.
__
.. _ -- - - -- - -- - - -- - -- -
-Economic
Development
Exports Imports Total Trade
(in peeoe) (in pesos) (in pesos)1,000,000 1,800,0 00 2,800,000
18,900,000 12,200,000 31,100,000
36,600,000 25,400,000 62,000,000
Year
The flowering of the nationalist movement in the late nineteenth
century could scarcely be possible without the economic growth
whi
ch
took place in nineteenth-eentury Philippines, particularly
after about
1830.
The growth of an export economy in those years
brought increasing prosperity to the Filipino middle and upper
classes who were in a petition to profit by it, as well as to the
Western-chiefly British and American-merchants who organized
it.
It
also brought into the Philippines both the machinery and the
consumer g
oods
which the industrialized economies of the West
could supply
,
and that Spain could not, or would not, supply
.
The
figures for Philippine for
eign
trade for the beginning, middle, and
end of th
is
p
eri od
are sign
ificant
of what was happening."
Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context
17
Philippine
e
xports in thi
s
burgeoning e
conomy
w
ere
agricultural
pr
oducts
,
and a r
apidly
ST
owing
popul
ation
ne
eded
increased
am
ounts
of ric
e.
Thus, tho
se
who c
ontrolled
large rice-, sugar-, and
abaca
-growing l
and s in
Ce
n tral Luzon, Batangas, parts ofthe Biko
l
r
egion,
Negr
os,
and
Pariay
profited the m
ost.
These included not
o
nly the Filipin
o
hacend
eros
of Pampanga, Batangas, and Western
Visayas, and th
e
friar orders owning the large haciendas of Bulacan
,
Laguna, and
C
avi te, but al
so
the
inquilinos
of the friar hacienda
s.
fly this time, many of these inquilinos were equivalently
hacen-deros in their own right,
p
assing on from one generation to the next
the lands they rented fr
om
the friar hacienda
,
and farm
ing
them
hy means of their
s
h a re-tenants or
ka sama.
To the latter they stood
in a s
emifeudal
relati
onship
little differ
ent
from that which existed
possible alternately to portray the American colonial system as the
fulfillment of Rizal's aspirations, to picture him as an ineffectual
reformist unable to bring himself to accept the national revolution
envisaged by Bonifacio, and to invoke him as patron of the ideals
of the Marcos New Society.' To sum it up in a phrase used by
Renato Constentino ill a different context, it has often been
"ven-eration without understanding," hence, no ven"ven-eration at all.
1825
18751895
Rizal in the Context of
Nineteenth-Century
Philippines
Though the
.
origins
and development of Filipino
nation-alism cannot be understood simply by studying Rizal and his
nationalist thought, neither can it be understood without giving
him central attention. But like any s
eminal
thinker's
,
Rizal's
evolv-ing nationalist thought must be stud
ied
within the context of his
times. The purpose of this essay is to single out some major
eco-nomic, political, cultural, and religious developments of the
nine-teenth century that influenced Rizal's growth as a nationalist and
conditioned the evolution of his thought. Without an understanding
of that milieu one can scarcely understand Rizal's enduring
impor-tance to the Filipino people nor the relevance of his ideas and ideals
today. One of the ironies of the cult rendered to Rizal as a national
hero is that often his words, rather than his thoughts
,
have been
invoked without any consideration ofthe historical context in which
they were spoken or of the issues they addressed. Thus, it has been
18
Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context
between owner-hacenderos and their tenants
.'
The prosperity which
the new export economy had brought to some may be illustrated by
the case of Rizal's Chinese ancestor Domingo Lam-co
.
When he had
come to the Binan hacienda in mid-eighteenth century
,
the average
holding of an inquilino was 2.9 hectares
;
after Rizal
's
father had
moved to the Calamba hacienda, th
e
Rizal family in the 1890s
rented from the hacienda over 390 hectares.'
But on the friar haciendas
,
rising pro
sperity
h
ad a
lso br
ought
friction between inquilinos and haciendas as lands grew in value
and rents were raised. A combination of trad
itional
meth
ods
and
modernizing efficiency led to disputes
,
ultimatel
y
ov
er
who sh
ould
reap the larger part of the fruits of the economic boom. Ev
entually,
this would lead to a questioning of t
he
friar
s'
righ
ts
to th
e
hacien-das
.
But it is a gros
s
misnomer to
s
peak uf the Re
volution
as an
"agrarian revolt" in the modern sense
.
For i
t
w
ould
n
ot
be
t
he
kasama wh
o
would challenge fr
iar
own
ership,
but
t
he pr
osperous
mquilinos
.
And their motive would
be
a
s
much politic
al
as
eco-nomic-to weaken the friars' influenc
e
in Philippine political
Iife .f
Political Developments
Economic d
evelopment,
as it larg
ely too
k p
lace
und
er
n
on-Span-ish initiative
s,
had important politic
al co
nse quences a
s
w
ell.
Mod-ernizing Filipinos saw the colonial poli
cies
of Spain as not
o
nly not
the causes of the existing economic pr
osperity,
but in
creasingly
as
positive hindrances preventing further progress and ev
en
threaten-ing what had already been achieved. In Spain Liberals succeeded
Conservatives at irregular intervals as one
o
r th
e
oth
er
proved
incapable of
c
oping with the problems of g
overning
th
e
n
ation,
The
instability of these governments mads it impossible to d
evelop
any
consistent policy for the overseas coloni
es,
W
orse,
b
oth
p
arties
used
the Philippine
s
a
s
a handy dumping gr
ound
to reward party h
angers-on with
jo
bs. Hence
,
each change of government br
ought
another
whole new mob of job-seekers to the Philippine
s,
ready to line their
pockets with Filipino m
oney
before they would be replaced by
s
till
others. Thus, Filipinos were deprived of tho
se
few po
sitions
they
had formerly held in the bureaucracy while the vast majority
Spanish bureaucrats had no interes
t.
in, or even kn
owl edge
of, the
country they were supposed to be
g
overn ing. If th
e
Spanish
bu-reaucracy had alw
ays
been characterized by graft and corruption,
at least those bureaucrats of an earlier day had
o
ften remained i
the country. If they too had often lined their own pock
ets,
they ha
- , - - -
-Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context
19
not been completely indifferent to the welfare of the Philippines
where they were making their home. But with the opening of the
Suez Canal in 1869 and relatively easy passage between Spain and
the Philippines
,
most became birds of prey, staying only long enough
to feather their nests."
Far worse in many wa
ys
than the corruption of the government
was its inability to provide for basic needs of public works, schools,
peace and ord
er,
and other prerequisites to even a semimodern
economy. Created
to
rid the provinces of the bands of
tulisanes,
the
Guardia Civil not only failed to achieve this end, but became an
oppressive force in th
e
provinces, harassing farmers and using their
position for personal profi
t,
as Rizal depicts so vivid
ly
in his
nov-els.? The antiquated system of taxation in effect actually penalized
modernization, and the tax
es
never found their way into the roads,
bridg
es,
and other public works needed for agricultural progress
."
Finally, hi
ghly
protect
ive
tariffs forced F
ilipinos
to
buy expensiv
e
Spani
sh
textiles and other products instead of the traditional cheaper
Brit
ish
ones
.'
In the fac
e
of a system that was both exploitative and
incapable of producing benefits for the colony
,
liberal nationalists
and even conservative upper-class Filipinos increasin
gly
no long
er
f
ound
any c
ompelling
motive for maintaining the Spanish colonial
regim
e,
a
s
i
t
b
ecam e
mor
e
and more clear that reforms would not
be forthcoming
.
To a nationalist like Rizal the decision to separate
from Spain had been made long since; it was, as the Spanish
pros
ecutors
n
oted
in 1
896 (
with substantial correctness though with
little resp
ect
for due legal process) a matter of when and how the
Revolution
s
hould c
ome.P
Cultural Development
A k
ey f
actor
i
n th
e
em
ergence
of nationalism in the late nine
-teen
th
c
entury
wa
s
the cultural development consequent on the
rapid spread of education from about 1860
.
It has become a
com-monplace to
s
peak of the rol
e
of ideas learn
ed
by the
European-educated
il
ustrados
in
t.
he emergence of the nationalist movement
.
But
i
t wa
s
not
j
ust thi
s
handful of Filipinos who were important,
nor was it only the European intellectual atmosphere which
stimu-lated nationalism
.
In many respects, the spread of higher education
am
ong
middl
e-
and l
ower-middle-class
Filipinos who could not afford
to
go abroad was m
ore
i
mportant
for propagating the liberal and
progres
sive id
eas written about from Europe by Rizal or Del Pilar
.
The cr
eation o
f a limi
ted
but substantial number
(
some 5 percent
-20 Rizal in Nineteenth·Century Context
perhaps) of Filipinos in all parts of the country who c~uld ~ommu·nicate in Spanish made possible for the first time In history a
movement that was both regional am', national in scope. '!
One of the major influences on the educational developments ofthe nineteenth century was the return of the Jesuits. Expelled from
the Philippines and the rest of the Spanish empire in 1768: theyfinally returned in 1859 to take charge of. the evan gelization ofMindanao. Having esca ped, because of their expulsion, fr om the
general decline that in the early part of the nineteenth .centuryafflicted the Philippine church and the system of education thatdepended on it, they returned with ideas and method~ new to thePhilippine educational system. Asked by the Ayuntamiento to takeover the municipal primary school in 1859, they renamed it, Ateneo
Municipal and opened it to Filipino stud ents as well as the Spa n.
iar ds for whom it had been founded. By 1865 It ha d been tra~s.
formed into a secondary school that offe red a level of ins tr uctionbeyond the official requirements and more approximated today's
college than high school. Aside from Latin and Spanish , Greek,
French and English were studied. At the same time such a role wasgiven to the natural sciences that Rizal ha s the Fil6sofo Tasio say,
"The Philippines owes [t h e J esuits] the begmnmgs of the Natural
Sciences, soul of the nineteenth cen tury."!
Under the direction of the Jesuits t oo was th at other new edu
-cationa l institution, the Escuela Normal de Maestros. It wa s openedin 1865 to provide Spanish-sp eaking teach ers for the projected newprimary school system. The Escuela Norm al represen ted a h ope ofprogress in the minds of many Filipinos, just as it would be opposed
by those for whom modern education f?r ~ilipinos posed a dangerto the continuance of Spanish rule." Rizal s picture of the tria ls ofthe schoolteacher in th e
N
oli,
if n ot perhaps typical, wa s certainlynot completely a caricature. Jesuit sources frequen tly compl ain aboutthe opposition that the graduates of the Normal Sch ool ~let from
many parish priests." If further concrete proof were required, oneneed only read the book published in 1885 by the !ranclscan Fr.Miguel Lucio y Bustamante. Here he denounced . [itongl ~anga
maestrong bagong litao ngayon, na ang pangala.i,
normal
8:"dproclaimed the danger of studying, and especially of learnmgSpanish. For, he declared, "ang mga tagalcg, ang rnga indio baga,aniya na humihiualay 0 pinahihiualay sa calabao, ay ang cadalasa,
" . H '''15
i, naguiguing masama at palamarang tauo sa DlOS a~ sa an.
More than in the primary schools, however, It. was m the secon-dary schools that the ideas of nationalism were to awak~, ev~namong those who had never gone to Europe. While still a university
---~--- - - -
-Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 21student in Manila, Rizal would write in his
Memorias
that throughhis studies of literature, science, and philosophy, "the eyes of my
intelligence opened a little, and my heart began
to
cherish noblersentiments." And more explicitly, speaking of his fifth year at theAteneo, through these studies "my patriotic sentiments greatly de-veloped."" When already in Europe, he would write to his Austrianfriend Ferdinand Blumentritt, concerning the YOW1g Filipinos inSpain:
These mends are all young men, criollos, mestizos, and Malays; but wecall ourselves simply Filipinos. Almost all wore educated by the Jesuits.The Jesuits have surely not intended to teach us love of country, butthey have showed us all that is beautiful and all that is best. ThereforeI do not fear discord in our homeland; it is possible, but it can
be
combated and prevented."
It was not that the Ateneo taught nationalism or the liberalprinciples of progress. But in imparting
to
its students a humanisticeducation in literature, science, and philosophy, in inculcatingprinciples of human dignity and justice and the equality of all men,
it effectively undermined the foundations of the Spanish colonialregime , even without the Spanish Jesuits wishing to do so. If theydid not draw all the conclusions to their principles, many of theirFilipino students would do so. The eyes of th ese Filipinos had been
opened tc a much wider perspective than their narrow Philippineexperi en ce before they ever set foot in Europe, and they no longer
would accept the est ablish ed or der.
As the chapter of Rizal in
El Filibusterism
o
on a class in theuniversity or hi s passing remarks in the
Noli
sh ow, the Filipinonationalists were much less appreciative of th e other educational
institutions, run by the Do minica ns. No doubt the weight of tradi-ti on hun g much h eavier on these than on th e newly found ed J esu itschool s and it would only be later in th e century tha t they would
begin to mcd ernize.P Yet. one has to remember that the earlynati onali st leaders among the Filipino clergy, like Fr. Jose Burgos
and
Fr.
Mariano Sevilla, came from the University of Santo Tomaswithout ever having studied abroad. More over, such later key fig-ures as Marcelo del Pilar, Emilio Jacintc, and Apolinario Mabini
obtained th eir ed uca t io n in San Jose, San Juan de Letran, and
San to Tomas. As early as 1843 , the Spanish offi cial Juan de laMatta had proposed th e closing of these in st it ut io ns as being"nurseries . . . of su bversive ideas."!" Though the accusation of
The growth of education was producing an i1ustrado class, not tobe completely identified with the wealthy, as the examples ofMabiniand Jacin to show. These ilustrados were increasingly
antifriar,
attimes even anticlerical or anti-Catholic, A simplistic historiographyhas attributed this hostility to th e "abuses of th e friars" or to theinfluen ce of Spani sh anticlericalisrn." Both of th ese factors no doubtplayed their part. There were indeed abuses on the part of somefriars. There is, however, little or no evidence that these werecommit ted more in the latter part of the nineteenth century thanat an earlier period, rather the contrary.P The reason for this attitude
among th e ilust rados is t o be sough t else wh ere-in th e
intermin-gling ofthe political and the religious so characteristic of the SpanishPatronato Real , most especia lly in the latter half of the nineteenthcentury.
As Spain became less and less willing or able to promote th ehappiness and prosperity of the Philippines, the Spanish colonialgover n me nt lean ed more heavily on what had always been amainstay of Span ish rule--the devotion of Filipinos to their Catho-lic faith. The sentiment tha t animated many a Spanish official wasexpressed with brutal fran kness by Gov. Valeriano Weyler in 189 1:
Religious Developments
Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 23
The religiou s orde-rs have their defects, their vices and their difficulties,but in the Philippines they have two qualities which from the politi cal
point of view nrc so grea t nnd so important tha t they oblige us topresciri d from what ever may be alle~e d agains~ them. One ~f the~qualities is their unshakeable devo:l on to Spain; the oth~r 18 .the~r
influe nce on thfl! natives, which even In the weaken ed state In which It
is today, is still su ffi ciently great to consider it a preserving factor. 27
For this reason, even the most anticlerical of Span ish governorsmaintained th at it was ne cessary to support the friars by everymeans. Writing "
cc
nfl dent ial memorial for the use of his successor
in 1872, Rafael l?']lJiordo expressed the key ideas of this policy:
Far fr om reliziou s exaggerati on bein g an obstacle in th e Ph.ilippines, it
sh ould be su p ported, so that the influence of the parish pnest may be
what it should be. .. . Religion can an d should be in Luzon and theBisayas a rnear.s of government which is to be taken advantage of, and
which justifi es the necessity of the religiou s orders.P
panic Filipin os, he did lay a historical foundation in his Morga andoth er essay s for a national consciousness and pride in the racewhich was to prove important for the future.
22 Rizal in Nin eteenth- Century Context
it is clear that th e university was communicating someth ing thastirred up the sparks of nationalism.
Nonetheless a major factor in giving nationali sm the form iactually took was the experience of Filipino students in Spain
Seeing the liberties enjoyed in the Peninsula, they becam e all thmore conscious of the servitu de which their people suffe re d. On
t
h
other hand th
,
e more perceptive saw the backwardness of Spa
.
in icomparison with ot h er European countries, th e con',;ptIon .a~futility of the Spanish politi cal system, and the system s inabilit
to promote even th e welfare of Spain, much less that of her colom.es
Many who came to Europe still in hope of ~eform and modermz~tlOin the Philippines cam e t o realize that this could never be achieve
under Spanish rul e and that the Filipinos must look to themselve~."Umasa [Filipina s) sa sari ling lakas," as Rizal would say, tur mnhis back on Europe and returning to his own country to carry 0
the st ruggle
th
ere."
.
.
One final cultural factor involved in the ri se of nationalism wasthe interest in th e Filipino past, largely inspired by the European,especially German, preoccupation with history and eth nology. Ithe German universities of the nineteenth century, and to a lesseextent in other European countries, modern hi storical method waexamining the origins not only of the European nation s themselvesbut of other peoples as well. Rizal was the princip al , th ou gh by nmeans the only, Filipino to see the importance of such hi storic~
investigation for the creation of a nat ional consciousness among hi
countrymen." Fr. Jose Burgos had already emphasized the ne ed,foFilipinos to look to their heritage, and it was from him that Rizal
had learned that concern. To this concern Rizal joined an historicalconsciousness formed by German historiography, applying modernhistorical method to the investigation of that heritage. In th e prefa ceto his edition of Antonio de Morga's
Suce
sos
de
la
s
I
slas
F
ilipinas ,
his most important historical work, Rizal outlines the process bywhich he had come to seek a foundation for his nationalism in thehistorical past and emphasizes the importance of history to the
national task."
In his annotations to the book, Rizal seek s ou t all the evidenceof a Filipino civilization before the coming of the Spaniards andtries to show how the intervening three centuries have meant declinerather than progress. At the same time he emphasizes Filipinovalues contrasting them with the Spanish and extolling the accorn-plishmants of his people. Iffrom a scientific historical point of view,
Rizal proves too much and veers toward the opposite distorti?nfrom that of friars who had denied all civilization to the pre-HIS
(
24 Rizal in Nin etee nth-Centu ry Context
His successor, Juan Alaminos, likewise an anticlerical, could no
sufficiently emphasize the importance of the friars. No one, h e fel
could deny their pat riotism, "wh ich verges on fanaticism, and the
make the Indio believe that only in loving t he Spaniards can h
save his soul in the next Iife."28
That patriotism and the undeniable infl ue nce that the friar paris
priest had on the ordinary Filipino, rath er than those often-recit
but little-documented abus es of the friars, explain wh y the fri ar
inevitably became the main t arget of th e Filipino natio nalis ts, an
of Rizal in particular." The same may be said conce rni ng th e fria
haciendas. For instance, a lth ough the Rizals had a land disput
with the Dominican hacienda of Calarnba, th e real is sue wa
something bigger-to be able to show that th e Filipino wa s th
equal of the Spaniard, even if the Spaniards be friar s. For Filipino
to win a lawsuit against a powerful friar order meant eventually
nullify that influence of the friars which th e Spanish governmen
so emphasized as a means t o control the
indios
?"
On that poin
Rizal and his fellow nat ionali sts were in agreement-from a differ
ent point of view-with Governors Weyler, Izquierdo, and Alami nos
A letter of Paciano Rizal to his br othe r J ose in Europe, writte
at the h eight of the Cala mba h acien d a dispute, is sign ificant in thi
regard. He wrot e in reference to a rumor he had heard that Arc h
bishop Nozaleda, th en in Europe, ha d proposed fri a r suppo rt fo
reforms to the Filipino nationalists the re, in the person of Del Pilar
in order to end the antifri ar campaign of La
Solidaridad
.
If the Hacienda of Calamba has any part in the compromise, I will tel
you the opinion of the majority of the people. The peop le do not ~esiTe
to appropria te to themselves this Hacien da, because . . . th e haciendwas handed over to the order in [1833 J a pproximately by Asanza. Bu
they likewise know (because of the leek of title-deeds) that those land
did not have the extension whi ch they now WIsh to grve them. In thir
situation the most just and equitable thing is to mark the limits of thi
Ha cienda so as to declare free of all Tent those lands not include d in thsale or cession and to return the money wrongly collected for these . Thiis what ought'to be done in strict justice. . . . If th e com prom ise in the
above sense will not injure the ca use which you are upholding, you can
propose it so as to put a halt to the unbearabl e situa t ion in which thepeople find themselves; if it would be harmful, I will always believe tha
interes ts of a secondary order should be subordinated."
Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 25
On e can see here the paradox of Philippine Cath olicism at the
en d ofthe nineteenth century. On the one ha nd, the ordinary Filipino
who h ad not gone to Manila or abroad for higher edu cat ion r
e-ma ined in the traditional religious practices and beliefs ' of his
forefathers and continued to look up to his friar parish priest asfath er of his people and protector against oppressive government
officials. So much was th is true that during th e Revolution one of
the great sources of division was the sorrow with which th e ordi-nary Filipino saw his friar parish priest imprisoned and taken
away." In some cases, notably among the Guard ia de Honor, this
even led to vi olent opposition to the Revolut ion ; in others, to such
a paradoxical situation as that of the Dominican parish pri est of
Orion , Bat a an, wh o had taken refuge in th e church tower with
Spanish soldie rs when the figh tin g broke out. Wh en the Spanish
troops could no longer h old out, Fathe r Herrero cam e down to
arrange for su rrender. As h e h imself later told the story,
On seeing me, as if at a sig nal all immediately sh eath ed their bolos,
knelt down , and brok e forth in a deafe nin g shou t: "Viva an g SantisirnoSa cramento, sala m a t sa Diosl, because-they added in th e same
language-in spite of our continuous rapid-fir e, th e Father is unharmed."As I came down from th e choir to pa ss to th e! con vento, another
spontaneous shout broke forth from all who filled the place, as they
separa ted into two files, shouting: "Viva ang Paring Cura! Viva!"33
On th e other han d, th e Fi lipino ilustrado educate d in Europe
found the Catholic practice of his day childish and incompatible
with modern ideas. As Rizal puts it thr ough the mouth of Elia s in
the
N
oli
:
Do you call those ex terna l practice s faith? Or that business in cor ds and
scup ul nrs, religion? Or the stor-ies of miracles and other fairy tales thatw {> h oar (·ve r y day, tru t h? Is this tbo law of .lesus Ch rist? A God did not
_have to let Himself be crucifi ed for this, nor we assum e th e obligati onof eternal gra tit ude. Superstiti on existed long before this; all that was
need ed wns to per fect it lind to rnise the price of the merchandi se."What wa s more, for th e nat.ionalists religion had come to signify .1
mean s to perpetuate the sta tus qu o, to maintain Spanish power
in the Phil ip pines. Rizal expressed his own mind in a letter to
B1umentritt:
The cause that Rizal is spoken of as upholding, and to which economi
interest s were to be subordinated, was of course the op port unity fo
Filipinos to run their own affairs and eventually to throw off th
yoke of Spain com pletely.
I wanted to hit the fri a rs [but] since the friars are always making useof religion, not only as a shi eld but also as a wea pon , protection, citadel,
fortress, armor, etc., I was there fore forced to atta ck their fa lse an d
-If in ~ur days we do not see more Filipinos outstanding in the sciences,let this not be attributed to their character nOT to their nature nor tothe inf1~ence of the climate nor much less that of the race, but ratherto the discouragement which for some years now has taken possessionof the youth, because of the almost complete lack of incentive. For as amatter of fact, what young man will still make efforts to excel in thescience of law or of theology, if he does not see in the future anythingbut obscurity and indifference?'!
Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 27had attempted to subject the religious orders to his own jurisdictionand to that of the government whose creature he was, by theovernight creation of a Filipino clergy who would take their places.The chief victims of this power play had been the Filipino clergy,whose slow but steady growth had been accelerated at the expenseof quality. When the Archbishop's crash program produced unwor-thy priests, whose behavior led to the Spanish joke that there wereno more oarsmen for the Pasig river boats because the archbishophad ordained them all, a permanent prejudice was created againstthe Filipino clergy."
The lack of friars at the beginning of the nineteenth century ledto turning over many parishes to the Filipino priests. But once thenumber of friars began to increase again after about 1825, a seriesof moves to deprive the Filipinos of the parishes once more suc-ceeded each other for the next fifty years. Just when a new genera-tion of Filipino priests under the leadership of Fr. Pedro Pelaezwere attempting to disprove the age-old accusations against themby showing that they were equal in ability to the friars, the govern-ment hardened its position, filled with suspicion that these priests,as had earlier happened in America, might become the leaders ofFilipino emancipation from Spain. Pelaez died in the earthquake of1863, accused as a subversive." His role in fighting for the rightsof the Filipino clergy was taken over by one of his young disciples,Jose Burgos, who published an anonymous pamphlet the followingyear, defending the memory of Pelaez and calling for justice to the
Filipino clergy." Burgos's defense of the rights of the secular clergyin his Manifiesto, however, goes beyond the scholarly argumentsfrom canon law used by Pelaez to urge the rights of the Filipinoclergy to the parishes; it blazes forth in a passionate challenrrs tothe whole notion of inferio:ity of the Filipino, whether of Spanishblood or indigenous, to the European Citing a long list of Filipino
pnests and lawyers from the past, he insists:
With Burgos we see the first articulation of national feeling, ofa sense of national identity. One cannot speak of nationalism in theRizal in Nineteenth-Century Context
superstitious religion in order to combat the enemy who hid behind thisreligion.... God must not serve as shield and protection of abuses, nor
must religion."
26
The picture of the religious environment in which nineteenthcentury nationalism came to maturity would be incomplete, aboveall for Rizal, without the Filipino clergy. Not only were Rizal andhis fellow Propagandists partly the heirs of the conflict betweenFilipino secular priests and Spanish friars that had led to themartyrdom of Fathers Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora in 1872; it wasalso in that conflict that the seeds of nationalism, which were tocome to full flower among the Propagandists, had first been sowed.Just as one cannot understand Bonifacio without knowing Rizal,whose thoughts he imbibed and rephrased in more popular lan-guage, so one cannot understand Rizal without knowing the influ-ence of Burgos on him. Rizal prolonged the incipient national
consciousness, of which Burgos was the most articulate spokesman,
into the full-blown nationalism which led to the Revolution. Hewould hint at that influence in a slightly fictionalized passage in anearly chapter of the Noli. In the novel Ibarra, just back from hisstudies in Europe, passes hy Eagurnbayan, where the three priestshad been executed in 1872. Though in the novel the priest is re-ferred to as an old man for the sake of the story, Burgos, with whomRizal was acquainted both personally and through his brother
Paciano, is clearly the one intended. He writes of the priest as:the man who had opened the eyes of his intel1igence, and had made himunderstand the good and the just, giving him only a handful of ideas,
yet these not commonplaces but COf. victions that had stood up well
under the glare of all that he had learned later . . .. [His] parting words
still resounded in his ears. "Do not forget that if wisdom is the patrimonyof all men, only those of good heart can inherit it. I have tried totransmit to you what I in turn received from my teachers, adding to thatlegacy as much as I was able in handing it on to the next generation.'
You must do the same with your own iriheri tance: increase it threefold,for you go to countries that are very rich." And the priest had added with'
a smile: "They came here seeking gold; go you to their countries insearch of the treasures we lack. But remember all that glitters is notgold." The priest had died on a scaffold on that hill."
What heritage had Burgos passed on to the next generation? Hetransformed the century-old dispute between the Spanish friarsand the Filipino secular clergy from an intramural ecclesiasticalcontroversy into a clear assertion of Filipino equality with theSpaniard, into a demand for justice to the Filipino." A centuryearlier the court prelate, Archbishop Basilio Sancho de Sta. Justa,
•
•
28 Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Cont ext
full sense. In spite of the accusations made against him,
f
o~
which
he was executed, there is no evidence that Burgos ever aimed atseparation of the Philippines from Spain ," Rather, hl.swas the first
step, the expression of a sense of those born
~n
the Philippines being
one people, with a nati onal identity
a~d ~atJ
onal
right s, even under
the sovereignty of Spain. From this in itial articulation of national
feeling, Rizal and others would
m
,o
~e
towar~
what they had
~
o~e
to see was the only way of maintammg th at iden tity and obt aining
those rights-separation from Spai n ; if need be, by means of arevolution" It is not any accident that we find numerous closeconnections between th e activist Filipino clergy led by Burgos and
the next generation of Filipinos who would lead the
Prop
ag~nda
Movement of the 18805 and 1890s-that Rizal's brother, Paciano,
was living in the h ouse of Burgos in 1872; an d tha t among those
exiled t o Guam in the aftermath of Burgos's executio n would
b
~
Fr.Toribio H. del Pilar, older brother of Marcelo,. and Fr. Mariano
Sevilla, in whose house Marcelo del Pilar wa s living as a student
in 1872." The Propaganda Movement would be th e heir of the
movement of the Filipino clergy, and would carry the Ideas ofnatJo.nal
identity ar ticulated by Burgos to their next step and thei r logical
conclusion . .
The Propagandists would also be heirs to another allied mov
e-t but one distinct fr om tha t of the clergy-the liber al reformists
men , " h d . d t
of the 18605. These were the "moderniz ers, men w 0 esrre 0
bring to the Philippines economic progress, a modern legal s~stem
and, the "modem liberties"-freedon: of the press, of assoclatJon, 0
speech , and of worsh ip. All of these goals would of course be paof the goals of the nati on ali st movement, bu t th ey were not confi nedto nationalists. Indeed, most of the men who appear
p
r
o
ml.nent~y
among the liber al reformists who eme rged in to th e
pu
~lic
light m1869-72 were criollos, Spania rds born in the Philippines. These
criollcs had little or no desire to see the Philippines separ ated fromSpain , but rather wished to see the liberties that ~ad bee~ I~tro
duced into the Peninsula also extended to Spanish Philippines.
Su ch were men like J oaquin Pardo de 'I'avera, Antonio Regidor, anoth er lawyers and merchan ts. (Bu rgos himself was a Spa nish
mestizo but he had identified himself clea rly with all those bornin the Philippines, wheth er of Spanish or
M
a
~ay
blo?d-"sean esto,
10 que son, filipinos 0 indige nas," as he puts It m his M anifiesto).
Generally antifriar, these rsformists saw
i
n
the
fn
~rs
o
bs
t
a
c
l
~s
progressive reforms and modern liber ties. It was WIth enth uslas
therefore that they welcomed the r ew governor , Carl os Ma. de I.
Torre, who arrived in Manila in 1869, the appointee of th e an ti
Rizal in Nin eteenth-Century Context 29clerical liberals who had made the Revolution of 1868 in Spain.
When de la Torre opened to Manila some of the freedom of
expres-sion proclaimed by the Revolution, an d ann ounced his intention ofintroducing reforms into the government, these reformists cheeredhim on and were joined in their demonstration by Father Burgos.The latter saw in the new liberal government, with its proclaimedr espect for liberty and equality, the hope of gaining recognition for
the justice of the Filipino priests' cause. Both the clergy and thereformists were deceived. In spite of the governor's professed lib
er-alism and his cordiality, he was suspicious of both groups and had
put them un der secr et police surveillance." Before long he was
succeeded by another appointee of the Revolu tion, Gen. RafaelIzquierdo. Even more than with De la Torre, for Izquierdo liberalr eforms were for the Peninsula , not the colonies. He did not evenkeep up the pretense of h is predecessor, but quickly suppressed thereform committees and ended even the appearances of liberty of
expression allowed by De la Torre. The clergy and the reformi sts
continued their st ruggle through fri endl y political influence inMadrid, little realizing that their steps were watched.<7
Wh en finally the opport unity cam e, with the outbreak of whatwas to all evidence a merely local mutiny over local grievances inthe garrison of Cavite, within hours all had been arrested. Beforethe month wa s over three priests had gone to their death by thegarrote, while their coll eagues an d their reformist allies were on
their way to exile in Guam, despite their political influences inMadrid. It is noteworthy th at it was the three priests who were
execu te d, not the reform ist lawyers and merchants" Their ex
ecu-tion manifested Izquierdo's conviction th at th e fria rs were a nec
es-sary political instrument for ma in ta inin g th e loyalty of the Filip i
-nos to Spai n; th erefore, by the sa me t oken , the Filipino priests who
migh t re place them in the pa rishes must be eliminated. Those who
cla mored for liberal refor ms would be silenced, but they were onlv
a passing annoyan ce; th e clergy who represente d the growing Filipi nocon scious ness of thei r rigot s as equal to any Spaniard must be
crus hed. With the death of its leaders and the exile of their follow
-ers, th e movem en t of the Filipino priests wa s indeed crushed.
When th e exiles fin ally retu rn ed to Manila, th ey kn ew bet ter
th an to expose th em selves a second time. Only with the Revolution
wou ld th e survivors , Fr . Pedro Dandan an d Fr. Mariano Sevill a,
reappear in t.he publi c eye. Fath er Dandan wou ld die fighting in themoun tain s in 1897. Fath er Sevilla would work to rally Filipinos to
resist the Americans, anti. once more be condemned- though ev
en-tually reprieved-to exile in Guam , th is tim e by the American s."
-Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 31
~~----~-
-events in a complex society, they fail to give an account of thereality thnt was.
To understand what happened in the nineteenth-century Glove-ment culminating in the Revolution, it is necessary to distinguishthe several different currents that went into movement. At leastfive can be considered-s-the reformist, the liberal, the anticlerical,
the modernizing, and the strictly nationalist. Each individual neednot be placed under one of these categories, for they certainlyoverlapped. Almost all n at ion alist s were liberal s in some respect;almost all were in favor of modernization. So too most liberals were
also anticleri cal, or at least antifriar. But it is necessary to distin-l:Uish what was really most im por ta nt for individ u a ls or groups in
orde r to und erstand wha t they aimed at in su ppor ti ng the Revolu
-tion, and why th ey did or did not con ti nue to do so when certainends had been achieved,
Probably most Filipinos, certainly all thinking ones, and evenSpaniards with any interest in the country, can be called reformistsin some sense in the late nineteenth century; the Spanish colonialregime obviously failed any longer to satisfy basic needs and desiresof the Filipino people. As intimated in th e letter of Paciano Rizalwe have quoted, many of the friars themselves desired reforms.
They even appear to have offered to make joint caus e with the
Filipinos in Spain to obtain su ch reforms, for all suffered from theinefficient and corrupt bureaucracy, from the antiquated and contra-dictory laws, from the exploitation of the Philippine treasury by themother country, and from the inability of the gove rn ment to main-tain peace an d or der.'·2 Indeed, in an ea rlie r period the harshest
condemnation of Spanish misgovernment came from the friars. It
was on Iy when th e cause of reform began to t ak e on antifriar andnationalistic overtones that they opposed it.53
Though by no means 811 reformists were liberals. liberals werealmost by definition reformi sts as well. For the safeguards of personalliberty-freedom of speech and of the press, freed om of association,freedom of religion, and r-specially freedom from arbitrary arrestand detenti on and exile or imprisonme nt without a trial-s-couldonly be obt.ained with major reforms in the existing colonial govern-ment. With the partial exception of freedom of religion, those lib-erties were the a spiration of all the activist Filipinos who
partici-pated in the Propaganda
Movement."
Together with the demand
for representation in the Spanish Cortes, they headed the list ofreforms demanded by La Solida ridad. As Rizal would write
B1umen-tritt, these liberties were an essential component of any progressworth the name.55 So integra] were the aspirations to civil liberties
~ ~ ~
Main Current. of the Nationalist Movement
In recent years certain gen eralizations have been used concern-ing the nationalist movem ent of the nineteenth cen~ury and therevolution that emerged from It. Such catchwords as the ss cu lari
-zation movement," "the reform movement," "the revolt of the masses,"
and "the betrayal of th e ilustrados" obscur e mo:e than clarify thecharacter of Filipino nationalism. The same might be said of at-tempts to describe the Revolution as " proletarian or lower:middle-class movement captured by the bourgeois ilustrado reformists, andother such explanations that come more from ideological constr~ctsthan from an examination of historical realities. These
generahza-tions may not entirely be false. But by oversimplifying compie
Many of the liberal reformists of 1872, on the other hand, no long~returned to the Philippines once they were free, but made thei
homes in Hong Kong or in Europe. For them the issue had bee
precisely that-liberal reforms, rather than ~ilipino rights-:an
when they could not obtain these in the Philippines, they liveelsewhere.60
Since the Propaganda Movement was also heir to the Iiberareformist tradition the degree to which the Propagandists weretruly nationalists, iike Rizal and Del :ilar, or merely liberal reo
formists like many of their colleagues m the campaign of
La S
oh
daridad'
would only be made clear once war had broken out withthe Americans, and the latter were offer ing the reforms which .h ad
been sought in vain from Spain. To the reformists, the Am.encan
offer would be enough; it was what they had really been lookm.g f~rall along. For the nationalists, the struggle would go on till Ibecame hopeles s.
Faced with a new colonial power, th e clergy continued to play itsrole in the rise of nationalism. The Americans directing the crush-ing of guerrilla r esistance, whether civilian like Governor Taft, ormilitary like Gen .
J.
Franklin Bell in Batangas and Gen. J acobSmith in Samar, all singled out th e Filipino priest as the mos
dangerous enemy and the sou l of the Filipino resis~n ce51 At theheight of the guerrilla war in 1901 nU,merou s p:,e't~ m all parts 0
the country were in prison, and not a lew, espe cially 10 the Vls~yas,
suffered torture and even death for complicity with the guerrillas,Though the initiative in th e nati onalist movement had passed fr~m
the Filipino priests to the young ilustrados in Europe and Mantiain the 1880s, the cl ergy remained a powerful force in the RevolutJOnand the major factor in keeping the ma sses loyal.
accept a position in the American government. He would be one ofthe first Filipino members of the Philippine Commission, though hehad been named Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the government ofa*guinaldo." A similar case was Jose Ma. Basa, exile of 1872, whoperhaps did more than any other individual to promote the cam-paign against the friars in the 1880s and 1890s. He was also themain source by which the writings of Rizal, Del Pilar, and others
of the Propaganda Movement were sm u ggled into the Philippines.'"
Together with Doroteo Cortes, former head of the Comite de Propa-ganda in Manila which had supported Del Pilar and La Solidaridad
for five year s, Basa W R S among the first to petition the American
consul in Hong Kong for an Am erican protectorate over the Phil-ip pin es."
The esta blishment of an Am erica n colonial government would
sort out those wh o had been agitating openly or secr et ly during thedecade before the Revolution. It would mak e clear who were onlyreformists, or liberals, or anti clerical s, or modernizers, but not trulynationalists. For all of the former th e American government gaveassurance that their main goals would b« achieved-modernizing
reforms in govern m ent an d the economy, civil liberties, and the
elimination of theocratical contr ol over Philippin e society; only thereal nationali sts would see th e fru strati on of the principal goal forwhich they had struggled. During the ear lier years of st r uggle this
line of nation alist thought leading from Burgos to Rizal to Bonifa
-ci o, Jacinto, and Mabini , had a ttra cted n ot only th ose who yearned
for an independent Phil ippines, but numerous others wh ose goals
were at lea st parti ally differe n t, or who su ppor ted only part of the
natio nalist program. Now th e real natio na lists were left to
them-selves . It would be an exaggeration to say that the ma sses as awhole stood behind the na tionalist struggle, but large numbers of
th em did . Th e kalayaan th ey looked for might not be the same
concept as the ind ependencia conceived by Rizal, Bonifacio, andMabini. But the freedom th ey longed for was far nearer to the
na tionalists' idea of independ ence than wore the goa ls of economic
progress, political reforms, and moder nizat ion sought by many of
th e ilustrados wh o ha d supoorted th e Propaganda Movement, only
to shift their loyalties in the hour of crisis" For the goa ls now
achieved from the Americans had only partially coincided with those
of leader s like Riza J wh o had seen th e st ruggle primarily as amovement aimed at th e creation of a national conscio usness, the
mnkinrr of the Revolut ion.
Rizal of course fav ored reforms in Philippine society, not only by
Spaniards, but by the F'i lipn os the mse lves. He opposed the influ-Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 33
~
-
-
-
~
~
---
I
to the program of the Propagandists, that it is difficult to see howanyone with any knowledge of our history and heritage could ~ema::k,
as some did in the Marcos years, that democracy and CIV11 liberties
were an American import which can now be dispensed with. Nottothe men who created a Filipino nati on long before the Americans
ever established themselves."
In the circ*mstances of the time, to be a liberal very often mean t
to be anticlerical or at least antifriar. Such anticlericali sm was notso much due to obscurantism, which certainly existed in some sectors
of the clergy as it was to the well-just ified fear that ecclesiastical
power would' be used to suppress liberal progress. The influence ?fthe friar orders in the Philippin es was not rarely used for this
purpose, whether successfully or not, th ough the r eligious orders'
fear of liberalism was not without basis. For church property hadso often been confiscated in Europe and the personal rights of
ecclesiastics so often violated in the name of the new freed om."
Whether or not they fully agreed with the liberals, the Filipinoclergy were much less likely to be the target of liberal antipathy.This was true even on the part of those liberals who cared little forthe bond of common nationality, since the Filipino clergy werepowerless to block liberal reforms, even if they had wanted to.
Modernization was a desire of all liberals, as it would be ofnationalists in general. But the converse was by no means true.Modernization was primarily an economic goal, and many of thosewho were deeply interested in progressive economic measures sought
them for the profit they themselves would derive, not for the co~~ry.Many of these men were conservative politically. Though desiringfar-reaching economic changes in Philippine society, just as theBritish, American, and other foreign entrepreneurs did, they had nodesire to create a new nation.58 When the Spanish regime fell under
the onslaught of the Revolution, conservative modernizers had noregrets, for th ey realized how little hope there was of Spain ever
doing away with all the archaic obst.acles to economic progre ss.
When the Philippine Republic emerged, they supported it cautiously,
intending to control it. When they saw they very likely could not,
or that an American regime promised more in the way of immediatepeace and order and ultimate economic growth than could thenewborn Revolutionary government, they had few Qualms about
accepting positions in the new colonial regime, even while stillholding positions in the Revolutionary government. Such were menlike T. H. Pardo de Tavera, nephew of the exile of 1872, friend of
Rizal and the Lunas in Paris. Although a bitter enemy of the friarsand high.ranking anticlerical Mason, he was among the first to32 Rizal in Nineteenth- Century Cont ext
-34 Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context
ence of the friars on that same society, for he saw them as
obstacle to freedom and to progress. He was devoted to the modernization of his country, so that, as he put it, she might take her plac
among the proud nations of Europe. But what he sought above allwas that his country should be free, free from tyrants from abroador at home, a country where there would not be any tyrants becauseFilipinos would not allow themselves to be slaves. It was the growthof a free people, proud of its past, working for its future, united ina common set of ideals.'"' This vision it was which made him thecenter of the nationalist movement of his day and the principalinspiration of the Revolution .
Higher Education and the
Origins of Nationalism
To write
of hi gh er education and the beginnings of nation-alism must seem a parad ox to one acquainted with the nationalistliterature of the last two decades of the nineteenth cen t ury.'
To
saynothing of Rizal's scathing caricatures of the University of SantoTomas ill his EI Filibueierismo, Jose Ma. Panganiban's harsh anddetailed dissection in
La S
olidaridad
of the university educationopen to Filipinos of the ;,880s is only th e most systematic of thecritiques of Philippine higher education that regularly appeared inthe pages of this organ of the Propaganda Movement," Even theAteneo Municipal, which Rizal took delight in contrasting with theother schools of Manila, did not escape the jabs of his pen. For asthe Fil6sofo Tasio drily observed to Don Filipo, the Ateneo repre-sen ted progress only because the Philippines was still emergingfrom the darkness of th e Middle Ages.' Later, writing to his friend
Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal would expl icitate, describing his
