The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
The theme is the gross, fat-witted tyranny that had enchained the
Filipinos and the extent to which they themselves were to blame for it.
Neither oppressor nor the complaisant among the oppressed was spared in
those cadent pictures; here each might behold his ugly countenance
faultlessly drawn. With bitter reproach he showed to his countrymen
their ignorance, their sloth, their tame submission that invited more
wrongs. In all human experience one observation has been invariable. It
is that the force that rules with autocratic and irresponsible sway is
able to bear anything else better than ridicule. The ridicule that
Rizal poured upon the dominant powers in the Philippines would have
stung to the quick Caracalla himself. One by one he marches them across
the stage, the whip of his terrible sarcasm always on their shoulders.
It is an immortal procession: the scheming, arrogant, lawless, immoral
friar, drunk with power and greed; the Spanish government officer, all
brute to the native, all crawling sycophant before the powerful orders;
the arrogant Spanish émigré, stuffed with the ridiculous bombast of a
bygone century, the émigré that has become rich in the islands at the
expense of the native and now hates and despises the rounds of the
ladder by which he did ascend; the native that cringes before the feet
of the classes that have so unspeakably wronged him; the woman of
Spain’s Island colony, “more deadly than the male”; the pretentious and
all but worthless educational system; the raw excesses of the courts;
the wanton cruelties of a Government conducted by expatriated savages;
the tortures and pathetic helplessness of the native masses. On all
this the man worked like Hogarth; he will startle and frighten you, but
he will convince you on every page that this is the truth. In this
misery, exactly this, dwelt the unfortunate millions that Spain
misgoverned; in this terror, thus trampled upon, overawed, silenced,
but not subdued. These were the people’s oppressors, lustful, cruel,
rapacious, their burning eyes following every pretty woman or girl,
their pockets lined with the peasants’ money, their claws reaching for
more. All the scenes of the drama and all the players in it, drawn with
irresistible art: the Civil Guards, the coarse instruments of this
despotism; the means by which terror was capitalized; the constant
temptation to revolt; the devilish work of the agents provocateurs; the
sickening punishments devised for those that yielded to the wiles of
such agents. [71] Against this shone the native grace and charm of the
Filipino woman, justly illumined, her goodness, kindness, ready and
apprehensive mind, the pitfalls dug for her by the bestial oppressors
of her people. You will say that all the materials are here for one of
those great dramas of human life that reach down to the primeval base
of first causes and of such framing this book has been made.
Everywhere is dense ignorance. The world that three hundred years
before left all these conditions behind still goes rolling in advance,
and hardly a Filipino knows of its passing. A great population endowed
with the potentialities of free minds, free limbs, free souls, free
ideas, is submitting to a yoke pressed down into men’s very flesh by
superstition on one side and brute force on the other.
We know that many of the incidents were but transcripts of what Rizal
himself had seen and known; many of the characters transferred
themselves from Calamba to his pages. Even when we read them for the
first time, and have, maybe, no previous knowledge of the locale, this
conviction of truth and sincerity possesses us; how much more it must
have reached and stung those whose enormities it paints! “It is only
the truth that hurts.”
CHAPTER V
“NOLI ME TANGERE”
The story is of a young Filipino, Juan Crisóstomo Ibarra, whose father
had wealth, was respected by the Spaniards, and wielded much influence
among his own people. Juan, still in his boyhood, is sent to a school
in Europe, that his education may be of the best. All prosperous
Filipinos hoped to send their sons, if they had any, on this quest for
the classical golden fleece. While Juan is gone his father becomes
involved in a dispute with the local friar magnate, the virtual
dictator of all the region about, as always; but this man brutal,
arrogant, revengeful, and lawless beyond the average of his peers. The
quarrel is about land; most quarrels with the friars had to do with
land or rents or fees or graft or some fancied lack of crawling
humility toward overblown pomp. As a rule the ill will of a friar meant
for the layman involuntary exile taken at utmost speed or a persecution
to the grave and without defense; it being part of the friars’ system
of government that of any person that dared to offend them a salutary
warning should be made. In the pursuit of this serviceable design, men
put to death for alleged sedition but really because they had fallen
out with the friars were sometimes quartered and hideous fragments of
their bodies nailed up in the towns, [72] as in Spain five hundred
years before.
Father Damaso is the friar that the elder Ibarra has offended. The
power of the System has been put forth. Ibarra, though innocent of any
crime, is arrested and thrust into prison, where he is kept without
examination or trial until he wilts away and dies, crying out the name
of his son. All ignorant of these events, Juan comes home; he knows his
father is dead, but he suspects nothing of foul play. Gradually the
truth is unfolded to him. He has returned full of hope for the Islands,
full of faith in their Government. Gradually he is disillusioned, as
one ugly development after another shows him the blight under which his
people drag out their lives.
Still he knows nothing against Father Damaso. That dark and scowling
figure he greets as his father’s friend.
The views of Island life, sharp, vivid, are like those of a
stereopticon or the wizard Zola. There is a native woman, Sisa, married
to a worthless dog of a husband who beats her, robs her, and gets
drunk. All her life centers in her two boys, Basilio and Crispin. They
earn a pittance each, working for the sacristan of a church in another
village, ringing the bells and cleaning the chancel. They are to come
home to-night, and Sisa has been preparing something to please them, a
supper with things they like to eat, earned by her hard work and
self-denial. She has bought some small fishes, picked the most
beautiful tomatoes in her little garden (for she knows how fond Crispin
is of tomatoes), and begged from a neighbor some slices of dried wild
boar’s meat and a leg of wild duck. To this she adds the whitest of
rice, which she herself has gleaned from the threshing-floors.
Then her worthless husband comes in and eats most of the boys’ supper.
Sisa says nothing, although she feels as if she herself were being
eaten. His hunger at last appeased, he remembers to ask for the boys.
Then Sisa smiles happily and resolves that she will not eat that night
because what remains is not enough for three. The father has asked for
his sons; for her that is better than a banquet.
The boys do not come, and the father goes away. At the church serious
trouble has fallen upon Basilio and Crispin. The curate has accused
Crispin of stealing and demands restitution; otherwise, the boy, says
the humane curate, will be beaten to death. That night while their
mother waits for them they are kept ringing the great bells in the
church tower, for a storm is raging and it is well known that the sound
of church-bells ringing keeps off the lightning. In the midst of this
employment, the sacristan suddenly appears, fines the boys for not
ringing in tune, renews the accusation of theft (which is quite
groundless), and drags Crispin off to punishment, locking Basilio in
the tower. He hears his brother’s cries for help dying out in the
distance. Then he climbs the belfry, unties the ropes from the bells,
ties them to the railing, lets himself out of a window to the ground,
and runs home. But Crispin never appears. He has been shot and killed
by a Civil Guard.
Two or three days later Civil Guards come to Sisa’s house and arrest
her for Crispin’s alleged theft. She is paraded through the streets as
a common malefactor and locked in the common jail. Basilio has crept to
the woods. Sisa begins to learn of Crispin’s fate. When she is released
from jail she has become insane.
She wanders about the country, living on alms and sleeping in the
woods. Basilio comes home to find her gone and starts in search of her.
When at last he comes in sight of her, she in her madness believes him
to be another enemy and flees. He runs after her and overtakes her in
time to hold her in his arms as she dies.
The story of Sisa is interwoven with the development of the story of
Ibarra.
Gradually the truth is unfolded to him, the legalized murder of his
father, the dishonor to his father’s ashes; for, buried in a cemetery,
the body of the elder Ibarra has been, at the friar’s orders,
disinterred [73] and cast into the lake. Still he does not quite
perceive what part Damaso has played in this nor understand that he
himself is pricked next upon the roll of death. Soon or late, he must
learn all. Then will devolve upon him the duty of vengeance. For
safety’s sake the friar plans to silence him betimes.
Meanwhile, the youth, in whom Rizal has typified the large generous
notions he himself once entertained of Utopia under the rule of Spain,
gives himself to projects for the elevation of his countrymen. He is
impressed with the darkness of ignorance around him, with the almost
comic futility of the educational system, which is no system at all.
Meeting an old schoolmaster, he discusses these conditions, and thus is
laid bare to us the means by which the native mind is kept in its
prison-house.
“How many pupils have you now?” asked Ibarra, with interest, after
a pause.
“More than two hundred on the roll, but only about twenty-five in
actual attendance.”
“How does that happen?”
... The schoolmaster shook his head sadly. “A poor teacher
struggles against not only prejudice but also against certain
influences. First, it would be necessary to have a suitable place
and not to do as I must do at present—hold the classes under the
convento by the side of the padre’s carriage. There the children,
who like to read aloud, very naturally disturb the padre, and he
often comes down, nervous, especially when he has his attacks,
yells at them, and even insults me. You know that one can neither
teach nor learn under such conditions....”
The curate is the same Father Damaso, the friar with whom Ibarra’s
father had quarreled. In his overbearing arrogance he has wantonly
insulted the poor schoolmaster, who goes on thus with his narrative:
“What was I to do with only my meager salary, to collect which I
have to get the curate’s approval and make a trip to the capital of
the province—what could I do against him, the foremost religious
and political power in the town, backed up by his order, feared by
the Government, rich, powerful, sought after and listened to,
always believed and heeded by everybody? Although he insulted me, I
had to remain silent, for if I had replied he would have had me
removed from my position, by which I should lose all hope in my
chosen profession. Nor would the cause of education gain anything,
but all to the contrary; for everybody would take the curate’s
side, they would curse me and call me presumptuous, proud, vain, a
bad Christian, uncultivated; and if not those things, then