The Makiling Echo: The Multiple Functions of a Staff Magazine in the American Tropical Empire of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

In an essay outlining the world of staff magazines in the early twentieth-century United Kingdom, Alastair Black argues for their usefulness in shedding light on a whole range of historical topics. Ironically, he also notes that they are very much understudied. In this article I take up Black’s call to study staff magazines, but in a context radically different; namely, the Philippines during the period of American colonization and focusing on just one example, the Makiling Echo, the staff magazine for the Bureau of Forestry between the years 1921 and 1937. My aim is to uncover the forces or concerns that established the conditions of existence of the Echo, as well as the particular functions it was called on to perform. The first of these functions was to act as a medium of communication between staff members widely scattered in the field while the second was to provide a publication outlet for the small scientific research community interested in forestry matters in the Philippines at the time.