The Social Cancer: A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere
_teniente-mayor_: Senior lieutenant, the senior member of the town
council and substitute for the gobernadorcillo.
_tikas-tikas_: A variety of canna bearing bright red flowers.
_tertiary brethren_: Members of a lay society affiliated with a
regular monastic order, especially the Venerable Tertiary Order of
the Franciscans.
_timbaín_: The "water-cure," and hence, any kind of torture. The
primary meaning is "to draw water from a well," from _timba_, pail.
_tikbalang_: An evil spirit, capable of assuming various forms,
but said to appear usually in the shape of a tall black man with
disproportionately long legs: the "bogey man" of Tagalog children.
_tulisan_: Outlaw, bandit. Under the old régime in the Philippines the
tulisanes were those who, on account of real or fancied grievances
against the authorities, or from fear of punishment for crime,
or from an instinctive desire to return to primitive simplicity,
foreswore life in the towns "under the bell," and made their homes
in the mountains or other remote places. Gathered in small bands with
such arms as they could secure, they sustained themselves by highway
robbery and the levying of blackmail from the country folk.
_zacate_: Native grass used for feeding livestock.
NOTES
[1] Quoted by Macaulay: _Essay on the Succession in Spain_.
[2] The ruins of the _Fuerza de Playa Honda, ó Real de Paynavén_, are
still to be seen in the present municipality of Botolan, Zambales. The
walls are overgrown with rank vegetation, but are well preserved, with
the exception of a portion looking toward the Bankal River, which has
been undermined by the currents and has fallen intact into the stream.
[3] _Relation of the Zambals_, by Domingo Perez, O.P.; manuscript
dated 1680. The excerpts are taken from the translation in Blair and
Robertson, _The Philippine Islands_, Vol. XLVII, by courtesy of the
Arthur H. Clark Company, Cleveland, Ohio.
[4] _"Estadismo de las Islas Filipinas, ó Mis Viages por Este Pais_,
por Fray Joaquin Martinez de Zuñiga, Agustino calzado." Padre Zuñiga
was a parish priest in several towns and later Provincial of his
Order. He wrote a history of the conquest, and in 1800 accompanied
Alava, the _General de Marina_, on his tours of investigation looking
toward preparations for the defense of the islands against another
attack of the British, with whom war threatened. The _Estadismo_,
which is a record of these journeys, with some account of the rest of
the islands, remained in manuscript until 1893, when it was published
in Madrid.
[5] Secular, as distinguished from the regulars, i.e., members of
the monastic orders.
[6] Sinibaldo de Mas, _Informe sobre el estado de las Islas Filipinas
en 1842_, translated in Blair and Robertson's _The Philippine Islands_,
Vol. XXVIII, p. 254.
[7] _Sic_. St. John xx, 17.
[8] This letter in the original French in which it was written is
reproduced in the _Vida y Escritos del Dr. José Rizal_, by W. E. Retana
(Madrid, 1907).
[9] _Filipinas dentro de Cien Años_, published in the organ of the
Filipinos in Spain, _La Solidaridad_, in 1889-90. This is the most
studied of Rizal's purely political writings, and the completest
exposition of his views concerning the Philippines.
[10] An English version of _El Filibusterismo_, under the title _The
Reign of Greed_, has been prepared to accompany the present work.
[11] "Que todo el monte era orégano." W.E. Retana, in the appendix to
Fray Martinez de Zuñiga's _Estadismo_, Madrid, 1893, where the decree
is quoted. The rest of this comment of Retana's deserves quotation
as an estimate of the living man by a Spanish publicist who was at
the time in the employ of the friars and contemptuously hostile
to Rizal, but who has since 1898 been giving quite a spectacular
demonstration of waving a red light after the wreck, having become his
most enthusiastic, almost hysterical, biographer: "Rizal is what is
commonly called a character, but he has repeatedly demonstrated very
great inexperience in the affairs of life. I believe him to be now
about thirty-two years old. He is the Indian of most ability among
those who have written."
[12] From Valenzuela's deposition before the military tribunal,
September sixth, 1896.
[13] _Capilla_: the Spanish practise is to place a condemned person
for the twenty-four hours preceding his execution in a _chapel_, or
a cell fitted up as such, where he may devote himself to religious
exercises and receive the final ministrations of the Church.
[14] But even this conclusion is open to doubt: there is no proof
beyond the unsupported statement of the Jesuits that he made a written
retraction, which was later destroyed, though why a document so
interesting, and so important in support of their own point of view,
should not have been preserved furnishes an illuminating commentary
on the whole confused affair. The only unofficial witness present was
the condemned man's sister, and her declaration, that she was at the
time in such a state of excitement and distress that she is unable to
affirm positively that there was a real marriage ceremony performed,
can readily be accepted. It must be remembered that the Jesuits were
themselves under the official and popular ban for the part they had
played in Rizal's education and development and that they were seeking
to set themselves right in order to maintain their prestige. Add to
this the persistent and systematic effort made to destroy every scrap
of record relating to the man--the sole gleam of shame evidenced in
the impolitic, idiotic, and pusillanimous treatment of him--and the
whole question becomes such a puzzle that it may just as well be left
in darkness, with a throb of pity for the unfortunate victim caught
in such a maelstrom of panic-stricken passion and selfish intrigue.
[15] A similar picture is found in the convento at Antipolo.--_Author's
note_.
[16] A school of secondary instruction conducted by the Dominican
Fathers, by whom it was taken over in 1640. "It had its first beginning
in the house of a pious Spaniard, called Juan Geronimo Guerrero,
who had dedicated himself, with Christian piety, to gathering orphan
boys in his house, where he raised, clothed, and sustained them, and
taught them to read and to write, and much more, to live in the fear
of God."--Blair and Robertson, _The Philippine Islands_, Vol. XLV,
p. 208.--TR.
[17] The Dominican friars, whose order was founded by Dominic de
Guzman.--TR.
[18] In the story mentioned, the three monks were the old Roman god
Bacchus and two of his satellites, in the disguise of Franciscan
friars,--TR.
[19] According to a note to the Barcelona edition of this novel,
Mendieta was a character well known in Manila, doorkeeper at
the Alcaldía, impresario of children's theaters, director of a
merry-go-round, etc.--TR.
[20] See Glossary.
[21] The "tobacco monopoly" was established during the administration
of Basco de Vargas (1778-1787), one of the ablest governors Spain
sent to the Philippines, in order to provide revenue for the local
government and to encourage agricultural development. The operation
of the monopoly, however, soon degenerated into a system of "graft"
and petty abuse which bore heartily upon the natives (see Zuñiga's
_Estadismo_), and the abolition of it in 1881 was one of the heroic
efforts made by the Spanish civil administrators to adjust the archaic
colonial system to the changing conditions in the Archipelago.--TR.
[22] As a result of his severity in enforcing the payment of sums
due the royal treasury on account of the galleon trade, in which
the religious orders were heavily interested, Governor Fernando de
Bustillos Bustamente y Rueda met a violent death at the hands of a
mob headed by friars, October 11, 1719. See Blair and Robertson,
_The Philippine Islands_, Vol. XLIV; Montero y Vidal, _Historia
General de Filipinas_, Vol. I, Chap. XXXV.--TR.
[23] A reference to the fact that the clerical party in Spain refused
to accept the decree of Ferdinand VII setting aside the Salic law
and naming his daughter Isabella as his successor, and, upon the
death of Ferdinand, supported the claim of the nearest male heir,
Don Carlos de Bourbon, thus giving rise to the Carlist movement. Some
writers state that severe measures had to be adopted to compel many
of the friars in the Philippines to use the feminine pronoun in their
prayers for the sovereign, just whom the reverend gentlemen expected
to deceive not being explained.--TR.
[24] An apothegm equivalent to the English, "He'll never set any
rivers on fire."--TR.
[25] The name of a Carlist leader in Spain.--TR.
[26] A German Franciscan monk who is said to have invented gunpowder
about 1330.
[27] "He says that he doesn't want it when it is exactly what he
does want." An expression used in the mongrel Spanish-Tagalog
'market language' of Manila and Cavite, especially among the
children,--somewhat akin to the English 'sour grapes.'--TR.
[28] Arms should yield to the toga (military to civil power). Arms
should yield to the surplice (military to religious power),--TR.
[29] For _Peninsula_, i.e., Spain. The change of _n_ to _ñ_ was common
among ignorant Filipinos.--TR.
[30] The syllables which constitute the first reading lesson in
Spanish primers.--TR.
[31] A Spanish colloquial term ("cracked"), applied to a native of
Spain who was considered to be mentally unbalanced from too long
residence in the islands,--TR.
[32] This celebrated Lady was first brought from Acapulco, Mexico,
by Juan Niño de Tabora, when he came to govern the Philippines in
1626. By reason of her miraculous powers of allaying the storms she was
carried back and forth in the state galleons on a number of voyages,
until in 1672 she was formally installed in a church in the hills
northeast of Manila, under the care of the Augustinian Fathers. While
her shrine was building she is said to have appeared to the faithful in
the top of a large breadfruit tree, which is known to the Tagalogs as
"antipolo"; hence her name. Hers is the best known and most frequented
shrine in the country, while she disputes with the Holy Child of Cebu
the glory of being the wealthiest individual in the whole archipelago.
There has always existed a pious rivalry between her and the
Dominicans' Lady of the Rosary as to which is the patron saint of the
Philippines, the contest being at times complicated by counterclaims
on the part of St. Francis, although the entire question would seem
to have been definitely settled by a royal decree, published about
1650, officially conferring that honorable post upon St. Michael the
Archangel (San Miguel). A rather irreverent sketch of this celebrated
queen of the skies appears in Chapter XI of Foreman's _The Philippine
Islands_.--TR.
[33] Santa Cruz, Paco, and Ermita are districts of Manila, outside
the Walled City.--TR.
[34] John xviii. 10.
[35] A town in Laguna Province, noted for the manufacture of
furniture.--TR.
[36] God grant that this prophecy may soon be fulfilled for the author
of the booklet and all of us who believe it. Amen.--_Author's note_.
[37] "Blessed are the poor in spirit" and "blessed are the
possessors."--TR.
[38] The annual celebration of the Dominican Order held in October in
honor of its patroness, the Virgin of the Rosary, to whose intervention
was ascribed the victory over a Dutch fleet in 1646, whence the
name. See _Guía Oficial de Filipinas_, 1885, pp. 138, 139; Montero
y Vidal, _Historia General de Filipinas_, Vol. I, Chap. XXIII; Blair
and Robertson, _The Philippine Islands_, Vol. XXXV, pp. 249, 250.--TR.
[39] Members of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, whose chief
business is preaching and teaching. They entered the Philippines
in 1862.--TR.