Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America

Historian De Leon (American studies and ethnicity, Univ. of Southern California; barangay: an offshore poem) investigates the construction of the racial label of “Filipino” and the histories and ethnologies of people from the Philippines. In a geographic location on a global trade route, this group of islands experienced centuries of colonization, first under Spanish rule and then under American. The author goes to great lengths to say that the word “Philippines” came from Spain’s king at the time. The Indigenous peoples of the region did not choose it themselves. He looks to the island of Luzon to explore its Indigenous past. Its peoples in the mountainous northern highlands and the flat southern lowlands were considered savages and peasants by Western imperial powers. The highlands (“bundok” in the native language becoming “boondock” in English) were specifically seen as ungovernable hinterlands. The concept of racial economy and the subjective nature of archiving inform De Leon’s ideas of insurgent ethnologies. He concludes that their racial label directly results from the migratory and work experiences of many different peoples of the Philippines being regarded as one ethnicity outside of their homelands.