RIZAL AND THE UNDERSIDE OF PHILIPPINE HISTORY commemorated for decades after?

commemorated for decades after? What modes of thought apart from that of the
BY REYNALDO C. ILETO ilustrados informed the event?

In 1890 Jose Rizal, the foremost Filipino intellectual and patriot which the THE “FALL” IN ILUSTRADO CONSCIOUSNESS
19 Century produced, provided in his annotations to a 17 th-Century Spanish text
th
Given the apparent fact that the indios were converted to Christianity, we
scholarly legitimization for the view that, with Spanish rule the people “forgot need to move beyond established and familiar views of how their world was
their native alphabet, their songs, their poetry, their laws, in order to parrot affected by the new religion. On one hand, professedly Catholic writers and
other doctrines that they did not understand.” The result of their blind imitation Hispanophiles claim that Christianity brought civilized ways, salvation and unity
of things foreign and incomprehensible was that “they lost all confidence in their to the islands. On the other hand, nationalists argue passionately that
past, all faith in their present, and all hope for the future.” Rizal labored for a Christianity was a weapon to facilitate the political and economic subjugation of
year in the British Museum to document the image of a flourishing pre-colonial the natives. In either view, the indio is the passive recipient. The Spanish friar, as
civilization, the Lost Eden, which he, the offspring of an era of rationality, representative of God on earth, is seen as exerting a powerful moral hold over
awakened consciousness and self-assertion, felt burdened to put in writing. The the indios. For better or for worse, he interprets the proper rules of Christian
Filipino people had to move forward, and in order to do so had to be aware of behavior, rewarding the obedient and submissive, and punishing evil-doers.
their origins, their history as colonized people, and the general progress of Furthermore, there is an implicit assumption that Christianity’s impact can be
mankind to which their future should be geared. understood by reference to certain core characteristics, foremost among them
Rizal’s construction of a “usable past,” to use a currently popular term, in being its otherworldly orientation which encouraged resignation to the reality
effect privileged the status of the ilustrados, the liberal-educated elite which lived by the indios: resignation to forced labor and the head tax, to the rule of
viewed itself as, among other things, released from the though-world of the the maguinoo or native chiefs and the later principales who were mostly agents
history-less, superstitious, manipulated masses, the pobres y ignorantes. In the of colonial rule. Those who are unwilling to criticize the religion itself view its
very act of interpretation, then, Rizal had to ignore or suppress – unconsciously, particular expression in the Philippine context as one of excessive pomp and
perhaps – phenomena which resisted his ordering mind. These existed on the pageantry, of countless festivals, processions and rituals that kept the indios in
fringes of his life and work but have not been studied seriously. Instead, we such a state of fascination that they failed to grasp the reality of colonial
endlessly debate whether he was a realist or an idealist, whether he was exploitation.
deserving of the veneration he receives. There is a probing of the intentions To whatever pole the argument tend – Christianity as the indios’ salvation
behind his actions, speeches and writings, an attempt to clarify his contribution or Christianity as the root of their alienation – there is always room for allowing
to the process of action-building, and so forth. But there is no questioning of his for or celebrating the triumph of liberal ideas in the late 19 th century. In the first
evolutionist premises, particularly the notion of emergence itself which belongs place, the notion that Christianity belongs to the realm of the otherworldly as
to the realm of the familiar, the “common sense.” As we shall see, this notion is distinct from the secular and political allows the data on popular disturbances
problematized in the meanings that Rizal’s gestures elicited among the pobres y and revolts. If they occur during the “pre-enlightenment” centuries, such
ignorantes. Rizal became implicated in the very world which the ilustrados phenomena are regarded as instinctive, largely localized reactions to oppressive
sought to efface. What we shall seek to uncover in particular is the play of measures, “nativistic” attempts to return to a precolonial past, at best primitive
meanings which his dramatic execution in 1896 set into motion. If this event precursors to the revolution. His horizons narrowed by religion and the divide-
were simply a condemned man’s attempt to perpetuate his own memory, or his and-rule tactic of the Spaniards, the indio is deemed unable to comprehend his
martyrdom is against oppression and obscurantism, then why, among many situation “rationally”: thus he reacts blindly, in the gut, to mounting irritants
other acts of martyrdom and execution, was it singled out, remembered, impringing upon him. Only with the advent of Rizal and the ilustrados is there a
clear understanding of the causes of dissatisfaction. Only with the founding of the stormy darkness of sin and ignorance. There are traces of a predominantly
Andres Bonifacio’s Katipunan secret society is there an organization with clear seafaring Malay society in the last theme, but it is located in a sea of darkness,
strategies and goals. When the Katipunan is superseded by Emilio Aguinaldo’s illumined only by the light of a foreign ideology. In the 18 th Century, metrical
Republican government, the Filipino people are finally released not only from the romances from Spain and Mexico were allowed to be translated or to serve as
colonial mother country but from a dark past. The history of “failure” ends with models for a popular form of indigenous literature called awit. This transplanted
the birth of the secular, progressive, enlightened Republic. to Philippine soil the traditions of European medieval romance. Tagalog poetry
With the dominant constructs securely established, it is impossible to became dominated by themes ranging from the Passion of Christ to the
regard as anything but a curious sidelight the fact that President Aguinaldo, very Crusades against the Moors. Ilustrados from Rizal to this day have lamented this
much in the style of the 18th rebel Diego Silang, was also seen as the Liberator apparent distortion of the Filipino mind. “Born and brought up… in ignorance of
sent by God. Or that Rizal, like Apolinario de la Cruz in 1841, was hailed as a our yesterday… lacking an authoritative voice to speak of what we neither saw
Tagalog Christ and King. In 1898 and 1899 the Republic, very much like the old nor studied” – Rizal could not have better expressed the anxiety of being left to
colonial administration, was beset with unrest led mostly by Popes, Christs, one’s own wits, unanchored in a stable past.
Pastors and Supremos. Such “sidelights” suggest that personalities and events The lack of a continuous, uninterrupted history of Filipino consciousness
toward the end of the 19th century were repetitions, with variations of course, of lay behind the ilustrado nostalgia for lost origins. Rizal’s efforts to reconstruct
the past. They draw our attention to the fact that limiting frameworks have been the history of a flourishing, pre-Spanish civilization that entered upon the decline
applied to 19th Philippine history, that there are, these exluded, “excess” data can be viewed as an attempt to reconstitute the unity of Philippine history, to
with which we can attempt to confront the dominant paradigms and elicit a play bring under the sway of the ilustrado mind the discontinuities and differences
of meanings in place of closed structures. If Rizal belonged to a series of Christs that characterized colonial society. The ilustrados were very much in tune with
and Tagalog Kings, we might well as what the conditions are for inclusion in the 19th century conceptions of history. Their activity was geared to the late 19 th
series and the mode of historical awareness it suggests. Rizal becomes less the century European search for a total history, in which all the differences of a
intellectual achievement of the century than a complex figure who offered society might be reduced to a single form, to the organization of a world-view, to
different, sometimes conflicting, readings of his life and work. the establishment of the system of values, to a coherent type of civilization.”
The reappearance, the persistence over time, of figures bearing the mark Ironically, the demand for order and coherence led to critique not only of the
of Christianity could eb interpreted as a sign of the total Filipino subjugation by Spaniards but of the ilustrados’ ancestors who, admitted Rizal, lost their heritage
Spain. It could signify the break, the loss and enslavement resulting from the because they “hastened to abandon what was theirs to take up what was new.”
Conquest. Rizal lamented the fact that Philippine traditions were no longer Ignorance and naivete are the familiar explanations for what appears to have
authentic because their origins were either forgotten or patently foreign. To him, been the absence of fixed boundaries in the conceptual world of the early
the forgetting of origins marked the onset of darkness: “These traditions (of links Filipinos.
with Sumatra) were completely lost, just like the mythology and genealogies of One fact that renders the notion of a “Fall” problematic, however, was the
which the old historians speak, thanks to the zeal of the religious in extirpating survival of the indigenous languages. For example, the whole crop of foreign
every remembrance of our nationality, of paganism, or of idolatry.” Philippine story lines in Tagalog literature, which on the one hand suggest a certain loss of
literary histories speak of the lost literature of the lowlands being replaced by authenticity, upon closer examination turn out to be masks that conceal age-old
religious poetry written at first by Spanish missionaries and then by select indios preoccupations. We shall see later on that the failure of such terms as “soul” and
who had served as translators for the Spaniards. The themes of such poetry ‘self’ to encompass the meanings of loob (lit., “inside”) releases the Tagalog
seem divorced from Philippine experience: “love for the Holy Family,” “God the Passion of Christ (Pasyon) from the control of the Church. The translation of alien
light of the world,” “Mary, star of the sea” guiding men in their voyage through story-lines and concepts into Tagalog not only resulted in their domestication,
their assimilation into things already known, but gave rise to various plays of
meaning.