Filipinx American students at Berkeley
While some members of Philippine society pursued education abroad during the Spanish colonial period, especially elites, the practice was expanded and facilitated during American colonial rule by the Pensionado Act of 1903. According to Adrianne Francisco, “It was not enough to bring American institutions and personnel to the Philippines; the best way to truly educate the “little brown brothers” was to send Filipinos to the United States.”
In 1903, the first year of the scholarship program, one hundred students were selected; they were referred to informally as pensionados because of the pensión, or scholarships, they received to pay for their studies. By the end of the program in 1943, over 500 students had received these scholarships. Most of the students returned to the Philippines after graduation, and many worked in prominent positions in government. Many more students came to the United States without the benefit of the pensión, and by 1938 over 14,000 students from the Philippines had been educated in the United States. Interestingly, many if not most, of the students attending Berkeley from the Philippines were not pensionados and must have been privately financed.
Despite the small number of actual pensionados, UC Berkeley was deeply intertwined with the program and the higher education of students from the Philippines. UC Berkeley professor Bernard Moses was a member of the Taft Commission and a pensionado program exponent, and the program was initially overseen by David Barrows, then the director of education in the Philippines.
Filipino student publications
As more and more students came to the United States from the Philippines, they created student organizations and publications. All of the examples in this exhibit were published in Berkeley.
The Filipino Students’ Magazine (1905-1907), later renamed The Philippine Review, was the first Filipino-produced periodical in the United States. According to Adrianne Francisco, the magazine, the “official organ of Filipino students in America,” featuring some of the earliest English-language literature by Filipinos, contained news items, educational articles, short stories, poetry, and humor. It was published in English and Spanish.
The Filipino Student (1912-1914) was published almost entirely in English.
Filipinx American students at Berkeley continue to publish a wide array of materials demonstrated by the work of the Pilipinx American Alliance and {m}aganda magazine.
The Filipino Students’ Magazine
According to Adrianne Francisco, the first issue of The Filipino Students’ Magazine (1905-1907) was dedicated to President Theodore Roosevelt, “[t]o show their good intentions and allegiance to the United States. For good measure, they even placed his image on the frontispiece. ... Roosevelt’s image was an outward display of allegiance, a way to disguise or mitigate the fact that the magazine was in league with American anti-imperialists.” The Anti-Imperialist League, which included Mark Twain, Grover Cleveland and Andrew Carnegie among its members, gave financial support to the magazine and “nearly every issue of [the magazine] after June 1905 up to its last included at least one piece from the Anti-Imperialist League that reaffirmed Filipinos’ right to self-government and the necessity of Philippine independence.”
—Francisco, “From Subjects to Citizens,” p. 75
The Filipino Student
Sarah Steinbock-Pratt, writing about The Filipino Student (published in Berkeley from 1912 through 1914), notes that “[i]n contrast to their predecessors, the students who published [The Filipino Student] defended their right to write openly about politics and the right of Filipino students in general to advocate for Philippine independence.”
—Steinbock-Pratt, “‘It Gave Us our Nationality,’” p. 189
Balita
Balita was the newsletter of the Pilipino American Alliance, now known as the Pilipinx American Alliance at Cal. According to the PAA Facebook page, “The UC Berkeley Pilipinx American alliance is a student organization dedicated to strengthening campus solidarity by promoting cultural diversity and addressing the often unseen issues of the Pilipinx community past and present. PAA also strives to support the community at Cal by assisting and encouraging them in their academic, political, and social endeavors.
“Established in 1969, the Pilipinx American alliance formerly, called the Filipino Student Association (FSA), grew out of an era when racism and oppression of Third World peoples occurred in the United States.”
{m}aganda magazine
“{m}aganda magazine is a student-run academic publication based at the University of California, Berkeley. Founded in 1989, it has evolved from its beginnings as a bi-annual magazine, and is now a diverse anthology of submitted work that is published once a. year. We serve as a vital forum for the presentation of diverse experiences and opinions through all platforms for creativity—including art, prose, poetry, film, music, journalism and scholarly writing.”