CHAPTER I

THE RIZAL LAW

INTRODUCTION
The way José Rizal is honored as a national hero in the Philippines is unparalleled in
the world. Shrines and monuments dedicated to his figure can be found all over the
archipelago, and his name is often associated with the city's most prominent street or plaza.
Rizal is a university subject because he has become a symbol of Filipino patriotism.

This chapter discusses the history of RA 1425 or the Rizal Law and its significant
provisions. This will also tackle differing views of the provisions of the original Rizal bill of
Recto and Laurel.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:

1. Explain the history of the Rizal Law and its important provisions, and
2. Compare and contrast the views of those in favor and against the RA 1425.

WARMING UP
Think of a recent novel/story that you have read. How did you learn from that study?
Apply this experience to Rizal’s writings? How would reading Rizal’s novels impart
patriotism? Reflect on this an discuss to the class.

REPUBLIC ACT 1425 OR THE RIZAL LAW

The Rizal Bill was passed into law as Republic Act No. 1425, sometimes known as
the 'Rizal Law.' The law's full title is "An Act to Include in the Curricula of All Public and
Private Schools, Colleges and Universities Courses on the Life, Works and Writings of Jose
Rizal, Particularly His Novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, Authorizing the Printing
and Distribution Thereof, and for Other Purposes." A republic act is a law that has already
been passed and implemented, according to the judicial system. A bill, on the other hand, is
only a proposed law that may or may not become law.
Here is the full text of RA 1425:

REPUBLIC ACT NO. 1425

AN ACT TO INCLUDE IN THE CURRICULA OF ALL PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS, COLLEGES AND
UNIVERSITIES COURSES ON THE LIFE, WORKS AND WRITINGS OF JOSE RIZAL, PARTICULARLY HIS
NOVELS NOLI ME TANGERE AND EL FILIBUSTERISMO, AUTHORIZING THE PRINTING AND
DISTRIBUTION THEREOF, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES

WHEREAS, today, more than any other period of our history, there is a need for a re-dedication to the ideals of
freedom and nationalism for which our heroes lived and died;

WHEREAS, it is meet that in honoring them, particularly the national hero and patriot, Jose Rizal, we remember
with special fondness and devotion their lives and works that have shaped the national character;

WHEREAS, the life, works and writing of Jose Rizal, particularly his novels Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo, are a constant and inspiring source of patriotism with which the minds of the youth, especially
during their formative and decisive years in school, should be suffused;

WHEREAS, all educational institutions are under the supervision of, and subject to regulation by the State, and all
schools are enjoined to develop moral character, personal discipline, civic conscience and to teach the duties of
citizenship; Now, therefore,

SECTION 1. Courses on the life, works and writings of Jose Rizal, particularly his novel Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo, shall be included in the curricula of all schools, colleges and universities, public or private:
Provided, That in the collegiate courses, the original or unexpurgated editions of the Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo or their English translation shall be used as basic texts.

The Board of National Education is hereby authorized and directed to adopt forthwith measures to implement and
carry out the provisions of this Section, including the writing and printing of appropriate primers, readers and
textbooks. The Board shall, within sixty (60) days from the effectivity of this Act, promulgate rules and regulations,
including those of a disciplinary nature, to carry out and enforce the provisions of this Act. The Board shall
promulgate rules and regulations providing for the exemption of students for reasons of religious belief stated in a
sworn written statement, from the requirement of the provision contained in the second part of the first paragraph
of this section; but not from taking the course provided for in the first part of said paragraph. Said rules and
regulations shall take effect thirty (30) days after their publication in the Official Gazette.
 SECTION 2. It shall be obligatory on all schools, colleges and universities to keep in their libraries an adequate
number of copies of the original and unexpurgated editions of the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, as well
as of Rizal’s other works and biography. The said unexpurgated editions of the Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo or their translations in English as well as other writings of Rizal shall be included in the list of
approved books for required reading in all public or private schools, colleges and universities.

The Board of National Education shall determine the adequacy of the number of books, depending upon the
enrollment of the school, college or university.

SECTION 3. The Board of National Education shall cause the translation of the Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo, as well as other writings of Jose Rizal into English, Tagalog and the principal Philippine dialects;
cause them to be printed in cheap, popular editions; and cause them to be distributed, free of charge, to persons
desiring to read them, through the Purok organizations and Barrio Councils throughout the country.

SECTION 4. Nothing in this Act shall be construed as amendment or repealing section nine hundred twenty-seven
of the Administrative Code, prohibiting the discussion of religious doctrines by public school teachers and other
person engaged in any public school.

SECTION 5. The sum of three hundred thousand pesos is hereby authorized to be appropriated out of any fund
not otherwise appropriated in the National Treasury to carry out the purposes of this Act.

SECTION 6. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

Approved: June 12, 1956

Published in the Official Gazette, Vol. 52, No. 6, p. 2971 in June 1956.

According to RA1425, all public and private schools, colleges, and universities should
include classes in their curricula about Jose Rizal's life and writings, particularly his books
Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

Senator Claro M. Recto drafted the Rizal Bill, which was sponsored in the Senate by
Senator Jose P. Laurel, Sr., then Chairman of the Committee on Education. They were both
noted for their strong sense of patriotism. This nationalism served as the framework for
drafting the republic act, which aimed to free our country from foreign control and enable us
to stand on our own—exactly the ideas and values that Rizal fought for. It was created for
Filipinos, particularly Filipino youngsters, who may have lost their sense of direction Because
teenagers play such a crucial role in nation building, it is only natural to remind them of the
past. The bill was signed into law on June 12, 1956.

The Rizal Law provides for the following:

1. Requirement for students in the colleges and universities to study the life, works and
writings of Jose Rizal; (Section 1)
2. Requirement for the colleges and universities to have sufficient and unexpurgated
copies of Rizal’s works and writings especially his novels Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo in their respective libraries; (Section 2)
3. Translation and publication of Rizal’s works to English and the other dialects of the
Philippines in cheap editions and the distribution of his works through the Purok
organizations and Barrio Councils throughout the country; (Section 3)
 4. Stipulation that the discussion of Rizal’s idea does not violate the state’s prohibition of
discussion of religious beliefs in the country’s public learning institutions; (Section 4)
and
5. The appropriation of the sum of Php. 300,000.00 for the publication of popular and
cheap editions of Rizal’s works. (Section 5)
This law was clearly produced during a period when patriotism and nationalism were in
short supply and desperately required, and when people were inspired by the authors'
initiative. The Philippines and its population looked to the United States for direction,
assistance, and welfare at this time. It was composed in order to seek assistance from the
same great mind that inspired the Filipinos of the past to struggle for freedom from colonists,
implying that the country may have needed a slow-paced revolution led by patriotism against
dormancy, apathy, and futility in the absence of invaders.

THE TRIALS OF RIZAL LAW

Senator Claro M. Recto proposed the bill in the Philippine Senate called the Senate Bill No.
438. This was followed the House Bill No. 5561 proposed by Congressman Jacobo
Gonzales. In addition to Recto’s Bill, House Bill No. 5561 aimed to also give importance to
study the life of Rizal which results to mandating schools and universities to inculcate in their
curriculum the Life and Works of Rizal. This was sponsored by Senator Jose B. Laurel who
was the Chairperson of the Committee on Education.
Debates on Senate Bill No. 438 began in April 23, 1956. Senator Jose B. Laurel was
supported by Senator Recto to take side in implementing the bill. They meet some
opposition. The issue was divided into two groups. The “anti-Catholics” was the group of
Recto and Laurel. Their opponents were Senators Mariano J. Cuenco, Francisco Rodrigo,
and Decoroso Rosales. Senator Rodrigo said that he got dispensation from the Catholic
Church to read the two novels of Rizal, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. When he
finished reading them, he commented that he would not allow his 16 year old son in reading
the novels since it might confuse his beliefs. He suggested though, that one should have the
guidance of an expert, if a minor would read it. He further said that the reading of the novels
in schools should be optional so as not violate the right of freedom and right of religion.
There is a need for a written statement to be allowed.
Senator Recto proved to his opponent that the state should require the reading of the Noli
Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo in both public and private schools. He said that the soul
objective of this bill was to foster the better appreciation of Rizal’s times and of the role he
played in combatting Spanish tyranny. He derived that the novels had any religious
motivation, he declared:
“Rizal did not pretend to teach religion or theology when he wrote those books.
He aimed at inculcating civic consciousness in the Filipinos, national dignity, personal pride,
and patriotism, and if references were made by him in the course of his narration to certain
religious practices in the Philippines in those days and to the conduct and behaviour of
erring ministers of the church, it was because he portrayed faithfully the general situation in
the Philippines as it then existed. Nobody can dispute that the situation described by Rizal in
those days, political, social, and religious, was the one actually obtaining in the Philippines,
but while he criticized and ridiculed the unworthy behaviour of certain ministers of the
church, he made exceptions in favour of the worthy ones, like the Dominican friar, Padre
Fernandez, and the virtues native pries, Padre Florentino and the Jesuits in general.”
 Senator Rodrigo, Rosales, and Cuenco derived much support from the Catholic Church
itself and from its hundreds of thousands of adherents throughout the country. They invoked
the need for unity, which they said would compromise if the bill were approved. Contending
that they were no less lovers of their country because they were devoted children of their
church, Senator Rodrigo remarked:
“A vast majority of our people are the same time Catholics and Filipino citizens.
As such, they have two great loves: their country and their faith. These two loves are not
conflicting loves. They are harmonious affections, like the love of a child for his father and for
his mother.”
“This is the basic of my stand. Let us not create a conflict between nationalism
and religion, between the government and the church.”
The conflict reach the House of Representatives on April 19, 1956 when the House Bill
No. 5561 introduced by Congressman Jacobo Z. Gonzales which was an identical copy of
senate Bill No. 438. Debates started on May 9, 1956 recommending approval without
amendment.
Notable defenders of the bill in the house, besides the author, where Congressman
Emilio Cirtez, Mario Bengzon, Joaquin R. Roces and W. Rancap Lagumbay. Aming the
outspoken opponents were Congressmen Ramon Durano, Jose Nuguid, Marciano Lim,
Zossa Lucas, Paredes Godofredo, Ramos Miguel Cuenco and Congressmen Carmen D.
Cosing and Teda San Andreas Ziga.
As the daily debates wore on in Congress and throughout the country it became clearer
that no agreement could reached on the original version of the bill. On May 9, 1956, two
weeks had passed new hope for a final resolution of the issue. This came about when
Senator Laurel, rose to propose in his own name and amendment by substitution which read
in full as follows:
“An Act to include in the curricula of all public and private schools, colleges,
and universities courses on the life, works and writings of Jose Rizal, particularly his novels
Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo authorizing the printing and distribution thereof, and
for other purposes.
Whereas, today, more than in any other period of our history, there is a need
for a re-dedication to the ideals of freedom and nationalism for which our heroes lived and
died;
Whereas, it is meet that in honouring them, particularly the national hero and
patriot, Jose Rizal, we remember with special fondness and devotion their lives and works
that have shaped the national character;
Whereas, the life, works and writings of Jose Rizal particularly his novels Noli
Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, are a constant and inspiring source of patriotism with
which the mminds of the youth, especially during their formative and decisive years in
school, should be suffused;
Whereas, all educational institutions are under the supervision of, and subject
to regulation by the state, and all schools are enjoined to develop moral character, personal
discipline, civic conscience and to teach the duties of citizenship; Now therefore,
Be enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the Philippines in
Congress assembled:
 Section1. Courses on the life, works, and writing of Jose Rizal, particularly his
novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, shall be included in the curricula of all
schools, colleges, and universities, public or private: Provided, that in the collegiate courses,
the original or unexpurgated editions of the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo of their
English translation shall be used as basic texts.
The Board of National Education is hereby authorized and directed to adopt
forthwith measures to implement and carry out the provisions of this Section, including the
writing and printing of appropriate primers, readers and textbooks. The Board shall, within
sixty days (60) from the effectivity of this Act promulgate rules and regulations, including
those of disciplinarynature, to carry out and enforce the provisions of this Act. Said rules and
regulations shall take effect thirty (30) days after their publication in the official Gazette.
Section 2. It shall be obligatory on all schools, colleges and universities to keep
copies of the original and unexpurgated editions of the Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo, as well as of Rizal’s other works and biography. They said unexpurgated
editions of the Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo or their translation in English as well as
other writings of Rizal shall be included in the list of approved books for required reading in
all public or private schools, colleges and universities.
The Board of National Education shall determine the adequacy if the number of
books, depending upon the enrolment of the school, college or university.
Section 3. The Board of National Education shall cause the translation of the
Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo as well as other writings of Jose Rizal into English,
Tagaloh and the principal dialects; cause them to be printed in cheap, popular editions; and
cause them to be distributed free of charge, to persons desiring to read them, through the
Purok organizations and Barrio Councils throughout the country.
Section 4. Nothing in this Act shall be construed as amending or repealing
Section 927 of the Administrative Code, prohibiting the discussion of religious doctrines by
public school teachers and other persons engaged in any public school.
Section 5. The sum of the three hundred thousand pesos is hereby authorized
to be appropriated in the National Treasury to carry out the purposes of this act.
Section 6. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

Senator Laurel explained his amendment that in his substitute bill, he included not the
Noli Me Tangere and the El Filibusterismo but all the works and writings of Rizal and even
those written by other about him. This led to the removal of the idea of compulsion. This new
measure was also debated in the chamber but with less heat this time. Several members
spoke on the substitute bill and they strongly opposed and suggested the deletion of the
provision in Section1, but this was rejected by the sponsor.
Furthermore, Senator Lim proposed the exemption of student from the requirements of
the bill, certain conditions, and the Senate seemed headed again for another lengthy
discussion and then the following proceedings took place:
“The Board shall promulgate rules and regulations providing for the exemption
of students for reasons of religious belief stated in sworn written statement from the
requirement of the provision contained in the second part of the first paragraph of this
section; but not taking the course provided for in the first part of said paragraph.”
 On May 12, 1956, the substitute bill was unanimously approved on the second reading.
The House of Representatives was also casting out their votes for the substitute bill. On May
14, 1956, Congressman Tolentino, the house majority leader, sponsored a bill identical to
Senator Laurel’s substitute bill, and it was approved on second reading in the Upper House.
Senate Bill No. 438 was approved on the third reading with 23 votes in favour of the
passing of the bill. House Bill No. 5561 was also approved on the third reading, with 71 votes
in favour and it was sent to the Senate on the same day.
On June 12, 1956, the bill was signed into law by President Ramon Magsaysay and
became Republic Act No. 1425 also known as “Rizal Law”.

Based on the discussion above, what is your opinion on the

provisions of RA 1425?

THE RIZAL BILL OF 1956 HORACIO DE LA COSTA AND

THE BISHOPS

This is an excerpt from the article of Fr. John n. Schumacher, S.J., the Rizal Bill of
1956 Horacio de la Costa and the Bishops. This discusses the controversies of the several
drafts of a pastoral letter written by Horacio dela Costa for the bishops in 1952.
Rizal, as shown by De la Costa, is a remarkable moral figure whose adherence to the truth
made his writings a source of moral, social, and political enlightenment for Filipinos. Despite
the fact that he was pushed to soften his views by an unknown interlocutor in later drafts, he
maintained an essentially good perspective of the works. However, in the face of Recto's
1956 statute mandating the novels, Abp. Fr. Rufino J. Santos was commissioned by Rufino
J. Santos. A new "Statement" will be written by Jesus Cavanna. The "Statement" began with
a few complimentary phrases from De la Costa before categorically condemning the novels
and forbidding their reading, a prohibition that proved ineffectual. The drafts of De la Costa
reveal that there was a very different attitude regarding Rizal within the Catholic Church,
whose legacy the church could welcome.
The Catholic Church encouraged its followers to write to their congressman and senators
expressing their opposition to the Rizal law, and later arranged symposiums. One of these
symposiums included Fr. The novels, according to Jesus Cavanna, belong in the past, and
teaching them would misrepresent current reality.
Cavanna believed that Rizal's works should be read in the order in which they were
written. As a result, if the characters in the novel are liberal Catholics or have lost their faith,
it is only fair that the opinions they express be interpreted as what is appropriate for such a
character to say, rather than as the author's teaching. He had added that "we are unable to
discover any clear example of Rizal doing this," that is, "suggest that these are his own
opinions which he proposed to his readers as true" in order to be "teaching and not merely
portraying error," and thus concludes that there is no passage in which Rizal shows that he
wishes to attack.
Even without being mislead by the prejudiced translation, this statement was later
withdrawn and changed because they chose to read it as an attack on the church itself. They
were denying that there was any passage in the novels where Rizal could be seen attacking
the church in his own person rather than having his characters speak as befitted them, and
the "Statement" continued to contradict itself:
“Furthermore, there are passages in both volumes where the author, rather than the
characters in the novels, talks. Aside from the attacks aimed at unworthy priests, several of these
passages are insulting to Catholic doctrines and practices as a whole. 4–5 par. 6) ([Philippine
Hierarchy] 1956, 4–5 par.

They then go on to cite over 120 passages that "are against Catholic dogma and
morals," "disparage divine worship," and "make light of ecclesiastical discipline." The
"Statement" (the Church's statement in response to the Rizal Bill) instead quoted canon law
prohibiting certain types of books, under which it declared the two novels fell. They could
only be read with the authorization of ecclesiastical authorities, which was "readily granted
for justifiable reason" to individuals with sufficient knowledge of Catholic doctrine.
The rest of the "Statement" focused on the Senate bill's irrationality and injustice in
requiring Catholic pupils to read attacks on their faith. Under the pretext of nationalism, such
a law would violate "one of our country's essential freedoms, namely, their freedom of
conscience" ([Philippine Hierarchy] 1956, 6–8 par. 11–13). It then proceeded to issue eleven
concise declarations for the guidance of all Filipinos, particularly law-making bodies. After
expressing their admiration for Rizal, the bishops stressed that, despite the fact that he wrote
the novels during a period when he was estranged from the Catholic Church, he retracted
anything he had written about her before his death. His final will and testament should
remain untouchable.
As a result, they proposed extracting "patriotic portions," claiming that the novel Noli
"was not truly patriotic" because "just 25 pages featured patriotic passages, while 120 pages
were devoted to anti-Catholic insults" (Constantino, 1971). The Archbishop of Manila, Rufino
Santos, went on to state in a pastoral letter to the people of his archdiocese that the novels
were not only condemned by the church, but that they were also illegal. "It is a sin for any
Catholic to read these works in their entirety, or to keep, publish, sell, translate, or convey
the same to others in any way without due permission," he said ([Santos] 1956, 350).
Soon after, senators reached an agreement under which a student who "serves
written notice under oath to the head of the college or university that the reading and study
of the... unexpurgated edition is contrary to his religion or religious beliefs, said student shall
be exempt from using the said edition" would be exempt from using the edition (Acosta
1973). Although Acosta saw it as a "win for the local Catholic Church," it was actually a face-
saving compromise that allowed it to pass the Senate unanimously and obtain President
Magsaysay's signature.

What is your takeaway on the role of the Catholic Church in the

passing of the Rizal Law?
 WHY STUDY RIZAL
When Laurel and Recto proposed teaching Jose Rizal's works at the tertiary level,
they were labeled as communists and threatened with excommunication. They believed that
learning about Rizal's worldview would help Filipinos recognize that they have their own
interests to promote and safeguard in the early 1950s. The popular mood at the time was to
regard the Americans as our perpetual savior, and the two nationalists were concerned that
this would weaken the youth's commitment to love their country and countrymen more.
They persevered in the face of adversity and invectives, resulting in the passage of
Republic Act No. 1425, which mandates the teaching of Rizal's novels. The topic was clearly
not Rizal's failed love for Leonor Rivera, nor was it whether he was gay or not, nor was it
when and where "El Filibusterismo" was published. The question of whether he preferred
Suzanne Jacoby to Gertrude Beckett is ridiculous. Memorizing "Mi Ultimo Adios" can be
difficult for students of mass communication and language, but it can be torturous for others.
What good will that accomplish in terms of instilling in students the principles of patriotism,
honesty, courage, and fortitude?
What role does Rizal education play? "A dead person cannot do anything about the
lives of the living," Maribel Q. Galindo was correct, "but the thoughts, ideals, dreams, beliefs,
or convictions that he left may be highly important to people's lives as a source of strength in
their day-to-day existence." The Rizal Course is about being loyal to your fellow Filipinos in
times of adversity, and that's where the relevancy of the theme came in." It's standing up for
the truth as you see it. It's being unafraid to do the right thing. It contributes to the
community's overall well-being. Finally, it's about your neighbors' love and how you and
them can work together.
Rizal has the potential to be a paradigm for all times, all locations, and all people who
value liberty and justice. He chastised his fellow Indios' corrupt mentality, asking that they
live with dignity and pride, just as he decried the colonial authorities' injustices. He would
have scoffed at political dynasties and foreign commercial disparities. He would have
bemoaned the millennials' lack of engagement and indifference. He would have chastised
politicians who prioritized their own agenda over that of the public. He would have scorned
individuals who would sooner travel overseas than use their skills to improve the lives of
their neighbors.
Learning is the process of integrating our gained knowledge with the reality we have
created for ourselves. "In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind,"
Louis Pasteur is said to have said. Mel Thompson writes in "Understanding Philosophy"
(1995) that "the varied situations and crises that chance throws up present both hazards and
opportunities." He believes that a "person who is alert and sensitive to what life is about, and
who has already considered the fundamental principles of what we can know or what we
should do, will be successful."
Returning to the plots of Rizal's works is no longer interesting because they have
previously been discussed in secondary school. Analyzing the plots of "Noli" and "Fili," as
well as analysing the meaning of his essays, is more important. "Everything we do is a
process in which our memories of past experiences impact our choices and intents. The
critical moment is a brief passage from the past to the future."
Those who do not know about the past are doomed to repeat its mistakes, according
to George Santayana. Rizal felt that those who are unaware of their origins will never arrive
at their destination. It has turned into a forewarning to us. Also, do we really need to go over
Jose Rizal's life and writings again? It's because of the Rizal Law, also known as Republic
Act 1425.

Make a drawing portraying the importance of studying the life and

works of Rizal.

ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date:

______
Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score:
_____

Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
Answer the following questions comprehensively.

1. Considering the context of the 1950s, what issues and interests were at stake in the
debate over the Rizal Bill? Do these issues remain pertinent to the present?
2. Do you agree with the rationale of the Rizal Law? Cite specific provision that you
agree on and explain why.
3. Why do we need to study the Life and Works of Rizal?

REFERENCES

Mañebog, J. (2014, June 25). Our Happy School. Retrieved from The Importance of the
Jose Rizal Subject .
Mojarro, J. (2018, June 24). Rappler.com. Retrieved from [OPINION] Reading,
understanding, and appreciating Rizal.
Presidential Communications Operations Office. (1956, June 12). Official Gazette of the
Republic of the Philippines. Retrieved from Republic Act No. 1425.
Quiray, E. L. (2018, May 05). Inquirer Opinion. Retrieved from How Rizal’s life should be
taught: https://opinion.inquirer.net/112944/rizals-life-taught#ixzz6TlpXXnnQ
Schumacher, J. N. (2011). The Rizal Bill of 1956 Horacio de la Costa and the Bishops.
Philippine Studies, 59(4), 529-553.
 CHAPTER II

Rizal and the Theory of

Nationalism

INTRODUCTION
National or group identity is the most powerful political or social force. The ideology
of liberal individualism may be more popular at times, but its polar opposite, nationalism,
tribalism, or group or national identification, balances it out. Even if they don't realize it,
belonging to a country is one of the simplest and most basic methods to find out who you
are. But what drives this identification? Is it a natural affinity to individuals who are physically
or culturally near to you, or has it formed via debates that lead to political motivation? What
benefit does national identity have? To completely comprehend them, we must explore how
they came into historical existence, how their meaning has evolved over time, and why they
are still relevant today.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:
1. Explain the views about how the concept of nationalism came into light;
2. Examine the values highlighted by the various representations of Rizal as a national
symbol; and
3. Advocate the values Rizal’s life encapsulates.

WARMING UP
Study the history of your town/municipality; know how and where your ancestors
came from. Know the hardships your town/municipality and your ancestors have
experienced and the great actions done by them to solve their problems. This would help
you know where your ancestors came from and how your country came to be.

NATION AS IMAGINED COMMUNITIES

Before tackling the issue of nationalism, it's a good idea to think about what a
"nation" is and come up with a useful definition. Nation must be regarded as an imagined
community - one that is both restricted and sovereign in nature, but that does not diminish its
reality, Benedict Anderson discussed.
 It is imagined because even the smallest nation's citizens will never meet, let alone
hear of, the majority of their fellow citizens, but the idea of their communion will live on in
their minds. Even the largest of them, with perhaps a billion living human beings, has limits,
albeit elastic, borders beyond which other nations reside. No country considers itself to be
coterminous with humanity.
Because the notion was born in an age when the Enlightenment and Revolution were
eroding the legitimacy of the divinely centered, hierarchical dynastic world, it is regarded as
sovereign. Nations dream of being free, and if under God, directly so, as they mature at a
time in human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion are
inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism
between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch.
Finally, it is envisioned as a community, because the nation is always regarded as a
deep, horizontal comradeship, whatever of the actual inequality and exploitation that may
exist in each. In the end, it is this brotherhood that has allowed so many millions of people to
gladly die for such restricted imaginings during the past two centuries. What is the purpose
of a person's sacrifice when they die for their country? It's for a notion, according to
Anderson: nations are emotional and cultural phenomena, not concrete ones.

NATIONALISM AND IMAGINED COMMUNITIES

Benedict Anderson’s attribute nation and national identity to a number of key
phenomena. He asserts that the main causes of nationalism are the following:
1. The concept of a continuous, solid national identity was an ideal replacement for the
religious worldview that dominated Europe during the Middle Ages. He claimed that,
with the help of the printing press, newspapers began to present the country as a
continuous story, with characters entering and exiting the stage at various times.
Furthermore, you assume that other members of the community have read the same
story and that you share a cultural code.
2. Next he argues that capitalism encourage printers to print first in Latin, but then in
local vernacular to find new markets and to keep expanding. Anderson’s study looks
at Indochina and Latin America, asking why in the former, nationalism in Vietnam,
Cambodia, and China were at odds with each other when they’re all communist
countries. And in the latter, asking why nationalisms develop in a continent with
roughly a shared language. He argues that the combination of capitalism and print
media created these imagined geographical communities.
3. Then there's the growth of the effort to eliminate hereditary monarchy and the
concept of primordialism, which holds that monarchy is based on the monarchs'
divine right to govern.
Many of these events coincided with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, which
resulted in a significant shift in society in all aspects. In order to better illustrate the
concept of nationalism. Anderson drew on the new nationalism that can be seen in
memorials and tombstones of unknown soldiers. Even if these memorials are either
empty or contain unidentified bodies, public ceremonial devotion is nonetheless paid to
them, nations would create them and claim them as their own. That the unknown soldier
is nonetheless put into the imagined group, regardless of their true origins or stories.
Furthermore, he demonstrated that nationalism differs from other political ideologies
in that no one would die for liberalism, yet hundreds of people die every year for their
countries. Because the concept of nation is so powerful, everyone assumes that everyone
else is a member of one. One of nationalism's most essential impacts, according to
Anderson, is to provide meaning where it is lacking, such as when someone dies in war. As
a result, a national identity was gradually forged from collective ideas, which spurred an
individual's daily quest for a better life.
Finally, Anderson added a crucial acknowledgment of the role of forgetting to his
numerous studies of the social and material circumstances for creative imagination. Memory
appears to fit into a pattern of national cohesion and identity reproduction that is probably
self-evident. National memory is created by an entire industry of history and
commemoration, which also provides more specific recollections within a national context.
Schoolchildren are taught about their country's history. Tourists pay a visit to historical
battlegrounds. But this isn't a whole memory. It's also forgetting, as Anderson showed us.
When English schoolchildren think of William the Conqueror as a great Founding Father of
the English nation, they must understand that he did not speak English and was the
conqueror as well as the parent of the English.

RIZAL AND POPULAR NATIONALISM

It's crucial to remember the situations in Asia, particularly the Philippines, during
Rizal's lifetime in order to better understand why he became the Father of Filipino
Nationalism. With the exception of China, Japan, and Thailand, the Western Powers
dominated the remainder of Asia and the Far East. Under Spanish rule, Filipinos were
denied essential human rights, such as freedom of speech, press, religion, and association,
as well as other benefits that come with a democratic society. In their native nation, they
were merely "wood hewers and water draws." Church and state were fused together in
Spain, with the clergy wielding more authority and influence than the civil authorities.
While Rizal was a passionate advocate for improving his country's deplorable
conditions, he also believed that his people should strive to develop themselves via industry
and knowledge in order to earn the respect and admiration of foreigners. Because he was
the first Filipino leader to argue for the idea of nationhood for his countrymen, Dr. Rizal has
been dubbed the "Father of Filipino Nationalism" by his own people. Unfortunately, some
Filipinos still believe that our Rizal is a "made-to-order" national hero.
Before we go any further, it's a good idea to understand what the term hero means. A
hero is "a prominent or central personage taking an excellent part in any exceptional deed or
event," according to Webster's New International Dictionary of the English language. He is
also "a man honored after death by public worship, because of exceptional service to
mankind," according to the historical committee of the Philippine National Heroes
Commission.
The National Heroes Commission's historical committee - tasked for studying,
evaluating, and expressly recommending Filipino national figures as national heroes in
appreciation of their sterling character and outstanding contributions for the country. - came
up with a list of traits that should be assessed before a person is declared a hero:
1. The extent of the person’s sacrifices for the welfare of the country;
2. Motive and methods employed in the attainment of the ideal, did the person
concerned or was there any selfish or ulterior motive in the making such sacrifices.
Were the methods employed in the attainment of the ideal morally valid?
 3. The third criteria concerned the moral character of the person. Did he do anything
immoral to taint his personal character? If there was any immorality, did it affect his
work, his society of the ideal?
4. The final criterion examines the influence of the person to his age or epoch and the
succeeding eras.
If we were to choose a single work by a Filipino writer from their day that contributed
more than any other to the establishment of Filipino nationalism, we would choose Rizal's
Noli Me Tangere without hesitation. None of the works published at the same time elicited as
many positive and negative responses from friends and adversaries alike as Rizal's Noli.
"The novel was excellent," observed Regidor, a Filipino exile in London in 1872, and "if Don
Quijote has made its author famous because he exposed the world to Spain's miseries, your
Noli Me Tangere will bring you similar fame." If Rizal's friends and lovers lauded the Noli and
its author with justifiable pride, his opponents did not.
In order to demonstrate the Filipinos' potential for self-government, Congressman
Henry Allen Cooper of Wisconsin gave a tribute to Rizal and even recited the martyr's Ultimo
Pensamiento on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. "It has been stated
that if American institutions had done nothing else than provide the world with the character
of George Washington, it would be enough to earn them the respect of mankind," he added.
So, Sir, I say to all those who dismiss Filipinos as barbarians and savages with no hope of a
civilized future, that his hated race earned their respect and the esteem of mankind when it
gave the world Jose Rizal."
Another reason is that no Filipino has yet been born who might match or surpass
Rizal as "a person of distinguished heroism or enterprise in peril, or endurance in suffering."
Consider what a Filipino biographer stated about these characteristics of our hero:
"What is most admirable about Rizal is his entire self-denial, his complete
abandonment of his personal interests in order to think only of the interests of his
country," wrote Rafael Palma. Given his natural gifts, he could have been anything
he wanted to be; he could have made a lot of money from his career; he could have
had a relatively comfortable, happy, prosperous life if he hadn't dedicated himself to
public affairs. However, the voice of the species overrode the voice of personal
advancement and private money in him, and he preferred to live far from his family
and sacrifice his personal attachments for an ideal he had envisioned. He paid little
attention to his brother or even his parents, both of whom he admired and revered.

"He didn't have much in the way of resources to carry out his campaign, but
that didn't deter him; he made do with what he had." He endured the rigors of Europe's frigid
winter, starvation, poverty, and misery; but his hope was resurrected when he raised his
eyes to heaven and recognized his aspirations. He bemoaned his compatriots, he
bemoaned those of those who had promised him support but failed to deliver, to the point
where, deeply disillusioned, he wanted to abandon his quest and give up everything. But
such feelings faded quickly, and he returned to his work of bearing the cross of his
suffering."

To bigoted Spaniards in Spain and the Philippines, Rizal was the most intellectual,
courageous, and deadly opponent of reactionaries and tyrants; as a result, he should be
publicly murdered as an example and a warning to those of his ilk.
If you're still looking for a reason why he's regarded as the greatest Filipino hero of all
time, look no further. It's simply because he is "a man honored after death by popular
veneration, because of remarkable service to mankind." We can see that Rizal was already
regarded as the preeminent leader of his country by both Filipinos and foreigners even
before his execution. Many people thought he was the Philippines' greatest export, and that
his arrival in the world was akin to the emergence of a rare comet, whose unusual brilliance
occurs every other century.
Many examples may be provided to show that Rizal's leadership was recognized by
his countrymen both at home and abroad even before the commencement of the Revolution
against Spain in 1896. He was frequently elected or appointed as president or leader by a
unanimous vote. The revolutionary group known as the Katipunan recognized Rizal's
leadership and magnificence by making him Honorary President and using his surname
Rizal as the password for third-degree members, according to history.
We occasionally come across Filipinos who believe that Andres Bonifacio, not Jose
Rizal, is the first national hero who deserves to be recognized and canonized. They claim
that Rizal never used a gun, rifle, or sword in the fight for the country's liberty and
independence on the battlefield. In these lines, Rafael Palma sums up the case of Rizal vs.
Bonifacio perfectly:
It should be a source of pride and satisfaction for Filipinos to have one of such exceptional
traits and merits among their national heroes, which may be equaled but not surpassed by any other
guy. Unlike most heroes in western countries, who serve their cause with the sword, distilling blood
and tears, the Filipino hero served his cause with the pen, demonstrating that the pen is just as
powerful as the sword in freeing a people from political enslavement. True, the sword of Bonifacio was
needed to break the yoke of a foreign power in our instance; yet the revolution organized by Bonifacio
was merely the effect, the result of the revolution prepared by the people.

During his lifetime, Spanish reactionaries regarded Rizal as the country's worst
enemy and traitor, and they continued to persecute him until his execution on December 30,
1896; nowadays, Rizal is widely regarded as his country's greatest hero and martyr, and the
"Father of Filipino Nationalism." "Not only is Rizal the most prominent man of his own
people, but the greatest man the Malayan race has produced," Prof. Blumentritt remarked,
"his memory will never expire in his fatherland, and future generations of Spaniards will learn
to pronounce his name with respect and reverence."
We have shown that until the moment of his immolation, Rizal had projected himself
as the foremost leader of the Philippines through his own efforts and sacrifices for his
oppressed countrymen, and that this fact was spontaneously acknowledged not only by his
own people but also by the elite of other lands who were intimately familiar with his patriotic
labors. There was no single person or group of people who made the Greatest Malayan the
People's Number One Hero. Rizal's own people, as well as foreigners, all contributed to his
status as the greatest hero and martyr of his people. Rizal could not be transformed into a
great hero no matter how much adoration and canonization he received from Filipinos and
foreigners.

Make a poster of you expressing your nationalistic sentiments as a Filipino.

 ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date:

______
Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score:
_____

Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
TEST I

1. What is a nation and why is it “imagined”?

2. How does Rizal and his works relate to Philippine nationalism?
3. Why is Rizal considered the Father of Filipino Nationalism?

TEST II
Instruction: In an essay, write about a particular value Rizal advocated that should be given
emphasis and of why it should be emulated by the people.

REFERENCES

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined Communities - Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism. New York: Verso.
de Ocampo, E. A. (1962, March). Dr. Jose Rizal, Father of Filipino Nationalism. Journal of
Southeast Asian History, 3(1), 44-55.
Zaide, G. F., & Zaide, S. M. (2014). JOSE RIZAL: Life, Works and Writings of a Genius,
Writer, Scientist and National Hero. Mandaluyong: Anvil Publishing Inc.
 CHAPTER III

RIZAL’S SOCIAL ORIGINS AND HISTORICAL

CONTEXT

INTRODUCTION
When seen within a time frame and the right historical context, the meaning and
relevance of a man’s activity can be more understood and appreciated. To properly
understand and appreciate Jose Rizal’s role in the formation of the Filipino nation, one must
be familiar with the events of the century in which he lived and the time he worked.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:
1. Analyze the various social, political, economic, and cultural changes that occurred in
the nineteenth century;
2. Examine the link between the individual and the society; and
3. Recognize the role of social origins and historical context in the making of a national
leader.

WARMING UP:
Are you familiar with your own origin? Make a diagram or family tree which illustrates your
own genealogy.

LESSON DISCUSSION
SOCIAL CLASS DIVISION
The social structure of the Philippines in the late nineteenth century was multi-ethnic
and multi-layered. The threads of this evolving colonial society, each of which was
undergoing internal class differentiation, were the resident Spanish, the expanding Chinese
community, and the native people (Indios). They were mostly classified into three social
groups:
Highest Class

• Peninsulares – they are of pure Spaniard descent born in Spain.

• Criollos – they are pure Spanish descent but born in the Americas.
Middle Class

• Mestizos de Espanol – they are of Spaniard descent but have mixed Filipino
ancestry.
• Principalia – the Native political elites.

Lowest Class

• Indio – they are Pure Blooded Filipino people.

• Mestizo de Sangley – they are of mixed Chinese and Filipino ancestry; also called as
chino mestizo.

A son born to a sangley male and an indio or mestizo de sangley female was
designated as a mestizo de sangley, and all subsequent male descendants were mestizos
de sangley regardless of whether they married an india or a mestiza de sangley.
This caste system has its origins in the Spanish colonial area and continues to this
day in the Philippines. The system was created for the purpose of taxation. Indios paid a
base tax, mestizos de sangley paid twice that, sangleys paid four times that, and criollos and
peninsulares paid none.

ASCENDANCE OF CHINESE MESTIZOS

There is misunderstanding concerning the term mestizo, which is exacerbated by the
fact that there has been no legally designated mestizo class since 1898, which we may use
to explain how the term is used in Spain. When the term mestizo appears in its original form
in materials from the Spanish period, it refers to Spanish mestizos (people of mixed Spanish
and native heritage), not Chinese mestizos.
The establishment of a Chinese mestizo community in the Philippines can only be
understood by first looking at some aspects of Chinese history in the Philippines. The
Chinese quickly ascended to a powerful economic position after the Spaniards came. The
Spanish started to regard the Chinese as vital because they swiftly monopolized the
commerce industry. Given the Spanish belief that the Chinese were economically necessary,
the only option to solve the problem would be to convert the Chinese to Catholicism and
Hispanism. This isn't to suggest that efforts to convert the Chinese were only a result of
calculated policy aimed at "taming" those who dominated the colony's economic life.
However, there is a better option.
Binondo began as a Chinese settlement around 1594. All Chinese were to be
expelled from the Philippines, according to a royal order. Governor Dasmarinas, on the other
hand, recognized that the city of Manila, the greatest Spanish settlement, required at least a
small number of Chinese for commercial services. By 1741, the Chinese mestizos had
established themselves as a distinct social group in the Philippines, with enough numbers to
be organized and categorized individually.
The economic standing of Chinese mestizos was greater than it had ever been by
the middle of the nineteenth century. They not only had significant land holdings, but they
were also well on their way to monopolizing internal trade, with only the province governors
as competition. Other observers remarked on the mestizos' riches and economic clout. In his
1842 report, Sinibaldo de Mas stated:
 “They control almost all retail business in the Philippines, and they may be considered the
country's middle class. They are the country's proprietors, merchants, and educated citizens, and they
will control public opinion. By the end of the century, the Chinese mestizos will have swelled to at
least one million, thanks to natural growth and immigration from China, and will control the majority of
the Islands' wealth.”

Foreign traders that wanted to distribute imported goods through Manila's mestizos
used the city's mestizos. The retail trade in Manila was exclusively handled by Chinese
mestizos and Chinese. They also controlled the majority of artisan stores and participated in
urban wholesale.
The rise of outside markets for Philippine exports, in turn, sped up the collecting of
raw materials across the archipelago. During the latter years of the Manila Galleon trading
system, galleons that had previously transported mostly Chinese products and Mexican
bullion began to load a more diverse cargo, including growing amounts of Philippine
produce. As Philippine lands became more widely exploited for commercial agriculture, land
acquisition became more competitive. Collectors of Philippine items began to see more
opportunities.
Spaniards and Spanish mestizos were rare in the Philippines, and even fewer were
interested in trade, with the exception of speculating in the Manila Galleon. The majority of
indios lacked the necessary funds and experience. Provincial governors (Spaniards),
Chinese, and mestizos were the only ones left. Mestizos appear to have been more active
collectors and transporters of Philippine products among the survivors.
Because the Chinese were temporarily absent from most of the provinces, the
mestizos were able to attain economic success. The new opportunities that began to surface
in the late eighteenth century would almost certainly have been taken by the Chinese if there
had been no limits on Chinese immigration and geographic movement. Instead, the
temporary application of Spanish rules provided a chance for the increasing mestizo
community, with only the provincial governors as a competition.
The mestizos' rise to economic significance was accompanied by a rise in social
prominence. Being a Chinese mestizo was, in fact, a source of social respect. In a letter
written around 1840, Sinibaldo de Mas laments the rise of riches as the benchmark of social
position, rather than lineage considerations. With the rise of the concept of riches as a
measure of prestige, it's no surprise that Chinese mestizos have become sought-after role
models. They were often among the wealthiest persons in the towns where they were
numerous, and, perhaps more importantly, they were thought to be wealthier as a class than
the indios. As a result, the term "mestizo" gained a lot of respect.
However, the indios' attitude toward the mestizo was not entirely positive. Many small
disagreements between mestizo and indio gremios existed, and their litigation dragged on
for decades. With the development of the mestizos to a position of luxury and prominence,
the Spanish were increasingly concerned about their interactions with the indios. This was
particularly true once the Spaniards were concerned about the danger of revolution in their
Philippine colony. Because Spain sought to keep the Philippines, a strong divide-and-rule
policy was judged effective. The indios and mestizos, in particular, must be kept apart - the
mestizos' intellect and money must not be linked to the number system.
 THE FRIAR LANDS
The land grants provided by the King of Spain through the encomienda system were
the principal source of the Church haciendas. These were the lands given to various
Spaniards who took part in the first conquest by the Royal Crown. The religious orders, for
example, The haciendas were obtained by contributions from Dominicans, Augustinians, and
Recollects, or through sales by Spanish proprietors who had lost interest or found
themselves unable of efficiently maintaining the estates. Following then, the estates were
augmented by grants or sales made by Filipino principals acting on their own or on behalf of
the towns.
The royal land grants stated that the lands given were only from lands not owned by
Filipinos; yet, both Cushner and Roth (1976) contend that some Filipino-owned estates must
have been included, despite the lack of concrete evidence. As a result, the question of
whether the large plots of property sold or donated to Catholic orders by Filipinos after the
founding of the religious hacienda genuinely belonged to individuals who sold or donated
them to the monks arises. The Spanish law established a variety of measures to ensure land
ownership and availability for sale, but these were not always followed, and both Cushner
and Roth believe that unfair transfers of common land were possible.
The haciendas became increasingly important as commercial agriculture grew rapidly
in tandem with population increase in the nineteenth century. While the profits of the owners
of the haciendas continued to rise, the wages of the laborers continued to fall, and this rising
profit became a component in the revolution that occurred later. Although there is no
conclusive evidence that the revolution was precipitated by agrarian issues, it is possible.
However, it was clear that many revolutionaries were eager to acquire control of the friar
estates and profit from the sale of the haciendas during the American rule. Even the Malolos
administration took the friars' lands following the earthquake.

ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date: _____

Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score: _____

Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
Give a short description on how the various political, economic, and cultural changes
in the 19th century shaped the:
1. Life and Works of Rizal, and
2. The Philippines as a whole.
REFERENCES
Asiniero , J. (2013). From Cádiz to La Liga: The Spanish Context of Rizal’s Political Thought.
ASIAN STUDIES: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 9(1), 1-42.
Borromeo-Buehler, S. (1985, March). The Inquilinos of Cavite: A Social Class in
NineteenthCentury Philippines. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 16(1), 69-98.
doi:10.1017/S002246340001277
Schumacher, J. N. (1977). Review: Church Lands and Philippine Socioeconomic
Development. Philippine Studies, 25(4), 456-469. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/42632397
Wickerberg, E. (1964, March). The Chinese mestizo in Philippine History. Journal of
Southeast Asian History, 5(1), 62-100.
 CHAPTER IV

TWO FACES OF THE

1872 CAVITE MUTINY

INTRODUCTION
The availability of resources, historians' interpretations, and the growth of people's
ideas can all influence historical debates and concerns. On the contrary, we also have a
famous saying, “there are always two sides of the coin.” The later describes the 1872 Cavite
Mutiny. The Spaniards has their own side of the story so as the Filipinos. Let us understand
and help us choose a stand on what really happened during the 1872 Cavite Mutiny through
this chapter.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:
1. Compare the Spanish and Filipino version of the Cavite Mutiny
2. Critique the two versions of the Cavite Mutiny

WARMING UP:
Social media or internet is one of the frequently used tool by most of us in acquiring
different kinds of information. Unfortunately, this tool can also be the source of fake news.
Enumerate steps on how you identify or choose true information.

LESSON DISCUSSION

LESSON 1:
TWO FACES OF THE 1872 CAVITE MUTINY
By Chris Antonette Piedad-Pugay

Since 1898, the 12th of June has been a significant date in the lives of all Filipinos.
The whole Filipino country, as well as Filipino communities around the world, congregate on
this day to commemorate the Philippines' independence. For all of us, 1898 has become a
pivotal year—it is on par with 1896, the year when the Philippine Revolution erupted in
response to the Filipinos' desire to be free of the Spanish colonial regime's injustices.
However, another year, 1872, is just as significant as the previous two.
 In the year 1872, two big events occurred: the 1872 Cavite Mutiny and the
martyrdom of the three martyr priests, Fathers Mariano Gomes, Jose Burgos, and Jacinto
Zamora (GOMBURZA). However, not everyone was aware that alternative reports of the
same event existed. Because this occurrence led to another terrible yet significant aspect of
our history—the execution of GOMBURZA, which was a vital element in the awakening of
nationalism among Filipinos—all Filipinos should be aware of all sides of the tale.

1872 CAVITE MUTINY: SPANISH PERSPECTIVE

A famous Spanish historian, Jose Montero y Vidal, described the incident and
characterized it as an attempt by the Indios to topple the Spanish rule in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, the official account of Gov. Gen. Rafael Izquierdo exaggerated the incident and
used it to blame the native clergy, which was at the time engaged in the campaign for
secularization. The general's report was more caustic, yet the two tales complimented and
confirmed each other. Initially, both Montero and Izquierdo claimed that the abolition of
privileges enjoyed by Cavite arsenal workers, such as non-payment of tributes and
exemption from forced labor, were the main reasons for the "revolution," as they called it;
however, they also cited other factors, such as the Spanish occupation of the Philippines.
The two Spaniards believed that the 1872 incident had been organized in advance
and that it was the result of a large conspiracy including educated leaders, mestizos,
abogadillos (local lawyers), people of Manila and Cavite, and the native clergy. They said
that Manila and Cavite conspirators planned to assassinate high-ranking Spanish officers,
followed by a massacre of the friars. The firing of rockets from the walls of Intramuros was
allegedly a pre-planned signal among the conspirators of Manila and Cavite.
According to their testimonies, the district of Sampaloc celebrated the feast of the
Virgin of Loreto on January 20, 1872, but regrettably, the festivities were marred by the
typical fireworks displays. According to reports, people in Cavite mistook the pyrotechnics for
an attack signal, and the 200-man detachment led by Sergeant Lamadrid launched an attack
on Spanish officials on sight, seizing the arsenal, as arranged.
When word of the revolution reached the iron-fisted Governor Izquierdo, he quickly
ordered the reinforcement of Spanish forces in Cavite to put down the rebellion. When the
expected reinforcements from Manila failed to arrive, the "revolution" was quickly subdued.
The fight resulted in the deaths of major instigators, including Sergeant Lamadrid, while the
GOMBURZA were prosecuted by a court-martial and sentenced to death by strangling.
Joaquin Pardo de Tavera, Antonio Ma., and other Patriots Regidor, Jose, and Pio Basa, as
well as other abogadillos, were barred from practicing law by the Audencia (High Court),
arrested, and condemned to life in prison in the Marianas Island. Furthermore, Governor
Izquierdo dissolved the local artillery regiments and ordered the formation of an artillery force
made up entirely of Peninsulares.
The GOMBURZA were executed on February 17, 1872, in an attempt by the Spanish
government and Frailocracia to create dread in the Filipinos so that they would never do
such a daring deed again. This sad occurrence was one of the driving causes in the
formation of Filipino nationalism.
A RESPONSE TO INJUSTICE: THE FILIPINO VERSION OF THE INCIDENT
The Filipino version of the deadly incident in Cavite was written by Dr. Trinidad
Hermenigildo Pardo de Tavera, a Filipino academic and researcher. According to him, the
episode was only a mutiny by the Cavite arsenal's native Filipino soldiers and employees,
who were upset with the removal of their privileges. Indirectly, Tavera blamed Gov.
Izquierdo's cold-blooded policies, such as the abolition of workers' and native army
members' arsenal privileges, and the prohibition on the establishment of schools of arts and
trades for Filipinos, which the general saw as a cover-up for the formation of a political club.
On January 20, 1872, a group of roughly 200 soldiers, arsenal workers, and Cavite
locals led by Sergeant Lamadrid rose out in arms and assassinated the commanding officer
and all Spanish officers in sight. Unfortunately, the insurgents did not receive assistance
from the majority of the army. When word of the mutiny reached Manila, Gen. Izquierdo
ordered the reinforcement of Spanish troops in Cavite right away. The revolt was officially
proclaimed over after two days.
Tavera believed that the Spanish friars and Izquierdo used the Cavite Mutiny as a
powerful lever to overthrow the Spanish government in the Philippines by magnifying it as a
full-blown conspiracy involving not only the native army but also residents of Cavite and
Manila, and most importantly, the native clergy. It's worth noting that the Central
Administration in Madrid proclaimed at the time that the friars would be stripped of all powers
of intervention in matters of civil government and educational direction and management.
This turn of events, according to Tavera, spurred the friars to take harsh measures in their
desperate attempt to maintain authority in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Central Government supported an educational decree
drafted by Segismundo Moret that encouraged the unification of sectarian schools managed
by the friars into a school known as the Philippine Institute in order to implement reforms.
The order sought to raise the standard of education in the Philippines by establishing
competitive examinations for teaching positions in such schools. Despite the native clergy's
enthusiasm for secularization, most Filipinos welcomed this advancement.
Fearing that their power in the Philippines would dwindle, the friars exploited the
episode and presented it to the Spanish government as part of a broad plot across the
archipelago with the goal of overthrowing Spanish sovereignty. Sadly, Tavera verified that
the Madrid administration came to believe that the program was accurate without conducting
any investigation into the true facts or scope of the purported "revolution" reported by
Izquierdo and the friars.
Convicted educated males sentenced to life in jail for their roles in the revolt, while
members of the native clergy led by the GOMBURZA were tried and executed by garrote.
This incident sparks the emergence of nationalism, which leads to the eruption of the
Philippine Revolution in 1896. The testimony of Edmund Plauchut, a French writer,
supported Tavera's account by affirming that the event occurred as a result of dissatisfaction
among the arsenal employees and troops in Cavite fort. The Frenchman, on the other hand,
focused on the execution of the three martyr priests, which he witnessed firsthand.
UNRAVELING THE TRUTH
When comparing the four accounts of the 1872 Mutiny, some basic facts remained
consistent: first, there was dissatisfaction among the arsenal workers and members of the
native army after their privileges were revoked by Gen. Izquierdo; second, Gen. Izquierdo
implemented rigid and strict policies that caused the Filipinos to flee the Spanish government
in disgust; and third, the Central Government failed to conduct an invest.
The road to independence was long and winding, and many patriots, both known and
unknown, sacrificed their lives to gain reforms and independence. Our victory on June 12,
1898, was a magnificent moment for us, but we must not forget that our predecessors had
already endured enough. May we be more historically aware of our past while we enjoy our
freedom in order to have a better future ahead of us. May we "not forget those who fallen
throughout the night," as Elias remarked in Noli me Tangere.

ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date: _____

Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score: _____

Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
I.
Make a venn diagram that will illustrate the differences and similarities of the two versions of
the Cavite Mutiny. The left or right space of the venn diagram will describe the differences of
the claims and the space in the middle will be for the similarities of the two claims.
II.
Evaluate the two claims. What is your stand? Write an essay of not more than 500 words
explaining your stand in the 1872 Cavite Mutiny.

REFERENCES

Piedad-Pugay, C. (2012, September 5). National Historical Commission of the Philippines.

Retrieved from The Two Faces of the 1872 Cavite Mutiny
 CHAPTER V

Rizal in Europe, the Propaganda

Movement, and Noli Me Tangere

INTRODUCTION
Without the Propaganda Movement, there might never have been a Philippine
Revolution. The Propaganda Movement (1872-1892) was the first Filipino nationalist
movement, led by a Filipino elite and inspired by the pronationalist activism of figures such
as José Burgos and by his execution at the hands of colonial authorities. Through which the
famous La Solidaridad and the La Liga Filipina were immortalized and became a spark that
started the journey of the country towards liberation.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are able to:
1. Explain the principle of assimilation advocated by the Propaganda Movement;
2. Analyze Rizal’s growth as a propagandist and disavowal of assimilation;
3. Discuss the significance of the establishment of LaLiga Filipina; and
4. Appraise important characters in the novel and what they represent.

STARTING POINT:

WARMING UP:
Identify a person in your community that you can call a “Rizal” of today’s generation.
What are his/her characteristics that made say he/she is “Rizal” of today’s generation?
Lesson Discussion

LESSON 1:
RIZAL IN EUROPE

It is very clear that Rizal was going to Europe not just to compete his medical studies
there were hidden purposes for his voyage to a new world. It can be inferred from Paciano's
letter to Rizal that the following were the real purposes of Rizal’s voyage to Europe: to make
a name for himself in the realm of journalism; to observe and study European society; & to
prepare himself for the task of liberating the Filipinos from Spanish tyranny.
Rizal’s departure for Spain was kept secret to avoid detection by the Spanish
authorities and the friars. Even his own parents did not know because his mother would not
allow him to do so. Only his older brother, his uncle, his sisters Neneng and Lucia, the
Valenzuela family, Pedro Paterno, Mateo Evangelista, the Ateneo Jesuit fathers, and some
intimate friends. The Jesuit priests gave him letters of recommendation to the members of
their Society in Barcelona. He used the name Jose Mercado.
It was a constitutional monarchy that governed Spain when the 21year-old student
Rizal arrived in Spain in 1882. Within a few months of his arrival in Spain, Rizal met a
socialist republican by the name Pi y Margall, who became his intellectual mentor, political
ally, and personal friend. And from the revolutionary vision of Pi y Margall, Rizal was able to
conceive the logic of his emancipatory discourses and display the groundings of his political
economic program of La Liga Filipina, which was patterned from the early 19th-century
mutualist traditions of the European Left.
José Rizal was so blessed with many gifts, talents and treasures, but he like
everyone else did not have everything. In the economic sense, they did not possess the
infinite resources of certain Spanish mestizos and creoles like the Legardas who controlled
the Manila distilleries and cigar factories, Pardo de Taveras who were trendsetters with all
kinds of international connections. As a result, while Rizal was in Madrid, he led a frugal life
while in Europe. He knew that he came to Spain to study and prepare himself for service to
his motherland. Accordingly, he rigidly budgeted his money and time. He lived frugally,
spending his money on food, clothing, lodging, and books – his only extravagance was
investing a few pesetas for a lottery ticket in every draw of the Madrid Lottery. All the while
he spent his leisure time reading and writing at his boarding house, attending reunions of
Filipino students at the house of the Paterno brothers – who in their Madrid mansion
entertained the alta sociedad of Spain – and practicing fencing and shooting.
After obtaining his degree of Licentiate in Philosophy and Letters and his separate
degree of Licentiate in Medicine, Rizal went to Paris and Germany in order to specialize in
ophthalmology. He particularly chose this branch of medicine because he wanted to cure his
mother’s eye ailment. He also continued his travel and observations of European life and
customs, government and laws in Paris. All the while his merits as a scientists were
recognized by eminent scientists of Europe.

LESSON 2:
THE PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT

Between 1872 and 1892, a national consciousness was growing among the Filipino
emigrants who had settled in Europe. After encountering first-hand, the tumult of 19th
century political movements inspired by Enlightenment thought, individual rights,
constitutionalism, and anti-clericalism. These emigrants – liberals exiled in 1872 and
students attending European universities – formed the Propaganda Movement. The
propagandists were largely young men, often mestizos and creoles whose families could
afford to send them to study in Spanish universities in Madrid and Barcelona.
 It was an assimilationist movement in that the propagandist – many of whom were of
half Spanish parentage and saw themselves as inheritors of Spanish civilization. Influenced
by the Spanish Constitution, things became clear for them that, whether the Philippines was
going to be an autonomous member in the Federation, it must be a nation first. They
believed that the Philippines should be fully incorporated into Spain as a Spanish province
and not merely as a colony, with Filipinos granted the same citizenship rights accorded to
Spanish citizens. Second, it sought the expulsion of the Spanish friars from the Philippines
and the empowerment of a native Filipino clergy. Lastly, as a cultural movement, it
showcased the writing and artistic production of the young Filipino elite as a means of
demonstrating their intellectual sophistication, on par with their Spanish peers.
It was in this juridical framework that the Filipino ilustrados waged their propaganda
movement in Spain to gain parliamentary representation for their country and to work for the
much-needed reforms. Their hope was to win the support of a sufficient number of diputados
to sponsor bills in the Cortes for these ends.

Rizal posed the Filipinos’ demands to Spain as a constitutional – contractual –

matter: does she recognize Filipinas as a province to be represented in the Cortes, an
integral part of Spain, with all the civil rights accorded to the Filipino people, as she had done
before with the Constitution of Cádiz? By Spain’s own constitutional traditions since 1812
and centuries earlier, the Filipinos now pressed their demands as a matter of right.
Rizal’s summation to Carnicero of what their goals were: grant representation in the
Cortes to the country; secularize the friars, thus removing their influence over government
and country; reform the Administration in all its branches; promote primary education freed
from all intervention by the friars; share in halves the country’s governmental posts between
peninsulares and insulares ; clean up the Administration; and create schools of arts and
trades in all provincial capitals with more than 16,000 people (Retana 1907). These reforms
were perfectly consistent with the principles and goals of Spain’s noblest statesmen from the
ilustrados of the Enlightenment to the federalistas of the day. But those who held the reins of
power in Madrid and in Manila were not of this persuasion, so the reformists, after years of
hard work and sacrifice, were going nowhere.
Rizal’s came with concept of establishing the Estatuto de la Liga Filipina upon his
return to Manila in 1892. Thought there has been record of what he said at those gatherings
it was clear that it was there where he presented his proposal for an organization, so all we
have is the publication itself.
It will be seen that La Liga is at bottom a mutualist association; its goal: to create a
compact, vigorous and homogeneous Civil Society. The basic unit, the building block out of
which Civil Society is to be constructed, is the people’s council (consejo popular) to be
established at the local level all over the country. The councils are to be as numerous as
possible and must regenerate themselves continuously. Most of all, they are all integrated
within a pyramidal structure of councils from the ground level of consejo popular (popular
council) through the consejo provincial (provincial council) up to the consejo supremo
(supreme council), which is the highest level and situated at the capital of the Archipelago.
Each council functions as a mutualist association where the members relate to each other in
mutually beneficial ways which are well spelt out in the Statutes. The nature of these
interrelationships both within and outside a particular council and the Liga as a whole is
summed up in the last article of the Statute, Article 15 of General Provisions.
“Beyond the confines of the council and in all matters not affecting generally the rule
of conduct of La Liga Filipina, all members from the highest supreme chief (gefe supremo) to
the last member shall in all social dealings regard themselves as brothers in blood; for such
fraternal reason are all obliged to defend mutually the interests of all members, to console
and comfort them in misfortune; let it be understood that what a member suffers from and
endures is also what all the others suffer from and endure” (Ibid.). The last embodies all. The
Liga’s motto: Unus instar Omnium (One is equal to all.)
The basic economic principle at work in the Liga, is the organization of credit. The
associated workers – artisans, peasants, workers, professionals – are enabled to produce
and exchange on the basis of loans made available to them by the association itself; with the
loans, they can invest in capital goods – their means of production, the tools of their trade –
and working capital. Note that all the rights of the members of the Liga are economic in
nature, designed to promote and facilitate the growth of productive enterprises and
professional services through the extension of credit, discount on purchases and services,
and other forms of support including protection and defense against injury or injustice. The
credit proposed here is interest-free and is based on mutual lending via a people’s bank.
Liga members are to pay dues – one-time entry and monthly quotas – and are expected to
make, as contributions to the council, an undertaking, an idea, a study, or a new applicant
for membership. With these funds the Liga functions as a people’s bank or as a development
agency directly involved with the members as they strive to develop their businesses. Thus,
the Liga grows in assets and strengths.
The rest of the duties of the members have to do with the security of La Liga itself.
There is an unsaid presumption in Rizal’s statutes that La Liga must grow and survive in a
hostile environment and must protect itself at all moments. Hence the dictatorial command
and communication structure of the organization: top-to-bottom channels of communication:
immediate implementation of orders without question; absolute secrecy of everyone on
everything; information on a need-to-know basis only; the use of pseudonyms and codes for
members and councils; constant and systematic reporting of any signs of trouble; no
horizontal sharing of information but bottom-to-top flow only; and readiness to replace any
post or part of La Liga which may be rendered disabled for any reason whatsoever (Estatuto,
Disposiciones generales). La Liga appears as a conspiratorial or revolutionary organization,
like a Leninist vanguard party or, the argument could well be advanced: from the start La
Liga is already designed to act as a revolutionary party if and when the moment comes: La
Liga awaits Ang Katipunan.
La Liga was Rizal’s answer to ever present question of how the country would break
away from Spain and show its capacity of being independent and self-sufficient. Its
architectural structure rests on an integration of building blocks, people’s councils spread all
over the country, mutualist associations of producers and consumers united on the basis of
cooperation and reciprocity. La Liga Filipina is at the national level an association of
associations, vertically integrated but self-managing at all levels. Through the organization of
credit and mutual help, the association aims to promote individual and cooperative
entrepreneurship, a step towards the ideal of a non-exploitative social order because
workers and peasants can possess their means of production, and each identifies his
interests in relation to the whole.
Theoretically. But Rizal already knew, before he conceived of La Liga, that the
autonomous union with Spain would never happen because it would have required as a
precondition the transformation of Spain herself into a federation, and the balance of forces
was against that. The only course of action, therefore, was to work for the independence of
the Philippines. Rizal came back to his country for that, and, organizationally and
conceptually, La Liga Filipina was to be the first step to freedom.
 LESSON 3:
NOLI ME TANGERE

After reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin which portrayed the brutalities of
American slave-owners and the general situation of the Negro slaves, Rizal was inspired to
create a novel that would depict the miseries and the plight of his people. At that time, he
was then living as a student in Madrid.
He proposed his idea of creating a novel about the Philippines with his friends, who
at first were eager about writing it but later did not follow because most did not write
anything, while others wanted only to write about women. He brought it upon himself to finish
the daunting task of writing a novel that would shed light to the situation of his country.
Towards the end of stay in Madrid he was able to finish about one-half of it, and after
completing travelling to Paris he continued to write the second half. He was finally able to
finish his novel when he wrote his last chapter when he was in Germany. But he saw no
hope of having it published for he was already penniless during the time that he completed
his work. Amid his despondency he met Dr. Maximo Viola, who was from a rich family in
Bulacan, gladly financed the publication of his book and supported him financially. In order to
save printing cost, Rizal decided to delete certain parts in his book, including a whole
chapter – Elias and Salome.
The title Noli Me Tangere is a Latin phrase which means “Touch me not.” It is not
originally conceived by Rizal, for he admitted taking it from the Bible. It was taken from the
Gospel of John 20: 13-17. It the story after the First Easter Sunday, when Mary Magdalene
visited the Holy Sepulcher and was surprised to see the Lord has risen from dead, who
admonished her by saying: “Touch me not; I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my
brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God and
your God.”
Rizal dedicated his work to the Philippine, his “Fatherland”. His dedication goes:
Recorded in the history of human sufferings is a cancer so malignant a
character that the least touch irritates it and awakens in it the sharpest pains. Thus,
how many times, when in the midst of modern civilizations I have wished to call thee
before me, now to accompany me in memories, now to compare thee with other
countries, hath thy dear image presented itself showing a social cancer like to that
other!

Destiny thy welfare which is our own, and seeing the best treatment, I will
do with thee what the ancients did with their sick, exposing them on the steps of the
temple so that everyone who care to invoke the Divinity might offer then a remedy.

And to this end, I will strive to reproduce thy condition faithfully, without
discrimination; I will raise a part of the veil that covers the evil, sacrificing to truth
everything, even vanity itself, since, as thy son I am conscious that I also suffer from
thy defects and weaknesses.

The plot revolves around Crisostomo Ibarra, mixed-race heir of a wealthy clan,
returning home after seven years in Europe and filled with ideas on how to better the lot of
his countrymen. Striving for reforms, he is confronted by an abusive ecclesiastical hierarchy
and a Spanish civil administration by turns indifferent and cruel.
The death of Ibarra’s father, Don Rafael, prior to his homecoming, and the refusal of
a Catholic burial by Padre Damaso, the parish priest, provokes Ibarra into hitting the priest,
for which Ibarra is excommunicated. The decree is rescinded, however, when the governor
general intervenes. The friar and his successor, Padre Salvi, embody the rotten state of the
clergy. Their tangled feelings—one paternal, the other carnal—for Maria Clara, Ibarra’s
sweetheart and rich Capitan Tiago’s beautiful daughter, steel their determination to spoil
Ibarra’s plans for a school. The town philosopher Tasio wryly notes similar past attempts
have failed, and his sage commentary makes clear that all colonial masters fear that an
enlightened people will throw off the yoke of oppression.
Precisely on how to accomplish this is the novel’s central question, and one which
Ibarra debates with the mysterious Elias. The privileged Ibarra favors peaceful means, while
Elias, who has suffered injustice at the hands of the authorities, believes violence is the only
option.
Ibarra’s enemies, particularly Salvi, implicate him in a fake insurrection, though the
evidence against him is weak. Then Maria Clara betrays him to protect a dark family secret,
public exposure of which would be ruinous. Ibarra escapes from prison with Elias’s help and
confronts her. She explains why, Ibarra forgives her, and he and Elias flee to the lake. But
chased by the Guardia Civil, one dies while the other survives. Convinced Ibarra’s dead,
Maria Clara enters the nunnery, refusing a marriage arranged by Padre Damaso. Her
unhappy fate and that of the more memorable Sisa, driven mad by the fate of her sons,
symbolize the country’s condition, at once beautiful and miserable.
The Noli Me Tangere, was based on the condition of the Philippines during the last
decades of the Spanish rule. The places, the characters, and the situation really existed.
Rizal said, “The facts I narrate there, are all true and have happened; I can prove them.” The
characters were drawn by Rizal from individuals who existed during his times.

The Main Characters

1. Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra y Magsalin – Crisostomo Ibarra is depicted as one of the
Filipinos who managed to finish their studies abroad. He had been living abroad for
seven years. Unlike his countrymen, he has a liberal mind, outspoken and idealistic.
Crisostomo Ibarra exemplified the vision that Jose Rizal had aimed for the youth of
the Philippines during his time. Others attribute Ibarra as Rizal’s reflection of himself.
2. María Clara de los Santos – Maria Clara's character is related to Rizal's childhood
sweetheart, Leonor Rivera. Like the real-life Leonor, she plays the piano and the
harp and has a sweet voice. She was portrayed as a faithful sweetheart, a good
friend, and an obedient daughter. She portrayed as the ideal woman during her time.
She does not impose her will except when she refused being married off to Linares.
Maria Clara symbolizes the purity and innocence of a sheltered native woman during
the time of Spanish occupation. She does not value material things that were
abundantly bestowed upon her by admirers and family alike but holds in high esteem
her parents’ honor and the promise she had given to her sweetheart
3. Padre Damaso Verdolagas – He’s a Franciscan friar and the former parish curate of
San Diego. He is best known as a notorious character who speaks with harsh words
and has been a cruel priest during his stay in the town. He is the real father of María
Clara and an enemy of Crisóstomo's father, Rafael Ibarra. He symbolizes the
 Spanish friars of Rizal's time and is a comment on the Spanish control of the
Philippines
4. Elias – He is a former boatman who became one of the most wanted criminals in
San Diego. He distrusts human judgment and prefers God's justice instead. He is
acquainted with the tulisanes and other crooks, which he uses to his advantage in
discerning the troubles of the town. Elias represents the common Filipino who is not
only aware of the injustices done to their countrymen but would also like to deliver
them from their oppressors. He is said to be the personification of Andres Bonifacio.
5. Pilosopo Tacio – Known by his Filipinized name Pilosopo Tasyo, is another major
character in the story. Seeking for reforms from the government, he expresses his
ideals in paper written in a cryptographic alphabet similar from hieroglyphs and
Coptic figures hoping "that the future generations may be able to decipher it" and
realized the abuse and oppression done by the conquerors. Tasio symbolizes the
learned Filipinos who had once embraced the culture of the Spanish regime. They
eventually became disenchanted when they return to the Philippines and observe the
stark contrast their countrymen receive from their colonizers. The more they turn to
learning, the more they become eccentric to the masses they seek to enlighten.
6. Padre Salvi – He has a secret admiration to Maria Clara. On the Later part of the
story he and padre Damaso devised a plan to break Ibarra and Maria Clara apart.
Symbolizes the lecherous friars of Rizal's time.

The Undesirables -- These are characters that portray the pervading social cancer in the
novels of Rizal.
1. Capitán Tiago – Don Santiago de los Santos, known by his nickname Tiago and
political title Capitán Tiago is a Filipino businessman and the cabeza de barangay or
head of barangay of the town of San Diego. He is also the known father of María
Clara. Capitan Tiago was a typical character during the time of Jose Rizal. He is a
rich native-born Filipino who rubbed elbows with the powers that be during that time.
He symbolizes the rich Filipinos who oppress their fellow countrymen in exchange for
the influence and the riches that they might gain from their powerful associations.
2. Donya Concolacion – her adulation of the Spaniards leads her to imitate the very
actions and attitudes of the Spanish women. She symbolizes the Filipinos in society
who are ashamed of their race and nationality.
3. Doña Victorina – Commonly known as Doña Victorina, is an ambitious Filipina who
classifies herself as a Spanish and mimics Spanish ladies by putting on heavy make-
up. As one of the lesser evils in the novel, Doña Victorina symbolizes those who
have a distorted view of their identity. Everything that is indigenous is inferior and
everything foreign as superior. It is the comedic form of ‘’colonial mentality’’.
4. Don Tiburcio de Espadana – Don Tiburcio is the husband of Doña Victorina. He
was introduced as one of the invited guests of Capitan Tiago in the latter's welcome
party for Juan Crisostomo Ibarra. He was known for charging exorbitant fees for his
medical treatment. He is a caricature of ignorant Spaniards who wreak havoc in the
provinces during the colonial era. His countrymen condone his actions for they do not
want him to become a burden to them.

The Supporting Characters – they are the victims of poverty and ignorance, who
represent a Filipino family persecuted by the Spanish authorities.
 1. Sisa – Sisa(Narcisa) is the typical native wife. She endures her husband's beatings
and irresponsibility. She had been stripped of her few jewels by her husband, Pedro,
an inveterate gambler. Despite the abuse, she considers him her god. She is
described as a mother who considers her sons her only treasure. Sisa is thought to
have represented the motherland who was suffering as her character have suffered
with the loss of her children. The tragic events that ruined her life represented the
abuse that the motherland received from her colonizers.
2. Basilio – Sisa's 10-year-old son. An acolyte tasked to ring the church bells for the
Angelus, he faced the dread of losing his younger brother and the descent of his
mother into insanity. At the end of the novel, Elías wished Basilio to bury him by
burning in exchange for a chest of gold located on his death ground. He will later play
a major role in El Filibusterismo
3. Crispin – Crispin represents the innocents who have been wrongly accused of the
crime they did not commit. The injustice they suffered under the hands of the
authorities during their time were silenced by their deaths and the cover-ups that
follow it.

ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date: ______

Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score: _____

Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
TEST I
1. What was the propaganda movement and what did it stand for?
2. What was Rizal’s involvement in the propaganda movement?
3. Why did the members of the propaganda movement advocate for assimilation?
4. Why did Rizal dismiss the idea of assimilation?
5. Who are the characters in Noli Me Tangere? Who are they symbolizing?

TEST II
Instructions: Read the constitution of the La Liga Filipina and fill out a table with the aims of
La Liga Filipina in one column and examples on how these aims could be attained today in
another column.

REFERENCES
Asiniero , J. (2013). From Cádiz to La Liga: The Spanish Context of Rizal’s Political Thought.
ASIAN STUDIES: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 9(1), 1-42.
Schumacher, J. N. (2000). The Propaganda Movement, 1880-1895: The Creation of a
FIlipino Consciousness, The Making of the Revolution. Quezon: Ateneo de Manila
University Press.
Schumacher, J. N. (2006). The Burgos Manifiesto: The Authentic Text and Its Genuine
Author. Philippine Studies, 54(2), 153-304. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/42633870
Zaide, G. F., & Zaide, S. M. (2014). JOSE RIZAL: Life, Works and Writings of a Genius,
Writer, Scientist and National Hero. Mandaluyong: Anvil Publishing Inc.
 CHAPTER VI

THE MORGA AND RIZAL’S SEARCH

FOR ORIGIN

INTRODUCTION
Rizal claimed that Noli Me Tangere is a sketch of our country's current problems, and
while writing his first novel, he recognized that before he could write additional chapters
about the present or create a sequel, he needed to go back in time. He needed to think
about what had happened during the last three centuries. He said that, like most of his
contemporaries, he was born and raised unaware of our history, and that he believed he had
no right or authority to speak about something he didn't understand. He felt compelled to
"invoke the testimony of an "illustrious Spaniard" who oversaw the Philippines' fate and
witnessed the fading of our old identity.

WARMING UP
Before embarking on this chapter, reading some books and articles about Philippine
History from reputable sources is advisable. This preliminary activity will help you
understand why Rizal gave importance to the history of our country.
Suggested Philippine History Books:

1. State and Society in the Philippines by Patricio N. Abinales and Donna J.

Amoroso
2. History of the Filipino People by Teodoro A. Agoncillo

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:
1. Explain Morga’s Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas
2. Compare and contrast Rizal and Morga’s different views about Filipinos and
Philippine Culture
3. Analyze Rizal’s ideas on how to write Philippine History.

MORGA’S SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS

Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, written by renowned Spaniard Doctor Antonio de
Morga, was published in Mexico in 1609. The book had been out of publication for a long
time when Rizal discovered it in an obscure corner of the British Library and Museum. Some
historians think Rizal meant to write a Philippine history for a long time but couldn't find the
time, so he annotated Morga's work and copied it by hand. Professor Ferdinand Blumentritt
was given the duty of drafting the prologue in Spanish, but instead wrote Rizal a long letter
full of criticism.
 Rizal had previously studied writings on the Philippines by friars such as Fr. Gaspar
de San Agustin Morga's book was unique since it was written by a layperson and was about
the conquest and conversion of the Philippines. Rizal would include Chirino and Gaspar de
San Agustin, as well as Isabelo los Reyes ("Limahong and Los Régulos de Manila"),
Argensola (The Molucas Conquest), and Trinidad Pardo de Tavera in his comments.
The first seven chapters, which covered Spanish colonial rule from Adelantado
Miguel Lopez de Legazpi to Don Pedro de Acua, were packed with political intrigue stories
that gurgled from the Capitania-General de Filipinas, swirled directly to the Metropolis
(Spain), but occasionally took a circuitous route through the Virreinato de la Nueva Espaa
(Mexico). While overseeing the evangelizing of the Philippines, the Captain-Generals
(Governor-Generals) had their sights set on the Moluccas, China, Japan, and, believe it or
not, Cambodia, Siam, and Cochin China. Despite the fact that the Moluccas were under
Portuguese control, the spice trade proved seductive, and Spaniards residing in Manila
would travel there to foment discord among the princelings that were always at odds.
Corruption and nepotism were both widespread. Even if a number of them were
tortured and executed in China, Japan, and other heathen places, religious organizations
were steadfast in propagating the Faith to "infidels." These politico-religious actions were
frequently carried out with the Spanish kings' knowledge. In several annotations, Rizal
repeatedly pointed out that the politically correct words during Morga's time, "to pacify" or
"pacification," were, in fact, synonyms for "make war" or "sow animosity," and that the
evangelization of the Philippines was far from complete, necessitating the need to cross
borders.
Morga detailed the Moro pirate incursions in the Visayas and Luzon, as well as the
Spanish rulers' several efforts to seize Mindanao, Jolo, and Sulu. Because the Spanish
colonial authorities prevented Christianized locals from carrying weaponry, they were unable
to defend themselves against Moro assaults, which encouraged the marauders, according to
Rizal.
Antonio de Morga, according to Rizal, was a witness to the last days of the native
way of life, the end of the time of contact, and because he was a layman, his views would be
a counterbalance to what the religious missionaries had written about the Philippines.
Sucesos de las Islas by Antonio de Morga has long been acknowledged for its worth.
It was initially published in Mexico in 1609 and has since been re-edited several times. It
provides a first-hand account of the early Spanish colonial foray into Asia. The Hakluyt
Society took notice of it in 1851, despite the fact that the edition created for the Society by H.
It took until 1868 for E. J. Stanley to be published. Morga's work is based on firsthand
experiences or eyewitness accounts of the events depicted. Furthermore, as he admits,
survivors from Legazpi's voyage were still alive when he was writing his book in Manila, and
he could consult them as well. As a lawyer, it goes without saying that he would look for
such proof. The Sucesos is the product of an objective observer who was also a prominent
player in the drama of his day, a dynamic bureaucrat who knew the inner workings of the
government. It's also the first history of the Spanish Philippines written by a layperson rather
than a religious chronicler. Contemporaries and successors lauded, quoted, and copied
Morga's text. Filipinos have found it to be a valuable depiction of the status of their original
culture prior to the arrival of the conquistadors, while Spaniards have viewed it as a work to
praise or condemn, depending on their viewpoints and the historical context.
 RIZAL’S MORGA AND ILUSTRADO VIEW OF THE
PRECONQUEST
“To the Filipinos: In Noli Me Tangere I started to sketch the present state of our
native land. But the effect which my effort produced made me realize that, before attempting
to unroll before your eyes the other pictures which were to follow, it was necessary first to
post you on the past. So only can you fairly judge the present and estimate how much
progress has been made during the three centuries (of Spanish rule).”
“Like almost all of you, I was born and brought up in ignorance of our country's past
and so, without knowledge or authority to speak of what I neither saw nor have studied, I
deem it necessary to quote the testimony of an illustrious Spaniard who in the beginning of
the new era controlled the destinies of the Philippines and had personal knowledge of our
ancient nationality in its last days.”
“It is then the shade of our ancestor's civilization which the author will call before
you... If the work serves to awaken in you a consciousness of our past, and to blot from your
memory or to rectify what has been falsified or is calumny, then I shall not have labored in
vain. With this preparation, slight though it is, we can all pass to the study of the future.”
Morga stated the Indians adore and reverence the crocodile because they are
terrified of its might, and Rizal patiently put things in their appropriate context. "May the
crocodile kill him!" even Christians curse. "to those who make false pledges, perjure
themselves, or break commitments." May the buhaya's fury fall upon them! Crocodiles have
been known to eat friars while spare their Indio attendants, according to Rizal. When this
happens, historians have offered plausible reasons, but not when Indios are the victims.

DR. JOSE RIZAL'S ANNOTATIONS TO MORGA'S 1609

PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Governor Antonio de Morga was not only the first to compose a Philippine history, but
also the first to publish one. This statement refers to our author's treatment of the subject in
a succinct and concrete manner. The work of Father Chirino, produced in Rome in 1604, is
more of a chronicle of the Missions than a history of the Philippines, but it still offers a wealth
of information on usages and customs. In fact, the honorable Jesuit admits that he gave up
writing a political history because Morga had already done it, implying that he had seen the
manuscript before leaving the Islands.

Doctor Morga appears to be referring to the Roman Catholic religion, which he intends to
preserve in its purity in the Philippines through fire and sword. However, in other regions,
particularly in Flanders, similar methods were inadequate in maintaining the church's
authority or even holding its subjects.

Great kingdoms were discovered and conquered in far-flung corners of the globe by
Spanish ships, but we may also include Portuguese, Italians, French, Greeks, and even
Africans and Polynesians among those who sailed in them. Despite being Spanish fleets, the
expeditions led by Columbus and Magellan, one a Genoese Italian and the other a
Portuguese, as well as those that followed them, were manned by a diverse range of
nationalities, including negroes, Moluccans, and even men from the Philippines and the
Marianes Islands.

Writing as intolerantly as Morga does was the norm three centuries ago, but today it
would be considered arrogant. No one has a monopoly on the true God, and no nation or
religion can claim, or at least demonstrate, that it has been given exclusive access to the
Creator of all things or sole understanding of His actual nature.

The Spaniards' conversions were not as widespread as their historians say. The
missionaries were only able to convert a small portion of the Filipino population. There are
still Mahometans, or Moros, in the southern islands, and negritos, igorots, and other
heathens occupy the majority of the archipelago's territory. Then there are the non-Christian
islands of Formosa, Borneo, and the Moluccas, which the Spaniards briefly ruled but quickly
lost. And if the Carolines have Christians, it is because of Protestants, whom neither Morga's
Roman Catholics nor many Catholics today consider Christians.

Morga demonstrates that the ancient Filipinos possessed an army and navy, as well as
artillery and other weapons of war. Their treasured krises and kampilans are deserving of
appreciation for their superb temperament, and some of them are lavishly damascened.
Their mail and helmet jackets, examples of which may be found in various European
museums, demonstrate to their considerable achievement in this field.

Morga's statement that the Spaniards "brought war to the gates of the Filipinos"
contrasts sharply with historians' subsequent use of the word "pacified" to describe Spain's
possession of a region. Perhaps "to make peace" meant the same thing as "to stir up
conflict" back then. (This is a hidden allusion to the old Roman phrase, often recounted by
Spaniards, that they made a desert and called it peace.)

As far as we know, Morga had mixed up Legaspi's tranquil arrival with the onslaught of
Goiti and Salcedo. According to other historians, Manila was burned in 1570, along with a
large complex for making artillery. Goiti did not take possession of the city, instead retreating
to Cavite and then Panay, raising doubts about his alleged victory. When it came to the date,
the Spaniards were sixteen hours behind Europe since they had followed the sun's path.
This situation persisted until the end of 1844, when the 31st of December was removed from
the calendar for that year by special agreement among the authorities.

As a result, Legaspi did not arrive in Manila on May 19th, but on May 20th, and it was not
on the festival of Santa Potenciana, but on the feast of San Baudelio. The similar error was
made with regard to other early events that are still incorrectly celebrated, such as San
Andres' day, which commemorates the repulse of the Chinese corsair Li Ma-hong.

Morga's claim that there was not a single Filipino province or town that opposed or
refused conversion may have been accurate of the civilized indigenous. However, for the
mountain tribes, the opposite was true. Several Dominican and Augustinian missionaries
said that it was impossible to effect conversions anywhere without the presence of other
Filipinos and a military escort. "There would have been no fruit of the Evangelic Doctrine
harvested otherwise," writes Gaspar de San Agustin, "for the infidels sought to kill the Friars
who came to preach to them." A trek to the mountains by two Friars with a large escort of
Pampangans was an example of this method of conversion provided by the same writer.
Don Agustin Sonson, the escort's leader, had a reputation for daring and had brought fire
and sword into the kingdom, murdering many people, including the chief, Kabadi.

According to Morga, "the Spaniards were accustomed to holding as slaves such locals
as they bought and others that they took in the expeditions in the conquest or pacification of
the islands." As a result, the "pacifiers" did not bring about any moral reform in this regard.
We don't even know if the Filipinos used to enslave one other in their wars, though it
wouldn't be surprising given the chroniclers' accounts of captives being returned to their own
people. Although the Spaniards were the first aggressors in these piratical wars, and gave
them their character, the behavior of the Southern pirates almost proved this.

What are the annotations of Rizal on Morga’s Sucesos that explains

the Philippine culture?

RIZAL AND MORGA’S VIEWS ABOUT THE FILIPINOS AND

PHILIPPINE HISTORY
Jose Rizal bemoaned the fact that he was born and raised unaware of our country's
pre-colonial history. As a result, he felt he had no voice or authority to speak about
something he didn't understand. You can bet that the majority of his peers shared his
sentiments. When he was a student at the Ateneo Municipal, Rizal wrote an anti-colonial
drama in which the Devil extolled the beauty of the archipelago before the Spaniards arrived.
We can only imagine how difficult it must have been to conduct historical study back
then. The majority of the extant sources were authored by religious order friars, fervent
missionaries determined to eradicate native beliefs and cultural practices that they
considered pagan and primitive. Rizal must have spent hours poring over early Philippine
histories by Fathers Pedro Chirino (1604), Francisco Colin (1663), and Gaspar de San
Agustin (1698), all of whom he mentioned in his annotations to Dr. Antonio Morga's book,
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, which was published in Mexico (Nueva Espaa) in 1609. When
Rizal came across it in an obscure nook of the British Library and Museum, it was already
out of print.
Rizal and his "Indios Bravos" were not completely unaware of the Motherland's ethnic
and indigenous populations; in fact, they despised the colonial habit of showing "samples" of
these "savages" in European fairs in order to justify Spain's invasion of the Philippines. Rizal
came discovered study articles about numerous ethnic communities in Asia written by
famous European scientists while in Europe, one of which was Ferdinand Blumentritt, the
author of "Versuch einer Etnographie der Philippinen," to whom Rizal wrote and thus began
their friendship.
 Chapter 8 discusses the appearance of the locals, their clothing and gold jewelry,
customs, and administration prior to the advent of the Spaniards and after the conquest, as
well as other unique characteristics. The annotations by Rizal are as extensive as the
chapter itself. Rizal corrected all of Morga's "mistakes," including misspellings of native place
names, flora and fauna, and social classes, as well as clarifying geographical positions.
Tendaya Island, for example, is one of the largest, according to Morga. Fr. It was close to
Maluco, according to Urdaneta, but Fr. Colin confirmed that it was in the Leyte area. Other
sources revealed that Tendaya was the name of a person, not an island.
Cotton was grown widely on virtually all of the islands, according to Morga, and the
indigenous sold it as thread and woven cloths to Chinese and other foreign traders. They
also spun thread from banana leaves; Rizal stated that Morga must have meant sinamay,
which is fashioned from abaca thread derived from the trunk rather than the leaves. After
that, he quoted Fr. Chirino claimed that these cotton garments were in high demand in
Nueva Espaa, and that encomenderos made a fortune from the cotton trade. That was 31
years after the encomiendas were established, but the hardworking locals were so frustrated
by excessive exploitation that they abandoned the fields and torched the weaving looms, as
Rizal pointed out.
Morga was clearly captivated by the indigenous' social structure; he highlighted
origins, differences, social class advantages, upward and downward mobility, and the
inheritance of property and titles. Unlike their European counterparts, local ladies never lost
their noble titles, according to Rizal. Because the bride's parents were losing a wonderful
daughter, the groom gave the bride's parents a dowry in marriage.
As expected, Morga was critical of the government structure, which he claimed
scarcely existed because no great figure controlled over a slew of settlements, the majority
of which were coastal and each with its own set of leaders. Why should the communities be
indebted to one ruler who didn't even live among them and was unfamiliar with their needs
and concerns, Rizal argued? If he didn't even live in the neighborhood, how could he have
resolved disputes, mete justice, and implemented policies? (Perhaps Rizal thought
federalism was a good idea.)
The literacy of pre-colonial Filipinos was one of the most time-consuming footnotes.
Morga claimed that the residents of each island had their own writing system with characters
that resembled Greek or Arabic. Unfortunately, Rizal stated that this was no longer the case.
The colonial authority claimed to be educating the Filipinos in word and practice, but in
reality, it was fomenting ignorance by putting the friars in charge of education. They were
accused of wanting to stupefy (embrutecer) the country by not only Filipinos but even
Peninsulars and foreigners, and this was clear in their writings and behavior.
Many notable experts have published on the subject of the ancient script. After
Chirino, Colin, and De San Agustin, there was Jacquet of the "Journal Asiatique," Alfred
Marche's "Luçon and Palaouan," concerning the Tagbanuas, and T. Pardo de Tavera's
"Contribucion para el studio de los antiguos alfabetos Filipinos" (1884).
Rizal met the most famous European ethnologists of the day through Ferdinand
Blumentritt. They must have been so struck by this young Asian's intellectual interest that
they invited him to join their famous club of ethnologists. Rizal was so enthusiastic that he
planned an international conference on the Philippines, but his bold aspirations were not
realized.
“Had he lived longer, I am sure he would have spent many years studying the past.”
After all, his third novel, Makamisa, was about the period of transition about which we know
so little. He would have gone to the highlands to meet the Ifugaos and Tinggians and live
among our ancestors.

Make a table comparing and contrasting Rizal and Morga’s views on

Philippine culture.

ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date: _____

Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score: ______
Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
A. Make a table comparing and contrasting Rizal and Morga’s views on Filipino culture
and history in relation with the Sucesos delas Islas Filipinas.
B. Make a short essay expressing your impression towards Jose Rizal as a historian.

REFERENCES
The Kahimyang Project. (n.d.). Dr. Jose Rizal’s annotations to Morga’s 1609 Philippine
History. Retrieved October 25, 2020 from
https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/966/dr-jose-rizals-annotations-to-morgas-
1609-philippine-history
The Biography (2018). Biography of Antonio de Morga (s.XVII). Retrieved October 25, 2020
from https://thebiography.us/en/morga-antonio-de
Cajes, A.S. (March 31, 2011). The Sikatuna-Legazpi Blood Compact. Retrieved October 25,
2020 from http://alsalca.blogspot.com/2011/03/sikatuna-legazpi-blood-compact.html
 CHAPTER VI

Indolence of the Filipinos

INTRODUCTION
In the opening scene of Noli Me Tangere, a social gathering in the house of Kapitan
Tiago serves as a venue for guests to mingle and converse. In one such occasion, Father
Damaso explicitly states his opinion of the Indio. While speaking to a young man about the
native Filipinos, Damaso exclaims, “As I believe in the Gospel! The Indian is so indolent!” To
this, the young man poses the question, “Does this indolence actually, naturally, exists
among the natives or is there some truth in what a foreign traveler says that with this
indolence we excuse our own, as well as our backwardness and poor colonial system?

Indolence in the natives was a view commonly held by foreigners who came to the
Philippines as evident in the conversation narrated above. Rizal and other propagandists,
however, felt that this view was misguided and made efforts for its rectification. One such
attempt was through Rizal’s essay, “Sobre la Indolencia de los Filipinos” which will serve as
the topic of this chapter.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:

1. Explain the factors that cause the indolence of the Filipinos

2. Identify one aspect (e.g., trade) of Philippine society and discuss the change that
took place on this aspect going to the Spanish period.

WARMING UP
Make a position paper regarding the “Indolence of the Filipinos”. Do you believe in
the idea that Filipinos are lazy people?

LESSON DISCUSSION
The following is the full, English translation of the essay, Indolence of the Filipino
People, originally written by Jose Rizal:

I
DOCTOR Sancianco, in his Progreso de Filipinas, (1), has taken up this question, agitated, as he calls it, and, relying upon f
acts and reports furnished by the very same Spanish authorities that rule the Philippines, has demonstrated that such indole
nce does not exist, and that all said about it does not deserve reply or even passing notice. Nevertheless, as discussion of it
has been continued, not only by government employees who make it responsible for their own shortcomings, not only by the
friars who regard it as necessary in order that they may continue to represent, themselves as indispensable, but also by seri
ous and disinterested persons; and as evidence of greater or less weight may be adduced in opposition to that which Dr. Sa
ncianco cites, it seems expedient, to us to study this question thoroughly, without superciliousness or sensitiveness, without
prejudice, without pessimism. And as we can only serve our country by telling the truth, however bit, tee it be, just as a flat a
nd skilful negation cannot refute a real and positive fact, in spite of the brilliance of the arguments; as a mere affirmation is n
ot sufficient to create something impossible, let us calmly examine the facts, using on our part all the impartiality of which a
man is capable who is convinced that there is no redemption except upon solid bases of virtue.

The word indolence has been greatly misused in the sense of little love for work and lack of energy, while ridicule has conce
aled the misuse. This much-discussed question has met with the same fate as certain panaceas and specifies of the quacks
who by ascribing to them impossible virtues have discredited them. In the Middle Ages, and even in some Catholic countries
now, the devil is blamed for everything that superstitious folk cannot understand or the perversity of mankind is loath to conf
ess. In the Philippines one's own and another's faults, the shortcomings of one, the misdeeds of another, are attributed to in
dolence. And just as in the Middle Ages he who sought the explanation of phenomena outside of infernal influences was per
secuted, so in the Philippines worse happens to him who seeks the origin of the trouble outside of accepted beliefs. The con
sequence of this misuse is that there are some who are interested in stating it as a dogma and others in combating it as a rid
iculous superstition, if not a punishable delusion. Yet it is not to be inferred from the misuse of a thing that it does not exist.
We think that there must be something behind all this outcry, for it is incredible that so many should err, among whom we ha
ve said there are a lot of serious and disinterested persons. Some act in bad faith, through levity, through want of sound jud
gment, through limitation in reasoning power, ignorance of the past or other cause. Some repeat what they have heard, with
out, examination or reflection; others speak through pessimism or are impelled by that human characteristic which paints as
perfect everything that belongs to oneself and defective whatever belongs to another. But it cannot be denied that there are
some who worship truth, or if not truth itself at least the semblance thereof, which is truth in the mind of the crowd.

Examining well, then, all the scenes and all the men that we have known from Childhood, and the life of our country, we beli
eve that indolence does exist there. The Filipinos, who can measure up with the most active peoples in the world, will doubtl
ess not repudiate this admission; for it is true that there one works and struggles against the climate, against nature and agai
nst men. But we must not take the exception for the general rule, and should rather seek the good of our country by stating
what we believe to be true. We must confess that indolence does actually and positively exist there; only that, instead of hol
ding it to be the cause of the backwardness and the trouble, we regard it as the effect of the trouble and the backwardness,
by fostering the development of a lamentable predisposition.

Those who have as yet treated of indolence, with the exception of Dr. Sancianco, have been content to deny or affirm it. We
know of no one who has studied its causes. Nevertheless, those who admit its existence and exaggerate it more or less hav
e not therefore failed to advise remedies taken from here and there, from Java, from India, from other English or Dutch colon
ies, like the quack who saw a fever cured with a dozen sardines and afterwards always prescribed these fish at every rise in
temperature that he discovered in his patients.

We shall proceed otherwise. Before proposing a remedy we shall examine the causes, and even though strictly speaking a p
redisposition is not a cause, let us, however, study at its true value this predisposition due to nature.
The predisposition exists? Why shouldn't it?

A hot, climate requires of the individual quiet and rest, just as cold incites to labor and action. For this reason the Spaniard is
more indolent than the Frenchman; the Frenchman more so than the German. The Europeans themselves who reproach the
residents of the colonies so much (and I am not now speaking of the Spaniards but of the Germans and English themselves)
, how do they live in tropical countries? Surrounded by a numerous train of servants, never going afoot but riding in a carriag
e, needing servants not only to take off their shoes for them but even to fan them! And yet they live and eat better, they work
for themselves to get rich, with the hope of a future, free and respected, while the poor colonist, the indolent colonist, is badl
y nourished, has no hope, toils for others, and works under force and compulsion! Perhaps the reply to this will be that white
men are not made to stand the severity of the climate. A mistake! A man can live in any climate, if he will only adapt himself t
o its requirements and conditions. What kills the European in hot countries is the abuse of liquors, the attempt to live accordi
ng to the nature of his own country under another sky and another sun. We inhabitants of hot countries live well in northern
Europe whenever we take the precautions the people there do. Europeans can also stand the Torrid Zone, if only they would
get rid of their prejudices.
(2) The fact is that in tropical countries violent work is not a good thing as it is in cold countries; there it is death, destruction,
annihilation. Nature knows this and like a just mother has therefore made the earth more fertile, more productive, as compen
sation. An hour's work under that burning sun, in the midst of pernicious influences springing from nature in activity, is equal
to a day's work in a temperate climate; it is, then, just that the earth yield a hundred fold! Moreover, do we not see the active
European, who has gained strength during the winter, who feels the fresh blood of spring boil in his veins, do we not see him
abandon his labors during the few days of his variable summer, close his office--where the work is not violent and amounts f
or many to talking and gesticulating in the shade and beside a lunch-stand,--flee to watering places, sit in the cafes or stroll
about? What wonder then that the inhabitant of tropical countries, worm out and with his blood thinned by the continuous an
d excessive heat, is reduced to inaction? Who is the indolent one in the Manila offices? Is it the poor clerk who comes in at e
ight in the morning and leaves at, one in the afternoon with only his parasol, who copies and writes and works for himself an
d for his chief, or is it the chief, who comes in a carriage at ten o'clock, leaves before twelve, reads his newspaper while smo
king and with is feet cocked up on a chair or a table, or gossiping about all his friends? Which is indolent, the native coadjuto
r, poorly paid and badly treated, who has to visit all the indigent sick living in the country, or the friar curate who gets fabulou
sly rich, goes about in a carriage, eats and drinks well, and does not put himself to any trouble without collecting excessive f
ees? [3]

Without speaking further of the Europeans, in what violent labor does the Chinaman engage in tropical countries, the industri
ous Chinaman, who flees from his own country driven by hunger and want, and whosewhole ambition is to amass a small fo
rtune? With the exception of some porters, an occupation that the natives also follow, he nearly always engages in trade, in
commerce; so rarely does he take up agriculture that we do not know of a single case. The Chinaman who in other colonies
cultivates the soil does so only for a certain number of years and then retires. [4]

We find, then, the tendency to indolence very natural, and have to admit and bless it, for we cannot alter natural laws, and wi
thout it the race would have disappeared. Man is not a brute, he is not a, machine; his object is not merely to produce, in spit
e of the pretensions of some Christian whites who would make of the colored Christian a kind of motive power somewhat mo
re intelligent and less costly than steam. Man's object is not to satisfy tile passions of another man; his object is to seek hap
piness for himself and his kind by traveling along the road of progress and perfection.

The evil is not that indolence exists more or less latently but that it is fostered and magnified. Among men, as well as among
nations, there exist not only aptitudes but also tendencies toward good and evil. To foster the good ones and aid them, as w
ell as correct the evil and repress them, would be the duty of society and governments, if less noble thoughts did not occupy
their attention. The evil is that the indolence in the Philippines is a magnified indolence, an indolence of the snowball type, if
we may be permitted the expression, an evil that increases in direct proportion to the square of the periods of time, an effect
of misgovernment and of backwardness, as we said, and not a cause thereof. Others will hold the contrary opinion, especiall
y those who have a hand in the misgovernment, but we do not care; we have made an assertion and are going to prove it.

II

When in consequence of a long chronic illness the condition of the patient is examined, the question may arise whether the
weakening of the fibers and the debility of the organs are the cause of the malady's continuing or the effect of the bad treatm
ent that prolongs its action. The attending physician attributes the entire failure of his skill to the poor constitution of the patie
nt, to the climate, to the surroundings, and so on. On the other hand, the patient attributes the aggravation of the evil to the s
ystem of treatment followed. Only the common crowd, the inquisitive populace, shakes its head and cannot reach a decision
.

Something like this happens in the case of the Philippines. Instead of physician, read government, that is, friars, employees,
etc. Instead of patient, Philippines; instead of malady, indolence.
And, just as happens in similar cases then the patient gets worse, everybody loses his head, each one dodges the responsi
bility to place it upon somebody else, and instead of seeking the causes in order to combat the evil in them, devotes himself
at best to attacking the symptoms: here a blood-letting, a tax; there a plaster, forced labor; further on a sedative, a trifling ref
orm. Every new arrival proposes a new remedy: one, seasons of prayer, the relics of a saint, the viaticum, the friars; another
, a shower-bath; still another, with pretensions to modern ideas, a transfusion of blood. "It's nothing, only the patient has eigh
t million indolent red corpuscles: some few white corpuscles in the form of an agricultural colony will get us out of the trouble.
"So, on all sides there are groans, gnawing of lips, clenching of fists, many hollow words, great ignorance, a deal of talk, a lo
t of fear. The patient is near his finish!

Yes, transfusion of blood, transfusion of blood! New life, new vitality! Yes, the new white corpuscles that you are going to inj
ect into its veins, the new white corpuscles that were a cancer in another organism will withstand all the depravity of the syst
em, will withstand the blood-lettings that it suffers every day, will have more stamina than all the eight million red corpuscles,
will cure all the disorders, all the degeneration, all the trouble in the principal organs. Be thankful if they do not become coag
ulations and produce gangrene, be thankful if they do not reproduce the cancer!

While the patient breathes, we must not lose hope, and however late we be, a judicious examination is never superfluous; at
least the cause of death may be known. We are not trying to put all the blame on the physician, and still less on the patient, f
or we have already spoken of a predisposition due to the climate, a reasonable and natural predisposition, in the absence of
which the race would disappear, sacrificed to excessive labor in a tropical country.

Indolence in the Philippines is a chronic malady, but not a hereditary one. The Filipinos have not always been what they are,
witnesses whereto are all the historians of the first years after the discovery of the Islands.

Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Malayan Filipinos carried on an active trade, not only among themselves but also wit
h all the neighboring countries. A Chinese manuscript of the 13th century, translated by Dr. Hirth (Globus, Sept. 1889), whic
h we will take up at another time, speaks of China's relations with the islands, relations purely commercial, in which mention
is made of the activity and honesty of the traders of Luzon, who took the Chinese products and distributed them throughout
all the islands, traveling for nine months, and then returned to pay religiously even for the merchandise that the Chinamen di
d not remember to have given them. The products which they in exchange exported from the islands were crude wax, cotton
, pearls, tortoise-shell, betel-nuts, dry-goods, etc. [5]

The first thing noticed by Pigafetta, who came with Magellan in 1521, on arriving at the first island of the Philippines, Samar,
was the courtesy and kindness of the inhabitants and their commerce. "To honor our captain," he says, "they conducted him
to their boats where they had their merchandise, which consisted of cloves, cinnamon, pepper, nutmegs, mace, gold and oth
er things; and they made us understand by gestures that such articles were to be found in the islands to which we were goin
g." [6]

Further on he speaks of the vessels and utensils of solid gold that he found in Butuan, where the people worked mines. He
describes the silk dresses, the daggers with long gold hilts and scabbards of carved wood, the gold, sets of teeth, etc. Amon
g cereals and fruits he mentions rice, millet, oranges, lemons, panicum, etc.

That the islands maintained relations with neighboring countries and even with distant ones is proven by the ships from Sia
m, laden with gold and slaves, that Magellan found in Cebu. These ships paid certain duties to the King of the island. In the
same year, 1521, the survivors of Magellan's expedition met the son of the Rajah of Luzon, who, as captain-general of the S
ultan of Borneo and admiral of his fleet, had conquered for him the great city of Lave (Sarawak?). Might this captain, who wa
s greatly feared by all his foes, have been the Rajah Matanda whom the Spaniards afterwards encountered in Tondo in 157
0?
In 1539 the warriors of Luzon took part in the formidable contests of Sumatra, and under the orders of Angi Siry Timor, Raja
h of Batta, conquered and overthrew the terrible Alzadin, Sultan of Atchin, renowned in the historical annals of the Far East.
(Marsden, Hist. of Sumatra, Chap. XX.) (7)

At that time, that sea where float the islands like a set of emeralds on a paten of bright glass, that sea was everywhere trave
rsed by junks, paraus, barangays, vintas, vessels swift as shuttles, so large that they could maintain a hundred rowers on a
side (Morga;) that sea bore everywhere commerce, industry, agriculture, by the force of the oars moved to the sound of warli
ke songs (8) of the genealogies and achievements of the Philippine divinities. (Colin, Chap. XV.) (9)

Wealth abounded in the islands. Pigafetta tells us of the abundance of foodstuffs in Paragua and of its inhabitants, who near
ly all tilled their own fields. At this island the survivors of Magellan's expedition were well received and provisioned. A little lat
er, these same survivors captured a vessel, plundered and sacked it, add took prisoner in it the chief of the Island of Paragu
a (!) with his son and brother. (10)

In this same vessel they captured bronze lombards, and this is the first mention of artillery of the Filipinos, for these lombard
s were useful to the chief of Paragua against the savages of the interior.

They let him ransom himself within seven days, demanding 400 measures (cavanes?) of rice, 20 pigs, 20 goats, and 450 chi
ckens. This is the first act of piracy recorded in Philippine history. The chief of Paragua paid everything, and moreover volunt
arily added coconuts, bananas, and sugar-cane jars filled with palm-wine. When Caesar was taken prisoner by the corsairs
and required to pay twenty five talents ransom, he replied; "I'll give you fifty, but later I'll have you all crucified!" The chief of
Paragua was more generous: he forgot. His conduct, while it may reveal weakness, also demonstrates that the islands were
abundantly provisioned. This chief was named Tuan Mahamud; his brother, Guantil, and his son, Tuan Mahamed. (Martin M
endez, Purser of the ship Victoria: Archivos de Indias.)

A very extraordinary thing, and one that shows the facility with which the natives learned Spanish, is that fifty years before th
e arrival of the Spaniards in Luzon, in that very year 1521 when they first came to the islands, there were already natives of
Luzon who understood Castilian. In the treaties of peace that the survivors of Magellan's expedition made with the chief of P
aragua, when the servant-interpreter died they communicated with one another through a Moro who had been captured in th
e island of the King of Luzon and who understood some Spanish. (Martin Mendez, op, cit ) Where did this extemporaneous i
nterpreter learn Castilian? In the Moluccas? In Malacca, with the Portuguese? Spaniards did not reach Luzon until 1571.

Legazpi's expedition met in Butuan various traders of Luzon with their boats laden with iron, wax cloths, porcelain, etc. (Gas
par de San Agustin,) plenty of provisions, activity, trade, movement in all the southern islands. (11)

They arrived at the Island of Cebu, "abounding in provisions, with mines and washings of gold, and peopled with natives," as
Morga says; "very populous, and at a port frequented by many ships that came from the islands and kingdoms near India," a
s Colin says; and even though they were peacefully received discord soon arose. The city was taken by force and burned. T
he fire destroyed the food supplies and naturally famine broke out in that town of a hundred thousand people, (12) as the his
torians say, and among the members of the expedition, but the neighboring islands quickly relieved the need, thanks to the
abundance they enjoyed.

All the histories of those first years, in short, abound in long accounts about the industry and agriculture of the natives: mines
, gold-washings, looms, farms, barter, naval construction, raising of poultry and stock, weaving of silk and cotton, distilleries,
manufactures of arms, pearl fisheries, the civet industry, the horn and hide industry, etc., are things encountered at every ste
p, and, considering the time and the conditions in the islands, prove that there was life, there was activity, there was movem
ent.
And if this, which is deduction, does not convince any minds imbued with unfair prejudices, perhaps of some avail may be th
e testimony of the oft-quoted Dr. Morga, who was Lieutenant-Governor of Manila for seven years and after rendering great s
ervice in the Archipelago was appointed criminal judge of the Audiencia of Mexico and Counsellor of the Inquisition. His testi
mony, we say, is highly credible, not only because all his contemporaries have spoken of him in terms that border on venera
tion but also because his work, from which we take these citations, is written with great circumspection and care, as well wit
h reference to the authorities in the Philippines as to the errors they committed. "The natives," says Morga, in chapter VII, sp
eaking of the occupations of the Chinese, "are very far from exercising those trades and have even forgotten much about far
ming, raising poultry, stock and cotton, and weaving cloth AS THEY USED TO DO IN THEIR PAGANISM AND FOR A LON
G TIME AFTER THE COUNTRY WAS CONQUERED." (13)

The whole of chapter VIII of his work deals with this moribund activity, this much-forgotten industry, and yet in spite of that, h
ow long is his eighth chapter!

And not only Morga, not only Chirino, Colin, Argensola, Gaspar de San Agustin and others agree in this matter, but modern t
ravelers, after two hundred and fifty years, examining the decadence and misery, assert the same thing. Dr. Hans Meyer, wh
en he saw the unsubdued tribes cultivating beautiful fields and working energetically, asked if they would not become indole
nt when they in turn should accept Christianity and a paternal government.
Accordingly, the Filipinos, in spite of the climate, in spite of their few needs (they were less then than now), were not the indo
lent creatures of our time, and, as we shall see later on, their ethics and their mode of life were not what is now complacently
attributed to them.
How then, and in what way, was that active and enterprising infidel native of ancient times converted into the lazy and indole
nt Christian, as our contemporary writer's say?

We have already spoken of the more or less latent predisposition which exists in the Philippines toward indolence, and whic
h must exist everywhere, in the whole world, in all men, because we all hate work more or less, as it may be more or less ha
rd, more or less unproductive. The dolce far niente of the Italian, the rascarse la barriga of the Spaniard, the supreme aspirat
ion of the bourgeois to live on his income in peace and tranquility, attest this.

What causes operated to awake this terrible predisposition from its lethargy? How is it that the Filipino people, so fond of its
customs as to border on routine, has given up its ancient habits of work, of trade, of navigation, etc., even to the extent of co
mpletely forgetting its past?

III

A fatal combination of circumstances, some independent of the will in spite of men's efforts, others the offspring of stupidity
and ignorance, others the inevitable corollaries of false principles, and still others the result of more or less base passions ha
s induced the decline of labor, an evil which instead of being remedied by prudence, mature reflection and recognition of the
mistakes made, through deplorable policy, through regret, table blindness and obstinacy, has gone from bad to worse until it
has reached the condition in which we now see it. (14).

First came the wars, the internal disorders which the new change of affairs naturally brought with it. It was necessary to subj
ect the people either by cajolery or force; there were fights, there was slaughter; those who had submitted peacefully seeme
d to repent of it; insurrections were suspected, and some occurred; naturally there were executions, and many capable labor
ers perished. Add to this condition of disorder the invasion of Limahong, add the continual wars into which the inhabitants of
the Philippines were plunged to maintain the honor of Spain, to extend the sway of her flag in Borneo, in the Moluccas and i
n Indo-China; to repel the Dutch foe: costly wars, fruitless expeditions, in which each time thousands and thousands of nativ
e archers and rowers were recorded to have embarked, but whether they returned to their homes was never stated. Like the
tribute that once upon a time Greece sent to the Minotaur of Crete, the Philippine youth embarked for the expedition, saying
good-by to their country forever: on their horizon were the stormy sea, the interminable wars, the rash expeditions. Wherefor
e, Gaspar de San Agustin says: "Although anciently there were in this town of Dumangas many people, in the course of time
they have very greatly diminished because the natives are the best sailors and most skillful rowers on the whole coast, and s
o the governors in the port of Iloilo take most of the people from this town for the ships that they send abroad ............. When
the Spaniards reached this island (Panay) it is said that there were on it more than fifty thousand families; but these diminish
ed greatly; ........... and at present they may amount to some fourteen thousand tributaries." From fifty thousand families to fo
urteen thousand tributaries in little over half a century!

We would never get through, had we to quote all the evidence of the authors regarding the frightful diminution of the inhabita
nts of the Philippines in the first years after the discovery. In the time of their first bishop, that is, ten years after Legazpi, Phil
ip II said that they had been reduced to less than two thirds.

Add to these fatal expeditions that wasted all the moral and material energies of the country, the frightful inroads of the terrib
le pirates from the south, instigated and encouraged by the government, first in order to get complaint and afterwards disarm
the islands subjected to it, inroads that reached the very shores of Manila, even Malate itself, and during which were seen to
set out for captivity and slavery, in the baleful glow of burning villages, strings of wretches who had been unable to defend th
emselves, leaving behind them the ashes of their homes and the corpses of their parents and children. Morga, who recounts
the first piratical invasion, says: "The boldness of these people of Mindanao did great damage to the Visayan Islands, as mu
ch by what they did in them as by the fear and fright which the native acquired, because the latter were in the power of the S
paniards, who held them subject and tributary and unarmed, in such manner that they did not protect them from their enemie
s or leave them means with which to defend themselves, AS THEY DID WHEN THERE WERE NO SPANIARDS IN THE C
OUNTRY." These piratical attacks continually reduced the number of the inhabitants of the Philippines, since the independe
nt Malays were especially notorious for their atrocities and murders, sometimes because they believed that to preserve their
independence it was necessary to weaken the Spaniard by reducing the number of his subjects, sometimes because a great
er hatred and a deeper resentment inspired them against the Christian Filipinos who, being of the their own race, served the
stranger in order to deprive them of their precious liberty. These expeditions lasted about three centuries, being repeated fiv
e and ten times a year, and each expedition cost the islands over eight hundred prisoners.

"With the invasions of the pirates from Sulu and Mindanao," says Padre Gaspar de San Agustin, [the island of Bantayan, ne
ar Cebu] "has been greatly reduced, because they easily captured the people there, since the latter had no place to fortify th
emselves and were far from help from Cebu. The hostile Sulu did great damage in this island in 1608, leaving it almost depo
pulated." (Page 380).

These rough attacks, coming from without, produced a counter effect, in the interior, which, carrying out medical comparison
s, was like a purge or diet in an individual who has just lost a great deal of blood. In order to make headway against so many
calamities, to secure their sovereignty and take the offensive in these disastrous contests, to isolate the warlike Sulus from t
heir neighbors in the south, to care for the needs of the empire of the Indies (for one of the reasons why the Philippines were
kept, as contemporary documents prove, was their strategic position between New Spain and the Indies), to wrest from the
Dutch their growing colonies of the Moluccas and get rid of some troublesome neighbors, to maintain, in short, the trade of C
hina with New Spain. it was necessary to construct new and large ships which, as we have seen, costly as they were to the
country for their equipment and the rowers they required, were not less so because of the manner in which they were constr
ucted. (16)
Fernando de los Rios Coronel, who fought in these wars and later turned priest, speaking of these King's ships, said: "As the
y were so large, the timber needed was scarcely to be found in the forests (of the Philippines!), and thus it was necessary to
seek it with great difficulty in the most remote of them, where, once found, in order to haul and convey it to the shipyard the t
owns of the surrounding country had to be depopulated of natives, who get it out with immense labor, damage, and cost to t
hem. The natives furnished the masts for a galleon, according to the assertion of the Franciscans, and I heard the governor
of the province where they were cut, which is Lacuna de Bay, say that to haul them seven leagues over very broken mountai
ns 6,000 natives were engaged three months, without furnishing them food, which the wretched native had to seek for himse
lf!"

And Gaspar de San Agustin says: "In those times (1690), Bacolor has not the people that it had in the past, because of the u
prising in that province when Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lava was Governor of these islands and because of the continual
labor of cutting timber for his Majesty's shipyards, WHICH HINDERS THEM FROM CULTIVATING THE VERY FERTILE PL
AIN THEY HAVE." (17)

If this is not sufficient to explain the depopulation of the islands and the abandonment of industry, agriculture and commerce,
then add "the natives who wore executed, those who loft their wives and children and fled in disgust to the mountains, those
who were sold into slavery to pay the taxes levied upon them," as Fernando de los Rios Coronel says; add to all this what P
hilip II said in reprimanding Bishos Salazar about "natives sold by some encomendoros to others, those flogged to death, th
e women who are crushed to death by their heavy burdens, those who sleep in the fields and there bear and nurse their chil
dren and die bitten by poisonous vermin, the many who are executed and left to die of hunger and those who eat poisonous
herbs ............ and the mothers who kill their children in bearing them," and you will understand how in less than thirty years t
he population of the Philippines was reduced one-third. We are not saying this: it was said by Gaspar de San Agustin, the pr
eeminently anti-Filipino Augustinian, and he confirms it throughout the rest of his work by speaking every moment of the stat
e of neglect in which lay the farms and fields once so flourishing and so well cultivated, the towns thinned that had formerly b
een inhabited by many leading families!
How is it strange, then, that discouragement may have been infused into the spirit of the inhabitants of the Philippines, when
in the midst of so many calamities they did not know whether they would see sprout the seed they were planting, whether th
eir field was going to be their grave or their crop would go to feed their executioner? What is there strange in it, when we see
the pious but impotent friars of that time trying to free their poor parishioners from the tyranny of the encomenderos by advisi
ng them to stop work in the mines, to abandon their commerce, to break up their looms, pointing out to them heaven for their
whole hope, preparing them for death as their only consolation? (18)

Man works for an object. Remove the object and you reduce him to inaction The most active man in the world will fold his ar
ms from the instant he understands that it is madness to bestir himself, that this work will be the cause of his trouble, that for
him it will be the cause of vexations at home and of the pirate's greed abroad. It seems that these thoughts have never enter
ed the minds of those who cry out against the indolence of the Filipinos.

Even were the Filipino not a man like the rest; even were we to suppose that zeal in him for work was as essential as the mo
vement of a wheel caught in the gearing of others in motion; even were we to deny him foresight and the judgment that the p
ast and the present form, there would still be left us another reason to explain the attack of the evil. The abandonment of the
fields by their cultivators, whom the wars and piratical attacks dragged from their homes, was sufficient to reduce to nothing t
he hard labor of so many generations. In the Philippines abandon for a year the land most beautifully tended and you will se
e how you will have to begin all over again: the rain will wipe out the furrows, the floods will drown the seeds, plants and bus
hes will grow up everywhere, and on seeing so much useless labor the hand will drop the hoe, the laborer will desert his plo
w. Isn't there left the fine life of the pirate?

Thus is understood that sad discouragement which we find in the friar writers of the 17th century, speaking of once very fertil
e plains submerged, of provinces and towns depopulated, of products that have disappeared from trade, of leading families
exterminated. These pages resemble a sad and monotonous scene in the night after a lively day. Of Cagayan Padre San Ag
ustin speaks with mournful brevity: "A great deal of cotton, of which they made good cloth that the Chinese and Japanese ev
ery year bought and carried away." In the historian's time, the industry and the trade had come to an end!
It seems that these are causes more thorn sufficient to breed indolence even in the midst of beehive. Thus is explained why,
after thirty-two years of the system, the circumspect and prudent Morga said that the natives "have forgotten much about far
ming, raising poultry, stock and cotton, and weaving cloth, as they used to do in their paganism and FOR A LONG TIME AF
TER THE COUNTRY HAD BEEN CONQUERED!"
Still they struggled a long time against indolence, yes: but their enemies were so numerous that at last they gave up!
IV

We recognize the causes that, awoke the predisposition and provoked the evil: now let us see what foster and sustain it. In t
his connection, government and governed have to bow our heads and say: we deserve our fate.
We have already truly said that when a house becomes disturbed and disordered, we should not accuse the youngest, child
or the servants, but the head of it, especially if his authority is unlimited, he who does not act freely is not responsible for his
actions; and the Filipino people, not being master of its liberty, is not responsible for either its misfortunes or its woes. We sa
ys this, it is true, but, as will be seen later on, we also have a large part, in the continuation of such a disorder.
The following, among other causes, contributed to foster the evil and aggravate it: the constantly lessening encouragement t
hat labor has met with in the Philippines. Fearing to have the Filipinos deal frequently with other individuals of their own race
, who were free and independent, as the Borneans, the Siamese, the Cambodians, and the Japanese, people who in their c
ustoms and feeling's differ greatly from the Chinese, the Government acted toward these others with great mistrust and grea
t severity, as Morga testifies in the last pages of his work, until they finally ceased to come to the country. In fact, it seems th
at once an uprising' planned by the Borneans was suspected: we say suspected, for there was not even an attempt, althoug
h there were many executions. (19) And, as these nations were the very ones that, consumed Philippine products, when all
communication with them had been cut off, consumption of these products also ceased. The only two countries with which t
he Philippines continued to have relations were China and Mexico, or New Spain, and from this trade only China and a few
private individuals in Manila got any benefit. It, fact, the Celestial Empire sent, her junks laden with merchandise, that merch
andise which shut down the factories of Seville and ruined the Spanish industry, and returned laden in exchange with the sil
ver that was every year sent from Mexico. Nothing from the Philippines at that time went to China, not even gold, for in those
years the Chinese traders would accept no payment but silver coin. (20) To Mexico went little more: some cloth and dry goo
ds which the encomendoros took by force or bought from the natives at, a paltry price, wax, amber, gold, civet, etc, but nothi
ng more, and not even in great quantity, as is stated by Admiral Don Jeronimo de Bacuelos y Carrillo, when he begged the
King that "the inhabitants of the Manilas be permitted (!) to load as many ships as they could with native products, such as w
ax, gold, perfumes, ivory, cotton cloths, which they would have to buy from the natives of the country ............... Thus the frie
ndship of those peoples would be gained, they would furnish New Spain with their merchandise and the money that is broug
ht to Manila, would not leave this place," (21)
The coastwise trade, so active in other times, had to die out, thanks to the piratical attacks of the Malays of the south; and tr
ade in the interior of the islands almost entirely disappeared, owing to restrictions, passports and other administrative require
ments.
Of no little importance were the hindrances and obstacles that from the beginning were thrown in the farmers's way by the ru
lers, who were influenced by childish fear and saw everywhere signs of conspiracies and uprisings. The natives were not all
owed to go to their labors, that is, their farms, without permission of the governor, or of his agents and officers, and even of t
he priests as Morga says. Those who know the administrative slackness and confusion in a country where the officials work
scarcely two hours a day; those who know the cost of going to and returning from the capital to obtain a permit; those who ar
e aware of the petty retaliations of the little tyrants will well understand how with this crude arrangement it is possible to have
the most absurd agriculture. True it is that for some time this absurdity, which would be ludicrous had it not been so serious,
has disappeared; but even if the words have gone out of use other facts and other provisions have replaced them. The Moro
pirate has disappeared but there remains the outlaw who infests the fields and waylays the farmer to hold him for ransom. N
ow then, the government, which has a constant fear of the people, denies to the farmers even the use of a shotgun, or if it d
oes allow it does so very grudgingly and withdraws it at pleasure; whence it results with the laborer, who, thanks to his mean
s of defense, plants his crops and invests his meager fortune in the furrows that he has so laboriously opened, that when his
crop matures, it occurs to the government, which is impotent to suppress brigandage, to deprive him of his weapon; and the
n, without defense and without security he is reduced to inaction and abandons his field, his work, and takes to gambling as
the best means of securing a livelihood. The green cloth is under the protection of the government, it is safer! A mournful co
unselor is fear, for it not only causes weakness but also in casting aside the weapons strengthens the very persecutor!
The sordid return the native gets from his work has the effect of discouraging him. We know from history that the encomend
eros, after reducing many to slavery and forcing them to work for their benefit, made others give up their merchandise for a t
rifle or nothing at all, or cheated them with false measures.

Speaking of Ipion, in Panay, Padre Gaspar de San Agustin says: "It was in ancient times very rich in gold, ............... but prov
oked by the annoyances they suffered from some governors they have ceased to get it out, preferring to live in poverty than
to suffer such hardships." (Page 378). Further on, speaking of other towns, he says: "Goaded by the ill treatment of the enco
menderos who in administering justice have treated the natives as their slaves and not as their children, and have only looke
d after their own interests at the expense of the wretched fortunes and lives of their charges ..............." (Page 422) Further o
n: "In Leyte, where they tried to kill an encomendero of the town of Dagami on account of the great hardships he made them
suffer by exacting tribute of wax from them with a steelyard which he had made twice as long as the others"
This state of affairs lasted a long time and still lasts, in spite of the fact, that the breed of encomenderos has become extinct.
A term passes away but the evil and the passions engendered do not pass away so long as reforms are devoted solely to ch
anging the names.
The wars with the Dutch, the inroads and piratical attacks of the people of Sulu and Mindanao disappeared; the people have
been transformed; new towns have grown up while others have become impoverished; but the frauds subsist as much as or
worse than they did in those early years. We will not cite our own experiences, for aside from the fact that, we do not know w
hich to select, critical persons may reproach us with partiality; neither will we cite those of other Filipinos who write in the ne
wspapers; but we shall confine ourselves to translating the words of a modern French traveler who was in the Philippines for
a long time:
"The good curate," he says with reference to the rosy picture a friar had given him of the Philippines, "had not told me about
the governor, the foremost official of the district, who was too much taken up with the ideal of getting rich to have time to tyra
nnize over his docile subjects; the governor, charged with ruling the country and collecting the various taxes in the governme
nt's name, devoted himself almost wholly to trade; in his hands the high and noble functions he performs are nothing more t
han instruments of gain. He monopolizes all the business and instead of developing on his part the love of work, instead of s
timulating the too natural indolence of the natives, he with abuse of his powers thinks only of destroying all competition that
may trouble him or attempt to participate in his profits. It matters little to him that the country is impoverished, without cultivati
on, without commerce, without, industry, just so the governor is quickly enriched!"
Yet the traveler has been unfair in picking out the governor especially: Why only the governor?
We do not cite passages from other authors, because we have not their works at hand and do not wish to quote from memor
y. The great difficulty that every enterprise encountered with the administration contributed not a little to kill off all commercia
l and industrial movement. All the Filipinos, as well as all those who have tried to engage in business in the Philippines, kno
w how many documents, what comings, how many stamped papers, how much patience is needed to secure from the gover
nment a permit for an enterprise. One must count upon the good will of this one, on the influence of that one, on a good brib
e to another in order that the application be not pigeonholed, a present to the one further on so that he may pass it on to his
chief; one must pray to God to give him good humor and time to see and examine it; to another, talent to recognize its exped
iency; to one further on sufficient stupidity not to scent behind the enterprise an insurrectionary purpose; and that they may n
ot all spend the time taking baths, hunting or playing cards with the reverend friars in their convents or country houses. And
above all, great patience, great knowledge of how to get along, plenty of money, a great deal of politics, many salutations, gr
eat influence, plenty of presents and complete resignation! How is it strange that, the Philippines remain poor in spite of their
very fertile soil, when history tells us that the countries now the most flourishing date their development from the day of their
liberty and civil rights? The most commercial and most industrious countries have been the freest countries: France,
England and the United States prove this. Hongkong, which is not worth the most insignificant of the Philippines, has more c
ommercial movement than all the islands together, because it is free and is well governed.
The trade with China, which was the whole occupation of the colonizers of the Philippines, was not only prejudicial to Spain
but also to the life of her colonies; in fact, when the officials and private persons at Manila found an easy method of getting ri
ch they neglected everything. They paid no attention either to cultivating the soil or to fostering industry; and wherefore? Chi
na furnished the trade, and they had only to take advantage of it and pick up the gold that dropped out on its way from Mexic
o toward the interior of China, the gulf whence it never returned.
The pernicious example of the dominators in surrounding themselves with servants and despising manual or corporal labor
as a thing unbecoming the nobility and chivalrous pride of the heroes of so many centuries; those lordly airs, which the nativ
es have translated into tila ka castila, and the desire of the dominated to be the equal of the dominators, if not essentially, at
least in their manners: all this had naturally to produce aversion to activity and fear or hatred of work.
Moreover, 'Why work?' asked many natives. The curate says that the rich man will not go to heaven The rich man on earth i
s liable to all kinds of trouble, to be appointed a cabeza de barangay, to be deported if an uprising occurs, to be forced bank
er of the military chief of the town, who to reward him for favors received seizes his laborers and his stock, in order to force h
im to beg for mercy, and thus easily pays up. Why be rich? So that all the officers of justice may have a lynx eye on your acti
ons, so that at the least slip enemies may be raised up against you, you may be indicted, a whole complicated and labyrinthi
ne story may be concocted against you, for which you can only get away, not by the thread of Ariadne but by Danae's show
er of gold, and still give thanks that you are not kept in reserve for some needy occasion? The native, whom they pretend to
regard as an imbecile, is not so much so that he does not understand that it is ridiculous to work himself to death to become
worse off. A proverb of his says that the pig is cooked in its own lard, and as among his bad qualities he has the good one of
applying to himself all the criticisms and censures he prefers to live miserable and indolent, rather than play the part of the w
retched beast of burden.
Add to this the introduction of gambling. We do not mean to san that before the coming of the Spaniards the natives did not
gamble: the passion for grumbling is innate in adventuresome and excitable races, and such is the Malay. Pigafetta tells us
of cock-fights and of bets in the Island of Paragua. Cock-fighting must also have existed in Luzon and in all the islands, for in
the terminology of the game are two Tagalog words: sabong, and tari (cockpit and gaff). But there is not the least doubt that
the fostering of this game is due to the government, as well as the perfecting of it. Although Pigafetta tells us of it, he mentio
ns it only in Paragua, and not in Cebu nor in any other island of the south, where he stayed long time. Morga does not speak
of it, in spite of his having spent seven years in Manila, and yet he does describe the kinds of fowl, the jungle hens and cock
s. Neither does Morga, speak of gambling, when he talks about vices and other defects, more or less concealed, more or les
s insignificant. Moreover, excepting the two Tagalog wordssabong and tari, the others are of Spanish origin, as soltada (setti
ng the cocks to fight, then the fight itself), presto, (apuesta, bet), logro (winnings), pago (payment), sentenciador (referee), c
ase (to cover the bets), etc. We say the same about gambling: the word sugal (jugar, to gamble), like kumpisal (confesar, to
confess to a priest), indicates that gambling was unknown in the Philippines before the Spaniards. The word laro (Tagalog, t
o play) is not the equivalent of the word sunni. The word balasa (baraja, playing-card) proves that the introduction of playing-
cards was not due to the Chinese, who have a kind of playing-cards also, because in that case they would have taken the C
hinese name. Is not this enough? The word taya (taltar, to bet), paris-paris (Spanish pares, pairs of cards), politana (napolita
na, a winning sequence of cards), sapore (to stack the cards), kapote (to slam), monte, and so on, all prove the foreign origi
n of this terrible plant, which only produces vice, and which has found in the character of the native a fit soil, cultivated by cir
cumstances.
Along with gambling, which breeds dislike for steady and difficult toil by its promise of sudden wealth and its appeal to the e
motions, with the lotteries, with the prodigality and hospitality of the Filipinos, went also, to swell this train of misfortunes, the
religious functions, the great number of fiestas, the long masses for the women to spend their mornings and the novenaries t
o spend their afternoons, and the night, for the processions and rosaries. Remember that lack of capital and absence of mea
ns paralyze all movement, and you will see how the native has perforce to be indolent for if any money might remain to him f
rom the trials, imposts and exactions, he would have to give it to the curate for bulls, scapularies, candles, novenaries, etc. A
nd if this does not suffice to form an indolent character, if the climate and nature are not enough in themselves to daze him a
nd deprive him of all energy, recall then that the doctrines of his religion teach him to irrigate his fields in the dry season, not
by means of canals but with masses and prayers; to preserve his stock during an epizootic with holy water, exorcisms and b
enedictions that cost five dollars an animal; to drive away the locusts by a procession with the image of St. Augustine, etc. It
is well, undoubtedly, to trust greatly in God; but it is better to do what one can and not trouble the Creator every moment, ev
en when these appeals redound to the benefit of His ministers. We have noticed that the countries which believe most in mir
acles are the laziest, just, as spoiled children are the most ill-mannered. Whether they believe in miracles to palliate their lazi
ness or they are lazy because they believe in miracles, we cannot say; but the fact is the Filipinos were much less lazy befor
e the word miracle was introduced into their language.

The facility with which individual liberty is curtailed, that continual alarm of all from the knowledge that they are liable to secr
et report, a governmental ukase, and to the accusation of rebel or suspect, an accusation which, to be effective, does not ne
ed proof or the production of the accuser. With that lack of confidence in the future, that uncertainty of reaping the reward of
labor, as in a city stricken with the plague, everybody yields to fate, shuts himself in his house or goes about amusing himsel
f in the attempt to spend the few days that remain to him in the least disagreeable way possible.

The apathy of the government itself toward everything in commerce and agriculture contributes not a little to foster indolence
. There is no encouragement, at all for the manufacturer or for the farmer; the government furnishes no aid either when poor
crop comes, when the locusts (23) sweep over the fields, or when a cyclone destroys in its passage the wealth of the soil; no
r does it take any trouble to seek a market for the products of its colonies. Why should it do so when these same products ar
e burdened with taxes and imposts and have not free entry into the ports, of the mother country, nor is their consumption the
re encouraged? While we see all the walls of London covered with advertisements of the products of its colonies, while the E
nglish make heroic efforts to substitute Ceylon for Chinese tea, beginning with the sacrifice of their taste and their stomach, i
n Spain, with the exception of tobacco, nothing from the Philippines is known: neither its sugar, coffee, hemp, fine cloths, nor
its Ilocano blankets. The name of Manila is known only from those cloths of China or Indo-China which at one time reached
Spain by way of Manila, heavy silk shawls, fantastically but coarsely embroidered, which no one has thought of imitating in
Manila, since they are so easily made; but the government has other cares, and the Filipinos do not know that such objects
are more highly esteemed in the Peninsula than their delicate pi�a, embroideries and their very fine jusi fabrics. Thus disap
peared our trade in indigo, thanks to the trickery of the Chinese, which the government could not guard against, occupied as
it was with other thoughts; thus die now the other industries; the fine manufactures of the Visayas are gradually disappearing
from trade and even from use; the people, continually getting poorer, cannot afford the costly cloths and have to be content
with calico or the imitations of the Germans,who produce imitations even of the work of our silversmiths.
The fact that the best plantations, the best tracts of land in some provinces, those that from their easy access are more profit
able than others, are in the hands of the religious corporations, whose desideratum is ignorance and a condition of semi-star
vation for the native, so that they may continue to govern him and make themselves necessary to his wretched existence, is
one of the reasons why many towns do not progress in spite of the efforts of their inhabitants. We will be met with the objecti
ons, as an argument on the other side that the towns which belong to the friars are comparatively richer than those which do
not belong to them. They surely are! Just as their brethren in Europe, in founding their convents, knew how to select the best
valleys, the best uplands for the cultivation of the vine or the production of beer, so also the Philippine monks (25) have kno
wn how to select the best towns, the beautiful plains, the well-watered fields, to make of them rich plantations. For some tim
e the friarshave deceived many by making them believe that if these plantations were prospering, it was because they were
under their care, and the indolence of the native was thus emphasized; but they forget that in same provinces where they ha
ve not been able for some reason to get possession of the best tracts of land, their plantations, like Baurand and Liang, are i
nferior to Taal, Balayan and Lipa, regions cultivated entirely by the natives without any monkish interference whatsoever.

Add to this lack of material inducement the absentee of moral stimulus, and you will see how he who is not indolent in that c
ountry must needs be a madman or at least a fool. What future awaits him who distinguishes himself, him who studies, who
rises above the crowd? At the cost of study and sacrifice a young man becomes a great chemist, and after a long course of t
raining, wherein neither the government nor anybody has given him the least help, he concludes his long stay in the Universi
ty. A competitive examination is held to fill a certain position. The young man wins this through knowledge and perseverance
, and after he has won it, it is abolished, because ......... we do not care to give the reason, but when a municipal laboratory i
s closed in order to abolish the position of director, who got his place by competitive examination, while other officers, such a
s the press censor, are preserved, it is because the belief exists that the light of progress may injure the people more than al
l the adulterated foods (26). In the same way, another young man won a prize in a literary competition, and as long as his ori
gin was unknown his work was discussed, the newspapers praised it and it was regarded as a masterpiece, but the sealed e
nvelopes were opened, the winner proved to be a native, while among the losers there were Peninsulars; then all the newsp
apers hastened to extol the losers! Not one word from the government, nor from anybody, to encourage the native who with
so much affection was cultivating the language and letters of the mother country! (27)
Finally, passing over many other more or less insignificant reasons, the enumeration of which would be interminable, let us c
lose this dreary list with the principal and most terrible of all: the education of the native.
From his birth until he sinks into his grave, the training of the native is brutalizing, depressive and antihuman (the word 'inhu
man' is not sufficiently explanatory: whether or not the Academy admit it, let it go). There is no doubt that the government, so
me priests like the Jesuits and some Dominicans like Padre Benavides, have done a great deal by founding colleges, s
chools of primary instruction, and the like. But this is not enough; their effect is neutralized. They amount to five or ten years
(years of a hundred and fifty days at most) during which the youth comes in contact with books selected by those very priest
s who boldly proclaim that it is an evil for the natives to know Castilian, that the native should not be separated from his cara
bao, that he should not have any further aspirations, and so on; five to ten years during which the majority of the students ha
ve grasped nothing more than that no one understands what the books say, not even the professors themselves perhaps; a
nd these five to ten years have to offset the daily preachment of the whole life, that preachment which lowers the dignity of
man, which by degrees brutally deprives him of the sentiment of self-esteem, that eternal, stubborn, constant labor to bow th
e native's neck, to make him accept the yoke, to place him on a level with the beast--a labor aided by some persons, with or
without the ability to write, which if it does not produce in some individuals the desired effect, in others it has the opposite eff
ect, like the breaking of a cord that is stretched too tightly. Thus, while they attempt to make of the native a kind of animal, v
et in exchange they demand of him divine actions. And we say divine actions, because he must be a god who does not beco
me indolent in that climate, surrounded by the circumstances mentioned. Deprive a man, then, of his dignity, and you not onl
y deprive him of his moral strength but you also make him useless even for those who wish to make use of him. Every creat
ure has its stimulus, its mainspring: man's is his self-esteem. Take it away from him and he is a corpse, and he who seeks a
ctivity in a corpse will encounter only worms.
Thus is explained how the natives of the present time are no longer the same as those of the time of the discovery, neither
morally nor physically.
The ancient writers, like Chirino, Morga and Colin, take pleasure in describing them as well-featured, with good aptitudes for
any thing they take up, keen and susceptible and of resolute will, very clean and neat in their persons and clothing, and of g
ood mien and bearing. (Morga). Others delight in minute accounts of their intelligence and pleasant manners, of their aptitud
e for music, the drama, dancing and singing; of the facility with which they learned, not only Spanish but also Latin, which th
ey acquired almost by themselves (Colin); others, of their exquisite politeness in their dealings and in their social life; others,
like the first Augustinians, whose accounts Gaspar de San Augustin copies, found them more gallant and better mannered t
han the inhabitants of the Moluccas. "All live off their husbandry," adds Morga, "their farms, fisheries and enterprises, for the
y travel from island to island by sea and from province to province by land."
In exchange, the writers of the present time, without being better than those of former times, neither as men nor as historian
s, without being more gallant than Hernan Cortez and Salcedo, nor more prudent than Legazpi, nor more manly than Morga,
nor more studious than Colin and Gaspar de San Agustin, our contemporary writers, we say, find that the native is a creatur
e something more than a monkey but much less than a man, an anthropoid, dull-witted, stupid, timid, dirty, cringing, grinning
, ill-clothed, indolent, lazy, brainless, immoral, etc., etc.
To what is this retrogression due? Is it the delectable civilization, the religion of salvation of the friars, called of Jesus Christ
by a euphemism, that has produced this miracle, that has atrophied his brain, paralyzed his heart and made of the man this
sort of vicious animal that the writers depict?
Alas! The whole misfortune of the present Filipinos consists in that they have become only half-way brutes. The Filipino is co
nvinced that to get happiness it is necessary for him to lay aside his dignity as a rational creature, to attend mass, to believe
what is told him, to pay what is demanded of him, to pay and forever to pay; to work, suffer and be silent, without aspiring to
anything, without aspiring to know or even to understand Spanish, without separating himself from his carabao, as the priest
s shamelessly say, without protesting against any injustice, against any arbitrary action, against an assault, against an insult;
that is, not to have heart, brain or spirit: a creature with arms and a purse full of gold ............ there's the ideal native! Unfortu
nately, or because the brutalization is not yet complete and because the nature of man is inherent in his being in spite of his
condition, the native protests; he still has aspirations, he thinks and strives to rise, and there's the trouble!

V
In the preceding chapter we set forth the causes that proceed from the government in fostering and maintaining the evil we a
re discussing. Now it falls to us to analyze those that emanate from the people. Peoples and governments are correlated an
d complementary: a fatuous government would be an anomaly among righteous people, just as a corrupt people cannot exis
t under just rulers and wise laws. Like people, like government, we will say in paraphrase of a popular adage.
We can reduce all these causes to two classes: to defects of training and lack of national sentiment. Of the influence of clim
ate we spoke at the beginning, so we will not treat of the effects arising from it.
The very limited training in the home, the tyrannical and sterile education of the rare centers of learning, that blind subordinat
ion of the youth to one of greater age, influence the mind so that a man may not aspire to excel those who preceded him but
must merely be content to go along with or march behind them. Stagnation forcibly results from this, and as he who devotes
himself merely to copying divests himself of other qualities suited to his own nature, he naturally becomes sterile; hence dec
adence. Indolence is a corollary derived from the lack of stimulus and of vitality.
That modesty infused into the convictions of every one, or, to speak more clearly, that insinuated inferiority, a sort of daily an
d constant depreciation of the mind so that, it may not be raised to the regions of light, deadens the energies, paralyzes all t
endency toward advancement, and at the least struggle a man gives up without fighting. If by one of those rare accidents, s
ome wild spirit, that is, some active one, excels, instead of his example stimulating, it only causes others to persist in their in
action. 'There's one who will work for us: let's sleep on!' say his relatives and friends. True it is that the spirit of rivalry is som
etimes awakened, only that then it awakens with bad humor in the guise of envy, and instead of being a lever for helping, it i
s an obstacle that produces discouragement.

Nurtured by the example of anchorites of a contemplative and lazy life, the natives spend theirs in giving their gold to the Ch
urch in the hope of miracles and other wonderful things. Their will is hypnotized: from childhood they learn to act mechanicall
y, without knowledge of the object, thanks to the exercises imposed upon them from the tenderest years of praying for whole
hours in an unknown tongue, of venerating things that they do not understand, of accepting beliefs that are not explained to t
hem to having absurdities imposed upon them, while the protests of reason are repressed. Is it any wonder that with this vici
ous dressage of intelligence and will the native, of old logical and consistent--as the analysis of his past and of his language
demonstrates--should now be a mass of dismal contradictions? That continual struggle between reason and duty, between h
is organism and his new ideals, that civil war which disturbs the peace of his conscience all his life, has the result, of paralyzi
ng all his energies, and aided by the severity of the climate, makes of that eternal vacillation, of the doubts in his brain, the o
rigin of his indolent disposition.
"You can't know more than this or that old man!" "Don't aspire to be greater than the curate!" "You belong to an inferior race!
" "You haven't any energy!" This is what they tell the child, and as they repeat it so often, it has perforce to become engrave
d on his mind and thence mould and pervade all his actions. The child or youth who tries to be anything else is blamed with
vanity and presumption; the curate ridicules him with cruel sarcasm, his relatives look upon him with fear, strangers regard h
im with great compassion. No forward movement! Get back in the ranks and keep in line!

With his spirit thus moulded the native falls into the most pernicious of all routines: routine not planned, but imposed and forc
ed. Note that the native himself is not, naturally inclined to routine, but his mind is disposed to accept all truths, just as his ho
use is open to all strangers. The good and the beautiful attract him, seduce and captivate him, although, like the Japanese,
he often exchanges the good for the evil, if it appears to him garnished and gilded. What he lacks is in the first place liberty t
o allow expansion to his adventuresome spirit, and good examples, beautiful prospects for the future. It is necessary that his
spirit, although it may be dismayed and cowed by the elements and the fearful manifestation of their mighty forces, store up
energy, seek high purposes, in order to struggle against obstacles in the midst of unfavorable natural conditions. In order tha
t he may progress it is necessary that a revolutionary spirit, so to speak, should boil in his veins, since progress necessarily r
equires change; it implies the overthrow of the past, there deified, by the present; the victory of new ideas over the ancient a
nd accepted ones. It will not be sufficient to speak to his fancy, to talk nicely to him, nor that the light illuminate him like the ig
nis fatuus that leads travelers astray at night; all the flattering promises of the fairest hopes will not suffice, so long as his spi
rit is not free, his intelligence not respected.
The reasons that originate in the lack of national sentiment are still more lamentable and more transcendental.
Convinced by the insinuation of his inferiority, his spirit harassed by his education, if that brutalization of which we spoke abo
ve can be called education, in that exchange of usages and sentiments among different nations, the Filipino, to whom remai
n only his susceptibility and his poetical imagination, allows himself to be guided by his fancy and his self-love. It is sufficient
that the foreigner praise to him the imported merchandise and run down the native product for him to hasten to make the ch
ange, without reflecting that everything has its weak side and the most sensible custom is ridiculous in the eyes of those wh
o do not follow it. They have dazzled him with tinsel, with strings, of colored glass beads, with noisy rattles, shining mirrors a
nd other trinkets, and he has given in return his gold, his conscience, and even his liberty. He changed his religion for the ext
ernal practices of another cult; the convictions and usages derived from his climate and needs, for other usages and other c
onvictions that developed under another sky and another inspiration. His spirit, well-disposed toward everything that looks g
ood to him, was then transformed, at the pleasure of the nation that forced upon him its God and its laws, and as the trader
with whom he dealt did not bring a cargo of useful implements of iron, hoes to till the fields, but stamped papers, crucifixes, b
ulls and prayer-books; as he did not have for ideal and prototype the tanned and vigorous laborer, but the aristocratic lord, c
arried in a luxurious litter, the result was that the imitative people became bookish, devout, prayerful; it acquired ideas of lux
ury and ostentation, without thereby improving the means of its subsistence to a corresponding degree.
The lack of national sentiment brings another evil, moreover, which is the absence of all opposition to measures prejudicial t
o the people and the absence of any initiative in whatever may redound to its good. A man in the Philippines is only an indivi
dual, he is not a member of a nation. He is forbidden and denied the right of association, and is therefore weak and sluggish
. The Philippines are an organism whose cells seem to have no arterial system to irrigate it or nervous system to communica
te its impressions; these cells must, nevertheless, yield their product, get it where they can: if they perish, let them perish. In
the view of some this is expedient so that a colony may be a colony; perhaps they are right, but not to the effect that a colon
y may flourish.
The result of this is that if a prejudicial measure is ordered, no one protests; all goes well apparently until later the evils are f
elt. Another blood-letting, and as the organism has neither nerves nor voice the physician proceeds in the belief that the trea
tment is not injuring it. It needs a reform, but as it must not speak, it keeps silent and remains with the need. The patient wan
ts to eat, it wants to breathe the fresh air, but as such desires may offend the susceptibility of the physician who thinks that h
e has already provided everything necessary, it suffers and pines away from fear of receiving scolding, of getting another pla
ster and a new blood-letting, and so on indefinitely.
In addition to this, love of peace and the horror many have of accepting the few administrative positions which fall to the Filip
inos on account of the trouble and annoyance these cause them places at the head of the people the most stupid and incap
able men, those who submit to everything, those who can endure all the caprices and exactions of the curate and of the offic
ials. With this inefficiency in the lower spheres of power and ignorance and indifference in the upper, with the frequent chang
es and the eternal apprenticeships, with great fear and many administrative obstacles, with a voiceless people that has neith
er initiative nor cohesion, with employees who nearly all strive to amass a fortune and return home, with inhabit, ants who liv
e in great hardship from the instant they begin to breathe, create prosperity, agriculture and industry, found enterprises and
companies, things that still hardly prosper in free and well-organized communities.
Yes, all attempt is useless that does not spring from a profound study of the evil that afflicts us. To combat this indolence, so
me have proposed increasing the native's needs and raising the taxes. What has happened? Criminals have multiplied, pen
ury has been aggravated. Why? Because the native already has enough needs with his functions of the Church, with his fies
tas, with the public offices forced on him, the donations and bribes that he has to make so that he may drag out his wretched
existence. The cord is already too taut.
We have heard many complaints, and every day we read in the papers about the efforts the government is making to rescue
the country from its condition of indolence. Weighing its plans, its illusions and its difficulties, we are reminded of the garden
er who tried to raise a tree planted in a small flower-pot. The gardener spent his days tending and watering the handful of ea
rth, he trimmed the plant frequently, he pulled at it to lengthen it and hasten its growth, he grafted on it cedars and oaks, unti
l one day the little tree died, leaving the man convinced that it belonged to a degenerate species, attributing the failure of his
experiment to everything except the lack of soil and his own ineffable folly.
Without education and liberty, that soil and that sun of mankind, no reform is possible; no measure can give the result desire
d. This does not mean that we should ask first for the native the instruction of a sage and all imaginable liberties, in order the
n to put a hoe in his hand or place him in a workshop; such a pretension would be an absurdity and vain folly. What we wish
is that obstacles be not put in his way, that the many his climate and the situation of the islands afford be not augmented, th
at instruction be not begrudged him for fear that when he becomes intelligent he may separate from the colonizing nation or
ask for the rights of which he makes himself worthy. Since some day or other he will become enlightened, whether the gover
nment wishes it or not, let his enlightenment be as a gift received and not as conquered plunder. We desire that the policy b
e at once frank and consistent, that is, highly civilizing, without sordid reservations, without distrust, without fear or jealousy,
wishing the good for the sake of the good, civilization for the sake of civilization, without ulterior thoughts of gratitude, or else
boldly exploiting, tyrannical and selfish without hypocrisy or deception, with a whole system well-planned and studied out for
dominating by compelling obedience, for commanding to get rich, for getting rich to be happy. If the former, the government
may act with the security that some day or other it will reap the harvest and will find a people its own in heart and interest; th
ere is nothing like a favour for securing the friendship or enmity of man, according to whether it be conferred with good will o
r hurled into his face and bestowed upon him in spite of himself. If the logical and regulated system of exploitation be chosen
, stifling with the jingle of gold and the sheen of opulence the sentiments of independence in the colonies, paying with its we
alth for its lack of liberty, as the English do in India, who moreover leave the government to native rulers, then build roads, la
y out highways, foster the freedom of trade; let the government heed material interests more than the interests of four orde
rs of friars; let it send out intelligent employees to foster industry; just judges, all well paid, so that they be not venal pil
ferers, and lay aside all religious pretext. This policy has the advantage in that while it may not lull the instincts of liberty whol
ly to sleep, yet the day when the mother country loses her colonies she will at least have the gold amassed and not the regr
et of having reared ungrateful children.

SUMMARY
Chapter 1 – Rizal accepts [[Gregorio Del Pilar's]] previous work and admits that
indolence exists among Filipinos, but it cannot be linked to the country's issues and
backwardness; rather, it is an outcome of the country's backwardness and troubles. In
previous studies on indolence, the focus has always been on rejecting or acknowledging its
existence, rather than analyzing its causes in depth. Before healing indolence, Rizal advises,
one must first investigate the causes. As a result, he lists the reasons of indolence as well as
the conditions that led to it. He reminds out that the hot environment has a natural inclination
to laziness. Filipinos cannot be compared to Europeans who live in frigid climates and have
to work much harder. He claims that an hour of work under the Philippine sun is equivalent
to a day's work in temperate climates.

Chapter 2 – According to Rizal, if the wrong therapy is administered, the sickness

would deteriorate. Indolence is the same way. People, on the other hand, should not give up
hope in the struggle against indolence. Rizal claims that the early Filipinos were already
trading between provinces and with adjacent countries before the Spaniards came; they
were also engaged in agriculture and mining, and some natives even understood Spanish.
All of this disproves the stereotype that Filipinos are lazy by nature. Rizal concludes by
pondering what caused Filipinos to forget their history.

Chapter 3 – Rizal lists a number of factors that could have contributed to the
Filipinos' cultural and economic decline. The numerous conflicts, insurgencies, and
invasions have thrown the communities into disarray. There has been a lot of chaos and a
lot of destruction. Many Filipinos have also been sent abroad to fight in battles or on
expeditions on behalf of Spain. As a result, the population has shrunk. Many men have been
brought to shipyards to build vessels as a result of forced labor. In the meantime, locals who
have had enough of the abuse have fled to the mountains. As a result, the farms have fallen
into disrepair. The so-called indolence of Filipinos is unquestionably due to deep-seated
factors.

Chapter 4 – According to Rizal, Filipinos are not to blame for their tragedies because
they are not their own masters. The Spanish government has discouraged labor and trade,
which ended once the government, began to treat the country's trading partners with
distrust. Furthermore, trade has slowed as a result of pirate raids and the government's
numerous limitations, which include little aid for crops or farmers. Many people have left the
fields because of this, as well as the harassment they have received from encomenderos.
Many government officials have monopolized businesses, there is widespread red tape and
bribery, and the government tolerates rampant gambling. This condition is exacerbated by
the Church's incorrect dogma, which maintains that the wealthy will not enter paradise,
resulting in a negative attitude toward work. There has also been discrimination against
locals in the educational system. These are some of the major factors cited by Rizal as
contributing to the decline of Filipino ideals.

Chapter 5 – All reasons of indolence, according to Rizal, can be reduced to two

factors. The first factor is the lack of training and education received by Filipino indigenous.
Filipinos are separated from Spaniards and do not have access to the same chances as
foreigners. They are educated that they are second-class citizens. The lack of a national
sense of solidarity among them is the second element. Filipinos bow to foreign culture and
do everything they can to emulate it because they believe they are inferior. Education and
liberty, according to Rizal, would be the remedy.

Rizal’s Views in Sobre La Indolencia de los Filipinos

"Sobre la indolencia de los Filipinos (On the indolence of the Filipinos)" is a lengthy,
and at times vehement, article by Rizal that appeared in the March 1890 issue of La
Solidaridad. Rizal objected to the Spanish colonial masters' allegation that Filipinos were
sluggish or lazy from afar and over time. "We must admit that indolence does actually and
positively exist there; only that, rather than holding it to be the cause of the backwardness
and the trouble, we regard it as the effect of the backwardness and the trouble, by fostering
the development of a lamentable predisposition," Rizal explained.
Rizal emphasized that the tropical environment is a big factor: "Nature recognizes
this and, like a good mother, has compensated by making the ground more fertile, more
productive." A day's work in a temperate climate is equal to an hour's work beneath that
scorching sun, in the midst of destructive forces emanating from nature in action."
Rizal presented early accounts like the "Zhu Fan Zhi," published by Chau Ju-kua in
1225, which described the industry and honesty of the Filipinos before the Spanish
conquest; and Antonio Pigafetta's chronicle of the Magellan expedition, regarding the
capture and ransom of the Philippine Islands, using notes gathered from the British Library
from 1888 to 1889 while working on his annotated edition of Antonio de Morga's 1609
"Sucesos de las "How could the industrious infidel turn lethargic centuries later when he was
Christianized?" Rizal cynically queried, wielding history as a weapon. Why did they lose
sight of their illustrious past and grow complacent? ”
Rizal also blamed the colony's deplorable status. The galleon trade had effectively
cut off existing trade between the Philippines and China and Southeast Asia, putting Filipino
traders and artisans out of business. Furthermore, the allure of the galleon trade caused
commerce and agriculture to be neglected. People were recruited to labor in shipyards,
where they were forced to work for little or no pay to build roads and buildings, decimating
the population and eliminating their natural desire to work. Their goods and services were
stolen by force, to the point that people simply refused to work anymore in order to have
their products taken for free, paid poorly, or excessively taxed to the point where they were
no longer worth the effort.
Another element was gambling, which created a "dislike for constant and laborious
toil by its promise of quick prosperity and its appeal to the emotions, through lottery,"
according to Rizal. Finally, he emphasized the failure of education, which, with the exception
of the Jesuits and Dominican Benavides, was more focused on religion than on the secular
and useful. "From the moment he is born until he dies, the native's training is brutalizing,
depressing, and antihuman (the word 'inhuman' is inadequate: whether or not the Academy
recognizes it, let it go)."
Rizal did not just rant, he provided a solution: education and the formation of what he
called a “national sentiment.” Rizal left us with 25 volumes of writings to instruct and inspire,
but alas, he wrote a lot for a nation that does not read him. It took a foreigner, Syed Hussein
Alatas, to build on Rizal’s essay and publish “The Myth of the Lazy Native” (1977),
disproving as myth the laziness of the Malays, Filipinos and Javanese in colonial times.

Do you believe that Filipinos are lazy as perceived by the Spaniards?

THE FILIPINO FARMERS

Rizal's thought-provoking literary works, such as his two novels Noli Me Tangere
and El Filibusterismo, and his additions to Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas,
are well remembered. We also remember him as an outstanding ophthalmologist—to the
point where we refer to him as Doctor Rizal, despite the fact that he only got a licentiate, not
a doctorate.Yet, even if we think of Rizal as primarily an intellectual, he did engage in
manual labor. He was very active in agriculture, which is maybe the most essential of all.
During his childhood, he was exposed to agriculture. His father, Francisco Mercado, rented
land from Dominicans and managed the farmers who worked the area. He contributed
articles to La Solidaridad called Sobre La Indolencia de Filipinos (On the Indolence of
Filipinos), in which he described how Filipinos had a rich agricultural culture prior to the
arrival of Spaniards, but that constant pirate raids and calls for arms and/or public works
discouraged many indios from aggressively developing their farms. The miserly reward that
the Filipino receives from his labor will eventually discourage him, as Rizal summarizes his
grievances.

“The Filipino Farmers” is an article about Filipino farmers, particularly from La

Laguna. It described their struggles, experiences on discrimination and injustices from the
Spanish government. Rizal wrote this addressed to the Minister of Colonies and Spanish
authorities. The primary purpose of this article was to cite government’s faulty organization
and use of power, and also to propose a reform that will favour the rights and welfare of
Filipino farmers in La Laguna.

The following is the English translation of Luchas de los Agricultores Filipinos (The
Filipino Farmers).

We applaud the efforts of the minister of colonies to foster agriculture in the Philippines. Proofs of
these are the boards, commissions, and committees and numerous projects. We suggest, however,
that the farmer be consulted also, the one in direct contact with the land, who makes the land
productive with his capital and labor and puts into practice the measures that science and experience
suggest.

And not only must he not forgotten but neither must his hands are tied, disabling them for work, as it
happens, unfortunately. It is not enough to issue royal decrees and timely measures; they must be
enforced and enforced expediently.

The Filipino farmer has to struggle not only with plagues and public calamities but also with petty
tyrants and robbers. Against the first, defense indeed is permitted; against the latter, not always. We
shall explain.

After the floods, locusts, fires, bad harvests, and the like, the farmer capitalist has to deal with the
constable who takes away from him his laborers for personal service, some public works, repair of
roads, bridges, and others; with the civil guard who arrests them for various reasons, sometimes for
not carrying with them their personal cedulas (certificates), for not saluting properly, for
being suspicious persons or for no reason whatsoever, and they menacle them to clean the barracks
and thus compel the capitalist to live on better terms with the chief and, if not, they take away his
carabaos, oxen, in spite of many protests, returning them later however, as these acts of violence are
almost always unjustified and not within the competence of the civil guard. The work is usually delayed
three or four days only but at times it is delayed weeks, the animal is lost or dies; and this happens
when the civil guard, going beyond its jurisdiction or province, commits these plunders in another
province and then returns to its own; hence the question of competency; the coming and going, etc.,
etc., etc.

At times, it is not the constable or the civil guard who opposes so indirectly the minister of colonies. An
official of the court or of the provincial government, dissatisfied with the farmer, urgently summons this
or that laborer, if not two or three. The unfortunate man undertakes a trip of two or three days, uneasy
and distrustful, spends his savings, arrives, presents himself, waits, returns, returns the next day and
waits, finally to be asked with a frown and the look of a judge, abstruse and unknown things. He is
lucky if he comes out free from this questioning, for not infrequently after it, he is sent to jail from which
he comes out later as stupid as before and all are as Christian as ever.
Sometimes, rare fortunately, a compania volante (flying squad) sweeps the province. Woe to those
who have enemies! It is enough to be in the list of suspects for the head of the squad to pick him up
and take him to another place without trial or filing of a complaint. Goodbye farm and goodbye
everything! See if after this he will be encouraged to plant in other islands.

But if the capitalist knows how to grease and through offerings to appease the gods and render them
favorable, he has already accomplished much. But still there remain other deities, the tulisanes or
bandits.

The tulisan is a terrible enemy of those whose farms are far from the towns. One cannot win his favor
by giving him gifts or bribing him, as some do secretly, because he would fall into the opposite abyss
and would be accused of being an accomplice of malefactors, which is equivalent to being tortured
and later exiled. The best remedy against this plague that the government cannot destroy is to arm
oneself and expose oneself to a daily and dangerous combat.

Well now; for the peaceful tax-payer to use firearms and to be able to defend himself, he needs the
good report of the people, the civil guard, and the parish priest, to petition the government in Manila, to
have patience, to wait because the petition is not always acted upon except after the end of several
months if someone follows it up or if he has a friend of the employee in charge of issuing licenses.

All this is very good. What is not so good is that despite the good reports, despite the peace in the
province, the abundance of bandits, the good conduct of the farmer tax-payer, and the danger to
which he and his farms are exposed, they deny him not only the use of the firearm, or the renewal of
the license but also they confiscate the firearm, which he bought at a fabulous price sometimes, only
to be left to rot, to become oxidized, in a corner of the barracks or the townhall, useless to all, except
to the bandits, who in this way are the most favored.

This is the case of a citizen of the province of La Laguna; owner of extensive lands planted to sugar
cane, coffee, and abaca located far from the town. That province has been for almost three centuries
not only to loyal Spain but "superloyal", one Indio in that province, Captain Francisco de San Juan,
having declared war in the name of Spain against the English in 1762 when even the government was
submitting to the invader, succeeding with his energy to save the money that the authorities wanted to
deliver to the enemy within bounds. This made me say to a Spanish writer that that Indio was half a
century ahead of the Mayor of Mostoles. However, La Laguna is one of the most agricultural
provinces, most liable to natural and human calamities, this citizen is denied the renewal of his license,
and in spite of all the good reports, they confiscated his firearm. For this reason he had to abandon his
farms, losing his abaca crops, for he could not venture out unarmed and he was sure that the
authorities who left him thus could neither defend him nor ransom him from the bandits.

We are convinced that the minister of colonies and the good Spaniards who love the prestige of Spain
and have affection for those Islands do not know these details. We, who can cite names, towns, dates,
witnesses, and attest other incidents through our own experience or as eye-witnesses, are content to
cite this case and we say: Je passe et des meilleurs.

It would be desirable to correct this, Mr. Minister of Colonies, lest some mischievous men say that the
government there being impotent might come to an understanding with the bandits and deliver to them
the unarmed inhabitant, that it wants the lands to be cultivated with speeches, projects, and boards
and for this reason it binds the hands of the farmer and puts a thousand obstacles on his path, so that
he may plant according to the new system. Agriculture is not improved only in that way. It is necessary
to aid those who practice it. Those who from their comfortable chairs think otherwise and see the
inefficacy of the royal decrees throw the blame for this backwardness to the indolence of the Indio.
They do not know with what obstacles he has to contend and they ignore that for a machine to run
well, it is enough that it be built according to principles but also that it be perfect in its details, that
everything be leveled, and that no part get out of its proper place.
These abuses, that for being unutterably bad become ridiculous, ruin the country and impair the
prestige of the government. This system of prevention, of unfounded fears, of unjust suspicions, not
only irritates and awakens men but exposes the weakness of the government: Much fear reveals
much weakness. This, added to the inability to stop banditry, makes an evil-minded person say that
the government is only hard on peaceful and respectable citizens while it fondles or lets alone the
rebellious and criminal. This is the usual reproach of independent Indios on Christianized Indios.

This behavior of the government there hurts the real interests of Spain and through this way of
making discontented men; the government appears as the foremost filibustero. And as we believe
that one cannot serve a country better than to tell her the truth, we say this to the Mother Country
so that she can apply timely remedy. Hence, we ask for representation in the Cortes and freedom
of the press in Manila in order to expose abuses to public opinion. Injustices there do not always
find a writer who may relate them, nor every article a generous newspaper that will accept it for its
columns; and even if it were not so, through the present road, the remedy always arrives late, if the
abuse is remedied at all.

We shall conclude by proposing to the minister a reform concerning the granting of licenses for the
use of firearms.

Inasmuch as they are not granted without the report of the people, of the chief of the civil guard
(European), and of the parish priest (almost always European), instead of being issued in Manila,
they should issued by the court of every town, after previous consultation or secret voting of the
judge, of the officer of the civil guard (European), and of the parish priest (almost always
European). It should not be granted without unanimity. In this way, it is simplified and the business
is shortened, and the time is better employed. There are no other inconveniences but these two:
There would be some more unemployed men and hidden enmities could not be satisfied with
revenge and secret reports, but on the other hand, the treasury and mankind would be the gainer –
the treasury with less employees and mankind with more loyal men and less traitors.
 ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date: ______

Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score: _____

Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.

1. Explain the factors that cause the Indolence of the Filipinos.

2. Identify one aspect (e.g., trade) of Philippine society and discuss the change that
took place on this aspect going to the Spanish period.

REFERENCES

Rizal, Jose. 1890. Sobre la indolencia de los Filipinos (On the indolence of Filipinos). In La
Solidaridad, vol. 2: 1890, trans. Guadalupe Fores-Ganzon, 322-27, 340-45, 362-69, 388-
401, 416-21.Pasig City: Fundacion Santiago. DS651 S6 1996

Ignacio, K. (2019). Luchas de los Agricultores Filipinos. Jose Rizal Life and Works
WordPress. https://joserizallifeandworks.wordpress.com/2019/04/02/luchas-de-los-
agricultores-filipinos/
 CHAPTER VIII
RIZAL’S CHANGING VIEWS ON
SPANISH RULE IN EL
FILIBUSTERISMO

INTRODUCTION
Jose Rizal's principles were a culmination of the teachings of what is known as
Enlightenment philosophy. This period of philosophy began in Europe at the beginning of the
eighteenth century and lasted until the nineteenth. Injustices perpetrated by friars and
Spanish misrule Jose Rizal's writings elevated him from a writer and campaigner against
Spanish rule's social and religious injustices in the Philippines to a national hero. This
chapter examines El Filibusterismo, one of Rizal's works that had a significant impact on
society.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:

1. Recognize the major themes, plot, characters, and ideas in the novel El
Filibusterismo.
2. Show the continuities and/or changes in Rizal’s views and ideas expressed in El
Filibusterismo.
3. Assess Rizal’s changing views on Spanish rule as reflected in El Filibusterismo and
other writings in the context of present Philippine Society.

WARMING UP

Reflective Activity: Identify and specific rules and regulations in your community or
institution where you belong (Example:school). Reflect how you react those rules and
regulations and share your insights to your classmates. Present a narrative what transpired
during the sharing.

MAIN IDEA

Rizal had significantly more notable and influential writings. However, his two novels,
Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, are his most well-known works. Crisostomo Ibarra
(as Ibarra in Noli; alias Simoun in Fili), Elias, Father Tolentino, and Tacio were fictional
characters who served as change agents in these works (the philosopher). All of the other
characters (Sisa and her kids, Maria Clara, Father Damaso, Father Salvi, and so on) were
manifestations of the cruelties of his day on Filipino lives and fortunes.
Rizal, like other Filipino exiles at the time, would make a strong argument for
reforming Spain's colonial practices. The Enlightenment ideas had swept over Europe the
century before, but Spain had been mostly unaffected by these powerful winds of thought.
Rizal's work reflects the Enlightenment philosophy's influence. He advocated for political and
social reforms that reflected his general beliefs in tolerance, liberty, and the need for civil
government.
He didn't share much about his ancestors in his writings, though. He has a
remarkable ability to comprehend and repeat current events from his period. In his political
works, he was swift, straightforward, and to the point. And his most analytical arguments
demonstrate how he absorbed and learnt from others.
After the terrible consequences of his first book, Noli Me Tángere, José Rizal penned
El Filibusterismo. His initial portrayal of the Philippines' injustices enraged individuals in
positions of political authority, particularly the friars. This resulted in increased tyranny of his
family, who were subjected to a slew of unjustified persecutions and legal attacks, as well as
expulsion from the Philippines.
While continuing the story of Crisóstomo Ibarra from the Noli, the second novel is a
little more analytical, delving into the political powers at play in the Philippines. The theme of
insurrection and a militant uprising is explored throughout the narrative, culminating in the
following paragraph near the end.
It's worth noting that there was a lot of debate about independence from Spain and
the prospect of a revolution in the Philippines at the time of publishing. This book, I believe,
was Rizal's thesis and point of view on what should be done in the event of a revolt. He
never openly advocated a violent rebellion, and even denied deep connection with the
Katipunan, up until his death, while he did support the Philippines' pursuit of independence –
the means of achieving it differed.

RIZAL’S ABANDONMENT OF ASSIMILATION

Rizal did not want the Philippines and the Indios to be separated because he felt they
were not ready at the time. He desired equal opportunity because he believes it is the best
way for us to demonstrate our worth to the Spaniards.
Despite the fact that Rizal did not actively support the revolution, we can argue that
he contributed to it. His efforts and writings were pivotal in the revolution, and he was a great
source of inspiration for the Katipuneros at the time. Rizal dedicated his life to his homeland
(Philippines). His achievements and writings were proof of his great reformer act.

RIZAL AS A REFORMIST
Our national hero, Jose Rizal, was one of the Filipinos who demanded reforms.
These reforms will bring about the reformists' ultimate goal: integration. Filipinos will be
granted the rights to which they are entitled. Rizal chose reform over revolution because he
saw that the Philippines was not yet ready to stand on its own (during his time). Rizal
advocated for reforms based on his liberal principles.

RIZAL AS A SEPARATIST
The Philippines a Century Ahead is the third and final well-known article in the La
Solidaridad, in which Rizal attempted to forecast the Philippines' future. He predicted that the
Philippines would eventually break away from Spain, an outcome that would be unavoidable
if the Philippines were not integrated and transformed into a Spanish colony.
 RIZAL’S CHANGING VIEWS ON ASSIMILATION

Rizal had private misgivings about the Propaganda Movement's objectives while
participating in the movement, which he conveyed in private correspondence to his Austrian
confidante Ferdinand Blumentritt. Jose Rizal reasoned that the Spanish Crown and
administration would not implement the reforms required for the colony's prosperity,
regardless of what Filipino expatriates peacefully did. He also stated that he would not want
to get involved in any covert or risky scheme against the colonial administration, but that if it
continues to persecute the Filipino people, he will have no choice but to support violence.
Filipino expatriates like Galicano Apacible, Edilberto Evangelista, and Antonio Luna
were among those who received Blumentritt's message. In reality, due of Rizal's sentiments,
a sizable portion of the Filipino expatriate population supported him. Luna himself believed
that there should be a propaganda movement both in Spain and at home, with the former
pushing integration and the latter favoring separation. Surprisingly, he would be willing to
return home as a separatist agent even if Filipino absorption into the Spanish nation was
successful.
Apacible had the foresight to believe that pro-reform propaganda in Spain would
demonstrate that Filipinos were willing to use peaceful avenues to advocate for their people,
and that its failure would justify the separatist struggle. He also encouraged Rizal to
establish a revolution headquarters in Hong Kong or elsewhere to centralize support for the
cause of independence. Many Filipino ilustrados (enlightened people) supported Rizal at the
time because he "was a separatist and the more radical one," according to Apacible.
Unsurprisingly, discussion of independence from Spain, whether peaceful or violent,
clashed with del Pilar's reformist La Solidaridad program, especially after the disaster at
Hacienda Calamba. Hundreds of tenants of a property-owning religious group, including
Rizal's family, were expelled with the assistance of the colonial government after the
Supreme Court in Madrid sided with the friars in a land dispute. This had a lasting impact on
Rizal's political ideas, as he steered the community and his family through the litigation. It's
safe to assume that at this crucial juncture, he made the decision to turn to independence
and radicalism.
With del Pilar, Rizal clarified his political perspective. He intended to terminate his
relationship with La Solidaridad's political purpose of assimilation, but he was still willing to
write to the paper, albeit less frequently than before in order to allow other Filipino views to
be heard, and he preferred that del Pilar head it. Rizal had his reasons for not contributing
for La Solidaridad over time: he wanted to write his novels, and he considered it would be
foolish if his stated dissenting opinions were disputed by other authors on the same
newspaper, but La Solidaridad couldn't let him go.
An item in the journal mocked Rizal in an indirect way, and he wasn't the only one
who noticed. Many readers of the journal despised del Pilar for publishing such a divisive
editorial, and support for the paper's editor and his cause was dwindling, particularly
following the catastrophe at Hacienda Calamba. Ilustrados who had been funding the
publication from the Philippines had stopped contributing, but del Pilar persisted. In the end,
the publication was shut down because Filipinos in the Philippines had lost faith in it.
Jose Rizal eventually stepped up to fill this political hole. He claimed that Filipinos
who had been educated overseas should return to the Philippines to enlighten the people
and free them from their oppression, victimhood, and sorrow. Given the Spanish
government's obstinacy, there was little chance for change in Europe, and the only way to
change was to work in the Philippines. He not only preached it, but also strove to put it into
practice.
 Why did Rizal abandon the idea of assimilation? What was hi main
point?

EL FILIBUSTERISMO

El Filibusterismo (transl. The Filibusterism; The Subversive or The Subversion, as in

the Locsn English translation, are also plausible translations) is José Rizal's second novel,
also known in English as The Reign of Greed. It is the sequel to Noli Me Tángere and was
written in Spanish, as was the previous book. It was initially published in the Belgian city of
Ghent in 1891.
The novel follows Crisóstomo Ibarra, the main character from the Noli-El Fili duology,
who is now back for revenge as "Simoun." The novel's dark tone contrasts sharply with the
previous novel's hopeful and romantic tone, indicating Ibarra's resort to violent means to
resolve his country's problems after his previous attempts at reforming the country's system
failed and seemed impossible given the Spaniards' corrupt attitude toward Filipinos.
Because of its depictions of the Spanish government's excesses and corruption, the
novel, along with its predecessor, was prohibited in various regions of the Philippines. Rizal
was exiled to Dapitan and eventually executed as a result of these works and his
involvement in groups aimed at addressing and reforming the Spanish system and its ills.
The novel and its predecessor, as well as Rizal's final poem, are now considered literary
masterpieces by Rizal.
Both of Rizal's novels had a significant impact on Philippine society, particularly in
terms of national identity, Catholic faith and its influence on Filipino choice, government
corruption, abuse of power, and discrimination, and, on a larger scale, issues related to
colonization's impact on people's lives and the cause for independence. These novels were
eventually used as an indirect source of inspiration for the Philippine Revolution.
Reading of both the novel and its precursor is now required reading for all high
school students in the Philippines, however it is now done in English, Filipino, and the
archipelago's regional languages.

PLOT
Crisóstomo Ibarra, a reform-minded mestizo who attempted to open a modern school
in his hometown of San Diego and marry his childhood sweetheart, was wrongfully accused
of rebellion and assumed dead following his escape from prison in the previous chapter.
Elas, a reformer friend, gave his life to allow Crisóstomo to reclaim his fortune and depart the
country, with the expectation of continuing their struggle for reforms from afar. After a
thirteen-year hiatus, a more revolutionary Crisóstomo has returned to the country, assuming
the persona of Simoun, a corrupt jeweler whose goal is to force the government to commit
as much abuse as possible in order to incite people to revolt.
Simoun appears to be selling his diamonds as he travels from town to town. He
returns to the Ibarra mausoleum in San Diego to get more of his loot, but he unintentionally
stumbles with Basilio, who was also visiting his mother's tomb at the time. Basilio had been
serving as Kapitán Tiago's servant in exchange for being permitted to study in the years
since his mother's death. He is currently a final-year university student wanting to be a
doctor and the successor to Kapitán Tiago's fortune. Simoun exposes his objectives to
Basilio and offers him a role in his plans when Basilio recognizes Simoun as Crisóstomo
Ibarra. Basilio declines because he is too certain of his standing in the world.
Simoun sleeps at the house of Tales, the village's cabeza de barangay, in Barrio
Sagpang, Tiani. Kabesang Tales is unable to resist the desire to grab Simoun's gun and join
the robbers after suffering misfortune after misfortune in recent years.
Simoun meets up with his friend, the Captain-General, who is taking a vacation from
a hunting expedition in Los Baos. Simoun raises the stakes in a friendly game of cards with
him and his pals, half-jokingly obtaining blank orders for deportation, jail, and summary
execution from the Captain-General.
A talking head allegedly organized by a certain Mr. Leeds but covertly commissioned
by Simoun is gaining popularity at the Quiapo Fair in Manila. Padre Bernardo Salv, now the
chaplain of the Poor Clares Convent, watches one of the performances. The exhibit is set in
Ptolemaic Egypt, but it includes a story that is eerily similar to Crisóstomo Ibarra's account of
Mara Clara, their destiny under Salv, and an ominous vow of vengeance. Salv, seized with
terror and shame, orders the show to be canceled, but not before Mr. Leeds has left for
Hong Kong.
Simoun meets with Quiroga, a wealthy Chinese businessman who aspires to be the
Chinese empire's consul-general. Simoun offers Quiroga a significant discount if he
performs him a favor: store Simoun's large stockpile of weapons in Quiroga's warehouses,
where they will undoubtedly be used for extortion activities with Manila's elite. Quiroga, who
despises firearms, reluctantly agrees.
Months have passed since Simoun's revolution, and the night of Simoun's revolution
has arrived. Simoun pays a visit to Basilio at Tiago's residence and extends one final
invitation to join his movement. Simoun's plan is for a cannon volley to be fired, after which
Kabesang Tales, now a bandit known as Matanglawin, and Simoun, who has deceived and
recruited a large rogue force among the government troops, will lead their forces into the
capital. The leaders of the Church, the University, score of bureaucrats, the Captain-General
himself, and the majority of government troops defending them are all in one place: the
theater where a contentious and much-hyped performance of Les Cloches de Corneville is
being staged. While Simoun and Matanglawin direct their soldiers, Basilio and a group of
others are tasked with forcing open the Poor Clares Convent door and rescuing Mara Clara.
Mara Clara, on the other hand, died just that afternoon, Basilio writes to Simoun,
murdered by the trials of monastic life under Salv, who had always lusted after her. Simoun
is distracted and crestfallen throughout the night, driven by grief. He had a "accident" that
night, which restricted him to his bed, according to later reports. His revolt is certain to fail.
The next day, posters threatening violence against university and government
leaders were discovered on the university's doors. The principal suspects are members of a
reform-oriented student group to which Basilio belonged, and they are all arrested. Except
for Basilio, who is an orphan and has no means of paying for his freedom, all are eventually
rescued through the intercession of relatives. During his incarceration, he learns that Capitan
Tiago has died, leaving him nothing (though Tiago's last will was changed by Padre Rene,
Tiago's spiritual advisor who also supplies him with opium); his childhood sweetheart has
committed suicide to avoid being raped by the parish priest when she tried to approach him
on Basilio's behalf; and he has missed his graduation and will be required to study for
another year, but with no funds to A darkened, disillusioned Basilio is released by Simoun's
prayers and joins Simoun's cause fully.
Meanwhile, Simoun has been planning a new revolution, which he discloses to a
now-committed Basilio. The wedding of Juanito Peláez and Paulita Gomez will be used to
plan the attack on the city. Leaders of the church and civil administration are invited to the
reception because the Peláez and Gomez families are renowned members of Manila's elite.
The Captain-General, who refused to extend his term despite Simoun's pleas, is the guest of
honor and will leave in two days.
As a wedding gift, Simoun will personally bring a pomegranate-shaped crystal lamp.
The lamp will be installed on a plinth at the reception site and will be bright enough to
illuminate the entire hall, which is also mirror-walled. After a while, the light would flicker as if
it were about to go out. When someone tries to raise the wick, a device hidden within the
lamp that contains fulminated mercury detonates, burning the lamp that is actually packed
with nitroglycerin and killing everyone in a massive blast.
Simoun's mercenaries will attack at the sound of the explosion, backed up by
Matanglawin and his bandits who will descend from the surrounding hills. Simoun believes
that in the midst of the chaos, the masses, who have already been frightened by the
government's harsh reaction to the poster incident, as well as rumors that German ships are
approaching the bay to finish what the revolution has failed to destroy, will step out in
desperation to kill or be killed. Basilio and a few others are to surround them and take them
to Quiroga's warehouses, where Simoun's weaponry is still housed. Simoun hands Basilio a
loaded revolver and sends him away to await further orders, the scheme being complete.
Basilio spends hours walking the streets and goes past Kapitán Tiago's riverside
house on Anloague Street, where he used to live. Juanito Peláez's father had purchased
Tiago's house as a gift for the wedded couple, and he realizes that this was to be the
reception place. Simoun enters the house with the lamp later, then quickly exits the house
and boards his carriage. Isagani, Basilio's friend and Paulita Gomez's former lover, is
regretfully looking at Paulita through the window as Basilio begins to pull away. Basilio tries
to scare Isagani away by pointing out how close they were to the condemned house, but the
young guy is too distraught to listen. Basilio confesses to Isagani, in despair, how the home
is poised to explode at any moment, but as Isagani continues to ignore him, Basilio escapes,
leaving Isagani to his fate.
Basilio's revelation temporarily unnerves Isagani, albeit belatedly. Isagani rushes into
the home, seizes the lamp, and throws it into the river, leaving the hall in darkness. Simoun's
second revolution is also thwarted because the home did not explode and the church and
government officials were spared.
As the trappings at the celebration location are broken down over the next few days,
sacks containing gunpowder are discovered hidden beneath the boards all over the home.
Simoun, who oversaw the modifications, has been revealed. Simoun is forced to go without
his bodyguard as his friend, the Captain-General, leaves for Spain. A manhunt ensues, and
Simoun is pursued all the way to the Pacific Ocean's coasts. He subsequently spends the
rest of his days hidden at Padre Florentino's ancestral mansion, Isagani's uncle.
The local Guardia Civil lieutenant notifies Florentino one day that he received an
order to arrest Simoun that night. Simoun reacts by drinking the slow-acting poison he keeps
in a section of his treasure box. Simoun delivers his final confession to Florentino before
dying. Florentino is taken aback when Simoun exposes his true identity. He then goes on to
describe how, despite his good intentions, he lost everything in the Philippines thirteen years
ago as Crisóstomo Ibarra. Crisóstomo vowed to exact retribution. Crisóstomo escaped to
foreign nations and engaged in trade after recovering the treasure buried beneath the Ibarra
mausoleum in the forest. He took part in the Cuban war, first assisting one side, then the
other, but always benefitting. Crisóstomo met the Captain-General, who was then a major,
and won his trust by lending him money and then covering for his illegal activities.
Crisóstomo bribed his way to a promotion to Captain-General and a posting to the
Philippines for the major. Once in the land, Crisóstomo used him as a tool, inciting him to
commit all kinds of wrongdoing, taking advantage of the Captain-voracious General's need
for riches.
 Crisóstomo's confession is long and arduous, and the night has fallen before he
finishes. Florentino assures Crisóstomo of God's mercy in the end, but explains that his
revolution failed because he picked methods that God does not approve of. Crisóstomo
takes the explanation grudgingly. He dies in silence after a while.
Knowing that the police officers will seize Crisóstomo's belongings, Florentino strips
him of his diamonds and casts them into the Pacific, declaring that if they are required for a
good cause, God will give the means to retrieve them. For the time being, they will remain
concealed beneath the sea, where they will not be utilized to skew justice or encourage
greed.

MAJOR CHARACTERS

1. Simoun – At the end of Noli Me Tángere, Crisóstomo Ibarra is assumed dead.

Simoun, a wealthy jeweler, has returned as Ibarra. He's tanned, with a scant beard,
long white hair, and enormous blue-tinted glasses, according to his description. He
might be abrasive and belligerent at times. Custodio and Ben-Zayb mocked him,
calling him an American mulatto or a British Indian. While on the surface he appears
to be an arrogant aristocrat, he is secretly plotting a violent revolution to avenge
himself for his tragedies as Crisóstomo Ibarra and to advance Elias' reformist
ambitions.

2. Basilio – son of Sisa and another character from Noli Me Tángere. He is a future
physician who is in his final year of university and was waiting for his license to be
released after graduation. Following the death of his mother, he applied to work as a
servant in Kapitán Tiago's household in exchange for food, lodging, and the
opportunity to study. He eventually went into medicine, and once Tiago withdrew
from society, he took over as manager of Tiago's large estate. He is a calm,
thoughtful man who is more concerned with his immediate responsibilities as a
servant, doctor, and student association member than with politics or patriotic
initiatives. Juli, the daughter of Kabesang Tales, who took him in as a small lad
fleeing the Guardia Civil and his insane mother, is his sweetheart.

3. Isagani – Basilio's friend. He's a poet, taller and more strong than Basilio despite
being younger. He is Padre Florentino's nephew, but it is also rumored that he was
Florentino's son with his old sweetheart before he was made a priest. Isagani is
finishing his studies at the Ateneo Municipal and intends to study medicine
throughout the events of the novel. Isagani, a student association member, is prideful
and naive, and he has a habit of putting himself on the spot when his ideas are
questioned. His uncontrolled idealism and poeticism collide with his girlfriend Paulita
Gomez's more practical and commonplace concerns. Paulita leaves Isagani for
Juanito Peláez after Isagani allows himself to be arrested after their relationship is
outlawed. In the novel's final mention, he is waving farewell to his landlords, the
Orenda family, in order to join Florentino permanently.

4. Father Florentino – Isagani's uncle and a retired priest. Florentino was the son of a
wealthy and influential Manila family. His mother persuaded him to pursue a career
as a priest. As a result, he was forced to end an affair with a lady he adored, and in
 despair, he turned his attention to his parish. He withdrew from the clergy shortly
after the 1872 Cavite mutiny broke out, scared of attracting undesired attention. His
parish took in a large amount of money despite the fact that he was an indio and a
secular, or a priest who was not linked with the orders. He moved to his family's
sprawling estate on the Pacific coast. He is characterized as having white hair, a
calm, tranquil demeanor, and a robust frame. He didn't drink or smoke. His peers,
including Spanish friars and officials, held him in high regard.

5. Father Fernández – a Dominican who was a friend of Isagani. He asked Isagani to a

discourse after the event with the posters, not as a teacher with his student, but as a
friar with a Filipino. Despite their failure to resolve their differences, they each
promised to present their colleagues with the opposing views of the other party –
despite the fact that they both feared that, given the animosity between their sides,
their own compatriots would be skeptical of the other party's existence.

6. Kapitán Tiago – Don Santiago de los Santos. María Clara's stepfather. Despite
having various landholdings in Pampanga, Binondo, and Laguna, as well as taking
over the Ibarras' large estate, Tiago was still depressed after Mara entered the
convent. He coped by smoking opium, which quickly turned into an out-of-control
addiction, aggravated by his friendship with Padre Rene, who provided him with the
drug on a regular basis. Tiago employed Basilio as a capista, a servant who was
given the opportunity to study as part of his pay; Basilio went on to study medicine
and eventually became his caregiver and estate manager. When Tiago learned of
Basilio's detention and Padre Rene's inflated allegations of violent uprising, he died
of shock.

7. Captain-General – the highest-ranking official in the Philippines during the Spanish

colonial period. Simoun's companion and confidant in El Fili is the Captain-General,
who is described as having an obsessive desire for riches. Simoun first saw him in
Cuba during the Ten Years' War, when he was still a major. Through bribes, he was
able to gain the friendship of the major and get promotion to Captain-General.
Simoun exploited him as a pawn in his own power plays to drive the Philippines into
revolution when he was deployed there. After being admonished by a top official in
the aftermath of Basilio's detention, the Captain-General was disgraced into not
extending his tenure. This choice to retire would eventually show to be a key
component of Simoun's plans.

8. Father Bernardo Salví – the former parish priest of San Diego in Noli Me Tángere,
and now the director and chaplain of the Santa Clara convent. Salvi habitually rapes
Mara Clara when he is present at the convent, according to the Noli's epilogue. He is
described as her confessor in El Fili. Despite claims to the contrary, SalvI believes
Ibarra is still alive and is constantly afraid of his vengeance.

9. Father Millon – a Dominican who serves as a physics professor in the University of

Santo Tomas.
10. Quiroga – a Chinese businessman who aspired to be a consul for China in the
Philippines. In order to prepare for the revolution, Simoun forced Quiroga to hide
firearms in his warehouses.

11. Don Custodio – Custodio de Salazar y Sánchez de Monteredondo, a famous

"contractor" who was tasked by the Captain-General to develop the students
association's proposal for an academy for the teaching of Spanish, but was then also
under pressure from the priests not to compromise their prerogatives as
monopolizers of instruction. Custodio, who is described as an opportunist who
married his way into high society, who constantly critiqued favorite ideas that did not
come from him, but was ultimately, absurdly stupid in spite of his scruples, receives
some of the novel's harshest criticism.

12. Ben-Zayb – El Grito de la Integridad, a Spanish daily in Manila, employs her as a

columnist. Ben-Zayb is an anagram of Ybanez, which is an alternate spelling of his
surname Ibaez. He isn't given a first name. Ben-Zayb is reported to have the
appearance of a friar who believes that everyone in Manila thinks the same way he
does. He is a fervent nationalist, often bordering on jingoism. As a journalist, he has
no qualms about exaggerating a tale, confusing and distorting information, repeating
phrases, and making a routine story appear more interesting than it is. Father
Camorra mockingly refers to him as an ink-slinger.

13. Father Camorra – the parish priest of Tiani. Ben-Zayb's regular foil, he is said to
look like an artilleryman in counterpoint to Ben-Zayb's friar looks. He will go to any
length to insult and humiliate Ben-liberal Zayb's claims. Camorra has a reputation for
unbridled lustfulness in his own parish. After attempting to rape Juli inside the
convent, he drives her to commit suicide. He was "detained" in a magnificent
riverside house just outside Manila for his wrongdoing.

14. Father Írene – Kapitán Tiago's spiritual adviser. Along with Custodio, Írene is
severely criticized as a representative of priests who allied themselves with temporal
authority for the sake of power and monetary gain. The student association sought
his support and presented him with two chestnut-colored horses, but he betrayed the
students by advising Don Custodio to make them fee collectors in their own school,
which was then to be administered by the Dominicans instead of being a secular and
privately managed institution as the students had envisioned. Rene provides opium
to Kapitán Tiago on a regular basis while encouraging Basilio to accomplish his job.
Rene fabricated accounts of fear following the outlawing of the student organization
in which Basilio was a member, hastening the death of Kapitán Tiago. He then struck
Basilio out of Tiago's last will and testament while he was in prison, ensuring that he
would not inherit anything.

15. Placido Penitente – a student of the University of Santo Tomas who had distaste for
study and would have left school if it were not for his mother's pleas for him to stay.
He has an argument with his physics professor, who accuses him of belonging to the
student society, which the friars abhor. He meets Simoun in the Quiapo Fair after the
confrontation. Simoun sees potential in Placido and invites him to accompany him on
a tour of his revolution preparations. Placido had become one of Simoun's devoted
 disciples the next morning. He is then seen with Simoun's bomb-maker, who was
once a San Diego schoolteacher.

16. Paulita Gómez – the girlfriend of Isagani and the niece of Doña Victorina, the old
Indio who passes herself off as a Peninsular, who is the wife of the quack doctor
Tiburcio de Espadaña. In the end, she and Isagani part ways, Paulita believing she
will have no future if she marries him. She eventually marries Juanito Peláez.

CHARACTERS FROM BARRIO SAGPANG

1. Kabesang Tales – Telesforo Juan de Dios, a former kabesa of Barrio Sagpang in

Tiani. He was a sugarcane planter who cleared lands he thought belonged to no one,
losing his wife and eldest daughter in the endeavor. When the Dominicans took over
his farm, he fought to his last money to have it retained in his possession. He was
kidnapped by bandits while out patrolling his fields while his case against the
Dominicans was still pending. Because he didn't have enough money to pay his
kidnappers, Juli was forced to work as a maid in exchange for her mistress paying
his ransom. Tales had no money to pay for his son Tano's expulsion from the
Guardia Civil after he was recruited into the Guardia Civil. When Tales lost the
lawsuit despite everything, he not only lost his farm but also had to pay a hefty fine.
Later, he joined the bandits and rose to become one of their most ruthless
commanders. After Juli's death, Tandang Selo, his father, would later join his band.

2. Tandang Selo – father of Kabesang Tales and grandfather of Tano and Juli. He and
Tales took in the young, ailing Basilio who was fleeing from the Guardia Civil when
he was a deer hunter and afterwards a broom manufacturer. When Juli left to be with
her mistress on Christmas Day, Selo suffered a stroke that left him unable to speak.
Selo left town permanently after Juli's suicide, carrying his hunting spear with him.
Later, he was seen with the bandits and was killed in a shootout with the Guardia
Civil — ironically, by the sniper Tano, his grandson.

3. Juli – Juliana de Dios, the girlfriend of Basilio, and the youngest daughter of
Kabesang Tales. Juli petitioned Hermana Penchang to pay for Tales' ransom after he
was kidnapped by bandits. She had to work as Penchang's maid in exchange. Basilio
bought a house for her family and ransomed her. Juli sought assistance from Tiani's
priest, Padre Camorra, when Basilio was sentenced to prison. Juli plunged to her
death from the church's tower when Camorra tried to rape her instead.

4. Tano – Kabesang Tales's son, second to Lucia who died in childhood. After returning
from Guardia Civil training in the Carolines, he was given the moniker "Carolino."
When his unit was ambushed by robbers while escorting prisoners along a path that
skirted a mountain, they were ambushed. Tano, the squad's sharpshooter, shot and
killed a surrendering bandit from afar, not realizing it was his own grandfather Selo.
 5. Hermana Penchang – the one among the "rich folks" of Tiani who lent Juli money to
ransom Kabesang Tales from the bandits. Juli will serve as her maid in exchange
until the debt is paid off. Penchang is characterized as a devout woman who speaks
Spanish, but her piety has been tainted by the friars' virtues. Juli worked continuously
while in her service, refusing to give her time off so she could care for her
grandfather Selo. Nonetheless, when the wealthy of Tiani shunned Juli for fear of
retaliation from the friars if she supported her family in any manner, Penchang was
the only one who felt sorry for her.

6. Hermana Báli – Juli's mother-figure and counselor. Juli's efforts to secure Kabesang
Tales' ransom and, later, Basilio's freedom were aided by her. Báli was a gambler
who previously performed religious services at a Manila convent as a panguinguera.
When Tales was kidnapped by robbers, Báli suggested to Juli that they borrow
money from Tiani's wealthy inhabitants, which they would repay when Tales' legal
battle over his farm was resolved.

REVIEW
El Filibusterismo carries up the basic story progression where Noli Me Tangere left it
13 years later, and does so in such a way that the reader will notice no difference if they
haven't read the first. All we need to know is that Ibarra's naïve affection for the Spanish
colonial government has transformed into an obsessive hate of it. Rather of leading an
outright guerilla revolt, he works to divide enemies, defrauds the colonial powers and later
attempts but fails to bomb a number of government officials.
When Ibarra, who now goes by the name Simoun, reveals to Basilo his rationale and
plans for attack, as well as the talks among the priests and students, he writes some of the
best prose in the work. Students' attempts to deploy their own language of universal human
brotherhood and different legal proclamations against the friars are met with sophism, which
devolves into crude power games. The innumerable Filipino adolescents who attempt to play
a good role in the development of their country are one by one forced to commit suicide, be
slaughtered by the army, or self-emasculate in order to save their lives and futures.
Rizal's critiques of colonial friarocracy are vehement. Native women are sexually
preyed upon by friars – who are continually seeking to collect more forced labor or products
from the community – and the educational system is proven to be not merely a farce but an
actual barrier to the proper education of its pupils. The image of the population's poverty and
impossibility of upward mobility or peace as a result of the friars is indeed serious, and Rizal
demonstrates that while there are bureaucrats willing to side with justice, with the natives,
they are placed in a situation where doing so openly is regarded by the power apparatus as
treasonous and grounds for dismissal and expulsion from the country. On the other hand,
constant production of rebels, such as Cabesang Tales and his band of outlaws, which he
eventually turns political, must be constantly battled against. Spanish colonialism has been
repeatedly demonstrated to be a cancer on indigenous peoples. Despite this, Rizal manages
to intersperse enough comic words to keep the reader from becoming bored and depressed.
Humorous comments alight on the peculiarities of the Chinese living in the
Philippines, the intellectualism of the friars that is large only in the colonial provinces and
shrinks to nothing once moved to European cities, the near autocratic powers of friars that
have in many ways the same sociopathy as children, and many other topics.
“When a group of Friars chooses to go to a fair, one of the jokes that I thought was
very humorous”. A statue of a one-eyed, unkempt woman holding an iron with puffs of steam
pouring out of it stands among the carved handicrafts of local people. The Philippine press,
what is this woman's carving meant to represent?
In its criticisms of Spanish tyranny, documentation of the friars' immorality, and
exhortation for action toward a national rebirth that will eventually lead to their expulsion by
any means necessary, El Filibusterismo transforms a political tract into a tale. While there
are times of description rather than narration, it is as a whole presenting the story of the
Fillipino, their foes, and hints at ways to get them out, to utilize a literary distinction created
by Georg Lukacs. While Rizal does not portray a character in the novel who is designed to
substitute for his own convictions, he is able to produce a fascinating piece of historical
literature by having so many characters renounce then current political attitudes, ideas, and
illustrating their interrelation.
Dr. Jose Rizal wrote the El Filibusterismo to show people how the Philippines
were being bondaged by Spain and Dr.Rizal made the Philippine league to get their
first group and to get their first reform group The theme of El Fili focuses on the
inevitable revolution and whether or not the Philippines should rebel peacefully and
diplomatically or violently. Also, not only El Fili but as well as Noli Me Tangere had a
profound effect on Philippine society in terms of views about national identity, the
Catholic Faith and its influence on the Filipino choice, and the government’s issues
on corruption, abuse of power, and discrimination, and on a larger scale.

Group discussion on the differences between Noli Me Tangere and

El Filibusterismo.

ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date: _____

Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score: _____

Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
1. Identify the characters in El Filibusterismo. Who are they symbolizing?

2. Create a graphic organizer showing the continuities and/or changes in Rizal’s ideas
expressed in Noli and Fili.
REFERENCES

Bernus, G.M. & Hermoso, A. (n.d.) Rizal as Reformist and Separatist. Retrieved November
20, 2020 from https://unveilingrizal.weebly.com/reformist-or-separatist.html
Jose Rizal University (n.d.). El Filibusterismo. Retrieved November 21, 20202
fromhttp://www.joserizal.ph/fi01.html
Kuya Chris (2014). El Filibusterismo: Rizal’s Revolution. Retrieved November 20, 2020 from
https://medium.com/@KuyaChris/el-filibusterismo-rizals-revolution-a6fde13f2377
National Historical Commission of the Philippines. (2021). Rizal’s Cogent Leadership
Thought as a Model in Public Administration. Retrieved November 16, 2020 from
http://nhcp.gov.ph/rizals-cogent-leadership-thought-as-a-model-in-public-
administration/
Rizal, J. (2002). The Indolence of the Filipino. In Project Gutenberg. Retrieved November 20,
2020 from http://www.bohol.ph/books/Indolence/Indolence.html
Sicat, G.P. (January 2, 2019). Jose Rizal’s Ideals and Ideas. In Philippine Star. Retrieved
November 2020 from https://www.philstar.com/business/2019/01/02/1881538/jose-
rizals-ideals-and-ideas
The Complete Review (n.d.). El Filibusterismo by Jose Rizal. Retrieved Novemmber 22,
2020 from http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/filipino/rizalj2.htm
 CHAPTER VII

RIZAL’S LIFE: EXILE,TRIAL AND

DEATH

INTRODUCTION

Dr. José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, is not only admired for
possessing intellectual brilliance but also for taking a stand and resisting the Spanish
colonial government. While his death sparked a revolution to overthrow the tyranny, Rizal
will always be remembered for his compassion towards the Filipino people and the country.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, students are expected to:
1. Discuss the factors that led to Rizal’s execution
2. Analyze the effects of Rizal’s execution on Spanish colonial rule and the Philippine
Revolution.
3. Assess the concepts of bayani and kabayanihan in the context of Philippine society.

WARMING UP

The following resources will be your guide in understanding the events that lead to Rizal’s
arrest, trial and eventual execution. These are our main references but feel free to look for
other online/offline resources that would help you in navigating the module. You can watch
in Youtube.

1. Rizal sa Dapitan (directed by Tikoy Aguiluz)

2. Jose Rizal by GMA Films (directed by Marilou Diaz Abaya)

LESSON DISCUSSION

Jose Rizal is, in the annals of heroism, an anomaly. He was a man of science, a
scholar and writer, and to many young Filipinos he is idealized as a model son and
something of a ladies’ man.
Unlike other national heroes, he did not bear arms or lead an army. Indeed, he
preached against an armed rebellion, believing his countryfolk were yet unprepared for battle
and so concluded that a revolution was bound to fail. But neither was he a milquetoast.
While in Madrid, he challenged fellow propagandist Antonio Luna to a duel after Luna
disparaged Nellie Boustead while in a drunken rage. Nellie apparently favored Rizal over
Luna, and hearing the young lady maligned, Rizal challenged Luna to a gun duel. The
gunfight did not proceed, fortunately, after Luna sobered up. Reports have it that, while a
superior swordsman, Luna was not as good with a pistol as Rizal was.
Rizal also challenged to a duel Wenceslao Retana, a minor official in the Spanish
colonial bureaucracy who became the foremost opponent of Filipino propagandists in Spain.
In an article in an anti-Filipino newspaper in Madrid, Retana claimed that the reason Rizal’s
family and friends were ejected from their Calamba properties was that they failed to pay
rent. It was an injustice that rankled Rizal deeply, especially since stories reached him that
his beloved mother was paraded before the townsfolk with her hands in shackles. It is
believed to have sparked Rizal’s simmering anti-Spanish sentiment.
And so an incensed Rizal challenged the Spaniard to a duel, a challenge left unmet
after Retana retracted his claims in a later article. The Spaniard would later become an
ardent devotee, and after the hero’s death wrote the first book-length biography of
Rizal.Proud and quick to take offense, sensitive to slights and determined to prove by
personal example the superiority or at least the equality of Filipinos to any other peoples on
earth, Rizal was uniquely situated to take on the mantle of national hero. Some have claimed
that Rizal was nothing more than a “creation” of the American colonial powers that deemed
the scholar-writer a safer and thus more palatable model of heroism than the more volatile
Andres Bonifacio, whose enduring image is, despite contrary scholarship, the firebrand in
peasant wear holding aloft a bolo and the Katipunan flag.
But this flies against accounts of how Rizal—and later, his surviving family—was
beheld by his contemporaries. During his exile in Dapitan, Rizal was visited by an emissary
of the Katipunan who sought to convince him to lend his person and reputation to the
revolutionary cause. Rizal rebuffed him.
Historian and Inquirer columnist Ambeth Ocampo, in an account of Rizal’s execution,
describes the scene as Rizal is led on foot from his cell in Fort Santiago to Bagumbayan:
“The streets were lined with people who wanted to see the condemned man, since Rizal was
many things to different people: ‘leader of the revolution,’ physician, novelist, poet, sculptor,
heretic, subversive. Rizal was a person one could not be neutral about. Like him or hate him,
he was a celebrity.”
In a time when it took at the very least some weeks for news to cross the ocean from
Spain to these islands, Rizal and his fellow propagandists were virtually the sole voices of
Filipino opposition to Spanish colonial policy. His novels articulated the inchoate anger of the
people against the symbols of Spanish oppression: the military, the civil authorities, the
clergy. At a time when armed conflict consisted of bolos and spears and a few rifles
employed against a well-armed military force with long arms, cannons, swords and mounted
troops, Rizal chose to fight with words—scathing, bitter, pained and pointed—and aimed
these at the heart of the colonizer. He may have eschewed active, bloody battle, but he was
no coward.
His words were missiles that covered a broad ground and outlasted his own brief life.
And their enduring influence explains why he is a hero
 RIZAL’S EXILE IN DAPITAN
Jose Rizal's arrival in Manila on June 26, 1892 had become very sensational among
the Filipinos. His popularity feared the Spaniards, and as such, payed careful attention to his
every move – all houses where he had been were searched and the Filipinos seen in his
company were suspected. As he had planned, on July 3, 1892 he founded the La Liga
Filipina in the house of Doroteo Ongjunco in Tondo, Manila.
Four days after the civic organization's foundation, Jose Rizal was arrested by the
Spanish authorities on four grounds:
1. for publishing anti-Catholic and anti-friar books and articles;
2. for having in possession, a bundle of handbills, the Pobres Frailes, in which
advocacies were in violation of the Spanish orders;
3. for dedicating his novel, El Filibusterismo to the three “traitors” (Gomez, Burgos
and Zamora) and for emphasizing on the novel's title page that “the only salvation
for the Philippines was separation from the mother country (referring to Spain)”;
and
4. for simply criticizing the religion and aiming for its exclusion from the Filipino
culture.

ARRIVAL IN DAPITAN
Aboard the steamer Cebu and under heavy guard, Rizal left Manila, sailing to
Mindoro and Panay, until he reached Dapitan at seven o'clock in the evening of June 17.
From that day until July 31, 1896, Dapitan became the bare witness to one of the most
fruitful periods in Rizal's life. His stay in the province was more than “he” living in exile – it
was the period when Rizal had been more focused on serving the people and the society
through his civic works, medical practices, land development and promotion of education.

CHALLENGING THE RELIGION

In Dapitan, Rizal had a scholarly debate with Father Pablo Pastells regarding
religion. This exchange of heated arguments revealed the anti-Christian Rizal – his
bitterness on the abuses performed by friars, doing such under the name of the sacred
religion. Father Pastells tried his best to win Rizal back to the faith but fortunately or
unfortunately, in vain. These series of debate ended inconclusively in which neither of them
convinced the other of his judgments/arguments.

CAREERS AND CONTRIBUTIONS

Rizal had maximized his stay in Dapitan by devoting much of his time in improving
his artistic and literary skills; doing agricultural and civic projects; engaging in business
activities, and writing letters to his friends in Europe, particularly to Ferdinand Blumentritt and
Reinhold Rost.
Rizal also partakes in civic works in Dapitan. Upon arriving in the province, he
noticed its poor condition. He drained the marshes of Dapitan to get rid of malaria-carrying
mosquitoes. He also provided lighting system – coconut oil lamps posted in dark streets – in
the province out of what he earned from being a physician. He beautified Dapitan by
remodelling the town plaza, with the aid of his Jesuit teacher, Fr. Francisco Sanchez, and
created a relief map of Mindanao (footnote: using stones, soil and grass) right in front the
church.

ROMANTIC AFFAIR WITH JOSEPHINE BRACKEN

Rizal had always been missing his family and their happy moments together in
Calamba and his despair doubled upon the announcement of Leonor Rivera's death. Not
soon, to his surprise, an Irish girl enlightened his rather gloomy heart. This girl was the 18-
year old Josephine Bracken who, to Wenceslao Retana's words, was “slender, a chestnut
blond, with blue eyes, dressed with elegant simplicity, with an atmosphere of light (gaiety).”
From Hongkong, she arrived in Dapitan in February, 1895 with his blind foster father,
George Taufer, and a Filipina named Manuela Orlac. Rizal's fame as an opthalmic surgeon
reached overseas, and one of Rizal's friends, Julio Llorente referred the group to Rizal. Rizal
and Bracken instantly fell in love with each and in just one month, they agreed to marry
which appalled and disturbed Taufer. However, the parish priest of Dapitan, Father Pedro
Obach, refused to do so unless they be permitted by the Bishop of Cebu.
On the other hand, Taufer returned to Hongkong uncured. Because no priest was
willing to marry the two, the couple exchanged their vows before God in their own way,
which scandalized Fr. Obach. In 1896, their love bear its fruit – Josephine was pregnant.
Unfortunately, Bracken gave birth to a one-month premature baby boy who lived only for
three hours. The child was buried in Dapitan, bearing the name Francisco, after Rizal's
father.

KATIPUNAN SEEK RIZAL’S ADVICE

Prior to the outbreak of the revolution, the Katipunan leader, Andres Bonifacio, seek
the advice of Jose Rizal. In a secret meeting on May 2, 1896 at Bitukang Manok River in
Pasig, the group agreed to send Dr. Pio Valenzuela as a representative to Dapitan who will
inform Rizal of their plan to launch a revolution against the Spaniards. On board the steamer
Venus, Valenzuala left Manila on June 15, 1892 and in 6 days, arrived at Dapitan with a
blind companion, Raymundo Mata. At night, Rizal and Valenzuela had a talk in the former's
garden. There, Valenzuela told him of the Katipunan's plan. Regarding this, Rizal
outspokenly objected Bonifacio's “premature” idea for two reasons:
1. The Filipinos were still unready for such bloody revolution; and the Katipunan
lacked machinery – before plotting a revolution, there must be sufficient arms and
funds collected.
2. Valenzuela also told Rizal of their plan to rescue him in Dapitan. Again, the exiled
hero disagreed because he had no plan of breaking his word of honor to the
Spanish authorities.

AS A VOLUNTEER IN CUBA
During the peak of the Cuban revolution, Rizal offered his services as a military
doctor to compromise with the shortage of physicians in the said country. It was his friend
Ferdinand Blumentritt who informed him of the situation in Cuba and suggested that he
volunteer himself as army doctor. On December 17, 1895, Rizal sent a letter to Governor
General Ramon Blanco rendering his service for Cuba. But for months Rizal awaited in vain
for the governor's reply, and loss hope that his request will be granted. It was only on July
30, 1896 when Rizal received a letter from Governor Blanco, dated July 2, 1896, accepting
his offer. The letter also stated that Rizal will be given a pass so that he can go to Manila,
then to Spain where its Minister of War will assign shim to the Army of Operations in Cuba.

FAREWELL IN DAPITAN
At midnight of July 31, 1896, Jose Rizal left Dapitan on board the steamer España,
together with Narcisa, Josephine, Angelica (Narcisa's daughter), three nephews and six of
his students. Many were saddened as the adopted son of Dapitan left.
In Cebu, on their way to Manila, Rizal successfully performed an opthalmic operation
to a merchant who paid him fifty silver pesos. After almost a week, on August 6, 1896,
España arrived in Manila. Rizal was supposedly to board the Isla de Luzon for Spain, but
unfortunately, left ahead of time. Instead, he was transferred to the Spanish cruiser Castilla
to stay and wait for the next mail boat that woul sail for Spain next month. He was prohibited
from leaving the vicinity but was allowed to accept visitors so long as they were his
immediate family. Of course, all these delays were part of the drama – Rizal has now fallen
to the critical/deadly Spanish trap.
Rizal lived in exile in far-away Dapitan, a remote town in Mindanao which was under
the missionary jurisdiction of the Jesuits, from 1892 to 1896. This four-year interregnum in
his life was tediously unexciting, but was abundantly fruitful with varied achievements (Zaide,
2008).

THE TRIAL, THE EXUCUTION AND THE DEATH OF JOSE

RIZAL

The Trial
On 20th December, 1896, Rizal together with his counsel, Lt. Taviel de Andrade of
the Spanish Artillery, prepared for his defense.
Five days later, on 25th December, Christmas Day, Rizal was informed that on the
following day, at 10:00 am, the Council of War would convene. Rizal wrote his counsel
Taviel, asking for a conference prior to appearing before the Council. However, it was not
known whether such pre-trial conference between Rizal and his counsel took place.
On 26th December, at the Cuartel General de Espana, a soldier’s dormitory was
converted into an improvised courtroom.
The trial proceeded with the reading of the accusations against Rizal “as principal
organizer” and “moving spirit of the Philippine insurrection, founder of societies, of
newspapers and [who] has written books designed to foment and propagate ideas of
rebellion and sedition among the people, as well as the principal leader of the anti-
government in the country.”
 Taviel de Andrade, Rizal’s defense counsel, argued that in the law applying the
Penal Code of Spain in the Philippines, none exists to establish the guilt of the accused; he
likewise challenged the veracity and impartiality of those who had given statements
incriminating Rizal; he closed his defense requesting the court to reject the images of war,
for they could only provoke ideas of vengeance, and that judges should not be vengeful but
fair and just.
After giving Rizal an opportunity to speak in his defense, the Court after deliberations
rendered its decision finding Rizal the author of rebellion and sentenced him to death.
On 28th December, Governor General Polavieja approved the sentence of the
Council of War after knowing that none of the members of the Council of Authorities
recommended the commutation of the sentence against Rizal.
On 29th December, Judge Dominguez went to Fort Santiago to notify Rizal officially
of the sentence. Rizal read the report or verdict but refused to sign it, stating that he was
innocent. He also alleged that he was not a Chinese mestizo as stated by the auditor in the
report but a pure Indio. Rizal was informed that no modifications were allowed in the text of
the judgment.
In the morning of 30 December, 1896, Rizal was executed at Bagumbayan field by
musketry. “Eight native soldiers composed the firing squad. Behind them were eight Spanish
soldiers with Mauser rifles, ready to shoot the native soldiers if they refused to shoot Rizal.”

The Execution
At 6:30 a.m. on 30 December 1896, Jose Rizal, bound elbow-to-elbow, left Fort
Santiago by foot for Bagumbayan field, accompanied by a bugler, a drummer and two Jesuit
priests, Fr. Estanislao March and Fr. Jose Villaclara. They took the Paseo de Maria Cristina,
now called Bonifacio Drive. Behind Rizal was his defense counsel Lt. Luis Taviel de
Andrade. A squad of soldiers surrounded them as they walked slowly. Upon reaching
Bagumbayan field, Rizal placed himself in the middle of the square, filled with 400 men, with
a band playing.
Eight native soldiers composed the firing squad. Behind them were eight Spanish
soldiers with Mauser rifles, ready to shoot the native soldiers if they refused to shoot Rizal.
Rizal refused to be shot in the back, saying he had not been a traitor to the country or
to Spain. But the Spanish captain in charge of the execution told him that he had orders to
shoot him in the back. Rizal reluctantly agreed, but he firmly refused to kneel or be
blindfolded. One last request of Rizal was that the soldiers spare his head and instead shoot
him in the back near the heart. The captain agreed. Rizal then shook hands with his
defense counsel, Lt. Taviel de Andrade and thanked him for his efforts in defending him. A
military doctor came to take his pulse; it was normal. The Jesuits raised a crucifix for him to
kiss, but Rizal had already turned away silently and prepared himself for death.
The order to fire was given. Before the shots rang out, Rizal shouted, “Consumatum
est!” (It is finished!). When the bullets hit their mark, Rizal made a last effort to turn around,
thus, falling lifeless with his back on the ground, his face to the sky. Another soldier gave
the body a “tiro de gracia” -- one last shot to make sure Rizal was dead. Shouts of “Viva
Espana!” rent the air. The band of the regiment struck the first chords of “Marcha de Cadiz.”
By 7:03 a.m. the execution was over.
Rizal Buried Without a Coffin

After the execution of Rizal his body was placed in a van and with utmost secrecy
buried in the old Paco Cemetery. Sra. Teodora, the mother of Rizal, wanted to comply with
the last wish of her son, that the family take charge of his remains. After several objections
on the part of some Spanish officials, Civil Governor Manuel Luengo agreed to her petition.
However, when the funeral coach left, they had already secretly taken the body away, and
Rizal's sister, Narcisa, went to all the cemeteries of Manila looking for the remains in vain.
On the way back, she saw, through the open gate of the Paco Cemetery, some
guardia civiles. This gave her a hint. She entered the cemetery and after much searching
found a freshly dug grave covered with earth. She gave the gravedigger some money and
placed a plaque with the initials of her brother in reverse, R.P.J., which means Rizal,
Protacio Jose. (Jose Rizal, Filipino Doctor and Patriot, by Jose Baron Fernandez, Paragon
Printing Corporation, Manila, 1992, pp 370-371).
A few days after the Americans occupied Manila in August 1898, Rizal's sister
Narcisa asked permission from the new authorities to exhume the remains of Rizal.
Permission was granted. When the body was exhumed, it was discovered that Rizal's body
had not even been placed in a coffin. The shoes were identified, but whatever had been
hidden inside them had already disintegrated (Fernandez, p. 393).
In 1911, Rizal’s remains were transferred from the Paco Cemetery to the base of the
monument which had earlier been erected at the Luneta (now Rizal Park). His aged, beloved
mother was still able to attend the ceremonies of the transfer. A few weeks later Sra.
Teodora Alonso Quintos died. It appears she made the effort to survive her son, to go on
living until such time that her son’s memory would be officially vindicated.

THE CONCEPT OF BAYANI AND KABAYANIHAN

Bayani
Most people conceive the idea of a hero as a person who after their death has been
recognized by a nation. The Oxford dictionary defines a hero as “a person, typically a man,
who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities”
(Oxford Dictionary, 2007). It would be easier to define the word Bayani to the English
translation of hero, but to the Filipino people, it has more elements. First, Bayani is not
gender specific. Second, the definition of Bayani, in a Filipino traditional sense, is an
unselfish act towards the human race; a person with extraordinary courage or bravery that
ignores extreme danger and exhibits strength to overcome difficulties. Lastly, a Bayani never
concern their own personal pleasure nor do they expect compensation for what they do,
rather their actions are done out of kindness. In other words, a Bayani is one that humbly
recognizes the interest of what is bigger that the individual, like the group, the community,
the nation, humanity and the environment. The need to improve the state of humanity is
instinctive and habitual.
Kabayanihan: Our Collective Heroism
The first thing to be learned here is that the meaning of the English word "hero" is not
exactly the same as that of our very own "bayani".
The Webster's Dictionary gives only one definition of the word hero: "A figure in
mythology and legend renowned for exceptional courage and fortitude." The bigger and
much bulkier dictionary at home, with 1,560 large pages, gives the following definitions: " 1a:
a mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or
ability. b: an illustrious warrior. c: a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities. d:
one that shows great courage. 2a: the principal male character in a literary or dramatic work.
b: the central figure in an event, period of movement. 3: submarine. 4: an object of extreme
admiration and devotion: IDOL. (Etymology is given as "akin to Latin "servare," to protect.)
How about "bayani"? Let's read these entries in Diksyunario ng Wikang Pilipino
published in 1989 by the Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas (LWP), formerly known as the
Surian ng Wikang Pambansa:
- ba-ya-ni png. (pangngalan) Taong matapos mamatay ay ipinagbubunyi ng bayan
dahil sa kanyang hindi pangkaraniwang paglilingkod sa bayan o sangkatauhan;
taong may di pangkaraniwang tapang at tigas ng loob sa harap ng panganib o kaya
ay katatagan ng kalooban sa paghihirap at pasakit.
- ba-ya-ni, pd. (pandiwa) Nauukol sa paggawang hindi binabayaran ang gumagawa.
sk (singkahulugan): pakisuyo, tulong, bataris, suyuan.

After taking note of parallels in descriptions such as bravery and toughness, we

realize the glaring disparity in situating the phenomenon: the English, or Western "hero" is
mythological or legendary, and often "of divine descent" in the mold of the Greek and Roman
gods; the Tagalogs' "bayani" is situated in his or her (the word "bayani" is not gender-
specific) relation to the community spirit -- working for free the way we have always known
the "bayanihan" spirit to be.
The word "exceptional" in the small dictionary's definition grates against the
envisioned theme and message of the TV show being planned, the heroism can be
discovered and cultivated in each of us. This is also found in the LWP Diksyunaryo's first
definition, although counterbalanced somewhat by the second meaning, which stresses the
community and one's service to it, thus allowing ordinary folk to qualify for the attribute. What
disturbs me more is the qualifier in LWP's definition that says "matapos mamatay."
The sense that one has to be dead to be a "bayani" in the first meaning given by the
LWP 's Diksyunaryo is disturbing. It may have discouraged many of us from aspiring to be
heroes. But this meaning has been attached only during this almost one century that has
passed since the days of the Katipunan. Rizal's execution at Bagumbayan and his
proclamation as "pambansang bayani" may have contributed much to it. And I have very
recently come across a proof that death as a qualifier for "bayani" was not in the meaning
attached to the word by the majority of those who used it during the Spanish period.
The point is that you may not simply translate because what we think are word
equivalents are sometimes as varied as the cultures that used them. Of course, I will still use
the word "heroism" but this time I'll try to be closer to its "bayani" sense.
The qualifier in the first meaning of "bayani" given in the Diksyunaryo produced by
the Linangan ng mga Wika sa Pilipinas, to the effect that one becomes a hero upon being
recognized as such after death was not there much earlier in the history of usage of the
word. The Katipunan, under the leadership of Andres Bonifacio, used the word "bayani" as
the label for its third- grade members, the highest rank in their "katipon" and "kawal." One
became a "bayani" after being elected to any of the organization's collegial leadership
councils. Surely, these were not posthumous awards being given!

Read Ricardo Nolasco “Ang Pinagmulan ng Salitang Bayani” (2001).

IS JOSE RIZAL OUR NATIONAL HERO?

Selection and Proclamation of National Heroes and Laws Honoring Filipino

Historical Figures (National Commission for Culture and the Arts)

Executive Summary

No law, executive order or proclamation has been enacted or issued officially proclaiming
any Filipino historical figure as a national hero. However, because of their significant roles
in the process of nation building and contributions to history, there were laws enacted and
proclamations issued honoring these heroes.

Even Jose Rizal, considered as the greatest among the Filipino heroes, was not explicitly
proclaimed as a national hero. The position he now holds in Philippine history is a tribute to
the continued veneration or acclamation of the people in recognition of his contribution to
the significant social transformations that took place in our country.

Aside from Rizal, the only other hero given an implied recognition as a national hero is
Andres Bonifacio whose day of birth on November 30 has been made a national holiday.

Despite the lack of any official declaration explicitly proclaiming them as national heroes,
they remain admired and revered for their roles in Philippine history. Heroes, according to
historians, should not be legislated. Their appreciation should be better left to academics.
Acclamation for heroes, they felt, would be recognition enough.

1. Selection and Proclamation of National Heroes

1.1 National Heroes Committee

On March 28, 1993 , President Fidel V. Ramos issued Executive Order No.75 entitled
“Creating the National Heroes Committee Under the Office of the President”.

The principal duty of the Committee is to study, evaluate and recommend Filipino national
personages/heroes in due recognition of their sterling character and remarkable
achievements for the country

1.2 Findings and Recommendations of the National Heroes Committee

In compliance with Executive Order No. 75 dated March 28, 1993 , the National Heroes
Committee submitted its findings and recommendations.
Criteria for National Heroes

(Adopted by the Technical Committee of the National Heroes Committee on June 3, 1993 ,
Manila . Members of the Committee included Drs. Onofre D. Corpuz, Samuel K. Tan,
Marcelino Foronda, Alfredo Lagmay, Bernardita R. Churchill, Serafin D. Quiason, Ambeth
Ocampo, then known as Dom Ignacio Maria, Prof. Minerva Gonzales and Mrs. Carmen
Guerrero-Nakpil)

1. Heroes are those who have a concept of nation and thereafter aspire and struggle for the
nation’s freedom. Our own struggle for freedom was begun by Bonifacio and finished by
Aguinaldo, the latter formally declaring the revolution’s success. In reality, however, a
revolution has no end. Revolutions are only the beginning. One cannot aspire to be free
only to sink back into bondage.

2. Heroes are those who define and contribute to a system or life of freedom and order for a
nation. Freedom without order will only lead to anarchy. Therefore, heroes are those who
make the nation’s constitution and laws, such as Mabini and Recto. To the latter,
constitutions are only the beginning, for it is the people living under the constitution that truly
constitute a nation.

3. Heroes are those who contribute to the quality of life and destiny of a nation. (As defined
by Dr. Onofre D. Corpuz)

Additional Criteria for Heroes

(Adopted by the Technical Committee of the National Heroes Committee on November 15,
1995, Manila)

1. A hero is part of the people’s expression. But the process of a people’s internalization of
a hero’s life and works takes time, with the youth forming a part of the internalization.

2. A hero thinks of the future, especially the future generations.

3. The choice of a hero involves not only the recounting of an episode or events in history,
but of the entire process that made this particular person a hero. (As defined by Dr. Alfredo
Lagmay)

1.2.2 Historical Figures Recommended as National Heroes

On November 15, 1995 , the Technical Committee after deliberation and careful study
based on Dr. Onofre D. Corpuz’ and Dr. Alfredo Lagmay’s criteria selected the following
nine Filipino historical figures to be recommended as National Heroes:

a. Jose Rizal
b. Andres Bonifacio
c. Emilio Aguinaldo
d. Apolinario Mabini
e. Marcelo H. del Pilar
f. Sultan Dipatuan Kudarat
g. Juan Luna
h. Melchora Aquino
i. Gabriela Silang
1.2.3 Status of the Report/Recommendations Submitted by the National Heroes
Committee.

Since the submission of the report/recommendations by the National Heroes

Committee to then Secretary Ricardo T. Gloria of the Department of Education,
Culture and Sports on November 22,1995 , no action has been taken. This was
probably because this might trigger a flood of requests for proclamations. Another
possibility is that the proclamations can trigger bitter debates involving historical
controversies about the heroes.

2. Laws Honoring/ Commemorating Filipino Historical Figures

2.1 Heroes

2.1.1 Jose Rizal

2.1.1.1 Decree of December 20, 1898 , issued by General Emilio Aguinaldo,

declared December 30 of every year a day of national mourning in honor of Dr. Jose
Rizal and other victims of the Philippine Revolution.

2.1.1.2 Act No. 137, which organized the politico-military district of Morong into the
Province of Rizal , was the first official step taken by the Taft Commission to honor
our greatest hero and martyr.

2.1.2 Andres Bonifacio

2.1.2.1 Act No. 2946, enacted by the Philippine Legislature on February 16, 1921 ,
made November 30 of each year a legal holiday to commemorate the birth of Andres
Bonifacio

2.1.2.2 Act No. 2760, issued on February 23, 1918 , confirmed and ratified all steps
taken for the creation, maintenance, improvement of national monuments and
particularly for the erection of a monument to the memory of Andres Bonifacio

2.1.3 Other Heroes

2.1.3.1 Act No. 3827, enacted by the Philippine Legislature on October 28, 1931 ,
declared the last Sunday of August of every year as National Heroes Day.

2.1.3.2 Proclamation No. 510, issued by Pres. Fidel V.Ramos on November 30,
1994 , declared the year 1996 as the year of Filipino Heroes as a tribute to all
Filipinos who, directly and indirectly, gave meaning and impetus to the cause of
freedom, justice, Philippine independence and nationhood.

2.1.3.3 R.A. No. 9070, April 8, 2001, declaring the eighteenth of December of every
year as a special working public holiday throughout the country to be known as the
Graciano Lopez-Jaena Day
 hero symbolizes goodness. Rizal gave us freedom by using goodness. Jose Rizal
became the Philippine national hero because he fought for freedom in a silent but powerful
way. He expressed his love for the Philippines through his novels, essays and articles rather
than through the use of force or aggression. He was a very amazing person at his time. He
was humble, fighting for reforms through his writings instead of through a revolution. He
used his intelligence, talents and skills in a more peaceful way rather than the aggressive
way.
Rizal is an American-sponsored hero: he opted for a non-violence reform in the
government. Instead he used his writings to open the eyes of the Filipinos. He dedicated his
life for his countrymen without hesitation.
He was known for his meekness and coolness, but he never fought on a war. Most of
the world Heroes was elevated as such because of their war exploits. Rizal never did it. He
was using his pen for criticism about the handling of the Spanish government in the
Philippines. He fought to have the Philippines a permanent representation in the Spanish
Cortes. That's why when the US accepted the Philippines as a vassal country, Gen. Taft
who was the Governor general here, appointed Jose Rizal as the National Hero for the
Philippines, to douse the fighting fervor of the Filipinos who are fighting for freedom at that
time.
The Americans decided for him being a national hero at their time in the country. It is
said that the Americans, Civil Governor William Howard Taft, chose Jose Rizal to be the
national hero as a strategy. Rizal didn't want bloody revolution in his time. So they wanted
him to be a "good example" to the Filipinos so that the people will not revolt against the
Americans.
Rizal became a National Hero because he passed the criteria by being a National
Hero during the American period.

ADDING THAT, RIZAL PASSED CRITERIA FOR NATIONAL HEROES

1. Heroes are those who have a concept of nation and thereafter aspire and
struggle for the nation’s freedom. In reality, however, a revolution has no end.
Revolutions are only the beginning. One cannot aspire to be free only to sink
back into bondage.
2. Heroes are those who define and contribute to a system or life of freedom and
order for a nation. Freedom without order will only lead to anarchy. Therefore,
heroes are those who make the nation’s constitution and laws. To the latter,
constitutions are only the beginning; for it is the people living under the
constitution that truly constitute a nation.
3. Heroes are those who contribute to the quality of life and destiny of a nation. (As
defined by Dr. Onofre D. Corpuz)

ADDITIONAL CRITERIA FOR HEROES

1. A hero is part of the people’s expression. But the process of a people’s
internalization of a hero’s life and works takes time, with the youth forming a part
of the internalization.
2. A hero thinks of the future, especially the future generations.
 3. The choice of a hero involves not only the recounting of an episode or events in
history, but of the entire process that made this particular person a hero.

ASSESSMENT

Name: ________________________________________________ Date: _____

Course / Section: _______________________________________ Score: ____

Instructions: Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper. Always write your NAME,
COURSE and YEAR, and STUDENT NUMBER.
1. What are the factors that led to the execution of Jose Rizal?
2. What do you think are the effects of the Rizal’s execution on the Spanish colonization
and the Philippine Revolution?
3. What are the concepts of bayani and kabayanihan? Who can be considered a bayani
in today’s world? Select one person who you consider as bayani and why.

REFERENCES
Jose Rizal (n.d.). The Death of Jose Rizal. Retrieved December 15, 2020 from
https://www.joserizal.com/death-jose-rizal/
National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). 2015. Selection and proclamation of
national heroes and laws honoring Filipino historical figures (1995). Online,
http://ncca.gov.ph/about-culture-and-arts/culture-profile/selection-and-proclamationof-
national-heroes-and-laws-honoring-filipino-historical-figures/

Palafox, Q.A.J. (September 19, 2012). Jose Rizal: A Hero-Saint? In National Historical
Commission of the Philippines. Retrieved December 14, 2020 from
http://nhcp.gov.ph/jose-rizal-a-hero-saint/
Sarmiento, V.M.H. (n.d.). Fuego! Reminiscing the heroism of Rizal. In Philippine Information
Agency. Retrieved December 13, 2020 from
https://pia.gov.ph/features/articles/1032427
The Biography (January 21, 2020). Jose Rizal Biography. Retrieved December 15, 2020
from https://www.biography.com/political-figure/jos%C3%A9-rizal
The Kahimyang Project (n.d.). Today in Philippine History, December 6, 1896, the trial of Dr.
Jose Rizal by a Spanish military court for sedition, rebellion and conspiracy, began.
Retrieved December 14, 2020 from
https://kahimyang.com/kauswagan/articles/796/today-in-philippine-history-december-
6- 1896-the-trial-of-dr-jose-rizal
Valdeavilla, R. (June 2018). The Life and Legacy of Jose Rizal: National Hero of the
Philippines. In The Culture Trip. Retrieved December 13, 2020 from
https://theculturetrip.com/asia/philippines/articles/the-life-and-legacy-
of-jose-rizal- the-philippines-national-hero/