PROPAGANDA MOVEMENT

The Propaganda Movement was a cultural organization formed in 1872 by Filipino expatriates in Europe. Composed
of the Filipino elite called "ilustrados", exiled liberals and students attending Europe's universities gravitated to the
movement.

La Solidaridad, a bi-weekly Spanish language broadsheet, became the platform for intelligent discourse on economic,
cultural, political, and social conditions of the country.

The organization aimed to increase Spanish awareness of the needs of its colony, the Philippines and labored to
bring about:

1. Recognition of the Philippines as a province of Spain;

2. Representation of the Philippines in the Cortes Generales, the Spanish parliament;
3. Secularization of Philippine parishes;
4. Legalization of Spanish and Filipino equality;
5. Equal opportunity for Filipinos and Spanish to enter government service;
6. Creation of a public school system independent of the friars;
7. Abolition of the polo (labor service) and vandala (forced sale of local products to the government);
8. Guarantee of basic freedoms of speech and association;
9. Recognition of human rights
The Propagandists
 José Alejandrino
 Anastacio Carpio
 Graciano López Jaena, publisher of La Solidaridad
 Marcelo H. del Pilar - the editor and co-publisher of the La Solidaridad and wrote under the name "Plaridel"
 Eduardo de Lete
 Antonio Novicio Luna - wrote for La Solidaridad under the name "Taga-Ilog"
 Juan Novicio Luna - painter and sculptor
 Miguel Moran
 Jose Maria Panganiban - wrote for La Solidaridad under the name "Jomapa"
 Pedro Ignacio Paterno - served as prime minister of the first Philippine Republic
 Mariano Ponce - wrote for La Solidaridad under the name "Tikbalang"
 Antonio Maria Regidor
 Isabelo Jr. L. delos Reyes
 Dr. Jose Rizal - author of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, wrote for La Solidaridad under the name
"Laon Laan"
Friends of the Movement
 Ferdinand Blumentritt - Austrian ethnologist

Miguel Sagrario Morayta - Spanish historian, university professor and statesman)

The Propaganda Movement

The Propaganda Movement (1872-1892) was the first Filipino nationalist movement, led by a Filipino elite and
inspired by the protonationalist activism of figures such as José Burgos and by his execution at the hands of colonial
authorities. Propagandists were largely young men, often mestizos and creoleswhose families could afford to send
them to study in Spanish universities in Madrid and Barcelona. There, they encountered the tumult of 19 th century
political movements inspired by Enlightenment thought, individual rights, constitutionalism, and anti-clericalism.
It was an assimilationist movement in that the propagandists—many of whom were of half Spanish parentage and
saw themselves as inheritors of Spanish civilization—believed that the Philippines should be fully incorporated into
Spain as a Spanish province and not merely as a colony, with Filipinos granted the same citizenship rights accorded
to Spanish citizens. Second, it sought the expulsion of the Spanish friars from the Philippines and the empowerment
of a native Filipino clergy. Lastly, as a cultural movement, it showcased the writing and artistic production of the
young Filipino elite as a means of demonstrating their intellectual sophistication, on par with their Spanish peers.

The Propaganda Movement targeted the Spanish government and public, but as an elite movement failed to engage
with the wider Filipino population. The Spanish government was little interested in the conditions of the Philippines,
particularly with the immense political foment in the Spanish political environment, and the movement ultimately
received scant support and made little headway in Spain. The propagandists themselves were considered to be
rebels at home in the Philippines, and many were exiled. Despite its overall failure, the movement generated a
political consciousness that fed into the nationalist revolution of 1896 and the struggle for independence that followed.

Sources:
John N. Schumacher, The Propaganda Movement, 1880-1895: The Creation of a Filipino Consciousness, The
Making of the Revolution (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2000),