The Philippines a Century Hence
ease, welfare, name, for the sake of an aspiration or a conceit,
sometimes scientific, or of some other nature, but at the least word
which wounds his self-love he forgets all his sacrifices, the labor
expended, to treasure in his memory and never forget the slight he
thinks he has received.
So the Philippine peoples have remained faithful during three
centuries, giving up their liberty and their independence, sometimes
dazzled by the hope of the Paradise promised, sometimes cajoled by
the friendship offered them by a noble and generous people like the
Spanish, sometimes also compelled by superiority of arms of which
they were ignorant and which timid spirits invested with a mysterious
character, or sometimes because the invading foreigner took advantage
of intestine feuds to step in as the peacemaker in discord and thus
later to dominate both parties and subject them to his authority.
Spanish domination once established, it was firmly maintained, thanks
to the attachment of the people, to their mutual dissensions, and
to the fact that the sensitive self-love of the native had not yet
been wounded. Then the people saw their own countrymen in the higher
ranks of the army, their general officers fighting beside the heroes
of Spain and sharing their laurels, begrudged neither character,
reputation nor consideration; then fidelity and attachment to Spain,
love of the fatherland, made of the native, encomendero [1] and even
general, as during the English invasion; then there had not yet been
invented the insulting and ridiculous epithets with which recently
the most laborious and painful achievements of the native leaders
have been stigmatized; not then had it become the fashion to insult
and slander in stereotyped phrase, in newspapers and books published
with governmental and superior ecclesiastical approval, the people
that paid, fought and poured out its blood for the Spanish name,
nor was it considered either noble or witty to offend a whole race,
which was forbidden to reply or defend itself; and if there were
religious hypochondriacs who in the leisure of their cloisters dared
to write against it, as did the Augustinian Gaspar de San Agustin and
the Jesuit Velarde, their loathsome abortions never saw the light,
and still less were they themselves rewarded with miters and raised
to high offices. True it is that neither were the natives of that time
such as we are now: three centuries of brutalization and obscurantism
have necessarily had some influence upon us, the most beautiful work
of divinity in the hands of certain artisans may finally be converted
into a caricature.
The priests of that epoch, wishing to establish their domination over
the people, got in touch with it and made common cause with it against
the oppressive encomenderos. Naturally, the people saw in them greater
learning and some prestige and placed its confidence in them, followed
their advice, and listened to them even in the darkest hours. If
they wrote, they did so in defense of the rights of the native and
made his cry reach even to the distant steps of the Throne. And not a
few priests, both secular and regular, undertook dangerous journeys,
as representatives of the country, and this, along with the strict
and public residencia [2] then required of the governing powers,
from the captain-general to the most insignificant official, rather
consoled and pacified the wounded spirits, satisfying, even though
it were only in form, all the malcontents.
All this has passed away. The derisive laughter penetrates like
mortal poison into the heart of the native who pays and suffers and
it becomes more offensive the more immunity it enjoys. A common sore,
the general affront offered to a whole race, has wiped away the old
feuds among different provinces. The people no longer has confidence
in its former protectors, now its exploiters and executioners. The
masks have fallen. It has seen that the love and piety of the past
have come to resemble the devotion of a nurse who, unable to live
elsewhere, desires eternal infancy, eternal weakness, for the child in
order to go on drawing her wages and existing at its expense; it has
seen not only that she does not nourish it to make it grow but that
she poisons it to stunt its growth, and at the slightest protest she
flies into a rage! The ancient show of justice, the holy residencia,
has disappeared; confusion of ideas begins to prevail; the regard
shown for a governor-general, like La Torre, becomes a crime in
the government of his successor, sufficient to cause the citizen to
lose his liberty and his home; if he obey the order of one official,
as in the recent matter of admitting corpses into the church, it is
enough to have the obedient subject later harassed and persecuted in
every possible way; obligations and taxes increase without thereby
increasing rights, privileges and liberties or assuring the few in
existence; a regime of continual terror and uncertainty disturbs the
minds, a regime worse than a period of disorder, for the fears that
the imagination conjures up are generally greater than the reality;
the country is poor; the financial crisis through which it is passing
is acute, and every one points out with the finger the persons who
are causing the trouble, yet no one dares lay hands upon them!
True it is that the Penal Code has come like a drop of balm to such
bitterness. [3] But of what use are all the codes in the world, if by
means of confidential reports, if for trifling reasons, if through
anonymous traitors any honest citizen may be exiled or banished
without a hearing, without a trial? Of what use is that Penal Code,
of what use is life, if there is no security in the home, no faith in
justice and confidence in tranquility of conscience? Of what use is
all that array of terms, all that collection of articles, when the
cowardly accusation of a traitor has more influence in the timorous
ears of the supreme autocrat than all the cries for justice?
If this state of affairs should continue, what will become of the
Philippines within a century?
The batteries are gradually becoming charged and if the prudence
of the government does not provide an outlet for the currents that
are accumulating, some day the spark will be generated. This is
not the place to speak of what outcome such a deplorable conflict
might have, for it depends upon chance, upon the weapons and upon
a thousand circumstances which man can not foresee. But even though
all the advantage should be on the government's side and therefore
the probability of success, it would be a Pyrrhic victory, and no
government ought to desire such.
If those who guide the destinies of the Philippines remain obstinate,
and instead of introducing reforms try to make the condition of
the country retrograde, to push their severity and repression to
extremes against the classes that suffer and think, they are going
to force the latter to venture and put into play the wretchedness
of an unquiet life, filled with privation and bitterness, against
the hope of securing something indefinite. What would be lost in
the struggle? Almost nothing: the life of the numerous discontented
classes has no such great attraction that it should be preferred
to a glorious death. It may indeed be a suicidal attempt--but then,
what? Would not a bloody chasm yawn between victors and vanquished,
and might not the latter with time and experience become equal in
strength, since they are superior in numbers, to their dominators? Who
disputes this? All the petty insurrections that have occurred in the
Philippines were the work of a few fanatics or discontented soldiers,
who had to deceive and humbug the people or avail themselves of
their power over their subordinates to gain their ends. So they all
failed. No insurrection had a popular character or was based on a
need of the whole race or fought for human rights or justice, so it
left no ineffaceable impressions, but rather when they saw that they
had been duped the people bound up their wounds and applauded the
overthrow of the disturbers of their peace! But what if the movement
springs from the people themselves and bases its cause upon their woes?
So then, if the prudence and wise reforms of our ministers do not find
capable and determined interpreters among the colonial governors and
faithful perpetuators among those whom the frequent political changes
send to fill such a delicate post; if met with the eternal it is out
of order, proffered by the elements who see their livelihood in the
backwardness of their subjects; if just claims are to go unheeded, as
being of a subversive tendency; if the country is denied representation
in the Cortes and an authorized voice to cry out against all kinds
of abuses, which escape through the complexity of the laws; if, in
short, the system, prolific in results of alienating the good will
of the natives, is to continue, pricking his apathetic mind with
insults and charges of ingratitude, we can assert that in a few years
the present state of affairs will have been modified completely--and
inevitably. There now exists a factor which was formerly lacking--the
spirit of the nation has been aroused, and a common misfortune, a
common debasement, has united all the inhabitants of the Islands. A
numerous enlightened class now exists within and without the Islands,
a class created and continually augmented by the stupidity of certain
governing powers, which forces the inhabitants to leave the country,
to secure education abroad, and it is maintained and struggles thanks
to the provocations and the system of espionage in vogue. This class,
whose number is cumulatively increasing, is in constant communication
with the rest of the Islands, and if today it constitutes only the
brain of the country in a few years it will form the whole nervous
system and manifest its existence in all its acts.
Now, statecraft has various means at its disposal for checking a people
on the road to progress: the brutalization of the masses through
a caste addicted to the government, aristocratic, as in the Dutch
colonies, or theocratic, as in the Philippines; the impoverishment
of the country; the gradual extermination of the inhabitants; and
the fostering of feuds among the races.
Brutalization of the Malayan Filipino has been demonstrated to be
impossible. In spite of the dark horde of friars, in whose hands rests
the instruction of youth, which miserably wastes years and years
in the colleges, issuing therefrom tired, weary and disgusted with
books; in spite of the censorship, which tries to close every avenue
to progress; in spite of all the pulpits, confessionals, books and
missals that inculcate hatred toward not only all scientific knowledge
but even toward the Spanish language itself; in spite of this whole
elaborate system perfected and tenaciously operated by those who
wish to keep the Islands in holy ignorance, there exist writers,
freethinkers, historians, philosophers, chemists, physicians, artists
and jurists. Enlightenment is spreading and the persecution it suffers
quickens it. No, the divine flame of thought is inextinguishable
in the Filipino people and somehow or other it will shine forth and
compel recognition. It is impossible to brutalize the inhabitants of
the Philippines!
May poverty arrest their development?
Perhaps, but it is a very dangerous means. Experience has everywhere
shown us and especially in the Philippines, that the classes
which are better off have always been addicted to peace and order,
because they live comparatively better and may be the losers in
civil disturbances. Wealth brings with it refinement, the spirit of
conservation, while poverty inspires adventurous ideas, the desire to