development rizal in the context of nineteenth-century

.__ .. _-- - --- --- - --- --- - -

Economic Development

Exports Imports Total Trade(in peeoe) (in pesos) (in pesos)

1,000,000 1,800,000 2,800,00018,900,000 12,200,000 31,100,00036,600,000 25,400,000 62,000,000

Year

The flowering of the nationalist movement in the late nineteenthcentury could scarcely be possible without the economic growthwhich took place in nineteenth-eentury Philippines, particularlyafter about 1830. The growth of an export economy in those yearsbrought increasing prosperity to the Filipino middle and upperclasses who were in a petition to profit by it, as well as to theWestern-chiefly British and American-merchants who organizedit. It also brought into the Philippines both the machinery and theconsumer goods which the industrialized economies of the Westcould supply, and that Spain could not, or would not, supply. Thefigures for Philippine foreign trade for the beginning, middle, andend of this period are significant of what was happening."

Rizal in Nineteenth-Century Context 17

Philippine exports in thi s burgeoning economy were agriculturalproducts, and a rapidly STowing population needed increasedamounts of rice. Thus, those who controlled large rice-, sugar-, andabaca-growing lands in Central Luzon, Batangas, parts ofthe Bikolregion, Negros, and Pariay profited the most. These included notonly the Filipino hacenderos of Pampanga, Batangas, and WesternVisayas, and th e friar orders owning the large haciendas of Bulacan,Laguna, and Cavite, but also the inquilinos of the friar haciendas.fly this time, many of these inquilinos were equivalently hacenderos in their own right, passing on from one generation to the nextthe lands they rented from the friar hacienda, and farming themhy means of their share-tenants or ka sama. To the latter they stoodin a semifeudal relationship little different from that which existed

possible alternately to portray the American colonial system as thefulfillment of Rizal's aspirations, to picture him as an ineffectualreformist unable to bring himself to accept the national revolutionenvisaged by Bonifacio, and to invoke him as patron of the idealsof the Marcos New Society.' To sum it up in a phrase used byRenato Constentino ill a different context, it has often been "veneration without understanding," hence, no veneration at all.

18251875

1895

Rizal in the Context of

Nineteenth-Century

Philippines

Though the .origins and development of Filipino nationalism cannot be understood simply by studying Rizal and hisnationalist thought, neither can it be understood without givinghim central attention. But like any seminal thinker's, Rizal's evolving nationalist thought must be studied within the context of histimes. The purpose of this essay is to single out some major economic, political, cultural, and religious developments of the nineteenth century that influenced Rizal's growth as a nationalist andconditioned the evolution of his thought. Without an understandingof that milieu one can scarcely understand Rizal's enduring importance to the Filipino people nor the relevance of his ideas and idealstoday. One of the ironies of the cult rendered to Rizal as a nationalhero is that often his words, rather than his thoughts, have beeninvoked without any consideration ofthe historical context in whichthey 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 whichthe new export economy had brought to some may be illustrated bythe case of Rizal's Chinese ancestor Domingo Lam-co. When he hadcome to the Binan hacienda in mid-eighteenth century, the averageholding of an inquilino was 2.9 hectares; after Rizal's father hadmoved to the Calamba hacienda, the Rizal family in the 1890srented from the hacienda over 390 hectares.'

But on the friar haciendas, rising prosperity had also broughtfriction between inquilinos and haciendas as lands grew in valueand rents were raised. A combination of traditional methods andmodernizing efficiency led to disputes, ultimately over who shouldreap the larger part of the fruits of the economic boom. Eventually,this would lead to a questioning of the friar s' rights to the haciendas. But it is a gross misnomer to speak uf the Revolution as an"agrarian revolt" in the modern sense. For it would not be thekasama who would challenge fr iar ownership, but the prosperousmquilinos. And their motive would be as much political as economic-to weaken the friars' influence in Philippine political Iife .f

Political Developments

Economic development, as it largely took place under non-Spanish initiatives, had important political consequences as well. Modernizing Filipinos saw the colonial policies of Spain as not only notthe causes of the existing economic prosperity, but increasingly aspositive hindrances preventing further progress and even threatening what had already been achieved. In Spain Liberals succeededConservatives at irregular intervals as one or the other provedincapable of coping with the problems of governing the nation, Theinstability of these governments mads it impossible to develop anyconsistent policy for the overseas colonies, Worse, both parties usedthe Philippines as a handy dumping ground to reward party hangerson with jobs. Hence, each change of government brought anotherwhole new mob of job-seekers to the Philippines, ready to line theirpockets with Filipino money before they would be replaced by stillothers. Thus, Filipinos were deprived of those few positions theyhad formerly held in the bureaucracy while the vast majority 0

Spanish bureaucrats had no interest. in, or even knowledge of, thecountry they were supposed to be govern ing. If the Spanish bureaucracy had always been characterized by graft and corruption,at least those bureaucrats of an earlier day had often remained ithe country. If they too had often lined their own pockets, they ha

- , -- - -


not been completely indifferent to the welfare of the Philippineswhere they were making their home. But with the opening of theSuez Canal in 1869 and relatively easy passage between Spain andthe Philippines, most became birds ofprey, staying only long enoughto feather their nests."

Far worse in many ways than the corruption of the governmentwas its inability to provide for basic needs of public works, schools,peace and order, and other prerequisites to even a semimoderneconomy. Created to rid the provinces of the bands of tulisanes, theGuardia Civil not only failed to achieve this end, but became anoppressive force in the provinces, harassing farmers and using theirposition for personal profit, as Rizal depicts so vividly in his novels.? The antiquated system of taxation in effect actually penalizedmodernization, and the taxes never found their way into the roads,bridges, and other public works needed for agricultural progress."Finally, highly protective tariffs forced Filipinos to buy expensiveSpanish textiles and other products instead of the traditional cheaperBritish ones.' In the face of a system that was both exploitative andincapable of producing benefits for the colony, liberal nationalistsand even conservative upper-class Filipinos increasingly no longerfound any compelling motive for maintaining the Spanish colonialregim e, as it became more and more clear that reforms would notbe forthcoming. To a nationalist like Rizal the decision to separatefrom Spain had been made long since; it was, as the Spanishprosecutors noted in 1896 (with substantial correctness though withlittle respect for due legal process) a matter of when and how theRevolution should come.P

Cultural Development

A key factor in the emergence of nationalism in the late nineteenth century was the cultural development consequent on therapid spread of education from about 1860. It has become a commonplace to speak of the role of ideas learned by the Europeaneducated ilustrados in t.he emergence of the nationalist movement.But it was not just this handful of Filipinos who were important,nor was it only the European intellectual atmosphere which stimulated nationalism. In many respects, the spread of higher educationamong middle- and lower-middle-class Filipinos who could not affordto go abroad was more important for propagating the liberal andprogressive ideas written about from Europe by Rizal or Del Pilar.The creation of a limited 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 amovement 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: theyfinally returned in 1859 to take charge of. the evangelization of

Mindanao. Having escaped, because of their expulsion, from the

general decline that in the early part of the nineteenth .centuryafflicted the Philippine church and the system of education that

depended on it, they returned with ideas and m e t h o d ~ new to thePhilippine educational system. Asked by the Ayuntamiento to takeover the municipal primary school in 1859, they renamed it, AteneoMunicipal and opened it to Filipino students as well as the Span.iards for whom it had been founded. By 1865 It had been tra~ s.

formed into a secondary school that offered a level of instructionbeyond 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 has the Fil6sofo Tasio say,

"The Philippines owes [the J esuits] the begmnmgs of the Natural

Sciences, soul of the nineteenth century."!Under the direction of the Jesuits t oo was that other new edu

cational institution, the Escuela Normal de Maestros. It wa s openedin 1865 to provide Spanish-speaking teachers for the projected new

primary 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 ~ i l i p i no s posed a dangerto the continuance of Spanish rule." Rizal s picture of the tria ls of

the schoolteacher in th e Noli, if not perhaps typical, wa s certainlynot completely a caricature. Jesuit sources frequen tly complain about

the opposition that the graduates of the Normal School ~l et frommany 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 ~ a n g a

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 '''15i, 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

- - - - - - - - - - ~ - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


student 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 developed."" When already in Europe, he would write to his Austrian

friend 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 becombated 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 inculcating

principles 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 their

Filipino students would do so. The eyes of these Filipinos had beenopened tc a much wider perspective than their narrow Philippineexperience before they ever set foot in Europe, and they no longer

would accept the establish ed order.As the chapter of Rizal in El Filibusterismo on a class in the

university or hi s passing remarks in the Noli show, the Filipinonationalists were much le ss appreciative of the other educationalinstitutions, run by the Do minicans. No doubt the weight of tradi

tion hung much h eavier on these than on the newly founded J esuitschool s and it would only be later in the century that they wouldbegin to mcdernize. P Yet. one has to remember that the early

nationalist leaders among the Filipino clergy, like Fr. Jose Burgos

and Fr. Mariano Sevilla, came from the University of Santo Tomaswithout ever having studied abroad. Moreover, such later key figures as Marcelo del Pilar , Emilio Jacintc, and Apolinario Mabini

obtained their educa tion in San Jose, San Juan de Letran, andSanto Tomas. As early as 1843, the Spanish offi cial Juan de la

Matta had proposed th e closing of these institut ions as being"nurseries . . . of subversive ideas."!" Though the accusation ofsubversion was often rashly bestcwed on Filipinos, especially priests,

The growth of education was producing an i1ustrado class, not to

be completely identified with the wealthy, as the examples ofMabiniand Jacinto show. These ilustrados were increasingly antifriar, at

times even anticlerical or anti-Catholic, A simplistic historiography

has attributed this hostility to the "abuses of the friars" or to theinfluen ce of Spani sh anticlericalisrn." Both of these factors no doubtplayed their part. There were indeed abuses on the part of somefriars . There is, however, little or no evidence that these werecommitted 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 to be sought elsewhere-in the intermingling ofthe political and the religious so characteristic of the SpanishPatronato Real , most especially in the latter half of the nineteenth

century.As Spain became less and less willing or able to promote the

happiness and prosperity of the Philippines, the Spanish colonial

government leaned more heavily on what had always been a

mainstay of Spanish rule--the devotion of Filipinos to their Catholic faith. The sentiment that animated many a Spanish official wasexpressed with brutal frankness by Gov. Valeriano Weyler in 1891:

Religious Developments


The religious orde-rs have their defects, their vices and their difficulties,bu t in the Phil ippines they have two qualities which from the politicalpoint of view nrc so grea t nnd so important tha t they oblige us to

prescirid from whatever may be a ll e~e d a ga ins ~ them. One ~f the~

qualities is thei r unshakeable devo:lon to Spain; the o t h ~ r 18 . t h e ~ r

influence on thfl! natives , which even In the weakened state In which It

is today, is still sufficiently great to consider it a preserving factor. 27

For thi s reason, even the most anticlerical of Spanish governors

maintained that it was necessary 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 relizious exaggeration being a n obstacle in th e Ph.ilippines, itshould be su pported, so that the influence of the parish pnest may bewhat it should be. .. . Religion can and should be in Luzon and theBisayas a rnear.s of government which is to be taken a dvantage of, and

which ju sti fi es the necessi ty of the religious or ders .P

panic Filipinos, he did lay a historical foundation in his Morga andother essays 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 something 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 SpainSeeing the liberties enjoyed in the Peninsula, they became all th

more conscious of the servitude which their people suffered. On thother hand the more perceptive saw the backwardness of Spain i, .comparison with other European countries, th e con',;ptIon . a ~

futility of the Spanish political system, and the system s inabilit

to promote even the welfare of Spain, much less that of her colom.esMany who came to Europe still in hope of ~eform and mod ermz~tlO

in the Philippines came to realize that this could never be achieve

under Spanish rul e and that the Filipinos must look to th em s el v e~ .

"Umasa [Filipina s) sa sari ling lakas," as Rizal would say, turmn

his back on Europe and returning to hi s own country to carry 0

the struggle there." . .One final cultural factor involved in the ri se of nationalism was

the interest in the Filipino past, largely inspired by the European,especially German, preoccupation with history and ethnology. Ithe German universities of the nineteenth century, and to a lesseextent in other European countries, modern hi storical method wa

examining the origins not only of the European nations themselvesbut of other peoples as well. Rizal was the principal , though by nmeans the only, Filipino to see the importance of such h i s to ri c~

investigation for the creation of a nat ional consciousness among hicountrymen." Fr. Jose Burgos had already emphasized the need,foFilipinos to look to their heritage, and it was from him that Rizal

had learned that concern. To thi s concern Rizal joined an historicalconsciousness formed by German historiography, applying modernhistorical method to the investigation of that heritage. In the prefaceto his edition of Antonio de Morga's Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas,

his most important hi storical 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 hi s annotations to the book, Rizal seeks out all the evidence

of 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 accornplishmants 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 Nineteenth-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, "which 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."28That patriotism and the undeniable infl uence that the friar paris

priest had on the ordinary Filipino, rather than those often-recit

but little-documented abuses of the friars, explain wh y the fri ar

inevitably became the main t arget of the Filipino nationalists, an

of Rizal in particular." The same may be said concerning the fria

haciendas. For instance, a lthough the Rizals had a land disput

with the Dominican hacienda of Calarnba, the real is sue wa

something bigger-to be able to show that the Filipino was thequal 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 wh ich the Spanish governmen

so emphasized as a means t o control the indios?" On that poin

Rizal and his fellow nationalists were in agreement-from a differ

ent point ofview-with Governors Weyler, Izquierdo, and Alaminos

A letter of Paciano Rizal to h is br other J ose in Europe, writteat the h eight of the Calamba h acienda dispute, is sign ificant in thi

regard. He wrot e in reference to a rumor he had heard that Arch

bishop Nozaleda, th en in Europe, had proposed fria r support fo

reforms to the Filipino nationalists there, in the person of Del Pilar

in order to end the antifriar campaign of La Solidaridad.

If the Hacienda of Calamba has any part in the compromise, I will telyou the opinion of the majority of the people. The people do not ~ e s i T eto appropria te to themselves this Hacien da, because ... th e h aciend

was handed over to the order in [1833J a pproximate ly by Asanza. Buthey likewise know (because of the leek of title-deeds) that those landdid not have the extension which they now WIsh to grve them. In thirsituation the most just and equitable thing is to mark the limits of thiHacienda so as to declare free of a ll Tent those lands not included 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 compromise in theabove sense will not injure the ca use which you are upholding, you canpropose it so as to put a halt to the unbearable situa t ion in which thepeople fin d themselves; if it would be harmful, I will always believe tha

interests of a secondary order should be subordinated."


One can see here the paradox of Philippine Cath olicism at the

end ofthe nineteenth century. On the one hand, the ordinary Filipino

who h ad not gone to Manila or abroad for higher educat ion re

mained in the traditional religious practices and beliefs ' of his

forefathers and continued to look up to his friar parish priest as

father of hi s 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 the ordi

nary Filipino saw hi s friar parish priest imprisoned and taken

away." In some cases, notably among the Guardia de Honor, this

even led to vi olent oppositio n to the Revolut ion ; in others, to such

a paradoxical situation as that of the Dominican parish priest of

Orion , Bataan, who had taken refuge in th e church tower with

Spanish soldiers when the figh ting broke out. When the Spanish

troops could no longer hold out, Father Herrero came down to

a rrange for su rrender. As h e h imself later told the story,

On seeing me, as if at a s ignal a ll immediately shea thed their bolos,knelt down , and broke forth in a deafenin g shou t: "Viva ang SantisirnoSacramento, s alama t sa Diosl, because-they added in t he samelanguage-in spite of our continuous rapid-fir e, the Father is unharmed."As I came down from th e choir to pass to th e! convento, anotherspontaneous shout broke forth from all who filled the place, as theysepara ted into two files, shouting: "Viva ang Paring Cura! Viva!"33

On th e other hand, the Fi lipino ilustrado educated 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 Noli:

Do you call those externa l practices fa ith? Or that business in cor ds andscupul nrs, religion? Or the s tor-i es of mi ra cles and other fairy tales thatw {> h oar (·very day, tru t h? Is t h is tbo la w of .lesus Christ? A God did not

_have to let Himself be crucifi ed for this, nor we assum e the obliga ti onof eternal gra titude. Superstition existed long befor e this; all that wasneeded wns to per fec t it lind to rni se th e price of the merchandi se."

What wa s more, for th e nat.ionalists religion had come to signify .1

means to perpetuate the s ta tus quo, to mainta in Spanish power

in the Philip 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 opportunity fo

Filipinos to run their own affairs and eventually to throw off th

yoke of Spain completely.

I wanted to hit the fria rs [but] since the friars are always making useof religion, not only as a shi eld but also as a wea pon , protection, citadel,for tress, armor, etc ., I was therefore forced to a ttack their fa lse and

\,,--- _ . ~ - - - - - - - - - - -- - ---

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 discouragemen t which for some years now has taken possession

of 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?'!


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 againstthe 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 thisreligion.... 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 himunderstand the good and the just, giving him only a handful of ideas,yet these not commonplaces but COf. victions that had stood up wellunder 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? 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,

••


full sense. In spite of the accusations made against him, f o~ whichhe was executed, there is no evidence that Burgos ever aimed at

separation of the Philippines from Spain ," Rather, hl.swas the firststep, the expression of a sense of those born ~ n the Philippines being

one people, with a national identity a~d ~atJ onal right s, even underthe sovereignty of Spain. From this in itial articulation of national

feeling, Rizal and others would m , o ~ e t o w a r ~ what they had ~ o ~ eto see was the only way of maintammg that iden tity and obtaining

those rights-separation from Spain ; if need be, by means of arevolution" It is not any accident that we find numerous closeconnections between the activist Filipino clergy led by Burgos andthe next generation of Filipinos who would lead the P r o p a g ~ n d aMovement of the 18805 and 1890s-that Rizal's brother, Paciano,was living in the h ouse of Burgos in 1872; and that among thoseexiled to Guam in the aftermath of Burgos's execution would b ~ Fr.

Toribio H. del Pilar, older brother of Marcelo,. and Fr. MarianoSevilla, in whose house Marcelo del Pilar was living as a studentin 1872." The Propaganda Movement would be th e heir of themovement of the Filipino clergy, and would carry the Ideas ofnatJo.nal

identity ar ticulated by Burgos to their next step and their logical

conclusion . .The Propagandists would also be heirs to another allied move-

t bu t one distinct from that of the clergy-the liber al reformist smen , " h d . d tof the 18605. These were the "modernizers, men w 0 esrre 0

bring to the Philippines economic progress, a modern legal s ~s t e mand, the "modem liberties"-freedon: of the press, of assoclatJon, 0

speech , and of worship. All of these goals would of course be paof the goals of the nationali st movement, bu t they were not confi ned

to nationalists. Indeed, most of the men who appear p r o ml. nent ~yamong the liberal reformists who emerged in to the pu ~li c light m1869-72 were criollos, Spaniards born in the Philippines. These

criollcs had little or no desire to see the Philippines separated fromSpain, but rather wished to see the liberties that ~ a d b e e ~ I ~ t r o duced into the Peninsula also extended to Spanish Philippines.

Such were men like J oaquin Pardo de 'I'avera, Antonio Regidor, anoth er lawyers and merchant s. (Burgos himself wa s a Spanishmestizo but he had identified himself cl early with all those born

in the Philippines, wheth er of Spanish or M a ~ a y blo?d-"sean esto,10 que son, filipinos 0 indigenas," as he puts It m his Manifi esto).

Generally antifriar , these rsformists saw in the fn ~rs o bs t a c l ~ sprogressive reforms and modern liber ties. It was WIth en th uslastherefore 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


clerical liberals who had made the Revolution of 1868 in Spain.When de la Torre opened to Manila some of the freedom of expression proclaimed by the Revolution, and announced his intention ofintroducing 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 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 liber

ali sm and his cordiality, he was suspicious of both groups and hadput them under secr et pol ice surveillance." Before long he wassucceeded by another appointee of the Revolution, Gen. RafaelIzquierdo. Even more than with De la Torre, for Izquierdo liberal

r eforms were for the Peninsula , not the colonies. He did not evenkeep up the pretense of his predecessor, but quickly suppressed thereform committees and ended even the appearances of liberty of

expression allowed by De la Torre. The clergy and the reformistscontinued their struggle through fri endly political influence in

Madrid, little realizing that their steps were watched. <7

When finally the opportunity cam e, with the outbreak of whatwas to all evidence a merely local mutiny over local grievances in

the garrison of Cavite , within hours all had been arrested. Beforethe month was over three priests had gone to their death by thegarrote, while their colleagues and their reformist allies were ontheir way to exile in Guam, despite their political influences inMadrid. It is noteworthy that it was the three priests who were

executed, not the reformist lawyers and merchants" Their execution manifested Izquierdo's conviction th at the friars were a necessary political instrument for main ta ining the loyalty of the Filip i

nos to Spai n; th erefore, by the sa me token, the Filipino priests who

might re place them in the parish es must be eliminated. Those whoclamored for liberal reforms would be silenced, but they were onlva pa ssing annoyance; the clergy who represented the growing Filipi nocon scious ness of thei r r igo t s a s equal to any Spaniard must becrus hed. With the dea th of it s leaders and the exile of their follow

ers, the movement of the Filipi no priests was indeed crushed.When the exiles fin ally return ed to Man ila, th ey kn ew better

th an to expose them selves a second time. Only with the Revolutionwould the survivors , Fr. Pedro Dandan and Fr. Mariano Sevilla,reappear in t.he public eye. Father Dandan would die fighting in the

moun tain s in 1897. Father Sevilla would work to rally Filipinos toresist the Americans, anti. once more be condemned- though even

tually reprieved-to exile in Gua m, th is tim e by the Americans."

- - - - _ . ~ - - - - - - -- - - -


~~-- - - ~ - -

events in a complex society, they fail to give an account of thereality thnt was.

To understand what happened in the nineteenth-century Glovement 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 certainly

overlapped. Almost all n ationalist s were liberal s in some respect;

a lmost all were in favor of modernization. So too most liberal s werealso anticleri cal, or at least antifriar. But it is necessary to distinl:Ui sh what was really most impor tant for individuals or groups inorde r to understand wha t they aimed at in suppor ti ng the Revolution, and why they did or did not con ti nue to do so when certainends had been achieved,

Probably most Filipinos, certainly all thinking ones, and even

Spaniards with any interest in the country, can be called reformistsin some sense in the late nineteenth century; th e Spanish colonial

regime 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 cause with the

Filipinos in Spain to obtain such reforms, for all suffered from theinefficient and corrupt bureaucracy, from the antiquated and contradictory laws, from the exploitation of the Philippine treasury by the

mother country, and from the inability of the govern ment to maintain peace and or der.'·2 Indeed, in an earlier period the harshestcondemnation of Spanish misgovernment came from the friars. It

was onIy when the cause of reform began to t ake on antifriar andnationalistic overtones that they opposed it.53

Though by no means 811 reformists were liberals. liberals werealmost by definition reformists as well. For the safeguards of personal

liberty-freedom of speech and of the press , freedom of association,freedom of religion, and r-specially freedom from arbitrary arrestand detention and exile or imprisonment 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 liberties were the a spiration of all the activist Filipinos who partici

pated in the Propaganda Movement." Together with the demandfor representation in the Spanish Cortes, they headed the list ofreforms demanded by La Solidaridad. 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 generalizations have been used concern

ing the nationalist movement of the nineteenth c e n ~ u r y and therevolution that emerged from It. Such catchwords as the sscularization 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 attempts to describe the Revolution as " proletarian or lower:middleclass movement captured by the bourgeois ilustrado reformists, and

other such explanations that come more from ideological c o n s t r ~ c t sthan 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 theihomes in Hong Kong or in Europe. For them the issue had bee

precisely that-liberal reforms, rather than ~ i l i p i n o rights-:anwhen 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 Sohdaridad' would only be made clear once war had broken out with

the Americans, and the latter were offer ing the reforms which .hadbeen 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 I

became hopeless.Faced with a new colonial power, th e clergy continued to play its

role 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 soul of the Filipino resis~n ce5 1 At the

height of the guerrilla war in 1901 nU,merous p:, e 't ~ m all parts 0

the country were in prison, and not a lew, especially 10 the V l s ~ y a s ,suffered torture and even death for complicity with the guerrillas,Though the initiative in the nationalist movement had passed f r ~ mthe Filipino priests to the young ilustrados in Europe and Mantiain the 1880s, the clergy remained a powerful force in the RevolutJOn

and the major factor in keeping the masses 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 smuggled into the Philippines.'"

Together with Doroteo Cortes, former head of the Comite de Propa

ganda in Manila which had supported Del Pilar and La Solidaridadfor five year s, Basa W R S among the first to petition the American

consul in Hong Kong for an American protectorate over the Phil

ippin es."

The establishment of an American colonial government would

sort out those who had been agitating openly or secret ly during the

decade before the Revolution. It would mak e clear who were only

reformists, or liberals, or anti clerical s, or modern izers, but not truly

nationalists. For all of the former the American government gave

assurance that their main goals would b« achieved-modernizing

reforms in government and the economy, civil liberties, and the

elimination of theocratical control over Philippin e society; only the

real nationali sts would see th e fru stration of the principal goal for

which they had struggled. During the ear lier years of st ruggle this

line of nationalist thought leading from Burgos to Rizal to Bonifa

ci o, Jacinto, and Mabini , had a ttracted not only th ose who yearnedfor an independent Phil ippines, but numerous others whose goals

were at least partia lly differen t, or who su ppor ted only part of the

nationalist program. Now the real nationa lists were left to them

se lves . It would be an exaggeration to say that the masses as a

whole stood behind the na tionalist st ruggle, but large numbers of

them did . Th e kalayaan th ey looked for might not be the same

concept as the independencia conceived by Rizal, Bonifacio, and

Mabini. But the freedom th ey longed for was far nearer to the

na t ionalists' idea of independence than wore the goa ls of economic

progress, political reforms, an d moder nizat ion sought by many of

the ilustrados wh o had supoorted th e Propaganda Movement, only

to shift their loya lties in the hour of crisis" For the goa ls now

achieved from the Americans had only partially coincided with those

of leader s like RizaJ who had seen the struggle primarily as a

movement aimed at th e creation of a national consciousness, the

mnkinrr of the Revolu t ion.Rizal of course favored reforms in Philippine society, not only by

Spania rds, but by the F'i lipnos the mselves. He opposed the influ-


~-- - ~ ~ -- ----- I

to the program of the Propagandists, that it is difficult to see how

anyone with any knowledge of our history and heritage could ~ e m a : : 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 nation long before the Americans

ever established themselves."In the circumstances of the time, to be a liberal very often meant

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 Philippines was not rarely used for this

purpose, whether successfully or not, th ough the religious 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 freedom."Whether or not they fully agreed with the liberal s, 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 c o ~ ~ r y .Many of these men were conservative politically. Though desiring

far-reaching economic changes in Philippine society, just as theBritish, 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 they realized how little hope there was of Spain ever

doing away with all the archaic obst.acles to economic progress.

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 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 friars

and high.ranking anticlerical Mason, he was among the first to


-


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 placamong 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 becauseFilipinos would not allow themselves to be slaves. It was the growthof 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 thecenter of the nationalist movement of hi s day and the principalinspiration of the Revolution.

Higher Education and the

Origins of Nationalism

To write of hi gher education and the beginnings of nationalism must seem a paradox to one acquainted with the nationalistliterature of the last two decades of the nineteenth century.' To saynothing of Rizal's scathing caricatures of the University of SantoTomas ill his EI Filibueierismo, Jose Ma. Panganiban's harsh and

detailed dissection in La Solidaridad of the university education

open to Filipinos of the ;,880s is only the most systematic of thecritiques 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 theother schools of Manila, did not escape the jabs of his pen. For asthe Fil6sofo Tasio drily observed to Don Filipo, the Ateneo repre

sented progress only because the Philippines was still emergingfrom the darkness of th e Middle Ages.' Later, writing to his friendFerdinand Blumentritt, Rizal would expl icitate, describing his

-------------j

development rizal in the context of nineteenth-century

Documents