Ilustrados and Indios

Ilustrados And Indios
The contrast to the ilustrado approach was the Katipunan of Bonifacio. Bonifacio,
not as Hispanized as the ilustrados, saw in people's action the only road to liberation.
The Katipunan, though of masonic and of European inspiration, was people's movement
based on confidence in the people's capacity to act in its own behalf. The early
rebellions, spontaneous and sporadic, could be termed movements, without
consciousness. Rizal and the propagandists were the embodiment of a consciousness
without a movement. It was Bonifacio and the Katipunan that embodied the unity of
revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary practice.
The indio as Filipino rose in arms while the ilustrado was still waiting for Spain to
dispense justice and reforms. The ilustrado Filipino was now being surpassed by
the indio in revolutionary ardor. The indio had a more legitimate claim to the title of
Filipino because he was truly liberating himself. The revolutionary masses proclaimed
their separatist goal through the Katipunan. Faced with the popular determination,
the ilustrados joined the Revolution where, despite their revolutionary rhetoric, they
revealed by their behavior their own limited goals.
Though their fight was reformist and may be regarded as tame today, the historic
role of the ilustrados cannot be denied for they were purveyors of ideas which when
seized upon by the masses became real weapons. Today their ideas are orthodox and
safe. However, the same concepts when made relevant to present society again make
their partisans the objects of persecution by contemporary reactionaries.
The role and the contribution of Rizal, like that of the ilustrado class, must be
evaluated in the context of his particular reality within the general reality of his time.
Rizal was a necessary moment in our evolution. But he was only a moment, and while
his validity for his time amounted to a heroism that is valid for all time, we cannot say
that Rizal himself will be valid for all time and that Rizal's ideas should be the yardstick
for all our aspirations. He provided the model of a form of heroism that culminated in
martyrdom. He was a Filipino we can be proud of, a monument to the race despite all
his limitations. But we cannot make him out to be the infallible determinant of our
national goals, as his blind idolators have been trying to do.
We must see Rizal historically. Rizal should occupy his proper place in our
pantheon of great Filipinos. Though he is secure to be in our hearts and memories as a
hero, we must now realize that he has no monopoly of patriotism; he is not the zenith of
our greatness; neither are all his teachings of universal and contemporary relevance
and application. Just as a given social system inevitably yields to new and higher forms
of social organization, so the individual hero in history gives way to new and higher
forms of heroism. Each hero's contribution, however, are not nullified thereby but
assume their correct place in a particular stage of the people's development. Every
nation is always discovering or rediscovering heroes in the past or its present.
Blind Adoration
Hero-worship, therefore, must be both historical and critical. We must always be
conscious of the historical conditions and circumstances that made an individual a hero,
and we must always be ready to admit at what point that hero's applicability ceases to
be of current value. To allow hero-worship to be uncritical and unhistorical is to distort
the meaning of the heroic individual's life, and to encourage a cult bereft of historical
meaning - a cult of the individual shorn of his historical significance. It is form without
content, a fad that can be used for almost anything, because it is really nothing. We
must view Rizal as an evolving personality within an evolving historical period. That his
martyrdom was tainted by his attacks on our independist struggle is not a ground for
condemning him entirely. We must determine the factors - economic and cultural - that
made Rizal what he was. We must see in his life and in his works the evolution of the
Filipino and must realize that the period crowned by his death is only a moment in the
totality of our history.
It is a reflection of our lack of creative thinking that we continue to invoke Rizal
when we discuss specific problems and present-day society. This is also a reflection of
our intellectual timidity, our reluctance to espouse new causes unless we can find
sanctions, however remote, in Rizal. This tendency is fraught with dangers.

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