The hero of the Filipinos The story of José Rizal, poet, patriot and martyr
had been broken. The letter was never sent.
None the less, Rizal and Josephine continued to regard themselves as
plighted, and after a time in Hong-Kong Mr. Taufer was won over to
consent to their union. Josephine went to Manila, where she made the
acquaintance of Rizal’s mother and sisters. She was about to start for
Dapitan to renew the attempt to gain the sanction of the church when in
a conversation Mrs. Mercado reminded her that there were two views of
this proceeding. It was doubtful if the bishop could be induced to
think well of the marriage; but even if he could his permission would
then be regarded as evidence of compromise on Rizal’s part. In the
opinion of many of his countrymen he enlisted against the church when
he enrolled against the friars; since the religious orders had come to
control the ecclesiastic as well as the political administration, the
distinction between church and friar was to some minds fairly vague.
Mrs. Mercado desired that nothing should weaken her son’s influence; a
constancy from which we may surmise of what fighting stock she came.
She knew that anything that looked like compromise would hearten his
enemies and dismay his friends. Therefore, she suggested a civil
marriage, the church to be ignored. Civil marriages and even common-law
marriages were now authorized by the laws of Spain, and, if not yet
decreed in the islands, were legally binding there. [193]
This advice the lovers deemed good when Josephine reached Dapitan and
reported it; there was no more talk of a dispensation from the bishop
of Cebu. A marriage ceremony was performed by the simple device of the
taking of hands before witnesses and the registering of their mutual
vows.
Rizal’s stout-hearted mother succeeded about this time in winning
permission to visit her son; later came two of his sisters. Their
presence revived in him the hope he had once cherished of uniting his
family in a spot where, after so much of strife and grief, they might
begin life afresh and be free from the friars that were the landlords
and rulers of Biñan and Calamba. He could see no reason why Mindanao
should not be well adapted to their needs. Government could not urge
against such a plan the objection it used against the North Borneo
project; Mindanao was Philippine territory. He wrote to Despujol asking
for the necessary permits and received a chilly answer reminding him
that he was an exile and an outcast and in no position to seek favors
of his Government. Steady persistence in the face of whatever rebuff
was one of Rizal’s strongest traits; the man seemed as incapable of
discouragement as George Washington was; and the philosophical reader
of history may well consider the appearance of this quality in three
men that founded three nations, William the Silent, Washington, and
Rizal, and inquire whether in value to the world this possession did
not overtop all others. With one cherished hope crushed, he turned to
another. He set himself to improve agriculture in the region where he
had been marooned; he showed the farmers how they could raise better
crops and get better prices for them. From the United States, where in
his travels he had observed with interest the latest agricultural
inventions, he imported modern farm machinery, using it upon his own
place and teaching its use to others. It has been the lot of few men to
lead lives of such varied use to their fellows. He seemed to go through
the world with eyes observing whatever was done around him and mind
considering how it could be done better.
Meantime, in Manila great changes had been at work, of which he knew
nothing. The discontent of the people, always growing, had begun to
find a new expression. Another leader had arisen, in all ways different
from Rizal except in this that he, too, was an inevitable product of
the attempt to force upon a people a distasteful sovereignty. It has
been much the fashion, particularly with writers of a scholastic bent
or reactionary sympathy (which is probably the same thing), to speak
ill of Andrés Bonifacio. If we desire a just estimate of the forces
that worked in diverse ways for Philippine freedom, we are not to
dismiss this man lightly [194] nor to speak of him with disrespect.
Successful revolutions demand the man that thinks and the man that
acts, Mazzinis and Garibaldis, Jeffersons and Washingtons. Rizal was
the Mazzini of the Philippine struggle; Bonifacio was its Garibaldi.
He was born in the working-class, was almost wholly self-educated, and
at the time he began to be powerful in Philippine destiny was a porter
in a maritime warehouse of Manila. In his youth he developed a passion
for reading; he read when other persons slept, ate, or idled. By
diligent study in the night-time he acquired a knowledge of history and
its philosophy that in a man of his handicaps and employment was not
less than marvelous and alone would have indicated a phenomenal
capacity. [195] He studied deeply the stories of other peoples
oppressed, the Israelites in Egypt, the Dutch under Spain, the American
colonies under England, the French under their monarchical system, and
formulated from these a church militant of democratic faith and
principles of which he was first the acolyte and then the devout
minister. In the end it mastered all his thought and waking hours and
became essentially his life. Something of the great truth he saw
clearly that the substance of all real progress in civilization has
been progress in democracy, and for the most part this has been won by
hard blows, rude encounters, and illimitable sacrifices. He caught a
glimpse of the magical stimulus that came to the world from the
successive emancipations of the American and the French peoples and
another glimpse of the probable effect of a similar emancipation on his
own. Upon the condition of those countrymen of his, dragging at a chain
that stifled in them all mental vitality with all self-respect, he
stared with growing impatience while he burned and fretted for another
Bunker Hill and another Yorktown.
He was of somewhat violent passions and such deficiencies in
self-control as were to have been expected from his experiences and
inadequate training. Nevertheless, he had great sincerity, a mind of
extraordinary fertility, and a readiness for swift decision and action.
He showed himself to be indomitable when wholly concentered upon the
one cause; and his contribution to it is not now to be disparaged
because he happened to come no nearer the academic walk than Lincoln
came.
When Rizal, lured from Hong-Kong by false promises of safety, landed in
Manila, Bonifacio was twenty-nine years old. He had long revolved in
his mind the fact so patent to all observing Filipinos that the first
step to their freedom must be unity. About the time Rizal was founding
his Liga Filipina, Bonifacio was formulating another and much more
portentous union. The two were launched about the same time; one in the
open, the other in the dark and with the utmost secrecy. Bonifacio
called his society the Kataastaasang Kagalanggalangang Katipunan ng̃ mg̃a
Anak ng̃ Bayan, which being interpreted means Supreme Most Respected
Association of the Sons of the People. For brevity’s sake the long
unwieldy name soon came to be shortened into K.K.K. or the Katipunan,
and so remains in history. Bonifacio shaped it like a masonic lodge,
with a ritual, passwords, grips, and the swearing of fealty and
silence. Its avowed object was the overthrowing by force of the Spanish
power and the establishing of the Philippine nation, free and
independent.
It appears now that the name of Rizal was used as an honorary president
of this society, [196] but wholly without his authority or even
knowledge. For this unwarranted use Bonifacio was much to blame. It is
likely that he found at first some difficulty in securing recruits and
took advantage of Rizal’s great popularity. Either so, or what seems
more probable to us, he expected to have Rizal’s support for the
Katipunan when it should have grown to formidable size. In either case,
the course was inexcusable. But we are to remember that Bonifacio,
warring against the most unprincipled and ruthless of powers, believed
he was justified in using any weapons that came to his hand.
Month after month the Katipunan spread among the disgusted and restless
Filipinos—secretly, always; and we are to surmise that the care with
which the movement was to be concealed until the instant of the blow
recommended it to people smarting under a Government so obese and still
so viciously protected. How long this Government was ignorant of what
was going on nobody knows. If the vast network of spies and agents
provocateurs, with which Spanish, like Russian, rule was maintained,
brought in no hint of the mine that was being driven beneath the feet
of the governing class, the spies must have made their first recorded
failure, and that concerning the one thing most important to their
employers. Filipinos, one may say, had not so known these ever busy
birds of ill omen.
The deportation of Rizal gave to the Katipunan a great impetus; the
masses of people bitterly resented the cowardice and perfidy that had
contrived at last to drag down the popular champion. At first they knew
no way to voice their protest. The Katipunan relieved them of their
uncertainty; it was the weapon thrust into their hands. A year went by
under this slowly darkening sky; then two years. Rizal was at Dapitan;
it seemed likely he would remain there until his last day, for nothing
would soften the hatred with which the friars and patricians regarded
him, and their word was the country’s law. Yet if he could be brought
back in the character of a revolutionary leader the whole country would
rise behind him. Ingenious minds brooded upon the ease with which he
could be rescued. Only a small force of troops guarded Dapitan; it
could be overpowered by a handful of resolute men. Rizal’s habit was to
take long canoe journeys alone around the coast, pursuing his
scientific inquiries; of his own will he would never violate his
parole, but suppose he should be seized and carried off by force? He
could then be picked up by a British mail-steamer, be landed at
Singapore, and be free. Intimations of these plans were conveyed to
him: he vetoed all of them. It was his word of honor that he had given
never to attempt to escape; not even with the least connivance at a
rescue would he taint his word; not even by allowing other men to
entertain a thought that his faith could be tainted; and not even in
dealing with a Government that had dealt perfidiously with him.
Bonifacio, looking into the faces of his people, believed more strongly
every day that the time to strike was near at hand, and every day he
longed the more for the active assistance of Rizal. [197] He knew well
enough the danger his movement stood in and how that danger increased
hour by hour as knowledge of what was afoot spread and could be
therefore the less easily controlled. At last he went to the length of
sending an emissary to see Rizal, to lay before him the plans for the
revolution and to ask his help. The messenger chosen was Pio
Valenzuela, a name afterwards famous and honored among his countrymen.
To disguise the real object of his visit he took with him a blind man
upon whom, it was pretended, Rizal was to perform an operation. Helped
by this ruse, the messenger had a fair chance to talk freely with the
exile.
What took place at their meeting was long in dispute. Enemies of
Philippine independence have asserted that in wrathfully rejecting
Bonifacio’s appeal Rizal declared himself against any effort for
national freedom. This is in accordance with a common process of
over-emphasizing (for propaganda effect) Rizal’s dislike of force and