John N. Schumacher, S.J. - Rizal in the Context of Nineteenth-Century Philippines

.

__

.. _ -- - - -- - -- - - -- - -- -

-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

1875 1895

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

0

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 of the nineteenth century was the return of the Jesuits. Expelled from

the Philippines and the rest of the Spanish empire in 1768: they finally returned in 1859 to take charge of. the evan gelization of Mindanao. Having esca ped, because of their expulsion, fr om the

general decline that in the early part of the nineteenth .century afflicted the Philippine church and the system of education that depended on it, they returned with ideas and method~ new to the Philippine educational system. Asked by the Ayuntamiento to take over 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 uction beyond 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 was given 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 opened in 1865 to provide Spanish-sp eaking teach ers for the projected new primary school system. The Escuela Norm al represen ted a h ope of progress in the minds of many Filipinos, just as it would be opposed

by those for whom modern education f?r ~ilipinos posed a danger to the continuance of Spanish rule." Rizal s picture of the tria ls of the schoolteacher in th e

N

oli,

if n ot perhaps typical, wa s certainly not completely a caricature. Jesuit sources frequen tly compl ain about the opposition that the graduates of the Normal Sch ool ~let from

many parish priests." If further concrete proof were required, one need 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:"d proclaimed the danger of studying, and especially of learnmg Spanish. 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~n among those who had never gone to Europe. While still a university

---~--- - - -

-Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 21 student in Manila, Rizal would write in his

Memorias

that through his studies of literature, science, and philosophy, "the eyes of my

intelligence opened a little, and my heart began

to

cherish nobler sentiments." And more explicitly, speaking of his fifth year at the Ateneo, through these studies "my patriotic sentiments greatly de-veloped."" When already in Europe, he would write to his Austrian friend Ferdinand Blumentritt, concerning the YOW1g Filipinos in Spain:

These mends are all young men, criollos, mestizos, and Malays; but we call ourselves simply Filipinos. Almost all wore educated by the Jesuits. The Jesuits have surely not intended to teach us love of country, but they have showed us all that is beautiful and all that is best. Therefore I 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 liberal principles of progress. But in imparting

to

its students a humanistic education in literature, science, and philosophy, in inculcating principles of human dignity and justice and the equality of all men,

it effectively undermined the foundations of the Spanish colonial regime , even without the Spanish Jesuits wishing to do so. If they did not draw all the conclusions to their principles, many of their Filipino students would do so. The eyes of th ese Filipinos had been

opened tc a much wider perspective than their narrow Philippine experi 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 the university or hi s passing remarks in the

Noli

sh ow, the Filipino nationalists 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 it school 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 early nati onali st leaders among the Filipino clergy, like Fr. Jose Burgos

and

Fr.

Mariano Sevilla, came from the University of Santo Tomas without 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 la Matta 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 to be completely identified with the wealthy, as the examples ofMabini and Jacin to show. These ilustrados were increasingly

antifriar,

at times even anticlerical or anti-Catholic, A simplistic historiography has attributed this hostility to th e "abuses of th e friars" or to the influen ce of Spani sh anticlericalisrn." Both of th ese factors no doubt played their part. There were indeed abuses on the part of some friars. There is, however, little or no evidence that these were commit ted more in the latter part of the nineteenth century than at 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 Spanish Patronato Real , most especia lly in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

As Spain became less and less willing or able to promote th e happiness and prosperity of the Philippines, the Spanish colonial gover n me nt lean ed more heavily on what had always been a mainstay of Span ish rule--the devotion of Filipinos to their Cath o-lic faith. The sentiment tha t animated many a Spanish official was expressed 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 to presciri 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 governors maintained th at it was ne cessary to support the friars by every means. 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 the Bisayas 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 and oth er essay s for a national consciousness and pride in the race which 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 tha stirred up the sparks of nationalism.

Nonetheless a major factor in giving nationali sm the form i actually took was the experience of Filipino students in Spain

Seeing the liberties enjoyed in the Peninsula, they becam e all th more 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 i comparison 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~tlO in 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 mn his 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 was the interest in th e Filipino past, largely inspired by the European, especially German, preoccupation with history and eth nology. I the German universities of the nineteenth century, and to a lesse extent in other European countries, modern hi storical method wa examining the origins not only of the European nation s themselves but of other peoples as well. Rizal was the princip al , th ou gh by n means 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,fo Filipinos to look to their heritage, and it was from him that Rizal

had learned that concern. To this concern Rizal joined an historical consciousness formed by German historiography, applying modern historical method to the investigation of that heritage. In th e prefa ce to 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 by which he had come to seek a foundation for his nationalism in the historical past and emphasizes the importance of history to the

national task."

In his annotations to the book, Rizal seek s ou t all the evidence of a Filipino civilization before the coming of the Spaniards and tries to show how the intervening three centuries have meant decline rather than progress. At the same time he emphasizes Filipino values 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?n from 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 haciend was 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 th sale or cession and to return the money wrongly collected for these . Thi is 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 the people 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 as fath 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 Santisirno Sa 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 that w {> 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 on of 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 use of 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 to the inf1~ence of the climate nor much less that of the race, but rather to the discouragement which for some years now has taken possession of the youth, because of the almost complete lack of incentive. For as a matter of fact, what young man will still make efforts to excel in the science of law or of theology, if he does not see in the future anything but obscurity and indifference?'!

Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 27 had attempted to subject the religious orders to his own jurisdiction and to that of the government whose creature he was, by the overnight 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 expense of quality. When the Archbishop's crash program produced unwor-thy priests, whose behavior led to the Spanish joke that there were no more oarsmen for the Pasig river boats because the archbishop had ordained them all, a permanent prejudice was created against the Filipino clergy."

The lack of friars at the beginning of the nineteenth century led to turning over many parishes to the Filipino priests. But once the number of friars began to increase again after about 1825, a series of 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 Pelaez were attempting to disprove the age-old accusations against them by 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 of Filipino emancipation from Spain. Pelaez died in the earthquake of 1863, accused as a subversive." His role in fighting for the rights of the Filipino clergy was taken over by one of his young disciples, Jose Burgos, who published an anonymous pamphlet the following year, defending the memory of Pelaez and calling for justice to the

Filipino clergy." Burgos's defense of the rights of the secular clergy in his Manifiesto, however, goes beyond the scholarly arguments from canon law used by Pelaez to urge the rights of the Filipino clergy to the parishes; it blazes forth in a passionate challenrrs to the whole notion of inferio:ity of the Filipino, whether of Spanish blood 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, of a sense of national identity. One cannot speak of nationalism in the Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context

superstitious religion in order to combat the enemy who hid behind this religion.... God must not serve as shield and protection of abuses, nor

must religion."

26

The picture of the religious environment in which nineteenth century nationalism came to maturity would be incomplete, above all for Rizal, without the Filipino clergy. Not only were Rizal and his fellow Propagandists partly the heirs of the conflict between Filipino secular priests and Spanish friars that had led to the martyrdom of Fathers Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora in 1872; it was also in that conflict that the seeds of nationalism, which were to come 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. He would hint at that influence in a slightly fictionalized passage in an early chapter of the Noli. In the novel Ibarra, just back from his studies in Europe, passes hy Eagurnbayan, where the three priests had 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 whom Rizal 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 him understand 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 patrimony of all men, only those of good heart can inherit it. I have tried to transmit to you what I in turn received from my teachers, adding to that legacy 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 in search of the treasures we lack. But remember all that glitters is not gold." The priest had died on a scaffold on that hill."

What heritage had Burgos passed on to the next generation? He transformed the century-old dispute between the Spanish friars and the Filipino secular clergy from an intramural ecclesiastical controversy into a clear assertion of Filipino equality with the Spaniard, into a demand for justice to the Filipino." A century earlier 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 at separation 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 a revolution" It is not any accident that we find numerous close connections 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 pa of the goals of the nati on ali st movement, bu t th ey were not confi ned to 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 m 1869-72 were criollos, Spania rds born in the Philippines. These

criollcs had little or no desire to see the Philippines separ ated from Spain , 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, an oth er lawyers and merchan ts. (Bu rgos himself was a Spa nish

mestizo but he had identified himself clea rly with all those born in 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 29 clerical 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 of introducing reforms into the government, these reformists cheered him on and were joined in their demonstration by Father Burgos. The latter saw in the new liberal government, with its proclaimed r espect for liberty and equality, the hope of gaining recognition for

the justice of the Filipino priests' cause. Both the clergy and the reformists 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. Rafael Izquierdo. Even more than with De la Torre, for Izquierdo liberal r eforms were for the Peninsula , not the colonies. He did not even keep up the pretense of h is predecessor, but quickly suppressed the reform 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 in Madrid, little realizing that their steps were watched.<7

Wh en finally the opport unity cam e, with the outbreak of what was to all evidence a merely local mutiny over local grievances in the garrison of Cavite, within hours all had been arrested. Before the month wa s over three priests had gone to their death by the garrote, while their coll eagues an d their reformist allies were on

their way to exile in Guam, despite their political influences in Madrid. 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 no con 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 the moun 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 the reality thnt was.

To understand what happened in the nineteenth-century Glove-ment culminating in the Revolution, it is necessary to distinguish the several different currents that went into movement. At least five can be considered-s-the reformist, the liberal, the anticlerical,

the modernizing, and the strictly nationalist. Each individual need not be placed under one of these categories, for they certainly overlapped. 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 certain ends had been achieved,

Probably most Filipinos, certainly all thinking ones, and even Spaniards with any interest in the country, can be called reformists in some sense in the late nineteenth century; the Spanish colonial regime obviously failed any longer to satisfy basic needs and desires of the Filipino people. As intimated in th e letter of Paciano Rizal we 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 the inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy, from the antiquated and contra-dictory laws, from the exploitation of the Philippine treasury by the mother 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 and nationalistic overtones that they opposed it.53

Though by no means 811 reformists were liberals. liberals were almost by definition reformi sts as well. For the safeguards of personal liberty-freedom of speech and of the press, freed om of association, freedom of religion, and r-specially freedom from arbitrary arrest and detenti on and exile or imprisonme nt without a trial-s-could only 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 of reforms demanded by La Solida ridad. As Rizal would write

B1umen-tritt, these liberties were an essential component of any progress worth 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 c oncern-ing the nationalist movem ent of the nineteenth cen~ury and the revolution 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 the character 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, and other such explanations that come more from ideological constr~cts than 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 live elsewhere.60

Since the Propaganda Movement was also heir to the Iibera reformist tradition the degree to which the Propagandists were truly 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 with the 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~r all along. For the nationalists, the struggle would go on till I became hopeles s.

Faced with a new colonial power, th e clergy continued to play its role in the rise of nationalism. The Americans directing the cru sh-ing of guerrilla r esistance, whether civilian like Governor Taft, or military like Gen .

J.

Franklin Bell in Batangas and Gen. J acob Smith 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 the height 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 Mantia in the 1880s, the cl ergy remained a powerful force in the RevolutJOn and the major factor in keeping the ma sses loyal.

accept a position in the American government. He would be one of the first Filipino members of the Philippine Commission, though he had been named Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the government of Aguinaldo." A similar case was Jose Ma. Basa, exile of 1872, who perhaps did more than any other individual to promote the cam-paign against the friars in the 1880s and 1890s. He was also the main 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 the decade before the Revolution. It would mak e clear who were only reformists, or liberals, or anti clerical s, or modernizers, but not truly nationalists. For all of the former th e American government gave assurance 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 the real nationali sts would see th e fru strati on of the principal goal for which 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 a whole 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, and Mabini. 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 a movement 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 how anyone 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. Notto the men who created a Filipino nati on long before the Americans

ever established themselves."

In the circumstances of the time, to be a liberal very often mean t

to be anticlerical or at least antifriar. Such anticlericali sm was not so 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 ?f the 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 had so 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 Filipino clergy were much less likely to be the target of liberal antipathy. This was true even on the part of those liberals who cared little for the bond of common nationality, since the Filipino clergy were powerless to block liberal reforms, even if they had wanted to.

Modernization was a desire of all liberals, as it would be of nationalists in general. But the converse was by no means true. Modernization was primarily an economic goal, and many of those who 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 desiring far-reaching economic changes in Philippine society, just as the British, American, and other foreign entrepreneurs did, they had no desire to create a new nation.58 _{When the Spanish regime fell under}

the onslaught of the Revolution, conservative modernizers had no regrets, 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 immediate peace and order and ultimate economic growth than could the newborn Revolutionary government, they had few Qualms about

accepting positions in the new colonial regime, even while still holding positions in the Revolutionary government. Such were men like 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 friars and high.ranking anticlerical Mason, he was among the first to 32 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 moderni zation 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 all was that his country should be free, free from tyrants from abroad or at home, a country where there would not be any tyrants because Filipinos would not allow themselves to be slaves. It was the growth of a free people, proud of its past, working for its future, united in a common set of ideals.'"' This vision it was which made him the center of the nationalist movement of his day and the principal inspiration 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 nationalist literature of the last two decades of the nineteenth cen t ury.'

To

say nothing of Rizal's scathing caricatures of the University of Santo Tomas ill his EI Filibueierismo, Jose Ma. Panganiban's harsh and detailed dissection in

La S

olidaridad

of the university education open to Filipinos of the ;,880s is only th e most systematic of the critiques of Philippine higher education that regularly appeared in the pages of this organ of the Propaganda Movement," Even the Ateneo Municipal, which Rizal took delight in contrasting with the other schools of Manila, did not escape the jabs of his pen. For as the Fil6sofo Tasio drily observed to Don Filipo, the Ateneo repre-sen ted progress only because the Philippines was still emerging from the darkness of th e Middle Ages.' Later, writing to his friend

Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal would expl icitate, describing his