The Revolution that Neyo, Was 7 r lity who} re diferent char: ena sang heat lt ly ecessarily guara alleage ae eee national heroes: witness the gq ae ee ep ofthe farm, oF Chinas Mao Indeed, a8 Rizal ay inne ction an lay tricks on ws ‘t ate, the ral possibilities may be considered, Be Lie iy Behe hecricansbe explained in terms of igen timid. tang na loob (debt of gratitude], arising fromthe fares Mesieaad fon Hong Kong had been sponsored by the Aner at hs etn co engnze Philippine independence if Astin ee eee struggle against the Spanish regime? The wily Amon yeaa vere well aware that without Aguinaldo and fie evolutionary forse they would not be able to wrest che Pilpings fom gna Ue The worst-case scenario for the American ‘eneral, as the l 5 Spanish Gov. emor-General Agustin seems to have sensed, Was an lignes ies the revolutionary forces andthe Spanish army, which want ieee an American occupation of the Philippines impossible, Unfortunately Aguinaldo was not cynical enough to discern this, Or could it be that Aguinaldo simply lacked the qualities of a heroic leadest i (1977, 123) raises this question for his Filipino readers, He asks, “Is this : Ir Ramona E Or does our tragedy lie in this, that the man who could have {aown better what the Americans were up to, the man with the seve heart, the great mind, and the vast imagination, shied away from the tes of lading the nation in the Revolution? Perhaps the most ambive lent figures in our national history are Agui both antiheroic.” Of Rizal, Joaquin (119) writes, ial £ é . He spurned the Katipunan, he rejected the Revolution, When it broke out he ei £2 eahe it by offering to serve Spain in Cuba. Even when a he was still offering to help stop the Revolution, by writing a m: festo asking his countrymen to lay down thir arms and submit278 The Revolution that Never Was d this Constantino line in chapter 2 as a fundamentally flawed interpretation based on an erroneous historiog- raphy. However, Joaquin’s point about Rizal as a great man who “re. re heroism” touches on a perennial question. What exactly was 1 be no single answer to this question. Like If he ap- as an Enlightenment figure to Blumentritt and the ilustrados, to he was a Tagalog Christ, the central figure in the at Bonifacio of Rizal’s novels and historical work was his own interpretation of Rizal, Bonifacio could serve as Rizal’s bridge to the masses because, like Rizal, he, t00, straddled both the Enlighten- nent and the Pasyon traditions. Bonifacio, unlike Aguinaldo (whose Spanish proclamations were penned by his ilustrado colleagues), was “a child of the Enlightenment, an autodidact who had taught himself Spanish and had read voraciously not only the Propaganda litera irerature on the American and French ions. Bonifacio was also a vernacular poet, and an occasional ‘actor for the vernacular theater who acted in plays that dramatized scenes from the Pasyon. This immersion in the vernacular culture, as well as his economic and social circumstances, enabled Bonifacio to be more integrated than Rizal with the pobres y ignorantes, the workers and peasants of the Tagalog region whose perception of historical events was informed by the Pasyon. Bonifacio’s appropriation and dissemination of Rizal’s ideas and the circulation of stories on Rizal's life (e.g. tales of his leadership of the Calamba struggle, of his miracu- lous powers in making the blind see and the lame walk, of the sheer drama of his execution, and of the courage and virtue of his family, in particular his mother and brother Paciano) both combined to produce the popular image of Rizal as the Tagalog Christ. This folk image of ee ‘and continues to inspire, the revolutionary and masses, Thus, Rizal became the central dramatis persona in Shan oe narrative against not only Spanish but also American ee ea rae ee ae eae motets and long after General eau Ee against American conquest forces, Rizal’s name, as the eal surrender to the American jino,” was always invoked by We have already critique ? There peared the popular masses unfolding Pasyon drama, TI fashioned from his reading ‘ture,The Revolution that Never Was 279 rebels and “bandits” who refused tg submit to the American yoke, Eye today, Rizal “the Tagalog Chrise» jg believed by the millennial folk tc be alive in that sacred space called «The New Jerusalem” in Mount Banahaw: Popular traditions are kept alive in this sacred mountain, here the folk still sing old agalog songs like the “Kundiman,” and continue €0 stage Poetic jousts like rhe ancient duplohan and the tradi tional balagtasan. During religious gatherings and rituals in Mount Banahaw, the spirit of 1896 is still invoked, and Rizal and Bonifacio and other heroes of the Revolution still celebrated as “the twelve ~excluding, of course, Aguinaldo—are lights” of Filipinas. Interestingly, as the ilustrados were defining the nation for the masses, the masses in turn were appropriating, the ilustrados, Rizal in particular, for their own purposes, ‘This process of appropriation was going on even before the Americans arrived. When the Americans came and conquered, one of their first acts was to appropriate Rizal, The success of their imperialist adventure in the Philippines meant that their reinvented version of Rizal would become the orthodoxy on the na- tional hero (see chap, 10). Redemption as Americanization With the triumph of the Americans, another narrative was writ- ten: the third part, the postcolonial phase, became redefined as an era of democracy under American “tutelage.” Redemption, this time, meant Americanization. This, of course, was not what the revolution. ary masses had wanted. Even with the capture of Aguinaldo, many con tinued fighting. The mantle of revolutionary leadership fell in the hands of General Miguel Malvar who, together with General Paciano Rizal, had earlier questioned the wisdom of the truce of Biak-na-Bato, Malvar revitalized the revolutionary forces in the Southern Tagalog region (Laguna, Batangas, Tayabas) by rekindling the spirit of the Katipunan and invoking the Pasyon ideals of sacrifice, martyrdom, and Redemp- tion, which had almost been forgotten under the leadership of Aguinaldo, Embarrassed by this tenacity and pressured by the Ameri- can government to finish the war as soon as possible, the US Army had to resort to extreme measures such as hamletting and reconcentration These measures depopulated the province of Batangas and broke the backbone of the remaining revolutionary army, forcing General Malvar to surrender. Despite the efforts of Artemio Ricarte and lacario Sakay to continue the resistance, American rule was finally installed.280 The Revolution that Never Was In retrospect, the Philippine Revolution, according to Maj ‘ts. First, it Was a twofold national struggle to dismantle Spanish colonial rule and to resist the American invasion, Second, “[iJt was also an expression of an internal struggle between different groups, which represented different classes, competing with cone another to get the political power expected to be relinquished by the Spaniards and to discover a favorable position for themselves tg exercise political dominance over the country” (75). Mabini’s claim that the Revolution in 1898 was “supported by all classes” is true only in the sense that “they were all interested in throwing overboard Span- ish domination” (76). There was no unanimity, however, with respect to the question of who should control the new nation-state. Majul (77) writes, “Antagonisms in the revolutionary camp did not break out into open conflict because the Revolution had to contend with a new factor: the threat of the imposition of American sovereignty.” However, the internal struggle had started much earlier, and an- tagonisms did break out in the open even as the new imperialist menace reared its ugly head. Ideological/political struggles had been going on since the Propaganda days—Rizal versus del Pilar, Graciano Lopez Jaena versus del Pilar, Rizal versus Eduardo de Lete, the Pilaristas ver- sus the Rizalistas. In these struggles, Rizal emerged as the paramount moral and intellectual leader. Bonifacio was defeated in an internal ‘struggle with Aguinaldo. Even the new Republic of Aguinaldo was racked by open antagonisms that ultimately debilitated the revolution- ary effort: Mabini versus Paterno, General Antonio Luna versus Buencamino, General Luna versus General Aguinaldo, General Malvar versus Calderon, and others. These intramural conflicts resulted in the downfall of Mabini and in the execution of Antonio Luna. The triumph of the wealthy conservatives in Aguinaldo’s government paved the way for the triumph of American imperialism in the Philippines. The bitter irony of this was expressed in the reminiscence of a veteran of the Revo- lution, Jose Alejandrino: ‘The great majority of the members of the educated and wealthy class had been attracted to the revolutionary cause by its successes [in 1898}, and were totally unprepared to support it in adversity. Neither did they have the self-abnegation and patriotism to risk their interests and their comforts, let alone ther lives, in the hazards of a grievous and unequal struggle, Doubtless when the war broke out they wereYr ‘The Revolution that Never Was 281 sincere in proclaiming that all of us Filipinos were duty bound to fight to the last; but substantial events revealed that their convictions had no deep roots. For at first opportunity they, almost without a single honorable exception, formed the nucleus of the annexationist Federal Party, which strove so actively, by all manner of means, to disarm the men whom they themselves had instigated to wage the war. (From The Price of Freedom, in de la Costa 1965, 249) In the end what Rizal had envisioned and died for—the blossom- ing of a free nation of “new men” and women who are “lovers of peace, say, lively, smiling, hospitable, and fearless” —did not come about. The historic bloc that was forming from the founding of the Liga and the Katipunan in 1892 to the heyday of the Revolution in 1898 collapsed. The vital link between the elite and the masses was severed, and the counterhegemonic movement crumbled. Once again, the elite and the masses went their separate, antagonistic ways. And the neoco- lonial state, under the “tutelage” of America, invented an official na- tionalism that quickly put up mute statues for its dead heroes to make sure that they, as Benedict Anderson aptly puts it, “are seen and not heard.” Yet the narrative of Redemption dies hard. It lingers still in the collective memory—in the millennial folk’s restless dreams of a coming apocalypse, when Rizal and Bonifacio will return, and when women will rule over men. However, such dreams are getting fainter and fainter with each passing day. If the Filipino nation today is to be revitalized, a new story needs to be told. This new narrative, however, must remem- ber the past—the Revolution that never was, and the nation that could have been—and begin from that forgotten decade, with all its pain and shame and unfulfilled dreams.