ALVIN D.

CAMPOMANES
Department of History
University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P)
With the new men that will
spring from her bosom and the
remembrance of the past, she
will perhaps enter openly the
wide road of progress and all
will work jointly to strengthen
the mother country at home as
well as abroad with the same
enthusiasm with which a young
man returns to cultivate his
father’s farmland so long
devastated and abandons due
to the negligence of those who
had alienated it.
Filipinas Dentro a Cien Años
 Teodoro Agoncillo
(History of the Filipino People, 1960; The Revolt of the
Masses, 1956)

 Renato Constantino
(The Philippines: A Past Revisited, 1975; The Continuing
Past, 1976)

crucial period in our history is the 19th c. nationalist

movement: The Philippine Revolution
Who defines the nationalist
perspective?
Reform : Revolution

Ilustrados: Masses

Liga Filipina: Katipunan

RIZAL: BONIFACIO

basic class antagonism

Pintura ni Carlos “Botong” V. Francisco
 accepted Agoncillo’s essentialist
characterizations
 masses possessed a revolutionary
consciousness born of praxis under colonial
oppression
 ilustrados provided a coherent political theory
to the inchoate revolutionary consciousness of
the “inarticulate masses” (European liberalism)
 Katipunan efforts thwarted by reformism and
collaborationist politics of the ilustrados
 Rizal as the prime example of this counter-
revolutionary class
 “Veneration without Understanding”:

Filipino’s misplaced veneration of Rizal as key factor

in the lack of understanding and disregard of the
Philippine Revolution
 What are the historical facts?

 How was Rizal read in the nineteenth

century and the Philippine Revolution?
 Of all the nineteenth century heroes, why was
Rizal the most venerated in the nationalist
movement?
 What was it in Rizal’s life and work that struck
a chord in the popular imagination?
 What was Rizal’s nationalist agenda? How was
it received by the revolutionaries?
 Were the Liga and the Katipunan perceived as
ideologically and strategically opposed
organizations?
 Did the revolutionaries perceive Rizal as an
assimilationist and opposed to the
Revolution?
 Did they perceive Reform and Revolution as
opposed political agendas (the way the Left
in contemporary times take them to be?)
 Setsuo Ikehata: Ileto’s as a challenge to the
dominant Agoncillo-Constantino
paradigm
 Rizal’s opposite and irreconcilable “texts”:
1. Liberal reformist (modern, elite)
2. “Tagalog Christ” (peasant folk)

 Rizal assimilated into the “realm of the familiar” (in

terms of the Pasyon idiom)
 Ikehata: Constantino could not think of
“ideology” or “theory” except in its “Western
European modern rationalized” sense
 Ikehata: Katipunan suffused with a pre-
existent worldview that articulated
liberation using the language and
structure and logic of the Pasyon
 “independence” ≠ “kalayaan”
 Ileto reproduced Agoncillo’s dichotomy in a
non-Marxist paradigm
 dichotomization, homogenization
 Are there no conflicts within each of the
classes?
 Ideological struggles
 struggle within classes, between power blocs
(Gramsci)
 misconception: del Pilar, Jaena, Rizal had the
same political agenda
 Rizal and Bonifacio
1861-1882 : Calamba, Biñan, Ateneo, Gomburza,
imprisonment of Teodora Alonzo,
whipping incident

1882-1887 : European sojourn, Enlightenment

education, medical studies, patriotism
Noli me tangere

1887-1888 turning point: Calamba Hacienda Case

1888-1892: second sojourn – radicalization;
historical, ethnological, and
linguistic studies; Indios Bravos;
break with del Pilar and Soli; El
Filibusterismo

1892-1896: Rizal and the Revolution; Liga

Filipina; Exile to Dapitan;
Katipunan, arrest and
martyrdom
 Critical examination of his correspondences
(1887-1892) show that Rizal was a subversive.
 A different Rizal from what the Americans
and Constantino constructed and propagated
 Correspondences (Critical Hermeneutics):

1. Reform or Revolution?
2. Calamba Hacienda Case
3. break with del Pilar
as early as 1887, Rizal had
expressed that independence
through peaceful struggle is
impossible and that seeking
assimilation was a mistake
 The Filipinos had long wished
for Hispanization and they were
wrong in aspiring for it.
It is Spain and not the Philippines who
ought to wish for the assimilation of the
country.

(Letter of 21 Feb. 1887; Rizal-Blumentritt, 52)

A peaceful struggle shall always be a dream, for
Spain will never learn the lesson of her South
American colonies… But under the present
circumstances, we do not want separation from
Spain. All that we ask is greater attention, better
education, better government, one or two
representatives, and greater security for our
persons and our properties. Spain could always win
the appreciation of Filipino if she were only
reasonable. But, quos vult perdere Jupiter, prius
dementat!

(Letter of 26 Jan 1887; Rizal-Blumentritt, 44)

 Was Rizal
COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY?
I can assure you that I have no desire to take
part in conspiracies which seem to me
premature and risky to the extreme. But if the
government drives us to it, that is to say, when
there remains to us no other hope than to seek
ruin in war, when all Filipinos prefer to die
rather than to endure their miseries any
longer, then I too shall advocate violent
means.

Letter of June 19, 1887; Rizal-Blumentritt

 Campaignfor reforms and the struggle for
independence are not mutually exclusive.

 From 1887-1892: Rizal had no illusions about

the Reform Movement though he appreciated
its tactical value.
I believe that only intelligence can redeem us, in the
material and in the spiritual… Parliamentary
representation will be a burden on the Philippines
for a long time. If our countrymen felt otherwise
than they do, they should reject any offer of such
representation but, the way we are, with our
countrymen indifferent, representation is good. It is
better to be tied in the ankles than elbow to elbow,
What can we do!

(Letter to del Pilar of April 1890)

The propaganda for assimilation is necessary but
separatist propaganda should be even more active for
the practical thing is to seek adherents in shaking off
the yoke [of Spain entirely] since we would not obtain
[assimilation] and even if we did (which is almost
impossible) we would work for independence,
banding together, making ourselves into apostles to
gain men and money…

(Antonio Luna to Rizal, Jan. 1892)

 Rizal: the root of the problem
was colonialism itself
 In the long run, independence,
not assimilation
 Filipinos should work for the
enlightenment of the Filipinos in
the Philippines.
 In the Noli, prior to 1887, he
still hoped for an enlightened
government.
 Publication of the Noli
Me Tangere (1887)
 Calamba Hacienda Case
(1888-1891)
 Manifestation of 1888