The Philippines a Century Hence
six millions of people should be brutalized, exploited and oppressed,
denied light and the rights inherent to a human being, and then heap
upon them slights and insults. There is no claim of gratitude that
can excuse, there is not enough powder in the world to justify, the
offenses against the liberty of the individual, against the sanctity
of the home, against the laws, against peace and honor, offenses that
are committed there daily. There is no divinity that can proclaim
the sacrifice of our dearest affections, the sacrifice of the family,
the sacrileges and wrongs that are committed by persons who have the
name of God on their lips. No one can require an impossibility of the
Filipino people. The noble Spanish people, so jealous of its rights
and liberties, can not bid the Filipinos renounce theirs. A people
that prides itself on the glories of its past can not ask another,
trained by it, to accept abjection and dishonor its own name!
We who today are struggling by the legal and peaceful means of debate
so understand it, and with our gaze fixed upon our ideals, shall not
cease to plead our cause, without going beyond the pale of the law,
but if violence first silences us or we have the misfortune to fall
(which is possible, for we are mortal), then we do not know what
course will be taken by the numerous tendencies that will rush in to
occupy the places that we leave vacant.
If what we desire is not realized....
In contemplating such an unfortunate eventuality, we must not turn
away in horror, and so instead of closing our eyes we will face what
the future may bring. For this purpose, after throwing the handful
of dust due to Cerberus, let us frankly descend into the abyss and
sound its terrible mysteries.
IV.
History does not record in its annals any lasting domination exercised
by one people over another, of different race, of diverse usages and
customs, of opposite and divergent ideals.
One of the two had to yield and succumb. Either the foreigner was
driven out, as happened in the case of the Carthaginians, the Moors
and the French in Spain, or else these autochthons had to give way
and perish, as was the case with the inhabitants of the New World,
Australia and New Zealand.
One of the longest dominations was that of the Moors in Spain, which
lasted seven centuries. But, even though the conquerors lived in the
country conquered, even though the Peninsula was broken up into small
states, which gradually emerged like little islands in the midst
of the great Saracen inundation, and in spite of the chivalrous
spirit, the gallantry and the religious toleration of the califs,
they were finally driven out after bloody and stubborn conflicts,
which formed the Spanish nation and created the Spain of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries.
The existence of a foreign body within another endowed with strength
and activity is contrary to all natural and ethical laws. Science
teaches us that it is either assimilated, destroys the organism,
is eliminated or becomes encysted.
Encystment of a conquering people is impossible, for it signifies
complete isolation, absolute inertia, debility in the conquering
element. Encystment thus means the tomb of the foreign invader.
Now, applying these considerations to the Philippines, we must
conclude, as a deduction from all we have said, that if their
population be not assimilated to the Spanish nation, if the dominators
do not enter into the spirit of their inhabitants, if equable laws and
free and liberal reforms do not make each forget that they belong to
different races, or if both peoples be not amalgamated to constitute
one mass, socially and politically homogeneous, that is, not harassed
by opposing tendencies and antagonistic ideas and interests, some
day the Philippines will fatally and infallibly declare themselves
independent. To this law of destiny can be opposed neither Spanish
patriotism, nor the love of all the Filipinos for Spain, nor the
doubtful future of dismemberment and intestine strife in the Islands
themselves. Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows,
and necessity is the resultant of physical forces set in operation
by ethical forces.
We have said and statistics prove that it is impossible to exterminate
the Filipino people. And even were it possible, what interest would
Spain have in the destruction of the inhabitants of a country she
can not populate or cultivate, whose climate is to a certain extent
disastrous to her? What good would the Philippines be without
the Filipinos? Quite otherwise, under her colonial system and
the transitory character of the Spaniards who go to the colonies,
a colony is so much the more useful and productive to her as it
possesses inhabitants and wealth. Moreover, in order to destroy the
six million Malays, even supposing them to be in their infancy and
that they have never learned to fight and defend themselves, Spain
would have to sacrifice at least a fourth of her population. This we
commend to the notice of the partizans of colonial exploitation.
But nothing of this kind can happen. The menace is that when the
education and liberty necessary to human existence are denied by
Spain to the Filipinos, then they will seek enlightenment abroad,
behind the mother country's back, or they will secure by hook or
by crook some advantages in their own country, with the result that
the opposition of purblind and paretic politicians will not only be
futile but even prejudicial, because it will convert motives for love
and gratitude into resentment and hatred.
Hatred and resentment on one side, mistrust and anger on the other,
will finally result in a violent and terrible collision, especially
when there exist elements interested in having disturbances, so that
they may get something in the excitement, demonstrate their mighty
power, foster lamentations and recriminations, or employ violent
measures. It is to be expected that the government will triumph
and be generally (as is the custom) severe in punishment, either
to teach a stern lesson in order to vaunt its strength or even to
revenge upon the vanquished the spells of excitement and terror
that the danger caused it. An unavoidable concomitant of those
catastrophes is the accumulation of acts of injustice committed
against the innocent and peaceful inhabitants. Private reprisals,
denunciations, despicable accusations, resentments, covetousness,
the opportune moment for calumny, the haste and hurried procedure of
the courts martial, the pretext of the integrity of the fatherland
and the safety of the state, which cloaks and justifies everything,
even for scrupulous minds, which unfortunately are still rare, and
above all the panic-stricken timidity, the cowardice that battens upon
the conquered--all these things augment the severe measures and the
number of the victims. The result is that a chasm of blood is then
opened between the two peoples, that the wounded and the afflicted,
instead of becoming fewer, are increased, for to the families and
friends of the guilty, who always think the punishment excessive
and the judge unjust, must be added the families and friends of the
innocent, who see no advantage in living and working submissively
and peacefully. Note, too, that if severe measures are dangerous in
a nation made up of a homogeneous population, the peril is increased
a hundred-fold when the government is formed of a race different from
the governed. In the former an injustice may still be ascribed to one
man alone, to a governor actuated by personal malice, and with the
death of the tyrant the victim is reconciled to the government of
his nation. But in a country dominated by a foreign race, even the
justest act of severity is construed as injustice and oppression,
because it is ordered by a foreigner, who is unsympathetic or is
an enemy of the country, and the offense hurts not only the victim
but his entire race, because it is not usually regarded as personal,
and so the resentment naturally spreads to the whole governing race
and does not die out with the offender.
Hence the great prudence and fine tact that should be exercised
by colonizing countries, and the fact that government regards the
colonies in general, and our colonial office in particular, as training
schools, contributes notably to the fulfillment of the great law that
the colonies sooner or later declare themselves independent.
Such is the descent down which the peoples are precipitated. In
proportion as they are bathed in blood and drenched in tears and gall,
the colony, if it has any vitality, learns how to struggle and perfect
itself in fighting, while the mother country, whose colonial life
depends upon peace and the submission of the subjects, is constantly
weakened, and, even though she make heroic efforts, as her number is
less and she has only a fictitious existence, she finally perishes. She
is like the rich voluptuary accustomed to be waited upon by a crowd of
servants toiling and planting for him, and who, on the day his slaves
refuse him obedience, as he does not live by his own efforts, must die.
Reprisals, wrongs and suspicions on one part and on the other
the sentiment of patriotism and liberty, which is aroused in these
incessant conflicts, insurrections and uprisings, operate to generalize
the movement and one of the two peoples must succumb. The struggle
will be brief, for it will amount to a slavery much more cruel than
death for the people and to a dishonorable loss of prestige for the
dominator. One of the peoples must succumb.
Spain, from the number of her inhabitants, from the condition of her
army and navy, from the distance she is situated from the Islands,
from her scanty knowledge of them, and from struggling against a people
whose love and good will she has alienated, will necessarily have to
give way, if she does not wish to risk not only her other possessions
and her future in Africa, but also her very independence in Europe. All
this at the cost of bloodshed and crime, after mortal conflicts,
murders, conflagrations, military executions, famine and misery.
The Spaniard is gallant and patriotic, and sacrifices everything,
in favorable moments, for his country's good. He has the intrepidity
of his bull. The Filipino loves his country no less, and although he
is quieter, more peaceful, and with difficulty stirred up, when he
is once aroused he does not hesitate and for him the struggle means
death to one or the other combatant. He has all the meekness and all
the tenacity and ferocity of his carabao. Climate affects bipeds in
the same way that it does quadrupeds.
The terrible lessons and the hard teachings that these conflicts will
have afforded the Filipinos will operate to improve and strengthen
their ethical nature. The Spain of the fifteenth century was not the
Spain of the eighth. With their bitter experience, instead of intestine
conflicts of some islands against others, as is generally feared,
they will extend mutual support, like shipwrecked persons when they
reach an island after a fearful night of storm. Nor may it be said
that we shall partake of the fate of the small American republics. They
achieved their independence easily, and their inhabitants are animated
by a different spirit from what the Filipinos are. Besides, the danger
of falling again into other hands, English or German, for example,
will force the Filipinos to be sensible and prudent. Absence of
any great preponderance of one race over the others will free their
imagination from all mad ambitions of domination, and as the tendency
of countries that have been tyrannized over, when they once shake off
the yoke, is to adopt the freest government, like a boy leaving school,