The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
misfortune is drawing together all the children of the Islands. Second,
the growth of intelligence at home and abroad is fatal to the existing
order. All those Filipinos that the cruelty and stupidity of the
Government have driven abroad have learned there the rhythm of the
march of mankind and are transmitting it home. It is a class that
rapidly increases. If it is the brain of the country now, it will in a
few years be the country’s nervous system, and of impact upon those
nerves let the Government beware.
One of two things, he concludes, is certain. Spain will grant sweeping
reforms in the islands, establishing there the liberties and advantages
that all civilized people view as birthrights. Or the islands will
declare their independence, after staining themselves and Spain with
blood. To check the advance of the Filipinos to this crisis Spain has
in effect but three weapons. First, the brutalizing effect upon the
masses of a caste system; the high caste, as always, alined with the
Government. Second, the supremacy of a theocratic class in the
Philippine structure, acting to overawe the natives, as in the Dutch
colonies the aristocratic class frightens them. Or, third, the
impoverishment of the country, the encouragement of tribal discord, and
the gradual destruction of the inhabitants.
Already these expedients have been tried enough to prove them worthless
for Spain’s ultimate use.
One little fact that he points out might well be remembered by all
imperialists. Where the aborigines of a seized country, as in
Australia, succumb and disappear before the alien civilization, that
makes one situation for the invader. Where the inhabitants, as in the
Philippines, adapt themselves to the invader’s civilization, show they
can maintain themselves under it, increase in numbers and in
restlessness, bettering the instruction they receive, the situation for
the alien sovereignty is different and not wholesome.
Still his hope clung to peaceful agitation as the means of improvement.
Retana says that Rizal was one that abhorred violent revolution in his
mind and desired it in his heart.
This might easily be. At the time Rizal was studying abroad, many
cities such as London, Paris, Hong-Kong, Macao, as well as Madrid,
contained small colonies of Filipinos, being chiefly the exiles of 1872
and Cavite. Among them it was customary to circulate pamphlets
breathing out destruction to Spanish rule in the Philippines, and so
on. These the authors were usually wise enough not to sign, the chief
purpose of their labors being, apparently, not so much to launch
expeditions for the overthrow of the citadel of oppression as to cheer
the hearts of exile with verbal fireworks. One of these came out in
March, 1889, in Hong-Kong, but widely circulated wherever there were
Filipinos. It is a race that, like the others, has good men and bad,
men that go erect and those that crawl. One of the latter species, a
creature of Weyler of the Red Hands, was then living in Hong-Kong and
felt called upon to answer the inflammatory appeals of his countrymen.
Perhaps he was not much of a Filipino; perhaps he was, in the bulk,
Spaniard. At least he said in his document that Spain’s rule in the
Philippines was the grandest specimen of colonial wisdom ever known and
replete with good things for the people. As to the friars, he said that
no possible objection existed to them, for they were kind, gentle, fond
of the people, and wholly given to good works. So he warned his
countrymen to pay no attention to ribald persons that wrote otherwise,
for they but walked the straight road to destruction.
Copies of this unique production made their way to Europe and in the
end to Paris, where Rizal was then living. In October of that year,
1889, appeared in Paris a rejoinder to sycophancy that set on edge the
teeth of every Filipino in Europe. It was unsigned, but to the colonies
the authorship seemed unmistakable. Only one Filipino could write like
that; only one Filipino could wither with such disdainful sarcasm the
apologist for the wrongers of his country.
The manifesto closes with this paragraph:
When a people is torn asunder, when its dignity, its honor, and all
its liberties are trodden underfoot; when now no legal recourse
remains against the tyranny of its oppressors; when its complaints,
its supplications, and its groans are not listened to; when it is
not even allowed to cry; when its last hope is torn from its heart
... then ... then ... then! ... there remains no other remedy but
to snatch with delirious hand, from the accursed altars, the bloody
and suicidal dagger of revolution!
Cæsar, we, who are about to die, salute thee! [121]
The judgment of the Filipinos in Europe could hardly have been wrong.
There is every reason to hold with them that the writer of this fierce
cry of warning was Rizal.
CHAPTER X
FILIPINO INDOLENCE
The Indio that had startled the Spanish colony in Manila by daring to
call the Philippines “my fatherland” proved his loyalty to the country
he adored by serving it with a discriminating zeal. He would have been
more picturesque if he had been well galvanized by Chauvin, but less
useful. His mind, though powerful, could work in only one way, which
was in orderly motions. These prevented him from dwelling so much on
his country’s wrongs that he forgot his country’s faults. For this
reason, and because he could have no heated bearings in his mental
processes, he was Filipinas’s greatest asset. In “Noli Me Tangere” he
showed that he understood well the native defects (products of the
System) and would spare them no more than he spared the friars. But it
was for his countrymen’s good that he rebuked them, like a wise father
correcting his children; and whatever might be his employments he never
forgot two great vital visions, Filipinas fast bound in the
prison-house and education tardily on its way to set her free.
With the same purpose of helping this good angel the sooner to smite
the prison locks, he now set himself an unusual task. He was to master
French; not after the fashion of the schools, for that he already had,
nor for the mere pleasure of acquiring it, but to be able to write in
it as if it were his native tongue. He knew what he was about in this;
if his novels should fail to arouse the Filipinos he was determined to
appeal to Europe in behalf of his country, and he conceived that he
could best do this in French. Therefore with indefatigable ardor he
pursued the French verb and the other phenomena of Gallic speech into
their remotest fastnesses. He took what might be called
post-postgraduate work in these arid excursions, employing the help of
unusual scholars and including colloquial French with French of the
Academy. When we come upon the fact that at the end of these labors he
was able to prepare as a text-book for French students a volume of
French exercises [122] we may perceive that his success was out of the
ordinary.
In Paris when the exposition of 1889 came on he was struck with the
fact that in that vast and imposing procession of the children of earth
his own people, whom he felt and knew to be as worthy as the others,
had no place. Therefore he organized an international league to make
known to the world the facts about the Filipinos and to refute the
slanders that Spanish writers had sown thickly in European literature.
He called this society the “Association Internationale des
Philippinistes.” Dr. Blumentritt was president, Dr. Rost
vice-president, and Dr. Planchut of Paris one of the directors. [123]
If Rizal was a nationalist, he was also an internationalist; a fact
that must be already apparent in these annals. No doubt, being wise
about other things, he was not deceived into thinking that
internationalism could come by any other than the nationalist route.
The first of the declared objects of his Association Internationale was
to summon an international congress. Others were to study the
Philippines historically and scientifically, to create a Philippine
library and museum of Philippine objects, to publish books on
Philippine topics, and to arouse public interest in these objects.
That the world looked with some disdain upon his people, that under the
spell of the Spanish pen it ignored the honorable record of Philippine
culture and the stirring Philippine history, were thorns that gave his
mind no rest. None knew so well as he that this misprision was rankly
unjust. In the face of almost universal opinion in Europe, he knew that
the Malay mind, though different, was not inferior; he knew that what
it wanted was no more than the sunlight and free air. In all ways the
general verdict was askew: the Filipinos were not even innately lazy,
as hundreds of writers had asserted, hundreds still repeated, and
doubtless other hundreds will continue to parrot for years to come. He
knew that lazy people could never have made the progress the Filipino
had made before the evil day of the Spanish flag. The respect he had
for the latent powers of his countrymen sprang from research and not
from prejudice. It was true enough, but not a truth that he could keep
refrigerated in scientific abstractions. It burned and struggled in him
like something fighting to get free, and he relieved himself of an
intolerable protest by writing (for “La Solidaridad”) a brochure on the
subject.
“The Indolence of the Filipino” [124] it is called, and, if he had
written nothing else, thoughtful men would still admire him for the
cool, masterly marshaling of his reasonings in this. He purposes to
deal with the truth. “Let us calmly examine the facts,” he says in
beginning, “using on our part all the impartiality of which a man is
capable who is convinced that there is no redemption except upon solid
bases of virtue.” Two pages later he says:
Examining well, then, all the scenes and all the men that we have
known from childhood, and examining the life of our country, we
believe that indolence does exist there. The Filipinos, who can
measure up with the most active peoples in the world, will
doubtless not repudiate this admission, for it is true that in the
Philippines one works and struggles against the climate, against
nature, and against man. But we must not take the exception for the
general rule, and should rather seek the good of our country by
stating what we believe to be true. We must confess that indolence
does actually and positively exist there, only that, instead of
holding it to be the cause of the backwardness and the troubles of
the country, we regard it as the effect of the troubles and the
backwardness, by the fostering of a lamentable predisposition....
[125]
The predisposition exists. Why should it not?
A hot climate requires of the individual quiet and rest, just as
cold invites to labor and action. For this reason the Spaniard is
more indolent than the Frenchman, the Frenchman more indolent than
the German. The Europeans themselves that so liberally reproach the
residents of the colonies (and I am not now speaking of the
Spaniards but of the Germans and English themselves), how do they
live in tropical countries? Surrounded with a numerous train of
servants, never going about but riding in a carriage, needing
servants not only to take off their shoes for them but even to fan
them! And yet they live and eat better, they work for themselves,
they look for riches, they hope for a future, free and respected,
while the poor colonist, the indolent colonist, is badly nourished,
has no hope, toils for others, and works under force and
compulsion!