EPILOGUE THE FIRST FILIPINO As long as the Filipino people have not enough spirit to proclaim, brow held high and breast bared, their right to a free society, and to maintain it with their sacrifices, with their very blood; as long as we see our countrymen privately ashamed, hearing the cries of their revolted and protesting conscience, but silent in public, or joining the oppressor in mocking the oppressed; as long as we see them wrapping themselves up in their selfisimess and praising the most iniquitous acts with forced smiles, begging with their eyes for a share of the booty, why give them freedom? —El Filibusterismo Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. —George Santayana izal was the frst Filipino, Before him there were the natives of uluan who rowed oat to Magellan's camp on “The Enchanted Island” of Human; Pigafetta found them “courteous and honest” = ' They were olive-skinned, rather. plump, their bodies oiled and tattooed, with black hair hanging dwn tthe waist naked except for ios wrapped round tes Real niet their private parts, strips of bark or, for the chieftains, a band of cotton embroidered ith si S aerney were armed with long knives, cbs and shields and spears at a ed. They azo wore goldenbaelets and earrings the hoes in heir ars lecorated wit Bela man could putan arm through them. They happily gave Magellan were so large that maT ce, jar of palm wine a fish and a coc, in exchange for coconuts, oranges Tetfoon’s very apparel! i the Kinglet of Sugbu, “a short, fat, tattooed mari” who began *e pay tribute (which not four days before a junk from Siam had by requiring Magellan MF ying gold and slaves), and ended up by agreeing to give done for the PEVIEEE jus scared out of his wits by a man dressed head to fot in the Spanish 2 ourance aif ws apne he woud never again be haunted by demons. Magellan's envoy seated ona palnleaf mat, naked except fora cotton He seceived ered velo hishead,avich necklace and golden sings set with 375we THE FIRST FILIPINO precious stones, He was eating turtle eggs, sipping palm wine through hollow bamboo tubes, and listening with a careless ear to four naked girls (“barefoot,” added Pigafetta archly, remarking that they were “very pretty and almost as fair as Europeans”) playing sweet tunes on drums and cymbals. “They were passionately fond of pleasure and idleness,” observed Magellan’s Italian chronicler. But they were also “a people that loved justice,” and kept strictly controlled measures of weight and length. They were good bargainers with their chickens, pigs and nee, and Magellan had to forbid his men to show an undue interest in gold. On the 4th April 1521, Humabon was baptized with the name of the King- Emperor Carlos, and his Queen (“young and lovely,” Pigafetta assures us, her lips and fingernails painted red, a great hat of palm-leaves with a triple crown, like the Pope's, on her head) Juana, no doubt after the unfortunate mother of Carlos, who had gone mad for love other husband, Felipe the Handsome. But there was also Lapulapu, kinglet of Mactan, as bold and handsomeand supple as the fish for which he was named, who thought himself “as good a man” as Humabon and would not pay tribute to “the Christian king.” Magellan decided to teach him a lesson and set put for the little island with sixty men in helmets and breastplates. When 1a was threatened with the strength of the strangers’ spears, he answered that he and his men had spears as well. He was ready for battle but asked only that the stranger be good enough not to attack him at night; Magellan wisely interpreted this 1s a ruse to get him to do so, and later found that pits had been dug in the seashore. When he landed at dawn he found that his muskets did not frighten Lapulapu and his men; the balls, piercing their fragile wooden shields, wounded their arms but only seemed to infuriate them more. Magellan tried burning their houses; their martial rage only waxed hotter, They soon learned that steel did not protect the Spaniards below the waist, and a poisoned arrow transfixed Magellan in the leg. He ordered a retreat and the Spaniards fell back in a rout, ‘wading through the surf towards their long boats. Lapulapu and his men pressed on their attack, throwing and picking up the same wooden spear as many as six or seven times. Finally one of them struck Magellan in the forehead; he transfixed the native with his own spear and lost it, and when he tried to draw his sword was cut down, falling face downwards in the water. Humabon tried to buy back the body; Lapulapu replied that he would keep it in memory of a brave man. There was also Suleyman, one of the two rajahs of Manila; required to surrender to Legazpi’s emissary, de Goiti, he replied that his men were far from being tattooed savages. He was waiting for the rains to come to put out the tinder for the Spanish muskets when the battle arose through a misunderstanding; de Goiti took Suleyman’s fort, but later withdrew? But the strategy of the conquest and the long Spanish dominion had been proved: Humabon had set Magellan on Lapulapu; Bisayans from Panay would help Legazpi take Maynilad; Lakandula stood by while the chieftains of Hagonoy and Macabebe died fighting in Bangkusay channel; Bisayans would fight Tagalogs; Tagalogs, Bikolanos, Pampangos, Ilokanos; one tribe against another, under Spanish command, for Spanish profit. The Muslims of the southern islands would raid the Christian settlements up to the mouth of Manila Bay itself; Bisayans under Spanish captains would march to Lake Lanao, and Pampangos garrison Zamboanga; the Muslims would fight for the Dutch Lapulap' 376Epilogue fighting for the Spanish; Lakandula fought for Salcedo against the , cxsians Her Salamat, plotted with the Japanese; and Diego Silang offered ee bis SOM He British. His widow's Tinggian lancers were beaten by Piddig ie allegiance os put down Tamblot's rebellion in Bohol and Bankaw’s in Leyte; me Cond defeated Sumoroy in Samar. . tans SUP t throughout the centuries as one tribe after another took up arms, it went sionary friars or for them, in protest against a wine tax or against jst the Sie Acapulco galleons, in the name of the old gods or in the name of forced labor sik Constitution. Whether the revolt was long-lived like Dagohoy’s renew SI hich lasted eighty-five years, or as short-lived as Novales’s, who “was hol, wi idnight, proclaimed emperor at two o'clock in the morning, and shot wed aeening,” natives —allies, converts, mercenaries— fought against natives archipelago Spanish and Christian. Malong proclaimed himself king el nt ‘Almazan, king of the Hokanos; and Apolinario de la Cruz, king of of Pani i logs. . i te Tage proclaimed himself a Filipino, gven atthe time of our story del Pilar called his newspaper Diariong Tagalog, and ended his denunciations of the monkish power with the patriotic cries of “Long ive Spain! Long live the Army! Down with the friars!” Rizal himself, writing to congratulate Lépez Jaena as late as 1889, exclaimed: “Sulung ang Bisaya itang Tagalog!” The eloquent Llongo, for his part, informed Rizal with considerable satsfaction in 1891 that the Barcelona republicans had offered him a choice of three constituencies in which they would support his candidacy to the Spanish Cortes. Indeed as we have seen, Rizal too, had considered the same possibility; he did rot aim so high as Pedro Alejandro Paterno who, after the Pact of Biyak-na-Bato, chimed that he was acknowledged by the natives as “Prince of Luzon,” and wanted to benamed also a Spanish prince or duke, a grandee of Spain, first class, and a senator> Tagalogs, Bisayans, Pampangos, Iokanos, Bikolanos were beginning to call themselves “Filipinos,” but they shared this name with any one of Spanish, Chinese ormixed, blood born in the Philippines; “Philippines” was still largely a geographical pression, and loyalty to the “Philippines” was the instinctive affection for the land of nésbirt, one's “native land” rather than fora Nation. To the very end the Spaniard fom Spain and the Spanish “Filipino” would refer to the natives merely as indios. Spanish Governors General in their decrees and proclamations might describe the ia “Spaniards,” “Spanish citizens,” “Spanish subjects,” as indeed they were, Spanish Constitution had set down the Principle that any free man born on A tenon va 2Spaniard. “A Spaniard,” shrugged one of them, “is one who... It was Rizal, as we have seen, who taught his countrymen that they could be sgt ee pines who were members of a Filipino Nation. He was the first who sy fat Theaetthole archipelago” and envisioned a“compactand homogeneous” Wess and “n, tribal communities from Batanes to the Sulu Sea, based on common ice to Spain Protection” rather than on the Spanish friar’s theory of double national ge Catholic and the Church as Spanish, “the unbreakable keystone in Despujol’s decree. coutla' apsve in the 377THE FIRST FILIPINO Burgos, Gémez, and Zamora, traditionally identified with the birth of Filipino nationalism, were but the precursors of this new community, the Filipino Nation, and this should be obvious for the Philippine seculars were priests from beginning to end, with purely priestly grievances and ambitions, and thus they moved by necessity in the wider reaches of the Universal Church. The intellectuals of that generation, who shared the fate of the priests, were equally untouched by the concept of the Filipino Nation, for they moved in turn within the Constitution for all the Spains and all the Spaniards; the reforms, rights and liberties they desired were those guaranteed by the Spanish Constitution to all subjects of the Spanish Crown: representation in the Spanish Cortes, individual liberties, democratic freedoms. The Filipino Nation was a narrower concept, more exclusive than the Universal Church and the Empire on which the sun had once upona time never set; but, for those who would call themselves by the new name of Filipinos, it was also a larger and more comprehensive community of all the tribes on all the islands of the archipelago, with duties and responsibilities that were more urgent and immediate. The racial secular nation would have to seek moral standards for its political, economic and social life independently of, although not necessarily in opposition to, theological doctrines and supernatural sanctions, and it would have to justify its existence and survival by serving the interests of its members over and above those of members of other nations. But Rizal's concept of a Nation, as we should perhaps remind ourselves on occasion was moral, unselfish, responsible, based uncompromisingly on a general recognition of mutual rights and duties. “What is the use of independence if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?” He never confused national independence with individual and social freedom. Rizal is also the first Filipino because he is first in the hearts of the Filipinos. Nations are known by the heroes they have. If a people have the government they deserve, they also have heroes made in their own image and likeness. Rizal had many competitors for pre-eminence in the generation that gave birth to Filipino nationalism: del Pilar, hurling his Jovian thunderbolts at the Spanish friar, considered by his antagonists as “the real soul” of subversion, “much superior to Rizal,” the prodigious, irreconcilable Mabini, prime minister of the war against the United States; and, of course, Bonifacio and Aguinaldo. There is much to be said for del Pilar. But he died obscurely, almost unnoticed, curiously enough on the 4th July, the date of the recognition by the United States of the Third Republic of the Philippines. Also, del Pilar, like Mabini, was a Mason of the first caliber, and one must reckon with the Church in these matters. Mabini, for his part, would never be forgiven by the Americans for his intransigence. A warlike people would perhaps have chosen Aguinaldo, the natural soldier who took command of the Revolution, routed the Spaniards on his second attempt, proclaimed the First Republic, and compelled the great North American Union to mobilize against him five times the forces required to secure the Spanish surrender. AS president of the First Republic, Aguinaldo was also the embodiment of our short-lived independence, and, if he had fallen in battle, he might have been our national hero. The proclamation of the 12th June as our national independence day, re-enforced by the sentimental, and somewhat political, homages of North American and Spanish 378Epilogue als have shored i ae image but his real tragedy is that he did not die, pebss jived on ina changing world which he has not understood and which no longer him. me surthermore, heroes are born but they are also made. Not only must a great man great historical moment, and die greatly, so that the nation feels that it dies but after his death it is equally important that the veneration of his memory Feencouraged, preached, and accepted by a grateful people. But in the early days of ‘american occupation, when it was forbidden even to fly the Filipino flag, it was tmihnkable thatthe new sovereign should permit the hero-worship of his deadliest To allow the president of the Revolutionary Republic to become a living hero would have been to jeopardize the still precarious pacification of the conquered county. Aguinaldo was quietly isolated to end his days as an unsuccessful politician But even if he had achieved martyrdom, and even if the Americans had been to allow his nationalist canonization, he would probably still have failed to inspire the wholehearted love and worship of the Filipinos. We Filipinos have had our share of war and revolution and we know that they leave little room for ethical scruples But itis to our credit that, while we recognize political necessities, we do not always approve of it. The success of the Revolution may have required a disciplined unity under an unchallenged dictator, and that unity may have demanded the limination, first of Bonifacio, and then of Antonio Luna, as dangerous rivals of the supreme leader, but these acts of state, of political necessity, would have tarnished a patriotic image. Why not, then, Bonifacio himself? Why not exalt the worker who organized the mass base of the Revolution among the proletariat and the peasantry, and who took tothe field when the principales and the ilustrados still faltered? Indeed it is significant that labor unions took the initiative in resurrecting Bonifacio from official oblivion. The Marxist interpretation of our Revolution would be that it was a peasant uprising, led and supported by the proletariat, against a feudal system of land tenure; that it pushed aside the gradualist reformers who sought to protect their economic interests through fascist hirelings; and that it ultimately failed and fell far short of its populist goal because of the eventual alliance between American imperialism and Philippine reaction, Under this theory Bonifacio would be the authentic hero; Aguinaldo, a “Bonapartist adventurer,” Rizal, an ineffectual Fabian. Indeed, it might well be asked: Was not Bonifacio the real maker of the Revolution? Did not history prove him right? Why is it that, for all that, he does not command, even among the masses, from whom he came, among whom he fulfilled his destiny, and whom he led into battle, a love and an admiration comparable to that inspired y Rizal, the property-owner, the very embodiment of the intelligentsia and the petite bourgeoisie, the aloof and gentle doctrinaire? __ Yet, the Filipinos have chosen Rizal unanimously, irrevocably. It cannot even be said that Rizal became the national hero because the Americans considered him the safest ie of our nationalism and therefore allowed, even encouraged, his enthronization, orb Filipinos had chosen Rizal even before he died, and his final martyrdom was nly the confirmation of a spiritual dominion that even the Katipunan acknowledged by "sing in his name. The choice was ours. It was Rizal who lifted up the hearts of his die at with him, 379 iyee" THE FIRST FILIPINO generation, and who is enshrined by the Nation and Republic he made. From this choice of our national hero a number of conclusions can be drawn. The most obvious is that we Filipinos love peace, for we have chosen to magnify a man of peace above the men of war. The next is that we love freedom and justice, for we have given our worship toa man who, for their sake, forsook the comforts and pleasures of peace. “God is Justice,” wrote Rizal, “and he cannot abandon His own cause, the cause of Freedom, without which there can be no Justice.” ‘A third is that we prize virtue more than victory, and sacrifice above success, for Rizal died a “failure” in the eyes of the world, at the mercy of an unmerciful enemy. “Redemption,” wrote Rizal, “presupposes virtue; virtue, sacrifice; sacrifice, love.” We have a national fondness for tragedy, and the essence of tragedy is that the virtuous man suffers because of his very virtues. It has also been observed that we commemorate our defeats rather than our victories. We may honor the fighters who, in hills and cellars, serve their country with the strength of their arms and the resourcefulness of their intelligence, the self-made men, the worldly men, the successful men who do the necessary work of conspiracy, organization, revolt, and government, without which nothing would be accomplished. But we reserve our highest homage and deepest love for the Christ-like victims whose mission is to consummate by the tragic “failure” the redemption of our nation. They stand above the reproaches and recriminations of human life, and are blessed with true immortality. When, at their appointed time, they die, we feel that all of us have died with them, but also that by their death we have been saved. ANNOTATED REFERENCES TO SOURCES Epilogue a Primer Viaje en torno del Globo by Antonio Pigafetta. Q) Zaide, 1, 151. @ Ep. Riz., I, 143. 4 Ep. Riz,, III, 237. © “Memoria” of Primo de Rivera. Report me and my cause aright. The rest is silence. Shakespeare (Hamlet) 380