The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
persecuted even beyond the tomb, as was Mariano Herbosa. Weep, or
laugh, there in those lonely isles, where you wander vaguely,
uncertain of the future! Spain, the generous Spain, is watching
over you and soon or late, you will have justice! [116]
It is the bitter sarcasm of a soul stung beyond endurance with the
sense of great wrong.
As a work of fictional art, “El Filibusterismo” is not equal to “Noli
Me Tangere.” It is likely that Rizal knew this and as likely that he
cared not, having now another purpose than to tell a story powerfully.
He is working with rather less of a connected story and rather less of
the clear dramatic prevision. The fates of such characters as he left
unrelated in “Noli Me Tangere” he follows to the end, but on the way
stops to picture lives and conditions not vitally interwoven with the
climacteric. Yet in one way this book is the superior in interest, for
it reveals the change that had been coming over him in these two years.
Slowly there had been erased in his creed the belief in the good
intentions of Spain; slowly (and reluctantly, no doubt) he had come to
face the thought that to appeal to Spain for reforms was useless and
the Filipinos must achieve by their own efforts the changes that would
lead to their redemption. That these efforts must be of a peaceful
character was a sheet-anchor of faith to which he still clung, or tried
to cling, and yet there is evidence that he felt it dragging as more
and more the hopeless stupidity of Spain was revealed to him. [117]
Evidence of the change in his essential point of view may be found even
in the dedication of the new book. It is boldly and uncompromisingly to
the men that, perishing on Bagumbayan Field, in 1872, the gored victims
of the System, made their names immortal.
To the memory of the priests [it reads], Don Mariano Gomez (85
years old), Don José Burgos (30 years old), and Don Jacinto Zamora
(35 years old), executed in Bagumbayan Field, February 28, 1872.
The church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the
crime that has been imputed to you; the Government, by surrounding
your trials with mystery and shadows, causes the belief that there
was some error, committed in fatal moments; and all the
Philippines, by worshiping your memory and calling you martyrs, in
no sense recognizes your culpability. In so far, therefore, as your
complicity in the Cavite mutiny is not clearly proved, as you may
or may not have been patriots, and as you may or may not have
cherished sentiments for justice and for liberty, I have the right
to dedicate my work to you as victims of the evil that I undertake
to combat. And while we await expectantly under Spain some day to
restore your good name and cease to be answerable for your death,
let these pages serve as a tardy wreath of dried leaves over your
unknown tombs, and let it be understood that every one that without
clear proof attacks your memory, stains his hands in your blood!
Here is a foretaste of the strange, new, and passionate bitterness that
was coming upon him, not heretofore discernible in his writings nor in
his life, the nettle smart of a growing disillusion. Something there
is, too, that in another man would surely savor of cynicism. “You may
or may not have been patriots,” “You may or may not have cherished
sentiments for justice and for liberty,” are phrases not of a piece
with his old-time faith. The wormwood that flavors these few lines is
perceptible throughout the book. In “Noli Me Tangere” the stern
arraignment of the friars and the Spanish officers is modulated with
many good-natured pictures of Philippine life, with descriptions of the
beautiful Philippine country-side, and with gentle fun-making of
popular follies. In the sequel [118] there are no relieving touches. It
is hot metal always overflowing and burning whatever it touches.
CHAPTER IX
PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCE
Sixteen years after Jagor printed his almost unheeded prophecy, other
men less gifted might have seen that his views on Philippine evolution
were soundly based. The conditions existing in the Islands could not
last much longer. Six or seven discontented millions could not continue
to be overawed with soldiery and great guns and managed upon a plan
they hated. No matter how assiduously they might be kept from all
weapons more deadly than jack-knives and toothpicks, the existing state
could not endure. The mere physical fact of the United States, forging
ahead upon a totally different principle, would be an influence that
soon or late would overturn these sagging bulwarks of antiquity. What
was to be the future of the Islands? For a long time the students of
Barcelona tried to settle this question, sometimes with debate and
sometimes with vociferation. Thence with similar futility it spread to
Madrid and elsewhere, and finally Rizal took it up in a series of
articles entitled “The Philippines a Century Hence.” [119]
What he thought about Philippine independence he here set down as
plainly as the law and the Spanish Government would allow. That any one
should try to muddle his views on this subject is strange enough when
he left thus a testament reasonably explicit in its text and still more
in its deductions. Although much latitude was allowed to public
discussion in the Spain of that day, plotting to overthrow Spanish rule
in the Philippines was still sedition, and under that term the police
sometimes included much that was extraneous—in Spain, as elsewhere.
Rizal had no fear for himself on this occasion nor any other, but one
can easily understand that he wished to save “La Solidaridad” from the
ash-can. Hence with admirable skill he steers as close as he can to the
forbidden line and yet escapes it.
Against one bugaboo of the timid, and even to this day a favorite
device of the crafty, he brought to bear a destructive logic. It was
urged that if the Philippines were free they would instantly be snapped
up by some powerful and greedy neighbor. The functions of a shield
against these ravenous wild beasts, a function later supposed to be
performed unselfishly by the United States, was then imagined to fall
to the lot of mighty Spain. But for her frowning guns and men-of-war,
behold the Philippines a breakfast any morning for Japan or for Great
Britain! In those days there were a few Filipinos that were impressed
with these fantasies, or said to be; in later times the superior white
man often seemed strangely infected with them. To one inclined to take
them seriously Rizal’s words might have been commended then, or may be
now.
It appears that he had been applying to his country the lessons of the
American Revolution.
If the Philippines [he says] succeed in winning their independence
at the close of a heroic and bitterly contested war, their people
can rest assured that neither England, Germany, France, nor Holland
will dare to pick up the territory that Spain could not retain.
Within a few years, Africa will absorb all the attention of the
great European nations, and none of them would neglect the immense
territories and opportunities that will open in the Dark Continent
for the sake of a handful of rugged islands at the other end of the
world.
As to England, she has already enough of colonies in the Orient, and
she is too wise to imperil her equilibrium by adding more. She does not
wish to run the risk of losing her great empire in India for the sake
of the comparatively poorer Philippine Archipelago. If England had even
thought of taking the Philippines, she would never have retired from
Manila after she had captured it in 1763; she would have retained that
great vantage-point and so would have spread her power from Island to
Island until all should be hers. For her the game was not worth the
candle, and is not. Singapore, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, mean much more to
British trade and the empire than the Philippines could ever mean, and
she has no idea of risking these great possessions for the sake of a
domain so dubious and restless as these Islands. For all reasons of
common sense and commercial advantage, England would look with favor
upon a state of independence that would open the Philippine ports to
British trade.
There is, besides, in England a feeling always growing that the country
has gone too far in imperialism and expansion, that the colonies have
already begun to weaken the mother-country and there must be no
additions to them.
He proceeds next to discuss the probable policies of Germany, China,
Holland, Japan, and the United States toward Philippine independence.
None of them, in his view, would feel any temptation to interfere with
it or to seize the Islands for itself. But, in any event, he says:
The Philippines would defend with the utmost ardor and courage the
liberty bought with so much blood and sacrifice. A new man will
spring from the Philippine bosom; with new energy he will dedicate
himself to progress; he will labor with all his resources to
strengthen his country at home and abroad. Gold will be dug from
the Philippine soil; copper, lead, coal, and other minerals will be
developed. The country will revive the maritime and mercantile
activities to which the Islanders are especially adapted by nature,
instincts, and aptitude. Filipinas will recover those good
qualities that she had centuries ago and has since been losing.
[120] Easily, then, we can see her once more a lover of peace, a
home of justice, and as of old merry, smiling, hospitable,
audacious.
He recounts then some of the existing evils in his country and inquires
what, if one can imagine another century of such servitude, the
Philippines will be reduced to in that time? But without circumlocution
he warns the Government that the servitude cannot possibly continue.
Unless the prudence of the Government provides remedies that are real,
the grievances now accumulating will have but one result.
This is not the time to forecast the probable outcome of such a
struggle if, most deplorably, it should come. It would depend upon
faith, zeal, the qualities of weapons, and a million conditions
that men cannot foresee. But one thing is certain. Suppose all the
advantages to be upon the side of the Government. Suppose the
Government to win an ostensible victory. It would be a victory as
disastrous as a defeat, and this simple fact the Government should
be wise enough to see.
If those that seek to guide the destinies of the Philippines could
be so obstinate as to insist upon holding the country in darkness
instead of relieving it with adequate reforms, the people would
brave the chances of revolt and prefer revolt’s hazards, whatever
they might be, to the certainty of the misery and wrong in which
they would be dwelling. What would they lose in such a fight? To
normal men the choice between long-drawn-out oppression and a
glorious death is no choice at all. Such men will always leap at
the chance of such a death and by their fervor and desperate
courage go far in any such conflict to make up for a disparity in
numbers.
He points out the fact that so far in Philippine history the revolts
have been sporadic and largely local. Earnestly he warns the Government
that this cannot continue. Very different would be the uprising of the
whole people against a state of unendurable misery, and toward such an
uprising the policy of the Government is driving. It is to be
remembered, he says, that factors in the problem exist now that never
existed before. First, the native spirit has awakened and common