Agoncillo’s works are not yet obsolete, but they are dated and have been replaced by new research and analysis. History is a humbling discipline because historians are only as good as their material will allow.

During the discussions regarding the redesign of Philippine bank notes in 2010, Agoncillo’s name and image were proposed to be among the icons on our currency. 9, is his 100th birth anniversary, and we really should consider the naming or renaming of a street after a historian who, rightly or wrongly, changed the way Filipinos remember and understand their past. To date, Panay Avenue is still Panay Avenue.Īgoncillo came to mind recently because today, Nov. Agoncillo had to be similarly honored but no one would even propose renaming Quezon Avenue, so the Solomonic solution was to rename half of Panay Constantino and the other half Agoncillo. Agoncillo lived on Quezon Avenue and Constantino on Panay Avenue. Agoncillo’s name came up again in 2002 during a controversy over the renaming of Panay Avenue into Renato Constantino Avenue. It is unfortunate that I wasn’t able to ask Agoncillo to confirm or deny this story in the series of conversations we had in 1984, now published as “Talking History” (UST Publishing, 2011).

Agoncillo-were still alive, so they had to concede to someone obscure but long dead. When I asked why the longest road in Metro Manila was named after a historian and former National Library director, the apocryphal story given me was that at the time of the renaming, a contemporary Filipino historian was preferred but then all the short-listed ones-Gregorio Zaide, Horacio de la Costa, and Teodoro A. WHEN PEOPLE ask about the story of Edsa, we have to go beyond People Power 1986 to a time when then Highway 54 was renamed from a bland generic to honor Epifanio de los Santos (1871-1928).

Teodoro agoncillo history