Malacañang mail
I am afraid to even imagine the volume of correspondence received by the Office of the President daily. More so, how this mass of communications is classified, filed, replied to, or acted upon. Aside from physical written letters sneeringly referred to nowadays as “snail mail,” there must be a deluge of emails, text messages, and those called in through landlines, Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, etc. Ninety-two years ago today, in the July 5, 1934 issue of “Graphic,” I found an article on Malacañang mail that inspired this column.
One of the benefits of history is perspective: looking back on the past helps us see how much has changed in a given time, how much remains the same, and what we in the present should do so that the present will stop reading like the past. In 1933, United States Governor General Frank Murphy and Senate President Sergio Osmeña were photographed in Malacañang, both smiling from ear to ear while talking on a clunky candelabra-type telephone to someone in the Vatican. It was a historic moment—the first overseas telephone call that patched Manila with Rome. Gen Z finds the archival photo quaint because they carry smartphones capable of overseas video communication. Imagine technology not yet invented in 1933, something that seemed like science fiction to an older generation.
We can even push the historical regression further to the 19th century. In a letter that Marcelo H. del Pilar posted in Spain to his wife “Tsanay” in the Philippines, he described a contraption in the editorial office of La Solidaridad that could “transmit his voice many towns away,” without him shouting or leaving his desk. What magic was this? Mrs. Del Pilar and her daughters could not even imagine our world with telephones, smartphones, or the 8888 Citizen’s Complaints hotline that burns seven days a week, 24/7. I often ask myself: what would José Rizal be if he had Google? Andrés Bonifacio armed with a smartphone? Juan Luna with a tablet and stylus? Emilio Aguinaldo with TikTok?
In 1934, Malacañang under Murphy received an average of 65 letters a day through the mail. That does not seem like much by today’s standards, even if you include the hundred or so letters delivered daily by messenger. The estimate in 1934 was that Malacañang had to plow through about 50,000 letters a year (20,000 delivered by mail, the rest door-to-door by messenger). They forgot to reckon with telegrams. Nevertheless, the daily workflow was as follows:
Early in the morning, someone went to the Manila Post Office to physically collect the mail. He returned to the palace with stacks of mail that were deposited on the desk of Angel Pulido, assistant chief clerk, who sorted the correspondence into two piles: “Official” and “Personal.” The latter batch usually remained unopened, requiring the personal attention of Murphy. Since he had a busy official, social, and personal schedule, replies were drafted either by Norman H. Hill, his personal secretary, or Miss Eleanor Bumgardner, his assistant secretary. Official mail was handed by Evaristo de Lara, chief clerk, to C.W. Franks, Malacañang secretary, who forwarded it to various departments in the Malacañang complex and other government offices.
Original letters, together with a copy of the reply or action taken, were returned to De Lara, who forwarded them to Constantino Tirona, chief of the Records Division. Correspondence received by messenger skipped Pulido and De Lara, and was immediately forwarded to Franks. The governor read quite a lot, mostly at night, scribbling notes or instructions on the margins to guide Franks. Some correspondence was personally replied to by Murphy, in longhand, with the bulk dictated to a secretary.
What stood out to the writer of the article were the oddballs like a law student and a stenographer who wrote:
“May you kindly recommend me to the United States navy for enlistment, or to any agency or government organization as a detective or special agent to His Excellency, the governor general of the Philippine Islands, so that I can have a free hand to subjugate control, and even destroy the maladministration and execution of the laws of the Philippine Islands? This may sound queer and ridiculous, but the truth still remains that there are many agents of the government who do not know law, and that instead of upholding it they violate it, this causing unnecessary annoyance and severity in the performance of their duties.”
He claimed persecution by government officials, but on further investigation, he was found to have been charged with vagrancy and was confined in the psychopathic hospital! Another wrote every week regarding millions of pesos in checks being withheld by the postman. He was a regular, writing letters to all governors since 1927. Most letters contained requests for recommendations for work, or even asking the governor to locate missing persons.
The Malacañang correspondence office runs basically the same way today, but with a bigger workforce than in 1934. As a historian, I wonder how Malacañang records are kept and organized. Who decides what to discard, and what a president can bring home after his term of office? This is the lifeblood of history. Where is it?
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Comments are welcome at ambeth.ocampo@inquirer.net
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