Journalism and Emergent Politics

1. False. The Spain that greeted the first batches of students from the Philippines in
1880s was one whose institutions were at par and even an improvement compared to
the rest of the advanced countries of Europe.
2. True. Filipino students in Spain had this experience of being able to criticize the church
freely without fear of arrest or recriminations.
3. False. The students from the Philippines, upon arriving in Spain, already recognized
and labeled themselves as Filipinos.
- The Filipinos was born in Spain
- They were all Filipinos regardless of their separate ethnicities
- Filipino is a national identity while filipino is a person
4. The periodical, Los Dos Mundos, outlined its program in its first issue as follows: to
demand for CUBA, PUERTO RICO and the Philippines, equality of rights, as far as
possible, with the other Spanish provinces.
a. International perspective of ilustrados collaborrated with Cubans and Puerto
Ricans
b. Nationalism emerged in a world of plurals
5. False. For Graciano Lopez Jaena, the provincial civil authorities ‘lives like a true feudal
lord; he recognizes no other authority prior and superior to his, nor does the
gobernadorcillo gives orders there, nor any other municipal authority except himself;’...
- The Friars
6. False. The erstwhile editor of Espana en Filipinas, Eduardo de Lete was the universal
choice of the Filipino colony for the position as editor-in-chief for the new periodical
which later would be called la Solidaridad.
- was not the universal choice
- Creole edito Lete was mildly reformist in contrast to others more militant
7. True. The articles on the first two issues of la Solidaridad were all unsigned, as those
by Filipinos would continue to be for some time.
- They didn’t sign because the fear of backlash
8. Variations:
10.1. True. Marcelo H. del Pilar was not only the editor of the periodical La Solidaridad.
He was also the delegate of the Comite de Propaganda in Manila and likewise headed
the association La Solidaridad.
10.2. False. Marcelo H del Pilar’s function in Spain was to act solely as the editor of
La solidaridad.
- ASOCIACION HISPANO-FILIPINO, ASOCIACION LA SOLIDARIDAD AND
LA SOLIDARDIDAD THE NEWSPAPER
- Plan for the propaganda?
i. Propaganda in Spain for the Homeland 1-2 years
ii. Eventual independence or at least the autonomous government and
the eviction of the friars
9. Ferdinand Blumentritt was an Austrian collaborator of the La Solidaridad whose
constant theme was on Spain’s neglect of its traditional policy of assimilation as
applied to the Philippines.
10. The periodical La Solidaridad subtitled itself as a Quincenario DEMOCRATICO with
its stated program of “aspiring to make democracy prevail in all the peoples both of
the Peninsula and of the overseas provinces”.
11. True. In the Brindis, Rizal looked ahead to a time when Spain would only be
remembered with affection, her flag no longer waving over the Philippines.
- What other parts of the Brindis would make Rizal a filibuster to the conservative
Spaniards? Throwing down the gauntlet.
12. True. The universities and the intellectual life in general were far behind those of the
rest of Europe.
- Professors and students were far too involved in politics to the detriment of
serious scholarship.
- Spain’s impact to the Filipino students are goddess with the feet of clay (a term
used by Schumacher means very pretty but disturbing) and other Europe
countries are more progressive.
13. Each change of party, and to slightly lesser extent each reorganization of cabinet, was
accompanied by a wholesale TURNOVER in government employees down to the
lowest echelons, as politicians newly installed provided for their followers
● Spoils system means nothings gets done due to brevity of tenure
● Filipino students were appalled to observe the grave defects of Spanish
political, social and intellectual life
● Managed election between Canovas and Sagasta and the resulting spoils
system
● Universities and the intellectual life in general were far behind the rest of
Europe
● Professors and students engaged in politics to the detriment of each work
● But did the backward system of education really matter for Filipino ilustrados?
The heroes of the Philippines were products of the backward system
● Did Spain’s backward initially matter? Site of secular pilgrimage for students
from the Philippines
14. False. Gregorio Sanciano, a creole, argues that the tribute was a symbol of rule
imposed by force, as in the ages of barbarism, and has no place in the modern regime
of its citizen.
- Chinese mestizo
- Implies assimilation with his proposal to abolish tribute and assert equality with
peninsular
15. True. Del pilar didn’t not successfully accomplish the program of Comite De
Propaganda upon the closure of the periodic La Solidaridad in 1895.
- The propaganda was not successful
16. The principle of ASSIMILATION is the assertion ‘that all Filipinos were Spanish
citizens and therefore should have the same rights and duties as peninsular
Spaniards’.
a. Implied in El Progreso de Filipinas by Gregorio Sancianco
b. Sancianco’s ethnicity?
c. Other initial assertion of equality?
 d. Pedro Paterno-Sampaguitas
e. Paterno-Sancianco-Rizal: evolution of thought?
17. Accustomed to having the mother-country held up to them as the ideal, the Filipino
students were saddened to learn that their idol had FEET OF CLAY when they saw
how far more progressive the other countries of Europe were.
18. The experience of FREELY discussing all ideas, of attacking or rejecting institutions
of church and state, of proclaiming the dogmas of liberty and progress would prove a
heady stimulus to their aspirations.
19. FALSE. The Filipino students shared a certain feeling, clearly defined, of being
Filipinos while in Spain.
20. If the Philippines was an integral part of the Spanish fathered, as official theory
maintained, they ought to be ruled by peninsular law possess the rights guaranteed
to every Spaniard, above all, REPRESENTATION in the Cortes.
21. FALSE. It was customary for the friars and other peninsular Spaniards in the
Philippines to address all Filipinos with the familiar pronoun used.
22. TRUE. There was general opposition to Lete as editor of the soon-to-be founded
periodical La Solidaridad.
23. In his attacks on the friars, Blumentritt is careful to emphasize that he is a
CATHOLIC
24. FALSE. The first stage of the political programme of the Comite de Propaganda was
the expulsion of the friars from the Philippines or at least an autonomous
government controlled by Filipinos.
25. In its stated program, La Solidaridad aspired ‘to make DEMOCRACY prevail in all
the peoples’ both of the Peninsula and of the overseas provinces’.
26. Discuss how a nascent Filipino identity was perceives and reflected in the primary
works of Paterno to Sancianco and Rizal.
-Sancianco made assertion that Filipinos are Spaniards

NOTESS:

20. WHAT WAS RIZAL’S MAJOR ROLE IN THE PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT?

● THE ASSERTION OF DIFFERENCE,

21. What is the propaganda movement and what did it stand for?

22. What contributed to the Filipino's disappointment of Spain?

● other European countries more progressive, university and intellectual life behind the
rest of Europe

23. What are two things Eduardo de Lete did not do?

● did not fulfill the rationale of journalism, to advance one's cause and refuse to review
Noli Me Tangere

24. What metaphors did Filipinos use to show their disappointment to Spain?

● seeing Spain has feet of clay (beautiful but with flaws)

25. What two aspects of Spain were so appalling?

● the grave defects of Spanish political, social intellectual life

26. What was a stimulus to their aspirations?

● freely discussing ideas

27. What is needed for the Assimilation of the Philippines?

● equal rights; representation in the Cortes; Paterno and Sancianco

28. What is Los Dos Mundos?

● a newspaper devoted to overseas Hispanic worlds (Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines),

29. How did Los Dos Mundos view the Filipinos during the propaganda movements?

● they were sympathetic to the cause of the filipinos

30. Rizal's toast was about?

● his glory to both Spain and Las Islas Filipinas

31. Who was the "brindis" addressed to?

● to Luna and Hidalgo

32. Describe how the union was to be made

● made based on equal rights, not as colonizer and colonized Conservative Spaniards
labeled Rizal as filibuster

33. Who did people not like to be editor in chief?

● Eduardo de Lete

34. Ferdinand Blumentritt

● He is a teacher who are friends with Jose Rizal. He emphasized that he is a Catholic.
He also added prestige and credibility to the newspaper.

35. What was La Solidaridad for?

● to make democracy prevail

Noli me Tangere 1

1. Variations:
1.1. True. Prior to the publication of the Noli me Tangere, the Filipinos had assailed the
colonial administration and the predominance of the friars in the Philippines in a sporadic,
unorganised, and more or less veiled manner.
1.2. The first clear break in the previously hesitant, sporadic, unorganized and more or
less veiled assailing of the colonial administration was the Publication of the Noli me
Tangere in 1887.
- It was a scathing, full-scale indictment of the Philippine political and religious
regime.
- Previous efforts had been on various issues in various newspapers/periodicals.
2. Variations:
2.1. The Noli me Tangere is not merely an attack on the Spanish colonial regime; it is a
charter of nationalism.
2.2. True. Rizal’s critic Vicente Barrantes taunted him with making the Filipinos just as
bad as the friars and civil guards.
- A balanced national portrait which Barrantes could not understand…
- “...calls on the Filipino to recover his self-confidence, to appreciate his own worth,
to return to the heritage of his ancestors, to assert himself the equal of the
Spaniard…”
- Charter of Nationalism
3. False. Rizal had always intended to write the Noli me Tangere in Spanish as he wanted
his countrymen to know of their deplorable condition. -(French)
- Why French? Primary language of world literary culture
- Could his countrymen read?
4. Variations:
4.1. False. The governor general, Valeriano Weyler, ignored the recommendation of the
comission permanente de censura to have the Noli me Tangere banned.
- Emilio Terrero
4.2. False. The Comision permanente de censura recommended the complete prohibition
of the novel in the Philippines which the governor-general, Emilio Terrero, eagerly
complied with.
- Strained relations between the archbishop of Manila and the governor-general.
- Weyler:ban ; Terrero:ignore
5. Variations:
5.1. False. The ethnic term mestizo chino occurs four times in the novel of which the
Narrator accounts for three of those mentions with a panic-striken voice in the crowd
discussing Ibarra’s arrest accounting for the fourth mention.
5.2. False. The ethnic term mestizo chino is mentioned thirty-five times in the Noli me
Tangere.
- Chino was mentioned thirty-five times.
- There is no mention of mestizo chino in the Noli.
- Who were the mestizo chino and why are they ‘absent’ in the novel?
 - Ambitious and upwardly mobile Chinese mestizos worked de-emphasized and
even worked to conceal whatever was residually Chinese about themselves.
6. Variations:
6.1. True. The novel features a limited political vocabulary with the four characters most
often using them to be Ibarra, Elias, Tasio, and the narrator.
6.2. True. The political term revoluccion is uttered four times in the mouths of a half-wit,
the Alferez, Primitivo and an unnamed woman.
- The novel is not about politics but about the deplorable conditions of the
Philippines.
- Noli is a moralist’s novel.
7. Of the 23 Philippine toponyms mentioned in the novel, almost all are in tagalog-speaking
areas in Southern Luzon with the possible exception of Pampanga, Albay, Cebu and Jolo.
- “San Miguel wielding a joloano kris”.
8. Variations:
8.1. Elias never uses a single word of Tagalog.
8.2. Elias is a man outside coloniality and points beyond it hence his words be in perfect
Castilian.
- Mixed speech is a sign of coloniality.
- The reverse is Damaso…”Cualquier bata”.
9. Variations:
9.1. Excluding nol Juan, Tia Isabel and Ibarra, The Narrator is the character who uses
tagalog the most.
9.2. False. Padre Damaso is overwhelmingly the biggest user of Tagalog words.
- Narrator; authenticity of narrator as native informant to amigos o enemigos.
10. Variations:
10.1. False. The pagan populations or the tribu infieles are never portrayed in the novel.
- Mentioned twice (negritos).
10.2. False. The ethnic term Moro is referred to three times in the novel and in every case
refers to the Muslims of the southern Philippines.
- Moro refers to the characters in the moro-moro play (ex. Florante and Laura).
- They are largely absent in the novel and so are the tribus infieles.
11. Visaya appears four times as a noun and once as an adjective referring to the companion
of the Tagalog Guardia civil member.
- Appears only five times in the entire novel.
12. False. Blumentritt’s largely positive evaluation of the Noli me Tangere was appreciated by
the Spaniards like Vicente Barrantes.
- Spaniards do not like criticism.
- Blumentritt was German.
13. A very strange interesting absence is that of the Ilocano whole at that time formed a larger
part of Manila’s class of domestic servants.
- Characteristics Tagalog Hauteur of Rizal.
14. Explain why the Noli is not a perfect rendering of Philippine Colonial Society?
- It is a tagalog-centric novel. Lack of representation.
Noli Me Tangere 2
1. Rizal's Noli calls itself a Novela Tagala or a tagalog novel as critical reception as a
FILIPINO literary work is deeply inferred by his oppositions regarding the privileged status
of its author Jose Rizal.
- Rizal is invested with the public authority to influence through explication, the
interpretation of his work.
- “An accurate depiction of Tagalog society viewed as a microcosm of Philippine
society”.
- Fictional and political representation from a position.
2. True. The novel could only be read by a small number of people mostly Spaniards and
educated Filipinos.
- Official censorship, exclusivity of the language, vehement condemnation by the
religious orders, amateurish distribution…
- Irony? “Changed the history of the nation” for a novel that was hardly read...
3. Rizal's arrival takes on the drama and excitement of the appearance of the MODERN.
- Doctor Uliman Anecdote (secular, technical and international).
- Rizal is living proof that one can be a native and a modern.
- Instability of the “filipino” in Rizal’s time.
4. True. Pregnancy of Pia Alba was caused by Padre Damaso raping the former was not
established in the Noli Me Tangere.
5. EUROPE becomes the figure for moral development and the universal progress of the
human condition.
6. True. The novel's founding act is based on a double consciousness split between one
who knows and one who is (submits of being known).
- The novel manifested by the inside and outside position or perspective. The
narrator represents both participant and observer because despite his Spanish
words and name he is still a local making him an insider.
7. When Pia Alba realized she was pregnant she was said to be weeping before the statue
of SAINT ANTHONY, the patron saint of lost persons.
8. The concept of literary realism reformulated the problem of mediation by making literature
not history but HISTORYLIKE.
- True to external reality but sufficiently removed from it to be true to itself as well.
- Both about and not about reality.
- Engenders the possibility of commentary.
9. Most people in Rizal's time had no access to the novel and had perforce to obtain access
secondhand, that is by HEARSAY OR RUMOR.
- A specific form of reading that sidestepped proscription but permitted nevertheless
a relaying of the novel’s content.
- Even repeated in a reputable newspapers (La Epoca).
- Lend more credence to the rumours.
10. False. The act of describing or representing the PH society is merely a matter of aesthetic
preference and not an ethical imperative.
- The inside-outsider has a stake in the place they represent.
11. True. The novel tends to deny its fictionality and claims to be writing history and life as it
is.
 12. PRINT not only had the capacity to attest to the historicity of the event it recorded but often
constituted the only proof that the event happened in the first place.
- Typographical reproduction meaning the extent to which a single passage of text,
a picture, an object or event can be replicated in its exacts dimension and
quantities.
- Novel’s 2000 copies upon printing
13. How would the literary devices (allusion, reticence and revelation) employed by Rizal
helped create the imagined community of the Filipinos?
- A sharing of commentaries by the people thus creating a sense of connection as
they are part of the community. Each member may represent a different view, but
nevertheless, it creates dialogue and this leads to cohesion and a sense of
community.

Noli Me Tangere 3

1. Variations:
1.1. True. A creole class in the full sense of the term never existed in the Philippines.
1.2. True. According to Nick Joaquin, the Philippine creole had no such scruples about
blood purity and were distinguished, not so much by the amount of Spanish blood in their
veins as by their culture, position and wealth.
- There were never enough numbers of Spaniards to form true ‘creole’ communities.
- The constant wars exhausted creole families, kept their numbers low.
- Juan Crisostomo Magsalin Ibarra - mestizo yet creole; since he was a landowner
and a gentleman.
2. False. The greatest achievement of the Philippine creole was keeping the Philippines
intact throughout the two centuries only faltering once.
- Three centuries.
- Chinese, Japanese, British and Dutch threats.
- Successful prosecution of the “Dutch wars” by the Dutch based in Java and
Moluccas might have made the Philippines a province of Indonesia.
- The only time the creoles failed to defend the Philippines? British Occupation of
1762-1764.
3. Variations:
3.1. Rizal made his Ibarra the descendant of a Basque.
3.2. Many of the Spaniards who came to the Philippines were Basques and Catalans folk
with a long tradition of rebelliousness against the Madrid government.
- Example of the fate of the immigrant Spaniard forever casting his lot with the
Philippines.
- Circumstances for this choice? Arduous and expensive journey in; return journey
next to impossible.
- Isolation and neglect of Madrid fostered the autonomous spirit of the creole.
- Governor-general detested as a foreigner hence he has to account for his term
prior to his departure (audiencia).
 - Creole becoming Filipino (Pedro Eibarramienda -> Saturnino -> Rafael -> Juan
Crisostomo).
4. The revolt of Spanish America and the opening of the Suez Canal transformed the
Philippines from practically an autonomous commonwealth to becoming a Spanish colony
in the strict sense of the word, thus starting the war between the Creole and the
Peninsular.
- Shortened route to the Philippines.
- Brought more ‘peninsulars’ to the Philippines crowding out creoles from posts in
the army, the church and the government (ex. Tiburcio de Espadana in literature
or Pelaez and Burgos in the church) thus beginning the war.
5. Variations:
5.1. True. The text of the novel Noli me Tangere, reveals a Rizal enamoured by his
heroine, Maria Clara.
5.2. False. The 1930’s perception of Maria Clara reveals that Rizal considered the
heroine’s portrayal to be a satirical-an interpretation which is corroborated in the text of
the novel.
5.3. True. 1930’s interpretation of Maria Clara believes her to be Rizal’s satirical portrayal
on the idealized woman.
- Novels and characters are subject to ‘differing’ interpretations as Rizal himself
prophesied for Maria Clara: “poor girl, with your heart play gross hands that know
not of its delicate fibers”.
- A case of how ‘the author is dead’ that once his works have been published, it is
now available for a variety of interpretations by multiple readers across time.
6. Variations:
6.1. False. According to Nick Joaquin, the novels (Noli and Fili) foretold the revolution of
1896 not looking back at the Creole Revolution of 1872.
6.2. Rizal was not looking forward to 1896; he was looking back to 1872 and all its
subsequent repercussions.
- Creole revolution = 1872 Cavite Mutiny
- Earlier instances of creole national consciousness include the Novales revolt of
1821 and the conspiracy of the Palmeros.
- The 1872 revolution was more formative of Rizal as Joaquin ‘interprets’ it.
7. True. When the Indio revolted against the Spaniards in 1896, the creole fought with the
peninsular but against the Americans when the latter came to occupy the country.
- The creole sided with the peninsular but redeemed himself by initially fighting the
Americans.
- The Indio usurped the lead (in the revolution) from the creole who ‘panicked’.
- The creoles had the most to lose:
- The peninsular could go home to Spain.
- The creole has no home but the Philippines as he was ‘Filipino’.
8. True. In Rizal’s reply to Vicente Barrantes, the novelist insists that the ideas expressed
by the characters in a novel are not the same conviction as that of the author.
 - “I shall be content with being told whether or not my characters have life or distinct
personalities; whether or not they talk according to their roles and their different
way of thinking; and never my own convictions” -Jose Rizal
- Dictated the choice of a novel as his chosen genre.
- “Able to criticize without fear of retaliation”.
9. False. Rizal says that the characters of Elias and Tasio represent the good Filipinos in the
Noli Me Tangere which his detractor Quioquiap had also acknowledged as having existed
in the novels.
10. True. Nick Joaquin believes that the epoch of the Noli me Tangere is the epoch of the
eventualists of the creole revolution.
11. True. In Simoun’s confession to Padre Florentino, Rizal seems to be a celebration of
reforms, of self-renewal.
12. The eventualists, like Pelaez, Burgos and Ibarra in the novel believe “that education and
propaganda will eventually create a climate of reform.”
13. Why has the character of Maria Clara been subject to the most number of interpretations
over the years?
- The interpretations change because it is place- and time-bound. It is also subject
to the differing ideas of what women are or should be either in politics, workforce,
and/or their general capacities that change or develop over time.
14. Did Nick Jouauin have a positive evaluation of Rizal’s novels? Why?
- He had a negative evaluation. Rizal’s actions were ambigious.
Journalism and Emergent Politics
(8A La solidridad)

Democratic Fortnightly
YEAR I BARCELONA, FEBRUARY 15, 1889 No. 1
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
In Spain, '.i monlhs 0.75 pesetas
In foreign lands :ind colonies 1.25
pe.-ieta.<,
EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES Advertisemenls and Notices at agreed
prices
Plaz.a de Buensuceso, No. 5,
1st floor. Single copy 15 centavos
OUR AIMS
-=-
We shall be remiss in a duty, a very fundamental
act of courtesy if at the start of our task
we do not extend sincere greetings publicly to
the Spanish press in general and to the press
of Barcelona in particular. Confident are we
that they will receive our modest publication
with kindness and affection.
In times like ours when there are newspapers
lo suit everybody's taste and reviews with
all kinds of information, it is not correct to say
that we join the press to fiIJ a vacuum. We only
aspire and hope for a place along the line so
lhat we can share with them the agonies of the
struggle, the anguish of battle which increasingly
sustain with audacious courage the Spanish
press.
Modest, very model!l indeed are our aspirations.
Our program aside from being harmless
is very simple; to fight all reaction, to hinder
all steps backward. to applaud and lo accept all
liberal ideas, and to defend progress; in brief,
10 he a propagandist above all of ideals of
democracy so that these might reign over aJI
nations here and beyond the seas.
The aims therefore of La Solidnrid{I{/ are
defined: to gat'het, to coHect liberal ideas
which nre daily exposed in the camp of politics,
in the fields of science, arts, letters, commerc.
c~ agriculture, and industry.
3
We shall also discuss all problems which
deal with the general interest of the nation,
seeking solutions that are purely national and
democratic.
The Spanish overseas provinces will find in
La Solidaridad a zealous supporter of their just
and lawful aspirations, an organ which will
voice their needs and make them public, which
will expose the evils which afflict those faraway
places so that these conditions may be
remedied.
It will be fair in discussing and judging the
political and economic problems whjch
becloud Cuban and Puerto Rican skies.
It will expose fearlessly and dispassionately
the disease that corrupts those societies, all
phases of corruption which undermine justice
and retard the economic development of our
precious Antilles whose present state and·
whose future are the concern of all parties and
administrators.
Its political program therefore with respect
to the colonies is not limited to any particular
field nor to any school of thought.
We shall pay special attention to the Philippines
because those islands need the most help
having been deprjved of representation in the
Cortes. We shall thus fulfill our patriotic duty in
the defense of democracy in those islands. ·
That nation of eight million souls should not
and must not be the exclusive patrimony of
theocracy and conservatism.
II, 25, February 15, 1890
TO HIS· EXCELLENCY
MR. VICENTE BARRANTES
Your B-xccllency:
The honor which Your Excellency bestows
on me in bothering yourself with my person and
with Noli.me tangere in the Seetion on the Spanish
Colonies (La Espa,ia Moderna, January,
J-8901 Vol. XIII), and some innuendoes and attacks
therein which were directed either against
me or· against the ideas divulged iii my book,
give me the right to answer you, if only to
defend mysel_f and place things in their true
light. Far from taking offense at the tone of
your work, sometimes acrimonious, but always
condescending and even degenerating into the
language of a headmaster, I feel honored up to
a. certain point, for frankly, I expected a cruder
and more vitriolic attack (though perhaps less
malignant), considering the literary exchange
Your Excellency and I had previously and accustomed,
as I am, to read the license in speech
of journalists in my country. Your ponderous
tone and your advice soften me and I find them
natural in one like Your Excellency, who is a
member of the Spanish Royal Academy and the
Academy of History-two lofty positions from
which the insignificant wri.ters like myself who,
in order to write must do so in a borrowed
tongue, must appear like pygmies or ants.
The entire .thesis and synthesis on pages 177,
178; 179, 180, and 18 I are reduced to this: that
I had indulged in inconsistencies, that I am ''a
bundle of inconsistencies," because in one part
of my Noli me langere, the Captain-General ":as
tellihg my bero that be was "the first man with
whom he had talked in that country" and that
later, I, Rizal, in LA SOLIDARIDAD a.sked for
reforms for my people. And for th is, Your
Excellency, you call .me "a novelist of bis own
sins a bundle o.f inconsistencies." Your Excel.
Jendy says that .my style is "!ery bad. Please note
that these words are not mine. May God protect
me from becoming a "novelist of the sins" of
Your Excellency!
If Your Excellency, who tells me frankly
that I have not cited more than one concre.te
person speaking of unjus;t friar~, could not fi~~
~n. my writing any other mcoJ1,s1sten~y but this'.
an truth I sho:uld consider myseJf twice bles_sed.
first for being more consistent than the Bible,
the Oospels, the Popes, and an mortals; and
second, for witnessing the miracle of the bread
and fishes corrected and augmented. You
Excellency makes of this what you call a ~bundle
of inconsistencies." If instead of bemg a
writer Your Excellency were to be a factory
63
laborer or a manufacturer, Holy God, how
goods would be multiplied!
But let us examine this terrible inconsistency:
Y.our Excellen~y writes on page 177 " .
. ~ Even Qu_ioquiap does not have such a low
regard of Filipinos 'tbat you have, neither did he
dare put into the mouth ef the captain-general
those cruel words addressed to the hero of the
Noli me Jangere-'Mr. Ibarra, you are the first
man I have talked to in this country.' You do
not even consider your countrymen as men, Mr.
Rizal! A great injustice that, 1 repeat, a ~p~niard
would not commit or even less a Chnstaa.n
etc." (Is the best Christian less than the last
Spaniard, Mr. Barrantes?)
And I say: such deduction a native, not even
a Tagalog would obtain! Because in order to
make a syllogism that will stand on four le~sas
the Dominicans say-and draw a conclusion
out of one premise, it is necessary to presume:
(1) that the captain-general and I are equals (I
am not trying to deprive Your Excc!lency of
bis superiority); (2) that the captain-general
had talked to all Filipinos before talking to Mr.
Ibarra; (3) that in each conversation His Excellency
knew his interpreter very well; and (4)
that His Excellency would never exaggerate.
I do not know, Your Excell.ency, if the academicians
ambarum demorum have proclaimed a
rule that the ideas expressed by the characters
in a novel must be precisely the same convictions
of the author and not those fitted to them
under the circumstances, beliefs, customs,
education and feelings. The good· Father Jose
Rodriguez abounds in the ideas of Your Exce·llency
or vice versa (the position of the factors
do not alter the product); but up to the present,
the above-mentioned friar is not an academician
that I know of, and even were he one, two
academicians do not constitute a majority on
learned societies; and even if such a rule be
made, it would not have an ex post facto application.
I might well be that Your Excellency
acquired this literary conviction from your dealings
with the fri_ars since som~ ideas of you-rs,
some phrases hke those ca1hng me an "exhorter,"
a "novelist of my sins," etc., show
traces of convent influence and seem to be the
same ones of Father Rodriguez himself. Still
unable to give liberties to my country, I give
them to my characters and I ~llow my capt~ingeneral
to say ~h~tever he washes to say without
fear of retaliation. Moreover, I have learned
from writers of prose and poetry rules of the
type they call mixed, ~herein different c~aracters
and the author himself fuse and mingle.
However, attribute to the characters what they
themselves say and to me what I say in the
narrative. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's;
Maybe fhis is too much to ask. I shall be content
II, 25, February 15, 1890
wjth ~eing to!~ :Vhether or np;~ my character
have hfe and d1strnet person:ahl1es· whethe
not they act and talk according to th,eir roles:
0
~
their different ~~ys,0f thinking; and never tni~d
my own conv1ct1ons.
But transeat, let us adopt awhile th
Rodriguez-Bar_rantes r.ule. I am the spirit I a~
the same captam~·general; I talked to all th~ Fllipinos,
I_ knew them. and not unti'I I talked to
Ibarra did I find a single man. AU right then
what literarr rule would Your Excellency adopt
now t~ rescind the. statement that Ibarra applies
to my mcontroverhble words? Because if You
Excellency read fhe .succeeding lines, yo~
wo~ld not ha~e committed that great injustice
which a Spaniard, not even a Christian would
com~it, n~r wo~ld he write such statements that
are hke d1gress1ons of those who write about
what does not exist.
In fact Ibarra replies in the next paragraph:
"Your Excellency has only seen those who
live i_n the city; you have not seen the maligned
huts m our towns. Your Excellency might have
se,en then real men, if to be a man, all that are
needed are a generous heart and simple customs."
Who speaks for Ibarra now, my good sit? Is
it Your Excellency? If so, then what of the
Rodriguez-Barrantes rule? And why does Your
Excellency say later, on page 180, that Ibarra
and Rizal are one and the same thing? Are we
or are we not? I do not wish to attribute to ba·d
faith this manner of quoting which Your Excellency
employs, accusing me of unfairness and
keeping silent about the reply that is found
predsely in the next line. This is deceiving the
people, pure and simple. Your Excellency had
been Civil Governor and DirecloroftheAdministration
in my country for many years; you
have maturity, experience, and positions, and
you belong to lhe superior and privileged race;
I am an outcast, a poor expatriate, a poor writer
wifh a very bad style, a "bundle of inconsist~ncies,"
and unexperienced youth of an enslaved
race and in spite of all this, I shall try to give
you an advice in exchange for those fatherly
ones you give me: When one has the position
and the aspirations of Your Excellency one
must write with more honesty and sincerity; one
should not adopt the tricks of the common man,
because as Your Excellency says, "i't is not e~ucation
that is the best measure nor the exclusive
attribute of man, but goodness and morality."
~h.at you s~y of man can also be applied to the
cnlic and to the historian.
In the same manner J find highly objectionable
whal you say about me on page 179: that
lcall carpenters lhe simple artists of Santa Cruz
and of Paete. Where, my good Sir? How could
Your Excellency take the phrase ••carpentry-
65
shops of Paete'' c,n page 27 of my Noli me
~ng;'e to mean t_he sculptors' shops of Santa
. r uz. D_o rou thmk ·that the suburbs of Santa
~ruz are ms_ide the earpentry-shops of that town
10 my province? Your Excellency in another
work of yours placed Colombo in•side of
Ceylon and ~o"": you arc do.ing the opposite-you
pla~e tewns inside -others, like juggl.ers do with
th eu boxes. What is your me.thod? Come now,
~as Your Excellency done ino put me in a bad
light before my people or does not Your Excellency
know how to read so that no',\'. you wish
to appear a defender of the natives who remember
many things about Yeur Excellency? Thus
you al.so quoted Father Rodriguez, yet followmg
this method, even the Holy Ghost himself
could come and write and I shall still assure him
that he would be critici.zed. Your Excellency
doubts my love of truth because in some. things
I am not in agreement with you. Your Excellency
in fact deals with truth in your own way
and you monopolize it.
But going back to the cruel words of my
general; I shall admit that they are cruel very
cruel indeed, but they are not false to the' chara~
ter of the one talking. Your Excellency talks
wi th more cruelty on page 180 and in spite of
the fact that you are a Spaniard and a Christian
and despite the fact that you already have the
sarcasm of my general before your eyes. You
say:
"As ~ matter of fa~t, though I sought tirelessly
with the same Diogenes lantern throughout
the Archipelago and with better ey.es, no
doubt, because of my knowledge than the
blessed General had, I found only one man and
he was you, sir, because Ibarra and Rizal are one
and the same-identical."
Let us end this: Did Your Excellency find
him? Did _you find more men? If Your Excellency
found what you sought, why shou'Jd we
talk then of the tirelessness of the very ·same
lanler.n .of Diogenes (a ~ommo~ lamp used by
the Civil Guard)? And 1f you did not find him
why talk of your superior sense of smell c.om~
pared to my general who was neither tireless nor
going about looking for his man all over the
Archipelago, nor had he a lantern of even the
M_iddle Ages? Would Your Excellency have
wished me to regard you as the ~ype of my
captain-gen~ra.1? Why should we talk then of
cruel words? Your Excellency who in all your
works expressed the· greatest hatred of my race
and my country; who always expressed joy in
seeing us suffer,. would want to come out now
as a defender of the natives? To what depths
has our misfortune fallen when we have to be
defended by those who had insulted us!
Wbo is being inconsistent? If J am to be
called "a bundle of inconsistencies~' perhaps it
II, 25, February 15, 1890
is because I have a good stock of yours in my
mind.
What is str~nge t~at a captain-general who is
used to .spen~tng his three years in an atmosp~
ere of vap1ty and venerat10n, surrounded by
fr:iars and mt~r.ested pe.rson·s, knows net the
inhabitants of the cou1Ury when you yourself in
spite of your many accomplishments, do ~ot
know t.hem- Your Excellency who is not
courted by friars but courted them? And tell
me who is the sane man who wi'll want to place
himself near a captain~general of the Philippines
and talk freely and frankly with him when he
knows that the peace of his househol'd can be
u~set by dysentery or ~ nervous ineigestion of
His Excelhmcy? And It must be borne in mind
that 'in the Philippines, dysente,ries and nervous
indigestions are common among certain classes.
I know of a brother-in-law of mine who is now
exiled for the second time without him or the
general having met once, without being info~
med of the accusation, without knowin_g what
cnmc h·e had been charged save the fact that he
is my brother-in-Jaw. I, myself, "the man," the
lb.arra of Your Excellency (I know not why you
take me so because I -am neither rich, nor a
mestizo, nor orphan, nor do lbarra's ideas coincide
with mine) on two occasions presented
myself at the palace of Malacanang; and did so
to my regret. The first time in 1880 because I
was mauled and wounded one dark night by the
Civil Guard. I passed by a bundle and did not
salute; the bundle turned out to be a lieutenant
who commanded the detachment. I was treacherously
wounded on the shoulder without a
word of explanation. I went to Mr. Primo de
Rivera; I neither saw His Excellency nor did l
even receive redress. . . And the second time
was in 1887 when I was called by Mr. Terrero
to answer ·tbe accusations and charges that were
being made against me for my work. Well then,
how many thousands and thousands of persons.
more honorable and worthier that Ibarra and
myself have seen even the tip of the hair or the
bald pare of His Excellency? And you, Sir, who
is regarded as one who knows the Archipelagoto
how many have you spoken? Do you know
the .spirit of the nation? If you do, you would
not say that I am "a soul perverted by a German
education" because what in me is alive I had
since childhood-before 1 learned even a word of
German. My soul is "perverted" because I was
educated seeing injustices and abuses everywhere;
because since childhood I have seen
many suffer meekly and bec;:ause I, too, suffered.
My "perverted soul" is the outc_ome of
that constant vision of an ideal morality that
yields t_o a stark reaJity of abuses, arbitrariness,
hypocnsy, farce, violence, perfidy, and other
vile passions. Thus "perverted" is my soul but
5? are th.c souls of hundred-thousands o.f Filipinos,
wh0 have not as yet left their miserable
homes; who speak no lang\lage other than their
~wn. If they should write or express ,heir sentiments,
my Noli me ta11gere would, in comparison
_to their works~ appear very small indeed.
Their volumes would suffice to build pyramids
on the tombs of all tyrants ...
Yes, Sir, you are right: Noli me 1a.1.1gere is
a satire_ and not an apology. Yes, I described
the soc1al cancers of my country. There are
depicted in it "despair and blackness" because
I see much infamy in my country-there where
the poor match the weak in number. I confess
that I found i·t painful to expose so much that
v.:as shameful and degrading but in making ihe
picture with my heart's blood, 1 wanted to
correct the evils and save the rest. Quioquiap
wiih whom Your Excellency compares me, no
doubt in order to humiliate me and make me
hateful in the eyes of my countrymen, described
native customs to insult and humiliate an entire
race; to ridicule and make fun of it, framing, like
you do, generalizations out of secondary and
remote premises. But I p-ortrayed the good
alongside the bad. l described an Elias and a
Tasia because the Eliases. and the Tasios exist,
exist, and exist, even if the thought pains. you.
Only you and your co-believers, fearing that the
little good I described might entice the bad 10
reform themselves, cry out that it is false, poetic,
exaggerated, idealistic, impossible, improbable,
and I know not what else. They
wou.ld see only the bad so that the nation might
be humbled and humiliated; because unable to
rise themselves they wish to have those around
them sink, so that in this manner, they might
appear great and exalted. There is, yes, much
corruption there, perhaps more than in any other
part of the world, but this is so because to the
natural filth of the earth were added the wastes
of transient birds and the jetsam that the sea
leaves on the shore. And because this corru,ption
exists, I wrote my Noli me tangere; I ask
for reforms so that the little good there i.s can
be saved and the bad, redeemed. If my country
were a republic like Plato's, I would not have
written the Noli me l,a11gere, nor would it have
achieved the success it had; neither would reforms
be necessary for who likes medi.cincs
when one feels well?
67
But Your Excellency wanted to ttap me by
default with your invention on page 179, claiming
that in my Noli me ta11gere there are no men
who need the liberal reforms I ask in "The Philippines
a Century Hence.'' I see that Your Excellency
has not read the whole book, but this
I do not deplore because it was not written for
you. However, since you wished to be its critic
and an infallible one, you should have read ii
II, 25, February 15, 1890
all in order not to waste time by aski11g foolish
qu~stions. Your Excel!ency asks seriously:
"What have you been silent so long? What
better way than the novel to proclaim to the
world your wonders?"
The greatest wonder is the effrontery of your
Excell~n~y who imagines one t-hing and takes
it as the truth from which all inferences that
occur to anyone should be made. Well then, my
dear Sir, those persons I talked about in "The
Philippines a Century Hence" are found on
pages. 290 and 291 and I ~o not quote the
material here, for I do not wish to waste time
and paper. The whole world can read about
them. This movement which has reached even
the remote corners of the provinces so that even
the philosopher Tasio had noticed it ten or
twelve years ago-the time of my novel-has produced
the people of today, but this outcome,
based on the chronology of events, Your Excellency
refers to as inconsistent. Your Excellency
has also called the natives of Ceylon, Malays,
has placed Santa Cruz in Paete and Colombo I
know not where. May Your Excellency profit
from this procedure!
Your Excellency 110w cites the names of
Anacleto del Rosario, lsabelo de los Reyes, and
Arellano. You cou Id cite more, if you knew the
country and the people better and would not
begrudge us our little national glories. I could
cite you in addition a Leon Guerrero, a Zamora,
a Joaquin Garrido, a Jose Luna, a Regino
Garcia, del Pilar, Mariano Sevilla, Pedro
Serrano, etc., but we are not concerned here
with making a list of men who are worthy.
There are and enough of them. Your Excellency
asks for historians, independent thinkers,
and philosophers. Of the first, though they are
not members of the Royal Academy of History,
there are like Jsabelo de los Reyes who has not
written Guerras Piraticas (Wars Against Pirates),
but who, nevertheless, deserves credit
for the thoroughness of his works. As for telling
you the name of the independent thinkers
and philosophers, may the Good Lord guard ~e
from falling into the net. Rather! as the English
wo.uld say; not even the name of the province.
We know well enough about the persecutions
and malicious lies that Francisco Rodriguez
was the object of, while he was living and after
his death, because he had the reputation of
being _an "independent thinker." Your Excelle~
cy 1s quite tricky asking me for the works of
philosophers. How about censorship? Work
that it might be abolished and J promise that t_he
first books will be dedicated to you. Inquire
also into the number of copies being sold of the
works of Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo,
Cantu, Sue, Dumas Lamartine, Thiers, Aiguals
de lzco, etc., and from the demand, you will
69
have an idea of the number of consumers.
Here is how your thesis amounts to: I am a
bundle of inconsistencies because to Your Excel
I ency it is thus you want me to appear and
because you see inconsistencies in everything.
Does Your Excellency wear glasses which give
opposite views? Or does Your Excellency naturally
have this characterisf.ic?
. Do you insist on your idea that the characters
in a novel should be in agreement with the views
of the author? Then, indeed, I shall accept my
being a .. bundle of inconsistencies" and even
more. But Your Excellency, after huving published
previously that poetry of Father
Rodriguez!
I am glad that Your Excellency places
Quioquiap far above me. Place him in the moon
and in the heavens too. I shall never aspire to
have his style. I shall keep my own which is
extremely bad, like Your Excellency says:
academicus Vi11centius Batra11tes dixit, ergo ita
est. But no matter how bad jt is, it will never
equal the wickedness of the abuses that it attacks
and I can say with Lista:
Of my untrammeled Muse
The echo never lulled tyrants,
Nor mean flattery poisoned its breath.
It has never corrupted an administration nor
has it served to hide frauds, oppressed and exploited
a trusting nation. Bad and all, my work
served the purpose I wanted it to serve. If it is
not a conic bullet-nickel-plated and polished,
the sort an academician can hurl-but a coarse
pebble picked up from the ravine., it has, nevertheless,
hit its mark. I threw it at a doubleheaded
Goliath which in the Philippines is
called friarchy and corrupt ;i.dministration. It is
true tha.t it rebounds; I do not deny it the right;
the wound is there and so is death, does t.he
weapon matter? Not able to deny the reality of
events which takes hold of style and of civility,
the dog bites the stone that wounds it. Moreover,
if I have critics, neither do I lack eulogists;
the latter compensate for the former. It would
be foolish to ask the off ended power to reward
me for telling him the bitter truths. I .consider
myself fortu:nate that I am still alive. Only the
demigods ask that the hands that strike be
kissed. What would have saddened me more is
to hear, in place of the rumblings and curses
from the enemy camp, plaudits and congratulations,
because then this would be proof that the
shot backfired. Since I wrote not for myself nor
for the purpose of knocking at the gates of the
Academy, but to expose the abuses and unm.ask
the hypocrites, I have achieved my aim. Why .
should I bother about anything else? My work
moreover has not been judged and cannot be
judged, because its effects still persist. When
the people it strikes and the abuses it combats
II, 25, February 15, 1890
h vc disappeared from th_e politics of my counlr~;
when a ne_w gene~tion co~ne~ which w~II
01 condone crime and 1mmorality, when Spain
~nds this strife by means of open-hearted and
liberal reforms; fin.ally, when a_U of us have died
and with us our pnd~, our vanit~',_ a~d our petty
passions, the~ Sp~n1ards and F1hp!.nos will be
able to judge 1t with calmness and impartiality,
without bias or rancor. ,
JOSE RIZAL
A REPLY
Articles Dedicated to Mr. Jose de Lacalle
Ill
Paragraphs 26, 27, and 28 follow. Paragraph
26: ''And false titles you try to exhibit to your
readers arc not worth anything." Paragraph 27:
"If in spite of the disastrous campaign undertaken
by your pen, you are a member of the
Geographic and Economic Society, prizeawardee
of our Exposi,tion, ,YOU owe these justly
to your unquestioned scientific merits and not
to your literary nor your political works; and
secondly, to what the Hlustrious Valera says that
we are today in such a dejected state that there
is no person or object that does not appear to
1.1s good, because it is foreign and not Spanish."
Paragraph 28: "You should not be boastful
therefore of a kindness which we would bestow
in the same manner to a beadle of the German
universities." ·
Thus the Spanish or Filipino reader has a
te~tim?ny of the loyalty, patriotism, and
H1spamsm of Mr. Lacalfe. The worst of all
mortal enemies of Spain would not have dared
to defile the name of Spain as this miserable
victim of blind and vengeful hatred did in paragraph
28 of his letter. In this very regrettable
aberration of his vengeful susceptibility, Mr,
Lacalle think~ to humiliate me by saying t~at
the Geographic Commercial Society of Madrid,
the G~graphic Society, the Eco.nomic Society
~f _Manila, the judges of the Philippine Exposi-,
hon . of Madrid would have granted to mere
beadles of German universities the same
honors, the same prizes that were given me by
!he above- mentioned national societies. And
~~s~ead of humiliating or ridiculing my name, he
1h. on~rs with his impertinence the societies
w ich include in their memberships the most
::owne~ names of his nation. This is the man
let O recites empty orations, who says in his
3. t~~ P~blished m La Alhambra last September
this bs r perhaps that we are ungrateful sons of
e oved Mother tha't she sends us here? .. "
71
And the saddest part of all is that this insult
to the Spanish name not only received the approval
of the careful censors, but paragraph 28
and even the flattery at the end of paragraph 27
are also published by La Opinion, El Eco de
Panay, etc., and are hailed by the Spanish volunteers
of Manila. Difficile est satiram non
scibere. But I am compelled to congratulate the
censors for the care they have of guarding the
prestige of the Spanish name. How good is the
honorable lady of censorship! Spaniards, be at
peace; cens0rship is the guardian of honor!
Those gods are very stupid; the weapons they
use t0 attack me in their blind hatred also wound
them; the mud they throw at me also soils their
hands.
Besides, Doctor Lacalle comes out rather late
with his fine accusation; I have already renounced
my title of meritorious member of the
Economic Society of Man•ila since last November
17 ...
In paragraph 30, Mr. Lacallc says: "I protest
anything lhat resembles a personal attack
against someone very respectable (scilicet, like
a beadle of the German universities); I have in
mind his notable studies and erudite investigations
of Philippine races; I sincerely praise the
outstanding works of the professor and J am
opposed to ,ideas that would condemn what is
good for science; I also oppose whatever is
contrary to the interests of Spain, the good name
of her people and we·lf-being of these races
(naturally, to Mr. Lacalle, those races are not
sons of the noble Mother), who inspite of the
defenders of brilliant Utopias, are fulJ of love
for the Mother who sacrificed blood, interests,
and tranquility."
Here we have an oration that contains
phrases enjoyed by all Quioquiaps, but it is no
more !,han an ora_tion. We, the Filipinos and I,
fight whatever 1s contrary to the interests of
Spain, the good name of her people and the
welfare of those races," while Mr. Lacalle tries
to silence us about the faults of the administration
that put to shame the good Spanish name
and embarrass the welfare of those races· while
Mr. Lacalle attributes to very honorable' societies
of his nation the wish to bestow their honors
to beadles of German universities. I fight only
!hose faults of his ~ountrymen that, in our opinion,
embarrass the mtegnty of the country. Mr.
Lacalle should not make himself a defender of
those races; this is a poor joke and badly pre~
ented. Mr. Lacalle should not speak with
am modesty and effrontery of only the sacrifices
in blood, interests, and comforts of Spaniards·
these sacrifices are mutually made and if today
Spai~ ~a~rifices only blood for the Philippines,
the F1hpmos, on the other hand, sacrifice blood
interests, and tranquility, only to get insult~

BRINDIS PDF

A toast delivered by Jose Rizal at a banquet in the Restaurant Ingles, Madrid, on the evening of
June 25, 1884, in honor of Juan Luna, winner of the gold medal for his painting “El Expoliarium,”
and Félix Resurección Hidalgo, winner of a silver medal for his painting “Virgenes Cristianas
Expuestas al Populacho” at la Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes de Madrid. [Translated from
the
original Spanish by Encarnacion Alzona for the Rizal Centennial Commission and Raul Guerrero
Montemayor.]
Gentlemen: In speaking before you I do not fear that you may listen to me with boredom, for you
have
come to share our enthusiasm with yours, that stimulus of youth, therefore you cannot help but
be
indulgent. Sympathetic currents pervade the air, bonds of fellowship radiate in all directions, kind
souls listen and, therefore, I do not fear for my humble person, nor do I doubt your kindness. Men
of
goodwill, you seek goodwill, and from that height, where noble sentiments prevail, you give no
heed
to pettiness. You see the whole, and you judge the case and you extend your hand to someone
who,
like myself, desires to join you in one single thought, one single aspiration, the glory of genius and
the
splendor of the homeland. (Good, very good; applause.)
Such is, indeed, the reason why we are gathered. In the history of nations there are names that
are
related to an event which bring love and greatness to mind; names which, like magic formulas,
evoke
agreeable and pleasant thoughts; names which somehow take on the meaning of an agreement,
a
symbol of peace, a bond of love among nations. Luna and Hidalgo belong among these names;
their
glorious achievements illuminate the two ends of the globe: the Orient and the West, Spain and
the
Philippines. As I utter, gentlemen, their names, it is if I saw before me two luminous arches,
projecting from both regions meeting half-way and entwining far on high, impelled by a sensation
of
sharing a common origin which unites two nations by an eternal bond, two nations that neither
sea
nor space can keep apart, two nations in which the seed of discord sown by the blind despotism
of
men will not bear fruit. Luna and Hidalgo bring glory to Spain as well as to the Philippines; they
were
born in the Philippines, but they could have been born in Spain, because creative genius does
not
manifest itself solely within the borders of a specific country: it sprouts everywhere; it is like light
and
air; it belongs to everyone: it is cosmopolitan like space, life and God. (Applause.)
The patriarchal era of the Philippines is passing; the illustrious deeds of her sons are no longer
wasted
away at home; the oriental chrysalis is leaving the cocoon; the dawn of a long day ahead is
heralded in
brilliant shades and rose-colored dawns; and that ethnic race, fallen into lethargy during the
historic
night while the sun shone on other continents, again awakens, moved by the electric impact
produced
by contact with the people of the West, and begs for light, life and the civilization that once might
have
been its heritage, thus conforming to the eternal laws of constant evolution, transformation,
recurring
phenomenon and progress.
This you well know and you exult in it; to you are owed the beauty of the diamonds that the
Philippines wears in her crown; she produced the precious stones, Europe polished them. And all
of
us proudly look on your work, and we see ourselves as the flame, the breath, and the basic
material. (Bravo.)
There they absorbed the poetry of nature; nature grand and terrible in its cataclysms, its
transformations, its conflicting forces; nature sweet, peaceful and melancholy in its constant
manifestation, unchanging; nature that stamps its seal upon whatever it creates or produces. Her
sons
bear this within themselves wherever they may be. Analyze, then, their accomplishments, if not
their
characteristics and however little you may know this nation, you will see her in everything, such
as the
molding of her knowledge like the soul that governs over everything, like the spring of a
mechanical
object, like substantial form, like raw material. It is impossible not to show what one feels; it is
impossible to be one thing and do another; contradictions are only apparent; they are merely
paradoxes. One “hears” coming from the canvas of “El Expolarium” the tumult of the throng, the
cry
of slaves, the metallic rattle of the armor on the corpses, the sobs of orphans, the murmuring
prayers,
with as much intensity and realism as is heard in the crash of thunder amid the roar of rapids or
the
fearful and frightful rumble of an earthquake.
The same nature that conceives such phenomena has also a share of influence in the brush
strokes.
On the other hand, in Hidalgo’s work there beats an emotion of the purest kind, ideal expression
of
melancholy, beauty and frailty, victims of brutal force; this is because Hidalgo was born beneath
the
dazzling azure of that sky to the murmur of the breezes of her seas, in the placidity of her lakes,
the
poetry of her valleys and majestic harmony of her hills and mountains, and ranges.
For that reason in Luna’s are the shadows, the contrasts, the moribund lights, mystery, and the
terrible, like the reverberation of the dark tempests of the tropics, the lightning and the roaring
eruptions of its volcanoes; for that reason Hidalgo is all light, color, harmony, feeling, limpidity,
like
the Philippines on her moonlight nights, on her tranquil days, with her horizons that invite
meditation, and where the infinite lulls. And both, despite being so distinct in themselves, in
appearance at least, are fundamentally one, as all our hearts are, in spite of notable differences;
in
reflecting on their palette the splendiferous rays of unfading glory with which they surround their
Native Land, both express the spirit of our social, moral, and political life; mankind subjected to
harsh
tests; unredeemed mankind; reason and aspiration in an open struggle with preoccupations,
fanaticism, and injustices, because sentiments and opinions cut passages through the thickest
walls;
because to them all bodies have pores, all are transparent, and if they lack a pen, if the press
does not
help them, the palette and brushes will not only delight the eye but will also be eloquent tributes.
If the mother teaches her child her language in order that she may understand his joys, his
necessities, or his sorrows, Spain, as mother, teaches also her language to the Philippines in
spite of
the opposition of those myopic men and pygmies, who, desiring to insure the present, do not see
the
future, do not weigh the consequences—sickly wet nurses, corrupt and corrupters, who tend to
extinguish all legitimate feeling, who, perverting the hearts of the people, sow in them the germs
of
discord in order to reap later the fruit, the bane, the death of future generations.
But, away with these woes! Peace to the dead, because they are dead; breath and soul are
lacking in
them; the worms are eating them! Let us not invoke their sad remembrance; let us not drag their
ghastliness into the midst of our rejoicing! Happily, brothers are more—generosity and nobility are
innate under the sky of Spain; of this you are all patent proof. You have unanimously responded,
you
have cooperated, and you would have done more had more been asked. Seated at our festal
board and
honoring the illustrious sons of the Philippines, you also honor Spain, because, as you are well
aware,
Spain’s boundaries are neither the Atlantic or the Bay of Biscay nor the Mediterranean—a shame
would it be for water to place a barrier to her greatness, her thought. Spain is there—there where
her
beneficent influence is exerted; and even though her flag should disappear, there would remain
her
memory—eternal, imperishable. What matter the guns and cannon, there where a feeling of love,
of
affection, does not flourish—there where there is no fusion of ideas, harmony of opinion?
(Prolonged
applause.)
Luna and Hidalgo belong as much to you as to us; you love them and we see in them generous
hopes,
precious examples. The Filipino youth in Europe, ever enthusiastic, and others whose hearts
always
remain young for the disinterestedness and enthusiasm that characterize their actions, offer to
Luna a
crown, a modest gift, small indeed for our enthusiasm, but the most spontaneous and the most
voluntary of all the gifts hitherto presented to him.
But the gratitude of the Philippines towards her illustrious sons was not yet satisfied, and desiring
to
give free rein to the thoughts that bubble in the mind, to the sentiments that abound in the heart,
and
to the words that escape from the lips, we have all come here to this banquet to join our wishes,
in
order to give form to the mutual embrace of two races that love one another and care for one
another;
morally, socially, and politically united for a period of four centuries, so that they may form in the
future one single nation in spirit, in their duties, in their views, in their privileges. (Applause.)
I drink then, to the health of our artists Luna and Hidalgo, legitimate and pure glories of two
peoples!
I drink to the health of the persons who have lent them a helping hand on the dolorous path of
art! I
drink to the health of the Filipino youth, sacred hope of my homeland, that they may imitate such
precious examples so that Mother Spain, solicitous and heedful of the welfare of her provinces,
may
implement soon the reforms she has contemplated for a long time! The furrow is ready and the
ground is not sterile! And I drink, finally, for the happiness of those parents who, deprived of the
tenderness of their children, follow them from those distant regions with moist eyes and palpitating
hearts across seas and space, who have sacrificed on the altar of the common welfare the sweet
consolations that are so scarce in the twilight of life, precious and lonely winter flowers that sprout
along the snow-white borders of the grave. (Warm applause, congratulations to the speaker.)

Noli 2 Why was the RIzal hero a creole?

unnatural and agonized. Given a choice, Rizal might well have been will. trade rank
and fortune for a normal man's ability to accept the worla adjust himself to it. The
young Rizal's dedication to athletics was an atter make himself normal. He
did not quite succeed, to our good fortune mature Rizal's determination to excel in
as many fields of endeavor as possibl. - science, art, medicine, literature - was a
compensation for his feeble physique he would show the world he was as
capable, as tall, as the next man. He proved he was very much taller, by
dising above himself. If there had been no need to do so, if he had been of normal
height and with normal capacities, he might have led a normal life, might
have accepted the world as he found it and adjusted himself to it. And
the nation would bave lost a hero.
Rizal's career illustrates the challenge-and-response theory of
progress Rizal soared because his every response ovashot the challenge. With
each achieve ment, whether in science or letters or scholarship, he added
one more cubit to his stature, until he aced no longer decry himself as
small. Even in that mast intimate incapacity that Radaic speaks of, Rizal
managed to achieve a measure of success. His last emotional involvement
with Josephine Bracken, is no longer just an affair but is a mature
relationship, a marriage
Says Radaic:
"The fights Rizal mentions in his Memorias, with boys bigger
than he against whom he thrust his little body as though to assure himself and
show others he was not so weak, are but compulsions to compensate for his
inferior build, as if he would thus attain the physical height nature had denied
him. His fights express his complexes, are an aspect of his timorousness, a
timorousness turned inside out
Tormented by eternal feelings of inferiority, Rizal made a career of ascension. The
struggle between his complexes and his ever more ambitious lifted this
extraordinary man to the supreme heights of perfection and hur
endeavor His career is that of the lesser sons in the fairy tales, who wo wonders
and win princesses. A Rizal well formed of body might never found in himself
the force needed to raise himself so high for the sake of country."
5 Why Was The Rizal Hero A Creole?
I he Rizal novels, so morbid of matter but so comic in manner, defy Canonization. The
Bible of the race won't toc today's line on the race. Like the brew scriptures, from
which its priestly editors vainly tried to purge a mass orytheistic myth, the Rizal
novels contain elements our stricter sensibilities
would purge away.
did Rizal choose for h the 1930s was that Mana - theory that wreaks ha the text of the novels,
W Iconoclasts have got around us may have been, at least cu she was a heroine to hin of
Maria Clara as an 100 discarded. Thus would
ne figure of Maria Clara, for instance, continues to scandalize us. Why choose for
heroine a mestiza of shameful conception? The reply of Was that Maria Clara was
no heroine to Rizal but an object of satice
at wreaks havoc on the meaning of satire, besides being refuted by the novels, which
reveals a Rizal enraptured by his heron
got around the dilemma by simply rejecting Maria Cları. Rizal 5 at least during the writing,
taken in by her, we are not. Wacher the to him or not, she is no heroine to us; and all the
folk
15 an ideal or as a symbol of the Mother Country, must be
Hans
- Thus would we purify Rizal. Said Rizal of his heroine:
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JOSE RIZAL
66
WHY WAS THE RIZAL HERO A CREOLE?
i
67
y not of its delicate
sin his Indio surname, which means to pour, to transfer, to translate, for
indeed a translation into Asia of Europe, or, possibly, the other
e are still confronted offends our racial pride
cance in his Indio surnam Ibarra was indeed a translar way around.
WC
"Poor girl, with your heart play gross hands that know not of it fibers."
But having disposed of his outrageous heroine, we are still ... by his equally
impossible hero, impossible because he offends our
e hero of the Great Filipino Novel be, not an Indio Filipina a Spanish "Filipino," with
the quotes expressing our misgivingsa Crisostomo Ibarra belonged to that
class which alone bore the name Fili those days but from which we would
withhold the name Filipino today the most of the Philippine Creoles (and the Rizal
hero is an example) had native than Spanish blood.
A Creole class in the pure sense of the term never existed in the Philie pines. The
Spanish didn't come here in such numbers as to establish a larono enough
community that could intermarry within itself and keep the blood pure. What
were their most numerous progeny – the friar's bastards - inevica bly
vanished into the native mass within a generation. But even the Spaniards who
did establish families could keep them Creole for, at the most, three genera.
tions. The exceptions are rare. The Rochas (Malacañang used to be
their manor) are probably the most durable, dating back some tivo
centuries; the Teuses have endured about a century and a half but have sunk
into obscurity; the Elizaldes (of very mixed blood) go back only a century, or
some four genera tions. The commoner process was followed by such families
as the Legardas and the Aranetas, which now seem purely native principalia
but began as Creole. This process was arrested and reversed by the great tribe
that may be called the Ayalas in general, though it includes the Sorianos,
Zobels, Melians, and Roxases. By the time of the Revolution, this Creolc
tribe was already hcaded by an Indio, Don Pedro Roxas, and seemed on
its way to becoming as "na tive" as the Legardas and Aranetas; but
succeeding generacions restored the tribe to Creole status with heavy
infusions of Europcan blood. Tis said th sons of the tribe are sent to Europe as
soon as they reach puberty and at allowed to come home until they have
married "correctly" abroad.
Up to around midway of the 19th century, however, the Phupe Creoles had no
such scruples about blood purity and were distinguishe class apart, as
"Filipinos," not so much by the amount of Spanish their veins as by their
culture, position and wealth. So, a friar's bas peasant girl might look completely
Spanish but would have no Creole, while a man like Ibarra, already two mixed
marriages aw Spanish grandfather, would still be a Creole because a
landowner man. He was an Ibatra far more than he was a Magsalin - and th
question is: Why did Rizal make this "translated Filipino" his hero? Vas Rizal trying to
identify with the Creole? Are the illustrators
1 hairy high-nosed and red-cheeked Ibarra the smaller, smoother features of Rizal?
A great writer is always writing about his times, even when he seems to hesuriting
about something else; and Rizal's novels are historical parable
have never quite related them to their particular period. We know the novels se
subversive, that they are about revolution, but we assume that Rizal meant The
Revolution of 1896, to which he was looking forward as a prophet; and we are therefore
dumbfounded that Rizal, when the Revolution came, chose to disown it and to
enlist on the side of Spain. We secretly suspect a failure of nerve in the man who had
so vigorously prophesied that Revolution.
But was Rizal prophesying? Might he not have been talking about another
revolution altogether, a revolution he was more sympathetic to? The novels
were, after all, written about a decade before 1896; and we know that the cvents
that most influenced Rizal, that must have shaped those novels, were the events
with which he grew up, that impelled a change in name, the translation
from Mercado to Rizal - and from the Philippines to Europe.
The clue is in the dedication to El Filibusterismo:
"To the memory of the priests, Don Mariano Gomez, Don Jose
Burgos and Don Jacinto Zamora, executed on the gibbct of Bagumbayan
on February 28, 1872"
Throughout the years he was growing up, Rizal was aware that a revo lution was
going on in his country, a revolution inspired at first by the person,
then by the memory of Burgos the Creole, and in which the people most Volved
belonged to the Creole class, for the Propaganda may be said to
begun, in the 1850s, with Father Pelaez, as a Creole campaign against the nsulars.
Rizal also knew that Spain was overthrown in America by the us uprisings of the
Creoles there (Bolivar, San Martin, Iturbide) - that is, class that had the education,
money, talent and prestige to conduct a th success. (The revolutions of the Indios
would come later, as with Mexico.) During Rizal's youth, it looked as if what had
happened in would happen in the Philippines: the Crcoles were restive, were cre
apparently headed for an open clash with the Peninsulars. So,
wrote his novels, he was writing about an actual movement, and
nor
at of Spanish blood in o, a friar's bastard by a I have no status as a arriages away
from 1
andowner and gende Magsalin - and there's signifi
by the class that had the e revolt with success. (The revolu Juarez in Mexico.)
During America would happen rising, were apparently when Rizal wrote his n
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JOSE RIZAL
WAS THE RIZAL HERO A CREOLE?
WHY WAS THE RIZA
06: he was looking
chronicling the
writing to animate it. He was not looking forward to 1896; he was back to 1872 and all its
subsequent repercussions. He was chronicli Creole revolution in the Philippines.
reduced to four. In return to the defense of the folk moment to be called to m their
religious instruction; but he or even to sleep two consecutive night a little local tyrant.
In return, the encomendero pledged himself, like a feudal lord,
of the folk under his care (which meant being ready at any ve called to military service
anywhere in the country) and also to
instruction, but he was forbidden to stay within his encomienda
The Creole
For 200 years - through the 17th and 18th centuries the Philippine Creoles were
Filipino in the sense that their lives were entirely devoted to the service of
the country: to expanding or consolidating the national frontiers and to
protecting them. Their great labor, their achievement, was keeping the Phil
ippines intact through two centuries when, it may be said there was not a
single day that the islands were not under threat of invasion: by the Chinese, the
Japanese, the British, the Dutch. For two centuries the country was under
con: stant siege The Dutch Wars, for instance - a aucial period in our
history - lasted fifty years. A single slip in the vigilance and our history would
have been different; there would be, to stress a point now invisible to us, no
Philippines at all: we would be a province today of Indonesia and nobody
would be arguing about what a Filipino is.
During those 200 years the Creole faltered only once, very briefly, with the
British invasion, but he quickly recovered balance. The conquering Ameri
cans of the 1900s would sneer at Spanish empire in the Philippines as inept,
against all the cvidence of history; for if the prime duty of a mother country
to a colony is to protect it from invasion, then we'll have to admit that
Spain, in its almost 400 years in the islands, acquitted itself with honor,
especially when we remember that within fifty years after the American
occupation, the Philippines fell, and fell unprotected, to an invader, while
the Americans looked the other way, toward Europe. Another point the
Tagalogs and Pampangos who fough with the Creoles to defend the islands
during those centuries of siege, we no sneer at as "mercenaries" - but is it
mercenary to fight for one's country
The labor of defense was so exhausting it partly explains why ther, no
really old Creole families in the Philippines. For his pains, the
Creolem be rewarded with an encomienda, which did not mean possessing
the land entrusted to his care but merely gave him the right to collect the tribute the
the space of two generations: his own lifetime and that of his heir. The
sales, then tribute was at first sight reales (or peso), was later increased to ten
reales,
The encomienda system lasted but briefly; and the Philippine Creole
Tad more for subsistence on the Galleon trade and on mining. He worked Can mines of
Antipolo when the Philippines still had a cannon foundry Istrand later, the gold mines of
Paracale. As a gentleman, manual labor uns forbidden him; he could enter only the
Army, the Church and the Govern ment. The Creoles formed our first secular
clergy, our first civil service Only fare in Spanish times, with the relaxation of the
restrictions on land-owning, did the Creole turn to agriculture, dedicating himself
to sugar culture in Negros and Pampanga, to abaca culture in Bicolandia, to cattle
culture in the various cancherias in the North
All this time thc Creole - and the Philippine colony in general - lived in
isolation from Spain, and the neglect fostered the autonomous spist. The Creole
was a “Filipino," not a Spaniard. He controlled the government; Madrid was
represented only by the govémor-general, who was so detested as a
“foreigner" he had to make an accounting of his stewardship before he
could retum to Madrid. The voyage from Europe to the Philippines was so
long and so expensive and the mortality among passengers so high that only the
hardiest of Spaniards reached the islands, and once here they had to cast in their lot with
the country forever, since a return trip was next to impossible. The immigrating Spaniard,
therefore, broke with Spain forever when he came to the Philippines. We further consider
that many of those who came here were Basques and calans – that is, folk with a tradition
of rebelliousness against the Madad
nment – the temper of the Philippine Creole becomes evident. Rizal made his Ibarra the
descendant of a Basque.
ith the revolt of Spanish America and the opening of the Suez Canal, me closer to Manila;
and the quicker cheaper voyage now brought to
ones, as Rizal's Teniente Guevara observed, "o mas perdido de la penin * These
peninsular parasites, however, considered
sular parasites, however, considered themselves several cuts rupino" - that is, the
Creole - and began to crowd him out of
ad Government. The war between Creole and Peninsular had
Madrid came closer to Maniu the Philippines, as Rizal's Tenie
are
above the "Filipino" - t Army, Church and Government, begun.
This was during the first
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as during the first three quarters or so of the 19th century, when
JOSE RIZAL
Y WAS THE RIZAL HERO A CREOLE?
WHY WAS THE RIZ
71
ound itself becoming a Spanish
for the Filipinization of the
tion of the clergy. Pelaez perished in the Cathedral during the
1863. but he left a disciple who would carry on his work:
teat earthquake of 1863, but he left a di
Jose Burgos.
en so
could be gained eventually, and the he
à practically autonomous commonwealth found itself becoming a colony in the strict
sense of the word. The previous centuries of SA the Philippines had been years of
Christianization, unification and dev ment, but only the final century, the 19th, was
a period of hispaniza and how effective it was displayed by the fact that
within less than a cen the hispanization campaign had produced Rizal
and the ilustrados, men steeped in Spanish and European culture they
seemed to have a thousand years of that culture behind them. The
campaign to hispanize the islands was intensifying when the Revolution broke
out: the government was open. ing normal schools for the training of native
teachers to spread Spanish throughout the population.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Creole was rising, stirred into insurgence bp the
example of a Mexican Creole of the Manila garrison. The Novales
revolt in the 1820s planted the idea of separatism. When Mexico,
having success fully revolted, seceded from Spain, the treaty between
the two countries permitted the two inperial provinces that were formerly ruled
through Mexico, to choose between joining Mexico or remaining with Spain. The
Philippines thus got the chance to break away from Spain in 1821, for the
Philippines was one of these two imperial provinces dependent on
Mexico, the other being Guatemala, which then comprised most of Central
America Guatemala opted to join Mexico, but the Philippine
government – or its Spanish govemor-general anyway – chose to keep
the islands under Spain. However, the revolt of the Mexican Creole captain
Novales – who was proclaimed "emperor of the Philippines" one day and
executed on the cathedral square of Manila the next day - shows that there was a
segment of Creole opinion in the Philippines that favored joining the Mexicans in their
independence. Local Creoles had heard that, in Mexico, a Cicole (Iturbide) had
been proclaimed "emperor," after a revolution that had, for one of its aims,
equality between Spaniards and Creoles.
The current of mutinous opinion swelled and, two decades after the Novales revolt,
erupted mysteriously in the Conspiracy of the Palmeros,.. affair that
involved a Creole family so prominent (it was related to Azcarragas) all
records of what appears to have been a coup attempt been suppressed - though
the Rizal student should perk his ears here, family close to the rulers of the state
it's trying to undermine suggest figure of Simoun, the sinister eminence
behind the governor-general.
A decade later, in the 1850s, the Creole revolution becomes ma in
Father Pelacz, canon of the Manila Cathedral, who started the propaga
With Burgos, we are already in Rix
Burgos, we are already in Rizal country. He and his mentor Pelaez pirol himself - were what might
be called "eventualists": they believed at with sufficient propaganda, reforms could be won
eventually
mined eventually, and the hated Peninsulars could be ejected without
oos is the Creole of the 1870s, resurgent if not yet insurgent: a Liberal in the manner
of Governor-General De la Torre; and already scious of himself as a Filipino distinct from the
Spaniard. His counterpart in
ular sphere is Antonio Regidor (implicated in the same Motin de Cavite that cost Burgos's life)
who replied to the Peninsular's disdain of the "Filipino" by showing in his own person, that a
Filipino could be more cultured than a Peninsular. It was in this spirit that the Philippine
Creoles would vaunt chat a Filipino, Ezpeleta, had risen to the dignity of bishop and
that another Filipino, Azcarraga, had become a government minister in
Madnd.
The fate of Burgos (the garrote) and of Regidor (exile) put an end to the idea of
eventualism. The Creoles that come after - mostly educated on the Continent and
affiliated with the Masonic Order-are already frankly Filibusteros - that is,
subversives -- and their greatest spokesman is Märcelo H. del Pilar, the
Creole who undoubtedly possessed the most brilliant mastery of Spanish a Filipino ever
wielded but whose talent got deadened by journalistic deadlines. but the extremnest
development of the Creole as filibustero was Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, a man
who came to loathe both the Malay and the Spaniard in himself so intensely he
became the first of the sajonistas and, as a member of the Philippine Commission of
the 1900s, fought for the implantation of En push in the Philippines. in a virulent desire to uproot
all traces of Spanish culture
he islands. For good or evil, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, whom we hardly remember, was
one of the deciders of our fate.
vizal novels probe these two phases of the Creole revolution. In angere, we are
still in the epoch of Pelaez and Burgos, the eventualists;
no believes that education and propaganda will eventually create
of reform, follows the fate of Burpos even to the point of being, like Burgos, implicated in an
uprising he knows
han uprising he knows nothing about. But in El Filibusterismo, in the period of Del Pilar
and Pardo de Tavera; and the sinister
cked and long-bearded, is no longer a propagandist but a and craves not only the fall of
Spanish rule but the failure of the
the Noli Me Tangere, we are still and Ibarra, who believes that ea a climate of reform,
We are already in the period Simoun, white-locked and lor corrupter, and craves
hispanization movement.
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e suggests the
12 WAS THE RIZAL HERO A CREOLE?
JOSE RIZAL
WHY WAS THE RIZA
Ibarra
study in Switzerland; he has been i subscribes to Madrid newspar What gets him into
trouble is tween Creole and Peninsular. The
Canal: he is illiterate but bash him. When he punishes a child who
I he family of Rizal's hero traces the evolution from Spanish Creole to Filipina The
great-grandfather still bears the original Basque pama Eibarramendia, which his
descendants abbreviate to Ibarra. Don Peder Eibarramendia is a Manila
businessman; when his warehouse burns down he accuses his bookkeeper of
having started the fire and thus ruins not only the hapless bookkeeper but
all his descendants, the last of whom is the tragic Elias Don Pedro is a
fearful figure, with his deep-sunken eyes, cavernous voice, and "laughter
without sound," and has apparently been in the country a long time, for he
speaks Tagalog well. He suddenly appears in San Diego, is fascinated
by a piece of deep woods in which are thermal waters, and buys up the
woods with textiles, jewels and some coin. Then he vanishes as suddenly
as he has come. Later, his rotting corpse is found hanging on a balite tree
in the woods. Tercified, those who sold him the woods throw his jewels into
the river and his textiles into the fire. The woods where he hanged himself
become haunted.
A few months later, his son Saturnino appears in San Diego, claims the
property, settles in the village (where still roam deer and boar) and
starts an indigo farm. Don Saturnino is as gloomy as his father: taciturn,
violent, at times cruel, but very active and industrious; and he
transforms San Diego from ". miserable heap of huts” into a thaving town
that attracts new settlers and the Chinese.
In these two initial generations of Ibarras, contemporaneous with the early
1800s, we see the Creole turning, after two centuries of constant warfare, from
arms to plow, from battlefield to farm and shop. Don Pedro and Don Saturnino have the
gloom of the frustrated, of warriors born too late for knight-errantry and forced into
grubbier tasks. One goes into business and ends up a suicide, the other
turns into a frontiersman, bringing the qualities of soldier - violence,
cruelty, vigor and zeal - to the development of a farm att edge of the jungle.
Rizal is fair; he sees the latter-day Creole as engaged another conquista, this time
of the soil. As long as the Creole was mer defending the land as empire, the land was
his but he was not the land's. But he began to work the land himself, he became
possessed by what, formers had merely possessed. The change shows in
the third-generation Ibarra, Rafael, the hero's father, who is already
graduating from Creole to Filipina
Don Rafael outrages the Peninsulars because, though of Spanish bo he wears the
native camisa. He is loved by his tenants; he sends his only
1. he has been influenced by the Liberalism of the 1860s. He
Madrid newspapers and keeps a picture of an "executed priest." to him into trouble is
almost too blunt a projection of the clash be.
Deninsular. The Peninsular in this case exemplifies the worst Croniards that poured into the
Philippines with the opening of the Suez . : illiterate but has been made a tax collector, and the
natives laugh at
he punishes a child who's mocking him, he is knocked down by Don Rafael, breaks his
head on a stone and dies. Don Rafael is throw
berotsWhen his son returns from Europe the old man has died in jail.
The fourth-generation Ibarra, Juan Crisostomo, has a proper Victorian's faith in education,
science, propaganda and the excellences of Europe. He has sherited a quarrel with the
Peninsulars that he does not care to pursue, being a dvilized man. He has also, but
unknowingly, inherited a quarrel with the Indios, which provides the Noli Me Tangere with
its sardonic humor; for Ibarra's life is thrice saved by Elias, who, it turns out, is a
victim of the Ibarras, a victim of the Creole. Rizal was making an ironic comment
on the alliance between Creole and Indio; yet be makes Elias die to save Ibarra the
Creole; and it's Ibarra, not Elias, who becomes the revolucionary.
He is forced to become one, though all he wanted to do was elevate the
masses by educating them. At times he even sounds like a reactionary:
"To keep the Philippines, it's necessary that the friars stay; and in the
union with Spain lies the welfare of our country."
Rizal repeats the Creole-vs-Peninsular theme by making Ibarra's rival Maria
Clara a Peninsular: the newcomer Linares. And when tragedy befalls
nim, Ibarra the Creole finds the Peninsular society of Manila ranged against
him
accrying him precisely because of his Spanish blood. “It always has to be
oles!" say the Peninsulars upon hearing of Ibarra's supposed
uprising "No Indio would understand revolution!"
the accurst woods where his Spanish ancestor hanged himself, bittered Ibarra ceases to
be a naïve Edmond Dantes and becomes a
In the accursty the embittered Ibarra ceases to be malevolent Montecristo.
Simoun
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Simoun of Rizal is unhappy
Levenge was sweet, how
his only son to
was sweet, however, for the Montecristo of Dumas. The unhappy even in reveage. He is
one of the darkest creations
24
JOSE RIZAL
WAS THE RIZAL HERO A CREOLE?
WHY WAS THE RIZÁLL
,
75
high purpose."
This final chapter is
final chapter is beautiful but unsatisfactory. The Noli Me To
ormist, the futility of collaboration; E/Filibusterismo bed the naivete of the reformist, the
futility of collabom
re have unequivocally justified revolution - but it takes back in er what it pushed
forward in the preceding ones.
should, therefore, have unequi the final chapter what it pushed for
What had happened?
of literature, a man who believes salvation can come only from total com
"I have inflamed greed," he says. “Injustices and abuses have mulin I have
fomented crime, and acts of cruelty, so that the people may be inured to the idea
of death. I have maintained terror so that fleeing from they may seize any
solution. I have paralyzed commerce so that the con impoverished and
reduced to misery, may have nothing more to fear. I hori spurred ambition, to ruin the
treasury; and not content with all this, to arouse popular uprising, I have hurt the
nation in its rawest nerve, by making the vulture itself insult the very carcass
that feeds it!"
Simoun is beyond any wish for reform, or autonomy, or representation in
the Cortes.
“I need your help," he tells Basilio, “to make the youth resist these insane
cravings for hispanization, for assimilation, for equality of rights. Instead of
aspiring to be a province, aspire to be a nation ... so that not by
right, nor custom, nor language, may the Spaniard feel at home here, nor
be regarded by the people as a native, but always as an invader, as an
alien."
And he offers Basilio "your death or your future; with the govemment
or with us; with your oppressors or with your country', warning the boy that
whoever “declares himself neutral exposes himself to the fury of both
sides" - the most poignant line in the novel; though Rizal, when the moment of
choice camc, did not exactly declare himself neutrál.
But Basilio, even when finally converted to the cevolution, shrinks from
Simoun's command to exterminate not only the counter-tevolucion but all who
refuse to rise up in arms:
"AW All Indios, mestizos, Chinese, Spaniards. All whom you find with. out
courage, without spirit. It is necessary to renew the racel Coward fathers can only
beget slave children. What? You tremble? You fear to sow death? What is to be
destroyed? An evil, a misery. Would you call that to destroy?! would call it to
create, to produce, to nourish, to give lifel"
Unlike Montecristo, Simoun fails. Dying, he flees to the house beside me Pacific
where lives Father Florentino; and through Father Florentino, Rizal seen to annul
what he has been saying so passionately, during the novel, through Simoun.
What had sounded like a savage sneering at reform becom celebration of
reforms, of spiritual self-renewal. Salvation cannot come corruption; garbage
produces only toadstools. In Dumas, the last words been: Wait and hope In Rizal,
the last words are: Suffer and toil. And the with which Simoun had thought to fuel
the holocaust, Father Florentino into the ocean, there to wait until a time "when
men need you for a holy
The Creole revolution had flopped. A few decades before, Sinibaldo de Mas had
predicted the impasse:
one the whites born in the colony, there arise local interests op to those of the
mother country and which cnd by arousing the desire for dependence. A Filipino
Spaniard may be called a Spaniard but he has never bren to Spain and has neither
friends nor relatives there. He has spent his in Fancy in the Philippines; there he
has enjoyed the games of childhood and known his first loves; there he has
domiciled his soul. The Philippines is his native land But the Filipinos (that is, the
Crcoles) are continually snubbed Their resentment when a boat from Cadiz
arrives in Manila with alcaldes mayores or military and finance officers is so
obvious one must close one's eyes and even at times one's cars to avoid
noticing it.
"However, much as the Spanish officials may suppose the Filipino Spaniards
to be disloyal and desperate, it was not possible for me to be lieve that it would
ever occur to them to rise up and arm the natives (bc cause the Creoles are much
less loved than the Europeans by the Indios, without the support of the friars,
without capital, and too weak a minority to subdue the more than 200,000 rich,
active and intelligent Chinese mesti zos and the three and a half million natives. In
case of a break, the Spanish population rooted in the country stands to lose most; the
Europeans can
urn to Spain, but the Filipino Spaniards will be uprooted, lose all and have to search
for another homeland. Yet can these individuals in question
ed stupid and blind if they favor separation from Spain when we peatedly read in
the history of popular uprisings that them
re they can guide a revolution according to their plans, never for a moment that
they will fall victims of the revolting masses
teti
be deemed stupid and blin
men believe they can guide suspecting for a moment that they incite to revolt?”
were joined by the risin other; and the Creole got him if the Indio should use gence
the revolt of Filipinos
Indeed was what more or less happened. As the insurgent Creoles by the rising native
ilustrados, initiative passed from one to the
cole got cold feet with the thought of what might happen to could rise up in arms.
For the Creole might think his insur
Filipinos against the Peninsulars; but to the Indio, it was
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lorentino huds for a holy and
JOSE RIZAL
76
d another set of Spaniards
back his land. So, in e slipped through and
limate of subversion; to
ANDRES BONIFACIO November 30, 1863–May 10, 1897
merely a quarrel between one set of Spaniards and another set And while the two sets
quarreled, the Indio snatched back his 1 Europe, while king and bishop squabbled, the
bourgeoisie slipped th seized power.
But the abortive Creole revolution did create a climate of subversi that extent Simoun had
succeeded. There's a clear line of development 1872 to 1896, as we acknowledge by
accepting Burgos as a national her what happened in America did not happen here. An
actual Creole revoit die break out, the Indio beat the Creole to the draw; and when the
hour of oning came the Creole sided with the hated Peninsulars - though he later what redeemed
himself by joining the second phase of the Revolution, the against the Americans. When
that too, collapsed, the Creole returned to the sid. of the imperialist: the Partido Federalista
was the Creole party. The failurer that party removed the Creole from the mainstream of the
national life though, iconically, the very failure led to the realization of the old
Creole dream: it was a Quezon that took possession of Malacañang,
The modem descendants of the Creoles have had no one fate. The very rich
ones, who were in the 1870s, becoming more and more Filipino have, today,
become more and more Spanish. The poorer ones have had, as Sinibaldo de Mas predicted
to search for a new homeland, Australia being the current goal of their
exodus. Others, as a modern Creole observes, emigrate to San Lorenzo Village:
"Go to the Rizal Theater any night and you'd think you were in a foreign
country.” But there's another segment that seems to be reviving what might
be called the Spirit of 72 and which may be studied in an Emmanuel Pelacz
or a Manuel Manahan, tentative Hamletish figures that baffle us with their
scruples, their militancies, their enigmatic "honor" Are they Ibarn or
Simoun? Are they resuming an unfinished revolution of their own, the
revolt of the Creoler
The jewels of Simoun wait in the sea. Or are they surfacing at last?
6 The Eve Of St. Bartholomew
St Bartholomew the Apostle was, according to the Gospels, from
Cana of Galilee and according to tradition, the first preacher of the
Faith in Ambia and "India," meaning the Near East, where he is
supposed to have suffered a particularly atrocious form of torture: he
was skinned alive and then beheaded. For this reason, his images carry a
large sharp knife, the instrument, of his martyrdom. The religious wars in Europe
were to associate him with another horror the massacre of the Huguenots in
Pacis in 1572, on an August 24, which is St. Bartholomew's Day.
The saint with the knife is the patron of Malabon towa, where he has, the
centuries, like all our patron saints, acquired a Filipino look. He
uve bolo, for one thing, and on his feast day the main street of von becomes two
dense rows of impromptu stores where one may buy
very size and kind, from small balisongs, to kitchen knives and farm
mous butcher's cleavers. Through this chilling display of cutery
vielding saint, his martyr's robe of crimson the very mood of stor August, in
Philippine folk culture is a red month, the amok
carries a native bolo, for one Malabon becomes two der blades of every size an
bolos, to enormous butcher rides the bolo-wielding saint, the month, for August, is
-
tore show trane artline
CHAPTER TO TWO
edom
moslem - free
The Fiction of a Knowable Community
ew novels exercise as gripping a hold on the Filipino nationalist imagi
Dation as José Rizal's Noli me tangere and El filibusterismo. Not sim ply touted
as Filipino masterpieces, they are "master-narratives" which have attained an
extraordinarily exalted status not unlike that of the nineteenth-century national
novels of Latin America (Sommer 1991, 4) as "originary," if not founding, fictions of
the Filipino national community: For his role in tracing the contours of nationalist
thought and determin ing the substance of some of its most important debates
postindependence Philippines, Rizal has been called the "First Fmpus (L Guerrero 1963, 492).
But what kind of community did Rizal conjure up? More impon how did he go
about representing this community, by what mean with what kind of
implications? This chapter focuses on the process through which the Noli me
tangere emerged as the found of Philippine nationalism. It addresses the ways in
which Rizal approa the problem of rendering, specifically through literary
procedures pine national community that was different and separate from Spain as he
involved himself in the equally arduous task of exposing
The Fiction of a Knowable Community me 49 community in temporal (by providing a
political chart of the progress of the human condition) and spatial (by adumbrating the
external and in ternal conditions of the nation-state) terms. Rizal's literary project of
conjuring up the Philippine nation is also one of the most important and
influential attempts by a Filipino to address and think through the prob lem of
modernity" that is central to nationalist discourse and practice. The "problem of
modernity" is concerned with the question of freedom in a historical context seen as
increasingly secular, technicized, and "in ternational" (Bearsdsworth 1996, 49).
Philippine literature attests to Rizal's effort to invent the "Filipino" in two
respects. First, it narrates this effort of invention and makes the ef fort one of its
key subjects. Second, Philippine literature valorizes this theme of inventing
the Filipino through the concept of the singular text. Rizal's Noli, for
example, calls itself a "Novela tagala," or Tagalog novel, and its critical reception
as a Filipino literary work is deeply informed by presuppositions regarding the
privileged status of its author; the “FilipinoTM patriot José Rizal. The emphasis on
the singularity of the text, the novelty of its vision and its presentation of ideas, and the
creativity of its author has greatly contributed to legitimizing Rizal's public
authority as a writer. This public legitimation highlights the intimate and
privileged relation ship between the author and his work, thereby investing
the author with the public authority to influence, through explication, the
interpretation of his work. Standard literary criticism of the Noli draws on the
"special" relationship between Rizal and his novel, and uses Rizal's letters and
other writings to explain how Rizal shaped his novel. His declarations concern
ing how his novels were to be interpreted (that is, as an accurate depiction of
Tagalog" society viewed as a microcosm of Philippine society), there fore, deeply
inform readings of his novels.
Rizal anchors his literary invention of the "Filipino" national commu nity in his
narrative project of forging a concept of modern nationhood out of the
vicissitudes of colonial rule. For Rizal, the problem of repre sentation involves not
only fictional representation, in the sense of speaking about the nation, but also
political representation, in the sense or speaking in the name of the nation. The
project of using narrative Language to make sense of Philippine colonial society entails the
inevi able, but nevertheless difficult, acknowledgment that writing itself means
ng from a position. The very act of constructing a Filipino commu as knowable,"
therefore, is never just a matter of artistic imagination, an ethical and political decision
to speak of the Philippines" to "fel Filipinos." This ethico-political decision that claims
to speak of and
rta
wy, by what means, and focuses on the complex ged as the founding text
nial government's evils and institutional violence.
Rizal's novels constructed a knowable "Filipino" community ploying a narrative
of development defining the new,
ary procedures, a Philip.
ate from Spain, even of exposing the colo
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pino" community by de ng the new, "modern
50
w Necessary Fictions
thes for—the Filiping that the one wahallenge of
imaginical attitude
by an ineluctable risk, ks can always and only
sometimes for-the Filipinos is, however, attended by an inelur consisting of the
awareness that the one who speaks can always
location. The challenge of imagining a com. munity, therefore, demands nothing less than
adopting a critical toward the very act of imagining that community as Filipino
u panig the art of creation Fantasizing about Rizal and/as the Modern
In August 1887, five months after the publication of Noli me to in Berlin, José Rizal
returned to the Philippines. He had spent the last five years traveling and studying in
Europe, and something of his general itinerary can be gleaned from the account with
which he later provided the Jesuit Pablo Pastells concerning the novel's writing. "Half
of the Noli" Rizal stated, "had been written in Madrid; one quarter of it in Paris,
and the rest in Germany" (Bonoan 1994, 92, 139).
The last country was of particular significance for Rizal, who called it "my
scientific homeland" (mi patria científica) (1938, v. 5, pt. 1, 120) and acknowledged
the "peculiar calm" that living amidst its people—"free, hard-working, studious,
well-governed, full of hope in their future and master of their own
destinies"-exercised on his imagination and his writing. Germany held a special
attraction for Rizal because it was the seat of scientific learning and philosophy.
Moreover, German scholarship on the Philippines was relatively untainted by
Germany's participation, dating from the 1880s, in the European imperialist
scramble for colonies and by its outright political and military intervention in
Africa and parts of the Pacific. Until the nineteenth century, Germany had been
consid ered a fragmented and backward country, and its subsequent unification
and meteoric accession to the world arena must have seemed, to Rizal, an
inspiring example of what any country, no matter how disadvantaged,
The Fiction of a Knowable Community to 51 from Rizal himself. The Comisión
Permanente de Censura subsequently submitted a report that recommended a total ban
on the importation, publication, and circulation of the book.
Although Rizal once told fellow reformist Mariano Ponce that the Noli was "written for the
Filipinos, and it is necessary that it should be read by the Filipinos" (1938, v. 2, 29), the
fact that the novel was written in Spanish would seem to undermine Rizal's
declared purpose from its in ception because few "Filipinos" in Rizal's time and
since-understood and used Spanish.? Rizal acquired considerable notoriety not
simply be cause of the spirited discussion and arguments generated by the Noli,
but because of certain, and in retrospect, important "misunderstandings" that
collected around his name.
For rumors, indeed, played a role in disseminating Rizal's-and the Noli's-proper
name among those who had no access to either Rizal or his book. Almost
immediately upon his arrival in the Philippines, Rizal was caught in a swirl of
rumors about himself and the Noli. In a let ter to Ferdinand Blumentritt, Rizal
enumerates the various stories that reached his ears: "They take me for a German
spy, agent of Bismarck, Protestant, freemason, wizard; a half-damned soul, etc."
(5 September 1887, 1938, v. 5. pt. 1, 202, and 216; Retana 1907, 144). In this
respect, the importance of the Noli resides not so much in the impact it had on
"the few who have understood it" as in the effect it had on those who could not
and did not read it. Mli's Interit
The fantasy about the nation that figures in the Noli is tied to a certain fantasy
about Rizal himself that has figured in the reading of his novels. The question at
the heart of both the internal drama of his novels and the critical drama--the
controversy over meaning, language, and context that these novels have
subsequently provoked in Rizal's time and beyond, is a question not only of what
a Filipino nation is or should be, but also of how this nation is actualized. The
question of substanti ating the nation is principally posed as a question of
appropriating *modern" ideas and practices identified as having a "foreign" (from
the Viewpoint of Rizal's subsequent Filipino critics) and "external" (from Rizal's
viewpoint) provenance.
Modernity, then, must be understood not only as a specific conjunc ture of
world-historical forces, dating back to the seventeenth century, which were
instrumental in shaping Philippine history through the fact of European
colonialism. One might also understand it as a form of think ing about that period
of history. This thinking concerns itself with the now and wherefore of human
freedom in an increasingly secular, tech
could achieve by dint of talent, diligence, and willpower.
Rizal arrived in Manila in time to observe, firsthand, the reaction his novel
(Schumacher 1973, 82-93). Since only a small number of cop had found their way
into the Philippines the rest being held up at
inged bands at toms—the Noli was much in demand, and copies, changed hand
escalating prices. The rector of the University of Santo Tomas appos a committee
that submitted a report condemning the novel for "heretical, impious and
scandalous in the religious domai antipatriotic, subversive of political order,
offensive to the Govern Spain and to its method of procedure in these Islands in
the policy main" (Retana 1907, 128-29). The report reached the governor-general
of the Philippines, who asked for a copy old
antipatriotic, supious and scansport condemn
mning the novel for being
religious domain, and main" Theo its method of protical
order, offensive 181
to the Government of
In the political do ached the Spanish
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49). As a discursive freedom, modernity not qually important normative
fire du ne served as commonsensical
preceding lotionship bet bring into
52 Necessary Fictions nical and international context" (Beardsworth 1996, 49). As a dice
term of reflection upon the problem of human freedom, mod, only has a
descriptive component, but an equally important one as well. dtreo He China
Rizal and his novels have for a long time served as commons markers-in historical
and literary terms of the emergence of the ti pino nation, but the preceding
discussion also underscores the ne examining more carefully the relationship
between Rizal, his novela the nation they not only helped imagine, but bring into
being. Riz novels constructed the nation by deploying a narrative of developmer
that invoked, yet also questioned, the universal norms that define a spe cifically
"modern" community in both temporal and spatial terms. This argument,
however, represents my own reading of Rizal and should not be construed as his
explicitly acknowledged position.
The fantasy of the nation forming the major theme of Rizal's novels can be
considered Rizal's way of thinking through the "modern" and its implications for
the Philippines. That Rizal and his novels are "modern" would seem obvious to
any Filipino student of history. Yet this view of Rizal's modernness rests on the
assumption of the modularity of the novel and nation forms, that is, the idea of
their flexibility and adaptability to contexts different from their point of origin.
As dominant artifacts of the modern age with specific associations with
"the West," the novel and the nation provide the form and content—both the
technical means and substance of Rizal's attempts to determine the "Filipino's"
understanding of community in relation to existing "colonial," "interna tional,"
and "technical processes. It is in the space of thinking through a Philippine
modernity that Rizal located the political possibilities of
The Fiction of a Knowable Community 53 The various, often conflicted, ways people
who live within the grip of colonial life experienced it give the lie to confident
claims of universal history and their promise of freedom and transcendence,
since the reality of colonial life imposes particularly recalcitrant material
constraints on the symbolic and practical capacities of the colonized to realize
their freedom. Rizal's imagined nation is one peculiarly fraught with hope and risk
be cause its conception of the ethical imperative of development and change is
tied to a recognition of the vicissitudes and contingencies shaping the
relationship between and among rulers and ruled. This is borne out in Rizal's
adoption of an inside-outside narrative perspective in the Noli me tangere, a
narrative double stance registering the presence of an "excess" of competing
cognitive standpoints that derive from the colonial experi ence of various
inhabitants in the Philippines, and complicate the novel's rhetoric of universal
historical development, change, and progress.
How did Rizal deal with this "problem" of freedom and agency, and how did he
and his novels, in doing so, end up prefiguring this problem in a way that differs
from, and potentially challenges, most of the subse quent critical appropriations
of Rizal and his works?
on To be sure, Rizal's contemporaries and contemporary Rizal biogra phers have
strikingly similar preoccupations. Although separated by three republics, two
world wars, and three foreign colonizers, the reactions of Rizal's contemporaries
dovetail with the critical reception of Rizal by subsequent generations of
Filipinos insofar as they are concerned with the idea of the "modern, as well
as its implications for the present-day Filipinos' capacity for transformative
thought and action. This idea of the modern, with its notions of radical
transformation and emancipatory capacities, crops up with monotonous
regularity in almost all discussions of Rizal's novels. Not only is Rizal often
depicted as an epitome of the modern (Renaissance) man, his literary feat of
imagining a Filipino com munity is itself considered a characteristically modern
gesture. To speak of Rizal is already to speak of the modern.
This peculiar identification of Rizal with modernity needs to be ad dressed. After
all, Rizal is a rather unusual choice for pational hero. He had spent nearly nine
years traveling abroad, and both the Noli me tan gere and El filibusterismo were
written and published in Europe (the latter in Ghent in 1891). It seems strange that
someone who lived most of his adult life elsewhere and wrote books that very few
people in his time could read would end up being the national hero of his
country. . This mystery is usually glossed over by the argument that Rizal's fre quent
absence did not change the fact that he did return to the Philippines
nationhood.
Rizal's novels may be read as attempts at describing a historical con text in which
the nation form had already achieved normative status other places as the
principal mode of social organization and politica, imagination. But in
reflecting upon the possibility or impossibility Filipino freedom in a secular,
technical, and international context, Raza novels had to deal with the problem of
formulating a notion of Fup nationness, based on the narrative of progress,
development, and chan that ran up not only against the assumptions, disciplinary
power practices of the colonial regime in the Philippines, but also agains idea of a
certain kind of internationalism wrought by the existence on peting European
colonial powers ("The Philippines a Century 10 1964, 154-62), and an emergent
socialism as well.
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also against the
54 « Necessary Fictions
rtordom in the hands of
ce against the colo as an American-sponsored
he
and that his subsequent persecution and martyrdom in the h the Spaniards helped
crystallize popular resistance against the nizers. It has also been argued that Rizal was an
American-sm
roduct of American efforts to contain the recalcitrant, revolu. tionary energies of the Filipino
people, the better to implement colonial rule over the islands (Constantino 1982;
Constantin Constantino 1975).
These explanations tend to occlude rather than illuminate the tion of Rizal's
influence, for how exactly did Rizal establish a reputation that, even in his time,
made him the potential rallying point of forces that coalesced into anticolonial
movements? Such a question necessarily invokes a notion of public reputation
cutting across several sections of social life and classes. Indeed, Rizal was
known beyond the circle of hispanized Filipinos who agitated for reforms in
Manila and Europe. Rizal had written about the "great deal of uproar" the Noli
created (1961d, v. 1, 135). In the same letter, Rizal treats us to an account of his
meeting with the governor-general of the Philippines. "You have written a novel
that aroused much comment," Rizal reported the governor as saying, "they tell
me that there are subversive ideas in it. I wish to read it."
The above quotation from Rizal's letter offers us some insights into the nature of
the novel and of Rizal's reception. The governor first hears about the novel and
the comments it elicited, then he wishes, in fact demands, to read it. It is indicative of
the novel's poor circulation that Rizal himself had to admit to the governor that he did not
have a copy of his own book at hand, and had to go around town looking for
one (1961d, 135-36). Lo his biography of Rizal; León Ma. Guerrero
enumerates the factors that worked against the dissemination of the Noli
and its ideas by the usual means of circulation among the reading public. Rizal
mau had two thousand copies of the Noli printed, but, as mentioned above, only a
small number of these copies found their way into the Philippines
The Fiction of a knowable Community 55 could be something else, Filipinos who were
members of a Filipino Na tion" (496). Having thus declared Rizal the "First Filipino"
by virtue of his accomplishments, Guerrero feels compelled to add that Rizal "is also
the first Filipino because he is first in the hearts of the Filipinos" (497). These statements
mean to account for Rizal's extraordinary impact on the imagination of his countrymen,
but Guerrero merely affects a sleight of-hand in his effort to explain Rizal's influence, for
he substitutes description for explanation. Rizal is, in other words, influential
because he is Rizal. In spite of Guerrero's attempts to provide a perspective on Rizal
that differs substantively from the usual hagiographies of the na tional hero, his
biography is, in the final analysis, not very different from those against which he
wrote.
Since Guerrero does not provide an adequate explanation of Rizal's influence, we will
need to seek the answer from Rizal himself. In Rizal's letter to Blumentritt, instead
of a discussion generated by the circulation of the Noli among the reading public,
another form of circulation that precedes the act of reading is at work and takes
the form of rumors. Proscription by the colonial state and especially by the friars
made the book controversial, and perhaps effectively impeded the further
dissemination of the ideas expounded and embodied by the novel. Most people in
Rizal's time had no access to the novel and had perforce to obtain access
secondhand, that is, by hearsay. The state and the clergy had not counted on the
effect that their censorship would have on pub lic reception of the novel, for, rather
than curtail the circulation of the novel's ideas, censorship made possible the
production of a specific form of reading that sidestepped proscription but
permitted, nevertheless, a relaying of the novel's "content." This specific
mediation of the Noli took the form of rumors.
The most interesting aspect of these rumors is, of course, that they are repeated
in supposedly reputable newspapers. The fact that these rumors were taken to be
the truth by everybody, including the so-called Indios, appears to have greatly
disturbed the writer of Epoca:
En tales circunstancias llegó á Fiúpinas, procedente de Alemania, el calambeño
José Rizal, quién reunió de seguida á lo más granado de su pueblo, y
entre aquellas sencillas gentes divulgó con pertinaz insistencia ideas
rabiosamente opuestas á los españoles, a las autoridades y en particular á
los religiosos, á ciencia y paciencia de los que debieron impedir tales
predicaciones. Rizal ha inspirado entre sus paisanos odio á la religion católica, y
sus mas adeptos han
. mostly Spaniards and
Official censorship, the exclusivity of the language in which the N written, the
vehement condemnation of the religious orders, and own amateurish handling of
the distribution all ensured that the would only be read by a small number of people.
mostly Spaniards educated Filipinos.
Yet, for all these obstructions, Guerrero acknowledges that o most extraordinary
things about the Noli is that withal it chang history of a nation" (1963, 148).
Guerrero does not provide any tion for this conundrum, merely subsuming it under
his argue Rizal's influence lay in the fact that he "taught his countrymen
owledges that "one of the
hal it changed the provide any explana. This argument that untrymen that they
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The Alction of a knowable Community
ICOT
on
57
en su noveblos y dicien porción de
56 Necessary Fictions
abandonado toda práctica religiosa, cumpliendo en esto fielmente lo que enseña en
su novela Noli me tángere, antipatia profunda religiosos, desprestigiándolos y diciendo de
ellos que son los explotard ores del indio de Calamba, y otra porción de cosas por el
estilo depresivas, no ya para los dominicos, sino también para todas lae demás
comunidades, y nada digamos de como pinta á la raza españoles.
of his travels through Germany, of his power and great influence (9) in that
nation, of how he would bring a German fleet (!!), of how he is to give to his
countrymen the ownership of the Calamba hacienda, and of how a Great State, a
Model Republic would be established there... In summary, (all these are) a
thousand hoaxes that have to tally disturbed those people in such a (ridiculous,
absurd but most effective) way that, in Calamba, those who follow Rizal are
tagged "The Party of Germany, and those loyal to the Dominican fathers are
called "The Party of the Friars" (my translation).
...Cuántas responsabilidades tiene sobre si ese germanófilo, pues con sus
teorías ha venido a producir mil disgustos a muchos de sus paisanos! En
Calamba no se habla sino de los triunfos de Rizal, de sus promesas, de la
acogida que le dispensan los sabios (?) de Europa: de sus viajes por Alemania;
de sus poder y grandes influencias (!) en esa nación; de que se va a traer una
escuadra alemana (!!): de que el les ha de dar a sus paisanos la propiedad de la
hacienda de Calamba; de que allí se ha de constituir un gran Estado, una
Republica modelo... En fin, mil paparruchas que tienen totalmente perturbados á
aquellas gentes de un modo tal, que es ridiculo y absurdo, pero exactísimo, que
en Calamba a los que siguen á Rizal se les apoda el partido de Alemania, y á los
que son leales á los padres dominicos se les llama el partido de los frailes.
(quoted in Retana 1907, 141-42)
In such circumstances, the Calambeño José Rizal arrived in the Philip pines
from Germany, and immediately joined the most select of his people. And among
those simple people, he popularized with tireless persistence ideas that are
rabidly opposed to the Spaniards, to the authordes, and, la particular, to the
religious, to the learning and efforts of those whose duty it was to
impede such preachings. Rizal has inspired hatred among his
countrymen toward the Catholic rell gion, and his closest followers have
abandoned all practice of religion, faithfully complying with that which
he teaches in his novel Noli me tangere, (namely,1 profound antipathy to
the clergy, deprecating them and saying of them that they are exploiters of the
indio of Calamba, and things of that kind, insulting things, not only as concerns
the Dominicans, but also all the other orders, not to mention how he portrays the
Spanish as a race.
Although the article writer expresses the fear that Rizal's novel would stir up
opposition to the Spanish clergy and the government, he is more alarmed by the idea
that Rizal's rumored association with the Germans appears to be generally
believed by one and all. La Época concocts yet tries to contain the rumors by
decanting them into a Calamba that threat ens to dissolve into factions like the Party
of the Friars and the Party of Germany. But the unexpressed fear is that this
factionalizing can very easily spill over and inundate other parts of the country
and other mem bers of the Spanish civil and ecclesiastical orders. Ironically, by
repeating these rumors, the newspaper may have done more to lend credence to
them just by the mere fact that they were printed at all. Furthermore, Rizal's
"scientific homeland," Germany, becomes a signifier of potential opposition to
the Spanish authorities because of the vilification the Span iards heaped
upon it. Retana comments that Spanish anxiety regarding the dispute with
Germany over the Carolinas at that time explains the virulence directed toward
the novel that, "as was natural," was suppos edly more pronounced in the
Philippines than anywhere else.
The vehemence with which Rizal's detractors attacked him is equaled only
by the avidity with which the "natives" received Rizal himself. Writ ing to
Blumentritt, Rizal describes a Mount Maldling outing that quickly spawned
rumors that he had planted the German flag at the summit and proclaimed
German sovereignty over the Philippines (1938, v. 5, pt. 1, 202 and 216;
Retana 1907, 144; L Guerrero 1963, 174). What could account for the case with
which Rizal attracted followers (If only for an outing) from among the indios?
Guerrero suggests a religious reading of the or winary people's enthusiasm for
following Rizal around: "How else are we to explain why the peasants should
follow him on his continental-style buungs at dawn to admire scenic views from a
mountain-top? He himself want believe that he was only leading a party of
mountaineers à la wellneritz; the simple men, women and children gathered
round him,
How much responsibility does this Germanophile bear, with his theo ries which
have produced a great deal of revulsion among his countrymen! In Calamba there
is no talk save that of Rizal's triumph his promises, of the welcome afforded him
by the sages) of Europes
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58 -
Necessary Fictions
one might surmise, in the expectation of a second Sermon on the (Guerrero 1963, 175). Historian
John Schumacher has also suggested
Sermon on the mount
has also suggested view through the lenses of Reynaldo Ileto's
lyzes the masses' notions
us idiom of the Passion B2b. 278-337). Guerrero's and
vond Man ordinary pro's disapp who appe
pathbreaking Pasyon and Revolution, which analyzes the masses of change and revolution in
terms of the religious idiom of the of Jesus Christ (1991, 188; Ileto 1989; Ileto 1982b,
278-337). Guerre Schumacher's analyses would thus confer on Rizal the same prop
Christ-like aura (further reinforced by his martyrdom) with which he appeared in folk
perception.
Yet there may be another way of appreciating the complex inlay representations
surrounding Rizal's stay in the Philippines, a way of draw ing attention back to Rizal's
German connection. Austin Coates and Carlie Quirino's biographies of Rizal both
report an anecdote concerning the reputation that Rizal had established as a
"German doctor" soon after be opened a clinic in Calamba in 1887. Here is
Quirino's version (1940, 135):
(Rizal) became known as the "Doctor Uliman," a Tagalog corruption of the
Spanish word for German. Among (the peasants), Rizal assumed legendary
proportions and tales of his miraculous cüres were whis pered around. Once a
tão stood outside the Mercado home, undecided whether or not to come in. Rizal
saw him and asked him to come up.
The Fiction of a knowable Community ne 59 of curiosity and reflection. That a German
doctor would be an object of curiosity can no longer have been unimaginable in
Rizal's time since descriptions of the trappings of the modern which appeared one
after another in the last half of the nineteenth century were likely to have been
disseminated beyond Manila to neighboring provinces like Laguna.
The man that the tao (ordinary person) expects has two attributes: he is a doctor,
and a foreigner. The tao's disappointed "oh, that," there fore, signifies a moment
of knowledge: the indio who appears before him, and in one version even answers to
the foreign-sounding name Doctor Uliman is not foreign but one of us." The
exclamation of disappointment already encapsulates a set of assumptions about
what is known, about what is "foreign" and what is not; yet it also encodes a kind
of desire, a set of assumptions about what needs to be known. The tao is curious
about the appearance of someone "modern," where "modern" is defined here as
secular (Doctor Uliman is not a priest), technical (Uliman is a doctor), and
"international" (Doctor is "Uliman").
Rizal's arrival thus takes on the drama and excitement of the appear ance of the
modern. In his overcoat and derby hat, pale from years of living in a temperate
climate and already afflicted with prickly heat rash, and furthermore believed to
have recently arrived from Germany and able to successfully cure people of their
eye ailments, Rizal lent himself to a species of rumor mongering that
incorporated the oppositional connota tions of Germany (Protestant, enemy of
Spain) and applied them to an indio. Moreover, rumors about the subversive
content of the Noli, as well as news of Rizal's reception by the authorities, did
nothing to dispel the "misunderstanding" of Rizal.
If the anecdote is indeed true, it would seem that most people went to see Rizal
hoping to see a white man, and were surprised that "Doctor Uliman" turned out,
miraculously, to be an indio. This disappointment, however, does not explain why
the people around him would follow him around, and still call him “Doctor
Uliman" anyway.
But perhaps this incident explains more successfully the expectations of Rizal's
biographers, for we need to ask why the biographers chose this incident as
illustrative of Rizal's reputation in the Philippines. Rizal's bi ographers have
repeatedly remarked on his metamorphosis into the miraculous "Doctor Uliman."
Guerrero and Coates, for example, both dwell on Rizal's "foreign" appearance
during his execution. Guerrero writes:
How strange he must have looked, in his black European suit and black
derby, facing the eight Filipinos (sic) of the firing-squad in their tropical campaign
uniforms and straw hats. It was almost as if this somberly
"I want to see, sir, the Doctor Uliman," said the peasant.
Rizal revealed that he was not an uliman although that was the name they called
him.
"Susmarlosep!" exclaimed the surprised tao, crossing himself. "So, it's only
you—thank you very much, sir- don't bother."
cuses instead or like himself. But if
In Coates's version, Rizal is merely pointed out as "Doctor Ullman, and the man, who
comes from another town. exclaims “in very roue Tagalog 'Oh, that!' and goes away in
disgust" (1968, 130). The anecoon ostensibly about a certain kind of colonial
mentality-the man ned the miraculous cures performed by a "German doctor,"
who turns be an indio just like himself. But if one suspends this judgment au cuses instead
on what exactly it was the man had expected on
en me moment the uliman dissolves into ari indio appeare not as a mere case of colonial
mentality, but rather, as an impian tation of and curiosity about what Doctor
Uliman representa secondhand accounts
nd accounts, passed on for generations, offer a telling & of a kind of popular
discourse in which the "modern becomes
Jerman doctor," who turns o
this judgment and fo ed expected of "Doctor
L, as an implicit expec
represents. These offer a telling glimpse
becomes an object
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The Fiction of a knowable Community
new
Necessary Fictions
60
61
and slender, pas vde, black suit, spone at that time in
domestication of Rizal's "foreign" (and modern) attributes, but in the high lighting,
indeed naturalizing, of it-a showcasing of his connections to the modern "outside." Rizal
hovers between the foreign and native, and the sliding between these categories shows
how unstable an appellation such as "Filipino" was in Rizal's time, and how
powerful and influential Rizal's figurative reappropriation of the term "Filipino" to
encompass the erstwhile indio had become, less than a century after his novels
were published and proscribed.
been indeed a foreign agent garbed man between the two lampposts had
been indeed a fore
executioners the true de. from some cold and hostile kingdom, and his
executioners the fenders of their native land" (1963, 490). And Coates: "Aged thirty-five
in prison, he was impeccably short and slender, pale after two months in
prison, he was imp dressed in European style, black suit, spotlessly white shirt
and tie wearing a black derby hat, much in vogue at that time in Europe appearance was
almost English in its formality and taste" (1968. xvi)
In these biographers' accounts, Rizal hovers in that moment between the foreign and
native; for both Guerrero and Coates, Rizal's role in the formation of Philippine
nationalism hinges on his access to the Europe's "modern" ideas and his ability
to translate and appropriate such ideas in the Filipino context. These obviously
symbolic descriptions of Rizal's for eign appearance can themselves be read as
scholarly versions of the Doctor Uliman anecdote, because they all dwell on the
moment of rec ognition, of transformation even, in which Rizal becomes the living
proof that one can be both native and modern. For a "native" to be taken for a
German doctor, it seems, proves that the "native" can be "modern," that the two
terms are not, as the colonizers would insist, mutually exclusive. Coates himself,
in fact, characterizes Rizal's achievement in terms of Rizal's ability to seem
modern and therefore relevant to the realities of Philip pine history in the present
time. The ideas expressed in Rizal's novels, too, stand as testaments to his
modern sensibility: It is Rizal's "accep tance," in Coates' assessment, "of the
inevitability of Asia developing in the full utlization of the science and
technology of the West that glves him the sense of modernity he conveys today,
rendering him of all the national leaders of Asia the most considerable, balanced,
and far seeing" (1968, 355).
eign apho context. These ob to translate and a
The Novel and Nation as Modern Artifacts
Far from being an idiosyncrasy, the intense preoccupation with the foreign
condensed in the Doctor Uliman anecdote figures prominently in a number of
literary studies on Rizal. Like the biographies that turn the national hero's life
story into a case study of nationalism and its roots in the question of what is
modern and how the colony can be imagined as a modern nation, the main
insights of some of the most influential liter ary studies on Rizal's import in
Philippine literature hinge on the same identification of Rizal with the modernity
of nationalism.
In his pioneering and comprehensive study of the novel form, Resil Mojares
situates the Noli me tangere within the context of a cultural nationalism that
emerged out of specific historical and technological developments in the
Philippines, notably the formation of an incipient print culture and the rise of a
hispanized class whose scions were edu cated in Europe. Crucial to the novel's
development was the further crystallization of empirical and mimetic tendencies
already at work in colonial prose narratives before the nineteenth century.
Mojares is con cerned with locating Rizal's novel in a native prose tradition
already tending towards a synthesis of empirical and fictional stances in writing (
Mojares 1983, 150). At the same time, he states that Rizal's novels repre sent a
"dramatic and qualitative leap" in the development of the novel. Thus, Mojares
sees Rizal's novels as a "culmination" of developments in local literature leading
up to 1887 as well as a "full demonstration" of the novel form as it was being
used canonically in Europe. He writes: "In deed, with Rizal's works the fully
developed novel as it is known in Europe comes upon the local scene" (137). The
language of Mojares's observation 18. strongly reminiscent of that used by
Guerrero and Coates to describe Rizal's arrival in Manila after five years' absence.
Mojares rightly states that the Filipino novel emerged at a time when
me novel form itself was already fülly developed in other countries. He notes that
the specificity of the Noli's textual history, written and pub:
In the biographies, as in the rumors, Rizal assumes the stance a someone who
comes both from inside and outside, who crosses uit borders of colonial distinctions
with apparent ease. The main diliferences however, is that in the rumors, curiosity
about Rizal stemmed from us fact that the people believed Rizal was, indeed, a
"Doctor Umman whereas in the biographies, there is never any doubt that
"Doctor U was an indio doctor (or, more accurately, a "Filipino"), or that an could
take on the "modern" attributes of Doctor Uliman. Indeed, unlike the biographies
of Rizal that seek to explain the moment in a native doctor can be mistaken for
Doctor Uliman (the modern), rumors of Doctor Uliman and his miraculous cure are much more
tling since they do not always end in the nationalist recognicou Filipino can be
modern. The strength of the rumors lay no
e moment in which
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e much more unset must recognition that a umors lay not in the
62 - Necessary Fictions
lished on foreign soil, and shaped by the impulses of a broad tradition-could
account for why there appears to be a lack
se of a broad European
to be a lack of continu etween Rizal's novels and later novels
around the turn of the century. The written in the vernacular languages around the turn of
the ce
ippine literary tradition uneven development of plural strands of the Philippine literary to
ristic of colonialism under a reflection of the uneven development characteristic of
colonialism
wint for the tentative Spain and the United States-would seem to account for the tenta ness the
novel form exhibited in the early twentieth cen notwithstanding the example Rizal's
pathbreaking novels set (225)
Yet Mojares observes that Rizal's novels remain "the most importa, literary works produced by
a Filipino writer, animating Filipinocom sciousness to this day, and setting standards
no Filipino writer can ignore" (137). Mojares credits the novels with portraying a
society "in which the imperatives for a restructuring of power are already present
(143). In similar terms, he explains the novels' avowed intent of “goling) down to
the roots of national consciousness" in terms of parallel devel opments in the
cultural concerns of Germany, Italy, France, and other European countries (119).
The thorny question for Mojares, though, is the degree to which Rizal's
novels can be considered "Filipino," given their provenance and implica tion in
"foreign" spaces and contexts. Mojares argues against the commonsensical
treatment of Rizal's novels as emerging "Minerva-like from the head of Zeus"
(137) and instead stresses that the novels lie within the "native, developing
tradition of prose narratives. To reinforce his claim that Rizal's novels are Filipino,
Mojares splits the novels into form and content analysis. His basic argument is
that the novel "in the European, nineteenth century sense of this form is
nevertheless Filipino in the
The Fiction of a Knowable Community 63 the Noli to Ninay (1885), a novel written by
Pedro Paterno, a fellow re formist and friend of Rizal's. Typical of the costumbrismo genre,
Ninay interweaves a melodramatic plot with descriptions of scenes and customs from Philippine
life (L. Guerrero 1963, 128-36). Schumacher writes: "The substance of Ninay could
have taken place in some European country just as well as in the Philippines. No one
can say that of the Noli. It is pre-eminently, as Rizal proclaims it in the subtitle,
'Novela tagala,' even if it be written in Spanish. In it we find Filipino life at its worst and best,
written unmistakably by Filipinos and directed to Filipinos (1991, 122).
León Ma. Guerrero also has a low opinion of Paterno's novel, calling Ninay an
“illustrated travelogue" (1963, 134). He notes the similarities in the rather
melodramatic plots of the Noli and Ninay but is at pains to point out that the
political message of the Noli, as well as its revealing descriptions of the "realities'
of the country* through vivid character sketches, is what distinguishes the two
novels. For if the plot were the main basis of evaluation, according to Guerrero,
then the Noli "would rank with 'Ninay,' or worse with 'Maria Nun' and other
slanders on the 'mysteries' of convents" (130-31). For Schumacher, Guerrero, and
Mojares, the Noli's ability to depict-if not actually politicize the depiction of Filipino life
made it influential. Thus, the publication of the Noli is heralded as a watershed
event in Philippine history in that it not only illustrates but, more importantly,
signifies the emergence of nationalist consciousness.
Now, if it is the (political) content that separates Rizal's Noli from travelogues and
"slanders," how are we to think about the novel's form? Unlike Mojares, both
Schumacher and Guerrero leave out any consider ation of the possible mutations
the European realist novel form can undergo in the articulation of a “Filipino"
content, focusing, instead, only on the way the European novel form
determines Rizal's portrayal of the country's "realities." In doing so, they
actually establish a dichotomy between form and content. Nationalism is, for
all purposes, a question of essence, a content that fills a basically
“foreign" form. The overly simpli fied dichotomy that Guerrero and
Schumacher establish in discussing the transplantation of western forms like the
modem novel, nation, and colonial state to the colony, resolves through simple
evasion the issue of what happens during the process of translation or
adaptation. It operates on a hidden assumption that opposes a "native" content
to a foreign "form" in a commonsensical, a priori way without posing the
question of now these terms relate to each other, and what effect the interaction
between the terms would have on the terms themselves.
particularity of motive, subject and content" (150).
John Schumacher, in his analysis of the Noli, makes a similar, but more
problematic move. Like Mojares, Schumacher uses Rizal to mark the convergence of
material and ideological forces instrumental in der the aspirations of native
"Filipinos" in nationalist terms. He thus con ers the Noll as a "charter of
nationalism for Filipinos," a cataly revolution (1991, 91-101). According to
Schumacher, Rizal provide most "thoughtful" articulation of the Filipino struggle
for unity, and freedom, and in this sense, the 1872 native clergy's aspiran
preceded Rizal's were but precursors whose incipient visions awe and mature
articulation by Rizal.
The Noli provided a "new direction in Filipino art and relation to nationalism,"
writes Schumacher. As evidence, ne
clergy's aspirations that lent visions awaited full
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and The Noli provided a writes Schuma
and literature in evidence, he compares
The Fiction of a knowable Community
64
Necessary Fictions
co
65
seem a commonsensical
vel," the "Spanish novel,"
But what does it mean to have a "Filipino" novel and natione un
a commons is the relationship between them? This would seem question, given that the
novel almost always carries its nation it, so that we can speak offhand of the English
novel," the "Spanish and the "French novel." The link between the
nineteenth-century novel, the nation, and Filipinoness forms the basis-but, alas, an of
unexamined basis of the preeminent place Rizal's novels occupy Philippine history,
as well as in Philippine literary history. For both fields of inquiry-literature and history-the
question of nation and the role culture played in the formation of the nation
are sine qua non. Yet it is precisely this link that, being commonsensical, is not
elaborated fully
The question of the novel, when conjoined with the question of the nation,
inevitably provokes a debate on how these "foreign" (i.e., Western European)
forms take on a "Filipino" content. But what are the condi tions under which this
very question is posed as a problematic dichotomy in the first place? What
makes the novel a particularly canonic vehicle of nationalist thought? Are Rizal's
novels really, simply "western" in form and "Filipino" in content? Or is there
another way of providing a more nu anced account of the transplantation of the
western novel to the colony? What do our attempts to answer the above
questions tell us, in turn, about the relationship between literature and history,
fact and fiction, nation
under the cloak of Religion, came among us to impoverish us, to brutal
us. I have distinguished the true Religion from the false, from the superstitious, from that
which traffics with the sacred word to extract money, to make us believe in foolishness which
Catholicism would blush at if it had knowledge of it. I have unveiled what lay hidden
behind the deceptive and brilliant words of our government; I have told our
compa triots of our faults, our vices, our culpable and shameful complacence with
these miseries" (1963. v. 2, bk. 3, 83-84).
Here Rizal sets out primarily to do two things: answer the calumnies the
colonizers heaped upon his people, and portray the country's re alities to
propose a "cure" by example. Rizal's favorite metaphor for the writing process
and motive—one not unexpected given his profes sion-is clinical diagnosis. In
dedicating the Noli to the "Motherland." Rizal writes:
Registrase en la historia de los padecimientos humanos en cancer de un caracter
táan maligno que el menor contacto le irrita y despierta en el agudísimos dolores.
Pues bien, cuantas veces en medio de las civilizaciones modernas he querido evocarte, ya
para compañarme de tus recuerdos, ya para compararte con otros países, tantas se
me presentó tu querida imagen con un cancer social parecido. Deseando tu salud
que es la nuestra, y buscando el mejor tratamineto, haré contigo lo que con sus
enfermos los antiguos: exponsanlos en las gradas del templo, para que cada
persona que viniese de invocar à la Divinidad les propusiese un remedio.
Y a este fin, tratare de reproducir fielmente tų estado sin contem placiones;
levantaré parte del velo que encubre el mal, sacrificando a la verdad todo, hasta
el mismo amor propio, pues, como hijo tuyo, adolezco tambien de tus defectos y
flaquezas.
and narration?
In his 21 March 1887 letter to Blumentritt, Rizal called the Noli "the first impartial
and bold book about the life of the Tagalogs. The Filipinos will find in It the
history of the last ten years" (Es el primer libro imparcial y atrevido sobre la
vida de los tagalos. Los filipinos encontrarán en el la historia de los últimos diez
años) (1938, v. 5, 96-97). In a magical feat On extrapolation, Rizal tums a novel
about Tagalog life into a history not the Tagalogs, but of the last ten years." He
goes on to explain the mo behind the writing: "Here, I answer all the false
conceptions that des (the government and the friars) have written against us and
all the sults with which they have tried to humiliate üs" (Agui contesto towe
conceptos falsos que se han escrito contra nosotros y todos los insumo que se
ha querido deprimimos) (97). His goal? "It is better to write for y countrymen....I
must wake from its slumber the spirit of my launch countrymen...I must
wake from its goal it is better to write to must first propose to my
countrymen an example with which to against their bad qualities and afterwards,
when they have reformed, many writers will rise up who can present my
fatherland to prous rope, as a young damsel enters society after she has
comples
In the annals of human adversity, there is etched a cancer, of a breed so malignant
that the least contact exacerbates it and stirs in it the sharpest of pairis. And
thus, so many times amidst modem cultures
have wanted to evoke you, sometimes for memories of you to keep me
company, other times, to compare you with other nations-many unes your
beloved image appears to me afflicted with a social cancer of similar malignancy..
rit of my fatherland.... with which to struggle y have reformed, then tland to
proud Eu
S completed her the hypocrisy which,
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education" (291–92). To this effect, "I have unmasked the hypoche
pesuring your well-being, which is our own, and searching for the best cure, I will
do with you as the ancients of old did with their alidicted:
66
Necessary Fictions
expose them on the steps of the temple so that each one who woula come to invoke the
Divine, would propose a cure for them.
to this end I will attempt to faithfully reproduce your condition without much ado. I will lift part
of the shroud that conceals vou illness, sacrificing to truth everything, even my own
self-respect to as your son, I also suffer in your defects and failings.
There are several features worth noting here. One, Rizal establishes an analogy
between the natural body and the social condition, implvin that both entities are
governed by certain laws that, in the case of phe nomena such as the human
body and society, are basically knowable. He compares the social condition of
the country to a diseased body, and suggests that the way to solve the country's
problems is by diagnosing the disease that afflicts it in the first place.
Two, Rizal's diagnosis hinges on the question of truth, of accuracy and
veracity--of objectivity, in other words—since no cure can be pro posed unless
the physician gets his "facts" and diagnosis right. The determination of causality
is thus an important component of the analysis. Knowing what causes the
disease is already a step towards curing the patient.
Three, and interestingly, Rizal refers to himself in the text, and iden tifies
both with the doctor who diagnoses the social cancer, as well as with the
patient who suffers from the disease. The novel's founding act is based on a
double consciousness split between one who knows and one who is, or who
submits to being, known.
More tellingly, however, Rizal proposes to use a set of literary proce dures,
associated with the novel form, to create a discourse that is, in an important
sense, scientific, and therefore, not "really" literature. Riza wrote the Noli at a
time when journalism and history were already i to be distinct from literature, as
nearly a century of developments rated these "fields" of discourse from a
previously general
The Fiction of a knowable Community 67 but only to denounce abuses and unmask
hypocrites, my purpose having been achieved, what does the rest matter to me?"
(1964, 192). (But of course the aesthetic claim did matter, for he later planned to write a
novel that was more "profound and perfect" than the Noli.)"
Although even a cursory glance at the Rizal-Blumentritt correspon dence
provides plenty of evidence to support the fact that Rizal evinced a lifelong
fascination with ethnography, we need to ask ourselves why Rizal chose to write
a novel rather than, as his contemporary Isabelo de los Reyes did, an
ethnographic or properly historical account, given Rizal's avowed goal of
representing Philippine society. The obvious answer would have been that the
novel form's fictional conventions allowed for some thing more than a portrayal
of the present that would have been unavailable in ethnography. How, precisely,
does the novel form's fiic tional quality allow its practitioners to do something
more than simply depict contemporary affairs, a feat that, had it been attempted
in ethnography, would have made the writer much more vulnerable to
charges of partiality?
Yet, perhaps the answer could also very well have been that both the colonial and
precolonial natives hardly left any historical documents, thanks to the
missionaries' religious zeal; the few surviving accounts of precolonial and
colonial life were written by the Spanish colonizers. To be sure, Rizal did turn to
ancient documents when he published his annotations of Antonio Morga's
Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas (1609) in 1890, a year before his second novel El
filibusterismo appeared in print. But this account of "the last moments of our
ancient nationality" (los últimos momentos de nuestra antigua nacionalidad)
(1962, v) has to admit the mediation, albeit relatively untainted with racial bias, of
the colonizer, so that the account of precolonial Philippines also becomes, at one
and the same time, the account of its conquest and vanishing (1962, vii).
Reynaldo Ileto has argued that ilustrados like Rizal operated on a
nineteenth-century European conception of "total history that purported to
account for differences between societies by reading and subsuming them under
the sign of a universal system of values, a coherent world View. According to
Ileto, it was "[t]he lack of a continuous, uninterrupted history of Filipino
consciousness (that) lay behind the ilustrado nostalgia for lost origins" (1982b,
280–85). This nostalgia for lost origins is, there fore, inherently contaminated by
the sense of a "Fall" of pre-Hispanic native culture, a fall that was blamed not
only on Spanish colonial rule, but on the natives who, in their ignorance,
"hastened to abandon what was theirs to take up what was new."
undifferentiated "novel/news" discourse.10 Rizal's attitude toward is most evident
in a letter he drafted on 5 March 1887, probably for Filipino painter Felix
Resurrección Hidalgo: "The incidents in that] I relate are all true and they happened: I
can give proors My book may have and it has defects from the artistic or aestne of
view. I don't deny it; but what cannot be questioned is the bapa of my narration" (1963,
84). In his response to Vicente Barrantes al on the artistic merits of the Noli, Rizal
wrote scathingly: "And . write for myself nor to be admitted to the porter's lodge
of the
atutude toward the Noli
87, probably intended e incidents (in the Noll u give proofs of them. ustic or
aesthetic point oned is the impartiality nte Barrantes' attacks
By, And as I did not lodge of the Academy,
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The Fiction of a Knowable Community
68
Necessary Fictions
co 69
Rizal's novels, however, not only attempted to fill the gaps of his albeit necessarily
focusing on the present instead of a gloriou
o fill the gaps of history,
of a glorious past; they force in relation to the literary tradi. hey did not simply want to
repeat.13
Joli showed precisely the f local and independent ex
noression. One Iblished abro for recognit
tionen and published at her explain this bo local and ind
tion that they inherited, but which they did not simply want to ren The Spanish clergy's
vociferous reaction to the Noli showed pres; novel's success at being taken as a
source of local and independe pression. One might further explain this by saying
that the nove written and published abroad, and that perhaps Rizal's personal
tion echoed the aspirations for recognition in Spain that the hisna native and
mestizo middle class from the Philippines sought.
The Spanish government had proved intractable about granting Philippines
representation in the Spanish Cortes, and because they were denied access to the political
sphere of the colonial and imperial centers the reformists strove for recognition in
the cultural field. The only space open to them was the universal" realm of
culture. It was in the cultural scene that the Filipinos could claim participation in
the normative cul ture of Europe, which claim constituted the primary means and
venue available for proving themselves the Spaniards' "equal" (Schumacher
1991, 120-21). Like the situation in most Third World countries, Philippine
nationalism took root first in the religious, cultural, and political arenas, while
remaining, for the moment, separate and distinct from the domain of the state.
nity, and the knowable community generates literature that describes it as a knowable
community. Rizal's treatment of the relationship between literature and history takes
the relation between the two to be one of reciprocal interaction. Writing to Pablo Pastells,
Rizal takes the relation ship one step farther and links the truth-generating capacity
of his work to its active intervention in shaping the "future": "What I had were a
clear vision of the real situation in my fatherland, vivid images of what was going
on, and enough skill to diagnose the disease, so much so that not only was I able
to portray what took place but also foretold what was to come. Inasmuch as at
this very moment I see the story of my 'novel' unfolding itself with so much
accuracy I can really say I am watching, and at the same time taking part in, the
performance of my own work" (Bonoan 1994, 139).
For Rizal, the basic problem of "knowing" a community took the form of finding a
position from which a community can be known. Moreover, this position had to
be convincingly experienced by his readers for the knowable community to be
known as such. But known to whom? And by whom? The usual answer would be:
by the Filipinos.
Yet the term Filipino itself poses the challenge of differentiation and integration.
Who, indeed, counted as Filipino? Rizal's selective appropria tion of the hitherto
restricted term Filipino to encompass creoles, natives, mestizos, even the infidel
sangley, is partly based on the notion of affec tive ties to a territorially bounded,
indeed determined, entity, Las Islas Filipinas. It is also obvious, however, that
Rizal was writing to address non-Filipinos. Answering the Spaniards' calumnies
and insults would have demanded addressing the Spaniards themselves,
answering representa tion with representation. The opening chapter of the
Noli actually comes right out and names its own putative readers:
Ironically, because the narrative ended up working too well, thereby binding
Rizal to the thoughts and characters of his novel, Rizal was forced to invoke
the fictional quality of his novel to dissociate himself from the charges that critics
like Vicente Barrantes made regarding the ideas the novel expressed: "I don't
know, Most Excellent Sir, if the academicians ambarum domorum have already
laid down as law that the ideas ex pressed by the characters in the novel have to
be precisely the writers own convictions and not what are suitable to them considering then
circumstances, beliefs, habits, education and passions...Does Your Lac lency by
chance persist in your opinion that the characters of a no must all conform to the
convictions of the author?" (1964, 183, 191):
How do we explain the seemingly contradictory move Rizal made claiming the simultaneous
veracity and fictionality of his novels? imp in Rizal's line of reasoning is the
assumption that literature has
ne in history, to help construct it. For Rizal, literatu operates as a force of its own in
history, but it is also history. enters history through its exposition of a "knowable
community phrase must be read two ways: literature depicts the knowable
Since no porters or servants ask for the invitation cards, let us go up. 0, you who
read me, friend or foe (oh rú que me lees, amigo o enemigo), if you are attracted
to the sounds of the orchestra, to the bright lights, or by the unmistakable tinkling of
glass and silverware, and wish to know how parties are in the Pearl of the Orient-I would find it
more pleasurable to spare you the description of the house, but this is just
as important, (underscoring added, modified translation)
In the opening chapter, the narrative persona actually functions as a kind of
guide, an insider who leads his reader (whether friend or enemy, usider or
outsider) through the Philippine natural and social terrain. The Stance the
narrative voice takes may be characterized as a kind of double
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also history. Literature
community." This le knowable commu
The Fiction of a knowable Community
70
Necessary Fictions
outside looking in. This
on
71
address, of being both inside looking out and outside looking curious double
address-directed at insiders and outsiders, so to spend cannot be merely dismissed as a
narrative device that Rizal der adopt on a whim for the Noli. For the inside-outside position
Rizal structed is precisely the participant observer position through wh *Filipino"
community is rendered knowable. Such a position bin representational capacity
of novel writing to the "objective reali nationness, the act of signification to a
"signified" out there.
This intimate connection between the novel and nation constitutes the main terms for the
novel's exposition of the problem of the knowable community. And, in fact, by the
nineteenth century, the novel had be. come a self-conscious genre; it was the
privileged form most eminently given to the exposition of the knowable community.
How is this so?
Benedict Anderson made the link between the nineteenth-century European
realist novel and the nation in his influential Imagined Com. munities: Reflections
on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1991). The Noli is, in fact, the typecase
of Anderson's analysis of nationalism, which differs from other accounts in its
treatment of nationality, or the more multilayered "nationness," as a "cultural
artefact" (1991, 4). Anderson argues that the novel form provided the
"technical means for 're-present ing the kind of imagined community that
is the nation" (25, 26-29). Anderson compares the Noli with Florante at Laura, a
metrical romance Tagalog Francisco Baltazar (Balagtas) wrote in the late
1830s. Balagtas's work has been widely hailed as the most important example
of the re working of the romance into a form capable of generating a
'self-conscious" reference to native society. But the distinctions that Anderson
makes between the novel and the romance point to the fact that there occurred an
important shift in the modes of apprehending the world. For the romance is set in
a distant past, whereas the novel locates the action in a recent setting. The
romance is based on the epic, whereas
common with the notion of ideology. For example, the imagined com munity is
both imaginary and real, and in fact, exploits and obscures the dichotomy
between fact and fiction. Like ideology, the nation naturalizes signs in order to
appear free, universal, and self-generating. Like ideol ogy, the nation denies its
mode of production by rooting its history in antiquity. Like ideology, the novel's
frame of reference is not history, but the social process of signification, the world
of "lived" as opposed to "actual" experience. Anderson, however, takes pains to
differentiate nationalism from ideology, and instead compares it to two distinct
social formations, kinship and religion."7 The term ideology, with its often
negative and re strictive associations, fails to communicate and explain the
capacity of the nation to command affective loyalties, nor does it fully suggest
the nation's function in explaining human mutability and mortality. This func tion
suggests a crossing of paths between the nation and the novel, since the latter
often deals with the issues of mutability and mortality.
One thing that the novel and nation have in common is the insepara bility of their
conception as forms from assumptions about their modularity. Having once
attained an institutional stability as a self-con scious form--that is, a "there-ness
permitting people to speak of nations and novels as such-they are held to acquire
a kind of translatability, a universalizing, generic form that can be carried on to
other places. Trans latability also brings up the possibility of comparison. As the
dedication page in the Noli made clear, Rizal conjured up his Motherland "amidst
modern cultures:" The idea of comparison was there from the beginning evoking
his motherland was not only meant to keep him company" (or soothe his
nostalgia); it also entailed comparison with other nations.
It is usual to explain the emergence of the novel and the nation by looking at
the changes—the development of printing technology, the rise of
capitalism and crystallization of the bourgeoisie as a class; urban ization,
secularization, and reformation-then sweeping Europe. Since these have been
treated in greater detail elsewhere, there is no need to repeat the arguments.
Instead, I would like to look into the me chanics of the shift in consciousness that
we usually classify as the growth of empirical and scientific attitudes, and the
growth of modern literary realism. The realist növel Itself is often held to be
indissolubly tied to the changing conceptions of the "out there," the means of
representing it, and the question of whether representation is possible in the first
place (Levine 1981, 6).
For Mikhail Bakhtin, the modern novel signifies the prominence of a new kind of
consciousness, a "new cultural and creative consciousness
the novel is modeled on history and journalism. The romance is usually set in a
remote and exotic location (like Albania) whereas the novel ten to be set in the
author's locale. Romances, perhaps more importa blend fact and fiction to create
a fictional plot, whereas the novel to deny its fictionality and claims to be writing
history or render as it is (Anderson 1991, 28; Davis 1983, 40).
Anderson analyzes the "nation on the basis of its being a sp shared system of
signification which emerged out of a highly convergence of historical forces
during the later medieval per features Anderson attributes to the nation would
seem to have
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of its being a specific,
highly specific nedieval period. The
m to have a lot in
72 rw Necessary Fictions
(that) lives in a two or more important comp
[that] lives in an actively polyglot world" (1981, 12). Polyglossia-theco existence of
two or more languages within a single cultura system-becomes an active and
important component in writing liter ture. Thus, the novel was born of the
awareness of other languages within a shared system of signification.
"Languages throw light on each other. one language can, after all, see itself only
in the light of another language" (12). What becomes thinkable here is not the
preexistence of several lan guages, but an awareness of several languages. The
"awareness of polyglossia is preconditioned by the possibility of comparison, of
trans lation, and language becomes "national" through this comparison. That this
happened in Europe during the Renaissance can be explained by the greatly
expanded scope of European voyages of "discovery" that added a spatial
dimension to the Renaissance consciousness of period (McKeon 1987, 40).
Bakhtin's concept of polyglossia provides an important basis for ex amining and
explaining the novel, for it sets the grounds for modern criticism's
sensitivity to the contractual" or "institutional" capacity of literary genres.
Rizal's reliance on the European novel form is, therefore, not a mere
consequence of individual preference, since the novel attained its institutional
stability and coherence as a self-conscious form during the eighteenth
century precisely because of its power to formulate and explain a set of
problems central to the "modem" experience. la One of these problems
was the instability of generic and social categories. The first registered an
epistemological crisis, a major change in attitudes to ward the representation
of "truth" in narratives. The other registered a cultural crisis in attitudes toward
the relationship between its members external, social order and internal, moral
state. Michael McKeon calls the first the question of truth, and the second the
question of virtue. Both are articulated as problems of signification: "What kind of
authority of evidence is required of narrative in order to permit it to signify truth
to Its readers?" and "what kind of social existence or behavior signifies an
individual's virtue to others?" (1987, 20). The European realist novel works by
establishing a deep and fruitful analogy between the questions of trum and virtue.
The founding insight of the novel, in fact, lay in its ability to juxtapose the two,
illuminating the problems of one question by referring to the other or conflating
the two.
The cementing agent for the two questions is print. Print capitalisis changed the ways in
which truth was apprehended, as well as the mes ods for apprehending it. The
spread of literacy in Europe during the same Middle Ages had profound
epistemological significance and ramiacados
The Fiction of a Knowable Community 73 for the determination of truth. For literacy was
not only the precondition for the transmission of the ancient Greek texts; it also
encouraged the growth of the empirical perspective and fostered a more skeptical
atti. tude toward, and the rational interpretation of, the erstwhile authoritative
medieval assumptions regarding the authenticity of saints' relics and figu rative
status of the Eucharist (McKeon 1987, 35). Before the sixteenth century, the
canonical truth of the Scriptures had been the main stan dard of spiritual and
historical truth against which all other writings were measured and often found
wanting. "Facts" were relevant, but they were subordinated to truth, and in an
apparent conflict between the two, it was the Scriptural abstraction that took
precedence over material or concrete issues.
An emphasis on the objectifying power of the written word subse quently
replaced, over the next few centuries, the emphasis on lineage, since print
effectively disseminated and reinforced the notion of compet. ing accounts of
the same event. It encouraged the norm of "objective" research and
understanding through the systematic collection, compari son,
categorization, collation, editing, and the indexing of documentary objects
(McKeon 1987, 43). Print thus promoted: a criterion of judgment that was appropriate
to, and that accounted for, discrete; and empirically apprehensible "things" --singularity,
formal coherence, and self-consis: tency became the test of veracity. In a way,
this was made possible because of the process of typographical
reproduction-the extent to which a single passage of text, a picture, an object
or event could be replicated in their exact dimensions and quantities helped
condition a "scientific cast of mind. Viewing objects as "discrete and
empirically apprehensible" was easily carried over to the investigation of human
life. Thus, the idea of nature, and of human nature" changed the course of
historical studies,
In sum, print not only conditioned the turn in historical studies, but the scientific
revolution in general. It was the result of two historically insepa rable but
distinguishable phenomena: the unprecedented valorization of empirical
perspectives and practices, and the rapidly growing opportuni ties to cultivate
and promote these through a fundamental change in the production and
management of knowledge (McKeon 1987, 44).
The effect of print on the narrative form was substantial. For print contributed to
and reinforced an "objective" standard of truth, which is also, in the narrative, a
"historical standard of truth, of historicity: Did I happen, how did it happen? And
print's verifying capacity was so pow cu that the act of publication itself would
seem to affirm, even supplant, we historicity of the information it was meant to
convey. Print not only
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74
Necessary Fictions
had the capacity to attest to the historicity of the event it recorded h. often
constituted the only proof that the event happened in the first le For print
introduced technology that permitted the rapid and instan neous circulation of
matters of public interest. In making news and journalism possible, it made possible
not only commentary on immedi ately past events, but the recording of novelty as
well (Davis 1983, 46-49) With print came, therefore, a certain awareness of
historicity, the histori. cal process, and, importantly, the narrative's ability to
encode this process
Rizal and the Universalist Rhetoric of Progress and Change
Rizal wrote the Noli in the 1880s, well over a hundred years since the European
novel began crystallizing as a distinct, self-conscious genre. The nineteenth
century is usually considered the heyday of the novel form. and we need to
understand that the novel by that time had already worked out in a stabilized form
some of the kinks in its claim to historicity. In the mid-eighteenth century,
according to Lennard Davis (1983), the in creasing valorization of empirical
modes of truth actually exacerbated the hitherto latent tension between the claim
to truth and the nature of the material whose truth was being claimed. That is, the
continuing avalanche of news reports gave the news a validity and authority that
made it worthy of public attention and cemented the association of the news with
the historical authenticity of printed documents in the public imagination. The
public, however, consequently found itself in the position of having to compare
many different, highly partisan, and often divergent "true accounts of the
same events at one and the same time. This experience fomented considerable
skepticism among people regarding the news' claims to truth and historicity,
which had by then become something of a convention
The concept of literary realism reformulated the problem of media tion
by making literature not “history," but "historylike." The text was
"true" to external reality but sufficiently removed from it to be true to itself as well.
The Noli presents a self referential statement on the truth fulness" of fiction in the
chapter, "La junta en el tribunal," in which the male representatives of San Diego,
divided along the lines of generation, meet to present their proposals for the
fiesta. The "liberal" party, com posed of "progressive young men like Don Filipo,
suggests that the money collected for the fiesta be put to good use for the benefit
of all, by pre senting new and morally edifying dramas instead of the usual
week-10118 moro-moros, which feature interminable clashes and dramatic
concom
The Fiction of a Knowable Community - 75 dramas suggested for consideration
are "The Election of the Gobernadorcillo," a comedy in prose, and "Mariang
Makiling," a fantastical drama of a satirical character. Both dramas are written by
people from the area, and both are intended to give a representation of our own
customs in order to correct our vices and defects and to encouragé our better
qualities."
This small detail from the Noli clues the reader in on the narrative basis of the
“Filipino” national community. The fictive dramas-in fact, the Noli itself as
fiction-treat the Philippine patria as a text that awaits the act of decoding and link
the edifying truth culled from literature to the moral improvement of the
viewer/reader. The patria thus imagined is at once real and "out there" and, above
all, "irue.Rizal's response to Barrantes' criticism concerning his novel's
characters would thus argue in favor of the existence of the novel and its
characters as independent from the author's ideas and intentions, even though
thë author would perforce have to invent words that the rustics "could have
uttered and even insist that he can prove the reality of what he imagined. The Epi.
logue of the Noli, for example, begins with the following paragraph:
Viviendo aún muchos de nuestros personajes, y habiendo perdido de vista á los
otros, es imposible un verdadero epílogo. Para bien de la gente, mataríamos con
gusto a todos nuestros personajes empezando por el Padre Salví y acabando por
Dona Victorina, pero no es posible... que vivan! El país y no nosotros los ha de
alimentar al fin, Since soñe of our characters are still living and others have been
lost sight of, a real epilogue is impossible. For the satisfaction (also trans: lated
as: for the good) of the people, we should gladly kill off all of our characters,
beginning with Padre Salvi and ending with Dofia Victorina (a native who has
pretensions to being Spanish, marries a larne Span iard, and dresses in the
European fashion), but this is not possible. Let them live! Anyhow, the country,
not ourselves, has to support them in the end. (modified translation)
In this passage, Rizal invokes both the "real world" in its historically placed,
realized, and detailed specificity ("some of our characters are still living), and the
fictional world in its artistically organized and rendered knowability ("we should
gladly kill off all of them, beginning with Padre Salvi and ending with Doña
Victorina) without stretching the reader's Incredulity. What is remarkable about
this double invocation of history and fiction is the power and flexdbility such an
invocation grants to nav
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tations between Christian protagonists and Moslem antagonists. 17
76
Necessary Fictions
elistic discourse. "Let them live!" cackles the narrative persona, since author has
the power to grant clemency even to his novel's most odio
.. characters. Yet this author would have us believe that it is not in his to tie all the loose ends
of the narrative and provide a proper epilog even though he does kill off villains
like Padre Damaso and Maria Claroid feckless suitor, Ibarra's rival, Linares.
Similarly, in the section of the Noli where the rustics talk about the meaning of the
word filibustero, Rizal alludes to his own profession as a trafficker in the written
word by making one of the peasants comment on the new breed of people who
talk "with wires," and who know Span ish and do not "handle anything but the
pen." It is as though the author accidentally "overhears" himself in his novel and
in the conversation of his characters.
Between the author's power to depict his world and the "constraints" that this
imagined) world poses on his vision, we have a novel that embodies and
thematizes the impulse to explain not only the transfor mative capacity, but
also the mutability, of human affairs in social and historical rather than
metaphysical terms. Perhaps, in Rizal's time, the important difference between
putting one's faith in a remote truth attested to by external authorities, and
immediately authenticating an empirically apprehensible truth present for all to
see (and change), was further rein. forced by the fact of colonial rule, in
which the external" sources of truth and authority were also
immediately and empirically verifiable sources of exploitation and
oppression. The Noli's influence lay in its providing an alternative to the
colonial ideology in that it held the experience of insta bility and oppression
to be something that could be identified and addressed directly as a
sociohistorical condition susceptible to more specific analysis and explanation,
and to the possibility of transforma tion. In the Noli, the question of how to tell the
truth was indissolubly linked to the question of the relationship between social
order and indie vidual character. It assumed that being able to tell the truth meant
bem able to determine the social order that reflected, and was itself reflected in,
the individual's moral condition. The question of a desirable or non desirable social
order thus becomes a question of getting to the tu! while the question of truth is
posed in terms of the question of a dete mining and determined social order. The question
of truth, in other word
The Fiction of a Knowable Community 77 ironically to a tension between the claim to
truth and the material whose truth is being claimed; for how in fact can truth be
claimed, given that it is tied to an oppressive and misleading, if not blinding,
social order? On the one hand, it was possible for Rizal to fall back on the novel's canonic
status to mediate between fact and fiction. His claim to Barrantes that his characters'
ideas did not correspond to his own breaks the simulacrum theory of the novel.
By subsuming his work under the cat egory of fictional prose narratives, Rizal
draws on the differentiation of the news/novel discourse which allows him to perform
the reportorial functions of journalism and history in a work of fiction, make direct
com ments on the world, and be a historian in an avowedly fictional work Rizal
thus draws on a broader notion of factuality; the factuality of "historylike," to
make a claim at once epistemological, moral, and politi cal. By virtue of the
admission of fictionality, Rizal is able to incorporate both news and commentary
into his work. It is in the disjunction and interaction between fact and fiction,
reportage and invention, news and novel, that the novel's power in society is
confirmed and consolidated. A journalistic piece or an ethnographic account would
not have gotten the same kind of reaction from colonizer and native alike, because it
could more easily be dismissed as tainted by its writers' bias. Moreover, the novel
form's conventions ensured that the question of virtue, by being read as fiction,
would insinuate themselves into the reader's consciousness, would engage the reader
in a way that the journalist pieces, with conventions demanding a relatively
stringent adherence to the disciplinary and au thoritative prose, could not
effectively achieve.
The novel's attitude toward fact and fiction is therefore constitutively ambivalent,
and it is the novel's ambivalence, the fact that it is both about and not about
reality, which engenders the possibility of commentary linking truth to a species
of ethical thinking, of morality, which is held to be the defining capacity of human
creation itself.2 Thus Rizal could ari tique the colonial order in the name of
higher standards of morality, and the human capacity to change society and
realize its potentials.
But the idea of virtue also casts a critical light on the question of truth, for the
fundamental problem of ethical and social signification inevitably leads to the
realization that specific epistemological choices have ideological significance
and consequences. Any given explanation of society and its motions implies
certain epistemological procedures and commitments. The question of truth is
thus inherently ideological and rooted in a specific social location. On that level,
it can be argued that Rizal addresses the issue by positing an outside stance
through which the
maintain ideolohological of the auth as a
has an ideological component, while that of social order has an ently
epistemological component.
Yet the conflation of the question of truth and morality (moramy a condition of
truth, and truth as a condition of morality) also
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78
Necessary Fictions
lent
situation of the Philippines as a Spanish colony can be denaturali illumined,
examined, and evaluated. The outside stance draws though Rizal himself does not
explicitly use the terms of) a universal notion of world history, of progress and change,
and looks to oth countries, specifically to modern Europe, for the concrete
embodime of the ideals.
In fact, Rizal's stance on the "modern," through its highlighting of the connection of the
"modern" to the "outside," closely resembles that of the popular discourse in his
time. Rizal's political writings attribute the backwardness, that is, the physical
and moral degradation of the Philip. pines to misgovernment by Spanish colonial
authorities, in part due to their lack of real understanding of the country they have
colonized. Rizal. however, also emphasizes the fact that it is contact with the
outside, particularly with "Western peoples," that produces the electric impact
that galvanizes the brutalized natives into "demand[ing] light, life, [and] the
civilization that at one time they (the colonial powers] bequeath (the Philippines),
thus confirming the eternal laws of constant evolution, of change, of periodicity,
of progress" (1964, 18).
The main impulse behind Rizal's literary project comes out of his attempt at
describing the mechanisms of Spanish colonial rule that are responsible for
"asphyxiating the modern ideas" "upon touching the shores of Manila"
(1964, 289). In Rizal's analysis of Philippine conditions, the "modern" is
primarily seen as external rather than as merely foreign. It is something that
comes to the Philippines from the outside, and has an infectious, universalizable
quality that the diligent mismanagement of the colony cannot contain. In a
passage where Ibarra passes by the Bo tanical Gardens of Manila, the pitifully
paltry and neglected gardens are compared to those in other European countries
where much money and effort were expended to ensure the blossoming of a
single flower. Rizal portrays progress and change as inevitable because they are
world-his torical in their scope: despite the efforts of Spain to keep the
Philippines backward, the ideas of change and the natives' aspirations cannot be
blunted. Seen in this light, we should not be surprised that Rizal vokes a
mythicized "free Europe" in his dedication instead of particular
The Fiction of a knowable Community 79 from the oppressive reality of European
subjugation and exploitation of colonies like the Philippines. Unlike Indian or
Chinese nationalists, Rizal could not draw on the past to create a material/spiritual
divide that would admit the superiority of western forms of technology and
government while asserting the Filipino spirit's inherent superiority. For the
surviving "Filipino" past existed only as already mediated by colonial rule and rep
resentation. Rizal's position on colonial power, or the "rule of one people over
another," views the outcome of such an encounter between two different peoples in
dualistic terms: either one assimilates to the other, or one is destroyed by the
other (1964, 154-55). The former can be ac complished through the
implementation of "modern" ideas, while the other can only result from the
continuing abuse of colonial power. Thus, the mode of differentiation for Rizal
cannot be based on an ancient Fili pino spirit, the authenticity of which can be
validated by a reference to an elaborate and elaborated precolonial "nationality."
What is, in fact, striking about the Noli is that even its "Filipino" content is not
much different from the content of social novels written in other countries. For
example, the similarity in plot and characters between the Noli and Doña Perfecta,
a novel by Benito Perez Galdos, touted as Spain's greatest writer in the
nineteenth century, revolves prin cipally around the dichotomy and conflict
between the European, liberal, egalitarian spirit concentrated in and typified by
the metropolis or Eu rope, and the traditionalist, reactionary spirit concentrated in
and typified by the province, or, in Rizal's case, by colonial Philippines. Perez
Galdos's plea for the reintegration of Spain into the European rationalist vision of
the world could very well have been Rizal's. Ibarra could also have been any one
of the young Spaniards (his forefather was a Basque) who went abroad-to
Germany, for example to be educated and came back im bued with the
philosophical and scientific ideas prevailing in other European countries during
the second half of the nineteenth century.23 In this light, Rizal draws on a series
of related oppositions, such as rea son and superstition, just and unjust, and
knowledge and ignorance, to organize the action his novels.
At the same time; Rizal creates a specifically "national" space in his novel in
which locality and local expression are suggested in terms of form through the
insider's perspective, and through the insertion of Tagalog Words into Spanish.
The idea of a Filipino "content" is thus posited through words, and through the
"form" of double address typical of the Noli's narrative perspective. More
important, the narrative derives its nationalizing impulse not from a single
speaking voice, but from the
places like Berlin, Madrid, or Paris. Europe becomes the figure for development
and the universal progress of the human condition.
Yet, it is equally important to note that Rizal's invocation of Europe" was also
deeply marked by a critical awareness of the fact the modern ideas are articulated
in the face of intensely competuvo ropean colonial powers, and this meant he had
to differentiate his post
Yet ment and the drid, or Paris", his dedicar
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Necessary Fictions
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81
differential cognitive standpoints generated and claimed by the i outside stance.
On the one hand, the outside stance draws cognitive apparatus and standpoint of
Europe, of a sense of "world tory," and of moral development, and serves up a powerful
indictment the abuses of colonial rule. On the other hand, the insider viewer argues
in favor of the efficacy and epistemological significance of the different, and not
always laudable and progressive, standpoints of the many different people who
live in colonial Philippines. The insider's per spective creates in the novel a space
for rescuing many voices, voices often denied, silenced, fragmented, or simply
unrecognized, by the general dis. course of progress and change.
While the insides perspective works by critique through attestation or testimony,
the outsider perspective works by means of a critical dis tance born of
comparison. This double vision is evident in the Noli's peculiar ethnographic
stance. Although the Noli is not strictly a work of ethnography, the handling of its
narrative stance does operate on the basis of what, by then, had become the
familiar genre of representing colonial Filipinas in travel narratives. The
project of "reproducing the conditions of the time draws much of its
impulse from the printed ethnographic narratives of colonial encounters,
mainly written by European travelers, going as far back in the west as 1493, a
year after the "discovery of Ameri ca," when Columbus wrote an account of his
voyage and made it available for publication. To be sure, travel narratives
underwent rapid, often uneven changes as they responded to the practical and
ideological circumstances of encounter and expansion, and if we speak of a
continu ity. In the sense of a tradition of travel writing, we can only do so in a
heuristic manner. Nineteenth-century narratives took shape within-and were
strongly influenced by the "globalizingo tendencies of Western expansion. The
publication of Karl Linne's Systema Naturae and the inau. guration of a series of
joint transnational explorative voyages are articulations of a domain of thinking
that Mary Louise Pratt (1992) calls "planetary consciousness." Travel writing's
"embourgeoisification" of uit
the center of a semicircle made up of "chinos, españoles, filipinos, militares,
curas, viejas, jóvenes, etc." only because this semicircle had already ap peared
somewhere else, in the travel narratives of Europeans who visited the Philippines
and noted the "variety of peoples moving in, and across, Philippine space.
Indeed, the traveling narrative I/Eye is evident in the first few chap ters of the
novel as it moves leisurely through space, providing sketches of backdrop detail
or an inventory of customs, practices, and mores. In the Noli, Rizal treats dinner
parties, picnics, fiestas, All Soul's Day, and Christmas Day in elaborate detail. But
the implied exteriority of Rizal's narrative stance differs from what is typical of the
European costumbrismo in that it is avowedly polemical. Rizal's narrative stance
is political be cause, unlike the European travel accounts, the one who describes
the scenes has a stake in what he describes. European travelers may desire
participation in the everyday life of the Philippines (participation often taking the
form of interracial liaisons amoureuses), but their participa tion is premised on
the knowledge that they have no stake in the place they seek to represent. They
are only passing through, as it were.
In the case of the Noli, the outsider is, by contrast, also an insider whose
participation in everyday life in the Philippines makes it impos sible for her to
fully disengage herself from the reality she is describing as a whole. Thus,
the act of describing or representing Philippine society is never just a matter
of aesthetic preference, but an ethical imperative.
This enforced rootedness—and the moral accountability implied by that fact—is
the wellspring of the Noli's trenchant social analysis. To be sure, this
rootedness coexists alongside the equally compelling "wordliness" Europe
represented the author and his characters' sense of being part of a larger
continuum of space and time called the "out side." Ibarra, who finds himself a
stranger in the Philippines after seven years in Europe, is privy to this other
worldliness. In fact, the Spanish governor-general addresses him on the familiar
basis of their shared, prior occupation of an external space; "Here (in the
Philippines) we cannot laugh at such things (excommunication) in public as we
can in the Pen insula, in enlightened Europe" (underscoring added). The political
mythology of liberal anticlericalism typical of the Filipinos in the Propa ganda
Movement (Del Pilar 1970, 1-41; Lopez Jaena 1951, 203–27) inveighs against
an oppressive "frailocracy that has kept the Philippines in the Dark Ages, even as
it posits the inevitable defeat of this monastic su Premacy by Progress, by
young men who dare defy the priests and dream of setting up schools to
eliminate ignorance and popular fanat
world is posited on the exteriority of the authoritative gaze, white, ONE male,
urban, and lettered, a gaze that constructs a moral cartography, verbal mapping
of landscapes and bodyscapes awaiting extraction consumption. Not
surprisingly, the ethnographic eye generally provides bird's eye-view of the place
through which it travels, and the represe tion of a crowd or crowds of people is a
favored motif of the gente, can be seen in the descriptions of Binondo by foreign
travelers like Bowring and Paul Gironière. In a sense, Rizal could put Maria
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83
82 Necessary Fictions
es count for part of the of the friars in many of the
cism." The idealistic thetoric of liberalism does count for pa extremely negative, if
not satirical portrayal of the friars in mar
extremely niets' works. wel end the way
len the space of the insider as touris point. The
pe
images also take walks without raising their skirts, and even suffer toothaches,
perchance on our accounts? Had (Capitan Tiago) not seen with his small eyes all
the Christs in the Sermon of the Seven Last Words move and bow their heads three
times in unison, moving to tears and groans all the women and the sensitive souls
destined for heaven? And more: we ourselves (nosotros mismos) have seen the
preacher show the public at the moment of descent from the cross a handkerchief
soaked in blood, and we ourselves were ready to weep with piety when, unfortunately
for our souls, the sacristan assured us that it was only a joke: the blood of a chicken
butchered and roasted and consumed incontinenti notwithstanding the fact that it
was Good Friday...the sacristan was fat! (1961b, 28)
travel narrative is the parentethere as an
Yet why does the novel end the way it does, with the failure of +1 liberal pro-Hispanization
rhetoric? What is striking about the narrati "T" is not so much the fact that it is polemical as
the fact that it inhabite the space of the observer as insider, the modern equivalent of a tioned
earlier, the insider as tourist guide. The Noli differs from Euron travel narratives on
precisely this point. The paradox of the European travel narrative is the paradox of the
European wishing to elide himself in order to constitute the out-there as an
object, a picture. At the same time, however, he desires participation in the
immediacy of the real. In this sense, one always reads the narrative as both an
authoritative ac count with the usual subdivision of the text into sections on
commerce. government, religion, customs, language, and so on, and as a
romance, complete with interracial love stories, idyllic country settings, picnics,
ritual celebrations, glittering parties in the city, tense confrontations with irate
inhabitants, cayman-catching, dramatic escapes, and others. The desire to
achieve surface mastery of things Philippine through the end less accretion of
"facts" is mediated by a countervailing desire, pushed by the opposite
longing for immersion in the minubiae of everyday life. In the act of
"immersing himself in an exotic country, the European trav eler foregrounds his
separation from that country all the more empbatically
In the case of the Noll, the crucial difference lies in the laughter this
insider-outsider viewpoint generates. It allows readers, for example, to see
sundry bifurcations at work-between official representation and the insider's
account of the same event, for example. The Manila newspaper reportage of the
fiesta highlights Padre Salvi's munificent self-sacrifice and unparalleled courage
in single-handedly calming down a restive crowd but the novel uses the insider's
description of the snoring and quarreng churchgoers and Salvi's own lecherous,
less than honorable, mouves ridicule the official version of the melée. To
complicate things, this na rative stance is not simply content to mock the
colonizer; it is self-motie as well. This is evident in the following passage where
the narraure po sona satirizes the idea of miracles wrought by gráven images:
The laughter is subversive precisely because it is an acknowledgment of the
vulnerability of the satirist: it comes from the inside but may also be directed at
the inside. The critical eye is trained on both the Spaniards and “Filipinos."
Moreover, laughter can arise in the most (in)opponune moments and even
among the subservient: In the chapter on souls in torment; Sister Rufa, after being
ignored by Padre Salvi when she presses forward to kiss his hand after mass,
jokingly exclaims (esclamó... con risa burlona); "Can it be that you've lost a real,
kuriput (miser)**
The outsider-as-insider's (self-)mocking stance brings out the most problematic
aspect of Noli: the rhetoric of nation used by a specific class of
self-proclaimed Filipinos. The series of idealized, liberal, utopian spaces that the
patriotic, worldly Ibarra tries to create on the basis of his Eu rope-inspired vision of
progress and change notably the school and picnic, spaces where the colonial
hierarchy can be flattened out, where personal happiness and political love
are intertwined-are constantly disrupted, ultimately ruined by crowds of the
disentranchised, by the insane Sisa, the spiteful Consolacion, the mysterious
Elías, the yellowish man who tries to kill Ibarra; and Lucas the conspirator and
Padre Salvi's cohorts. The disenfranchised fit in and out of the edges of Ibarra's
con sciousness, first as an idealized abstraction on whose behalf he seeks to
institute reforms, then as individuals like the madwoman Sisa, her invet erate
gambler of a husband Pedro, and the mercenary Lucas, who impinge on his
consciousness and interrupt his reveries and preoccupations to ihtlict their
specific problems and idiosyncrasies upon him, and finally as one individual (la
voz de los perseguidos; "the voice of the persecuted"), Clas, who quite literally
speaks, with compelling urgency, on behalf of Capitan Pablo and his band of
hunted men.
Was it not also revealed that the Virgin of Luta, of the town of Lipe had one cheek
more swollen than the other, and the border ol. dress dirtied with mud? Does this
not logically prove that the s
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Necessary Fictions
Just as Ibarra cannot entirely prevent the "unwanted" or "und
wallow Filipinos, whive, idyllic gatreform. It is not
from paternal.com infeccess of his own peo Salvi
or the hatred the obstacles, Ib
unwanted" or "undesirable" sed to be championing, from
is unable to guarantee the Infiltrating his festive, idyllic gatherings, he is unable
to guay
e not just the sexually moti success of his own programs of reform. It is not just
the sexuall vated malice of Padre Salvi or the hatred, arising from paternal for
Maria Clara, of Padre Damaso that are the obstacles. Ibarra bima the biggest
problem because his plans for improving the lot of his Filipinos do not actually
take into proper account the real, practical com "Filipinos" make on Ibarra. Ibarra
is, in a most intimate and personal bound to Elías in a circuit of reciprocity and
mutual indebtedness power, exploitation and suffering that go back a long way,
beyond the personal histories of the individuals concerned. There is no escaping the
"outsiders" who are also fellow Filipinos because they are the ones who made
Ibarra, literally and symbolically. By exploiting the indios, Ibarra's cruel
forefather, Saturnino, founded the fortune that enabled Ibarra to go abroad;
similarly, Elías, who saved Ibarra's life after Ibarra saved him, later finds out just
how deeply and ineluctably he is linked to Ibarra. That he would choose to
cement this link, rather than sever it, after finding out the truth about Ibaira's
ancestry is indicative of the kind of fantasy about the Filipino nation that Rizal
conceived, one that acknowledges the irre ducible links that bind one person
to another.
Moreover, Ibarra's disenfranchised fellow Filipinos are not passive
consumers of Ibarra's beneficence and vision. The crowd scenes in the
Noll (fiesta, cockpit, theater) are depicted as volatile public spaces, often
rife with discontent that can very easily spill over into violence. Yet the
so-called natives in Rizal's novels do not only act: these crowds can speak,
and they often do in many places in the novel. The Noll creates a situ ation
in which the people" are viewed and represented from the inside and outside.
This double representation generates an excess of viewpoints that Ibarra's
pro-Hispanic reforms cannot simply recuperate. The crowd blurs the terms by
which the Noli distinguishes between what is rational and not, since the narrative
persona, indeed the author himself (so he declares), shares in the people's
"irrational" foibles even if these do not escape the author's mocking scrutiny. At
the same time, given Rizas choice of Ibarra as a main character, the crowd also
constitutes a tional space into which rationality must continually be extended, she
la their "ignorance," which is the term the novel uses to account 10 tenacity of
the habits of thought and action that help maintain the
task necessary and infinite.
governor-general mouth
The Fiction of a Knowable Community for 85 labels like "ignorant" and "fanatic" not
only to explain why liberal reforms are bound to fail in the present time, but also
why these reforms must be undertaken. It is when the crowds speak that the
opposition between reason and superstition, between ignorance and knowledge,
is often re inforced in the novel.
Rizal, however, was also aware that decrying popular "ignorance" and
"fanaticism," as middle-class ilustrados were wont to do, cannot fully account for
what takes place in the space of colonial encounter. Some of the novel's funniest
moments involve the townspeople's reaction to colonial power. The contact zone
is precisely what generates the so called "corruption," or cancer, notably on the
linguistic register. Early negative reviews of the Noli in the Spanish press
excoriated the Noli for bad writing (Rodriguez, quoted in Schumacher 1973, 85),
for its "crassest ignorance of the rules of literature and especially of Spanish
grammar" (87). Indeed the Noli itself is a textual manifestation of a "some thing
else" that exceeds the rules of novel writing, if by rules we mean that classical
allusions cannot be used alongside Balagtas, or grammati cal Spanish alongside
market Spanish, Chinese pidgin, Tagalog Latin, and other languages.
That the word "corruption" is used to describe the linguistic experi
ence and the rest of colonial experience only highlights the dangerous instability of
meaning produced within the contact zone. The source of the colonizers'
frustration and paranoia lies precisely in their inability to control the ways in
which meaning circulates and proliferates within a crowd. Padre Damaso's
sermon provides one such occasion in which the natives, forced to listen to a
long-winded harangue in the incomprehen sible language of their masters,
manage to work out their own reading of the sermon according to their specific
concerns, with potentially unset tling effects as far as the official discourse of the
church is concerned, since the priest's vituperation against uppity nadyes
somehow gets inter preted as the priest's attack against the inefficient Spanish
government (Rafael 1988, 1-22). Doña Consolación's interminable struggles with
the word “Filipinas" ends up confusing her husband the alferez and
revealing his ignorance, thereby undermining his supposed authority and
superi ority as a Spaniard. Or consider again the vicissitudes of the word
Filibustero as it undergoes iteration with difference into plbastlero,
plebestiero, plibestiro, plibustiero, pelþistiero and palabistiero in the hands
of the rustics. In the chapter "Souls in Torment," the townsfolk engage in a
discussion of the merits of acquiring a hundred thousand years' worth of
indulgences and penitence. The insertions of Tagalog words and
4
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pressive social order, makes the pedagogical task necessary and Exasperated
liberals like Ibarra and the Spanish governor-genera
W016
B6
w Necessary Fictions
"corruptions" of Spanish all register the existence of a heteroglo of other
languages and sensibilities and positions.25
Joli is premised upon a demystifying readability in which things can be known or
pieced together from the text-whether it is Ibarra's or Elías' story or Maria Clara's fate
or the hermanas' gullibility. Its revolves around a series of disclosures, of secrets
exchanged for anoth Even dreams can be deciphered. But this readability is strongly
inflecter by the novel's ambivalence toward the implications of its project of
demystification, especially the implications of its ability to "speak to" and "speak
for the very people it represents/portrays.26
The character of Elías, a self-Identified indio, exemplifies the ambiva lence of the
narrative project(ion). To an extent, Elías is the more enigmatic of the two
outsiders-as-insiders of the novel (the other being Ibarra, the self-avowed
stranger in his own land). Elías is both the cata lyst of events (or even nonevents,
as when he prevents a riot at the theater), and the interpreter who ratlonalizes the
behavior and actions of the gente, Daming its discontent and the sources of its
suffering and unruliness to Ibarra. Elias speaks for the oppressed by
rationalizing the "blind." "popular fanaticism of the victims of Spanish
abuses and casts his lot with the outlaws after Ibarra, clinging to illusions
of paternal Hispanization, refuses to help the bandits: Yet in the latter half
of the novel, Elías tries to dissuade a vengeful, disillusioned Ibarra by
invoking the same paternal metaphor Ibarra used: the people are "innocent and
defense less," and will only bear the brunt of suffering unleashed by anarchic
violence. Like Tasio, Elías invests "the people" with the future potential of
change, disruptive, cauterizing, above all, unstable: "The force repressed for
centuries will light and burst." In so doing, he also gives up his ability to "speak
for the people since he cannot predict when the change will erupt. In his
discourse, the gente is both an entreaty (i.e., open to some darity) and a threat
(i.e, open to disruption). He admits his own inabmy to account for the effects and
implications of such a symbolic investments
If the self-sacrificing Elías is haunted by "the people" for whom must speak but
whom he can never fully represent, what more for Ibai Unlike Elías, Ibarra is so
occupied with his personal affairs that n
The Fiction of a Knowable Community 87 For example, Pedro's wife Sisa has
been driven mad by the disappear ance of her son Crispin, a sacristan in Padre Salvi's
church. When Pedro approaches him, Ibarra promises to help find the missing son,
but, when Maria Clara prompts him later, at the fiesta, he admits "rather
confusedly" (medio confuso) that he has done nothing: "Besides, I have been
very busy" (He estado ademas muy ocupado). Lucas, another of the disaffected,
ap proaches Ibarra who, in a state of distraction upon hearing of Maria Clara's
illness, angrily brushes off the man. Padre Salvi will later use Lucas, along with the
aforementioned Pedro, to organize a rebellion that would be. wrongly attributed to
Ibarra's leadership. Ibarra should have taken Tasio the Philosopher's words to heart.
When consulted, the sage astutely ad vises Ibarra to give up his well-meaning plan to
build a school because "[t]he enterprise needs another man, because to make it a success,
zeal and money alone are not sufficient; in our country are also required self
denial, tenacity of purpose, and faith, for the soil'is not ready; it is only sown with
discord."
In contrast, the nobler, self-sacrificing Elías's sense of the patria is premised on
(an already) prior abdication of claims to love and personal happiness in favor of
the higher claims of "the people. "27 To do so, Elsas would have to cancel out the
destructive cycle of exploitation and suffer ing that had hitherto served as the
binding force among fellow Filipinos. In burning Ibarra's papers, Elías abolishes
his original intention of seek ing restitution from the descendants of the Spanish
mestizo who had been responsible for the death of his great-grandfather. He
abolishes the cir cuit of revenge and indebtedness in which he had operated
while preserving the bond of intimacy linking him to Ibarra, Whereas the well
meaning Ibarra falls into, and is trapped in, the cycle of retribution following his
implication in Padre Salvi's manufactured rebellion and his own suffering at the
hands of the authorities, Elas escapes such a cycle because he has cut all ties
to his past, and the abolition of indebtedness is absolute. The beauty of
this self-sacrifice lies in the fact that it is unconditional, and therefore
inspires a debt of gratitude that is both infinite and postponed (because the
debt is always owed by the future generation).
If Elsas's selflessness and self-immoladon mark the nationalist mo ment, a
moment born out of the ashes of the past, a moment that seemingly gives birth to
itself and is without genealogy, a moment when natred and revenge are
transformed into love, sacrifice, and solidarity, When blood enemies can become
friends, it is only fitting that he who has liven up everything (family, the past,
security, love) dies alone, because this
distracted from even taking the people" seriously and heeding the mistakable
signs of discontent and plotting around him. He assumes good intentions, substantial
capital, and a rational program of acco enough to guarantee the successful
implementation of his altruisto P for his country. Ibarra's good intentions are
sorely tested when he is to deal with real people with very specific problems.
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ested when he is forced
88 Necessary Fictions nationalism is posited as the dissolution of the self-denying
self abstraction.2 Elías remains unnamed, but not unknown, in his scene. The
notion of brotherhood and sacrifice gives the knowable com munity the emotive charge
that suffuses the nation's "truth." It is perh the novel's ability to imagine the
possibility of a self-sacrificing death the allows the community to be rendered
meaningful. We might say the literature's ability to bear witness to the possibility
of self-sacrifice pro vides one important position from which the national
community is "knowable" as a community in and through death.
At the same time, this meaningfulness of a knowable community is not to be
equated with the certainty of immortality. What is most moving about the novel is
its admixing of hope and risk. For despite the auspi cious title of the last chapter
"La Nochebuena," which refers to Christmas Eve but also literally means "The
Good Night," Elías' death is solitary, and his invocation of "you who will see the
dawn" is an ambiguous statement opening itself to a future"you who will see the
dawn"—that neither Elsas nor Rizal himself could fully predict, let alone
guarantee.23
The Noli's constant sliding between inside and outside perspectives, between the
possibilities and constraints of this positioning, between the affirmative presence
of "free Europe" and the "indio's" critical power of self-attestation and the power
to complicate idealized norms of freedom and development, enables the novel to
conceive of itself in a national moment. It is, in fact, not just the subject
matter, but also the gathering power of language in the Noli that allows
the possibility of entry into a community of those who have been
excluded when the bounds of that community were drawn, a
community which, as Rizal suggests, cannot be fully represented (in both
the artistic or political senses) by an ilustrado like Ibarra. Paradoxically, though,
this inclusive community takes on the boundedness given it by the colonial state,
even if that state was reso lutely antinationalist.
The Fiction of a Knowable Community 89 very different idea of Catholicism in the
Philippines" (1938, v. 5, 14). This insistence on the complication of our ethical
norms posed by social locatedness, by the specificity of the contexts of
day-to-day existence, meanings, and social relations within the Philippines that
define the social order, provides the main critical impulse for interrogating the
assump tions of various critical mediations shaping Philippine "reality." Within
the gaps created by the complications of the universal ideas of freedom and
transformation, Rizal locates the emergence of the knowable Filipino community.
It was, perhaps, in this spirit that, writing to the Filipinos in Barcelona from
London in 1889, Rizal boldly declared "Knowledge of a thing prepares for its
mastery. Knowledge is power. We are the only ones who can acquire a perfect
knowledge of our country, because we know both languages, and besides we are
informed of the secrets of the people among whom we had been raised. The
Spaniards will never get to know us well, because they have many
preoccupations, they do not mingle with the population, they do not understand
well the language, and they stay a short time. The most that they can know is
what is going on in the government offices, and these are not the country" (1963,
254).
Yet who are the "we" whom Rizal invokes? One of the problematic aspects of
the Noli concerns precisely its depiction and handling of crowds. It has
been argued that in opting for reform over revolution, Rizal was supposedly
expressing the conservatism of the middle class. Renato Constantino, for
example, reads Rizal as a paragon of the bourgeois fear of the masses and of
violence (“Veneration" n.d.). Rizal's second novel, El filibusterismo, explores the
question of violence, and its examination of anarchism as a political alternative
echoes the plot of several novels written around the same time in other parts of
the world, notably Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Devils and Henry James's Princess
Cassamassima. One could conceivably account for the failure of Simoun's
anarchist plot in terms of social developments in the world scene, with
anarchisms espe. cially in Italy, Spain, and Russia. Written after the French
Revolution and events of 1848 but before the Russian Revolution, the Noli's and
Fili's assimilation of revolution into anarchism stood between a period when the
inspiring success of the French revolution was ineparably contami nated by the
bloody reign of terror unleashed in its wake, and a period when the masses of
people that constituted a potential class capable of revolutionary activity still lacked
the organization, ideology, and will to assert its hegemony. I
This was a time of marked uncertainty based, ironically, on a vague Asistent
awareness of the possibilities of imagining different kinds of
Rizal's novel presents an epistemic claim that complicates the nor mative import
of the novel's rhetoric of development and change through its insistent avowal of
the force of cultural material. Rizal's novel can be read as an elaboration of his
frequently articulated contention that being in the Philippines provides the inhabitant
with the potential knowledge that complicates the picture inattentive outsiders
(and insiders as wew construct about the Philippines. Writing to Blumentritt, Rizal
states: Su you know our country only from the books written by friars and Span
iards who copied one another. If you had grown up, as I did, in one our villages,
and seen the sufferings of our peasants, you would na
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90
Necessary Fictions
tical futures coas a form of ar and liberatory, ed in
the blood
IP
certainty was typically ex political futures for one nation, and this uncertainty was
typica
+ defined social movements pressed in novels as a form of ambiguity that defined
social mov in terms, alternately, of decisive and liberatory revolution, and of fatal
individualistic acts of political terrorism drenched in the blood of inno cent victims.
Though suggestive, this reading leaves questions about the mass ception of
Rizal unanswered. Some readers may notice the relative paucity of attention Rizal
devotes to elaborating the day-to-day life of so-called ordinary people (with the
possible exception of Sisa), content. ing himself with eavesdropping on their
conversations. Rizal's most important achievement, in fact, lies in the fact that his
works register the people's presence as an excess of conversations over and
above the usual, intimate, blow-by-blow accounts of their lives. One must look at
Rizal's novel not solely in terms of what it excludes, but in terms, too, however
conflictively, of what it includes. For the novel gives a place, through the
narrative device of eavesdropping, for what it declares to have no place.
The argument in this chapter thus far has been that the people" who make up
Rizal's fantasy of the Filipino nation both have a place and do not have a place in
the novel. While Rizal's depiction of numerous character types is what lends his
novels their narrative density and tex ture, the Rizal novels also suggest that
these types cannot be contained both within the rhetoric of liberalism and
Hispanism that Ibarra espouses (in the name of the people, of course) and
within the novel itself.
This is because these people's actions and reactions-plucked mo mentarily from
the flow of the world by narrative acts of eavesdropping
constitute the novel's most powerful statement about the complexity of the social
terrain and the historical contingency that attends the impera tive toward political
action. Moreover, Elías's dilemma shows that it is not revolutionary violence Rizal
fears, but the unpredictability of the effects of any program of action, the
intolerable burden of history, of risk and chance, that are at the heart of all social
programs and trans formative visions. Which is not to say that just because one
cannot runy account for how history might turn out in the wake of one's actions
and decisions, one should therefore refuse to embark on action aimed at
changing society. Elsas, for example, does not abandon the difficult to of speaking
and working for "the others." even when he counsels Ibarra
The Fiction of a Knowable Community for 91 itions-makes future decisions possible
and forces people to take Coponsibility for the decisions (and errors) they make.
Rizal's much dis cussed and sometimes maligned "indecisiveness" can be read not just as an
ideological feature of his novels, but as a literary expression of the contingency of
any attempt to represent a political, moral, and symbolic community, an
ineradicable component of nationalist thought and prac tice. Rizal's difficulty in
grappling with his material, a difficulty that may have been evinced as "unruliness"
within the novel or as the unruliness of the novel itself, is an acknowledgment of
a difficult love for a knowable community, and the risks that attend, or haunt, the
interminable task of rendering a critical-as opposed to blind acceptance of
"outside" norms or values-exposition of this community.
When Rizal gives his readers a sense of crowds, of people, and when the people
talk, and keep on talking beyond the novel, the fictional realism of Noli me
tangere redụces the distances separating the author, the reader, and their shared
world. Rizal's “people are at once the frame of reference of nationalism, its basis.
But they are also something else, an excess of speech, a multitude of characters
who are still living or “have been lost sight of” and whose personalities stand
out as reflective of the distortions, but also the possibilities, engendered within
the Span. ish colony-Doña Victorina with her colonial mentality, Capitan Tiago
with his venal spinelessness, Doña Consolacion in all her cruelty, but also Ellas
with his capacity for self-sacrifice, Capitana Maria in all her dignity. The Noli
suggests a basis for nationalism rooted in a sense of place, of location, and in
a mode of connectedness not fully recuperable even by nationalist
solidarity and sacrifice. Because the Filipino nation is grounded in the
possibility that, despite the readability of social relationships and connections
that the novel establishes between individuals and societies, between human
beings and nature, knowing and acting on that knowledge may not be enough to
guarantee the success of changing the social order.
This possibility of a failure in representation (in both Its artistic and political
senses of speaking of and for) stems from Rizal's uneasiness regarding the issue
of the "corruption" colonial rule spawned. By summoning the specter of the
filibustero in its various linguistic and semantic mutations, Rizal insists both on the
specificity of native reinvention of colonial terms, as well as the incalculability of the
effects of this reinven
on. As the mutations of filibustero show, the term can be applied as much to the
"first civilian I fi.e., one of the peasants) see stealing hens
s to the political dissident. The danger is that the term would lose its
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against embarking on his plans to exact vengeance.
The acknowledgment of the contingency of artistic and political
cisions-contingent because they are specific to a range of su
92 Necessary Fictions political charge, even if its political charge originates from the
poco ties created by such corruption in the first place.
One might think of "the people in similar terms, as a necessary "e tion" the novel generates,
but also as a kind of excess that the ne registers, an excess that the novel can index but
cannot fully contain is perhaps no coincidence that the people appear in Rizal's novels in the act
of talking, creating and spreading rumors, which in turn foreground the relations
among truth, untruth, and nontruth.2 This excess creates the possibility of a
failure of reference, representation, of writing from a perspective even, that blurs
the conceptual boundaries that determine the oppositions operating in the novel,
oppositions such as reason/su perstition and knowledge/ignorance. The possible
breaching of the line defining the modern and its negation is what leads Ibarra to
tell Elías. with whom he has been arguing passionately over the issue of "the
people": "I have not been brought up among the people whose needs,
perhaps, I am not aware of. I spent my childhood in a Jesuit school, I grew up in
Europe, I have been developed by books and I have read only what men have
been able to bring to light. What remains behind in the shadows, what writers
failed to write about, I know nothing of." Even Ellas, who calls himself “one of the
people" and tries to articulate the people's needs, is also haunted by the
contingency of his own posi tion. When an Ibarra, embittered by the events that
led to his arrest on false charges of having staged a rebellion, speaks
darkly of vengeance, the knowledgeable Elías counsels peace and invokes the
specter of the "defenseless and the innocent" for whom even his (Elsas's)
rationaliza tions cannot fully account to dissuade Ibarra from living up to
his own observation about the "right of might."
This acknowledgment of both the necessity and limitation of writing from a place
and perspective stems from the multiple standpoints the inside/outside
stance generate, which render both transparent yet prob. lematic the narrative of
progress, universalized cultural norms of Europe, and construal of progress as
inevitable change. The inside-outside per spective pits against the often
idealized, transcendental account of politica will and self-determination the
"nature" of the recalcitrant, empirica vagaries and particularities of the Philippine
colonial situation. Riza evocation of the suffering, but also tenacious survival, of
the brutan people can be read as a plea for the epistemological significance o
experiences the colonial situation engendered, experiences that the versalist
norms of progress and development may not fully recupe
The Fiction of a knowable Community 93 The irreducibility of the risk attending the
knowable community and tre inscription in history, body, technics, and politics, haunts
Rizal and makes him posit the nation in the future. It is perhaps his inability to quarantee the
necessity of his decision that, as Graciano López Jaena observed, made Rizal leave the problem
of
political transformation un solved (1963, 610). Because the Filipino nation, for Rizal, is
both nurturing and intractable, a source of succor but also of anxiety, comforting but
also menacing, it compels but also obstructs the drive for origins, for a
genealogy:33 It is haunted by the very freedom it posits.
The moment of nationalism is both a fiction that the novel helped to create or
realize, and a fiction produced in the very strictures of material forces operating
in colonial Philippines. It may not be proper to speak of the novel as generating a
nation that is then defined as exclusionàry. The nation emerges precisely from
the excess of speech and violence of ex clusion. Nationalism and literature thus
come together in the invention of a political community, and the efficacy of such a
community does not lie in the success of the invention but in the risks that attend
the neces sity of forging a national community, the risks of failure opening that
community to the necessity of reinvention again and again. It is to admit that
human freedom is haunted irrevocably by time, by human finitude, by the objects
that we create and objects that create us. That Rizal's novels were able to index
this aporia at the heart of nationalist thought and practice may help to explain the
continuing fascination that his novels command even among Filipinos today.
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nor the nationalist ritual of self-abnegation and sacrifice fully abso
Allusion and Reticence in the Pia Alba-Damaso Relationship
Rizal’s novels, like the Bible, have been known to arouse intense proprietary feelings among
some of their
most devoted readers. Years of careful study of the novels’ myriad characters and the words and
thoughts
attributed to them, of every chapter and every twist of the plot, allow attentive readers – often
backed
by institutions such as literature departments and schools more generally, as well as publications
and
mass media – to claim privileged access to the “truth” of the texts and what they “really” mean.
Not
surprisingly readers find a continuous source of irritation in the errors that abound like flies
whenever the
novels are talked or written about. Nery (2011, 6), for example, begins his book-length study of
Rizal with
a catalog of errors that he classifies as “instructive errors” that throw “unexpected light” on details
or
events or people; “unfortunate errors” that result from “momentary inattention”; and “pernicious
errors”
or “gross misinterpretations” that result in “serious misunderstanding.”
Literary criticism relies on the close reading of a text for cues on how to read a work. Referring
“back” to
the text and the evidence it provides is often seen as a way of testing and evaluating the
robustness and
plausibility of an interpretation, with understanding that the encounter that we call “reading” may
yield
a number of different interpretations. Not all interpretations are equally valid within the terms of
reading
that are set institutionally (by literary studies, for example) and exegetically (by the protocols of
reading
specific to various “interpretive communities,” to use Stanley Fish’s [1980] term).
For example, the popular understanding cited by Michael Tan (2010, A15) of Padre Damaso as
a type of
father who “absconds” from his responsibility in caring for his child is clearly not borne out in
Rizal’s novel.
Padre Damaso tries in vain to abort his baby in order to hide all traces of his broken vows of
celibacy and
his paternity. But once Maria Clara was born, he dotes on his child so much that he becomes the
overprotective father (in both senses of parent and priest). In effect Padre Damaso usurps Capitan
Tiago’s
position as paterfamilias of his own household by putting pressure on Capitan Tiago to call off
Maria
Clara’s engagement to Ibarra, even going through great lengths to pick a prospective spouse for
Maria
Clara in the person of a relative of his, the peninsular Linares.
But the problem is that such revealing details are not always forthcoming in the Noli. This narrative
reticence is particularly pronounced in the novel’s account of Padre Damaso’s relationship with
Pia Alba.
What we do know of Pia Alba suggests that she is no shrinking violet (Rizal 1978, 32). Dona Pia
is described
as a beautiful young woman (hermosa joven), willowy (esbelta), robust (robusta), and shapely
(bien
formada). The novel makes clear that Capitan Tiago is the son of a sugar planter, “rich enough”
(bastante
acaudalado) but so miserly (avaro) that he would not shell out a cuarto (small coin of little value)
to have
his own son educated (ibid., 31). However, Dona Pia is instrumental in helping Capitan Tiago
make his
fortune and giving him his high social position (le ayudo a havcer su fortuna y le dio su posicion
social)
(ibid., 32). Dona Pia, not content with buying and selling sugar, coffee and indigo, “wished” (quiso)
to sow
and reap instead and persuaded Capitan Tiago to buy land in San Diego.
Typical of the novels of its time, the Noli is reticent on the precise nature of Dona Pia’s sexual
entanglement with Padre Damaso. Padre Damaso, her spiritual adviser, suggests that she go to
Obando
to dance at the feast of St. Pascual Bailon and ask the saint for a son. Damaso’s penchant for
women is
alluded to in the first chapter of the novel, where he recounts to his fellow dinner part guests his
experiences as a young priest. When he first comes to Filipinas twenty-three years earlier, he is
assigned
to a small farming town, and his lack of proficiency in Tagalog does not prevent him from hearing
the
confession of the town’s women. Damaso boasts that the women and he “understood each other”
(nos
entendiamos), and that the women “came to love me so much” (me llegaron a querer) that they
weep
when he is transferred to another town.
But whether Padre Damaso actually raped Pia Alba cannot be definitively established by the
“facts” found
to be in the novel. (It is also worth noting that Celdran’s Damaso act focuses on the church’s
meddling in
politics rather than on the sexual abuses and assaults committed by some of its priests, which
have been
much in the world news of late.) To begin with, had Padre Damaso raped Dona Pia, one might
expect a
traumatized Pia to exhibit signs of depression well before she discovers she is pregnant, weeks
before she
misses her menstrual period. But the passage Nery (2010) quoted states that Pia “felt signs of
motherhood” and then became despondent. Another passage that Nery quoted has Aunt Isabel
remembering that Dona Pia wept before the image of San Antonio many times during (not before)
the
first months of her pregnancy. Later on, when Capitan Tiago forbids Maria Clara from speaking
to the
recently excommunicated Ibarra, Tiago tries to get the weeping Maria Clara to stop crying by
comparing
her with her mother: “Don’t cry, daughter… You’re not like your mother, who never cried except
from
paglilihi: (No llores, hija mia… tu no eres como tu madre que no lloraba mas que por antojos;
“antojos is
Rizal’s translation of the Tagalog term for cravings women developed during pregnancy) (Rizal
1978, 201).
The “evidence” of Dona Pia’s letters is similarly inconclusive. They only suggest that Pia had
written them
in remorse when she was already pregnant with Maria Clara; that neither Pia nor Damaso wanted
the
child; and that both had conspired to have the child to aborted.
It may well be that Dona Pia had been raped indeed and that either the people around her had
not noticed
any change in her behavior immediately after the rape or Pia herself had successfully hidden her
distress
from the other people around her. Pia may have become visibly despondent, unable any longer
to mask
her suffering when the physical evidence of rape became obvious.
But the novel’s reticence also allows the different slants of interpretation. Dona Pia may have
been
seduced coercively or not, by Padre Damaso. She may even have fallen in love with the priest.
Dona Pia is
stricken by remorse when she learns she is pregnant. She may or may not have regretted her
affair with
the priest, but she definitely does not want the baby she is carrying and conspires with Padre
Damaso to
get rid of the foetus. Unlike Damaso, Pia will not be given the chance to fall in love with her
Daughter
because she dies of puerperal infection soon after childbirth.
Another “proof” Nery cited concerns Pia Alba weeping before the stature of San Antonio. Saint
Anthony
of Padua is knowns in Catholic lore as the patron saint of lost property and “lost” persons (meaning
either
persecuted persons or persons in distress). Four miracles attributed to the saint are some
relevance to Pia
Alba’s case. One miracle concerns a jealous husband who stabs his wife, whom Saint Anthony
later
restores to life (Keller 2015). Another miracle happens to a woman who apparently suffers from
convulsions, which townspeople mistake for demonic possession and which the woman’s
husband reads
as guilt over her immoral behavior. In despair, the woman tries to commit suicide, but Saint
Anthony is
able to calm her down and persuade her not to (Atwood 2012, 181). Yet another miracle comes
to the
jealous nobleman who refuses to believe that his wife’s newborn son is his own and plots to have
his wife
and her son killed. Saint Anthony asks the infant, only a few weeks old, “Who is your father?” and
the
infant turns to the jealous nobleman and says, “This is my father” (Rieti 1895, 91-92). The fourth
miracle
occurs to yet another jealous husband who tears out his wife’s hair for spending too much time
helping
out the church. Saint Anthony restores her hair (ibid., 56-57)
Dona Pia’s weeping before the statue of Saint Anthony by no means settles the issue, since it
might also
be read in at least two ways: as an expression of innocence because she has not engaged in
immoral
behavior but had been forced into it by Padre Damaso, or as an expression of suicidal despair
over either
the affair or pregnancy, or both.
Michael Tan (2010, A15) utilizes literary onomastics to help make sense of the Noli. He stresses
the
acoustic similarities between Damaso’s family name, Verdolagas, and the Spanish-Filipino term
“berdugo”
(executioner). He also explores the etymology of Pia Alba’s full name, translating it as “white
piety.” The
Latin word pius, from which “Pia” derived, can mean a number of things: pious, devout, prayerful,
dutiful,
loyal. The Latin albus, form which “Alba” is derived means “white.”
But these derivations do not exhaust the associations that the names “Pia Alba” and “Damaso
Verdolagas”
bring into play. Naming has important place in the Holy Bible because it sheds light on the on who
does
the naming (Parded 1992, 40-443) and constitutes an “elemental act of language” in literature,
offering
“invaluable keys” for interpreting texts that often exceed the intentions of the author (Smith 2016,
309).
Not all names in a literary text are meant to be meaningful, of course. The famous dialogue
between
Hemogenes and Cratylus (Plato 2006) over the question whether the naming is arbitrary or can
serve as
an instrument of teaching and distinguishing natures shows that there is no hard and fast rule in
choosing
between “ordinary” names and “moral” and “meaningful” names (Fowler 2012, 3). But some
names do
activate chains of references and associations that point to a wider etymological and allusive field
that
tells us something about the fictional bearers of these names. The Germans have their own term
for such
Cratylic names: “speaking names” (sprechende Namen).
Rizal appears to have given some thought to the “historical entanglement” of names (ibid.) and
invested
meaning and power in some of the names with which he christened his literary creations. “Alba,”
for
example, does not only derive from the Latin word “white.” In Spanish, alba means “dawn” or
“daybreak,”
and in Spanish and more generally European literature (particularly of Occitan region that
encompasses
parts of France, Italy, and Spain), alba is a type of lyric poetry know as “dawn-song,” the theme
which is
adulterous love. While most of these songs consist of lovers bewailing their parting at dawn after
a night
of lovemaking, the Spanish variant has dawn signifying not the time when the lovers part, but
rather the
time when lovers meet (Siegal 1996 &; Hawking 1979,22).
One can also glean from the name of Damaso Verdolagas a wealth of (often playful, teasing)
meanings.
Father Alunday’s mistaking Damaso for Pope Damasus I is a felicitous example of the Rizalian
“characterizing names” or characterisierte Namen drawn from well-known literary and historical
figures.
Pope Damasus I (366-384 CE) was not only a stalwart defender of the Catholic Church against
heresy and
one of the key figures involved in establishing the theological foundation of the primacy of Rome
as the
“Apostolic See” (the apostolica sedes), a term Damasus had been the first to use (Louth 2007,
76). In 378
he was also charged with adultery, although eventually exonerated. He has come down in history
bearing
the nickname “Auriscalpius matronarum” (ladies ear-tickler), in reference to his assiduous
cultivation of
the patronage of Rome’s wealthy matrons and his ability to persuade these women to funs his
churchprojects
(Cain 2013, 176). A reader well versed in church history would surely relish the thought of Rizal,
tongue-in-check, naming his own colonial version of the dogmatic ladies’ ear-tickler after this
illustrious
personage.
What about Verdolagas? The word means purslane (Portulaca oleracea), whose Filipino names
are
alusiman (Bikol), dupdupil (Bontoc), bakbakad (Ifugao), golasiman (Tagalog), kantatabam
(Pangasinan),
and ngalug (Ilocano) (Quattrocchi 2012, 3054). Although now considered one of the most
widespread
horticultural plants in the world, the purslane followed the Spanish conquistadores along their
routes of
colonization. Variously viewed and treated as weed and herb, purslane thrives in high-
temperature zones
and can grow in uncultivated land, even waste places (Bermejo and Leon 1994, 310-14). Purslane
was
historically used as an antiscorbutic, diuretic, and analgesic (ibid., 311). Ironically, verdolagas
were
thought to have an aphrodisiac properties: these succulent herbs were supposed to “reduce the
desire to
fornicate” (Dioscorirde, quoted in ibid.).
The point tracing all these allusions is to draw attention to an inherent undecidability in the Noli
as far as
the depiction of the relationship between Dona Pia and Padre Damaso is concerned. John Blanco
(2009,
261), in his analysis of the Noli, affirms the ambiguity of the relationship by stating point-blank that
Maria
Clara’s “true father is Father Damaso, the same Spanish priest responsible for seducing (or
raping; it is not
certain) Maria Clara’s mother, disinterring the body of Ibarra’s father, calumniating Ibarra’s father’s
name,
and provoking the son Crisostomo’s wrath.”
Ambeth Ocampo is not the only historian to question the “rape” of Pia Alba. In her study of how
issues of
urbanity, sexuality, and gender informed the patriotic discourses of the ilustrados in the nineteenth
century, Raquel Reyes (2008, 117-19) cogently argues that friar “moral laxity” – commonplace in
Philippine colonial society – furnished the ilustrados with material for fashioning their critique of
friar
obscurantism and abuse of authority. The figure of the irascible, parochial, libidinous, bigoted,
and vicious
Padre Damaso is Rizal’s contribution to fleshing out the idea “frailocracy” (frailocracia, as Marcelo
del Pilar
called it), which has kept the Philippines backward and stagnant. Reyes argues that “within the
melodrama
of the Noli lies the damning message that the consequences of entrusting the oral and spiritual
guidance
of women to priests are treachery, corruption, vice, and death (ibid., 124). Reyes’s (ibid.) account
of Pia
Alba’s relationship with Padre Damaso differs substantively from the interpretations Nery and Tan
propose:
Rizal relates, for example, the story of Dona Pia Alba, as a wealthy married woman who is
desperate to
bear a child. After fruitlessly invoking numerous saints and the Virgin in order to conceive, Dona
Pia turns
for comfort or advice to her confessor, the Franciscan parish priest Padre Damaso. She finds him
obliging,
and soon becomes pregnant. But she is then filled with remorse, as she later admits in a letter, at
carrying
a priest’s child. She curses it, desires its death. Together, she and the friar attempt to abort the
foetus
using drugs but fail.
Reyes’s critical insight into the ilustrados’ antifriar campaign is not blunted by her decision to
interpret
the Pia Alba-Padre Damaso relationship in terms of stress Dona Pia’s agency in initiating the
affair. The
narrative of reticence of the Noli gives the novel capaciousness that can accommodate disparate,
even
conflicting, interpretations. Every act of interpretation is place- and time-bound, arising out of the
concerns specific to its time. For this reason, interpretation needs to be historicized (Jameson
1981, 9).
Did many of Noli’s readers in Rizal’s time think that Pia was raped (which is not necessarily the
same as
being seduced)? When ans why did the “rape” interpretation become influential? How have public
awareness and understanding of colonial and sexual politics evolved in the wake of anticolonial,
nationalist, feminist, and other movements? What are the intellectual and political stakes in
advancing
the rape thesis as the only valid way of understanding what happened between Pia Alba and
Padre
Damaso?
Just as interpreting Rizal’s novels demands historicization, it is also imperative to historicize the
ilustrados’
own time- and place-bound attitudes toward female sexuality. Prevailing notions of women’s (and
priests’) proper and correct behavior do not necessarily reflect the reality of on-the-ground
relationships
or public opinion in colonial society. As Reyes (2008. 117) has noted, what shocked a foreign
observer like
Robert MacMicking about the Philippines was not so much the priests’ openly taking native
women as
mistresses (even lodging them and their own mestizo children in the covenant) as the routine
violation of
priestly vows of celibacy being “tolerated and indulged by society at large.” Maria Clara’s bastardy
and
her parents’ botched attempts at abortion are pivotal to Rizal’s moral critique of frailocracy. But
they do
not necessarily nor uniformly excite the same degree of moral and political outrage among all
sectors of
society outside the pages of the book. Informal unions and illegitimacy were, in fact, common
among the
colonial population, particularly among those who could not afford marriage fees charged by the
priests
(MacMicking 1851, 75). In some parishes up to 25 percent of births were listed as having
“unknown
fathers” (Owen 2000, 33). Queridas (mistresses) and illegitimate children were a fact of life in
colonial
Filipinas (Hau et al. 2013, 5-6). While any number of these couplings (especially involving priests)
might
have been unwanted or coerced, neither querida nor illegitimate children necessarily elicited
public
opprobrium?
Nery
– evidence/quotes within the novel
Michael Tan
– allusions/names of the characters
John Blanco
– Damaso is Maria Clara’s father, and the one who raped/seduced Pia Alba
Raquel Reyes
– Pia wanted a child and came to Damaso, tries to abort
Frailocracy/moral laxity of friars
Robert MacMicking
– priest celibacy is violated