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Jesuit Missionary Letters from Mindanao. Volume Two: The Zamboanga-Basilan-Jolo Mission. Edited, Translated, and Annotated by Jose S. Arcilla, SJ. (Quezon City, Philippines: Philippine Province Archives of the Society of Jesus. 1993. Pp. xxxii, 564. $ 30.00.)
This is a fine collection of letters from three missions where the frustrations and dangers faced by Jesuit missionaries far outnumbered their successes in converting Moslems and upland minorities to Christianity. The volume is arranged in three sections (Zamboanga, 1880-1898, Basilan, 1880-1896, and Jolo, 1875-1898), and within each section in chronological order. It is valuable for ethnographic data especially on Subanon culture and Basilan (less so on Jol6 and Siassi), for insights into Jesuit resettlement and conversion efforts, for making the acquaintance of some individual Jesuits of great personal character, and, most of all, for understanding, through their eyes, the dynamics of Philippine regional history in the late nineteenth century. The editor, Jose Arcilla, provides useful annotations, especially short biographies of each priest. His translation from Spanish reads smoothly, with only a few awkward moments. He includes four letters on a controversy over the baptism of a high Moslem official in Jol6 which are not among the published letters in Spanish.
Arcilla does not attempt to hide the fact that his heart is on the side of the priests as they struggle to convert their recalcitrant flock. One wonders if the fathers were actually met with "immense joy" by residents of Isabela, Basilan, and if those residents were, as he says,*liberated for eventual conversion and baptism" (p. xxvi). One wonders, as well, about their decision to ban Zamboangue*os from access to books (p. xxvi).The volume also suffers from an annoying lack of good maps to help the reader locate places mentioned...