Una Palabra a Tiempo (1907)

This is a piece from 1907, from a page of The Silliman Truth [the March 15 issue] — which in the 1900s served not just as campus paper for what was then Silliman Institute but also a community newspaper [one of the first in the province] and a Protestant missionary publication. This page contains what I think is an unsigned short story in Spanish titled “Una Palabra a Tiempo,” probably the first one published in the province. The Silliman Truth, however, was first published in 1903, predating The Filipino Student Magazine by two years. (That magazine is supposedly the first publication in English by Filipinos). Alas, we don’t have copies of the Silliman Truth from that year anymore, but if we do come across any — and if it contains any literary work in the new colonial language — we can effectively rewrite the history of Philippine literature in English. I did a rough translation of “Una Palabra a Tiempo” from the Spanish, and it turns out to be a precious fable about a country doctor who encounters a drunk on the road at night, and the drunk accosts him to ask if there is any cure at all to his condition. To which the doctor replied: “I cannot help you.” But suggests that there is one other doctor who can: Jesus Christ. Days later, he finds the drunk quite sober and thankful for his godly advice. Now that’s pure literature of proselytisation! The school paper, after all, was very much a missionary publication. It got me thinking though: so many of the early essays published between 1903–1908 in Dumaguete were about the perils and evils of drunkenness. Soooo many. Was Dumaguete awash in tubà and other types of alcohol at the turn of the 20th century?