Marcelo Hilario del Pilar y Gatmaitan

(August 30, 1850 - July 4, 1896)

Biography

Marcelo Hilario del Pilar y Gatmaitan (August 30, 1850 – July 4, 1896) was a Filipino writer,
journalist, satirist, and revolutionary leader of the Philippine Revolution and one of the leading
Ilustrado (Knowledgeable) propagandist of the Philippine War of Independence.

He served as editor of the vernacular section of the Diariong Tagalog (Tagalog Newspaper), the

first Philippine bilingual newspaper, in 1882. From 1890 to around 1895, he edited the
newspaper La Solidaridad (Solidarity), mainly through his 150 essays and 66 editorials published
under the nom de plume Plaridel.

Del Pilar's militant and progressive outlook was derived from the
classic enlightenment tradition of the French philosophes and the scientific empiricism of the
European bourgeoisie. Part of this outlook was transmitted by freemasonry, to which del Pilar
subscribed.

Early life and education

Del Pilar was born in Cupang, Bulacan, Bulacan, on August 30, 1850, to Don Julián Hilario del
Pilar and Doña Blasa Gatmaitan. He was the last child and the fifth son among the ten children.
His elder brother, Toribio, was exiled to Guamfor his involvement in the 1872 Cavite Mutiny.
The family adapted the surname Del Pilar in 1849 pursuant on the decree issued by Governor-
General Narciso Claveria. Del Pilar was descended from the illustrious lineage of Gatmaitan,
one of the sons of the pre-colonial ruling families of Bulacan and Pampanga.

He learned his first letters from his paternal uncle Alejo. Because his family was highly cultured,
it was not long before he played the piano, violin, and flute. In Manila he took a Latin course in
the school of José Flores and then transferred at the Colegio de San José, where he finished
his Bachelor of Arts degree. He also studied at the Universidad de Santo Tomas, where he
obtained his law degree in 1880.

As a student, he favored overthrowing the Spanish government. Often, he met with his
classmates like Mariano Ponce and Apolinario Mabini in his Binondo house, and expounded on
the need to peacefully fight Spanish rule. His mastery of Spanish language would help hasten
development led him to teach Spanish to children in his neighborhood while he was a boarder
of Mariano Sevilla, a Filipino secular priest. Then about the time of Cavite Mutiny, he used to
meet regularly in a goods store in Manila with liberal Spanish creoles, mestizos, and Filipino
intellectuals by whom he was politically indoctrinated about the affairs of the country.
Fortunately, suspicion was not turned on him and he escaped prosecution in 1872.

He worked as oficial de mesa in Pampanga and Quiapo in January 1878. He also worked for

the Manila Royal Audiencia and at the same time he spread nationalist and anti-friar ideas in
Manila and in towns and barrios of Bulacan. He married his second cousin Marciana in February
1878. They had seven children and five died of infancy.

(Leaders of the reform in Spain: L-R: Rizal, del Pilar, and Ponce)

Publications assailing the Spanish friars

Driven by his sense of justice and his own bad experiences with the clergy, del Pilar denounced
in his publications on the violations of the clergy, the narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy. He
spoke anywhere he could summon a crowd – the cockpit, tienda, and town plaza. He delivered
his tirades against the friars during fiestas, parties and funeral wakes.

On August 1, 1882, he put out Diariong Tagalog, a nationalist newspaper. Here he publicly

denounced Spanish mal-administration of the Philippines. His attacks were mostly directed
against the friars whom he considered to be mainly responsible for the oppression of the
Filipinos.
La Soberanía Monacal en Filipinas (Monastic Sovereignty in the Philippines) was among the first
pamphlets he wrote in Spain. The others included Dasalan at Tocsohan (Prayerbook and
Teasing Game), Pasióng Dapat Ipag-alab nang Puso nang Tauong Babasa (Passion That Should
Inflame the Heart of the Reader), Cadacilaan ng Dios (God's Goodness), Sagot ng España sa
Hibic ng Pilipinas (Spain's Reply to the Complains of Filipinos), Dudas (Doubts), La Frailocracia
Filipina (Frailocracy in the Philippines), and Caiingat Cayo (Be Careful) - del Pilar’s defense
of Rizal against a friar pamphlet entitled Caiiñgat Cayó denouncing the Noli Me Tangere.

(La Solidaridad, the official organ of the Propaganda Movement)

Escape from clerical prosecution

Del Pilar began his campaign in 1869 writing petitions to the colonial authorities, exposing
abusive local civil and religious officials. In 1885, he urged the cabeza de barangay of Malolos to
resist the government order giving the friars blanket authority to revise the tax lists. He wrote
the September 30, 1887, petition of the natives of Binondo, Manila, to the governor general. He
also wrote the November 20 and 21, 1887, complaints of the Navotas folk against their friar-
curate. On March 1, 1888, the populace of Manila staged a public demonstration against the
friars. This document was signed by most of the native officials of Manila and neighboring
towns, accusing the Archbishop of Manila and the friars of disobedience and treason and
demanded the friar’s expulsion from the Philippines. The same year he founded a secret society
called El Cinco. Its aim was to separate the Philippines from Spain.

Sought by the religious and civil authorities, he escaped to Spain. Before his departure, he
organized Caja de Jesus, María y José intended to provide scholarship grants to poor but
intelligent children and the Junta de Programa, which functioned to collect funds to support the
propaganda work and constitute liaison between the propagandists in Spain and those in the
Philippines.

After he left Manila, he spent his time with the Filipinos in Hong Kong led by José María Basa, a
propagandist and a bitter enemy of the clergy. Basa - whom Rizal had already established
contact on his way back to Europe - became the agent for smuggling Rizal's novels into the
Philippines.

Life in Spain

Del Pilar arrived in Spain on January 1, 1889. Del Pilar headed the political section of
the Asociación Hispano-Filipina founded in Madrid by Filipinos and Spanish sympathizers, the
purpose of which was to agitate for reforms from Spain.

He succeeded Graciano López Jaena as the editor of the newspaper La Solidaridad on December

15, 1889. Even before he had chief burden of the editorship, and when he assumed the post, he
transferred the editorial office from Barcelona to Madrid.
The newspaper busied itself with the moderated goals of the representative of
the Philippines in the Spanish parliament. It entered for the legal comparison of Spaniards and
Filipinos and the lifting of the Polo (community service) and the Bandala (the compulsion sale of
local products at the government). The newspaper demanded moreover a guarantee of the
basic rights of speech freedom and society freedom as well as same for Filipinos and Spaniards,
who wanted to enter into the civil service.

Less than a year after he arrived in Spain, del Pilar realized the futility of the Filipino campaign
for reforms. Thus he conceived the Katipunan. He tried to establish it in 1890 but succeeded
only in July, 1892 with the help of his brother-in-law Deodato Arellano.

Later years and death

After years of publication from 1889 to 1895, La Solidaridad had begun to run out of funds. Its
last issue appeared on November 15, 1895. He himself was by then a much emaciated man,
suffering from malnutrition and overwork. Having very little money to spend in a faraway
country, he often missed his meals and smoked discarded cigarette butts to keep him warm and
to forget his hunger.

Months before the revolution, del Pilar circulated in Manila and neighboring provinces his
political works entitled La Patria and Ministerio de la Republica Filipina in preparation for his
return to personally lead a revolution, but on July 4, 1896, he died of tuberculosis in
Barcelona. The following day, he was buried in unmarked grave at the Cementerio del Sud-
Oeste. López Jaena had died six months earlier in Barcelona in a similar hospital run by
the Sisters of Charity, and is said to have retracted masonry and received the sacraments as del
Pilar did.

His remains were brought back in 1920 to his final resting place, now known as Dambana ni
Plaridel under the National Historical Institute located in San Nicolas, Bulacan, Bulacan.
Father of Philippine Masonry

Considered the Father of Philippine Masonry, del Pilar spearheaded the secret organization of
Masonic lodges in the Philippines as a means of strengthening the Propaganda Movement.
He was made a freemason in Spain in 1889, one of the first Filipinos initiated into the mysteries
of freemasonry in Europe. He co-founded Lodge Revoluccion in Barcelona and revived Lodge
Solidaridad when it floundered into stormy seas where he became its Worshipful Master and
with Rizal as the orator. He was crowned 33° by the Gran Oriente Español.

Legacy

Organized in his memory, Samahang Plaridel is a fellowship of journalists and other

communicators that aims to propagate Marcelo H. del Pilar’s ideals.

This fellowship fosters within its capacity, mutual help, cooperation, and assistance among its
members; dedicated to the journalistic standards of accuracy and truth, and in promoting these
standards in the practice of journalism. Plaridel’s ideology of truth, fairness and impartiality is
anchored on democratic principles, as these are the bastions of a society acceptable to all
Filipinos.
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for Rizal’s Life,
Works, and Writings

Submitted by:

Jess Wilmar O. Malaque

BSN 4C

University of Perpetual Help System Dalta - Molino Campus

Submitted to:

Maj. Jerson N. Napat

Professor

University of Perpetual Help System Dalta - Molino Campus

2011