Rb and Sf

ROTTEN BEEF AND STINKING FISH:
RIZAL AND THE WRITING OF PHILIPPINE HISTORY
Ambeth R. Ocampo

Antonio de Morga, lieutenant governor of the Philippines (in thelate sixteenth century), described the food of the indios asfollows:
Their daily fare is composed of rice crushed inwooden pillars and when cooked is called morisqueta(this is the staple throughout the land); cooked fishwhich they have in abundance; pork, venison,mountain buffaloes which they call carabaos, beef and fish which they know is best when it has startedto rot and stink (Emphasis supplied.)
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Reading this text in the British Museum 280 years laterRizal was so incensed that he later responded in print with:
This is another preoccupation of the Spaniards who,like any other nation, treat food to which they are not accustomed or is unknown to them with disgust. TheEnglish, for example, feels horror to see a Spaniardeating snails; to the Spaniard roast beef is repugnant and he cannot understand how Steak Tartar or rawbeef can be eaten; the Chinese who have tahuri andeat shark cannot stand Roquefort cheese etc, etc.This fish Morga mentions, that cannot be known to begood until it begins to rot, all on the contrary, it isbagoong [salted and fermented fish or shrimp pasteused as a sauce in Filipino cuisine] and those whohave eaten it and tasted it know that it neither is nor should be rotten.
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Rizal's sarcastic rebuttal appears, surprisingly, not in hissatirical novels or his polemical tracts, but in a scholarly work --his annotated re-edition of
Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas deFilipinas
. Aside from the racial slurs to which Rizal was reacting,however, Rizal maintained mixed feelings for the Morga,