La Solidaridad Democratic Fortnightly Year I Barcetona, Fesruary 15, 1889 No.1 ‘SUBSCRIPTIONRATES In Spain, 3 months 0.75 pesetas ‘tn foreign lands and colonies 1.25 esetas [EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES Plaza de Buensuceso, No. 5, Ist floor. ‘Advertisements and Notices at agreed prices Single copy 15 centavos OUR AIMS ‘We shall be remiss in a duty, a very funda- ‘mental act of courtesy if at the start of our task we do not extend sincere greetings publicly to the Spanish press in general and to the press of Barcelona in particular. Confident are we that they will receive our modest publication with kindness and affection. In times like ours when there are newspa- pers to suit everybody's taste and reviews with all kinds of information, itis not correct to say that we join the press to fill a vacuum. We only aspire and hope for a place along the line so that we can share with them the agonies of the struggle, the anguish of battle which increas- ingly sustain with audacious courage the Span- press. Modest, very modest indeed are our aspira~ tions. Our program aside from being harmless is very simple; to fight all reaction, to hinder all steps backward, to applaud and to accept all liberal ideas, and to defend progress; in brief, lo be a propagandist above all of ideals of democracy so that these might reign over all nations here and beyond the seas. The aims therefore of La Solidaridad are defined: to gather, to collect liberal ideas which are daily exposed in the camp of poli- ties, in the fields of science, arts, letters, com- iculture, and industry. merce, ay We shall also discuss all problems which eal with the general interest of the nation, seeking solutions that are purely national and democratic. ‘The Spanish overseas provinces will find in La Solidaridad a zealous supporter of their just and lawful aspirations, an organ which will voice their needs and make them public, which will expose the evils which afflict those far- away places so that these conditions may be remedied. It will be fair in discussing and judging the political and economic problems which becloud Cuban and Puerto Rican skies. Itwill expose fearlessly and dispassionately the disease that corrupts those societies, all phases of corruption which undermine justice and retard the economic development of our precious Antilles whose present state and whose future are the concern of all parties and administrators, Its political program therefore with respect {o the colonies is not limited to any particular field nor to any school of thought. We shall pay special attention to the Philip- pines because those islands need the most help hhaving been deprived of representation in the Cortes, We shall thus fulfill our patriotic duty in the defense of democracy in those islands, ‘That nation of eight million souls should not and must not be the exclusive patrimony of theocracy and conservatism. ofI, 25, February 15, 1890 TO HIS EXCELLENCY MR, VICENTE BARRANTES Your Excellency: ‘The honor which Your Excellency bestows ‘on me in bothering yourself with my person and with Noli me fangere in the Section on the Span ish Colonies (La Espaia Moderna, January 1890, Vol. XIII), and some innuendoes and at. tacks therein which were directed either against me or against the ideas divulged in my book, give me the right to answer you, if only 10 defend myself and place things in their true light. Far from taking offense at the tone of your work, sometimes acrimonious, but always condescending and even degenerating into the language of a headmaster, | feel honored up to a certain point, for frankly, | expected a cruder and more vitriolic attack (though perhaps less malignant), considering the literary exchange Your Excellency and I had previously and ac- ccustomed, as 1 am, to read the license in speech of journalists in my country. Your ponderous tone and your advice soften me and I find them natural in one like Your Excellency, who is a member of the Spanish Royal Academy and the Academy of History-two lofty positions from which the insignificant writers like myself who, in order to write must do so in a borrowed tongue, must appear like pygmies or ants. ‘The entire thesis and synthesis on pages 177, 178, 179, 180, and 181 are reduced to this: that I had indulged in inconsistencies, that {am “a bundle of inconsistencies,” because in one part of my Noli me tangere, the Captain-General was telling my hero that he was “the first man with whom he had talked in that country” and that Tater, I, Rizal, in LA SOLIDARIDAD asked for reforms for my people. And for this, Your Excellency, you call me “a novelist of his own sins, a bundle of inconsistencies.” Your Excel- lency says that my style is very bad. Please note that these words are not mine. May God protect me from becoming a “novelist of the sins” of Your Excellency! If Your Excellency, who tells me frankly that I have not cited more than one concrete Person speaking of unjust friars, could not find in my writing any other inconsistency but this; | in truth I should consider myself twice blessed: first for being more consistent than the Bible, the Gospels, the Popes, and all mortals; and second, for witnessing the miracle of the bread and fishes corrected and augmented. | You Excellency makes of this what you call a “bun- dle of inconsistencies.” If instead of being a writer Your Excellency were to be a factory 63 laborer or a manufacturer, Holy God, how goods would be multiplied! But let us examine this terrible inconsist- ency: Your Excellency writes on page 177 “ . - » Even Quioquiap does not have such a low regard of Filipinos that you have, neither did he dare put into the mouth of the captain-general those cruel words addressed to the hero of the Noli me tangere~'Mr. Ibarra, you are the first man I have talked to in this country.” You do not even consider your countrymen as men, Mr. Rizal! A great injustice that, I repeat, a Span- iard would not commit or even less a Christian etc.” (Is the best Christian less than the last Spaniard, Mr. Barrantes' And I say: such deduction a native, not even a Tagalog would obtain! Because in order to make a syllogism that will stand on four legs— as the Dominicans say-and draw a conclusion out of one premise, it is necessary to presume: (1) that the captain-gencral and I are equals (1 ‘am not trying to deprive Your Excellency of his superiority); (2) that the captain-general had talked to al Filipinos before talking to Mr. Ibarra; (3) that in each conversation His Ex- cellency knew his interpreter very well; and (4) that His Excellency would never exaggerate. Ido not know, Your Excellency, if the acad- emicians ambarum demorum have proclaimed rule that the ideas expressed by the characters in a novel must be precisely the same convic- tions of the author and not those fitted to them under the circumstances, beliefs, customs, education and feelings. The good Father Jose Rodriguez abounds in the ideas of Your Excel- lency or vice versa (the position of the factors do not alter the product); but up to the present, the above-mentioned friar is not an academician that I know of, and even were he one, two academicians do not constitute a majority on learned societies; and even if such a rule be made, it would not have an ex post facto appli- cation. I might well be that Your Excellency acquired rary conviction from your deal- ings with the friars since some ideas of yours, some phrases like those calling me ai “ex- horter,” a “novelist of my sins,” etc., show traces of convent influence and seem to be the same ones of Father Rodriguez himself. Stil unable to give liberties to my country, I give them to my characters and I allow my captain- ‘general to say whatever he wishes to say with- ert fear of retaliation, Moreover, [have leamed from writers of prose and poetry rules of the type they call mixed, wherein different charac- ters and the author himself fuse and mingle. However, attribute to the characters what they themselves say and to me what I say in the narrative. Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's, Maybe this is to0 much to ask. I shall be contentU, 25, February 15, 1890 jth being told whether or not my ch; have life and distinct personalities; wheites not they act and talk according to their roles and their different ways of thinking; and never mind my own convictions. But franseat, let us adopt awhile the Rodriguez-Barrantes rule. Iam the spirit, I am the same captain-general; I talked to all the Fill pinos, I knew them and not until I talked to [oarra did I find a single man. All right then what literary rule would Your Excellency adopt now to rescind the statement that Ibarra applies, tomy incontrovertible words? Because if Vous Excellency read the succeeding lines, you would not have committed that great injustice which a Spaniard, not even a Christian would commit, nor would he write such statements that are like digressions of those who write about what does not exist. In fact Ibarra replies in the next paragraph: “Your Excellency has only seen those who live in the city; you have not geen the maligned huts in our towris. Your Excellency might have seen then real men, if to be a man, all that are needed are a generous heart and simple cus- toms.” ‘Who speaks for Ibarra now, my good sir? Is it Your Excellency? If so, then what of the Rodriguez-Barrantes rule? And why does Your Excellency say later, on page 180, that Ibarra and Rizal are one and the same thing? Are we ‘or are we not? I do not wish to attribute to bad faith this manner of quoting which Your Excel- leney employs, accusing me of unfair and keeping silent about the reply that is found precisely in the next line. ‘This is deceiving the people, pure and simple. Your Excellency had been Civil Governor and Director of the Admin- istration in my country for many years; you have maturity, experience, and positions, and you belong to the superior and privileged race; Tam an outcast, a poor expatriate, a poor writer with a very bad style, a “bundle of inconsisten- cies,” and unexperienced youth of an enslaved race and in spite of all this, 1 shall try to give you an advice in exchange for those fatherly ‘ones you give me: When one has the posi and the aspirations of Your Excellency one ‘must write with more honesty and sincerity; one should not adopt the tricks of the common man, because as Your Excellency says, “it is not edu- cation that is the best measure nor the exclusive attribute of man, but goodness and morality. What you say of man can also be applied to the critic and to the historian. oe In the same manner I find highly objection- able what you say about me on page 179: that Ucall carpenters the simple artists of Santa Cruz and of Paete. Where, my good Sir? How could Your Excellency take the phrase “carpentry- shops of Paete” on page 27 of my Noli me ‘angere to mean the Sculptors" shops of Santa Cuz? Do you think that the suburbs of Santa Cruz are inside the carpentry-shops of that town in my province? Your Excellency in another Work of yours placed Colombo inside of Ceylon and now has Your Excellency done it to put me ina bad light before my people or does not Your Exe lency know how to read so that now you wish to appear a defender of the natives who remem- ber many things about Your Excellency? Thus you also quoted Father Rodriguez, yet follow- ing this method, even the Holy Ghost himself could come and write and I shall still assure that he would be criticized. Your Excellency doubts my love of truth because in some things Jam not in agreement with you, Your Excel- lency in fact deals with truth in your own way and you monopolize it But going back to the cruel words of my general, I shall admit that they are cruel, very Cruel indeed, but they are not false to the char- acter of the one talking. Your Excellency talks with more cruelty on page 180 and in spite of the fact that you are a Spaniard and a Christian and despite the fact that you already have the sarcasm of my general before your eyes. You say: “As a matter of fact, though I sought tire- lessly with the same Diogenes lantern through- out the Archipelago and with betier eyes, no doubt, because of my knowledge than’ the blessed General had, | found only one man and he was you, sir, because Ibarra and Rizal are one ‘and the same—identical.” Let us end this: Did Your Excellency find him? Did you find more men? If Your Excel- lency found what you sought, why should we talk then of the tirelessness of the very same lantern of Diogenes (a common lamp used by the Civil Guard)? And if you did not find him, why talk of your superior sense of smell com- pared to my general who was neither tireless nor going about looking for his man all over the Archipelago, nor had he a lantern of even the Middle Ages? Would Your Excellency have wished me to regard you as the type of my caplain-general? Why should we talk then of cruel words? Your Excellency who in all your works expressed the greatest hatred of my race and my country; who always expressed joy in seeing us suffer, would want to come out now as a defender of the natives? To what depths has our misfortune fallen when we have to be defended by those who had insulted u Who is being inconsistent? If 1 am to be called “a bundle of inconsistencies” perhaps itM, 25, February 15, 1899 js because I have a good stock mind. What is strange that a captain-general who is used to spending his three years in an atmos hereof vanity and veneration, surrounded by Fars and interested persons, knows not the inhabitants of the country when you yourself ig spite of your many accomplishments, dona know them= Your Excellency who is rot courted by friars but courted them? And tell me who is the sane man who will want to place himself near a captain-general of the Philippines and talk freely and frankly with him when be knows that the peace of his household can be upsel by dysentery or a nervous indigestion of ifs Excelleney? “And it musts borne in mind that in the Philippines, dysenteries and nervous indigestions are common among certain classes. Uknow of a brother-in-law of mine who is now exiled for the second time without him or the eneral having met once, without being in: formed of the accusation, without knowing what crime he had been charged save the fact that he is my brother-in-law. I, myself, “the man,” the Ibarra of Your Excellency (I know not why you take me so because I am neither rich, nor a ™estizo, nor orphan, nor do Ibarra’s ideas co- incide with mine) on two oceasions presented myself at the palace of Malacaang; and did so to my regret. The first time in 1880 because I was mauled and wounded one dark night by the Civil Guard. I passed by a bundle and did not salute; the bundle turned out to be a lieutenant who commanded the detachment. I was treach- erously wounded on the shoulder without 2 word of explanation. I went to Mr. Primo de Rivera; I neither saw His Excellency nor did 1 even receive redress... And the second time was in 1887 when I was called by Mr. Terrero {o answer the accusations and charges that were being made against me for my work. Well then, how many thousands and thousands of persons, more honorable and worthier that Ibarra and myself have seen even the tip of the hair or the bald pate of His Excellency? And you, Sir, who is regarded as one who knows the Archipelago— fo how many have you spoken? Do you know the spirit of the nation? “If you do, you would Tot say that I am “a soul perverted by a German ication” because what in me is alive I had since childhood-before | learned even a word of jerman. My soul is “perverted” because | was Cducated seeing injustices and abuses every- Where; because since childhood | have seen many suffer meekly and because I, 100, suf- feted. My “perverted soul” is the outcome of that constant vision of an ideal morality that {iclds to a stark reality of abuses, arbitrariness, )Pocrisy, farce, violence, perfidy, and other wile passions. Thus “perverted” is my soul but Of yours in my 67 0 are the souls of hundred-thousands of Filic pinos, who have not as yet left their miserable homes; who speak no language other than their Own. If they should write or express their sen- iments, my Noli me tangere would, in compari- Son to their works, appear very small indeed. Theit volumes would suffice to build pyramids on the tombs of all tyrants... Yes, Sit, you are right: Noli me sangere is @ satire and hot an apology. Yes, | described the social cancers of my country. There are Cepicted in it “despair and blackness” because {see much infamy in my country-there where the poor match the weak in number. I confess that I found it painful to expose so much that Was shameful and degrading but in making the picture my heart’s blood, | wanted to Correct the evils and save the rest. Quioquiap with whom Your Excellency compares me, 0 doubt in order to humiliate me and make me hateful in the eyes of my countrymen, described native customs to insult and humiliate an entire Tace; to ridicule and make fun of it, frat slike you do, generalizations out of secondary’ and Temote premises. But | portrayed the good alongside the bad. I described an Elias and a Tasio because the Eliases and the Tasios exist, exist, and exist, even if the thought pains you, Only you and your eo-believers, fearing tha the little good I described might entice the bad to form themselves, cry out that it is false, po- etic, exaggerated, idealistic, impossible, im- probable, and | know not what else. would see only the bad so that the nation might be humbled and humiliated; because unable to rise themselves they wish to have those around them sink, so that in this manner, they might appear great and exalicd. There is, yes, much corruption there, perhaps more than in any other part of the world, but this is so because to the natural filth of the earth were added the wastes of transient birds and the jetsam that the sea leaves on the shore, And Because this corrup- tion exists, I wrote my Noli me tangere; | ask for reforms so that the little good there is can be saved and the bad, redeemed. If my country were a republic like Plato’s, 1 would not have written the Noli me tangere, nor would it have achieved the success it had; neither would re- forms be necessary for who likes medicines when one fecls well? But Your Excellency wanted to trap me by default with your invention on page 179, claim- ing that in my Noli me tangere there are no men who need the liberal reforms I ask in “The Phil. ippines a Century Hence.” { see that Your Ex- caltency has not read the whole book, but this I do not deplore because it was not written for you. However, since you wished to be its critic and an infallible one, you should have read itI, 25, February 15, 1800 all, in order not to waste time by asking foolish questions. Your Excellency asks seriously: What have you been silent so long? What better way than the novel to proclaim to the world your wonders?” ‘The greatest wonder is the effrontery of your Excellency who imagines one thing and takes it as the truth from which all inferences thet occur to anyone should be made. Well then, my dear Sit, those persons I talked about in “Tie Philippines a Century Hence” are found on pages 290 and 291 and I do not quote the material here, for 1 do not wish to waste time and paper. The whole world can read about them. This movement which has reached even the remote corners of the provinces so that ever the philosopher Tasio had noticed it ten or twelve years ago-the time of my novel-has pro. duced the people of today, but this outcome, based on the chronology of events, Your Excel! leney refers toas inconsistent. Your Excellency has also called the natives of Ceylon, Malays, has placed Santa Cruz in Paete and Colombo 1 know not where, May Your Excellency profit from this procedure! Your Excellency now cites the names of Anacleto de! Rosario, Isabelo de los Reyes, and Arellano. You could cite more, if you knew the country and the people better and would not begrudge us our little national glories. I could cite you in addition a Leon Guerrero, a Zamora, a Joaquin Garrido, a Jose Luna, a Regino Garcia, del Pilar, Mariano Sevilla, Pedro Serrano, etc., but we are not concerned here with making a list of men who are worthy. ‘There are and enough of them. Your Excel- Iency asks for historians, independent thinkers, ‘and philosophers. Of the first, though they are ‘not members of the Royal Academy of History, there are like Isabelo de los Reyes who has not written Guerras Piraticas (Wars Against Pi- rates), but who, nevertheless, deserves credit for the thoroughness of his works. As for tell- ing you the name of the independent thinkers and philosophers, may the Good Lord guard me from falling into the net. Rather! as the English Would say; not even the name of the province. We know well enough about the persecutions and malicious lies that Francisco Rodriguez 1¥as the object of, while he was living and after death, because he had the reputation of ing an “independent thinker.” Your Excel- lency is quite tricky asking me for the works of Philosophers. How about censorship? Work {hat it might be abolished and | promise that the First books will be dedicated to you. Inquire into the number of copies being sold of the Gals of Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, iu; Sue, Dumas, Lamartine, Thiers, Aiguals 4 Izco, ete., and from the demand, you will 69 have an idea of the number of consumers. Here is how your thesis amounts to: 1am a bundle of inconsistencies because to Your Ex- cellency it is thus you want me to appear and ‘use you see inconsistencies in everything. Does Your Excellency wear glasses which give ©pposite views? Or does Your Excellency natu- rally have this characteristic? Do you insist on your idea that the characters ina novel should be in agreement with the vi of the author? ‘Then, indeed, | shall accept my being a “bundle of inconsistencies” and even more. But Your Excellency, after having pub- lished previously that poetry of Father Rodriguez! 1am glad that Your Excellency places Quioguiap far above me, Place him in the moon and in the heavens too. | shall never aspire to have his style. I shall keep my own which is extremely bad, like Your Excellency says: academicus Vincentius Barrantes dixit, ergo ita est, But no matter how bad it is, it will never equal the wickedness of the abuses that it at- tacks and I can say with List OF my untrammeled Muse ‘The echo never lulled tyrants, Nor mean flattery poisoned its breath. It has never corrupted an administration nor has it served to hide frauds, oppressed and ex- ploited a trusting nation. Bad and all, my work Served the purpose I wanted it to serve. If it is hot a conic bullet-nickel-plated and polished, the sort an academician can hurl—but a coarse pebble picked up from the ravine, it has, nev- ertheless, hit its mark. 1 threw it at a double- headed Goliath which in the Philippines is called friarchy and corrupt administration. It is {rue that it rebounds; I do not deny it the right; the wound is there and so is death, does the weapon matter? Not able to deny the reality of events which takes hold of style and of civility, the dog bites the stone that wounds it. Morea? ver, if I have crities, neither do | lack eulogists; the latter compensate for the former, It would be foolish to ask the offended power to reward me for telling him the bitter truths. I consider myself fortunate that I am still alive. Only the demigods ask that the hands that strike be kissed. What would have saddened me more is to hear, in place of the rumblings and curses from the enemy camp, plaudits and congratula- tions, because then this would be proof that the shot backfired. Since I wrote not for myself nor for the purpose of knocking at the gates of the Academy, but to expose the abuses and unmask the hypocrites, I have achieved my aim. Why should | bother about anything else? My work moreover has not been judged and cannot be Judged, because its effects still persist. When the people it strikes and the abuses it combatsIl, 25, February 15, 1890 ave disappeared from the politics of my coun- fry; when a new generation comes which will 13 condone crime and immorality; when Spain dnds this strife by means of open-hearted and enveal reforms; finally, when all of us have died hd with us our pride, our vanity, and our petty jons, thon Spaniards and Filipinos will be Pre to judge it with calmness and impartiality, ithout bias or rancor. r sil JOSE RIZAL AREPLY Articles Dedicated to Mr. Jose de Lacalle I Paragraphs 26, 27, and 28 follow. Paragraph 26; “And false titles you try to exhibit to your feaders are not worth anything.” Paragraph 2: “If in spite of the disastrous campaign under- taken by your pen, you are a member of the Geographic and Economic Society, prize- awardee of our Exposition, you owe these justly to your unquestioned scientific merits and not to your literary nor your political works; and secondly, to what the illustrious Valera says that we are foday in such a dejected state that there is no person or object that does not appear to us good, because it is foreign and not Spanish.” Paragraph 28: “You should not be boastful therefore of a kindness which we would bestow in the same manner to a beadle of the German universities.” Thus the Spanish or Filipino reader has a testimony of the loyalty, patriotism, and Hispanism of Mr. Lacalle.' The worst of all mortal enemies of Spain would not have dared to defile the name of Spain as this miserable victim of blind and vengeful hatred did in para- graph 28 of his letter. In this very regrettable aberration of his vengeful susceptibility, Mr. Lacalle thinks to humiliate me by saying that the Geographic Commercial Society of Madrid, the Geographic Society, the Economic Society Of Manila, the judges of the Philippine Exposi- tion of Madrid would have granted to mere beadles of German universities the same honors, the same prizes that were given me by the above- mentioned national societies. And instead of humiliating or ridiculing my name, he Gishonors with his impertinence the societies Which include in their memberships the most {enowned names of his nation. This is the man ho recites empty orations, who says in his ‘ler published in La Alhambra last September ihis [Sif Pethaps that we are ungrateful sons of is beloved Mother that she sends us here?...” n ‘And the saddest part of all is that this insult to the Spanish name not only received the ap- proval of the careful censors, but paragraph 28 and even the flattery al the end of paragraph 27 are also published by La Opinion, El Eco de Panay, etc., and are hailed by the Spanish vol- unteers of Manila, Difficile est satiram non scibere, But | am compelled to congratulate the censors for the care they have of guarding the prestige of the Spanish name. How good is the honorable lady of censorship! Spaniards, be at peace; censorship is the guardian of honor! ‘Those gods are very stupid; the weapons they Use te aitack me in their blind hatred also wound them; the mud they throw at me also soils their hands. Besides, Doctor Lacalle comes out rather late with his fine accusation; | have already re- nounced my title of meritorious member of the Economie Society of Manila since last Novem- ber 17... In paragraph 30, Mr. Lacalle says: “I protest anything that resembles a personal attack against someone very respectable (scilices, like a beadle of the German universities); | have in mind his notable studies and erudite investiga- tions of Philippine races; I sincerely praise the ‘outstanding works of the professor and | am ‘opposed to ideas that would condemn what is good for science; I also oppose whatever is Contrary to the interests of Spain, the good name of her people and well-being of these races (naturally, to Mr. Lacalle, those races are not sons of the noble Mother), who inspite of the defenders of brilliant Utopias, are full of love for the Mother who sacrificed blood, interests, and tranquility.” Here we have an oration that contains phrases enjoyed by all Quioguiaps, but it is no more than an oration. We, the Filipinos and I, fight “whatever is contrary to the interests of Spain, the good name of her people and the welfare of those races,” while Mr. Lacalle tries to silence us about the faults of the adminis- tration that put to shame the good Spanish name ‘and embarrass the welfare of those races; while Mr. Lacalle attributes to very honorable socie- ties of his nation the wish to bestow their honors to beadles of German universities. I fight only those faults of his countrymen that, in our opin- ion, embarrass the integrity ofthe country; Mr. Lacalle should not make himself a defender of those races; this is a poor joke and badly pre- sented. Mr. Lacalle should not speak with immodesty and effrontery of only the sacrifices in blood, interests, and comforts of Spaniards; these sacrifices are mutually made and if today Spain sacrifices only blood for the Philippines, the Filipinos, on the other hand, sacrifice blood, interests, and tranquility, only to get insults