TO THE YOUNG WOMEN OF MALOLOS

Framework:

 Background of the analysis

The story behind the letter to the young women of Malolos was written and
the people involved.
 Summary of the Letter
Includes the things emphasized in the letter
 Lessons Rizal wanted to portray
What Rizal wanted to express or the things Rizal wanted us to learn from
the letter.

BACKGROUND

“To the Young women of Malolos” is an essay written by Jose Rizal while he was in
London upon the request of Marcelo H. Del Pilar.

The women from Malolos Bulacan consists of 20 women all in all:

1. Eugenia M. Tanchangco
2. Agapita R. Tiongson
3. Aurea M. Tanchangco
4. Filomena O. Tiongson
5. Basilia V. Tantoco
6. Cecilia O. Tiongson
7. Teresa T. Tantoco
8. Feliciana O. Tiongson
9. Maria T. Tantoco
10. Alberta S. Uitangcoy
11. Elisea T. Reyes
12. Anastacia M. Tiongson
13. Juana T. Reyes
14. Basilia R. Tiongson
15. Leoncia S. Reyes
16. Paz. R. Tionson
 17. Olympia S. Reyes
18. Aleja R. Tiongson
19. Rufina T. Reyes
20. Mercedes R. Tiongson

The names you are seeing, are the names of the brave 20 women of Malolos.

Alberta S. Uitangcoy - Leader of the group was the one who handed the letter personally
to Governor-General Valeriano Weyler

The 20 young women, majority of whom were related to each other by blood or affinity
were from the principal mestizo Sangley clans of the town.

Tanchangco, Reyes, Tantoco, and Tiongson Families of combined native Chinese and
Spanish Ancestry

Although these women enjoyed a life of luxury, they opted to be educated rather than to
be contented with what society expected from them.

During the Philippine revolution against Spain, many of the aided the revolutionaries.
Some of them became the members of the cross Roja. (Red cross- at the time of the
Filipino-American war)

Others became the founding members of the Malolo’s committee of the Asociacion
Feminista de Filipinas 1906. -a national women’s organization aimed at improving the
welfare of women in all classes

December 12, 1888 - They presented a letter to Governor-General Valeriano Weyler

- Petitioned for permission to open a night school where they could study the Spanish
language under Teodoro Sandiko.

Teodoro Sandiko -

 A professor of Latin
 A Filipino lawyer and former Senator of the Philippines

The women of Malolos decided to learn the Spanish language because it was the
language of Politics and Society during that time.
Having heard the petition of the Filipinas, father Felipe Garcia - a Spanish parish priest
rejected the request for he thinks it is a threat that may cause emergence of ideas from
the Indios. This prompted governor-general Weyler to turn down the petition.

Although disheartened by the rejection, the 20 women of Malolos remain undeterred and
courageously continued for their agitation for the night school. The rejection didn’t stop
them in pursuing their rights or dreams for education. Their perseverance finally pave off
when they finally succeeded in obtaining the government’s approval but with the following
conditions

1. The funds will come from their own purse

2. Señorita Guadalupe Reyes should be their teacher

3. Morning School - classes will be held at daytime, not at night.

The establishment of a school out of the enduring efforts of the women to be educated in
Spanish was commended by several newspapers.

After hearing the women’s victory, Graciano Lopez Jaena in the column “Ecos de
Ultramar”, praised the women for their courage to present themselves to the governor-
general an action considered bold that time.

Right after the article was published in La Solidaridad, Jose Rizal, upon the request of
Marcelo H.del Pilar, wrote a letter in tagalog to the Women of Malolos commending them
for their daring action and bravery in their attempt to open a school where they could be
taught Spanish.

Rizal penned his writing on February 17, 1889 when he was in London. He sent the letter
to Del Pilar on February 22, 1889 for transmittal in Malolos.

FEBRUARY 22, 1889

Jose Rizal, upon the request of Marcelo H.del Pilar, wrote a letter to the Women of
Malolos commending them for their daring action and bravery in their attempt to open a
school where they could be taught Spanish.
Jose Rizal was greatly impressed by the fighting spirit that the young women of Malolos
had shown. In his letter, he expresses great joy and satisfaction over the battle they had
fought. In this portion of Rizal’s letter, it is obvious that his ultimate desire was for women
to be offered the same opportunities as those received by men in terms of education.
During those days young girls were not sent to school because of the universal notion that
they would soon only be taken as wives and stay at home with the children. Rizal,
however, emphasizes on freedom of thought and the right to education, which must be
granted to both boys and girls alike.
The establishment of a school out of the enduring efforts of the women to be educated in
Spanish was commended by several newspapers. Graciano Lopez Jaena in the column
"Ecos de Ultramar", praised the women because of their courage to present themselves to
the governor-general, an action considered bold that time.
Right after the article of Lopez Jaena was published in "La Solidaridad", Marcelo H. del
Pilar wrote from Barcelona to Jose Rizal in Madrid, on February 17, 1889, requesting
Rizal to write them a letter in Tagalog commending the bravery of the women and with
hopes that this valiant struggle against friar hegemony in the affairs of the Filipinos will
enthuse all compatriots. Hence, Rizal sent del Pilar on February 22, 1889 the letter written
in Tagalog for transmittal to the 20 young women of Malolos.
________
.
LETTER TO THE WOMEN OF MALOLOS
by JOSE P. RIZAL
London, February 22, 1889
TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN:
When I wrote the Noli Me Tangere I pondered long on whether or not courage was
a common virtue of the young women of the country. Though I searched my memory
diligently, though I recalled one by one all the young women I have known since
childhood, only a few conformed to the ideal I longed for. It is true that many were
endowed with sweet disposition, beautiful habits, gentle manners, modesty but withal
were mingled complete deference and obedience to every work and request of the so-
called fathers of the soul – as if the soul had any other father but God – due to excessive
goodness, humility, or perhaps ignorance. They are like withered plants, sowed and
grown in darkness. Though they may bloom, their flowers are without fragrance; though
they may bear fruit, their fruit has no juice.
However, now that news arrived here of what occurred in your town Malolos. I realized
that I was wrong, and my joy was beyond bounds. I should not be blamed, for I did not
know the town of Malolos nor its young women, except one Emilia and this one only by
name.
 Now that you have responded to our vehement clamor for public welfare; now that
you have shown a good example to you fellow young women who, like you, desire to have
their eyes opened and to be lifted from their prostration, our hope is roused, now we are
confident of victory. The Filipino woman no longer bows her head and bends her knees;
her hope in the future is revived; gone is the mother who helps to keep her daughter in the
dark, who educates her in self-contempt and moral annihilation. It is no longer the highest
wisdom to bow the head to every unjust order, the highest goodness to smile at an insult,
to seek solace in humble tear. You have found out that God’s command is different from
that of the priest, that piety does not consist in prolonged kneeling, long prayers, large
rosaries, soiled scapulars, but in good conduct, clean conscience and right thinking. You
have discovered that it is not goodness to be too obedient to every desire and request of
those who pose as little gods, but to obey what is reasonable and just, because blind
obedience is the origin of crooked orders and in this case both parties sin. The head of
the priest cannot say that he alone will be responsible for the wrong order because God
gave each one his own mind and his own conscience so that he can distinguish between
right and wrong. All are born without chains, free and no one can subject the will and spirit
of another. Why would you submit to another your noble and free thought? It is cowardice
and an error to believe that blind obedience is piety and arrogance to think and reflect.
Ignorance is ignorance and not goodness and honor. God, fountain of wisdom, does not
expect man, created in his image, to allow himself to be fooled and blinded. The gift of
reason with which we are endowed must be brightened and utilized. An example is the
father who gave each of his son a lamp to light his way in the darkness. Let them intensify
its flame, take care of it, not extinguish it to depend on the light of others, but to help one
another, seek each other’s counsel in the search of the way. He is exceedingly stupid and
he can be blamed if he stumbles in following somebody else’s light, and the father could
say to him: “What for did I give you a lamp of your own?” But one who stumbles by
following his own light cannot be greatly blamed because perhaps his light is dim or else
the road is very bad.
The usual reply of those who want to fool others is this: He who depends on his
own reason is arrogant. I believe that more arrogant is he who wishes to subject another’s
will and dominate all men. More arrogant is he who poses as God, who pretends to
understand every manifestation of God’s will. And exceedingly arrogant or blasphemous is
he who attributes to God everything he says and desires and makes his personal enemies
the enemies of God. We ought not to depend on ourselves solely. We should seek advice,
listen to others and do what we believe to be the most reasonable. The habit or the
cassock does not add anything to a man’s learning. Even if the wild mountaineer is
clothed in layers of habits, he remains wild and he cannot fool any other except the
ignorant and the ill-willed. So that this can be proven, buy a habit of St. Francis and put it
on a carabao. It would be lucky that with the habit on, he does not become lazy. Le me
leave this subject and talk about another.
Young womanhood, the nursery of fruitful flowers, ought to accumulate riches to
bequeath to its descendants. What could the offspring be of a woman whose virtue is to
murmur prayers, whose only knowledge is derived from awit, novena, prayer-books,
miraculous tales intended to fool men, with no other recreation but panguingue or frequent
confessions of the same sins. What sons would she have but sacristans, servants of the
curate, or devotees of cockfighting? The present enslavement of our compatriots is the
work of our mothers because of the absolute confidence of their loving hearts and of their
great desire to improve the lot of their children. Maturity is the fruit of childhood and
childhood is in the lap of the mother. The mother who teaches nothing else but how to
kneel and kiss the hand should not expect any other kind of children but stupid ones or
oppressed slaves. A tree that grows in the mire is either light or only fit for firewood. Of by
chance there should be a bold one, his boldness is concealed and he will use it for evil,
like the dazed bat which cannot forth until it is twilight. The common reply is that foremost
are piety and love of God. But, what is the piety that they have taught us? To pray and
kneel a long time, kiss the hand of the priest, spend all the money on the church, and
believe whatever occurs to them to tell us. Chatter, callous knees, rubbing of the
nose . . . . With the regard to church alms, using God as the pretext, is there anything in
the world which does not belong to and is the creation of God? What would you say to a
servant who gives to his master alms consisting of a piece of rag borrowed from the same
rich master? Who is the vain and foolish man who will give alms to God and believe that
his miserable gift will clothe the Creator of all things? Blessed is he who gives the needy,
helps the poor, and feeds the hungry , but cursed and censurable is he who is deaf to the
entreaties of the poor, who stuffs those who are satiated, and lavishes his money on silver
hangings for the altar, on alms of the church or the friar who is swimming in riches, on
Masses with music and rockets, while he squeezes this money form the bones of the poor
and offers it to the master with which to by the chains to bind him and to pay his
executioners. Oh, blindness and shortsightedness.
 True piety is obedience to what is right, happen what may. “Deeds and not words
are what I ask of you”, said Christ. “He is not the son of my father, my father, but her who
lives according to the will of the father.” Piety does not consist in a worn-out nose nor in
Christ’s successor known for giving his hand to be kissed. He did not fatten the rich and
proud scribes. He did not mention scapulars, he did not require the wearing of rosaries,
he did not ask money for Masses, and he did not charge for saying prayers. St. John did
not ask to be paid for baptizing on the Jordan River nor Christ for preaching. Why is it that
now priests ask to be paid for every move they make? And still hungry, they sell
scapulars, rosaries, belts, and other things to entice money and to hurt the soul; because
even if you wear a scapular all the rags on earth, wear as rosaries all the wood in the
forests, gird around your waist all the skin of animals and over all of them all the priests in
the world take pains to make the sign of the cross and to murmur prayers, and sprinkle
them with all the water of the sea, they cannot cleanse the dirty heart, they cannot absolve
the unrepentant of sins. Likewise, for their covetousness they forbid many things, such as
eating meat, marrying one’s cousin, compadre, and the like, which however are permitted
if one pays. Why, can God be bought and is He dazzled by money like the priests? The
thief who pays for a bull for composition can rest assured that he has been forgiven.
Therefore, God wants to partake of stolen goods? Is it true that God is so needy that He
imitates the carabineer or the civil guard? If this is the God that the friars worship, I turn
my back to such a God.
Let us be reasonable and open our eyes, especially you women, because you are
the ones who open the minds of men. Consider that a good mother is different from the
one created by the friars. Raise your children close to the image of the true God – the God
who cannot be bribed, the God who is not avaricious, the God who is the father of all, who
is not partial, the God who does not fatten on the blood of the poor, who does not rejoice
at the plaint of the afflicted, and does not obfuscate the intelligent mind. Awaken and
prepare the mind of the child for every good and desirable idea – love for honor, sincere
and firm character, clear mind, clean conduct, noble action, love for one’s fellow men,
respect for God – teach this to your children. And because life is full of sorrows and perils,
fortify their character against any difficulty, strengthen their hearts against any danger.
The country should not expect honor and prosperity so long as the education of the
children is defective, so long as the women who raise the children are enslaved and
ignorant. Nothing can be drunk in a turbid and bitter spring. No sweet fruit can be picked
from a sour seed.
 Important indeed are the duties that women must fulfill in order to relieve the
country of her sufferings, but they are not beyond the strength and character of the
Filipino woman to perform. Everybody knows the power and the prudence of the women
of the Philippines. Hence they blind them, chain them, weaken their spirit, so sure are they
that so long as the mother is a slave, all her children can be enslaved also. This is the
reason of the enslavement of Asia: the women of in Asia are ignorant and oppressed.
Europe and America are powerful because there the women are free and educated, their
mind is lucid and their character is strong.
We know that you lack instructive books; we realize that nothing is injected into
your mind daily except what will serve to dim your inherent light. We are aware of all this
so that we are endeavoring to make the light that is shining over your fellow women in
Europe reach you. If you will not be bored with these few words that we are going to say
and you will read them, perhaps no matter how thick the fog that envelops our country, the
brilliant light of the sun will penetrate it and it will shine however faintly. We shall not falter
if you help us. God will help us to dispel the mist for He is the God of Truth; and the former
brilliance of the Filipino woman will be restored undiminished. She lacks nothing but a free
mind, for she had an excess of goodness.
Such is the longing that is constantly in our thoughts, that we dream of – the honor
of the woman who is the partner of our heart, who shares our happiness and our
misfortune. If she is a young woman, let the young man love her not only for her beauty or
the sweetness of her disposition but also for the firmness of her character, her lofty ideas
that invigorate and encourage the weak and timorous man or arouse brilliant ideas. That
she may be a young woman of whom the country can be proud, a young woman of who
inspires respect. It is the common talk here among Spaniards and friars who came from
there that the Filipino woman is weak and ignorant, as if all were weak because some
have fallen; as if in other countries there were no women of weak character, whereas in
fact the Filipino women possess more virtue than those of other countries. Nevertheless,
the Spaniards and the friars who return to Spain, perhaps because of the looseness of
their tongues, broadcast first of all in print and by word of mouth, accompanied by shouts,
laughter and insults that So and So was like that in the convent, like that to a Spanish
houseguest, and many other things that are irritating whenever we remember that many of
the failings are due to naïveté, excessive kindness, meekness, or blindness, which is their
work. There is a Spaniard here, who is now an important personage, whom we fed and
housed during the time he was wandering about the Philippines. As soon as he came
back to Spain, he had it published that once he sought hospitality in Pampanga. He ate
and slept there and the lady of the house was this and that to him. This was how he
returned the kind hospitality of the lady. Likewise the returned friar regaled his Spanish
callers with stories about his obedient hand-kissers and other things accompanied with
smiles and significant winks. In the book published by Mr. Sinbaldo de Mas and in other
books written by friars are related the sins confessed by women, which the friars did not
keep secret, recounting them to their Spanish callers and embellishing them at times with
incredible tall and lewd stories. I cannot repeat her what a friar unashamedly told Mas he
could not believe. Every time we hear or read about these things we ask if the Spanish
women are Holy Marys and all Filipino women are sinners. However, if it should come to a
point of settling accounts and exposing, perhaps . . . But let me abandon the subject for I
am not a father confessor nor a Spanish house-guest who destroys the honor of his hosts.
I lay this aside and continue relating the duties of women.
In countries were women are respected as in the Philippines, they ought to
recognize their true position so that they may be able to perform the duties expected of
them. An old custom was that when an student went courting, he threw away everything –
studies, honor, money – as if a young women sowed nothing but evil. The bravest when
he got married, became a coward; the coward became shameless, as if he were waiting
only to get married before proclaiming his own cowardice. The son had no other excuse
for his pusillanimity except his concern for his mother, and because of this he swallowed
gall, endured blows, obeyed the most idiotic order, and he became an accomplice of
traitors. It must be known that when no one flees, there will be nor pursuer; if there are no
small fish there will be no big ones. Why does not a young woman ask of the man she is
going to love for a noble and honorable name, a manly heart that can permit him to be the
father of slaves? Instill in his mind activity, noble behavior, worthy sentiments, and don not
surrender your young womanhood to a weak and timid heart. When she becomes a wife,
she should help her husband in every difficulty, encourage him, share with him all perils,
console him and drive away his woes, always bearing in mind that a heroic heart can
endure any suffering and no legacy is bitter as the legacy of infamy and slavery. Teach
your children to guard and love their honor, to love their fellowmen, their native land, and
to perform their duties. Tell them repeatedly to prefer death with honor to life with
dishonor. They should imitate the women of Sparta and here I am going to cite some
examples.
 When a mother handed the shield to her son who was going to war, this was all
she said to him: “Bring this back or they bring you back”, meaning “You come back a
victor or you die” because it was the custom to throw away the shield of the fleeing
vanquished warrior or bring back his corpse on top of the shield. A mother heard that her
son was killed in the war and the army was defeated. She said nothing but gave thanks
that her son had been saved from ignominy; but when her son came back alive, upon
seeing him, she put on mourning. A warrior told a mother who had gone out to meet the
returning heroes that her three sons had been killed in the war. “That is not what I am
asking”, the mother replied, “but, did we win or did we lose?” The hero replied, “We won.”
If that is so, let us give thanks to God!” she said, and she went to the temple.
Once a defeated king of theirs hid in the temple for fear of popular indignation. The
Spartans agreed to close him up and starve him. When they sealed the door, the mother
was the first to bring stones. These customs were common among them and therefore all
GreeceSparta, no enemy was able to set foot on her soil and no Spartan woman ever saw
an enemy army. respected the Spartan women. “Of all women”, remarked one, “only you
Spartan women wield power over men.” “Of course”, replied the Spartan women, “of all
women we alone give birth to real men.” Men, said Spartans are nor born to live for
themselves but for their country. So long as this manner of thinking and this type of
women prevailed in
I do not expect to be believed because I say it. Many people do not respect reason and
truth, but the priest’s habit, gray hair, or lack of teeth. But if old age is venerable because
of hard experience, my past life though a short one, dedicated to the welfare of the
country, also has given me some experience. Far be it from me to compel others to
believe me, to pretend to be a little god, a successor of God, to expect people to take my
word with closed eyes, bowed head, and folded arms. What I ask is for all to think, to
reflect and meditate, investigate and shift in the name of reason the following that I am
going to state:
First and foremost. Some become treacherous because of cowardice and
negligence of others.
Second. Lack of self-respect and excessive timidity invite scorn.
Third. Ignorance is bondage, because like mind, like man. A man without will of his
own is a man without personality. The blind who follows other’s opinion is like a beast led
by a halter.
 Fourth. One who wants to help himself should help others, because if he neglects
others, he too will be neglected by them. One mid-rib is easy to break, but not a bundle of
many mid-ribs, tied together.
Fifth. If the Filipino woman will not change, she should not be entrusted with the
education of her children. She should only bear them. She should be deprived of her
authority in the home; otherwise she may be unwittingly betray her husband, children,
country and all.
Sixth. Men are born equal, naked, and without chains. They were not created by
God to be enslaved, neither were they endowed with intelligence in order to be misled,
nor adorned with reason to be fooled by others. It is not pride to refuse worship a fellow
man, to enlighten the mind, and to reason out everything. The arrogant one is he who
wants to be worshipped, who misleads others, and wants his will to prevail over reason
and justice.
Seventh. Analyze carefully the kind of religion taught you. Find out if that is the
command of God or the teaching of Christ for alleviating the suffering of the poor, for
comforting those in pain. Consider everything taught you, the aim in every sermon, the
underlying reason for every Mass, novena, rosary, scapular, image, miracle, candle belt,
and other things that are forced upon you, dinned daily into your ears and dangled before
your eyes, and discover the beginning and their end, and then compare that religion with
the pure religion of Christ, and see if your Christianity is not like the milking animals or like
the pig that is being fattened, nor for its own sake, but in order to see it at a price and
make money out of it.
Let us reflect then, study our situation, and ponder. May these few loose lines serve as an
aid to your natural intelligence and enable you to proceed along the path on which you
have started.
Tubo ko’y dakila sa puhunang pagod, and I shall welcome whenever may happen,
the usual reward for anyone who dares to tell the truth in our country. May you realize
your desire to learn and may you not gather in the garden of knowledge the unripe fruit
but select what you pick, think about it, taste it before swallowing it, for on the face of the
earth all are mixed and it is not unusual for the enemy to sow weeds together with the
good seeds in the middle of the field.
This is the sincere wish of your compatriot.
JOSE RIZAL
 Rizal’s letter is his way of recognition to the brave Filipinas who are no longer
blinded by the fraud religion belief. It is not only addressed to the young women, but also
to all Filipino women. He want to express his wishes to keep them in mind.

Rizal emphasized to his letter

- The rejection of the spiritual authority of the friars. - not all of the priest that time
embodied the true spirit of Christ and His church.

- The defense of private judgement. - Do not consult our opinion alone, but hear the
opinion of others.

- Equal right to education. - (One of the highlights of his letter) desire for woman to be
offered the same opportunities as those received by men in terms of education. He
believed that everyone has the right to education.

- Qualities of mothers to have a possess.-

For married women

- Aid their husband

-refrain from causing their husband to worry

-sweeten their husband’s moments of affliction

- Role of woman in the family. - duties and responsibilities of Filipino mother’s to their
children and duties and responsibilities of a wife to her husband.

- The teachings of priest vs. the teaching of God.

- Advice to the married and unmarried Filipinos.

“Appearance and looks can be deceiving”

For Young men

-Firmness of character

-Superior ideas rather than physical beauty and sweetness of disposition

 For Young women

- noble and honored name

- manly heart

- a high spirit incapable of being satisfied with engendering slaves

LESSONS RIZAL WANTED TO PORTRAY

Analysis:
Salient points
“To the Women of Malolos” centers around five salient points (Zaide &Zaide, 1999):
1. Filipino mothers should teach their children love of God, country and fellowmen.
2. Filipino mothers should be glad and honored, like Spartan mothers, to offer their
sons in defense of their country.
3. Filipino women should know how to protect their dignity and honor.
4. Filipino women should educate themselves aside from retaining their good racial
values.
5. Faith is not merely reciting prayers and wearing religious pictures. It is living the
real Christian way with good morals and manners.

Rizal’s Letter to the young women of Malolos as we know is addressed to 20 courageous

young women of Malolos for their perseverance to pursue the establishment of a night
school where they can study Spanish. He emphasizes the importance of women and
mothers and how the country's future lay in their hands. And in the last paragraph of letter,
Rizal summarizes the lesson he wanted to portray. He asked the women to reflect and
ponder the seven sieves of reason. One of these seven sieves of reason is “Consider well
what kind of religion is being taught you”, a very deep one that serves as an important
reminder and at the same time somehow a warning. It speaks that we need to be
remindful and to analyze carefully the kind of religion taught to us.

DR. JOSE RIZAL'S ANNOTATION TO MORGA'S 1609 SUCESOS DE LAS ISLAS FILIPINAS

(Reviewer)
Brief information about Sucesos De Las Islas Filipinas and Don Antonio de Morga SUCESOS DE
LAS ISLAS FILIPNAS

(EVENTS IN THE FILIPINAS ISLANDS)

Dedicated to Don Cristoval Gomez de

Sandoval y Rojas, Duke of Cea by Doctor Antonio
de Morga, Acalde of Criminal causes, in the Royal
Audiencia of Nueva España, and Counsel for the
holy Office of the Inquisition.

Published in Mexico at the shop of

Geronymo Bali, in the Year 1609 by Comelio
Adriano Cesar.

The work consists of eight chapters:

1. Of the first discoveries of the Eastern islands

2. Of the government of Dr. Francisco de Sande

3. Of the govern ment of Don Gonzalo Ronquillo de Peñalosa

4. Of the govemment of dr. Santiago de Vera

5. Of the government of Gomes Perez Dasmariñas

6. Of the govemment of Don Francisco Tello

7. Of the government of Don Pedro de Acuña

8. An account of the Philippine Islands.

The first seven chapters mainly concemed the political events which occurred in the
colony during the terms of the first eleven governors-general in the Philippines, beginning
with Miguel Lopez de Legazpi in 1565 to Pedro de Acufña who died in 1606. For present-day
Filipinos chapter eight is the most interesting, because it gives a description of the pre-
Hispanic Fiipinos, or rather the indios, at the Spanish contact. This same chapter was
indispensable for Rizal, not only for its
ethnographic value but more to help him reconstruct the pre-Hispanic Philippines which
Rizal wanted to present to his countrymen.

The original Spanish text of 1609 had never been reprinted in full until the
annotated Rizal edition came off the press of Garnier Hermanos in Paris in 1889. After
the Rizal edition, there was a magnificent edition by Wenceslao Retana, which saw print
in 1909.

In the Philippines, Rizaľ's Morga was reissued in photo-offset reproduction only in

1958, by which time few Filipinas knew or cared for books in Spanish. An English
translation of Rizaľ's Morga was
commissioned and published by the
Jose Rizal National Centennial
Commission in 1961.

DON ANTONIO DE MORGA

Morga combined the three

functions of historian, poltician and
soldier, and his character is many sided
and complex He is spoken in high terms as
an historian, and Rizal as well as Bumentit,
exats him above all other historians of the
Philippines

Antonio de Morga was bom in

1559 in Seville. He graduated from the University of Salamanca in 1574 and in 1578 attained a
doctorate in Canon Law. He taught briefly in Osuna, later returning to Salamanca to study Civil
Law. In 1580, he joined the government service and was appointed in 1593 to Manila as
Lieutenant Govemor, the second most powerful position in the colony, next only to the
Governor General of the Philippines. In 1598 he resigned this post to assume the office of oidor
or judge in the Audiencia.
 Morga's fame came in 1600 when he was put in charge of the Spanish fleet
against a Dutch invasion under Olvier van Noort Although the Dutch sailed away, the
Spaniards lost heavily, and cording to Morga, he had jumped ship and swam ashore
with nothing but the enemy standard in his hand. The Dutch account of the batte
descrnbes Morga hiding and crying in his flagship before it sank. Morga's reputaion in
the colony sank, like his flagship, and in 1603 he was transferred to Mexico. From
Mexico, Morga was moved to Quto in 1615 where he was the president of the
Audiencia. He found himself in trouble and was investigated for comuption and
eventualy found guity. However, he escaped humiliation and the gallows, by dying in
1636, because the case was WOLnd up.

DR. JOSE RIZAL'S ANNOTATION TO MORGA'S 1609 SUCESOS DE LAS

ISLAS FILIPINAS

“To the Filipinos: In Noli Me Tangere I started to sketch the present state of our native
land. But the effect which my effort produced made me realize that, before attempting to
unroll before your eyes the other pictures which were to follow, it was necessary first to
post you on the past. So only can you fairly judge the present and estimate how much
progress has been made during the three centuries (of Spanish rule). Like almost all of
you, I was born and brought up in ignorance of our country’s past and so, without
knowledge or authority to speak of what I neither saw nor have studied, I deem it
necessary to quote the testimony of an illustrious Spaniard who in the beginning of the
new era controlled the destinies of the Philippines and had personal knowledge of our
ancient nationality in its last days.

It is then the shade of our ancestor’s civilization which the author will call before you. If
the work serves to awaken in you a consciousness of our past, and to blot from your
memory or to rectify what has been falsified or is calumny, then I shall not have labored
in vain. With this preparation, slight though it may be, we can all pass to the study of the
future,

-Rizal in Europe in 1889.

 Governor Antonio de Morga was not only the first to write but also the first to publish a
Philippine History.
 Father Chirino's work, printed at Rome in 1604, is rather a chronicle of the Missions
than a History of the Philippines but still it contains a great deal of valuable material on
wages and customs. The worthy Jesuits in fact admits that he abandoned writing a
Political History because Morga had already done so, so one must infer that he had
seen the work in manuscript before leaving the islands.
 By the Christian Religion, Doctor Morga appears to mean the Roman Catholic
which by fire and sword he would preserve in its purity in the Philippines.

 Great kingdom were indeed discovered and conquered in the remote and unknown
parts of the world by Spanish ships.
 Three centuries ago, it was the custom to write as intolerantly as Morga does
but nowadays it would be called a bit presumptuous. No one has a
monopoly of the true God nor is there any nation or religion that can claim.
 The conversions by the Spaniards were not as general as their historian claims.
 It is not the fact that the Filipinos were unprotected before the coming of the
Spaniards.
 The civilization of the Pre-spanish Filipinos in regard to the duties of life for that age
was well advanced.
 According to some historians, Magellan lost his life on Mactan, and the soldiers of
Legaspi fought under the banner of King Tupas of Cebu.
 The islands came under Spanish sovereignty and control through compacts, threaties of
friendship and alliances for reciprocity.
 The term "conquest" is admissible but for a part of the islands and then only on its
broadest sense. Cebu, Panay, Luzon Mindoro and some others cannot be said to have
been conquered.
 Conquest and conversion cost spanish blood but still more Filipino blood. With the
Spaniards and on behalf of Spain there were always more Filipinos fighting than
Spaniards.
 Morga shows that the ancient Filipinos had army and navy with artillery and other
implements of warfare.

Their prized krises and kamplians for their magnificent temper are worthy of
admiration and some of them are richly damascened.

Their coats of mail and helmets of which there are specimens in various
European Museums, attest their great advancement in this industry.

 Morga's expression that the Spaniards are the one who "brought war to the gates of
the Filipinos" .Perhaps, "to make peace" then meant the same as "to stir up war". (This
is a velled allusion to the Old Latin saying of Romans often quoted by Spaniards that
they made a desert, calling it making peace.)
 Magellan's transferring from the service of his own king to employment under the King
of Spain. According to historic documents, Portuguese King had refused to grant
Magellan's request to raise his salary.
 Magellan was mistaken when he represented to the King of Spain that the Molluca
Islands were within the limits assigned by the Pope to the Spaniards. But because of this
error, the Philippines did not fell into the hands of the Portuguese.
 The city of Cebu, which Morga calls " The city of the Most Holy Name of Jesus"
was at first called " The village of San Miguel"

 The image of the Holy Child of Cebu was given by the worthy Italian Chronicles of
Magellan's Expedition, the Chevalier Pigafetta to Cebuan Queen.
 The expedition of Villalobor,intermediate between Magellan's and Legaspi's, gave the
name "Philipina" to one of the Southern Islands , Tendaya, now perhaps Leyte,then
eventually it was extended to the whole archiplego.
 Raja Soliman was called "Rahang Mura" or Young King, in distinction from the
Old King "Rahang Matanda".
 Morga has evidently confused about the pacific coming of Legaspi with the attack of
Goiti and Salcedo. Other historians believed that the Manila wad burned in 1570 and it has a
great plant for manufacturing artillery. But accordingly it was on May 20th
when Legaspi arrived in Manila, not on the 19th of May. It was not on the festival of
Santa Potenciana but rather on San Baudelio’s day.
 The Cebuans aided the Spaniards in their expedition against Manila, for the reason of
they were exempted from the tribute.
 The Bisayas were called as “ The land of the Painted People” (Pintados in Spanish) it is
called tattooing that was made in fire.
 The Tagalog’s called their City as “Maynila”.
 Morga uttered that the lands were “entrust” (given as encomiendas) he means “divided
up among”. The word “en trust” means “pacify.
 Salcedo is Legaspi’s Grandson who died at the early age of 27. He is called as the
Hernando Cortez of the Philippines— his duty as “conqueror’s” intelligent right arm and
the hero of the “conquest”. He is making peace and friendship with the Spaniards. He
save Manila from Li Ma-hong.
 The Chinese corsair Li Ma-hong had an unsuccessful attack upon Manila to Pangasinan
Province.
 The Spanish governors are strict. Some stayed in Manila as Prisoners.
 A fruitless expedition happened against the Portuguese in the Island of Ternate in the
Molucca group was abandoned.
 The “pacification” of Kagayan was accomplished by taking advantage the jealousies
among its people.
 Captain Gabriel de Sivera, a Spanish Commander who gained fame in a raid on Borneo
and Malacca coast.
 The conspiracy of Manila and Pampangan former chief was revealed by a Filipina to the
Spaniards.
 According to Morga, the artillery cast for the New Stone fort in Manila was handed by
an ancient Filipino.
 The Mexican Galleon Santa Ana was captured by the English freeboother Cavendish with
122,000 gold pesos, a great quantity of rich textiles-skills, satins and damask, musk
perfume and store of provisions and he took 150 prisoners.
 Earliest Spanish days, ships were built in the islands. It is considered as an evidence of
native culture.
 Father Alonso Sanchez, A Jesuit. He visited papal court at Rome and the Spanish King at
Madrid. Has a mission and came to be a counsellor or representative.
 Governor Gomez Perez Dasmarinias' time, Manila was guarded against further damages
, suffered from Li Ma-hong by the construction of a massive stone wall around it.
 The early cathedral of wood was burned through carelessness at the time of the funeral
of Governor Ronquillo. According to Jesuit historian Chirino, it was made with hardwood
pillars around which two men could not reach. From this, it may surmised how hard
workers were the Filipinos at that time.
 A stone house for the bishop was built before starting on the governor-general's
residence. This precedence is interesting for those who uphold the civil power . Morga's
mention of the scant output of large artillery from the Manila cannon works because of
lack of master foundrymen shows that after the death of the filipino Panday Pira there
were not spaniards skilled enough to take his place , nor where his sons as expert as he.
 China Japan and Cambodia at this time maintained relations with the Philippines. But in
our day it has been more than a century since the natives of the latter two countries
have come here. The causes which ended the relationship may be found in the
interference by the religious orders with the institutions of those lands.
 For Governor Dasmarinas's expedition to conquer Ternate, in the Moluccan group, two
Jesuits there gave secret information. In his 200 boats, other than 900 spaniards there
probably been Filipinos chronicler speaks of indians, as the Spaniards called the native of
the philippines who lost their lives and other people who were made captives when the
chinese rowers mutinied it was the custom always to have at least 1,000 native bowmen
besidesthe group are nearly Filipinos, generally Bisayans.
 The historian Argensola, in telling off for special gaileys for expedition say that they were
manned by an expedient which was generally considered rather harsh. It
 was ordered that there be bought enough of the indians who were slaves of the
former indian chiefs or principalos, to form these crews, and the price, that which
had been customary in pre-Spanish times, was to be advanced by the
encomederos who later would be reimbursed from the royal treasury. In spite of
this promised compensation, the measure still seemed severe since those
Filipinos were not correct in calling their dependents slaves. The masters treated
these, and loved them, like sons rather, for they seated them at their own tables
and gave them their own daughter in marriage.
 Morga says that the 250 oarsman who manned Governot Dasmarinas' swift gallery were
under pay and had the special favor of not being chained to their benches. According to
him it was covetousness of the wealtg aboard that led them to revolt and kill the
governo, but tyr historian Gaspar de San Agustin states that the reason for the revolt
was the governor's abusive language and his threatening the rowers. Both these
authors' allegations may have contributed, but more important was tge fact that there
was no law to compel these chinamen to worow in the galleys. They had come to manila
to work in trades. The Filipinos have been much more long- suffering that the chinese
since, in spite of having been obliged to row on more than one occasion, they never
mutinied.
 It is difficult to excuse the missionaries' disregard of the laws of nations and the usages
of honorable politics in their interference in Cambodia that was to spread the faith.
Religion had a broad field awaiting it then in the Philippines where more than nine-
tenths of the natives were infidels. Truth is that the ancient activity was scarcely for the
faith alone because the missionaries had to go to islanda rich in spices and gold.
 Rodriguez de Figueroa attempted to conquer Mindanao, according to his contract with
the King of Spain, there was fighting along the Rio Grande by the Buhahayenes.
According to Argensola, the general was the celebrated Siilonga, and distinguished for
many deeds in raids on Bisayas and adjacent Island.
 Argensola has preserved the name of the Filipino who killed Rodriguez de Figueroa, it
was Ubal. Two days previously he had given banquet of beef animal of his own, and he
made the promise which he kept, to do away with the leader of
 the Spanish invaders. A Jesuit writer calls him a traitor through the justification
for that term of reproach is not apparent. The Buhahayrn people in their own
country never offended or declared war upon the Spaniards, they just had to
defend their homes against a powerful invader.
 The muskets used by the Buhahayens were probably from Figueroa's soldier who died in
battle. Though Philippines had lantalas and other artillery, muskets were unknown till
Spaniards came.
 Spaniards used the word " discover " very carelessly may be seen from an admiral's
turning in a report of his "discovery"of the solomon islands though he noted that the
islands had been discovered before
 Death has always been the first sign of European civilization on its introduction in the
Pacific Ocean, God grant that it may not be the last, though in statistocs, civilized islands
are losing their populations at a terrible rate.
 The Spanish historians of the Philippines never overlook any opportunity be it suspicion
or accident, that may twisted into something unfavorable to the Filipinos. They seem to
forget that in almost evey case the reason for the rupture has been some act of those
who were pretending to civilize helpless people by force of arms and at the cost of their
native land.
 The Japanese were in not error when they suspected the Spanish and Portuguese
religious propaganda to have political motives back to the mission any activities.
 A missionary record of 1625 sets forth that the King of Spain had arranged with certain
members of Philippine religion orders that undergoes of preaching the faith and making
Christian they should win over the Japanese and oblige them to make themselves of the
Spanish party; and finally in told of a plan where by the King of Spain should become
also King of Japan. Therefore it was not for religion what they were converting the
individuals.
 The raid by Daius Sali and Silonga of Mindanao, In 1599 sailing vessels and 3,000
warriors against the capital of Panay, is the first act piracy, by the inhabitants of the
South which is recorded in Philippines history it say "by the inhabitants of the South"
because earlier there had been other acts of piracy, the earliest being that
 of Magellan's expedition when it sealed the shipping of friendly islands and even
of those whom they did not know extorting for them heavy ransoms.
 Estimating that the cost of the islands was but 800 victims a year, still the total would be
more 200,000 person sold into slavery or killed all sacrificed together with so many
other things to the prestige of that empty title, Spanish sovereignty.
 Still the Spaniards say that the Filipinos have contributed nothing to Mother Spain and
that it is Island which one everything.
 In Morga's time, the Philippines exported silk to Japan hence now comes the best
quality of that merchandise.
 Morgas's view upon the failure of Governador Pedro de Acunia's ambitious expedition
against the Moro's unhappily still apply for the same conditions yet exist uprisings and
loss of Spain's sovereignty over the islands the inhabitants were disarmed, leaving them
exposed to the harassing of a powerful and dreaded enemy.
 The peaceful countryfolk are deprived of arms and thus made unable to defend
themselves against the bandits or tulisanes thus to make easy its getting booty.
 Hernando de los Rios blames there Moluccan wars for the fact that at first the
Philippines were a source of expense to Spain instead of profitable inspite of the
tremendous sacrifices of the Filipinos, their practically gratuitous labor in building and
equipping the gallons, and despite too, the tribute, tariffs and other imposts and
monopolies.
 True also is that it was to gain the Moluccas that Spain kept the Philippines the desire
for the rich spice islands being one of the most powerful arguments, when because of
their expense to him, the King thought of withdrawing and abandoning them.
 Among the filipinos who aided the goverment when the Manila Chinese revolted,
Argensola says there were 4,000 Pampangansarmed after the way of their land, with
bows and arrows, short lances, shields, and long daggers.
 The loss of two Mexican galleons in 1603 called forth no comment from the religious
chroniclers who were accustomed to see the avenging hand of God in the maisforturies
and accidents of their enemies.
  The filipino Chiefs who at their own expenses went with the Spanish expectation against
ternate, in the Moluccas, in 1605, Don Guillermo Palaot, Maestro de Campo, and
Captain Francisco Palaot, Juan Lit, Luis Lont, and Agustin Lont. They had with them 400
Tagalog and Pampamgas. The leaders bore themselves bravely for Argensola writes that
in the assault on Ternate, No officer Spaniard or India, went unscathed.
 Ancient traditions ascribe the origin of Malay Filipino to the Island of Sumatra.
 The cannon foundry mentioned by Morga as in the walled city was probably on the site
of the tagalog one which was destroyed by fire on the first coming of the Spaniards.
 The established in 1584 was in Lamayan, that is Santa Ana now, and was transferred to
the old site in 1950. It continued to work until 1805. According to Gaspar San Agustin.
The cannon which the Pre- Spanish Filipinos cast were As great as those of
Malaga,Spains foundry.
 Malate better Malat, was the tagalog aristocracy lived after they were dispossessed by
the Spaniards of their old home in what is now the walled city of Manila. Among the
malate residents were the families of Raja Matanda and Raja Soliman.
 The Spaniards says Morga were accustomed to hold as slaves such natives as they
bought and others that they took in the forays in the conquest or pacification of the
Island. Consequently in this respect the Pacifiersintroduced no moral improvement.

Conclusion
Sucesos de Las Islas Filipinas was the first historical book that was written and
published by Don Antonio de Morga . The book only proves that the Filipinos had a
culture on their own even before the coming of the Spaniards. During the Spanish
colonization, Filipinos were demoralized exploited. Also, in the annotations of Rizal, he
included the sufferrings of the Filipinos. The people of the Pre-hispanic Philippines is
advance and the present state of the Philippines was not necessarily superior to its
past.

THE INDOLENCE OF THE FILIPINOS

Reviewer
 THE INDOLENCE OF THE FILIPINOS

Sobre la indolencia de los Filipinos (Spanish) The

Indolence of the Filipinos (English)

 A socio-political essay written by Jose Rizal published in La Solidaridad, as a response to

the accusations of the Spaniards towards the native Filipino’s indolence.
 It stated the reasons that attributed to the indolence of the Filipinos.

Indolence: a little love for work or lack of energy

MAIN CAUSES THAT ATTRIBUTED TO THE INDOLENCE OF THE FILIPINOS

SPANISH GALLEON TRADE

 The Manila-Acapulco Galleon trade
 They monopolized the trade and it resulted to the closure of small businesses.
 Filipinos were also forced to work for the trade and to build the Galleon (huge ships).

Additional passages

 Before the arrival of the Europeans, The Malayan Filipino carried on an active trade, not
only among themselves but also with all the neighbouring countries.
 China has relations with the island, relation that is purely commercial, which mentions
the activity and honesty of the traders of Luzon, who took the Chinese products and
distributed them throughout the islands (from a Chinese manuscript dating back 13 th
century, translated by Dr. Hirth). The merchandise consisted: cloves, cinnamon, pepper,
nutmegs, and mace, gold and other things.
 The first thing noticed by Pigafetta who came with Magellan in 15ce, on arriving at the
first island of the Philippines, Samar, was the courtesy and kindness of the inhabitants
and their commerce.
 The sea bore everywhere commerce, industry, agriculture, by the force of the oars
moved to the sound of warlike songs of the genealogies and achievements’ of the
Philippine divinities.

FORCED LABOR
 Polo y Servicio
 The Spaniards conquered other kingdoms and they use the natives as soldiers.
Additional passages

 The natives furnished the masts for a galleon, according to the assertion of the
Franciscans, and heard the governor the province where they were cut (trees),
which is Laguna de Bay, say that to haul them seven leagues over every broken
mountains 6,000 natives were engaged three months, without furnishing them
food, which the wretched native had to seek for himself.
 The natives were not allowed to go their labors, that is, their farms, without
permission of the governor, or of his agents and officers.

Gaspar de San Agustin said: “Although anciently there were in this town of Dumangas many
people, in the course of the time they have very greatly diminished because the natives are the
best sailors and a most skillful rowers on the whole coast, and so the governors in the port of
Iloilo take most of the people from this town for the ship that they sent abroad… when the
Spaniards reached this island (Pasay) it is said there were on it more than fifty thousand
families: but this diminished greatly… and at the present they amount to some fourteen
thousand tributaries.”

 These fatal expeditions wasted all the moral and material energies of the
country.

LACK OF PROTECTION AGAINST FOREIGN INVASION

 The Filipinos lacked protection during the time of Spaniards colonization.

 The Filipinos are used as a military force, slaves, worker without pay.
 How can a Filipino work and do their job if the Spaniards used them as a
weapon, slaves and workers?

They didn’t protect us instead they used us as a material for battle.

Additional passages

 The piracy survivors of Magellan’s expedition, however, these same survivors

captured a vessel, plundered, and sacked it and took prisoner. They also took vessel
of the Chief of Paragua with his son and brother. With a ransom of 400 measures
(Cavannes) of rice, 20 goats, 20 pigs 450 chickens. The first piracy and Philippines
history.
 Sulu to Mindanao piracy greatly decrease the number of inhabitants

SYSTEM OF EDUCATION

 Education was not established to teach and create intellectual students. The Spaniards
contradict the education system of the Filipino and manipulated it. They
 felt and sensed that Filipinos doesn’t deserve to be educated. Since they see
them as low class human or Indios that they are slaves meant to give service.
 The education system was totally blocked to prevent revolution of the people.
Knowledge is power and power will enable Filipinos to fight back.

Additional passages

 The education system attributed to the indolence of the Filipinos. The system was not
an intellectual progression but a repetitive prayer.
 It only teach Filipinos on how to pray, novenas, culture of being Catholic to hide the
reality since they think Filipinos are dumb.
 It is only repressive and backward.
 The education system doesn’t teach about industry, agriculture, and commerce; they
hid these knowledge.
 The education is meant to enslave and create slavery.

GAMBLING

 Gambling is an activity where someone risk money or belongings, there is an

element of randomness or chance involve and purpose to win.
 Before the Spanish colonization, gaming is said to have already been within the
Philippines. Even though there are no specific records when gambling was initially
practiced in the archipelago, it’s likely that some forms were introduced by the
Chinese in the late nineteenth century.
 Pigafetta tell us of cockfights and bets in the island of Paragua. Cockfighting much
also have existed in Luzon and in all islands, for in the terminology of the game are
two Tagalog word: Sabong at tari (cockpit and gaff).
 Morga does not speak of it, in spite of this having spent seven years in Manila, and
yet he does describe the kinds of fowl, jungles hens and cocks. Neither does Morga
speak on gambling, when he talks about vices and other defeats, more or less
concealed, more or less insignificant. Moreover excepting the two Tagalog words
sabong and tari.

Additional passages

 The others are Spanish origin as soltada (setting the cocks to fight, then the tari fight
itself), pasta (apuesta, bet), logro (winning) pago (payment) etc.
 We say the came about gambling: the word sugal (jugar, to gamble), indicates that
gambling was unknown in the Philippines before Spaniards. The word laro (Tagalog
to play) is not equivalent of the word sugal. The word baraja (playing
 card) proves that the introduction of playing-cards was not due to the Chinese
name.

SPANISH RULERS WERE A BAD EXAMPLE

1. Spain also extinguished the natives’ love of work because of the implementation of
forced labor. Because of the wars between Spain and other countries in Europe as well
as the Muslims in Mindanao, the Filipinos were compelled to work in shipyards, roads,
and other public works, abandoning agriculture, industry, and commerce.
2. Spain did not protect the people against foreign invaders and pirates. With no arms to
defend themselves, the natives were killed, their houses burned, and their lands
destroyed. As a result of this, the Filipinos were forced to become nomads, lost interest
in cultivating their lands or in rebuilding the industries that were shut down, and simply
became submissive to the mercy of God.
3. The Spanish rulers were a bad example to despise manual labor. The officials reported
to work at noon and left early, all the while doing nothing in line with their duties. The
women were seen constantly followed by servants who dressed them and fanned them
– personal things which they ought to have done for themselves.
4. Gambling was established and widely propagated during those times.
5. There was a crooked system of religion. The friars taught the naïve Filipinos that it was
easier for a poor man to enter heaven, and so they preferred not to work and remain
poor so that they could easily enter heaven after they died.
6. The taxes were extremely high, so much so that a huge portion of what they earned
went to the government or to the friars.

RELIGION

“Blessed are the poor for they will enter the kingdom of God.”

 Went also, to swell this train of misfortunes, the religious functions, the great number of
fiestas, the long masses from the women spend their mornings and novenaries to spend
their afternoons and the nights for the processions and rosaries.
 If the climate and nature are not enough in themselves to daze him to irrigate hid fields
in the dry season, not by means of canals but with masses and prayers; to preserve his
stock during an epidemic with holy water, exorcisms and benedictions that cost five
dollars and animal to drive away locusts by procession with the image of St. Augustine,
etc it well undoubtedly to trust greatly in god; but it is better to do what one of his
minister.
 Additional passages

 There is no doubt that the government, some priest like Jesuit and some Dominicans
like Padre Benavides have done a great deal founding colleges, schools primary
instructions and the like. But this is not enough; there effects are neutralized.
 To what is this retrogression due? Is it the delectable civilization, the religion of
salvation; of the friars, called of Jesus Christ by euphemism that has produced this
miracle that has atrophied his brain, paralyzed his heart and made of the man this
sort of vicious animal that the writers depict?
 The misfortune of the present Filipinos consist in that they have become only half-
way brutes. The Filipinos is convinced that to get happiness, it is necessary for him
to lay aside his dignity as rational creature, to attend mass, to believe what is told
him, to pray what is demanded of him, to pray and forever to pay; to work, suffer
and be silent without aspiring anything, without aspiring to know or even
understand Spanish, without aspiring himself from carabao.

CLIMATE OF THE COUNTRY

 Philippines has a hot climate (Tropical Country).

 For this reason works become hard and tiring under the burning sun.

“Many who acknowledge its presence and exaggerate it have not, however, failed to advise
remedies taken from various places, such as Java, India, or other English or Dutch colonies, such
as the quack who saw a fever cured with a dozen sardines and then always prescribed these fish
whenever his patient's temperature increases.”

Spaniards are the indolent one

 Spaniards is more indolent than Frenchman; the Frenchman more so than the German.
 They have servants (Native Filipinos) to almost everything they do; taking their shoes
off, fans at them and etc.
 Spaniards strive for themselves to become wealthy, with the expectation of such a
future, free and valued, while the poor settlers, the indolent settler, is undernourished,
without hope, toils for someone else, and works under extreme pressure.
 A day's work in a temperate environment is equivalent to an hour's work under the
scorching sun, in the midst of malignant forces arising from mature activity.
 The truth is that violent labor in tropical countries is not as beneficial as it is in cold
countries; there is death, degradation, and destruction.
 A man can live in any climate if he adapts to its requirements and conditions
(European’s Mistake).
 The inhabitants of hot countries live well in northern Europe whenever we take the
precautions of the people there do.
 If only Europeans could get rid of their biases, they could tolerate the Torrid Zone.

RIZAL IN THE 21st CENTURY: THE RELEVANCE OF HIS IDEAS AND TEXTS

Answers to questions as well as solutions to problems in Rizal’s Noli Me

Tangere and El Filibusterismo can best be found in his essay. “The indolence of
the Filipinos.” A key concept of Rizal is the of ‘national sentiment’. Rizal believed
that the lack of national sentiment was the cause of numerous ills of Philippine
colonial society. Rizal’s criteria for identifying these problems, how to eliminate or
prevent their recurrence in Philippine society, is still cogent for many more years
to come.
According to Professor Renato Constantino’s essay ‘Our Task to Make
Rizal Obsolete’ (1959). The importance of Rizal’s ideas consists their valid
applicability today as well as their inspirational value. While describing the
negative characteristic of some persons and the social ills of his time, Rizal also
indicated the ways of their regeneration. He added, although Rizal aimed to
describe the people and society of his time, the fact that we still see many of
these non-too-agreeable characteristics and ills and indicated that he is still
speaking of the present.
Two Extremes:
1. Rizal’s ideas are still applicable not only today but for all times
2. Pays slip service to the national hero, emphasizing some harmless or non-
controversial aspects of his life and works, while claiming that the
conditions he wrote about no longer exist.
The first school fails to view society in terms of a dynamic process and
assumes that Filipinos will continue to exemplify those negative trait Rizal
deplored and wished to reform. The latter school reveals that some ideas and
truths of Rizal are ‘unpalatable and dangerous even now’.
Professor Constantino demonstrates how Rizal was an incisive critic and
commentator of his times. That his comments have cogency today reveals that
the ills of Filipino society have changed little from the time he wrote that the
Filipinos today have learned little and have not progressed much from their
colonial past. To prove his point, Professor Constantino present a judicious
choice of characters portrayed in Rizal’s novels.
- The present day Palaez with their shady business deals
- The Capitan Tinongs who are bribers of government officials and are
notorious influence peddlers
- The Capitan Tiagos who belittle native customs and the products of native
energy while being Victorians who fawn upon government officials and
influential politicians
- The Dona Victorians who belittle native customs and the products of native
energy while being dazzled by and emulating anything foreign.
- The Basilliqs who, in spite of past humiliations and injustices from government
officials, had become totally indifferent to political events coupled with a terrible
fear of police retaliation while contenting themselves with a false sense of security.
Professor Constantino concludes: ‘on the contrary, only when we have
realized Rizal’s dream can we really appreciate his greatness because only
then will we realize the great value of his ideas… a reorientation of our ways
and of our thoughts along nationalistic lines will fulfill the dream of Rizal and the
same time make them obsolete as goals because the dream will have become
a reality’.
A main reason, among many others, why Rizal’s literary work have
generated various schools of thought has to do with the nature and aims his
analyses of social problems.
1. Descriptive aspect - dealing with facts both historical and contemporary. Here,
Rizal deals with what he considered individual and social problems.
2. Prescriptive elements - where Rizal propounds or at least suggests
solutions to the problems expounded in descriptive area.
3. The prescriptive aspect - is an analysis of what may not happen if and when the
prescriptive elements is followed or not. Yet it is to be noted that to predict an
event, it is not necessarily to propound or favor it.

Socially Descriptive Texts

It is the descriptive aspect where the delineation of character traits
revealing a social malaise or laudable social values is to be found. Some of
these traits are cultural or the result of social institutions. Many essays or
comments on Rizal’s novels even go as far as to identify some of Rizal’s
contemporaries as models for the novel’s characters. But of greater importance
than trying to identify such characters with living persons in the past is to view
them as representations of cultural and social institutions. As such, the portrayal
of characters merely represents a literary device to exemplify institutions. For
example, the school teacher in Noli Me Tangere represents the educational
problem in the colony; Sisa represents domestic and accompanying social ills.
Cabesang Tales represents the chronic agrarian conflicts in the country, and so
on. Rizal points out how many individual traits or idiosyncrasies are not innate
but fostered by social institutions or the result of historical events.
In effects, Rizal’s critique of some institutions of his time represents a
veritable condemnation of an oppressive colonial administration controlled by an
inept or corrupt bureaucracy that was further qualified by unwarranted clerical
domination. True enough, Spanish colonial domination has long passed away
from the point of view of the
Philippine educational, economic and other social problems as Rizal viewed them
still exist in one form or another in subtle, and therefore more insidious, fashion.
Rizal aimed to point out what was wrong among individuals and institutions
in the society of his time-wrongs still existing in some form or another these days-
and propounded solution to eliminate them. This was his role as reformer. In this
role, he takes his place among many of the world’s moral and political
philosophers with a message that may well be cogent for many years. At the very
least, keeping in tandem with solution, a reversal to such condemned past might
well be prevented or thwarted.
Rizal was a firm believer in the postulate that man was endowed by his
Creator with Innate moral and intellectual faculties or potentialities that were
meant to be actualized in the individual and social spheres. To develop these
faculties, he also had innate rights that were God-given through Nature. These
rights did not originate in government or any political institution. It was the duty of
government to recognize and affirm such rights if it were to claim legitimacy to
govern. Among these basic human rights were those of the recognition of
individual worth – freedom of speech and association, and so on. They were so
basic that their non-recognition or suppression implied the wicked stifling to the
person’s moral and intellectual faculties. It did not matter whether the individual
was a colonial subject or member of an independent state.
Thus, when Rizal demanded that a person be given his freedom or be
made free, he did not necessarily mean political independence since even within
a colonial context he stressed the necessity that a person be free within that
system. And when he wrote that man was not created by God to be a slave, he
was, in his own way saying that man was born free; but if he found himself unfree
in society, it was due to the nature of certain social or political institutions.
According to him, it is the duty of the government to provide all the conditions or
facilities for a person to develop his intellectual faculties by way of a very sound
educational system.
To better understand Rizal’s two novels:
1. The two novels must first be viewed as one integral whole, such that it can be
assumed that the conception of the first, entailed the conception of the second. It is
as if the space of time between 1887 and 1891, the two dates of the publication of
the two novels, did not decisively alter the mail plot of the second.
There is an incident in Chapter 62 of Noli Me Tangere where Elias
reproves Crisostomo Ibarra: ‘You are going to light the flames of war, since you
have money and brains, and you will quickly find many to join you, for
unfortunately there are plenty of malcontents. But in this struggle which you are
going to undertake, those who will suffer most will be the defenseless and the
innocent’ (Noli, p.475). And this is precisely what Ibarra, now transformed into
Simoun, did in El Filibusterismo. Father Florentino sermonize to the dying
Simoun the important consequences of such an action of war (Fili, p. 358).
 2. Determine which ideas voiced by the various characters in the novels
represent Rizal’s and who’s which did not.
For example, of the different apparently conflicting views of Simuon, the
most complex figure in El Filibusterismo, one wonders which views are identical or
parallel to Rizal’s own ideas and those which he would have personally disowned
or condemned. Moreover, there are certain views or questions offered by Simoun
that seem intended more for the reader’s reflections rather than for anything else.

This is where the importance of Rizal’s two major essays comes in.
1. The Philippines: A Century Hence (1889 – 1890) – It is a political essay indicating
certain probabilities regarding the future of the Philippine colony.

2. On the Indolence of the Filipinos (1890) – it is an incisive psychological and sociological

analysis of the Filipinos and how they had been conditioned by their history, the
conquest, and the introduction of foreign values and institutions.
It is in this very essay where Rizal clearly delineates the conditions for the
salvation or regeneration of the Filipino people. It is the major key to a better
understanding of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. It is no accident that the
above two essays were written at a time between the publication of the two
novels – a time when Rizal was already writing El Filibusterismo. This explains
the overlapping of ideas between both novels and both essays.

Social Degeneration
In the ‘Indolence of the Filipinos’, Rizal admitted that the so-called “indolence” of
the Filipinos had become a chronic disease, but denied that it was a hereditary
one. La Indolencia de los Filipinos also known in its English version, “The
Indolence of the Filipinos”, is an exploratory essay written by our national hero
Dr. Jose Rizal, to explain the alleged idleness of his people during the Spanish
colonization.
The Indolence of the Filipinos is a study of the causes why the people did not,
as was said, work hard during the Spanish regime. Rizal pointed out that long
before the coming of the Spaniards, the Filipinos were industrious and
hardworking. The Spanish reign brought about a decline in economic activities
because of certain causes:
 First, the establishment of the Galleon Trade cut off all previous associations of the
Philippines with other countries in Asia and the Middle East. As a result, business was
only conducted with Spain through Mexico. Because of this, the small businesses and
handicraft industries that flourished during the pre-Spanish period gradually
disappeared.
 Second, Spain also extinguished the natives’ love of work because of the
implementation of forced labor. Because of the wars between Spain and other
countries in Europe as well as the Muslims in Mindanao, the Filipinos were
compelled to work in shipyards, roads, and other public works, abandoning
agriculture, industry, and commerce.

 Third, Spain did not protect the people against foreign invaders and pirates. With no
arms to defend themselves, the natives were killed, their houses burned, and their lands
destroyed. As a result of this, the Filipinos were forced to become nomads, lost interest
in cultivating their lands or in rebuilding the industries that were shut down, and simply
became submissive to the mercy of God.

 Fourth, there was a crooked system of education, if it was to be considered an

education. What was being taught in the schools were repetitive prayers and other
things that could not be used by the students to lead the country to progress. There
were no courses in Agriculture, Industry, etc., which were badly needed by the
Philippines during those times.

 Fifth, the Spanish rulers were a bad example to despise manual labor. The officials
reported to work at noon and left early, all the while doing nothing in line with their
duties. The women were seen constantly followed by servants who dressed them and
fanned them – personal things which they ought to have done for themselves.
 Sixth, gambling was established and widely propagated during those times. Almost
every day there were cockfights, and during feast days, the government officials and
friars were the first to engage in all sorts of bets and gambles.

 Seventh, there was a crooked system of religion. The friars taught the naïve Filipinos
that it was easier for a poor man to enter heaven, and so they preferred not to work
and remain poor so that they could easily enter heaven after they died.

 Lastly, the taxes were extremely high, so much so that a huge portion of what they
earned went to the government or to the friars. When the object of their labor was
removed and they were exploited, they were reduced to inaction.
Rizal admitted that the Filipinos did not work so hard because they were
wise enough to adjust themselves to the warm, tropical climate. “An hour’s work
under that burning sun, in the midst of pernicious influences springing from
nature in activity, is equal to a day’s labor in a temperate climate.”
It is important to note that indolence in the Philippines is a chronic malady, but
not a hereditary one. Truth is, before the Spaniards arrived on these lands, the
natives were industriously conducting business with China, Japan, Arabia,
Malaysia, and other countries in the Middle East. The reasons for this said
indolence were clearly stated in the essay, and were not based only on
presumptions, but were grounded on fact taken from history.
Another thing that we might add that had caused this indolence, is the lack of
unity among the Filipino people. In the absence of unity and oneness, the
people did not have the power to fight the hostile attacks of the government and
of the other forces of society. There would also be no voice, no leader, to sow
progress and to cultivate it, so that it may be reaped in due time. In such a
condition, the Philippines remained a country that was lifeless, dead, simply
existing and not living. As Rizal stated in conclusion, “a man in the Philippines is
an individual; he is not merely a citizen of a country.”
It can clearly be deduced from the writing that the cause of the indolence
attributed to our race is Spain: When the Filipinos wanted to study and learn,
there were no schools, and if there were any, they lacked sufficient resources
and did not present more useful knowledge; when the Filipinos wanted to
establish their businesses, there wasn’t enough capital nor protection from the
government; when the Filipinos tried to cultivate their lands and establish various
industries, they were made to pay enormous taxes and were exploited by the
foreign rulers.
It is not only the Philippines, but also other countries, that may be called
indolent, depending on the criteria upon which such a label is based. Man
cannot work without resting, and if in doing so he is considered lazy, they we
could say that all men are indolent. One cannot blame a country that was
deprived of its dignity, to have lost its will to continue building its foundation upon
the backs of its people, especially when the fruits of their labor do not so much
as reach their lips. When we spend our entire lives worshipping such a cruel and
inhumane society, forced upon us by aliens who do not even know our
motherland, we are destined to tire after a while. We are not fools, we are not
puppets who simply do as we are commanded – we are human beings, who are
motivated by our will towards the accomplishment of our objectives, and who
strive for the preservation of our race. When this fundamental aspect of our
existence is denied of us, who can blame us if we turn idle?

Rizal Concept of National Sentiment

In a very important sense, Rizal's concept of national sentiment has points

of contact with Rousseau’s concept of the General will. One of the schools, the
liberal school, interprets Rousseau’s general will for the good of all. As a moral
imperative it cannot err. It is a will that is in direct opposition to the individual or
particular will which
aims at personal or sectarian interests. Neither is the general will identical to the
mere addition or aggregate of individual wills. Nor it necessarily the will of the
majority since the majority might only work for its partisan interests as against
what may constitute the valid interests of a minority.

In brief, the general will represents a moral effort aimed at the good of the
whole community as against that of a special segment or class in society.

But there is qualitative difference between Rousseau's general will and

Rizal's national sentiments. Rousseau was a European acquainted with a long
history of national states. He had lived in independent national state in France,
England, and Switzerland. He was approaching his subject from essentially
moral point of view so as to arrive at the principle of the legitimacy of
government. In Rizal's case, he was not living in what he conceived as a nation;
a man in the Philippines is only an individual, not a member of a nation.

The question to be raised here is: if there was no nation in the

Philippines, then did the term 'national' in 'national sentiment' mean? The
answer will be dealt with later. For the present, what is needed is to indicate
one of the main stumbling blocks to the ability to generate a national sentiment
or to exercise it.

The inability to conceive of a greater good that transcended the purely

individual or personal interests was due to one's amor propio or self-love or false
pride. Like many novelists of the late 19th century, Rizal used symbolism as a
technique to convey some messages to the discerning reader. One of these in
Maria Clara's locket which appears to be related to the pride of vanity which Rizal
so much deplored as a trait among many Filipinos. It will be recalled that during
the town fiesta of San Diego, Capitan Tiago gifted Maria Clara with a locket
studded with diamonds and emerald and containing a silver of the boast pf St.
Peter where Jesus Christ had ridden on the Sea of Galilee. It was veritable acts
of ostentation vanity. Not long after, without much thought pf reflection, Maria
gave it to a beggar afflicted with leprosy, causing one of her friends remark that it
was something the beggar could not eat and which the person and which the
persons might refuse to touch because of fear of contamination. In time, the leper
gave it to Basilio who, as a medical student, came to treat him with beneficial
medication. Instead of using the locket as a means of finance his medical studies
and freeing himself from humiliating handouts form from Capitan Tiago, Basilio
then gifted it to Juli, his girlfriend, who, for a very sentimental reason, would not
use it to emancipate herself from the domestic servitude or to help father,
Cabesag Tales, save their land from expropriation by a friar corporation. Simoun
and its place substituted the locket which Simoun must deposited in his smaller
chest of valuable as hinted in El Filibuterismo. It is this very treasure chest, unlike
a large one which Simoun also possessed, which Father
Florentino personally carried to precipice and threw into the sea, exclaiming that it
had caused a lot of mischief.

A clue as to what the locket symbolizes is found in Chapter 11 of El

Filibuterismo, where the Spanish governor general, a Spanish official, some friars
of different orders, the jeweler Simoun and the others were present in a gambling
session in Los Baños.
The group's conversation drifted into different forms of stakes that could be used
in their gambling. Possible stakes or chips like Simoun's diamonds, government
favor or concessions by the governor general, and so on were discussed as
possibilities. When asked what he could bet or present as a stake, one of the
friars protested that clerics like him did not possess the resources of persons like
the governor general. It was then Simoun retorted that the friars could offer
virtudes de boquilla, that is, promises of virtues, or better still, empty or purely
verbal promises. We asked what he could gain from purely verbal promises as
well as other concessions from the governor general.
Simoun irritatingly exclaimed: I'm tired of hearing virtues talked about and would
like the whole of them, all there are in the world, tied up in a sack in order to throw
them into the sea even though i have to use diamond, as a sinker's and this is
precisely what father Florentino when he threw into the sea the small treasure
chest of Simoun which contained his diamonds and others precious jewel, as well
as the cherished locket of Maria Clara. Did not Simoun's diamond here serve as a
ballast or sinker for the locket?

Within the specific context of the gambling incident in Los Baños, what
Rizal might have wanted to suggest was the existence of the hypocrisy or
unfulfilled promises of high government or clerical officials. But in the wider
context of how the locket passed from the hand to hand, the element of amor
propio or hurt pride is involved. To repeat, in his essay on the indolence of the
Filipinos, Rizal bewailed this moral defect. And the Noli Me Tangere and El
Filibusterismo are full of characters exemplifying this moral failure. It is the
manifestation of the lack of national sentiment. Rizal wanted to do away with all
forms of vanity or selflove (amor propio).

In the last chapter of El Filibusterismo when Father Florentino observed

that Simoun had refused to hide in the face of the governments of efforts to locate
and arrest him, he recalled the saying of St. John Chrysostom: 'Vanity of vanities
and all is vanity! The priest here was reflecting on one of the greatest flaws of
Simoun's character- self- love or hurt pride. Might not this trait reflect a possible
significance of Maria Clara's locket?

The idealistic and relatively naive Ibarra of the Noli Me Tangere had been
transformed into the sinister Simoun. It is accidental or significant that, in the
presence of the hunted and dejected Simoun, Father Florentino quotes a saint
on the subject of vanity and that name of this saint is no less that Juan
Crisostomo, the very first names of Juan Crisostomo Ibarra? At this point, an
admirable trait as well as consistency in
Rizal's action must be pointed out. In his dedication to the fatherland in Noli Me
Tangere he wrote... I will raise part of the veil that covers the evil, sacrificing to
the truth everything, even self-love (amor propio) itself, since, as your son, I also
suffer from your defects and weaknesses.

Here, our national Hero exemplified fundamental elements of national

sentiment: He showed consciousness of the fatherland and the existence of a
people, bravery in exposing publicly what he believed were evils in colonial
society, and the decision to do away with self-love or vanity and all that this
implied. He dared to touch what many others had feared to touch. As he
explained in a letter to his friend Felix Resurrection Hidalgo, Rizal took the title
Noli Me Tangere which signified "touched me not" from the gospels. He had
dared to do what others had feared to do. He tried to answer the calumnies
heaped on the Filipinos, unveil what was really behind the promises of the
government, and express the hopes and aspirations of the people.

At this juncture, it may be remarked that the title of his first novel when
related to the sad and tragic fate of Maria Clara makes her symbolizes
something that none can ought to or could touch. In the last few paragraphs of
Noli Me Tangere, it is narrated how colonial government official appeared at the
nunnery where Maria Clara was cloistered to make some inquiries about her. He
saw a beautiful nun who, with tears and tales of horror, begged the official's
protection against the "outrages of hypocrisy". The official ignored the request
and was assured by the abbess that this beautiful nun was mad. He left things as
they were since he might have thought that the nunnery was itself precisely a
place for insane. Nevertheless, when the Spanish governor general came to
know about the matter. He thought otherwise and wished to protect the nun. But
this time no one was allowed to pursue an inquiry since the abbess would not
permit a visit to the nunnery- forbidding it in the name of religion and the Holy
Statutes ( Noli p. 498).

In brief, Maria Clara was not to be touched, she had become clerical
properly and, in effect, symbolized some aspects of clerical dominance in the
colony, in touching this aspect, Rizal hurt certain vested interests in the colony
for this, and he had to pay with his life.

Simoun, the guy in El Filibusterismo who best exemplified the lack of

national sentiment, at least in one part of his complex nature, is the individual
who best reflected the absence of national sentiment. His vengeance was deeply
personal, and many of his actions were driven by self-love or damaged pride. To
attain his own personal goals, he used all means available to him, including:
BRIBERY, CORRUPTION, and COERCION. He was manipulated for his own
personal gain and lacked moral respect for others. According to Father
Florentino it was God himself who frustrated Simoun's plans most notably, the
two revolution attempts.
 Due to Simoun's delay after learning of Maria Clara's death, the first effort
at revolution failed. The attempted revolution had a very personal goal: the rescue
of Maria Clara from the nunnery, which implicated the vengeful Simoun's bruised
pride. While the second attempted at revolution failed due to insufficient
coordination and a lack of a
well-defined cause or philosophy. Revolutionaries soon split off into various
gangs, each following their own set of goals, and some became robbers, robbing
convents and wealthy people's homes.

If Rizal made national sentiment the motivating factor in such attempts,

would he have made Simoun’s efforts successful?

From this perspective, Noli me tangere may be interpreted as exposing the

different ills of a colonial society, whereas El filibusterismo could be interpreted as
demonstrating what was incorrect or incomplete in the method of ameliorating or
solving them.

"Noli Me Tangere" is translated "Touch Me Not" or "The Social Cancer,"

while "El Filibusterismo" is translated "The Reign of Greed." These both novels
were influenced by the writer's contemporary living situations, opinions, and
beliefs and were set in a politically and historically motivated fictional Philippines
during the Spanish colonial period. These two novels delve deeper into the
internal and external battles of a country split by motivations, beliefs, and
moralities by employing almost real-life individuals and frequently imposing
satirical characteristics on the majority.

A main principle of national sentiment is found in the appreciation of native

creative energies and the sheer avoidance of wishing to be a mere copy of
others.

The preservation of one's language was not just a sort of identity

preservation, but also a type of freedom from undesirable ideas. To avoid being
a poor replica of others' culture, which can only lead to being dismissed and
despised, one should establish one's own culture. The foundations of the
Philippine Fatherland must be constructed. ‘Aspire to be a nation instead of
begging to be a province of Spain. Instead of submissive thinking, think
autonomously, so that the Spaniard cannot be considered the master here, nor
even as a member of the country, but always as an invader, a foreigner, and you
will regain your liberty sooner or later. Rizal is stressing once again that a basic
aspect of national spirit is the belief in and appreciation of native creative energy,
as well as the complete avoidance of trying to be a mere copy of others. To sum
up, Rizal's goal in his writings and papers, as well as his acts, was to establish a
national community. This was more than just patriotism in the sense of adoration
for one's birthplace. Rizal was attempting to find a new identity other than that of
an Indio.
Conclusion
More than a century has passed since Rizal lived and wrote his works and we
now face a new millennium. The word scientific culture or order seems as far off
as ever just as Simoun thought of it. We still witness conflicts between national
states, ethnic rivalries, religious conflicts, subtle oppressions between states, as
well as internal struggles between social classes within each country. And a
great deal of these inner conflicts is intimately related with the foreign policies of
stronger and wealthier states.
How much of the national sentiment,
as Rizal defined it, can be found today
in Philippines society? How pervasive
is it and in what segments of society is
it best found? Or to put in another way:
To what extent has our country
approximated Rizal’s model of a
national community? For, indeed, Rizal
believed that an independent state was
not necessarily identical to the national
community he had in mind. A national
community is something in the making.
In accordance with Rizal’s criteria, it
can move forward in a dynamic fashion
or take a few backward steps. Answers
to the questions can partially be found
in the existence, disappearance, or
reappearance of those characters
Rizal wanted to do away with or make
obsolete. Herein the cogency of his
criteria. As long as there is exploitation
and poverty in society, a lack of
bravery in the struggle for the
recognition and protection of human
rights, selfish support for power-
hungry or corrupt officials in order to
partake of the crumbs from their tables,
and an urgent need to bring about the
best of the people’s creative energy,
Rizal’s message for the people he so
loved and others in a similar historical
situation remains true in the next
millennium.

THE “MI ULTIMO ADIOS” RIZAL’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BY: AUSTIN COATES

It may be asked what a foreign writer can possible have to say to an audience on
so well- known subject as Ultimo Adios. But sometimes a foreigner serves to shed a
new light on familiar things, or at any rate a different light.

According to Austin Coates Ultimo Adios as a poem achieves four separate

purposes:

 It is a poem of farewell
 An appeal to people to not forget him (the author)
 It’s the authors last will and testament
 It is an autobiography

This poem was written in a very small slip of paper. At the top of the first page
according to Austin has an unreasonable space, which is significantly blank. It had
no title, undated and unsigned. Why? It was clearly Rizal’s intention that the poem
should speak for itself. Austin explained each stanza to unmask the real author of
the poem or to explains the key points that describes the author of the poem.

Adios. Patria adorada. region del sol

querida. Perla del mad de Oriente, nuestro

perdido Eden:

He goes on to say that he leaves to his country the sad, withered remains of his
life, but that had his life been finer and better than it was, even so he would have
given it to his country.

Others are giving you their lives on fields of battle,

Fighting joyfully, without hesitation or thought for the

consequence,

How it takes place is not an important. Cypress, laurel or

lily, Scaffold or battlefield, in combat or in cruel

martyrdom,
 It is the same when what is asked of you is for your country and your
home.

We learn from this that a war of some kind is going on. He is in some way
connected with it. Yet for some reason he is not taking part in it. He admires those
who are fighting, but he does not entirely agree with what they are doing.

I am to die – when I shall see, through the somber

shroud, Colour in the sky at last announcing

day;

And at this moment to anyone reading this poem in no matter what part of
the world, the reader is suddenly jolted into exclaiming, “Good heavens, the man is
going to die at dawn: he’s writing this on the last night of his life”.

My dream when but an adolescent boy,

My dream when young, by then with vigour filled.

Has been to see day, O gem of the Orient Sea,

When your eyes would be without tars, your head held high.

Without line or wrinkle, or blush of shame.

From this we see that he was a person whose ideas were formed when
he was very young and for once formed did not change.
 Salud! Says the soul who is about to leave

you; Salud! And what joy it is to fall that you

may rise. To die to give you life, to die

beneath your skies…

From this we learn that he is dying in his own country and that he is
evidently a person of considerate significance, since his death will apparently affect
the entire situation the situation in which there is a war going on.
 If above my sepulchre you should one day

see A tender, humble flower shooting amid

the grass.

Press it to your lips and kiss my soul,

Beneath that cold tomb I shall feel on my

brow

The tenderness of your sigh, the warmth of your breath.

This and the next stanza, also about the tomb, date this poem exactly.
This was an age which there was a morbid romanticism with white marble angles
with wings; when every dramatist and composer of opera knew the emotional value
of a tomb scene. We instantly recognize, in other words, the we are in somewhere at
the end of the 19th century.

And if a bird descending should alight on my

cross, Let the song the bird sings be a

canticle of peace.

This is an idea from a Spanish poem which he utilizes here aid indeed
improves on it, and this enables us to improve on our vague idea of the 1880s. We
are quite definitely in the 1890s.

Let the warming sun evaporate the rain,

returning it pure to heaven with my plea likewise to follow it;

This might be a poem, but these are words of exact science, telling us
instantly that the man who wrote this was a scientist.
Pray for me also, O my country, that I may rest in God.

This – that he was at one and the same time a Darwinian scientist and a
believer - is the most outstanding intellectual feature of Rizal.

And pray for yourself that you may see your final redemption-
 Is anyone left out?

And this is just one point. Here is a man who clearly always remembers
everybody.

The next stanza is typical of Rizal, the man who remembers everybody. The
stanza is in fact like this autograph.

Y cuando en noche oscura, se envuelva el

cementerio Y solos solo muertos queden

velando alli

No turbes su reposo. no turbes el

misterio: Tal vez aeoredes oigas de citara

o salterio: Soy yo querida Patria, yo que

te canto a ti.

Quite apart from the fact that, by any standards, this superb poetry, with
its wonderful baroque opening, leading to that last line complete simplicity this verse
contains another very important clue to the identity of the writer:

Tal vez acordes olgas de citaria a salterio.

Rizal once said of himself. Musically, I am a zero. And in fact he differed

greatly from most of his countrymen in this respect.
 And when my tomb, by everyone

forgotten. Has neither cross nor stone to

mark its place.

Let it be ploughed over by man, and by his

spade. Let my ashes; before passing into

nothingness.

Be disrespected in nourishment of the crop that is to come.

 This is again a scientist speaking. And the “the crop that is to come”
obviously means youth and the people of the future.

At that time will no matter that I am lost in

oblivion: Your atmosphere. Your open spaces, you

crisscross valleys.

Will hear my call, vibrant and dear.

Repeating to you constantly the essence of my faith.

Now, there is only one kind of call vibrant and clear, which can be
dispersed to nourish future generations: and that is the printed word.

Then he comes the most outright clue of all, when he actually mentions
his country by his name:

Land of my idolatry my misery of

miseries, Beloved Philippines hear this

last farewell.

And he gives a picture of the grim state of affairs there:

I go to where there are no slaves, no hangmen. no oppressors.

Where faith does not slay, where he who reigns is God.

In this last line – “where faith does not slay” – we learn the he considers
the ultimate responsibility for this death lies with the Church. And the – “where he
who reigns is God” he is evidently not a heretic, not an atheist.

Then he comes the last stanza:

 “Adios, padres liermanos, trazas del alma mia. Trazos del alnia mia” – fragments of my
sould. He clearly comes from a very closely united family.

Amigos de la infancia en el perdido hogar:

 “Friends of childhood in the home we have lost”. So apparently the family
of this man lost their home, how? Was it destroyed by tire? And what about the
childhood friends who are linked with this? They seem also to have lost their homes.
Also by fire? If homes were destroyed by tire, they can be rebuilt. Apparently these
homes were not rebuilt.

Finally:

Adios, dulce estrangera. mi amiga. mi alegria:

And we are at once riveted to that untranslatable word “amigo”. “Amigo” is

easy enough in English: for “amiga” there is no word. In Austin’s version he have given
it as “farewell, sweet stranger, my companion, my happiness.” From this we know that
he loved a woman to whom he was not married, but that in his relationship with her
there was no shame.

It will be seen that Austin have constructed an extraordinary complete picture of

the writer of this poem and the reason why he could not sign or date the poem becomes
more obvious. The poem speaks for itself: it does not require a signature or a date.

Austin believes that nearly every poem can just conceivably have been written by
someone else. This couldn’t the autobiographical material contains is so deep, and so
pervades every line, that it could only have been written by one man. There is no other
man in history to whom all the inner facts apply.

Throughout Rizal’s life he used the method of enigma. He always used it, in
conversation, in writing, in whatever he did. Noli Mi Tangere is an enigma. Rizal used
this method with complete consistency from the age of fifteen onward.

The Ultimo Adios was Rizal’s statement to his people, and, consistent to the end,
it had to go out to the world in enigmatic form. Thus the blank space at the top. Thus the
facts that the poem has no title, no date, and no author’s name.

Rizal gave himself to his people, but he did so in the form of an enigma: and he
did this deliberately. He wished his words to be remembered, far into the future: and he
knew that nothing endures like an enigma, because it is always a source of fascination,
about which people will argue and hold differing opinions.
 Finally according to Austin, therefore ladies and gentlemen, should anyone tell
you that it is old that to be a Rizalista these days, or to attend ceremonies such as this
being held today, my advice to you – albeit the advice of a foreigner – would be to take
no notice. Believe you me; your children will be receiving the same criticism from their
children.

REFLECTIONS ON THE PHILIPPINES AND THE FILIPINO

Jose Rizal

Of all the Filipino reformist Rizal was undoubtedly the most cultured his

awareness of evil that plagued Philippine society under Spain led him to write deeply

and extensively about them in order o call the attention of the peninsular Spaniards to

the cause which had made the Philippines a backward country. Past novels and essays

are eloquent proofs of his deep sense of history of his mastery and envoy, and his

abiding faith in Spain. One note that in all his works as in those Lopez Jeana, Marcelo H.

del Pilar, and other reformist, the pervading theme are not hatred of Spain and what she

stood for, but content for the friars and the transformation of the Philippine Into a

province of Spain. They were, in a word, and clerical but not Spaniard). The following

selections, translated by Dr. Azona, typify Rizal as a brilliant analysts. The Irony in

"Reflection of a Filipino" is equaled only in some passage of Noli Me Tangere and El

Filibusterismo.

The following selections, translated by Dr. Azona, typify Rizal as a brilliant

analysts. The Irony in “Reflection of a Filipino” is equaled only in some passage of Noli

Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo.

REFLECTIONS OF A FILIPINO
 Jose Rizal

When I contemplate the present struggle between the religious corporations and

the advanced groups of my country, when I read the numerous writings published by

this and that group in defense of their ideas and principles, I’m prompted to ask myself

at times if I, a son of the country, ought not to take part in the struggle and declare

myself in favor of one of the two groups, for I should not be indifferent to anything

concerning my native land.

Or, if I’m more prudent and have learned my lesson better, my role should be to

remain neutral, to witness and watch the struggle, to see which party wins and

immediately take its side in order to gather more easily the fruit of victory.

My life has been one of continuous doubting and continuous vacillation. Which

party should I side? Let’s examine closely the matter and afterwards we shall see.

What are the advantages of being anti-friar?

Nothing really. The more I analyze the thing the more I find it silly and imprudent.

This thing of struggling so that the country may progress… the country will progress if it

can and if it cannot, no. Moreover, what do I care if the coming generation would enjoy

more or less freedom than I, have better or worse education, if there be justice for all or

there be none…

The question is that I, my number one, don’t have a bad time; the question is the

present. A bird in my hand is worth more than one hundred flying, says the proverb.
Charity begins at home, says another. Here I have two proverbs in my favor and there’s

not even half a proverb against me.

For the present, in fighting the religious orders, one risks being imprisoned or

exiled to some island… Well, not so bad. I like travelling to know the islands, a thing that

cannot be done better than by going as an exile. Passports are unnecessary and one

travels more safely. Go to jail? Bah, everybody goes to jail. In that way, one gets free

house, for as it is, there I don’t pay.

Deportation and jail are nothing, but if… if number one is finished, if they take

advantage of a mutiny and they charge me as its leader. A council of war tries me and

they send me to the other life? Hmm! It’s a serious matter to be an anti-friar.

What do I care if the friars don’t want the education of the country?

They must have a reason. I agree with them. Since I was a child, I have had a

hard time going to school and a harder time getting out of it… because the teacher at

times kept me a prisoner. Let there be a vote on the matter and see how all the children

will vote for the friars, asking for the suppression of every kind of teaching…

That the friars oppose the teaching of Spanish… and what’s the matter with that?

For what do we need Spanish? To know the beautiful stories and theories of liberty,

progress, and justice and afterwards get to like them? To understand the laws, know

our rights and then find in practice other laws and other things different from them. Of

what use is the knowledge of Spanish?

 We can speak to God in all languages… if it were Latin I say, well. The curate

says that God listens first to the prayers in Latin before those in Tagalog. That’s why

Masses are in Latin and the curates live in abundance and we the Tagalogs are badly

off. But Spanish? To understand the insults and swearing of the civil guards? For this

purpose there’s no need to know Spanish. It’s enough to understand the language of

the butt of guns and have the body a little sensitive.

And of what use is it to us since we are forbidden to reply, because one can be

accused of resisting authority and because the very same civil guard tries the accused,

a prison sentence is certain. The truth is that I like to travel and see the islands, though

tied elbow to elbow. In this matter of not teaching Spanish, I agree with the friars. Now,

they may say this and that about the friars, that they have many women, paramours,

that they don’t respect married women, widows, or maidens and the like. On this matter

I have my private opinion. I say if one can have two, three, and four women, why should

he not have them? Women are to blame. Besides there’s something good about the

curate. He does not let his paramours die of hunger, as many men do, but he supports

them, dresses them well, protects their families, and leaves a good bequest to his

daughters or nieces. And if there’s any sin in it, he’ll absolve them at once and without

great penance.

Frankly speaking, if I were a woman, and I had to prostitute myself, I would do it

to curate… for the time being, I’ll be the paramour of a semi-Jesus Christ, or of a

successor of God on earth. In this regard, I believe that the enemies of the friars are

merely envious. They say that they monopolize all the estates, get all the people’s

money. The Chinese do the same.

 In this world, he who can enrich himself enriches himself, and I suppose that a

friar for the mere fact of being a friar is not less of a man. Why then should not the

Chinese and the merchants be persecuted? Moreover, who knows? Perhaps they take

away our money to make us poor so that we may quickly get to heaven. Still we have to

thank them for their solicitude. They are also accused of selling their scapulars, belts,

candies, rosaries, and other things. This is to complaint just for the sake of complaining.

Let him buy who wants to buy, he who doesn't don’t. Every trader sells her merchandise

at the price he likes. The Chinese sells his tinapa sometimes two for a centavo, and at

other times, three for two centavos. If we tolerate this practice of the Chinese dealer,

why should we not tolerate this practice of the curate-trader of scapulars? Is the curate

perchance less of a man than the Chinese? I say it is purely ill will. Let them shout and

say that with his money and power the friar imposes on the government; what does it

matter to me? What do I care if this or that one should give the order if after all I’ll have

to obey? Because, if the curate doesn't give the orders, any corporal of the carabineers

will do so, and everything would be the same. In the final analysis, I see no reason

whatsoever to go against the friar curates.

Let’s see now if there are advantages in siding with

them against the liberal Filipinos.

The friars say that these are all atheists… that I don’t know I know only one

called Mateo, but it doesn't matter. They say that they will all go to hell… Frankly,
though we ought not to judge harshly anyone, the successor of Christ on earth is

exempt from this injunction. He should know better than anybody else where we are

going after death, and if he doesn't know, I say that nobody will know it better. The friars

exile many of their enemies; of this I can’t or I shouldn't complain. I had a lawsuit and I

won it because it happened that my adversary was an anti-friar and he was exiled when

I was almost in despair of winning the case, for I had no more money to bribe the desk

officials and to present horses to the judge and the governor. God is most merciful!

They charged administratively Captain Juan, who had a very pretty daughter whom he

forbade to go to the convent to kiss the curate’s hand. Well done! That’s doubting the

holiness of the curate and he truly deserve deportation. Moreover, what’s he going to do

with his daughter? Why guard her so carefully if, after all, she’s not going to be a nun?

And even if she had to be a nun, don’t certain rumors somewhere around say the nuns

of St. Claire and the Franciscan friars understand each other very well? What’s bad

about that? Aren’t the nuns the wives of Jesus Christ? Aren’t the friars his successors?

Why so many women for him alone? Nothing, nothing, the friars are right in everything

and I’m going to side with them against my countrymen. The Filipino liberals are anti-

Spaniard. The proof that they are is… that the friars say so. But if the liberals win? If,

tired, persecuted, and desperate for so much jailing and exiling, they throw all caution to

the wind, they arm themselves as in Spain, behead their enemies, killing them in

revenge may also reach me. Here! Here! Let’s consider well if this is possible. Is a

massacre of the friars possible in the Philippines? Is it possible here a slaughter to that

which occurred in Spain thirty years ago as they say? No, a Filipino never attacks one

who is unharmed, one who is defenseless. We see it among boys who are fighting. The
biggest one does not use all his superior strength but fights the smallest with only one

arm; he doesn't start the attack before the other one is ready. No, the Indio may be

stupid, simple, fanatical, and whatever one may say, but he always retains a certain

gentlemanly instinct. He has to be very, very much offended, he has to be in the last

stage of despair to engage in assassinations and massacres of a similar kind. But, if

they should do the friars what the friars did to the heretics on St. Bartholomew’s day in

France? History says that the Catholics took advantage of the night when the heretics

were gathered in Paris and beheaded and assassinated them… if the anti-friar Filipinos,

fearing that the friars may do to them what they did in France, take advantage of the

lesson and go ahead. Holy God! If in this supreme struggle for survival, seeing that their

lives, property, and liberty are in danger, they should stake everything and allow

themselves to be carried away by excesses, by the terror that present circumstances

inspire? Misfortune of misfortunes! What would then become of me if I side now with the

friars? The best course is not to decide. So long as the government does not appease

the minds of the people, it’s bad to take part in these affairs. It might be desirable to

deport, to send to the gallows all the liberal Filipinos to extirpate the see

What would then become of me if I side now with the friars? The best course is

not to decide. So long as the government does not appease the minds of the people, it’s

bad to take part in these affairs. It might be desirable to deport, to send to the gallows

all the liberal Filipinos to extirpate the seed… but, their sons, their relatives, their

friends… the conscience of the whole country? Are there today more anti-friars than

before 1872? Every Filipino prisoners or exile opens the eyes of one hundred Filipinos

and wins as many for his party. If they could hang all Filipinos and leave only the friars
and me to enjoy the country, that would be the best but… then I’ll be the slave of all of

them. I’ll have to work for them, which would be worse. What is to be done? What is the

government doing? Liberalism is a plant that never dies, said that damned Rizal…

Decidedly I’ll remain neutral: Virtue lies in the middle ground. Yes, I’ll be neutral. What

does it matter to me if vice or virtue should triumph if I shall be among the vanquished?

The question is to win, and a sure victory is a victory already won. Wait for the figs to

ripen and gather them. See which party is going to win, and when they are already

intoning the hymn, I join them and I sing louder than the rest, insult the vanquished,

make gestures, rant so that the others may believe in my ardor and the sincerity of my

convictions. Here’s true wisdom! That the fools and the Quixotes allow themselves to be

killed so that mine may triumph. Their ideal is justice, equality, and liberty! My idea is to

live in peace and plenty! Which is more beautiful and more useful, freedom of the press,

for example, or a stuffed capon? Which are greater, equal rights or some cartridges

equally full of gold coins? Equality for equality, I prefer the equality of money, which can

be piled up and hidden. Let the friars win; let the liberals win, the question is to come to

an understanding afterwards with the victors. What do I care about the native land,

human dignity, progress, patriotism? All that is worthless if one has no money!
 TO THE FILIPINO YOUTH
JOSE RIZAL

A translation from Spanish by Charles Debershire

Hold high the brow serene, O

youth, where now you stand;

Let the bright sheen Of your grace be seen, Fair

hope of my fatherland!

Come now, thou genius grand,

And bring down inspiration; With

thy mighty hand,

Swifter than the wind's violation, Raise

the eager mind to higher station.

Come down with pleasing light Of art and science to the fight, O

youth, and there untie The chains that heavy lie,

Your spirit free to blight.

See how in flaming zone Amid the shadows thrown, The

Spaniard's holy hand

A crown's resplendent band Proffers

to this Indian land.

Thou, who now wouldt rise On

wings of rich emprise, Seeking

from Olympian skies

 Songs of sweetest strain,

Softer than ambrosial rain;

Thou, whose voice divine Rivals Philomel's refrain And

with varied line Through the night benign Frees

mortality from pain;

Thou, who by sharp strife

Weakest thy mind to life ;

And the memory bright Of

thy genius' light

Makest immortal in its strength ;

And thou, in accents clear Of

Phoebus, to Apelles dear; Or by

the brush's magic art

Takest from nature's store a part, To

fig it on the simple canvas' length;

Go forth, and then the sacred fire Of

thy genius to the laurel may aspire ;

To spread around the fame, And

in victory acclaim,

Through wider spheres the human name.

Day, O happy day,
 Fair Filipinas, for thy land!

So bless the Power to-day

That places in thy way

This favor and this fortune grand!

THE TOWN SCHOOLS IN THE PHILIPPINES

In this essay whose original in Spanish is titled La instruccion, the

national hero Rizal evaluates the elementary instructions given in the town is
schools established under the provision of the Educational Decrees of 1863
and offers proposal for it’s improvement. He signs it with one of his pseudonyms
-Laong Laan.
Education in the Philippines under the provision of the Education Decrees
of 1863, was evaluated and exposed by Rizal. Education in the Philippines was
the subject and became the topic of different local newspapers. But what is
written in the newspapers is the opposite of the real system of the schools. They
intentionally publish their work that pretends to be the better to attract the great
masses in the towns rather than addressed it to the Government or higher
authorities.
The schoolboys and afterwards become the teachers of the town
are expressing their opinions for the progress of the country. They are hoping to
be forgiven a chance to speak about objective of their lives, that their observation
will reach the concerned, and if those like them who are just ordinary citizens
hear the grievances, then they can be very happy and rewarded by the time that
their occupations will be taken away that they spent exclusively for the welfare of
the native land.
Rizal gives attention to the moral and intellectual condition of the
people which was hardly criticized by other foreign countries, such as German,
English, and French, which find us backwards.
In any case, the scheme of the merchant writer who have shown a
desire to have fun and laugh so that his work is accepted and makes money
faster, and his work has found many truths in the ability to sacrifice many
innocent people, but the truth is not that sad and painful.
Rizal was the first to admit and confess a mistake, because
whenever he found a voice that could express himself and listen to him, he would
protest against slander or refute the mistake.
Do you know what is the usual cackled topic that they paraphrase and delineate
in a thousand ways?
  The backwardness and ignorance of Filipinos, that kind of first childhood in which our
people float, and that like a dense deleterious atmosphere is drowning in their cradle
happiest dispositions and the freshest minds.
 When its cause is asked they themselves reply, without thinking or reasoning, with
another common-place word: Apathy. And with this they believe they have said a great
truth and had won forever the fame of great thinkers.
We believe that the cause of our backwardness and ignorance is the lack of means of
education, the vices that filet us from the beginning until the end of our
 careers. It is not the lack of stimulus of a doubtful future, or the fetters or
obstacles that are encountered at every step.
We are not going to propose a reform in the orders of the Government. Our
voices is too unauthorized for us to pretend and dream the impossible. We
just want to get the greater good from the present state of the system education.
And as it is a vast and delicate question under any aspect that it may be
considered, we shall limit ourselves for the elementary higher education that the
children receives in the modest town school, postponing for a better occasion the
discussion of higher education. And not because this primary instruction is
humble, and rudimentary we must despise it and disregard it, for if nature would
despise the aced that the wind carries and throws into its bosom, It would never
be seen adorned or dressed in precious mantle that it wears in tropical season.

First laboratories of human knowledge

 The school house is loacted only in major towns in accordance to the towns importance,
commerce and number of inhabitants. Have one or two schools for boys and girls.
Regularly one school administered by the teacher of boys. If there is no woman teacher,
who is rare, the school is for built sexes.
 The schoolhouse in the town which are rich and near the provincial capital or the capital
city is a kind of barn made of masonry or simply with bamboo or nipa or of both kinds of
materials.
According to the state of problematic treasury of the town government. When
despite taxes, tributes, and personal services, there cannot be found the
measurable stun sufficient to erect a poor hovel and fence it with, bamboo.
 The vestibule of the parish house or of any other house, serves as a temporary
schoolhouse, but which may become really permanent. Such a change takes place also
when the place destined for the school becomes the barracks, the jail, or town halls or
as it happens in several towns, believing perchance that, since knowledge occupies no
place; teaching may will be done in the open air.
 The furniture of this educational institution is compose of: long benches of wood or
bamboo, a wide table, rectangular or square where all pupils write and solve their
problems, if they don’t doodles.
 The eternal nightmare of childhood that takes away his peace of mind, tranquility, and
prudence.
 Notwithstanding there are schools where more order reigns and where in front of each
bench is found table made and hoc to keep books and paper. One or two maps, sample
of writing, spelling books, etc. cover the walls.
 The teacher
 Usually graduated from the Normal School, and in this case he is young and sufficiently
competent for the position he holds, or a retired directorcillo, a clerk, or a former old
student who had to absorb the textbook’s, knowing more Latin than Castilian and more
aphorisms than any other thing, like a hat of La letra con sangreentroor.
 The maximum salary that the teacher can get from the Government does not, usually
exceed P25, just as the minimum does go below P12. The children of well to do families
beside use to pay a quota of P1, 00 or four reales Fuertes. With this and the sale of ruled
paper, pens and books a young man supports himself-poor wet nurse in charge of giving
the first nourishment to that seed so neglected that is called childhood.
Within the number of children is sufficiently large, a teacher can ask for an
assistant who is paid 7 or 5 pesos to share the work or bear it all himself alone
during the greater part of the week. This assistant is usually the brightest among
his pupils or one who has graduated from the same Normal School where there
is a course intended for the training of these assistants who, for lack of means or
any other cause cannot finish the complete normal course.
With regard to woman teachers- rare beings difficult to find in certain
provinces save some modifications, are in the same predicament as their
masculine colleagues. They are usually the best from the colleges, not always of
poor or middle class families, for the desire to have a title or a career (since no
other is available) makes litany well to do young woman take the examination for
teachers, not to practice afterwards except at identically. Nevertheless, very few
risk taking this step that time timid young women look upon as a decisive act
their life or future.
The municipal School for girls in Manila
 Colleges of la Concordia, sta. Rosa and sta. Catalina are the school from where come
the only teachers with feminine influence in the towns.
For being few and rare they select the best towns where the most well to do live,
so that the third and fourth class towns have to end their girls to the school for
boys lest they grow up without knowing the advantages of the most modest and
rudimentary education reading and writing.
Education is limited more or less to the following:
 In the boy’s schools
 Reading
 Writing
 The four principal arithmetical operations
  In the girl’s schools
 not: same subjects with some variation: sewing and woman’s work,
in which they excel more than in any other thing.

The first subject is reduced to reading without period or comma with

pronunciation or more or less tolerable, according to the ability and patience of
the teacher, using textbooks nine tenths which the pupils do not understand and
who are thereby tortured without getting anything out of them.
After the bitter pages of the Cartilia - a memorable object in the annals of childhood-
follows the readling of Trisagion or the Mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary, true mysteries for a
town lad, even less intelligible than the hieroglyphics to simple tourist. If the child is already
sufficient quick with reading, then they give him Doctrina Christiana (Christian Doctrine) by
father Astete. El migo de los ninosorEl Rueda’ which they commit to memory and recite worse
than a parrot.

This is with regard to reading. With respect to writing, the matter is already better,
though it leaves much to be desired. By force of perseverance, cleverness, smith a certain art or
innate ability many learn how to write correctly and beautifully, differing very little from ours, if
they do not equal or excel us, on the other hand, they do not write orthographically either their
native tongue or the Spanish for the reason that they do not understand or speak the latter
and they have never studied the former.

They learn also with much ease the principal arithmetical operations,
but as they are never taught in a practical way, nor are they given problems to
solve in the majority of cases. It turns out that they forget them easily, for
considering them as foolishness or snares, and afterwards they count only with
the fingers or with little stones in which many of them excel in such a way that
they get to perform true equations.
To know how to read, if that can be called to have
beautiful penmanship even if it cannot be utilized
properly; to know how to add, subtract, multiply and
divide without many being able to use it in their daily
lives. Are application, ability or perseverance lacking
here? No. Has the teacher neglected his duties? Neither
do we believe so. Where then is the defect, where is the
flaw that renders useless so much time and so much toll.
Let us set Forth some brief consideration before answering the questions:
 In the towns we don’t speak here of those remote ones but of those near the city those
who understand and speak the official language are few and even fewer are those who
speak it well,
 Well now, in those towns children are generally the most well-to-do, as soon as they
have acquired the rudiment, go to Manila to enroll in a college where they get a more
perfect and adequate education.
  The remain therefore in the towns the children of the poor who though they have many
aptitudes, are compelled to drown it in the obscure atmosphere, where they live and
vegetable and where they do not find any worthy employment for their precious talent.
We don’t blame anybody except ill-luck and poverty.
Do not blame them backwardness of time Philippines towns on indolence,
the whipping boy of everyone who has not studied or gone deep into the
background of things. Blame rather the defect and insensible system of
education that, like a thick fog, obscures the intellectual horizon, killing and
drowning the most felicitous aptitudes. We say it because we know it from our
own long experience; because we are children of the towns and we have been
victims of that unfortunate routine.
What is indolence?
A state of the soul characterized by utmost indifference to everything that
surrounds and concerns one.
We believe that if indolence exists, it exists only as the offspring of ignorance and not as an
essential quality that they attribute to the country and to her climate.

This opinion was erroneous and passionate:

 To those who judge things superficially and not profoundly,
 To those who, deluded by the glitters of other people's opinions, become accustomed
to repeat and emit them as their own, and afterwards, unmindful of what they do, make
themselves mere echoes of the errors of other people;
 To those who are satisfied with four dazzling phrases with two or three anxious that
startle not for their originality hut because they evoke laughter and who never analyze:
 To those whom mistake causes for effects;
 To those who see clear, but not daring to accuse die guilty or confess the error or put
die linger in he wound, look for an easy solution and shower with curse one who, like
the Biblical bird, cannot answer or defend himself.
Would you say it is Indolence that makes that student flock to Manila from
all the provinces crowding it. If the two or three doors that open to them an
uncertain and obscure future? Is it the effect of indolence the existent of those
whole districts of artists and artisans there Philippines where theme is neither a
college academy, nor school of arts amid trades? The existence of those
manufactured articles that sum up for their fineness and delicacy as well as the
products of industry and agriculture in spite of the primitive state in which the
country is found? That explains the pile of applications for the acquisition of lands
applications filed by those desirous of employing and utilizing time,
intelligence, :and labor?
 We don't deny, indeed we would rather confess sadly though not without
dismay, that the country is very back ward and very far front occupying the place
that she deserves, taking into consideration her inhabitants and her, oil.
Teach us, educate us and enlighten us and indifference,
apathy and indolence will disappear.
The blind man who has seen light cannot help but love it. He who has
heard once the harmonies of Meyer bear or the melodies of Rossini cannot help
but love music. He who has seen the advantages of a better life will fight to get
out of the moral ergastula"
Our words shall be addressed directly to those in charge of carrying out
the objectives of the government as well as to those whom we consider can give
support to our proposition.
What is really the blockage to our progress?
 Our ignorance from the official language
If the Filipinos really don’t understand and unable to speak the Spanish
language, the teaching, the efforts, and all the proposals are meaningless if they
want to attain those progress.
Suppose to be the Right Way
Instead of the textbooks that awaken the one’s faith but not to make him a
Christian in the true meaning of the word, and the murmuring words that the
Filipino don’t fully understand, they should have given the children simple books
of moral, on the geography and history of the Philippines, and above all a good
treatise on agriculture but written in the language he speaks, since the immense
majority of the people are engaged in working and cultivating the soil and raising
cattle. Is it costly, is it impossible?
The modest and almost rudimentary education would be enough to awaken in the
pupils ideas of perfection and progress and the people, the rulers and even religion would
gain much. There are books on true and healthy moral as well as little compilations of history
and geography or treatises on agriculture adapted to the country. What does it cost to translate
them and disseminate in the public schools for those unfortunate children wilt cannot go to
better schools in order to get a more useful education?

Let us cease to be empirical. Let us learn to

progress. Let us seek the direct good; for life is short and
the mission of man is great. Let everyone fulfill its duties
and obligations in the sphere in which he lives, not only
for the sake of complying with and not for the sake of
complying task of suffering and progressive humanity.
 To you then who have the sacred trust of educating the germs of society, you who are
charged with giving life and nourishment to the spirit of those who much later will become
citizens or will fill important positions: to you we appeal and we submit to your judgment this
consideration. Examine, analyze, what is before you: try to put remedy to what is given to you
to cure and improve.

The gobernadorcillos of the towns have done a grateful help, who ought to
see to it constantly and carefully that all children attend school or compel parents
to send them to schools. Rich people also have done an impact in stimulating the
education by rewarding those who show the most application and the best
conduct, that it perhaps result to boost the children’s perseverance and improve
his confidence to do better. Whether the sacrifice is big or small; whether men
are ungrateful or forgetful, whether malice is opposed; or whether sterile and
barren egoism mock, we ought not to be dismayed before an insignificant failure
nor go backward at the least obstacle that is discerned in the horizon. In order
that the work of an individual is crowned with the most brilliant success,
necessary are all the favors of fortune, all the assistance of happy
circumstances, a prepared ground, a propitious predisposition otherwise the
voice is lost in the void like hopes and efforts. Let us work then together and
instead of useless lamentations, of disconsolate complaints, of accusations and
excuses, let us apply the remedy, let us build, no matter if we begin with simplest,
for later we shall have time to erect new edifices on the foundation. Step by step
one reaches tile Temple of Progress who’s numerous and fitful steps are not
climbed without having faith amid conviction in the soul, in the heart of courage
necessary in encountering disillusions, and the gaze fixed on the future. Let its
do for generation that must follow us, which will be either our reward or our
reproach, all that we would like to have been done for us by our ancestors,
perhaps placed by fatality in very dismal circumstance though full of generous
aspirations. The road is ours as the present is ours, and if it is not given to us to
reach the end, we may be sure that by fulfilling our duties, the future will be ours
– the future full of blessings.
Conclusion
Aiming for progress is not that easy to reach as well as to educate our
countrymen. Focusing on the education is a must for us to improve ourselves
and creates new opportunities. The backwardness and ignorance were really a
burden for the progress, but those are curable, in fact we have almost surpassed
that kind of state. We have learned a lot from the past. We trained our children
well to bring the next generation to the next level. We just have to conquer the
barriers together in order for us to build a better future, not just for ourselves but
for the country’s future.
Education is not just for the fortunate people who
are on the cities that are updated and that the government
almost always being prioritized, but it is also and should
be for the people in the countryside to elevate their status
of living and wisdom so that we could have more
 productive individuals in every corner of our mother land
or even in the whole world.

Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo: The Nationalism of the Two Novels

Introduction

Rizal is a man known for his intelligence, versatile talents, a patriot and humanist
who believes that education will give his people liberty from their oppressive
ignorance and it will be delivered into conscious awareness of unity and freedom.
Rizal was very known for his writings that are passed on to different Filipino
generations. The novels he wrote were condemned in the 19th Century - Noli Me
Tangere and El Filibusterismo. The fiction novels of Rizal have aroused the spirit
of nationalism of the Filipino people then and now. These two novels were
considered as the "greatest Philippine social documents," for they bring forth the
most potent inspiration for national unity today. It also received official recognition
of "gospels of Philippine nationalism," and the Philippine Congress made a law
that regulates the compulsory reading of the two novels in colleges and
universities also known as the Republic Act 1425 signed on June 12, 1956.
The nationalistic novels made Rizal popular amongst Asian Nationalists. He also
has different statues in different places he's been to honor his martyrdom and his
heroic acts. The novel revolves around the unjust ruling of the Spanish colonial
exploitation during their occupation in the Philippines and he agitated for Political
and Social reforms.
Rizal being a humanist and a poet used his pen to describe how horrible is the
situation of his fellow countrymen through his books. The novel expressed his
love for our nation and uplifted the light of nationalism to his fellow citizens.
Although he is a man of mixed races, the blood of him being a Filipino surfaced
in his acts.
During the 19th Century, the Philippines was occupied by the Spanish
government which where friars are considered to be one of the most influential
and powerful people. Included in the novel were the anti-clerical fortifications
during the era but were written to present anarchy of unbridled greed existing in
the country. Rizal is not against the catholic religion but he pointed all the blame
to the Spanish friars who are responsible for all the misery of his countrymen. He
inevitably condemned some of the practices and procedures being done in the
religion which are made by the friars.
The novels also traced the delicate portrait of a people faced with social
problems and political enigmas. The novel's characters illustrated the different
lives there were during the era and the unjust and unfair treatment they get.
The first novel was called as 'Noli Me Tangere' that literally means "Touch me
not". The novel was all about how cancerous the society is during the Spanish
colonialism. It was written during Rizal's entire Europe trip and was published in
1887. 170 passages from Noli Me Tangere are against the religion.
The sequel of the book was titled as 'El Filibusterismo'. It also contains hate
towards the catholic unjust practices in its 50 passages. The Gomez, Burgos and
Zamora also known as GomBurZa was the 3 martyr friars who inspired Jose in
writing this sequel. It was all about the reign of the greed of the Spanish rulers
and was published in 1891.
At present, the first few copies of the two books are now kept in the National
Library in Manila and is open for the public to view.

Plot of Noli Me Tangere

Crisostomo Ibarra, a mixed-race heir to a wealthy clan, returns home after seven
years in Europe, full of ideas about how to improve the condition of his fellow
countrymen. In his search for change, he is confronted with an abusive
ecclesiastical hierarchy and cruel Spanish civil administration. Via plot
developments, the novel indicates that meaningful change in this context is
extremely difficult, if not impossible.
His father, Don Rafael Ibarra, was imprisoned during his absence
for the accidental death of a tax collector. Don Rafael died in jail, and Father
Damaso, San Diego's parish priest, refused him a Christian burial because he
had stopped going to confession long before his death and was a subscriber to
liberal publications.
The deplorable conditions in his country have remained unchanged
since he left to Europe. He established a school he had known in Europe in order
to educate his people and bring progress to his hometown. With the enthusiastic
support of the town, his project was met with skepticism by the old scholar Tasio,
who had tried and failed to do the same thing years before.
An attempt on Ibarra's life occurs during the laying of the school's
cornerstone, but he is saved by Elias, the mysterious boatman whom he had
previously rescued from death during a picnic at the lake. Ibarra is continuously
harassed and persecuted by the friars in San Diego. Ibarra was almost provoked
to kill Father Damaso by the vilification hurled against his death father, but his
hand was remained held by his fiancee Maria Clara. The friar excommunicates
him, but the Archbishop later absolves him.
Finally, a force rebellion is planned, and Ibarra is named as its
leader due to forged documents. As she was forced to trade his love letter for
some letters that contained the hidden secret of her paternity, his fiancee
unwittingly supported the plotters by providing them with a specimen of his
signature.
Ibarra was imprisoned before being rescued by Elias. Elias is
wounded and sacrifices his life for his beloved friend. Ibarra quietly buried Elias in
his family's woods before fleeing the country, giving the appearance that he died
from the civil guard's bullets.
 Father Damaso advises Maria Clara to marry the Spaniard Alfonso
Unares, who is in love with her. She refuses and instead enters the Poor Clares'
nunnery.
Nationalism in the Novel “Noli me Tangere”
Rizal's 1st novel -- the Noli me Tangere-- could be a critical,
complete indictment of the Philippine political and non-secular regime. during this
novel, Rizal tried to do what nobody has been willing to do -- he replied to the
calumnies that, for hundreds of years, are concentrated upon us and our country;
he represented the state of our society, our life, our beliefs, our hopes, our
needs, our laments, and our grievances. And what's stunning is that he has
unmasked the hypocrisy, that underneath the cloak of faith, came among us to
deprive us, to brutalize us.
Rizal distinguished religion faith from the false, from the irrational, from
that that traffics with the Sacred Word to extract cash, to form us believe
foolishness that Christianity would blush at if it had information of it. Moreover, he
unveiled what lay hidden behind the deceptive and sensible words of our
government.
Rizal didn't let his fellowmen off the hook, though. He had additionally told our
fellowmen of our faults, our vices, our blameworthy and shameful apathy with
regards to those miseries. it may be noted that the facts Rizal had connected are
all true and real.
After publication, Noli me Tangere was thought-about to be one in every of the
instruments that initiated Filipino nationalism resulting in the 1896 Philippine
Revolution. The novel did awaken sleeping Filipino awareness and established
the grounds for meaning to independence.

Plot of El Filibusterismo

Thirteen years after leaving the Philippines, Crisostomo Ibarra returns as

Simoun, a rich jeweler sporting a beard and blue-tinted glasses. On board the
dingy steamer, Tabo en-route to San Diego on the Pasig River, he is the subject
of conversation on the lower deck, as well as the center of attention on the upper
deck. The thirteen years away from his country. He was transformed into an
exotic looking, mysterious personality. He radiates great influence and he
becomes the indispensable consultant and a confidant of the Captain-General.

No one suspects that Simoun, the affluent jeweler, is the fugitive Ibarra. Only a
Basilio, son of Sisa a demented in Noli Me Tangere. But even Basilio finds it
difficult to reconcile the dreamer and the idealist that once was Ibarra to the
shrewd, sly schemer that is now Simoun.
A young man, Basilio pursuing a medical career and he graduated at the Ateneo
Municipal de Manila. Basilio stumbles on Simoun’s secret on a Christmas clay
visit to his mother Sisa in the woods of the Ibrras, as Simoun was digging near
the grave site for his buried treasures. Simoun tries to win Basilio to his side as
he explains his plans. He has returned to over – throw the government and
avenge the injustices he has suffered. He would use his wealth and his influence
to encourage corruption in the high circles of government; as a result, he would
drive the people to despair and incite them to revolution. His obsession the
revolution would primarily become a fulfillment of his vow of vengeance. Simoun
has reasons for instigating a revolution. First is to rescue María Clara from the
convent and second, to get rid of ills and evils of Philippine society. The people’s
freedom in the process came only as a secondary purpose.

Simoun attempts twice to ignite the fires of the rebellion but on the first occasion,
he falls. The news of Maria Clara’s death reaches him just as he is about to give
the signal for the coordinated attack on the city. He planned this revolution, so
that in the ensuing confusion he would be able to rescue Maria Clara from the
nunnery. But Maria Clara is dead, in his numbness he forgets that his followers
await his signal. Panic ensues and they break out in disorganized rampage.

Second attempt of Simoun is thwarted by Isagani, a young poet, who snatches

the lamp. Simoun sends a wedding gift to Isagani former sweetheart who marries
another suitor. The lamp contained a homemade bomb which was timed to blow
up when all the invited high officials and friars were seated at the wedding feast.
According to Simoun, the lamp will stay lighted for only 20 minutes before it
flickers; if someone attempts to turn the wick, it will explode and kill everyone
Having been warned by his good friend Basilio of the impending explosion,
Isagani risks his life to save his faith-less Paulita. Due to his undying love for
Paulita, bursts in the room and throws the lamp into the river, sabotaging
Simoun's plans. He escapes by diving into the river as guards chase after him.
He later regrets his impulsive action because he had contradicted his own belief
that he loved his nation more than Paulita and that the explosion and revolution
could have fulfilled his ideals for Filipino society. Meanwhile, a parchment
prophesying doom is passed around among the wedding guest and Simoun is
pinpointed as the instigator of the scheme.:
“Mene Thecel Phares.” The signature identifies that Simoun as Ibarra. Juan
Crisostomo Ibarra Initially thinking that it was simply a bad joke.

Simoun fless with his box of jewels. Hunted by the law and wounded, he seeks
sanctuary in the house of a native priest, Father Florentino to escape his
pursuers he takes poison and dies in despair. Before he dies, he reveals his real
identity to Florentino while they exchange thoughts about the failure of his
revolution and why God forsook him. Florentino opines that God did not forsake
him and that his plans were not for the greater good but for personal gain.

Simoun, finally accepting Florentino’s explanation, squeezes his hand and dies.
Florentino then takes Simoun’s remaining jewels and throws them into the Pacific
Ocean with the corals hoping that they would not be used by the greedy, and that
when the time came that it would be used for the greater good, when the nation
would be finally deserving liberty for themselves, the sea would reveal the
treasures.

Nationalism in the Novel

In Rizal's "El Filibusterismo," the Philippines is inchoate national project images

not in Asia but amid complex allusive dynamics that emanate from the Americas.
Rizal and his novel, like the Philippine nation they inspired, appear in global and
postcolonial frameworks as both Asian and American in that episteme Eastern
and Western, subaltern and hegemonic, interact in a ceaseless flow that resists
easy categorization.

In 1887, he published his first novel, Noli Me Tangere, written in Spanish, a

searing indictment of friar abuse as well as of colonial rule’s shortcomings. That
same year, he returned to Manila, where the Noli Me Tangere had been banned
and its author now hated intensely by the friars. In 1888, he went to Europe once
more, and there wrote the sequel, El Filibusterismo (The Subversive), published
in 1891. In addition, he annotated an edition of Antonio Morga’s Sucesos de las
Islas Filipinas, showing that the Philippines had had a long history before the
advent of the Spaniards. Rizal returned to Manila in 1892 and founded a reform
society, La Liga Filipina, before being exiled to Dapitan, in Mindanao, Southern
Philippines. There he devoted himself to scientific research and public works.
Well-known as an ophthalmologist, he was visited by an English patient,
accompanied by his ward, Josephine Bracken, who would be his last and most
serious romantic involvement.
The El Filibusterismo rank it as an "inferior" because less polished work when
compared to Rizal's first novel, Noli me Tangere. The El Filibusterismo lacks, for
these commentators, the narrative coherence and cheerful humor of its
predecessor, putting in their place polemic pronouncements and sarcastic
laughter. In writings about nationalism and Rizal, the El Filibusterismo is quickly
passed over, its complications put to the side. Such complications begin with the
absence of a single narrative line. Instead, the novel is loosely woven around two
plots, from which several others emerge. One concerns the attempts, ultimately
foiled, of an association of university students to establish a self- supporting
academy for the teaching of Castilian in Manila autonomous from friar control.
The other plot deals with the story of Simoun, a mysterious jeweler of unknown
origins who, having ingratiated himself with the Governor General, the friars and
local officials, uses his wealth to spread corruption in the colony in the hope of
intensifying general misery and hastening a popular uprising.
The filibustero is thought to subvert one's control over one's thoughts and that of
the mother country over her sons and daughters, it also insinuates its way to the
top of the colonial hierarchy, inserting itself where it does not belong and causing
authority to act in ways that go against its interests. The filibustero then is a kind
of foreign presence who exercises an alienating effect on all those it comes in
contact with. Being out of place, it can travel all over the place, promoting the
misrecognition of motives and words. For this reason, we can think of the
filibustero's foreignness as the force of a transmission that troubles social
hierarchy. It is the power of translation that the filibustero possesses-
-the capacity to cross boundaries and put diverse groups in contact with one
another but translation in the service of something outside of colonial society.
What is the "outside" that the filibustero works for? Independence, perhaps?
Rizal himself remained uncertain. Until the end of his life, he never explicitly
favored a final break with Spain even though he considered political assimilation
to be doomed. We can think of the Fili as the site within which he rehearsed this
ambivalence at the foundation of nationalist sentiments. The novel is a record of
hesitations and anxieties raised by the failure of assimilation giving rise to the
specters of separation. The figure of the filibustero
was its medium for tracking and trafficking in the emergence, spread and
containment of such anxieties. It is this fundamentally unsettling nature of the
filibustero as both medium and message, that infects, as it were, both author and
his characters. I try to trace the spread of this infection below.
His novels also have foreign origins. The two novels, as they are popularly
referred to, were written while Rizal traveled and studied through Europe. The
first novel was composed mostly in Paris and published in Berlin in 1887; the
second was begun in London, continued in Biarritz, Paris, Brussels and finally
published in Ghent in 1891. While monetary considerations forced Rizal to find
the cheapest publisher, there is nonetheless the sense here of nationalist writings
emanating from the unlikeliest places beyond the empire similar to that of the
primary nationalist newspaper, La Solidaridad (published in Barcelona and
Madrid from 1889-1895). Both novels were declared subversive by Spanish
authorities, their transport and possession criminalized. Rizal and his friends had
to arrange for their clandestine delivery to the Philippines. They were smuggled
in, usually from Hong Kong, and bribes were routinely paid to customs officials to
allow for the entry. The conditions under which the novels were composed and
circulated further underlines their strangeness. They were written outside colonial
society, addressed to an audience absent from the author's immediate milieu.
Their clandestine circulation required the corruption of officials while their
possession, declared a crime, resulted in imprisonment, and their author was
himself exiled in the southern Philippines for four years and eventually executed.
We get a sense of both in Rizal's dedication of the El Filibusterismo: "To the
Memory of the priests Don Mariano Gomez, Don Jose Burgos, and Don Jacinto
Zamora," it begins, referring to the three Filipino (non-peninsular Spaniard)
secular priests who were falsely implicated in a local uprising in 1872 and
unjustly executed by Spanish authorities. Having earlier criticized the Spanish
friars' monopoly over the colony's wealthiest parishes in the 1860s, these three
secular priests had also challenged Spanish assumptions about the inferiority of
natives and mestizos and the inability of non-Spanish secular priests to run their
own parishes.
In El Filibusterismo, the author is shadowed by another agent who returns the
call of death: the figure of the filibustero. In the book's epigraph, Rizal quotes his
Austrian friend and nationalist sympathizer Ferdinand Blumentritt who writes: “It
is easy to suppose that a filibustero has bewitched in secret the league of friars
and reactionaries, so that unconsciously following his inspirations, they favor and
foment that politics which has only one end: to extend the ideas of filibusterismo
all over the country and convince every last Filipino that there exists no other
salvation outside of that of the separation from the Motherland.” In Spanish
dictionaries, one of the definitions of filibustero is that of a pirate, hence a thief.
But as one who, we might say in English, "filibusters", He is also one who
interrupts parliamentary proceedings, smuggling his or her own discourse into
those of others. In either case, we can think of the filibustero as an intruder,
breaking and entering into where he does not properly belong, and doing so by
surprise and often in disguise. Small wonder then that by the latter 19th century,
"filibustero" was also glossed as "subversive," in the sense of a disruptive
presence, a figure who by word or deed, suddenly and surreptitiously steals upon
the social order. Thus, were nationalists referred to by Spanish authorities as
filibusters. Their wish to speak and disseminate Castilian as a route to economic
and social reform challenged the friar-sanctioned practice of dissuading the
majority of natives from learning the language. The friars from the beginnings of
colonization in the sixteenth century had administered God’s Word in the
numerous local vernaculars. They also translated native languages into Castilian
for the benefit of the colonial state and their clerical orders. Thus did the friars
long enjoy the role of privileged mediators between the metropolis and the
colony. For Filipino nationalists to seek to spread Castilian to the populace would
in effect undercut the mediating authority of the Spanish fathers. In their desire to
communicate in Castilian, ilustrado nationalists were asking to be recognized as
other than what colonial authorities regarded them to be: the equal of Spaniards.
Instead, Spanish authorities prodded by the friars saw nationalists to be speaking
out of place. Speaking in a language that did not belong to them, they appeared
alien to and disruptive of the colonial order. The political implications that grow
out of linguistic disruptions takes on a particular inflection in Rizal's citation of
Blumentritt. The filibustero here is put forth as a kind of sorcerer, a malevolent
medium. Later on, Rizal in his preface will refer to the filibustero as a "phantom"
(fantasma) who
roams about, haunting the populace. Its presence is thus a secret, so that one
may be in contact with a filibustero without being aware of it. The power of the
filibustero lies in his or her ability to make you think what he wants you to without
your knowledge. Possessed by the thoughts of another who you cannot even
recognize, you begin to act in ways you did not intend. Thus does the
malevolence of the filibustero consist of separating you from your own thoughts.
And in a colonial context, such a separation can bring you to cut yourself off from
the mother country, that is, to mistake separation from Spain for independence.

Conclusion
Rizal being a man with versatile talents used his writing to uplift the spirit of
nationalism. He may not used sword to hurt anyone but only through his words
that he was able to open the eyes of the Filipino people blinded by the unjustly
practices of the Spaniard friars which makes the church teachings a shield and to
justify their doings.
Noli Me Tangere became an eye opener for all the people who read it. It depicted
the anomalies the church have been facing because of the wrongdoings of the
friars who rules it. Meanwhile, El Filibusterismo is about the desire to revolt and
to destroy all the individuals who are responsible for all the corruption in power,
hypocrisy and mistreatment of all the native Filipino people who also nicknamed
as “Indios.”
The novels are the stepping-stone for early Filipino revolutions to arise. It
became an inspiration for them that no one is allowed to make them a nobody to
their own land and they are the authorized rulers of the country and its people.
Indeed, a pen is mightier than the sword. A sword can end a life but will never
end the mentality both the oppressed and the suppressants as much as the pen
can do. He was able to awaken the spirit of nationalism amongst Filipinos and
was able to insult the suspects at the same time.
Rizal was indeed an intelligent man who was passionate about getting rid of the
unforgivable afflictions the Spanish friars and the government exercised during
the occupation of Spanish Colonialism in the Philippines. He have given his life to
free his beloved motherland and its people. Even up to this day, his heroic deed
was always instilled in our minds and will be passed to the next generations to
come.
 THE PHILIPPINES A CENTURY HENCE

Reviewer

Chapter I

In order to read the destiny of a people, it is necessary to open the book of its past.

 “The national survival mostly depends on how the government governs its people and
country.”
 Consequences in places where two different races dwell: assimilation,
destruction, elimination, encystment.

Although he still believed that the Philippines should not separate from mother Spain,
he always believed in the birth of the Filipino spirit of a nation. Influenced by the French
Revolution a century before him, he always seen the spread of libertarian views would
have an immediate impact on the Philippines. His essay has been viewed as an
ultimatum to Spain: reform or independence.

Spain’s implementation of her military policies – because of such laws, the

Philippine population decreased dramatically. Poverty became more rampant than ever,
and farmlands were left to wither. The family as a unit of society was neglected, and
overall, every aspect of the life of the Filipino was retarded.

Deterioration and disappearance of Filipino indigenous culture – when Spain came

with the sword and the cross, it began the gradual destruction of the native Philippine
culture. Because of this, the Filipinos started losing confidence in their past and their
heritage, became doubtful of their present lifestyle, and eventually lost hope in the
future and the preservation of their race.

Passivity and submissiveness to the Spanish colonizers – one of the most powerful forces that
influenced a culture of silence among the natives were the Spanish friars. Because of the use of
force, the Filipinos learned to submit themselves to the will of the foreigners.

- The question then arises as to what had awakened the hearts and opened the minds of the
Filipino people with regards to their plight. Eventually, the natives realized that such oppression
in their society by foreign colonizers must no longer be tolerated.

- Exterminating the people as an alternative to hindering progress did not work either. The
Filipino race was able to survive amidst wars and famine, and became even more numerous
after such catastrophes. To wipe out the nation altogether would require the sacrifice of
thousands of Spanish soldiers, and this is something Spain would not allow.
- Spain, therefore, had no means to stop the progress of the country. What she needs to do is
to change her colonial policies so that they are in keeping with the needs of the Philippine
society and to the rising nationalism of the people.
- Then the people saw their own countrymen in the higher ranks of the army, their general
officers fighting beside the heroes of Spain and sharing their laurels, begrudged neither
character.

Chapter II

The priest of that epoch, wishing to establish their domination over the people, got in
touch with it and made common cause with it against the oppressive encamenderos.
 And not a few priest, both secular and regular, undertook dangerous journeys, as
representatives of the country, and thus, along with the strict and public residencia then
required of the governing powers, from the captain-genera' to the most insignificant
official, rather consoled and pacified the wounded spirits, satisfying, even though it
were only in form, all the miscontents.
 The people no longer have confidence in its former protectors, now its exploiters and
executioners. The mask have fallen. It has been that the love and piety of the past have
come to resemble the devotion of a nurse.
 True it is that the Penal Code has come like a drop of balm to such bitterness. But what
use are all the codes in the world, if by means of confidential reports, if for trilling
reasons, if through anonymous traitors any honest citizen may be exiled or banished
without a hearing.

If the state of affairs should continue, what will become of

the Philippines within the century?
 This is not the place to speak of what outcome such deplorable conflict might have, for
it depends upon chance, upon the weapons and upon a thousand circumstances which
man cannot foresee.
 If those who guide the destinies of the Philippines remain obstinate, and instead of
introducing reforms try to make the condition of the country retrograde.
 All the pettry instructions that have occurred in the Philippines were the work of a few
fanatics or discontented soldiers, who had deceive and hambug the people or avail
themselves of their powers over their subordinates to gain their ends.
- So they all failed.
- No insurrection had a popular character or was based on a need of the whole race or
fought for human rights or justice , so it left no
 Brutalization of Malayan Filipinos has been demonstrated to be impossible. In spite of
the dark horde of friars in whose hand rest the instruction of youth.
 Neither is it possible gradually to exterminate the inhabitants.
 Chapter III

If the Philippine must remain under the control of Spain, they will necessarily have to be
transformed in a Political sense, for the course of their history and needs of their
inhabitants so required.
 Governors realized this truth and impelled by their own patriotism
 Introduced needed reforms in order to forestall events.
 Not only Ineffectual but even Prejudicial
 Government must be radical in confronting evils that must be cured
- Tries in this way to alleviate the patients sufferings or to temporize the cowardice and timid
ignorant.
- All the reforms of the our liberal ministers were, have been, are and will be good- when
carried out
- When we think of them, we are reminded of the dieting of Sancho Panza in Barataria Island.
He took his seat at a sumptuous and well-appointed table “covered with fruit and many
varieties of food differently prepared” but when the wretch’s mouth and each dish the
physician Pedro Rezio interposes one saying “take it away!” the dish remove, sancho was a
hungry as ever. truth is that the dispositic Pedro Rezio give reasons, which seemed to have
been written By Cervantez especially for the colonial administrations, “you must not eat, Mr
governor, exact according to the usage and custom of other islands, where there are
governors”. something was found to be wrong with each dish: one was too hot, another too
moist, and so on, just like our Pedro Rezio on both sides of the sea great good did his cooks skill
do sancho!
- In the case of our country, The reforms take the place of the dishes; the Philippines are Sanco,
while the part of the quack physician is played by many persons interested in not having the
dishes touched, perhaps that they may themselves got the benefit of them.
- The result is that the longsuffering sancho, or the Philippines, misses his Liberty, rejects all
government and ends up by rebelling against his quack physician.
- If the Philippines have no liberty on the press, have no choice in the cones to make known to
the government and to the nation whether or not their decrees have been duly obeyed,
whether or not these benefit the country, all the able efforts of the colonial ministers will meet
the fate of the dishes in Barataria Island.
- The minister, then, who wants his reforms to be reforms, must begin by declaring the press in
the Philippines free and by instituting Filipino delegates.
- The free press of the Philippines, because of their complaints rarely ever reached the
Peninsula, very rarely, and if they do they are so secret. So mysterious that no news paper
dares to publish them or if t does reproduced them, it does so tardily and badly.
- A government that rules a country from a great distance is the one that has the most need for
a free press more if it wishes to rule rightly and fitly.
- It directly observes what it rules and administers
- Requires truth and facts
 FREEDOM OF PRESS IS DANGEROUS!
- If Napoleon had not tyrannized over the press, perhaps it would have warned him of the the
peril into which he was hurled him understand that the people were weary of the peril into
which he was made him understand that the people were weary and the earth wanted world
peace. Perhaps his genius, instead of being dissipated in foreign aggrandizement would have
become intensive in laboring to strengthen his position and thus have assured it.
- Spain herself records in her history more revolutions when the press was gagged.

What colonies have become independent while they had a

free press and enjoyed liberty?
- Is it preferable to govern blindly or to govern with ample knowledge?
- Prestige of the rulers that prop of false governments will be greatly imperiled.
- A nation acquires respect, and concealing abuses, but by rebuking and punishing them.

The Free Press needed by the government, the government

which still dreams of the prestige which it builds mined
ground.
What risks does the government see in them?
- Prove unruly
- Becomes political trimmers
- Act properly
- All the representatives would be separatist and that in all their contentious they would
advocate separatist ideas.

Filipinos are indolent and peaceful.

Then what need the government fear? hasn't it any influence in the elections?
frankly speaking, it is a great compliment to separate the fear them in the midst of the
Cortes of the nation.
If they become what they should be, worthy honest, and faithful to their trust, they
will undoubtedly annoy an ignorant or incapable minister with their questions but they
need him to govern and will need some more honorable figures among representatives
of the nation.
Now then, if the real objection to the Filipino delegates, that they smell like
igorots, which so disturbed in open Senate and doughty General Salamnca, then Don
Sinibaldo de Mas, who saw the igorots in person an wanted to live with them, can a fear
that they will smell worst like powder, and Senor Salamanca undoubtedly has No Fear
of that order. and if this were all, the Filipinos, who's there in their own country or
accustomed to bathe every day, when they become representatives may give up such a
dirty custom, at least during the legislative session so as not to offend the delicate
nostrils of Salamanca with the order of the bath.

LAW HAS NO SKIN NOR REASON NOSTRILS

No serious reason why the Philippines may not have representatives. by their
institution many malcontents would be silence, and instead of blaming its troubles upon
the government, as now happens, the country would bear them better, for a good at
least complain and with its sons among its legislators, would in a way become
responsible for their actions.
The lack of enlightenment, the indolence, the egotism, of our fellow countrymen,
and the boldness, the cunning and the bar full methods of those who wish there
obscurantism, may convert reform into a harmful instrument, but we wish to be loyal to
the government and we're pointing not to eat to the road that appears best to us that its
effort may not come to grief so that the discontent may disappear.
The Filipino people are so stupid and weak that they are treacherous of their own
interests, then let the responsibility falls upon them, let them suffer all consequences. every
country gets the feed it deserves and the government can see that it has done its duty.

The Free Press will keep the government in touch with public opinion, and the
representatives, if they are, as they ought to be, the best from among the sons of the
Philippines will be there hostages.

When the laws and acts of officials are kept under

surveillance
- The word justice may cease to be a colonial jest.
- Offices and trust should be awarded by competition, publishing the work and the judgment
thereon, so that there may stimulus and that discontent may not be bred.

To recapirulate: Philippines will remain Spanish if they enter upon the life of law and
civilization if the rights of their inhabitants are respected if the other rights due them are
granted, if the liberal policy of the government is carried out without trickery or
meanness, without subterfuges or false interpretations.

 Otherwise if an attempt is made to see in the islands a code to be exploited, a resource

to satisfy ambitious, thus to relieve the soverign country of taxes.
 Close indeed are the bonds that unite us to Spain. Two peoples do not live for three
centuries in continual contact, sharing the same lot shedding their blood on the same
fields, holding the same beliefs, worshipping the same God, Interchanging the same
ideas, but that ties are formed between hem stronger than those engendered by
affection.
Machiavelli- the greatreader of the human heart said: la noluro degli huomini, cos!
ohligarsi pe ll heneficii che essianno come per quelli che essi ricevono (it is human
nature to be bound as much by benefitsconferred as by those received).

 Spain cannot claim, not even in the name of God himself, that six millions of people
should be brutalized, exploited and oppressed, denied light and the rights inherent to a
human being and then heap upon them slights and insults.
 There is no claim of gratitude that can excuse, there is not enough power in the world to
justify the offenses against the liberty of the Individual, against the sanctity of the home,
against the laws, against peace and honor, offenses that are committed their daily.
 There is no divinity that can proclaim the sacrifice of our dearest affections, the sacrifice
of the family, the sacrileges and wrongs that are committed by persons who have the
name of God on their lips.

We, who today are struggling by the legal and peaceful means of debate so understand
it without going beyond the pale of the law, but if violence first silences us we have to
misfortune to fall then we do not know what course will be taken that will rush in to
occupy the places that we leave vacant.

- In contemplating such an unfortunate eventually we must turn away in horror, and so

instead of closing our eyes we will face what the future may bring.

Chapter IV
History does not record in its annals any lasting domination exercised by the people
over another, of different races, of diverse usages and customs, of opposite and
divergent ideals.
 One of the two had to yield and succumb. Either the foreigner was driven out, as
happened in the case of Carthaginians
 The Moors and the French in Spain or else these autochthons had to give way and
perish.
Moors in Spain
– One of the longest dominations, which lasted seven centuries.
- Even though the Peninsula was broken up into small states and in spite of the chivalrous
spirit, the gallantry and the religious tolerance of the califs, they were finally driven out after
bloody and stubborn conflicts, which formed the Spanish nation and created the Spain of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

 The existence of foreign body within another endowed with strength and activity is
contrary to all natural and ethical laws. Science teaches us that it is either assimilated,
destroys the organism, is eliminated or becomes encysted.
  Applying these considerations to the Philippines, we must conclude, as a deduction from
all we have said, that:
1. If their population be not assimilated to the Spanish nation
2. If the dominators do not enter into spirit of their inhabitants
3. If equitable laws and free and liberal reforms do not make each forget that they
belong to different races,
4. If both people be not amalgamated to constitute one mass, socially and politically,
homogenous, that is, not harassed by opposing tendencies and antagonistic ideas , and
interest someday the Philippines will fatally and infallibly declare themselves
independent.
 To this law of destiny can be opposed neither Spanish patriotism, nor the love of all
Filipinos for Spain, nor the doubtful future of dismemberment and intestine strife in the
islands themselves. Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows, and
necessity is the resultant of physical forces set in operation be ethical forces.
 We have said and statistics prove that it is impossible to exterminate the Filipino
people.
 The menace is that when education and liberty necessary to human existence are
denied by Spain to the Filipinos, then they will seek enlightenment abroad.
- Hatred and resentment on one side, mistrust and anger on the other side, will finally
result in a violent terrible collision, especially when there exist elements interested in
having disturbances, so that they may get something in the excitement, demonstrates
their mighty power, foster lamentations and recrimination or employ violent measures.
- The result is that a chasm of blood is them opened between the two peoples that the
wounded and the afflicted
 The Spaniards is gallant and patriotic, and sacrifices everything in favorable moments,
for his country’s good. While we Filipinos loves his country no less.

If the Philippines secure their independence after heroic and stubborn conflicts, they
can rest assured that neither England nor Germany, nor France, and still less Holland
will dare to take up what Spain has been, unable to hold.
 Africa- Within few years Africa will completely absorb the attention of the Europeans.
 England- has enough colonies in the Orient and is not going to sacrifice her Indain
Empire for the poor Philippine islands.
 Germany - will not care to rim any risk, and because a scattering of her forces and war in
distant countries will endanger her existence on the continent.
  France- has enough to do and see more of a future in Tongking and China the fact
that the French spirit does not shine in zeal for colonization.
 Holand - is sensible and will be content to keep the Moluccas and Java.
 China - will consider herself fortunate if she succeeds in keeping herself intact and is
not dismembered among the European powers that are colonizing the continent of
Asia.
 Japan - which on the north sides has Russia, who envies and watches her, on the
south England, with whom she is accord even to her official language.
 America- Perhaps the great American Republic, whose interest lie in the pacific and
who has no hand in the spoliation of Africa may someday dream of foreign
possession.

- Very likely the Philippines will defend with inexpressible the liberty secured at the price of
so much blood and sacrifice. With the new men that will spring from their soil and with the
recollection of their past, they will perhaps strive freely upon the wide road of progress and
all will labor together.

““Therefore, we repeat and we will ever repeat, while there is time, and that is better
to keep pace with the desire of a people than to give way before them: the former
begets sympathy and love, the latter contempt and anger.”

“ Spain, must we someday tell Filipinas that thou no ear for her woes and that it of she
wishes to be saved, she must redeem herself?”