RIZAL IN THE CONTEXT OF THE 19TH CENTURY

(excerpt from Engaging Rizal, 2018 by: Pinas, Abordo, Torres, Distor, Balbin)

Rizal and the Early Nationalist Climate

The decade following the Cavite Mutiny of 1872 saw Rizal engaged in his medical studies in
Madrid. Yet that was only a cloak for more noble purposes for the country. It was an intensely
radicalized period in Europe. Benedict Anderson in his book “Under Three Flags: anarchism and the anti-
colonial imaginations” declares that between 1880 and 1890, Europe and the United States have been
wobbled by series of spectacular assassinations directed against heads of states, high-ranked military
officers, reactionary authorities and capitalists who are regarded as class enemies by despairing bomb-
throwing radical anarchist and nihilists led by Kropotkin and Bakunin. The goal of this terrorist-inspired
state of lawlessness is to intimidate their class enemies and “animate the oppressed to re-prepare
themselves for revolution.”

Jose Rizal mulled over this historic drama unfolding before his own eyes, presumably in rapt
admiration for the audacity of the youth that carried out such shocking deeds of heroism. Also trending
at this time was Alfred Nobel’s industrial explosives, a novelty at the time, which was used by these
radicals to accomplish their avowed purposes. This tone of the time was underscoredheavily in Rizal’s
second novel using Simoun’s scheme as vehicle. Simoun attempted to blow up the aristocratic house of
Kapitan Tiago where the distinguised spaniards honored the wedding reception of Paulita Gomez
through nitroglycerine bomb. His stay in Europe exposed Rizal as well to the different works of social
realists such as Chateaubriand, Daudet, Dumas, Hugo, Lesage, Sue, Voltaire and Zola—for France;
Bulwer-Lytton, Defoe, Dickens and Thackeray—for England; Goethe and Hoffman for Germany; Manzoni
for Italy; Douwes Dekker—for the Netherlands; and Cervantes for Spain. The political ideas they hold
not only affected Rizal deeply but radicalized him more and hardened his outlook about the political
destiny of the Philippines.

Rizal’s time was deeply sopped in nationalist fervor. Capino, in his book Rizal’s Life, Works and Writings,
notes that in Europe, paticularly France, the reintroduction of the precept of popular sovereignty by the
seminal thinkers of the period—Rousseau, Voltaire and Montesquieu, among others—altered people’s
view markedly about political relationships. The kings ruled absolutely under the divine right, regarding
the people as their heritage. The king, not the people, was the State. This was aptly demonstrated in the
declaration of King Louis XVI’s shortly before the French revolution got underway, “l’etat, c’est moi” (I
am the state).This increasing shift in political thought made way for people to claim the State and its
destiny as their own.In the course of time the people’s loyalty and attachment shifted away from the
king to the land of their birth. Sovereignty, that is, the supreme power to govern the State, now belongs
to the people rather than lodged in their king. Now their rulers don’t rule absolutely anymore as they
used to under the divine right. The people now are the sovereign. Their rulers now governed on the
basis of the “free consent of the governed”. Nowhere is this uneasy convergence of the old and new
thought about political arrangements than it was sublimely and bloodily demonstrated in the revolution
staged by the French people in 1789. As the fires of revolution spread throughout Europe and resonated
across the Americas, in their ashes new independent nations were born. The spirit of nationalism
hencefort was in the rampage, and democratization of nations began its march. The rights of suffrage
have been adopted and later extended to women, elections are done through the instrumentality of the
ballots, slavery was abolished, nations now governed by popular representations.

Back in the Philippines, the worsening socio-political conditions combined with the long playing
carlist wars in Madrid were slowly, but surely, coming to a head. Spain was unstable politically. The
bitter and, at times bloody, rapid transition of administration in Madrid led to a sordid affair of
maladministration and corruption in the country. The rapid transition meant in the Philippines the quick
replacement of administrators before they could even work their program, if any, for the country at the
time they were beginning to be acquainted with the people and their culture. Hence sound policies were
never seen fully enforced because the administrator was recalled too soon. Others, aware that they will
be recalled sooner or later, took advantage to fatten their pockets before they could be supplanted by
yet another. Not having time sufficient enough to determine the fitness, if any, of their candidate
governors-generals and their long trail of hangers-on, the new regime in Spain was happy enough to
haul them off to the Philllipines to enjoy their brief incumbency before they could be replaced when a
new administration takes over the government in Madrid. This ugly backdrop was aptly captured in the
conversation between Lt. Guevarra and Crisostomo Ibarra as they were heading to the police
headquarter in the 4th chapter ofNoli Me Tangere.Capino hit the nail in the head when he said that dregs
of Spain became well-placed in the government of the Philippinesas in the case of ignorant barbers and
lackeysbeing appointed as provincial governors, rough sailors assigned as district judges and garrison
commanders.

The ugly picture of Philippine politics painted above has grotesquely meshed with the brewing
crisis in the religious department of the spanish colonial system both in Spain and in the Philippines—
the secularization of Philippine parishes.It was just a matter of time before this crisis becomes a full
blown war. Though the issue was religious in nature, the controversy however transmogrified into bitter
political rivalry between the religious or the friars on the one hand and the secular clergy on the other in
the matter of rights over Philippine parishes. But later in the second half of the 19 th century, the
controversy became even more politicized as the native clergy and filipino ilustrados fought for equality
of rights between Spaniards and Filipinos. Although the root and cause of the controversy be long and
complicated, this intra-church conflict later turned into one of the axles of filipino nationalism. The
controversy began as a resistance movement of the friars against the Bishop in his exercise of visitation
rights over the parishes within his diocese under the Patronato Real. The religious stubbornly resisted it
claiming what Schumacherin “Father Jose Burgos: A Documentary History”callsthe friars’ “corporate
freedom”. Where this right was insisted, the friars used the leverage of abandoning the parishes to keep
the bishops at bay. Almost always the bishops were forced to back down as there was at the time
insufficient number of priests, nor were there ordained priests among the seculars, to fill up the
churches abandoned by the friars. To settle the issue once and for all, a royal decree was issued under
Charles III to the eventual secularization of parishes and the training of filipino clergy. This point marked
the genesis of the Filipino clergy’s erratic sail into the ecclesiastical leadership role until their ship run
aground especially in the tempestuous political waters of the 19 th century.

The 19th century opened its gates for Spain with the Napoleonic invasion and held Madrid to its throat
and, consequently, if not simultaneously, with the declaration of independence of her colonies overseas.
The leaders of these independence movements are creoles the likes of Bolivar and San Martin of Latin
America. However, for Mexico, Peru and Ecuador, the leaders of these successful revolutions were
native priests. It was not long in coming that its chilling effects reverberated in the remaining colonies of
Spain including the Philippines. The Spaniards and the government began to suspect the seculars’ loyalty
and thus began to view them as threats to Spain’s imperial integrity. Thus the friars, the staunch enemy
of secularization, got their good break to exploit this messy affair to their advantage. As expected, they
pounded on the age-old issue of the seculars’ incompetence and their indeterminate loyalty as basis to
persuade the government to declare them unfit for the sacred office. The government in turn reversed
its policy on secularization. In its decree in 1826, Spain ordered that all parishes occupied by the secular
priest be turned over to the friars.

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

GREAT INDIVIDUALS AS AGENCIES OF CHANGE by Piotr Sztompka (1993) reappraises

the whole legacy of sociological thinking about change, from the classical to the
contemporary period while providing the intellectual tools necessary for a critical and
rational grasp of the times. The book covers the four grand visions of social and
historical change which have dominated the field since the 19th century: the
evolutionary, the cyclical, the dialectical, and the post-developmentalist.

RIZAL IN THE CONTEXT OF THE 19TH CENTURY PHILIPPINES in The Making of a Nation:
Essays on Nineteenth-Century Filipino Nationalism by John Schumacher (1991) centers
on the emergence of Filipino national consciousness in the second half of the
nineteenth century that extends from the beginnings of Filipino national awareness
with Father Jose Burgos to its full flowering in the revolution and the war in defense of
national independence against the Americans. The essays in the book represent the
thought of the author on key aspects of the process by which the Filipino people
formed themselves into a nation.

THE PROMISE IN THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION by C. Wright Mills (1959) talks

about the relationship between history and society: “Seeing how the unique historical
circumstances of a particular society affect people and also seeing how people affect
history at the same time.”

A decade later, the liberal government in Madrid dissolved all the religious orders in Spain and
had their property confiscated that, as a consequence, not a few of the friars migrated to the Philippines
in order to continue to lead their religious life here. Thus the deluge of religious coming from Spain
strengthened the policy of dispossessing the native priests of their parishes butonly to be handed over
to the friars—both to the mainstays and the newly-arrives. When Padre Pelaez and Padre Gomez
appeared in the scene, it was in the zenith of the controversy. The fight for secularization was a
promising one especially so that Pelaez fought from the position of high authority when he was
appointed as vicar-capitular of the archdiocese of Manila. When Pelaez perished in the devastating
earthquake of 1863, the fight was picked up by his young disciple, the 26-year old Padre Jose Burgos.

In a series of manifestos, Burgos, equally outspoken as his predecessor, ardently defended the
loyalty and competence of the native clergy proving that they are in no way inferior to the friars but
accused his enemies of illegally occupying the parishes in the Philippines pointing to the various royal
decrees and canon laws as basis of his polemics.Not regarding the exalted status of his detractors,
Burgos unmasked their pretentions, abuses, insurmountable wealth and immorality which were
violative of the virtues of their calling. Just as promising as the fight of Pelaez was for the rights of
Filipino clergy, Burgos took the fight a knot higher with a racial tone by calling himself a Filipino.

Yet the sweltering circumstancesobtaining in the country at the time came to a head when the
mutineers—not in anyway linked to the secularization nor were they related to the liberal elements in
Manila—seized the port of San Felipe in Cavite on the night of January 20, 1872.Burgos and his
colleagues in the movement were arrested, and the advancement of the native clergy flopped as a
result. With uncertain proofs of their guilt for masterminding the failed uprising, Burgos and his co-
accused Gomez and Zamora—known in history as GOMBURZA—were executed as shameless
filibusteros.

This was the context Rizal lived in. Years later, Rizal wrote the Noli Me Tangere to give the
martyrs of 1872 justice and to reenact, in a sense, what really transpired that sealed their fate. Then he
followed his novel with yet another novel, El Filibusterismo, and dedicate it to the memory of the three
martyred priests. The year was 1872, and the intervening period up to 1896 was intensely expended to
obtain the much needed reforms forthe country from Spain. Rizal found himslef in the middle of all
these. Towards the latter years, Rizal concluded thatall the efforts directed to Spainin order to obtain
these reforms, were an exercise in futility. While the other Filipinos remained fixated to the idea of
reforms to be eventually granted by Spain, Rizal however took a different path. He saw that it was time
to set the course for the eventual emancipation of the country from Spain.