one of the most trusted newspaper-type broadcasters in the Philippines. And that’s Source 1 in the show notes. Also given the context, as a journalist, you’d have access to the most records, and you would know how to use them. No one else had any sources footnoted, so I’m standing by this decision. Also the article I mentioned about Visayan folklore and women’s conflicting places in it and history includes the same date. So I have two records that actually agree. 

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And according to that record, Teresa Magbanua was born on October 13, 1868 in Iloilo. Also, the author of that piece points out that there’s a strong regional bent in the various historical stories or lessons that get told, so maybe that exasperated the problem. I can’t know for sure. Maybe that’s another topic for Hugot Podcasting, though I should say that I did try to write a paper on education in the Philippines once, and that went poorly. 

But back to the point, though, her parents, Juan Magbanua and Alejandra Ferraris, were fairly wealthy. Wealthy enough that young Teresa was able to go to Manila to study education. And then she came home to Iloilo to teach for a while. And perhaps like many young and wealthy female-identifying people in today’s day and age do, this was always meant to be a temporary state of affairs, as it were. Something to do before marriage or even a way to get to marriage. 

After a couple years, Teresa transferred residence within Iloilo, and after she did so, she met her future husband, Alejandro Balderas, and he was also very rich. He owned vast lands, which definitely put him at the point of wealth where his wife didn’t need to work anymore. Upon her marriage, Nanay Isa quit teaching and devoted herself to this newfound life, being a helpmate to her husband and looking over their fields is how some people explain it. And am not going to say who because of the sheer contempt I have for that picture that you might have picked up in my voice.

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And look, could she have been a loving and dutiful wife? Yes. I don’t doubt that she was loving and loyal and all those things. But her learning how to shoot a gun and how to ride a horse during this time shouldn’t be a random footnote in this story. At least not in my mind.

Flash back for a second to Jose Rizal, flash back to the growing discontentment with the Spanish colonizers that was starting to seize every Filipino, particularly Filipinos that had the means to potentially resist. To do something about it. The embers were there, and they were starting to catch. 

Now granted, even Rizal didn’t know fully what was to come. At first, he just wanted some reforms, right? Especially amongst the church officials who were often going against the theology they professed simply to do whatever they wanted. Rizal’s work assumed and built off of a disinterest, a distrust, and genuinely disgust with the Spanish. But on the other hand, it was also built off of a sort of void in the popular consciousness surrounding the virtues of Filipinos as part of their social condition.

Now, here, we can go back to Noli Me Tangere for a second. Jose Rizal includes a couple different stand-ins for larger social issues amongst his characters. Most notably, you have the friar who went ahead and fathered an illegitimate child despite how not okay that was within his theology, and you have María Clara, the love interest who had become a personification of the ideal Filipino woman: loving and unwavering in her loyalty to her beloved. To that which was hers, you could also phrase it.

Because yes, at times María Clara can be docile or overly sweet. (inhale) And it… (exhales) And it bothers me a bit, but if you overlook that manifestation of her nature, you still have this very intense loyalty and devotion, which I would call a critical part of the character Rizal was trying to show. 

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That devotion comes from a deep seated if not somewhat unexpected strength. María Clara endures when perhaps it would be completely understandable if she did not. She endures until that ability is outright taken away from her by a corrupt abbess. 

Now, here’s the thing. You could say much the same thing of Nanay Isa, could you not? As a Filipina woman, she grew up in a social milieu that valued her loyalty and devotion to what was hers. Not to her husband, necessarily. Because we all have our priorities. Or we all only have so much of our heart to give out.

In working on these episodes, I can’t help but wonder where Nanay Isa’s mind and heart really was. I can’t help but wonder what she was thinking or who she might have seen or met with when she was in Manila. Or even with her students in Iloilo. What made her the woman that she was? What bent her passions to being a fighter? What curved her fear and purged it from her body?  In some ways, I’ll never completely know.

But according to that same Source 3, Teresa’s sister remembered the young girl as being restless and unafraid. So maybe it was just in her nature to some degree. Maybe that restlessness is what lead her to picking her nation’s well being over her husband’s wishes. And not even a guaranteed well being. But the chance for such. 

However, I am getting ahead of myself. That’s something for next episode. 

Hey, I told you I had a lot to say.

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This has been a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. Thanks for listening! Find more information about our shows at miscellanymedia.online or follow us on Twitter @miscellanymedia for updates on current and future projects.

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