Blake Clinton Y.

Dy / February 10, 2007

Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippines, 1840-1910

Throughout Philippine history it has been assumed that it was the enlightened middle

class was at the leading edge of the fight for freedom against the foreign oppressor.

These Illustrados or enlightened, termed so for their wealth and exposure to western

thought and education articulated the desire of the Filipino people for sovereignty

and freedom with such verve and verboseness that eventually our colonizers

acquiesced to our cries and relinquished their claims to our land. Rizal, Aguinaldo,

Quezon, Roxas at the feet of these names are laid the honor of having paved the way

for our countrys attainment of independence at least that is what they would have

you believe. The truth of the matter is that to give sole credit to these Illustrados

would be playing in to their deceptions and doing a grand disservice to those

thousands who fought valiantly against long odd and died in the name of kalayaan

during the bloody revolutions of the colonial era. In truth the quest for freedom was

hardly a homogenous endeavor, there was no grand ideal that all Filipinos strove for

rather there were dozens of disparate groups from all walks and classes hoping to

achieve some ever so mutable state of kalayaan. The groups would sometimes

cooperate and as many times compete with one another until through many years of

back stabbing, deal making and conflict we arrive at the clumsy contraption that we

call freedom today.

 This is the driving thought of Iletos work Pasyon and Revolution., the fact that

the Filipino experience of revolution and freedom is not one straight and unified

experience but instead it is the slapstick amalgamation of the millions of peoples actions

and ideals rather than the few clean decisive strokes perpetrated by an elite and oft times

overvalued few. His goal in this study, as he makes it plainly clear to us in his

introductory chapter is to shed light on those below the Illustrado class to produce what

he called A History from Below. This study attempts to give us a look at how the

masses experienced the revolution, what were the motivating factors behind their fight

for freedom, how did they go about achieving their goals and what was their idea of

freedom in the first place. Ileto accomplishes this by undertaking a historical analysis of

various texts produced during the time such as correspondences between revolutionary

groups, constabulary reports and seditionist literature and then cross referencing them

with the generally accepted histories under the scrutiny of the Marxist perspective.
In the first two chapters of his work Ileto makes it blatantly apparent that the

motivating factors for revolution by the Illustrados and the masses could not be more

divergent. Whereas the wealthy elite were driven primarily by Western political

thought and economic concerns the masses were ironically enough motivated by

religion. Ileto points out the Pasyon in particular or should we say the masses radical

interpretation thereof as playing a substantial part as to the formation of the spiritual

component of the revolution. While the elite would decry the Pasyon as a tool of

oppression by the friars in spreading a message of meekness and submission among

the populace, the masses on the other hand viewed the plight of the Christ as parallel

to their own lives and that his persecutors were likened to ironically to the friars and

elite who authored the piece in the first place. In effect the Pasyon could very well

be considered the first piece of Marixst literature to achieve wide readership in the

country, spreading a message that extolled the values of community, brotherhood and

the simple life. It then comes to no surprise that revolutions of the time would take

their lead from the Pasyon and folk tales such as Bernardo Carpio to organize

themselves along religious lines with groups being led by various self proclaimed

holy men and messiahs

Their organization along religious lines did not end there, revolutionaries also put

into practice the rituals of the ideas that motivated them to revolt in the first place.

This manifested itself in the various odd practices that these groups took to heart, the

most blatant of which was their belief in the anting-anting and the strange rituals that

each group practiced the most well known of which was the initiation rituals of the

KKK. While our colonizers have been quick to dismiss these superstitions as

nothing more than courage building exercises undertaken by suicidal fanatics to

Filipinos this was something more complex. Throughout Iletos work the theme of

the loob is quite recurrent, essentially the Filipino sought to cultivate self-

discipline, asceticism and prayer his inner self and consequently harness the anting-

anting or gain access to supernatural powers to vanquish his enemies. More so than

supernatural power the loob also speaks of a persons character and his temporal

fortunes, every victory or defeat is attributed to how well developed is a persons

loob thus a leader seeks to surround himself with objects that would enhance his loob

such as anting-antings, reliquaries and the like. A flagging cause speaks of leader

whos loob is declining while those who meet success are those who have an inner

liwanag that will triumph above all else this further bolstered by the fact that in their

belief death is but the gateway to Heavy as evinced by certain pasyons incorporating

the Garden of Eden into their scripts. Thus their followers are more than willing to

brave a hailstorm of bullets with nothing more than bolos and lengths of rope where

in such cases the elite would have capitulated and ran due to their overriding concern

for their won status and well being. It is there supreme confidence in their loob that

gives them such courage or some would say foolhardiness against such long odds.
 Another trait by which such movements distinguish themselves from those led by

Illustrados is their very definition of freedom. Whereas the elite would define it as the

peace and sovereignty of the country under their beneficent rule the masses had a

differing idea on the matter, termed by Ileto as the Kalayaan Ideal. For the masses

freedom meant brotherhood, community and a return to the state of paradise similar to

that of the Garden of Eden, essentially the ideal state of life preached by the communist

ideology. This division is what hindered the Filipino struggle for independence for the

elite would not deign to help the masses achieve such a goal as it was to their detriment to

do so. In fact they would go so far as to work with the colonial rulers in stamping out

such movements for they formed a credible threat to their power. This schism was

dramatically illustrated by Aguinaldo ordering the execution of Bonifacio in the aim of

preserving the predominantly Illustrado led Malolos government. Such a trend would

continue into the American period of domination where leaders such as Sakay and

Malvar would be defeated by American forces with the aid of Illustrado traitors while

people such as Quezon and Roxas supposedly heroes today would be continually decried

as false kings who colluded with the enemy.

In the end of the more than 70 years of conflict it would eventually be the Illustrados

who would emerge as the victors and be the ones to shape the future of the country

heralding the extinction of the ideals of the Katipunan. However despite being the

defeated the more than 70 years of revolution has proven that while they are simple

folk the masses are capable of going beyond their station to attempt to actualize a

certain objective and a certain future. While majority of their movements eventually

faltered during the revolutions those that built on the masses aspirations as well as

their political and economic situations were the ones that achieved any lasting effect.

The labels of uneducated, stupid, fanatic and like are merely but methods by which

the better classes and out of the limelight put them down but as the revolutions have

illustrated it is impossible to simply ignore them. To achieve true Kalayaan it is

imperative that we listen to the voices from below.