CHAPTER 3.

2
THE PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT

1. Rizal always considered education as a medicine or something that could cure the
problems of Colonial Philippines. He believed in education that is free from political and
religious control. He asserted that reform can not be achieved if there is no suitable
education, a liberal one available to Filipinos. Rizal was not happy at the University of
Sto. Tomas compared with his student days at the Ateneo Municipal. At least, he
enjoyed the little freedom students were given in expressing themselves. This he could
not find at the Dominican university. Rizals idea of education as an instrument of
change has not diminished a bit. In one of his letters to Alfredo Hidalgo, a nephew, Rizal
stated: Life is very serious thing and only those with intelligence and heart go through it
worthily.Rizals idea of education was therefore the most enlightened. His concept of
education was felt as early as when he was only 16 years old.

In one of his poems, Education gives luster to the Motherland; he dwelt on the excellent
conception of education as a means of instilling enchanting virtue and raising the
country to the high level of immortality and dazzling glory.

2. Public education did not arrive in the Philippines until the 1860s, and even then the
Roman Catholic Church controlled the curriculum. Because the Spanish friars made
comparatively little effort to inculcate a knowledge of Castilian, less than one-fifth of
those who went to school could read and write Spanish, and far fewer could speak it.
The Filipino populace was thus kept apart from the colonial power that had been ruling it
for more than three centuries. After the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869, sons of
the wealthy were sent to Spain and other countries for study. At home and abroad, a
growing sense of Filipino identity had begun to manifest, and in 1872 this burgeoning
nationalism spawned an armed insurrection. About 200 Filipino soldiers at the Cavite
arsenal revolted, killed their officers, and shouted for independence. Plans for a similar
demonstration in Manila failed. The rebellion was quickly suppressed and led to
wholesale arrests, life imprisonment, and the execution of, among others, three Filipino
priests, whose connection with the uprising was not satisfactorily explained.

In 1888 Filipino expatriate journalist Graciano López Jaena founded the newspaper La
Solidaridad in Barcelona. Throughout its course, La Solidaridad urged reforms in both
religion and government in the Philippines, and it served as the voice of what became
known as the Propaganda Movement. One of the foremost contributors to La
Solidaridad was the precocious José Rizal y Mercado. Rizal wrote two political novels—
Noli me tangere (1887; Touch Me Not) and El filibusterismo (1891; The Reign of Greed)
—which had a wide impact in the Philippines. López Jaena, Rizal, and journalist
Marcelo del Pilar emerged as the three leading figures of the Propaganda Movement,
and magazines, poetry, and pamphleteering flourished.

In 1887 Rizal returned briefly to the islands, but because of the furor surrounding the
appearance of Noli Me Tangere the previous year, he was advised by the governor to
leave. He returned to Europe by way of Japan and North America to complete his
second novel and an edition of Antonio de Morga's seventeenth-century work, Sucesos
de las Islas Filipinas (History of the Philippine Islands). The latter project stemmed from
an ethnological interest in the cultural connections between the peoples of the pre-
Spanish Philippines and those of the larger Malay region (including modern Malaysia
and Indonesia) and the closely related political objective of encouraging national pride.
De Morga provided positive information about the islands' early inhabitants, and reliable
accounts of pre-Christian religion and social customs.

3. The Propaganda Movement languished after Rizal's arrest and the collapse of the
Liga Filipina. La Solidaridad went out of business in November 1895, and in 1896 both
del Pilar and Lopez Jaena died in Barcelona, worn down by poverty and
disappointment. An attempt was made to reestablish the Liga Filipina, but the national
movement had become split between ilustrado advocates of reform and peaceful
evolution (the compromisarios, or compromisers) and a plebeian constituency that
wanted revolution and national independence. Because the Spanish refused to allow
genuine reform, the initiative quickly passed from the former group to the latter.