Carry the Fire
A Keynote Address given to UP KAMALAYAN and the College of Social Sciences on 30th September 2022
Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for inviting me today to speak for Kasaysayahan 2022 and for the 30th Anniversary of the founding of UP Kamalayan. As Jero stated during my introduction, I am Noel Mozart B. Diaz — former Supremo of UP Kamalayan from AY 2018–2019. What I did not know upon entering UP Kamalayan was that it had been extant for more than two decades and served as the premier history organization for students in UP Baguio and quite possibly, beyond UP Baguio. I hope that, as it is today, it has extended its reach beyond the campus through the online landscape as well as strengthened its bonds with other historical organizations in other universities across the archipelago. Our task today as historians, as students of history, and as bearers of historical truth and knowledge has never been more paramount as well as fundamental to our present and future as a nation — as I hope I will be able to convey later in my speech.
To all the current members I am speaking to and to all the prospective members sitting in the audience today, I live in hope that you are aware of the legacy that you are carrying and will carry as members of this organization. It is not a glamorous legacy nor a glamorous vocation, gone are the days when historians are able to rub shoulders with presidents, diplomats, and are even elevated to the status of a celebrity. Today the historian and each and every student of history sits at the crosshairs of forces that wish to erase, deny, and distort the historical truths that historians of the past have struggled to document, that historians of the present continue to explore, assert, dialogue with, and argue for, and that historians of the future will need to defend tooth and nail against the relentless attacks we must stand against. I also live in hope that the professors sitting in the audience will continue to help and guide the youth in standing for historical truth, in holding the line against distortionists, obscurant narratives, and outright liars.
But I do not wish to get too serious too quickly. UP Kamalayan is not an organization of gatekeepers nor are we an organization of people all too serious about the nitty gritty aspects of our discipline and vocation that is history. When I came to it, UP Kamalayan laughed as much as it discussed serious matters. We would rent a house in the city and after taking a shot of Emperador Light or whatever liquor the org could afford, launch into a lengthy discussion of the pitfalls of positivism and Ranke then go back to talking about the latest developments between James Reid and Nadine Lustre. We would go out into the beaches of La Union, chase after runaway tsinelas swept away by the tide, watch the sunset, head back to the bahay kubo to write our papers, fall asleep to the crashing of the waves, and wake up only to realize that we had not planned for the breakfast of the second day of the team building activity. We would have picnics in John Hay and have rough games of capture the flag. We would sit by the UPB Woods or courtyard and conduct income generating projects like Past Food and struggle to properly wrap and cook cheese sticks while our fellow orgmates sat down beside us counting our meager earnings. We would walk into libraries and see our orgmates and classmates asleep on the couch or lining up to get a photocopy of readings that we absolutely needed to read within a few hours or risk failing the quizzes of Ma’am Nela, Ma’am Chat, Ma’am Verna, Sir Ado, or Sir Math who, upon our entrance to the classroom, would notice how fresh and warm and unmarked our readings still were. History, as a course, discipline, and vocation, is not glamorous but it fills your heart with a warmth that cannot be replaced. As caretakers of memory, it is important that our own memories, especially with those whom we have shared struggle with, are kept in a special area in our minds — as I hope the organization is still doing to this day. Whatever difficulty the organization may have faced during the height of the pandemic and even today as it wanes, I am glad to see that it has overcome these and come out not only surviving but thriving as well.
During my tenure as Supremo, the challenge that we faced was manpower. With our alums far and away, off in the world manning the ramparts of museums, archives, tours, and research, we were left with the task to continue the organization with a quarter of the manpower and coupled with the continually mounting tasks of being a student in UP in our senior year. It was difficult to say the least but by the time that the freshmen came, the freshmen that are now fresh graduates or are struggling with their thesis today, I can say that we survived and if we left the organization with anything — and sadly it was not cash that we left them with — I hope that it was the framework to keep on and keep on keeping on despite the challenges that face the organization. UP Kamalayan, now in its 30th year, is as strong as ever, and will continue to survive and to thrive for as long as there are history students and history enthusiasts.
But why choose history in the first place? I cannot speak for anyone but myself when I answer this question. I do remember, vaguely, during my first Kasaysayahan, the answers of my batchmates. “It’s a good pre-law, history is my first love, I’ve always been interested in history.” And of course, the “Dito kasi ako pumasa, I plan on shifting out after the year or semester ends, I’ve never done well in history sa high school, pero I will try my best in this course.” I know that there are those among you in the crowd grappling with this same question and it is a question I still contend with every now and then. Why did I choose history? I answered, then, history is my first love. Do I still love history now? Yes. Pipiliin ko at pipiliin ko magpakailanman. I chose history, even after realizing that it was not merely knowing the story of humanity, and I will keep on choosing history even as theories, methodologies, and the pain of hunting down primary sources fry my brain into oblivion. I choose history even when history is being attacked and especially when it is being attacked as it is today.
I do not wish to launch headfirst into a discussion of what history is, or go bullheaded into a lecture about its whats, whys, and hows, this is a journey that you will undertake in your stay here in UP Baguio and it will be explained by professors far greater than me, professors that have dedicated their lives to the discipline, duties, and vocation that is history. You will learn concepts and theories, methodologies and narratives, and by the end of your stay, should your professor break into your house and shake you awake at three in the morning to ask you to outline the differences between E.H. Carr and Leopold von Ranke’s conceptualization of history or to enunciate the famous line popularized by Zeus Salazar concerning Pantayong Pananaw, you should be able to do it and then buy better locks. And so, while I stand here without accolades and without decades of experience and without renown, what I can perhaps impart to you, members of UP Kamalayan, freshmen, and professors, is a reminder of our duties as historians and students of history — something that, I think, is common to all of us who have chosen bear witness to the story of humanity.
First and foremost, I believe that a historian has a duty to the truth. While certain forms of truth may be amorphous, the truth that historians seek to discover is a narrative of objective truth that is adherent to a correspondence to facticity, methodological vigor, and satisfactory to the historiographies and historians of this day and age — that is to say, peer-reviewed. As history is written and rewritten every generation, we must ensure that the narratives that are being written today are not negligent of the facts found in primary data and its corroborations nor obscurant in highlighting one aspect of the narrative over the other. We must guard, absolutely, against total distortion of the past and eventual destruction of its memory. Our duty to truth is in its discovery, rediscovery, care, and, most importantly, its protection. While we can take comfort in the idea that truth will remain truth even if the whole world shouts a lie, we must also recognize that the past is fragile and requires constant vigilance. This is not to say that these truths are to be held as sacred, these are truths that must be constantly held to scrutiny, to be questioned, to be contended with in the face of evidence and primary sources that challenge the grand narratives of the past. While we hold classics in high regard, we must not blindly accept the things that these historians argue. We must contend, question, and engage in dialogue with these texts even if they are part of the historical canon while at the same time engaging with the proper methodology and historiographical lenses in order to avoid thinking in polemics, in propaganda, or in conspiratorial thinking. There is a balance to be struck.
Secondly, there is our duty to time and its contents. The past cannot speak for itself and so we must speak for it. The past cannot defend itself. There is a line in George Orwell’s 1984 that goes, ‘he who controls the past controls the present, he who controls the present controls the future’. Our duty to the past is to preserve and protect it. There is a certain malleability to records of the past that is hard to swallow especially for the historian and every discipline that concerns itself with the past. The past is a fragile thing. Its existence lies in forgotten diary entries, in ruins, in old cities, in records of a time long gone, and even then, its existence only deteriorates over time. There are gaps we must fill, gaps we must imagine into being, and conflicting interpretations of the past that we must contend and dialogue with in order to create a picture that is still maddeningly incomplete. To paraphrase William Henry Scott, we see through the gaps in the parchment curtain, those fleeting glimpses into the past that show the level of verisimilitude that all historians are aiming for. We must protect the past not only for its ability to explain but also to deconstruct and hold accountable historical forces that still persist to this day.
Then there is the present. While some may contend that the historian has no claim over the present, it is only in the present that we exist, defend, and weave together histories that might otherwise be forgotten or lost to time. More than this, the philosopher Ernst Bloch argued that the present is nothing but continuing and unfinished processes of the past. That the present is simply the living ruins of the past. This is the reason why we continue to argue about Bonifacio’s bones, about Salcedo’s expeditions, about Igorot gold, about things that seem to hold no direct relevance to the present situation. Once one sees how these processes persist to the present, the world opens into a maddening complexity where past and present coexist within the same earthly plane. Moreover, the present is where we must contend, where we must decide as historians, as individuals, as scholars, and as a nation our values. We must (and please forgive me for this example as I am sure that our eyes and ears are tired of fighting back the tide) decide for ourselves whether we praise the construction of buildings more than human life and dignity. We must decide our values. For if we decide that buildings and theaters and bridges and roads are more important than human life and dignity, then by all means, that is the history that we shall write. But if we decide otherwise, then we must prepare to struggle against the forces that seek to snuff out the truth and the values we hold dear.
And then the future. As historians and students of history, it is fun to make guesses. While history does not repeat itself, there are patterns that it follows. But I suppose that is a topic for another time. Our duty to the future is not to predict it but to make it. We do not only make use of the present to map out the past, we use the present in an attempt to nudge history in the places that we believe it should head. We are not impartial arbiters but stakeholders in a future and world that is yet to come. Other than this, we must ensure that the history that future generations read is not mere polemic, not mere propaganda, not mere obscurantism, nor outright lies and distortion. There is a saying usually attributed to Winston Churchill that goes, ‘the nation that has no past has no future.’ A peoples without a story is one that is condemned to a childlike naivete and whose people will be exploited by oppressors, thieves, and liars.
Lastly, a historian’s duty is to the people. Not merely to the people in the most abstract sense, but to a people in the most general sense. We must write and research and argue and contend not only for people in the present — those communities who have been subject to historical injustices, those peoples and persons who suffer under unjust historical processes — but also to the people in the past, the inarticulate, the marginalized, the oppressed, those whose stories have been silenced and outright destroyed. We also have a duty to the people we disagree with, to the obscurants, to the liars, and to those whom they deceive. To the liars we owe to them the bearing of the line, to bear witness to the truths that drive out their lies. To the deceived we have a duty to understand and to educate — not to mock and ridicule. I was told a time ago that — shouted at, actually — education is not confined within the four walls of a classroom, praktika hindi lang teorya. I suppose that with what we have witnessed these past few years is that the struggle in the classroom is just as important as the struggle outside of it. Lastly, we have a duty to the people not yet born, to ensure that they do not inherit the curses and burdens we live under now but also inasmuch that they do not forget the curses and burdens that we have had to live through. To make sure that they know where they came from, to give substance to existence, and to contend with all the awfulness one comes to learn in studying history, instead of being led to believe that there was once a mythological golden age.
I suppose now would be a good time to end as I feel that I have droned on for too long in a too serious a tone. But more than anything, I hope I have been able to accomplish the things I have set out in telling this speech to all of you: to remind or inform, and to curse you with knowledge. I wish to curse you with this knowledge, to give to you these burdens, so that when the time comes that you are heckled on Social Media for asserting and arguing for historical truth, you may not in good conscience simply turn away and ignore the distortion; that when you are challenged by fanatics, loyalists, apologists, and the like you can no longer sit still or keep quiet in the face of blatant distortion; that when your parents come after you for not towing the line you will feel the need to stand your ground; that even if you shift out, even when you leave the program, you will feel that itch that you cannot bear; that when the time comes that you must bear witness to truth, you will speak it with power and conviction. I hope you will forgive me for giving you a burden you did not ask for. Yet I will charge you with one more burden, one more curse and that is to carry the fire. Carry the fire of truth in this long night; carry the fire against the howling and screaming winds; carry the fire in the storms, in the cold, and in the sweltering heat; carry it in the cities and classrooms, in the plains, in the fields and forests, in the mountains and coasts; carry it against those who would gladly snuff it out, against those who would dim it, against those that say that it does not matter; carry the fire when things seem bleak, especially when things are bleak; carry it until your bones ache; carry it or pass it on until the light finally shines over this archipelago. Carry the Fire — you carry with you the hope of generations Mapanganib ang pag-limot, ang pag-alala ay pagkilos.
Thank you very much for your time.
