The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere
cataract from one of her eyes, an achievement which no doubt formed
the basis of marvelous tales. But the misfortunes of his people were
ever the paramount consideration, so he wrote to the Captain-General
requesting permission to remove his numerous relatives to Borneo to
establish a colony there, for which purpose liberal concessions had
been offered him by the British government. The request was denied,
and further stigmatized as an "unpatriotic" attempt to lessen the
population of the Philippines, when labor was already scarce. This
was the answer he received to a reasonable petition after the homes
of his family, including his own birthplace, had been ruthlessly
destroyed by military force, while a quarrel over ownership and rents
was still pending in the courts. The Captain-General at the time was
Valeriano Weyler, the pitiless instrument of the reactionary forces
manipulated by the monastic orders, he who was later sent to Cuba to
introduce there the repressive measures which had apparently been so
efficacious in the Philippines, thus to bring on the interference of
the United States to end Spain's colonial power--all of which induces
the reflection that there may still be deluded casuists who doubt
the reality of Nemesis.
Weyler was succeeded by Eulogio Despujols, who made sincere attempts to
reform the administration, and was quite popular with the Filipinos. In
reply to repeated requests from Rizal to be permitted to return to
the Philippines unmolested a passport was finally granted to him and
he set out for Manila. For this move on his part, in addition to the
natural desire to be among his own people, two special reasons appear:
he wished to investigate and stop if possible the unwarranted use of
his name in taking up collections that always remained mysteriously
unaccounted for, and he was drawn by a ruse deliberately planned and
executed in that his mother was several times officiously arrested
and hustled about as a common criminal in order to work upon the
son's filial feelings and thus get him back within reach of the
Spanish authority, which, as subsequent events and later researches
have shown, was the real intention in issuing the passport. Entirely
unsuspecting any ulterior motive, however, in a few days after his
arrival he convoked a motley gathering of Filipinos of all grades of
the population, for he seems to have been only slightly acquainted
among his own people and not at all versed in the mazy Walpurgis
dance of Philippine politics, and laid before it the constitution
for a _Liga Filipina_ (Philippine League), an organization looking
toward greater unity among the Filipinos and coöperation for economic
progress. This _Liga_ was no doubt the result of his observations in
England and Germany, and, despite its questionable form as a secret
society for political and economic purposes, was assuredly a step in
the right direction, but unfortunately its significance was beyond
the comprehension of his countrymen, most of whom saw in it only an
opportunity for harassing the Spanish government, for which all were
ready enough.
All his movements were closely watched, and a few days after his
return he was arrested on the charge of having seditious literature
in his baggage. The friars were already clamoring for his blood, but
Despujols seems to have been more in sympathy with Rizal than with
the men whose tool he found himself forced to be. Without trial Rizal
was ordered deported to Dapitan, a small settlement on the northern
coast of Mindanao. The decree ordering this deportation and the
destruction of all copies of his books to be found in the Philippines
is a marvel of sophistry, since, in the words of a Spanish writer of
the time, "in this document we do not know which to wonder at most: the
ingenuousness of the Governor-General, for in this decree he implicitly
acknowledges his weakness and proneness to error, or the candor of
Rizal, who believed that all the way was strewn with roses." [11]
But it is quite evident that Despujols was playing a double game,
of which he seems to have been rather ashamed, for he gave strict
orders that copies of the decree should be withheld from Rizal.
In Dapitan Rizal gave himself up to his studies and such medical
practice as sought him out in that remote spot, for the fame of his
skill was widely extended, and he was allowed to live unmolested
under parole that he would make no attempt to escape. In company
with a Jesuit missionary he gathered about him a number of native
boys and conducted a practical school on the German plan, at the same
time indulging in religious polemics with his Jesuit acquaintances by
correspondence and working fitfully on some compositions which were
never completed, noteworthy among them being a study in English of
the Tagalog verb.
But while he was living thus quietly in Dapitan, events that were to
determine his fate were misshaping themselves in Manila. The stone had
been loosened on the mountain-side and was bounding on in mad career,
far beyond his control.
III
He who of old would rend the oak,
Dream'd not of the rebound;
Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke
Alone--how look'd he round?
BYRON.
Reason and moderation in the person of Rizal scorned and banished,
the spirit of Jean Paul Marat and John Brown of Ossawatomie rises to
the fore in the shape of one Andres Bonifacio, warehouse porter, who
sits up o' nights copying all the letters and documents that he can lay
hands on; composing grandiloquent manifestoes in Tagalog; drawing up
magnificent appointments in the names of prominent persons who would
later suffer even to the shedding of their life's blood through his
mania for writing history in advance; spelling out Spanish tales of
the French Revolution; babbling of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity;
hinting darkly to his confidants that the President of France had begun
life as a blacksmith. Only a few days after Rizal was so summarily
hustled away, Bonifacio gathered together a crowd of malcontents and
ignorant dupes, some of them composing as choice a gang of cutthroats
as ever slit the gullet of a Chinese or tied mutilated prisoners in
ant hills, and solemnly organized the _Kataastaasang Kagalang-galang
Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan_, "Supreme Select Association of the
Sons of the People," for the extermination of the ruling race and
the restoration of the Golden Age. It was to bring the people into
concerted action for a general revolt on a fixed date, when they
would rise simultaneously, take possession of the city of Manila,
and--the rest were better left to the imagination, for they had been
reared under the Spanish colonial system and imitativeness has ever
been pointed out as a cardinal trait in the Filipino character. No
quarter was to be asked or given, and the most sacred ties, even of
consanguinity, were to be disregarded in the general slaughter. To
the inquiry of a curious neophyte as to how the Spaniards were
to be distinguished from the other Europeans, in order to avoid
international complications, dark Andres replied that in case of
doubt they should proceed with due caution but should take good care
that they made no mistakes about letting any of the _Castilas_ escape
their vengeance. The higher officials of the government were to be
taken alive as hostages, while the friars were to be reserved for a
special holocaust on Bagumbayan Field, where over their incinerated
remains a heaven-kissing monument would be erected.
This Katipunan seems to have been an outgrowth from Spanish
freemasonry, introduced into the Philippines by a Spaniard named
Morayta and Marcelo H. del Pilar, a native of Bulacan Province who was
the practical leader of the Filipinos in Spain, but who died there in
1896 just as he was setting out for Hongkong to mature his plans for a
general uprising to expel the friar orders. There had been some masonic
societies in the islands for some time, but the membership had been
limited to Peninsulars, and they played no part in the politics of the
time. But about 1888 Filipinos began to be admitted into some of them,
and later, chiefly through the exertions of Pilar, lodges exclusively
for them were instituted. These soon began to display great activity,
especially in the transcendental matter of collections, so that their
existence became a source of care to the government and a nightmare to
the religious orders. From them, and with a perversion of the idea in
Rizal's still-born _Liga_, it was an easy transition to the Katipunan,
which was to put aside all pretense of reconciliation with Spain,
and at the appointed time rise to exterminate not only the friars
but also all the Spaniards and Spanish sympathizers, thus to bring
about the reign of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, under the benign
guidance of Patriot Bonifacio, with his bolo for a scepter.
With its secrecy and mystic forms, its methods of threats and
intimidation, the Katipunan spread rapidly, especially among the
Tagalogs, the most intransigent of the native peoples, and, it should
be noted, the ones in Whose territory the friars were the principal
landlords. It was organized on the triangle plan, so that no member
might know or communicate with more than three others--the one above
him from whom he received his information and instructions and two
below to whom he transmitted them. The initiations were conducted with
great secrecy and solemnity, calculated to inspire the new members
with awe and fear. The initiate, after a series of blood-curdling
ordeals to try out his courage and resolution, swore on a human skull
a terrific oath to devote his life and energies to the extermination
of the white race, regardless of age or sex, and later affixed to
it his signature or mark, usually the latter, with his own blood
taken from an incision in the left arm or left breast. This was one
form of the famous "blood compact," which, if history reads aright,
played so important a part in the assumption of sovereignty over the
Philippines by Legazpi in the name of Philip II.
Rizal was made the honorary president of the association, his
portrait hung in all the meeting-halls, and the magic of his name
used to attract the easily deluded masses, who were in a state of
agitated ignorance and growing unrest, ripe for any movement that
looked anti-governmental, and especially anti-Spanish. Soon after
the organization had been perfected, collections began to be taken
up--those collections were never overlooked--for the purpose of
chartering a steamer to rescue him from Dapitan and transport him to
Singapore, whence he might direct the general uprising, the day and
the hour for which were fixed by Bonifacio for August twenty-sixth,
1896, at six o'clock sharp in the evening, since lack of precision
in his magnificent programs was never a fault of that bold patriot,
his logic being as severe as that of the Filipino policeman who put
the flag at half-mast on Good Friday.
Of all this Rizal himself was, of course, entirely ignorant, until
in May, 1896, a Filipino doctor named Pio Valenzuela, a creature of
Bonifacio's, was despatched to Dapitan, taking along a blind man as a
pretext for the visit to the famous oculist, to lay the plans before
him for his consent and approval. Rizal expostulated with Valenzuela
for a time over such a mad and hopeless venture, which would only bring
ruin and misery upon the masses, and then is said to have very humanly
lost his patience, ending the interview "in so bad a humor and with
words so offensive that the deponent, who had gone with the intention
of remaining there a month, took the steamer on the following day, for
return to Manila." [12] He reported secretly to Bonifacio, who bestowed