La solidaridad Democratic Fortnightly ‘Year I Barcetona, Marcu 15, 1889 No.3 Ped EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFIGES| Advertisements and Notices at agreed In Spain, 3 months 0.75 pesetas ava de BEE nie In foreiga lands and colonies 1.25 Plaza de Buensuceso, No.5 pesclas Is Noor. Single copy 15 centavos CLOUDS Our political horizon does not show the peace that we all desir. ‘Mr. Manuel Zorilla takes a trip to England or to Bordeaux and immediately, the ministerial press announces the trip, proclaiming at the same time that such a move does not worry the gov- ernment at all. ‘On our part, we should be glad that there had been nothing to fear. We would even go farther, and praise the statements of Mr. Sagasta, assuring Congress that since the trip does not obligate us to interfere in the interna- tional conflicts of Europe, the government should be able to reduce the services that Fepresent superfluous precautions, in order that by so doing, it can decrease the contribu-tions which weigh heavily on this unfortunate nation. tis trae that Mr. Sagasta, skillful man that he is in the manipulation of words, said later that he had not meant his statements to express ‘an official policy or promise. He had only ex- pressed a simple, private opinion of his own Which some day and in the future might bear fruit. ‘This means that what he said was only a passing remark. . For meaningless remarks, there is no one like Mr. Sagasta. Tis very hard in fact to go beyond this stage. Every-day the future becomes more and more nebu- lous. Even without counting on the weak opposition of Mr. Canovas, the deceptions which at every step inspire the policies of Mr. Sagasta and which are convenient only to himself will come to an end, because they accomplish nothing good for the nation whose goal is to advance the rights of 4B democracy rather than favor those who try (0 ‘choke them, The persistent and growing agitation to organ- ize a thied liberal party is an important symptom to diagnose the difficult situation which the coa- lition encounters. A strong conviction is growing that the fulfillment of Mr. Sagasta’s promises ‘which he made when he was in the opposition no longer lies in his hands. “The weakness of some and the duplicities of ‘others produce unfortunate circumstances which ‘are not lost on Zorilla followers. In view of these ‘events, Providence seems to show the way to the fulfillment of inscrutable plans. Besides the darkening clouds in the interior, others appear in the international situation. ‘The German press gives an account of the presence in Germany of a Moroccan mission. It seems certain that Morocco will cede to Germany 4 port between Melilla and the frontiers of Argel, perhaps to satisfy Germany's ulterior motives and those of the French Arabs. ‘The efforts of Germany {o isolate France led hitherto to a policy of gaining our friendshi but now, Germany seems bent on creating dif culties for us in our colonial policies. ‘Should we block the progress of Germany's policy? Should we allow it? For our part, we would like to sound the ery of alarm. THE FILIPINO FARMERS ‘We commend the efforts of the Minister of the Colonies to encourage agriculture in ine Philip- pines. We have proofs that such a policy is being carried out in the activities of the council, com- jan1, 3, March 15, 1889 missions, and committees and in the number of plans being drafted. We recommend, neverthe- less, that he consult the farmers also—those who are in direct contact with the soil, those who, with their own capital and labor make the soil produc- tive and who put into practice the methods that science or experience dictates, ‘They should not be forgotten, nor should their hands be tied or rendered incapable of work, a step that is being unfortunately done now. Itis not enough to issue Royal decrees and dictate oppor- tune means but decrees should be complied with in a forceful manner. ‘The Filipino farmer does not have to struggle with plagues and natural calamities alone but with petty tyrannies and bandits as well. Itis true that against the first, he is allowed some measure of defending himself but against the latter, he is not always safe. We shall explain. After floods, locust pests, poor harvests, etc., the landlord has to contend with the constable of the place, who deprives him of workers when these are taken away and pressed for work on roads, bridges, etc. He also contends with the Civil Guard who detains them on different al- leged violations of regulations, like not carrying their personal cedulas, or not saluting properly, ot because they are under suspicion, or perhaps, for no reason at all. The Civil Guard then ‘keeps them to clean the barracks and by thus keeping them away from work obliges the landlord to seek thé good graces of the officer or be deprived further of his carabaos, his oxen for days, in spite of all protests, until these are returned much later. ‘Although these acts of violence are almost always committed without justification and outside the duties of the Civil Guard, work may be delayed three or four days only, although sometimes, for ‘weeks until the animals either die or are lost. All these happen when the Civil Guard transcending the boundaries of his district or province goes out to commit abuses and then returns to his district where the same quarrels with the landlord, the same abuses of power are resumed. ‘Sometimes itis not the constable nor the Civil Guard who is indirectly responsible for nullifying the policy of the Minister of the Colonies. A judge or an official from the capital ofthe province who is displeased with a farmer, urgently calls such and such a laborer or laborers. The unbappy man takes a two or three-day trip to the capital, appre- hensive and disturbed, He spends all his savings; he presents himself to the official; he waits but is told to return the next day; he returns and waits again, only to be asked later by an angry judge, some difficult and obscure questions which he could not answer. The unhappy man, it is truc, may free himself of charges, but on many occa~ sions, he proceeds from there to jail where he emerges later more stupid than before, and eve- 45 rybody thinks himself a good Christian always. ‘Sometimes, and luckily very seldom indeed, a volunteer company passes the province. Alas, for those who have enemies. It is enough to be in the list of “suspicious” persons for the leader of the company, without due process of law and witlhout any cause whatsoever to take him to another place. Then, it is goodbye to the country and to everybody! Let us observe then if this is the way to encourage agriculture in the other islands. ‘But if the landowner is one of those who knows how to please those in power by bribes, then he has them acting for him and he then gains an advantage over others. But then, there are many other gods to propitiate. These are the robbers and bandits. For those who have their farms far from the towns, it is the robber-bandit that is a terrible enemy. There can be no favors gained, like in the others, by giving him gift and bribes, which some do secretly, because he would then be plunged into another abyss: whosoever deals with the bandit is accused of connivance and of being an accomplice of the evildoers and this would mean certain torture and later, exile. The better way of combating this evil is to arm one’s self and face danger everyday. For a peaceful taxpayer to possess arms and have the means to protect himself, it is necessary for him to obtain the goodwill of the neighborhood, of the Civil Guard, and of the parish priest; to apply later to the Central Gov- ernment in Manila; to have patience; to wait patiently because petitions are not always acted upon promptly but are considered after months and months had elapsed and even then, only if there were someone to follow it up or some friend in the office that awards licenses who could help. Al this is all right. What is not good is that in spite of a good recommendation, in spite of peace and order in the province except for the dits, in spite of the exemplary conduct of a citizen farmer and the danger that he and his harvests are exposed to, the government denies him not only the use of firearms, or the renewal of alicense he already possesses but also deprives hhim of his weapon which he had purchased at a fabulous price. Once confiscated, the firearm is thrown into some comer of the headquarters or of the court, there to rust and be of no use to ‘anybody except to favor the bandits who are the only ones who gain an advantage by this process. This is what happened to a neighbor in the province of Laguna, who owned a considerable size of land far from the town and planted to sugar cane, coffee and abaca. The province had been not alone loyal to Spain, but eminently so for more than three centuries. When a local man arrived in Laguna, Captain Francisco de SanJuan, during the war against the English in 1762, he declared his loyalty to Spain rch when the Central Government itself was under the control of the invaders. With the aid of native troops, he succeeded in saving the money of the province, which the authorities had wanted to turn over to the enemy. This was what made a Spanish writer at the time say that this native had displayed leadership that was half.a century more advanced than that shown by the alcalde of Mostoles. Laguna is one of the better agricultural areas in the islands but more subject to natural calamities and human depredations. When a citizen is de- nied a renewal of his permit to have firearms, in ‘spite of all good things said in his favor, when his firearm is taken away from him, then he is forced to abandon his lands and lose completely his abaca, for he cannot go to the field unarmed, Iam sure that whoever leaves the field like that cannot defend the crop and neither can he redeem it from the bandits. ‘We are sure that the Minister of the Colonies and the good Spaniards who care for the honor of Spain and who maintain an affectionate regard for the Islands overlook these matters. We, who are able tocite names, towns, dates, witnesses and able to attest to other incidents of a similar nature ‘because of personal experience or the testimonies of eyewitnesses, content ourselves with citing this ‘example and saying, “Je passe et des meilleurs” for the rest. It would be necessary to correct this, Mr. Minister of the Colonies, lest some malicious ‘mind say that since the government there is help- Tess, it makes friends with bandits by handing over to them disarmed inhabitants; that it desires to cultivate lands by speeches, plans, and agree- ‘ments, a policy that should be enforced by tying the hands of the farmers and forcing them to till the soil under the new system. Agriculture cannot be improved by this method. What is needed is aid to those who are engaged in it. Those who, from their comfortable seats think some other way possible and who, when they find the failure oftheir Royal decrees throw the blame for backwardness on the indolence of the native do not know with what difficulties the farmer contends. They ignore the fact that for a machine to work well, it is not enough that it be con- structed according to definite principles but also that it be perfect in every detail, such that eve- rything fits well and no single piece is out of its lace. PinThese abuses which become more and more ridiculous, result in losses for the country and in the decline of Spanish prestige. This system of preventing work, of unfounded fears, of unjust suspicions not only irritate and awaken the people but they also uncover the weakness of the government, Fear, itis said, isa sign of weakness. 47 3, March 15, 1889 added to the inability of the government to suppress banditry, makes the people think that the government is hard only on the peaceful and law- abiding citizen, but it pampers or tolerates the rebellious and the criminally inclined. This opin- ion is the plaint voiced by the unsubdued natives to Christian natives. This conduct of the government in the islands harms the true intentions of Spain. By fostering discontent by means of this procedure, the gov- ‘emment becomes the real filibuster. We believe that nothing serves the nation better than telling the truth.-Therefore, we are telling the Mother Couniry the truth so that reforms may be adopted. This is why we ask for representation in the Cortes and for freedom of the press in Manila: that we may expose evils to public notice. The abuses committed there do not always find a pen townie out them, nor does every atele writen find a generous paper which would publish it in its columns. Although it has not been so before, reforms always come late these days in correcting evils. ‘We shall conclude by recommending achange to the Minister of the Colonies in the licensing and use of firearms. Although a license should not be given with- ‘out considering the condition in the town, the recommendation of the Civil Guard and of the parish priest, it should be decided by the Council of every town through secret balloting and not in Manila. There should also be previous consulta- tion with the teacher, Civil Guard (Spaniard), and parish priest (almost always a Spaniard) and the matter attended (0 only when approved unat mously. Thus the procedure will be simplified and facilitated without much loss of time. There are no other drawbacks but two: there will be more dismissals and secret enemies cannot seck revenge or offer anonymous information. On the other hand, the Treasury and humanity in general will be the beneficiaries, the former by having less employees to hire, and the latter by more loyalty and less treachery. BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF EVENTS European politics this fortnightis under a very clouded sky: France, in a crisis; aly in a crisi Spain in a crisis; abdication in ‘Serbi France, after a very painful crisis in the gov- ernment, was able to form at last a cabinet that neither satisfies nor pleases all the republican parties. In our opinion, the French cabinet is still in a crisis Nothing has been resolved of the problem, While the constitutional revision and other urgent and essential reforms in the life of the republicI, 35, July jnferior race and you are not worthy of being represented by your own delegates in the Par- fiament of the noble nation,” perhaps the ferament, relying on the “only support of ish rule” will delay the diffusion of the ational language voluntarily, but then it would be at its own risk. FERNANDO BLUMENTRITT ON THE INDOLENCE OF THE FILIPINOS | Doctor Sancianco, in his Progreso de Filipinas (Philippine Progress), has taken up this question-a burning one as he calls it, and relying on facts and reports furnished by the very same Spanish authorities who rule the Philippines has demonstrated that such indo- lence does not exist and that whatever is said about it does not deserve a reply, not even a passing notice. Nevertheless inasmuch as discussion of it siill has continued not only by government em- ployees who make it responsible for their own shortcomings, not only by the friars who regard it as necessary in order that they may continue representing themselves as indispensable, but also by serious and disinterested persons; inas- ‘much as contrary to the evidence which Doctor Sancianco cites, others of more or less reliabil- ity can be cited, itseems expedient (0 us to study this question thoroughly, without rancor or sen sitiveness, without bias, without pessimism; and ‘inasmuch as we can serve our country only by telling the truth however bitter it be, inasmuch as a round-about artful negation cannot refute 1 real and positive fact, in spite of the brilliance of the arguments; inasmuch as a mere affirma- tion is not sufficient to create something impossible, we shall examine the fc cley, using, on our part, all the impartiality of which 4 man is capable, who is convinced that there is no redemption except upon solid bases of virtue, . ‘The word indolence has been greatly mis- used in the sense of little love for work, lack of energy, etc.; ridicule has covered the misuse of it, This much-discussed subject has met with the same fate as certain panaceas and specifics of the quacks who, by-ascribing to them impos- sible virtues, have discredited them. In the Middle Ages and even in some Catholic coun- tries now, the devil is blamed for everything that ‘superstitious people cannot understand or which the perversity of mankind does not wish to admit. In the Philippines the shortcomings of 323 15, 1890 ‘one ot of others, the misdeeds of some and the crimes of others are attributed to indolence. ‘And just as in the Middle Ages, he who sought the explanation of phenomena outside of inter- nal influences was persecuted, in the Philippines worse happens to him who seeks the origin of the trouble outside of accepted beliefs, ‘The consequence of this misuse is that some are very much interested in proclaiming it as dogma and others in combating it as a ridiculous superstition, if not a punishable delusion, Yet from the misuse of anything it should not be deduced that it does not exist. We think that there must be something be- hind all this outcry, for it is incredible that so ‘many persons should agree to lie~among whom wwe said that there are many serious and terested ones. Some act in bad faith, for due to lack of sound judgment, or to limited reasoning power, ignorance of the past, ete. others repeat what they hear without study or reflection; others speak because of pessimism cor impelled by that human characteristic which paints as perfect or nearly perfect everything that belongs to oneself and defective, every- thing that belongs to another. But it cannot be denied that there are some who worship truth or if not truth itself, at least the semblance of it which is the truth in the mind of the crowd. Examining well therefore all the scenes, the ‘men we have known from childhood and life in ‘our country; we believe that indolence does exist there. "The Filipino who can measure uy to the most active people of the world will doubtless not repudiate this admission, for itis true that there one works and struggles against climate, against nature, against men, But we should not take the exception for the general rule and should rather seek the good of our country by starting what we believe to be true, We must confess that there indolence actually and positively exists; only, that, instead of holding it to be the cause of the backwardness and the trouble, we should regard it as the effect of the backwardness and the trouble, favoring the development of a lamentable predisposi- fon. “Those who have until now talked {of the roblem] of indolence, with the exception of Boctor Sancianco, have been content with de- ying or affirming it; we know of no one who has studied its causes, Nevertheless, those who admit ils existence and exaggerate it more or less, have not failed to advise remedies taken here and there-from Java, from India, from other English and Dutch colonies, like the quack who saw a fever cured with a dozen Sardines afterwards prescribed these fish at every rise in temperature that he discovered in patients,Il, 35, July 15, 1890 We shall do otherwise; before proposin; sembly we shall examine the causes and even though, strictly speaking, a predisposition is not icause, we shall however study the true value Sf this predisposition due to nature ‘The predisposition exists, How could it not exist? . ‘A hot climate requires of the individual quiet and rest, just as cold incites one to labor and action. For this reason the Spaniard is more {ndolent than the Frenchman; the Frenchman, more than the German. ‘The Europeans them: selves who accuse the residents of the colonies tery often of indolence (and | donot speak now of ihe Spaniards, but of the Germans and En- glish themselves}, how do they live in tropical Eountties? Surrounded by a retinue of servants, never going but riding in a carriage, needing Servants not only {0 take off their shoes for them, but even to fan them! And yet they live and eat better [than that native], they work for themselves to get rich, with the hope of a future, free and respected, while the poor colonial, the indolent colonial, is badly nourished, hopes for nothing, toils for others and works under force and compulsion! Why? Perhaps the reply will be that white men are not built to suffer the severity of the climate. A mistake! A man can live in any climate if he wil only adapt himself to its requirements and conditions; what kills a European in bot countries is the abuse of li- {quors, the attempt to live according to the nature of his own country under another sky and an- other sun. We, inhabitants of hot countries, live ‘well in northern Europe whenever we take the precautions that the people there do. Europeans tan also stand the torrid zone if only they would el rid of their prejudices. . “The fact is that in tropical countries, violent work is not as good a thing as in cold countries $ there it means annihilation, death, destruction. Nature who knows this, like a just mother, has made therefore the earth more fertile, more pro ductive; itis @ compensation. An hour's work under the burning sun, in the midst of pernicious influences springing from active nature is equal to a day’s work in a temperate climate; it is therefore just that the earth yield a hundredfold! Moteover, do we not see the active European, he who has been fortified during winter, he who feels fresh blood of spring coursing in his veins-do we not see him abandoning his labors during the few days of his variable summer, close his offices where the work is not violent and for so many is reduced to talking and ges- ticulating in the shade and beside a lunch counter, flee to watering places, sit in the cafes or stroll about, ete.? What wonder then that the inhabitant of tropical countries, worn out and With blood thinned by the continuous and exces 325 sive heat, indolent one in Manila offices? Is it the clerk who comes in at eight in the morning and leaves at one in the afternoon with only parasol-who copies, writes, and works for him- self and for his Chief, or is it his Chief who comes in a carriage at ten o'clock, leaves before twelve, reads his newspaper while smoking and with his feet cocked up on chairs or a table, or ossiping about everybody with his friends? ho is the indolent one, the native coadjutor, poorly paid and badly treated who has to visit all the indigent sick living in the country, or the friar curate who enriches himself fabulously, goes about in a carriage, eats and drinks well, snd does not put himself to any trouble without collecting excessive fees? Even without speaking of Europeans, the Chinese, the industrious Chinese who flees from country driven by hunger and want and ‘whose whole ambition is to amass a small for- tune-to what labor is he dedicated in tropical countries? With the exception of some bag. gage-carriers, an occupation that the natives also pursue, almost all of them are dedicated to ‘rade and commerce; rarely do we find one dedi- cated to agriculture. The Chinese who in other colonies engage in agriculture do so only for a certain number of years and then retire. We find therefore the tendency to indolence very natural and we have to admit and bless it because we cannot alter natural laws and be- cause without il, the race would have disappeared. Man is not a brute, he is not a machine; his object is not merely to produce in Spite ofthe claims of some Christian whites who ‘wish to make of the colored Christian a kind of motive force somewhat more intelligent and less costly than steam, Man’s purpose is not to satisfy the passions of another man; his object is to seek his happiness and that of his kind by iravelling along the road of progress and perfec tion, ‘The evil is not that indolence exists more or less latently but that itis fostered and magnified. ig men as well as among nations, there ‘exist not only aptitude but also tendencies to- ‘ward good and evil. To foster the good ones and ‘aid them as well as to correct the bad ones and ‘express them would be the duty of society or of the government, if less noble thoughts did not ‘occupy their attention. The evil is that the in- dolence in the Philippines is an exaggerated {ndolence, one of the snowballing type, if we may be permitted the expression, an evi Increases in direct proportion to the periods of time, an effect of misgovernment and of back- wardness like we said, and not a cause hereof. Others will hold the contrary opinion, especially those who have a hand inIl, 35, July the misgovernment, but we do not care; we made our assertion and we shall prove it, (To be continued) WHAT BOOKS SAY “Ithas beensaid that the characterof the native is incomprehensible; that he is good for nothing and that he even prefers a master who maltreats him and whips him. What nonsense! And is it sible that these things have been written by men who consider themselves intelligent?” “The native, when he isenslaved, undoubtedly carries out better the tasks imposed on him, but he does so for fear of punishment and only until the time when an opportunity present itself to escape and flee, which is what happens many times. “When the Spaniards or the European mal- ‘teats him, he may exclaim ‘ Valiant Castila,’ a phrase we tak literal meaning whic absurd, because it means to them quite the com- plate oppo “Vallnt” means 1 them * eel , insufferable,’ etc., and so when they say * ‘Ang Castila valiente’ ( a valiant Castillan) they mean abad Spaniards; while those who are kind to them know well how to distinguish this from ‘Ang mabutin Castila,’ the noble or good Spaniard. “Moreover, when a European does not have certain manners, lets out coarse expressions that are hardly proper and does not behave properly, the natives do not recognize him as a true Spat iard, They are wont fo exclaim: “Hindi Castla,” he isnot a Spaniard, “Thave also heard reference to the existence of servants who pray that their masters whip them becauseif they did not, they wouldnot be showing. love for them. What actually happens in such 2 case is that the masters fail to understand their servants; what the latter ask is merely that they are ready to suffer the consequences of their own fauls if they be guilty of them. , “This has happened to me in connection with servant. Someone who could have failed to un~ derstand the motive would have probably inlerpretedthe statement in different way. Havin ‘ast suspicion at one of his companions for a fault made, the servant came to me and asked me to punish him because he was the guilty on “Could itnotbe possible that similar situations sve arisen and not knowing their customs, we failed to give correct interpretations ‘o similar requests?” (Manuel Scheidnagel, Paseos por ef mundo (Voyage Around the World], Madrid, 1878, pages Vand 17.) 327 15, 1890 “You must understand that freedom of the press is unknown in the Philippines and those ‘who are fond of reading newspapers and acquir- ing news must content themselves ordinarily reading simple items on morals, fit for children, Jong and pompous praises of the officials which are always the same for everybody, detailed descriptions of religious festivals, reprints of sermons by Father So-and-So, many and pro- longed debates on whether or not agua (water) is written with a g or vino (wine) with a 6, long commentaries on the weather, humidity, the hot or cold temperature then prevailing, if it should or should not rain soon, some news of raids staged by tulisanes (bandits) in the provinces which are quite frequent, forecasts that are al- most always erroneous of coming earthquakes or typhoons, and lastly, the advertisements on ‘Singer machines, precious stones, and long lists, of religious books which are sold in book- stores of religious literature.” (Manuel Scheidnagel, Paseas por el mundo, Madrid, 1878, page 112.) “{t happens generally that the highest offi- cials who arrive in the country have to suffer the consequences of adulations from the high echelon which seem bent usually—I do not know why-on disfiguring the truth and on opposing the good intentions they might have by placing obstacles that are completely illusory and ideas which, let us be frank about it, tend to becloud their good judgment. “The selection of persons with practical ex- perience in the provinces, those who might be his official or personal representative, should be the first concern of a new governor-general of those Islands; for then, he would know from the start whatever he should have known, when due to troubles and officious meddling, he is forced ‘out or finds himself ready to leave the important command which had been entrusted to him. “The high officials of the Philippines when of their own accord or in the discharge of a duty conferred on them travel in any part of the coun- try, they find themselves like the spectator of a theatrical performance who sees only the tinsel, the superficial brilliance of artificial light and hears the lines of the actors, but without notic- ing ether the corners filled with dust, the secrets hidden behind the canvas, or the’ miserable drama which sometimes is lodged in the heart of the most charming artist.” (Manvel Scheidnagel, Paseos por el mundo, Madrid, 1878, page 165.)Il, 36, July 31, 1890 Government or the Church, from government psions or from priesthood. This is why the tical and colonial policies to the majority of ‘aniards are nothing more than questions of ‘employment or of the stomach. Spain and the Spaniards will follow this road until Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines are lost o her. ‘Therefore we should not talk of the stick, but of justice and of morality, just as we should not talk of benevolence, but of pretensions and im- modesty. FERNANDO BLUMENTRITT ON THE INDOLENCE OF THE FILIPINOS Continuation I" When in consequence of a long chror ness the condition of the patient is examined, cone may ask if the weakening of the tissues and the debility of the organs are the cause of the malady’s progress or the effect of the bad treat- tment that prolongs the action of the disease, ‘The attending physician attributes the entire failure of his science to the poor constitution of the patient, to the climate, to the surroundings, ics om the other hand, the patient attributes the aggravation of the disease to the treatment fol- lowed. Only the common crowd, the ingu tive populace shakes its head and cannot reach a decision. ‘Something like this happens in the case of the Philippines. Instead of physician, read government, thal is friars, employees, efc.; instead of patient, Philippines; instead of disease, indolence. ‘And just as in similar cases when the patient gels worse, everybody loses his head, each one dodges the responsibility and throws it to aeighbor and instead of seeking the causes, order to combat the evil in them, devotes him- self at best to attacking the symptoms; here a blood-letting, a tax; there a plaster, forced labor; further on a sedative, a minor reform, etc. Every new arrival proposes a new remedy: nine-day prayers, the relics of a saint, the vi cum, the friars; another, advises a shower bath; Still another, with pretensions of modern ideas, & transfusion of blood. “Nothing! the patient ‘has only eight million indolent red corpuscl Some little white cells in the form of an a ‘cultural colony will save us from the trouble.” id everywhere there are groans, gnawing s, lunching of fists, many hollow words, ignorance, much oratory, a lot of fear. Patient is near his end! of li BAL ‘Yes, transfusion of blood, transfusion of blood! New life, new vitality! "Yes, indeed, the new white corpuscles that you will inject into its veins, the new white corpuscles that mean cancer in another organism, have to resist all the depravity of the system; have to resist the blood-1oss that it suffers every day; have to have ‘more stamina than all the degeneration, all the germs in the principal organs. Be thankful if they do not become coagulates which would impede circulation and produce gangrene, Be thankful if they do not themselves produce the cancer. ‘While the patient breathes, we must not lose hope, and however late we be, a careful exami- nation is never superfluous; a least the cause of his death will be known. We are not trying to ut all the “blame” on the physician and, still ess, on the patient, for we have already spoken of a just and natural predisposit sence of which the race would tificed to excessive labor in a trop Indolence in the Philippines is a chroni ness, but not a hereditary one. The Fi have not always been what they are. All his- torians of the early years after the discovery of the Islands attest to this, Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Malayan Filipinos carried on an active trade, not only among themselves, but also with all the neighboring countries. A Chinese manuscript of the thirteenth century, translated by Doctor Hirth (Globus, September 1889) which we will take up at another time, speaks of China's re- lations with the Islands, relations purely com- mercial, in which mention is made of the activ- ity and honesty of the traders of Luzon who took the Chinese producis and distributed them throughout all the Islands, traveling for nine months and then retumed to pay religiously even for the merchandise that the Chinese did nol remember having given them. The products which they exported from the Islands in ex- change were crude wax, colton, pearls, tortoise shells, betel nuts, cloths, etc. The first thing noticed by Pigafetta who came with Magellan in 1521, on arriving at the first island of the Philippines, Samar, was the courtesy and hospitality of the inhabitants (coriesi e buon’) and their commerce. “To hhonor our captain,” he says, “they conducted him to their boats where they had their merchan- dise which consisted of cloves, cinnamon, pe per, nutmegs, mace, gold, and other things; and they made us understand by gestures that such articles were to be found in the istands where we were going.” Further on he speaks of the vases and utensils ‘of solid gold that he found in Butuan where the people were engaged in mining, He describesIl, 36, July the silk dresses, the daggers with long hilts of rid and scabbards of carved wood, the gold Beth, etc. among cereals and fruits, he men- ters" rice, millet, oranges, lemons, ‘panicum, ee. ‘That the Islands maintained relations with neighboring countries and even with distant ‘ones is proven by the ships from Siam, laden with gold and slaves, that Magellan found in Cebu. These ships paid certain duties to the King of the island. In the same year, 1521, the survivors of Magellan's expedition met the son | of the Rajah of Luzon, who, as Captain-General of the Sultan of Borneo and Admiral of his fleet, had conquered for him the great city of Lave (Garawak?). Could this captain, who was greatly feared by all his foes (temuto fommamente da géntili, have been the Rajah Matanda whom the Spaniards afterwards en- countered in Tondo in 1570? In 1539, the warriors of Luzon took part in the formidable contests of Sumatra and under the command of Angi Siry Timor, Rajah of Batta, conquered and overthrew the terrible ‘Alzadin, Sultan of Atchin, renowned in the his- torical annals of the Far Bast. (Marsden, His- tory of Sumatra, Chapter XX.) ‘At that time, that sea where the islands float like a cluster of emeralds on a crystal tray, that ‘sea was everywhere traversed by junks, paraus, barangays, vintas, light vessels like shuttles, so large that they could maintain a hundred rowers on a side (Morga); that sea led to all commer- cial, industrial, agricultural places, mud by the force of oars to the rhythm of war songs, of fe iealogies and achievements of the Philippine eities. (Colin, Chapter XV.) ‘Wealth abounded in the Islands. Pigafetta tells us of the abundance of foodstuffs in Paragua and of its inhabitants, who nearly all filled their own fields (quasi tutti Javorano i propy compi). At this island the survivors of Magellan’s: an were well-received and provisioned. A little later, these same survivors captured a vessel, plundered and sacked it (Pigliamo e lo sacheggiammo) and took pris- oner init the Chief of the island of Paragua with his son and brother. In this same vessel they captured bronze ‘ulverins and this isthe first mention of artillery of the Filipinos, for these culverins were useful to the Chief of Paragua [in the war] against the ‘Savages of the interior. They were held for ransom for seven days with a demand of measures (cavans?) of rice, 20 Figs 20 goats, and 450 chickens. This the its act of piracy recorded in Philippine history. ‘The Chief of Paragua paid everything and vol- untarily added coconuts, bananas, sugar canes ‘and jars filled with palm wine. When Caesar 343 31, 1890 was taken captive by the corsairs and required to pay a ransom of twenty-five salents, he re- plies shall give you fifty, but later I shall ave all of you crucified!” ‘The Chief of Paragua was more generous; he forgot. His conduct, while it may reveal weak- ‘ness, also demonstrates that the Islands were abundantly provisioned. This Chief was named Tuan Mahamud; his brother, Guantil, and his son, Tuan Mahamed, (Martin Mendez, Purser of the ship Victoria, Archivo de Indias.) A very strange thing and one that shows the facility with which the natives learned Spanish is that fifty years before the arrival of the Span- iards in Luzon, the same year, 1521, when they first came to the Islands, there were already natives of Luzon who understood Spanish. In the treaties of peace that the survivors of ‘Magellan's expedition made with the Chief of Peragua, when the servant interpreter Jorge died, they communicated with one another trong ‘@ Moro who had been captured irt the island of the King of Luzon and who understood some Spanish, (Martin Mendez, op. cit.) Where did this extemporaneous interpreter learn Span- ish? In the Moluccas? In Malacca, with the Portuguese? In Cebu during the few days so- journ of the Magellan expedition? Spaniards ‘did not reach Luzon before 1571. ‘The members of the Legazpi expedition met in Butuan various traders of Luzon with their praus laden with iron, wax, clothes, porcelain, etc, (Gaspar de S. Agustin), plenty of provi- sions, activity, trade, movement in all the south- ern islands. Their first news were that Luzon or its capital Manila, was where the big boats ‘of China went and that from there even the merchants of Borneo went to get provisions. (G.de 8. A.) ‘They arrived at the island of Cebu, “abound- ing in provisions, ae Ines and gold wash- ings, and peopl natives,” as Morga says, ay lous, ‘and at a port frequented by many ships that came from the islands and Kingdoms near India,” as Colin says; and even though they were peacefully received, discord soon arose. The city was taken by force and burned, The fire destroyed the provisions and, naturally, famine broke out in that town of a hundred thousand people, according to histori- ans and members of the expedition; but the neighboring islands quickly relieved the need, thanks to the abundance they had. ‘All the histories of those first years, in short, ‘abound in long accounts of the industry and agriculture of the natives; mines, gold dust, dhoths, farms (cultivated lands), trade by barter, Shipbuilding, raising of pouty and stock, silk ‘nd cotton textiles, distilleries, manufactures of arms, pearl fishing, civet industry, horn andIl, 36, July 31, 1890 jde industry, ¢l¢., are things encountered at oi step and considering the time and the conditions of the Islands, prove that there was fife there was activity, there was movement. "And if this which is self-evident does not convince the minds imbued with unfair preju- Gices, the testimony should be of some avail of the oft-quoted Dr. Morga who was Lieutenant- Gover fhe Philippines and Oidor usc] of the Audiencia of Manila for seven years an; who after rendering great services in the Archi- jelago was named Criminal Judge of the Kudiencia of Mexico and Counsellor of the Inquisition. His testimony, we say, is highly credible, not only because all his contemporar- jes have spoken of him in terms that border on veneration, but also because bis work, from which we take these citations, is written with at circumspection and care, with respect to fhe authorities in the Philippines as well a the mistakes they committed. “The natives,” says Morga in Chapter VII speaking of the occupa- tion of the Chinese, “are very far from exercis- ing those trades and have even forgotten much about farming, raising pouliry and stock and cotton and weaving cloth, AS THEY USED TO DO IN THEIR PAGAN STATE AND FOR A. LONG TIME AFTER THE COUNTRY WAS CONQUERED.” ‘The whole Chapter VIII of his work deals with this moribund activity, this much forgotten industry, and yet in spite of this, how long his Chapter’ VII i ‘And not only Morga, not only Chirino, Colin, Argensola, Gaspar de S. Agustin and others agree on this matter; modern travellers, after two hundred and fifty years, examining the decadence and misery, assert the same thing, Dr. Hans Meyer, upon seeing the unconquered tribes cultivating beautiful fields and working energetically, asked if they 100 would not be- come indolent when they in turn should accept Christianization and a paternal government. Accordingly, the Filipinos, in spite of the climate, spite of their few needs (they had less now), were not the indolent creatures of our lime and, as we shall see later on, their morality ind theit mode of life were not what is now complacently attributed to them. How then and in what way was that active and ent pagan of ancient times con- terprising Yerted into the lazy and indolent Christian that Our present writers say [about them]? We have already spoken of the more or Jess stent predisposition which exists in the Philip- Pines toward indolence and which must exist eeuywhere in the whole world, in all men, be- sist Ne all hate work more of less, especially tac? itmay be somewhat hard and unproduc- "ve. The dolce far niente of the Italian, the 345 rascarse la barriga ing one’s of the Spaniard a [scratching one’s stomach) the supreme ambition of the bourgeoisie to live on his income in peace and tranquility attest to this, What causes contribute to awaken this terri- ble pr ition from lethargy? How is it that the people, s0 fund of their customs as to border on routine, has given up their ancient habits of work, of trade, of navigation, etc., even ‘othe extent of completely forgetting their past? (To be continued) THE LABOR PROBLEM IN CATALUNA In the preceding issue we said that we could ‘not envision anything that might be a satisfac tory solution to such an important political and Social problem. We saw the adamant stand of ital and of labor and since this solution pre- cisely strives for the sacrifice of the claims or for the tolerance of one or both parties, while they remain in that altitude, no compromise is possible. We understand naturally that it was fot even possible to take a middle road that would reconcile the two sides, for self-pride played a devilish role in the question, We di not wish to examine then the justice or inju of the claims of one or the other; we only cot fined our ideas to deploring that impasse which ‘was ruining industry and increasing the misery ‘of the thousands of laborers. But what we did not dream of was thet the matter would get to the point it had reached. We shall give a report. ‘The manufacturers of Manresa and of upper Llobregat formed an association to counteract that spirit of u that solidarity of action ‘among workers who are also united. ‘The manu- facturers did not deal directly with the laborers, but with the commissioners of the three groups representing them. Since there had already be- gun an open fight between capital and labor each side defending in its own fashion, theit respective interests, the manufacturers pro- ceeded to dismiss the commissioners first, and to close the factories later; thus throwing the ‘great mass of workers without work, with the end in view of forcing them by hun up the union; once disor jy they would then be sure of the triumph of capital. Divide et impera, Faced by this attitude of the manufacturers, the workers felt wounded in their personal and collective diglty and they vigorously protested any such attempt against the organization. Even those who did not belong to any union or center made common cause with the unionists and theIl, 37, August 15, 1890 the new state of affairs naturally brought nc ju was necessary tO subject the people wil vor by forces there were fights, there was an Ghose who had submitted peacefully eats to repent of it insurrections were sus- efeg, and some occurred; naturally, there peceeecutions and many capable laborers ere yed. Add to this condition of disorder the gerifon of Limahong; add the contin itp which the inhabitants of the Phil inte plunged to maintain the honor of Spain, to Wend the sway of her flag in Borneo, in the ffoluceas, end in Indochina; to repel the Dutch foe; costly wars, fruitless expeditions in wi tach time thousands and thousands of native fhers and rowers were known to have em- barked but whether they returned to their homes tas never stated. Like the tribute that once pon a time Greece sent to the Minotaur of ete, the Philippine youth embarked for the saying goodbye to their country for- fren ahead were the stormy sea, the endless ‘wars, the rash expeditions. Because of this, Gaspar de San Agustin says: “Although long ago there were in this town of Dumangas many people, in the course of time shey have been veatly diminished because the natives are the Keer sailors and the most skillful rowers on the whole coast; and so the provincial governors in the port of Ilo-ilo take most of the people from this town for the expeditions they send abroad. When the Spaniards reached this island (Panay) it is said that there were in it more than fifty thousand families; but they were greatly re- duced, . . and at present they may amount to some fourteen thousand tribute payers.” From fifty thousand families to fourteen thousand ‘tribute payers in little over half a century! We would never get through were we to wote all the testimonies of authors regarding, the frightful diminution of the inhabitants of the Philippines during the first years after the dis- covery. In the time of its first Bishop, that is ten years after Legazpi, Philip Il said that they had been reduced to less than two thirds. ‘Add to these fatal expeditions that wasted all the moral and physical energies of the country, ‘he fightful inroads of the terrible pirates from ‘he south, instigated and encouraged by the g0V~ emment, first, in order to get a complaint ‘against them and afterwards, to leave the islands subjected to it, unprotected; inroads that ‘eached the very shores of Manila, even Malate itself, and during which were seen in the baleful W of burning villages, droves of unfortunates Who had been unable to defend themselves set {tt for captivity and slavery, leaving behind im the ashes of their homes and the corpses coat pants and children. Morga who re: mnls the first piratical invasion says: “This expedition, 365 boldness of the people of Mindanao di damage othe Vitayan islands as much by hat they did in them as by the fear and fright which the natives acquired, because they found them- selves under the power of the Spaniards who held them as subjects tribuie-payers and defenseless, in such a manner that they were without protection from their enemies or with- ‘out the means with which to defend themselves, AS THEY USED TO HAVE WHEN THERE WERE NO SPANIARDS IN THE LAND. . .” ‘These piratical attacks also reduced the number of the inhabitants of the Philippines, since the independent Malays were espeially notorious for their cruelties and murders, sometimes be- cause they believed that to preserve their inde- dence it was necessary to weaken the Span ‘ards by reducing the number of their subject sometimes because a greater hatred and & deeper resentment inspired them against the Christian Filipinos who, being of their own race, served the foreigner in order to deprive them of their precious liberty. ‘These expedi- tions lasted almost three centuries, repeated five or ten times a year, and each expedition cost the islands over eight hundred prisoners. “With the invasions of the pirates from Jolo and Mindanao,” says Father Gaspar de San ‘Agustin (the island of Bantayan, near Cebu) “has been greatly reduced because they easily captured the people there since the latter had nowhere 10 take refuge in and were far from help from Cebu. The hostile Joloans did great damage to this island in 1608, leaving it almost depopulated.” (page 380.) ‘These severe attacks, coming from without, produced a counter effect in the interior, which, following our medical comparisons, was like a purge or fasting in an indviual who ass in an it fost much blood. To resist so many calamities, to conserve their hol Id and take the offensive in these disastrous contests, to isolate the warlike Joloan from theit neighbors in the South, to care forthe needs ofthe empire of he Indes (for one of the reasons why the Philippines was pre~ Served was because of its strategic position elween New Spain and the Indies, as contem- porary documents prove), to wrest from the Butch their growing colonies of the Moluceas and get rid of some troublesome neighbors; to mnaintain, in short, the trade of China with New Spain, it was necessary {0 consiruct new and [urge ships which, as we have seen, were costly te ine country not only because of their equip- trent and the rowers required, but also because Or the manner in which they were constructed. Fernando de 10s Rios Coronel, who fought in those wars and later turned priest, speaking of these ships tol id: “As they were very the King said: thege, the timber needed was scarcely 10 beIl, 37, August 15, 1890 there, a permanent source of trouble preait& ced missionaries and a bad example to our eaceful and quiet Filipinos. 10 thr Fabie, finding himself in these troubles wie fs ministerial apprenticeship had not ‘him for at the start, is giving all power prepr*Wweyler and an almost unlimited credit toh dispatch of cruisers, soldiers, supplies ition, ef. ' that for, Mr. Miniter ofthe colonies? And iy support of Spain-the missionaries ee are they for? ITWAS BUT A DREAM... “The names of Balaguer and Becerra have for the Filipinos today only a historical value. ‘The Philippines and the Filipinos will always remember with gratitude and affection these igreat men who worked for its redemption from the bureaucratic despotism of the friars, who serve only to endanger the integrity of the na- tion, Today that era of reforms seems to be only a dreary; the awakening is bitter and the people have to add one more disappointment: that of being grateful to the much talked of and my cal benevolence of the Spaniards that asks for gratitude if a simple duty is complied with, and recognition if laws and orders which they them- selves have issued are complied with. Now the Conservative Party rules in Spain— that party which, despite its name, was often the cause of many uprisings and disorders. To the Philippines, the Conservative Party means reac- tion: ‘The God of the conservative Spaniards is tol Jesus Christ, the Redeemer and Saviour who by his Divine Love for the unfortunates sacri- ficed His life on the cross; the God of the Con- servatives is the god of the Jews, the god of Yengeane, the god who destroys tribes instead of forgiving and saving them. ‘The Conse lives would add deceit to Spanish ingratitude i the eyes of the Filipinos; those who with their tps hate and detest despotism in the Mother uniry would hoist anew the dark banner of an absolutism led by the provincials and selfish interests ofthe regular clergy in the Philippines. same who threw the most illustrious sons of the country into the Agafa prison and into ther leas of arbitrary and capricious ban- ‘shments, Bavtott and ephemereal was the period of iogaBtef tnd Becerra; now friarchy and abso- sm will triumph, exhausting themselves in aL hg the noble name of the nation in ridicule. * In spite of its triumphs monkish rule whe gS ideas of freedom. The youth of the land form the hope of the future may be perse- sen cuted, but they will not be discours sed. Ideas will spread and reaction will be awakened int exorably and horribly. In the Philippines modern ideas have taken root: the Philippines will form a Spanish Province and not a sion. Perhaps a war to exterminate the liberals of the Philippines will be proclaimed, but what does that matter? Ideas do not die with the individual. ‘The Conservatives will pursue the lamenta- ble policy of alienating the “inferior” Filipinos from the “superior” Spaniard, that is, they will require the Filipinos to see in the Spaniards foreign masters under whose yoke they suffer because brute force posed. But the few beautiful phrases which the Conservatives will address to their young brothers in the Philip- pines will not deceive anybody: the Filipinos are already far advanced and able to understand the difference between the heart and the lips, the Word and the spirit, conscience and the word. ‘The history of the Spanish colonies shows this on almost every page of its chronicle. ‘The situation of the country shows that there are many dissatisfied and few contented persons. In the same way that in the Mother Country the Conservative government is giving new food to the Republicans, also encouraging the growth of ideas in the Philippines, prejudicial to those who under the pretext of patriotic mo- tives, dishonor millions of loyal and civilized subjects with the stigma of intellectual and political inferiority. May God help the Conservatives understand that the suppression of the understand that the suppression of the reforms already introduced would be a mistake with transcendental conse- quences. FERNANDO BLUMENTRITT ON THE INDOLENCE OF THE FILIPINOS (Continuation) ‘A fatal combination of circumstances-some, independent of the will in spite of men’s efforts, others, offsprings of stupidity and of ignorance, | others, inevitable corollaries of false principles, | and still others, the result of more or less wi | passions-has induced the decline of labor, an Evil that instead of being remedied by prudence, nature reflection and the recognition of the mnistakes ‘made, through a deplorable policy, through a regrettable blindness and obstinacy has gone from bad lo worse, until it has reached the condition in which we now see it, First came the wars, the internal disorders 363Il, 37, August 15, 1890 nthe forests (of the Philippines!) and fa a es la tn yin he farthest [corner] of them, where, ind, in order to haul and convey it to the oosiatd, the native owns of the surrounding stig had to be depopulated in order to get cout with immense labor, damage, and cost of “The masts of a galleon cost the natives cording 10 the assertion of the Franciscans, x heard the governor of the province where Ay were cut, which is Laguna de Bay, say that the tl them 7 leagues over very rough moun- toa 6,000 natives were engaged three months ind the towns were paid 40 reales every month Githout giving them food which the wretched tative had to seek for himself!” ‘And Gaspar de San Agustin says: “In these times (1690) Bacolor does not have the people that it had in the past because of the uprising in that province when Don Sabiniano Manrique de Lata was Governor of these Islands and because of the continual labor of cutting timber for His Majesty's shipyards WHICH HINDERS ‘THEM FROM CULTIVATING THE VERY FERTILE PLAIN THEY HAVE, etc.” If this is not sufficient to explain the depopu- lation of the Islands and the abandonment of industry, agriculture and commerce, then add the ‘natives who were executed, those who left their women and children and fied in disgust to the mountains, those who were sold into slavery to pay the taxes levied on them,” as Fernando de los Rios says; add all this to what Philip If in reprimanding Bishop Salazar about “na- tives sold by some encomenderos to others, those flogged to death, the women who were ‘crushed to death by their heavy burdens, those who slept in the fields and bore and nursed their children and died bitten by poisonous snakes, the many who were executed and left to die hunger and those who ate poisonous herbs. . . and the mothers who killed their children at binh,” and you will understand how in less than thirty years the population of the Philippines Was reduced to one-third, We are not saying this; it was said by Gaspar de San Agustin, the retminently anti-Filipino Augustinian, and he Sonfirmed it throughout the rest of his work by Peaking every moment of the state of neglect in which lay the farms and fields once so flour- ‘ishing and so well-cultivated, the decimated towns, for ae : {uns formerly inhabited by many leséing nee is it then that discouragement a Kened in the spirit of the inhabit- 2268 ofthe Philippines, when in the midst of so they calamities they did not know whether Would see the seed they were planting Eas Whether ther field was going to be their Ne oF their harvest would go to feed their 367 executioner? What is there strange when we see the pi ious but impotent friars of that time advis- ing their poor parishioners to free themselves from the tyranny of encomenderos, to stop work in the mines, to abandon their industry to break their looms, pointing out to them heaven for their whole hope, preparing them for death as. their only consolation? ‘Man works for an object; remove the object, and you reduce him to inaction, The most active man in the world will fold his arms from the ‘moment he understands that it is madness to bestir himself, that his work will be the cause of his trouble, that for him it will be the cause of vexations at home and of the pirate’s greed abroad. It seems that these thoughts have never entered the minds of those who complain about the indolence of the Filipinos. Even if the Filipinos were not a man like the rest; even were we to suppose that to him, the desire for work wes as essential as the move ment of a wheel caught in the gears of others in motion; even were we to deny him foresight and the conclusions thatthe present and the past ‘suggest, there would still be another reason to explain the attack of the disease. The abandon- ment of the fields by their cultivations, whom wars and piratical attacks dragged from their homes was sufficient to reduce to nothing the hard labor of so many generations; in the Phil- jines abandon for a year the land most bes tifully tended and you will see how you will have to begin all over again: the rain will wipe out the furrows, floods will drown the seeds, plants and bushes will grow everywhere, and on seeing so much useless labor the hand will drop. the hoe, the laborer will desert the plow. Is there not the fine life of a pirate? ‘Thus is understood that sad dismay which we find in the friar-writers of the seventeenth cen- tury, speaking of submerged plains once very fertile, of provinces and :owns depopulated, of ‘goods which have disappeared from the market, Of leading families exterminated. Those pages resemble a sad and monotonous scene in the night aftera lively day. Of Cagayan, Father San Agustin speaks with mournful brevity: “A great deal of cotton out of which they made good loth which the Chinese and Japanese bought ‘and carried away every year.” In the historian’s time, industry and trade must have come to an id. vm seems that these are more than sufficient causes to breed indolence even in the midst of f beehive. ‘Thus is explained why after thirty. two years of the system, the circumspect and prudent Morga said that the natives “have for- {fotien much about farming, poultry-raising, Sck-raising, cotton-raising and weaving cloth like they used to do in their pagan state and FORIl, 37, August 15, 1890 ‘TIME AFTER THE COUNTRY W LONEN CONQUERED.” a HAD, Fipey struggled a long time against indo- _ Sil a, bot their enemies were 0 numerous vr ast they gave UP! _— THE BALAGUER LIBRARY-MUSEUM JOSE RIZAL is beautiful institution which was altars ‘on October 26, 1884 is found, like inmwattpefore, in Villanueva y Geli, a town weed almost over the ashes of the ancient and tt eilis of Subur and of Tolobi Pomponis Mela in his Situ orbis locates these Ener in this area, although Romey in a Cuadro Comparative assers that Tolobis is the present Manorell and Subur is Sitges. iis founder, the worthy patrician Don Victor Balaguer, has consecrated to fortune tiving it immediately 18,000 volumes, 200 ings and many other objects of art~all from vate property and “all laboriously gath- ered” as he used (0 say, “during my life.” In a letter of Mr. Balaguer sent to Don Ramon Estruch and dated August 30, 1883, which we have on hand, we find the explanation of the source of the funds which would furnis the means of realizing such a lofty project. “I ‘am a politician,” he said, “and I believe that the money of politicians should have a purpose.” In 1874 at the age of 19, he came into his inheritance which he invested in a state bonds and railways. In 1881 his wife died and alone in the world and without children, he decided to cash in all his fortune and employ it for a monument that might be useful to his country and worthy of her. Fate favored his purpose: the prices of stocks went up and he realized a profit of about 40,000 duros with which he built this edifice, instead of constructing a house for his own comfort and use, for free education and Public omament, Let's go inside his place, but we first look ‘the two marble plaques Jocated on both sides Githe gate. On them are engraved in golé Me ters, among other illustrious names which we a do not recall, those of Juan Luna y [uvisio, Eduardo Tods'y Gael, Enrique Serra, ‘eter y Soler. Inthe center of the building our glance swept eg leets that were familiar and dear to us, ee ‘he afeetion that is pore ippines. Hampers a ‘t) and bamboo woven in the Ilocos and in shes Bulacan); ladles and cups of coconut Ping getcictely made; statues made by Fepresenting customs of the country; scarfs exquisitely embroidered by native women; gold dust from the Agno river (Pangasinan); very fine mats, samples of pifa, abaca, and cotton cloths; musical instruments and primitive weapons; salakots (coolie hats), saddles, locano kalapi, Igorot idols, coralline amulets, ivory figures, old coins, earrings of bone and horns, Taklobos and a thousand other Filipino objects. I this hall we also find necklaces manufac- tured and used by the natives of Fernando Poe; small baskets, found in an old tomb of Saint Ceterinha (Brazil); embalming materials used by the guanches (Great Canary); Puerto Rican idols found in the Borinquen cemetery (Aguadilla City); tanjas or domestic idols of the inhabitants of the Andes; comb made of spines and branches of the Chonta palm of the Coreguage Indians; shell craft, mother-of-peal omaments worn by married women of Caqueta (Andes); tube for the red paste with which the Caraguages and the Guages paint themselves all of them representing an exotic civilization. The gallery occupies a large hall. Its walls are covered with old and modern paintings of the most renowned artists and are placed in the best of conditions, thanks to the light they re- ceive which is softened by a rich velum on the ‘window: the Mestiza (woman of mixed blood) [painting] of Luna; paintings of Ricart, Teofilo, of the Filipino M. Zaragoza, a sketch of the painting of Amerigo on the Filipino Exhibit of Madrid, and many other paintings, majority of which are noteworthy and which form an artis- tic combination with statues made by the chisel of Damian and Jose Campeny, of the Valmitjanas, Fuxa, Carbonell, Tasso, Sanmarti, Sunol, A. Dizand others; the Himeneo of Sunol, the Lucrecia of D, Campeny and the Episodio de Trafalgar of Diaz deserve special mention. Of engravings, we saw many by Alberto Durero, Van Eych, Jordaens, Rembrandt and Goya. Shell-craft: Roman carnelians and agates attract notice and Greek ones engraved on notches from Ampurias. Ceramics: Different plates, majolica-ware, faiences, glazed ware, elc. ‘Costumes: Mandarin, Arab, European clothes of the past century; helmets, armor, tap- sities, laces, Japanese and Chinese weapons. ‘Archeology: Skulls, axes, adzes, and bead necklaces of the Neolithic period; mosaic pieces, glasses of Caracalla, Hefculanum, and Asta rings and Roman seals, carvings found in Llunia, 014 Roman city, etc. . Nurnismatics: Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman coins-of the monarchy, republic, consu- late, empire and of the colonies, provinces and lands which were allied to it; those of the pow-Il, 38, August 31, 1890 Henge % Ilocos Norte ‘77, Canaries 78. Bulacan 2: Manila (owns outside the city) 3: Gimarines Norte 83. Batany Si Albey FERNANDO BLUMENTRITT ON THE INDOLENCE OF THE FILIPINOS (Continuation) Vv We know the causes that predisposed and il; now let us see what foster it. In this connection, government and the governed have to acknowledge their fault and say: “We deserve our fate.” ‘We have already said that when a house becomes disturbed and disordered, we should not blame the youngest child or the servants, but the head of it, especially if his authority is unlimited. He’ who does not act freely is not responsible for his actions; and the Filipino people, not being master of its liberty, is. not responsible for either its misfortunes or its ‘woes. We say this, itis true, but as will be seen lateron, we also have a large part [of the blame] for the continuation of such a disorder. The following causes, among others, contrib- uted to foster the evil and aggravate it: the con- stantly lessening encouragement that labor has met in the Philippines, The Government, fear- to have Filipinos come in contact with other individuals of the same race, {who are] inde- Pendent and free, like the Borneans, Siamese, Cambodians and’the Japanese, people who in their customs and feelings differ greatly from the Chinese, regarded them with much mistrust ‘and great severity, as Morga testifies in the last ages of his work, until they finally stopped foming to the country. In fact, it seems that ‘nce they suspected an uprising planned by the Bomeans; we say suspected because there Was. ‘ot even an attempt, although there were many ®xecutions, And, as these nations were the very nes that consumed Philippine products, when communication with them had been cut off, Consumption of these products also ceased. ‘The 301 only two. countries with which the Philippines fete x te relations were China and », or New Spain, and from this trade onl; China and a few private i nila obtained any benefit. In fact, the Celesti Empire sent her junks laden with merchandise, ‘that merchandise which shut down the factories of Seville and ruined Spanish industry, and returned loaded with the silver that was sent every year from Mexico. Nothing from the Philippines at that time went to China, not even gold, for in those years the Chinese traders did not accept any other payment but silver cur- tency. ‘To Mexico went a lille more: some cotton cloths and textiles which the encomendero took by force or brought from the tatives at a paltty price; wax, amber, gold, civel, etc. were sent but nothing more and nol even in great quantity, as stated by Admiral Don Jeronimo de Baiwelos y Carrillo, when he begged the King that “ihe inhabitants of the Manilas be permitted! to load as many ships as they could with native products, such as wax, gold, perfumes, ivory, cotton cloths, which they would have to buy from the natives of the coun try... Thus friendship of these peoples would be gained, they would furnish New Spain with their merchandise and the money that is brought to Manila would not leave this place.” “The coastwise trade, so active in other fies, had to die out, thanks to the piratical attacks of the Malays of the south; trade in the interior of the Islands almost completely disappeared, thanks to the restrictions, permi administrative requirements. Not to be ignored are the hindrances and obstacles that from the boginning were thrown jin the farmer's way by the rulers, who were influenced by a childish fear and saw every- ‘where signs of conspiracies and uprisings. The natives were not allowed to go to their labors ‘or their granjerias (farms) as they were called then, without permission ofthe governar, or his alealdes mayores (provincial governors), and judges and even of the priests, as Morga says. Those who know the administrative redslape ‘and confusion in a country where the officials work scarcely two hours a day; those who know the cost of going to and returning from the capital fo oblain a permit; those who are aware ‘of the petty vengeances of the litte tyrants, tnderstand if with this erude arrangement it possible to have even the most ridieulous agri- Piliure, ‘True it is that this absurdity, which would be ludicrous had it not been so serious, tas disappeared for some time now, but if the words have gorie out of use, other facts and ther provisions have replaced them. The Moro pirate has disappeared, but there remains the Pandit who infests the fields and waylays theIl, 38, August 31, 1890 ‘per hold him for ransom. Well then, the fume men, Which has a constant fear of the (o, denies to all the farmers even the use of Pea; of if it does allow i, it does so very 3 shlgaly and withdraws it at pleasure, so that gudeetfer who, thanks to this means of Ane ase, plans his crops and invests his meager deta in the furrows which he has s0 labori- capiopencé finds that when his crop matures, qreceuts to the government which is impotent ivosppress banditry, to deprive him of his ‘Ceapon; and then, without defense and without wearily, he is reduced to inaction and abandons Fis ficld, his work, and takes to gambling as the best means of securing 2 livelihood. The green Cloth [gambling table} is under the protection of the Government. It is safer! A sad counselor when one is defenseless, strengthens the very rseeutor! ‘The sordid return the native gets for his work ultimately discourages him. We know from history thal the encomenderos after reducing many to slavery and forcing them to work for their benefit, made others give up their mer- chandise for a trifle or nothing at all, or cheated them with false measures. Speaking of Ipion, in Panay, Father Gaspar de San Agustin says: “It was in ancient times very rich in gold. . . but provoked by the annoyances they suffered from some alcaldes mayores (provincial gover- nors) they have ceased to get it out, preferring to live in poverty rather than to suffer suc hardships.” (Page 378.) Farther on, speaking of other towns, he says: “goaded by ill-treat- ment ofthe encomenderos who in administering justice have treated the natives as their slaves and not as their children, and looked after their ‘own interests only at the expense of the ‘wretched fortunes and lives of their charges . + (page 422).” Farther on, “In Leyte, they tried to kill an excomendero of the town of Dagami n account of the great hardships he made them suffer by exacting tribute in wax from them with 2 see yard whieh he had made twice as long asothers...” _ This state of affairs lasted a long time and still lasts, in spite of the fact that the breed of encomenderos has become extinct. A term passes away but the evil and the passions do not fo witht as long as reforms are devoted only changing the names. . The wars with the Dutch, the inroads and piratical attacks of the people of Jolo and Mindanao disappeared; the people have been Gussfomed, new towns have grown up while others have become impoverished; bu the vexa- ions and frauds subsist as much as or Worse ¢ they did in those cut years. We shall not tit our own experiences for, aside from the fact wt we do not know which to select, critics may 393 feproach us with partiality; neither will we cite those of other Filipinos who write in the news Papers, no; but we shall confine ourselves to translating the words of a modern French trav- eller who was in the Philippines for a long time: “... The good curate,” he says with ref- erence to the rosy picture that a friar had given him of the Philippines, “had not told me about the alcalde (provincial governor), the foremost official of the district who, much engrossed with the idea of enriching himself, had not time to tyrannize over his docile subjects; the alealde, charged with ruling the country and collecting the various taxes in the name of the government, is devoted almost exclusively to {rade; in his hands the high and noble functions he performs are nothing more than instruments of gain, He monopolizes the business and in- stead of developing on his part the love of work, insiead of stimulating the to0 natural indolence of the natives, he, abusing his powers, thinks only of destroying all competition that may trouble him or that may try to participate in his profits. 1 matters little to him that the country is impoverished, without culture, without com- ‘merce, withoul industry, just so the alcalde is quickly enriched!” Yel the traveler has been unfair in picking out the alcalde especially. Why only the alealde? We do not cite passages from other travellers because we do not have works at hand and we > ot wish to quote from memory. The great difficulty that every enterprise en- countered with this administration contributed not @ little to kill off all commercial an trial movement. All the Filipinos as well as those who have tried to engage in business in the Philippines know how many documents, how many processes, how many stamped pa- pets, how much patience is needed to secure a petmit for an enterprise from the Government! ‘Sne must count on the goodwill of this one, one the influence of that one, on a good bribe to another, in order that the application be not pigeonholed, a present to the one farther on so that he may pass it on fo his chief; one must pray to God to give him good humor and time to see ‘and examine it; to another, talent to recognize ‘expediency; to one further on, sufficient stu- ty not to smell behind the enterprise a fili- Fustering purpose; and that they may not be busy taking baths, hunting, or playing rummy with the reverend friars in their convents or ‘country-houses; and above all, great patience, great knowledge of how to get along, plenty of froney, a great deal of politics, many saluta- tions, great influence, plenty of presents, and complete resignation! Why should it be strange that the Philippines remain poor in spite of itsIl, 38, August 31, 1890 fertile soil when history tells us that the fiourishing countries today date their de- mas ment and this advancement from the day veetiriberty and civil rights? The most com offal and most industTious countries have mae he feest countries: France, England, and beet ited States prove this; Hong Kong, ihich ihe ox worth the most insignificant island of the i ippines, has more commercial activity than ibe islands logeter, because 8 fee and js well-governed. is wo Bede with China which was the whole occupation of the colonizers of the Philippines Sis not only prejudicial to Spain, but also to the We of her colonies; in fact, when the officials i rivate persons of Manila found an easy wiihod of getting rich, they neglected every- thing; they paid no attention either to cultivating the soil or to fostering industry. What for? Ghina supplied it; they had only to take advan- tage of it and pick up the gold that dropped out opits way from Mexico toward the interior of the Celestial Empire, the abyss whence it never returned. ‘The pernicious example of the rulers, that {practice} of surrounding themselves with serv- ants and of despising manual or hard labor as thing unbecoming of the nobility and aristo- ‘cratic pride of the heroes of so many centuries; those lordly airs which the natives have trans- ated into tila ka castila [you are like a Span- iard], and the desire of the dominated [people] tobe the equal of the masters, if not essentially, af least anners; all this had to produce naturally aversion to activity and fear or hatred of work. Moreover, “why work?" many natives asked themselves. “The curate says that the rich man will not go to heaven; the rich man on earth is ‘exposed (o all kinds of trouble, to all kinds of molestations, to be appointed cabeza de barangay, to be deported if an uprising occurs, to be the forced banker of the military chief of the town, who to reward him for favors received seizes his laborers and his stock to force him to beg for mercy and thus pay up easily. Why be Fi? So tha all the offigers of justice may have ‘lynx eye on one’s actions; so that at the least fase may be raised up against him, indict him, along and complicated story may be concocted against him, from which he can only get away not by the thread of Ariadne but by Danae’s shower of gold; and still, thanks be if he is not kept in reserve for some needy occa- sion? The native whom they try to regard as an imbecile is not so much so that he does not (attend that it is ridiculous to work himself death to become worse off. A proverb of his S25: Pork is cooked in its own lard, and since among his bad qualities he has the good one of = applying to himself all the criticis ss oe about he prefers ae indolent rather than wretched beast of burden” HAS Tie Patio te ‘Add to thisthe introduction of gambling. We 4o not mean to say that before the arrival of the Spaniards the natives did not gamble; the pas- sion for gambling is innate in adventuresome and excitable races and such is the Malay. Pigaffeta tells us of cockfights and of bets in the island of Paragua. Cockfighting must have ‘existed also in Luzon and in all the islands, for in the terminology of the game, there arc two ‘Tagalog words: sabong and tari (cockfight and spur). But there is not the least doubt that the fostering of this game as well as the perfecting of it are due to the Governmes iithough Pigaffeta tells us of it, he mentions it only in Paragua and not in Cebu, nor in any other island of the south where he stayed a long time. Morga does not speak of it in spite of his having spent seven years in Manila and yet he describes the kinds of fowls, the wild hens and cocks. Neither does Morga speak of gambling when he talks of vices and of other defects, more or less con- cealed, more or less insignificant. Moreover, excepting the two Tagalog words sabong and tari, the others are of Spanish origin, such as soltada (the act of letting the cocks loose for the fight, then the fight itself), pusta (apuesta, bet), logro (winnings), pago (payment), sentenciador (one who gives decisions), casa (to set), etc. We say the same about gambling: the word sugal (jugar, to gamble) like kumpisal (confesar, to confess to a priest) indicates that ‘gambling was unknown in the Philippines be- fore the Spaniards. The word laré (to play in Tagalog) is not the same as the word sugal. ‘The word balasa baraja (playing-card), proves that the introduction of playing-cards was not due to ‘the Chinese who have a kind of playing-cards also, because in that case they would have taken the Chinese name. What else? The words taya (iallar, 10 bet), paris-paris (Spanish pares, pairs), politana (Napolitana) a winning suit of bne-iworthree in cards, sapote (to slack the cards), kapote (to slam), monte (literally moun- ‘game of cards), ec, all prove the foreign origin of this terrible plant, which only produces vice and which has found in the character of the tative a fit soil, enriched by circumstances. ‘With gambling which breeds dislike for steady and difficult toil by its promises of easy money and its appeal to the emotions; with the fotteries, with the prodigality and the hospitality Of the Filipinos went also, to swell this train of frisfortunes, the religious functions, the numer~ bus fiestas, the long masses for the women to Spend theit mornings and the novenaries to spend their afternoons and the nights for the 395I, 38, August 31, 1890 ons and rosaries. Consider that the lack J, the absence of means paralyze all ot raty and you will see how the native had to feindolent by force, for if any money were to be Tain with him after the rials, imposts, exac- Tons, etc. he would have to give it to the curate for bulls, scapularies, candles, novenaries, etc. iOrdif this were not sufficient to form an in- Golent character, if the climate and nature are fot enough in themselves to daze him and deprive him of all energy, recall then the doc- trines of his religion which teach him to irrigate fis fields in dry season, not by means of canals, tot with masses and prayers; to preserve his Sock during rinderpest with holy water, exor- ‘cisms, and benedictions which cost five duros ‘animal; 10 drive away the locusts by a pro- Eession with the image of Saint Augustine, etc, Itis good, undoubtedly, to trust much in God; but it is better to do what one can and not trouble the Creator at every moment, even when these appeals redound to the benefit of His minister. We have seen that the countries which believe most in miracles are the laziest, just as spoiled children are the most ill-man- ered. Whether they believe in miracles to pallite their laziness or they are lazy because they believe in miracles, we cannot say; but the fact is that the Filipinos were much less lazy before the word miracle was introduced into their language. ‘The facility also with which individual lib- erty is curtailed, that continual alarm which everybody has that one is likely to be accused of being a filibuster a suspicious person, on the basis of a secret report, of an administrative order, of an accusation, which to be effective, does not have to be proved, nor to have the accuser come openly; that lack of confidence in the future, that uncertainty of reaping the re- ward of his labor as in a city stricken with plague, where everybody yields to fright, shuts himself in his house or goes about amusing himself in an attempt to spend the few days that remain to him in the least disagreeable way Possible, ‘The apathy of the-Government itself toward everything in commerce and agriculture con- tributes not a litte to foster indolence. ‘There ‘sno encouragement at all for the manufacturer orfor the farmer; the Government does not help either when a poor crop comes, when the lo- ‘uss sweep over the fields, or when a typhoon lestroys in its wake the wealth of the soil; nor does it take any trouble to seek a market for the Products of its colonies. Why should it do so ‘When these same products are burdened with ‘axes and imposts and have no free entry into Ports of the Mother Country, nor is the ‘Sonsumption of these [products] encouraged! ocessi 5 capital 397 While we see all the walls of London cov With advertisements ofthe products of fs coos nies; while the English make heroic efforts to Substitute Ceylon tea for Chinese tea, they themselves begin with the sacrifice of their taste and their stomach; in Spain, with the exception of tobacco, nothing from the Philippines is known: neither its sugar nor coffee, hemp nor the fine cloths, nor its Hocano blankets. The name of Manila is known only from those shawls of China or of Indo-China which at one time reached Spain by way of Manila, heavy silk shawls, fantastically but coarsely embroi- dered, which no one has thought of imitating in Manila since they are so easily made; but the Government has other cares and the Filipinos do riot know that such objects are more highly esteemed in the Peninsula than their delicate pita embroideries and their very fine jusi fab- tics. ‘Thus disappeared our trade in indigo, thanks to the fraud of the Chinese, which the Government could not guard against, occupied as it was with other thoughts; thus the other industries die now: the fine manufactures of the Visayas are gradually disappearing from trade, ven from use the people coninially geting poorer, cannot afford the cosily cloths an have {o be contented with calico or the imitations of the Germans, who, in imitating us, copy even the work of our silversmiths. ‘The fact that the best estates, the best tracts of land in some provinces, those that from their easy access are more profitable than others are in the hands of religious corporations whose desideratum is ignorance and a condition of semi-starvation of the native so that they may continue to govern him and make themselves necessary to his wreiched existence is one of the reasons why many towns do not progress in spite of the efforts of their inhabitants. We will be met with the objection, as an argument in ‘opposition, thal the towns which belong to the friars are comparatively richer than those which do not belong to them. We believe this! Just as their brethren in Europe, in founding their convents, knew how to select the best valleys, the best upland for cultivation of the vine, or the production of beer; thus, also the Philippine monks have known how to select the best towns, the beautiful plains, the well-watered fields to make of them very rich estates. For some time the friars have deceived many by making them believe that if these estates were prospering, it was because they were under their Pare; and the indolence of the native was thus emphasized; but they forget that in some prov- fnces where they have not been able to get pos- session of the best lands, due to one reason or Snother, the estates like’ those in Bavang and Liang are inferior to those in Taal, Balayan, andIl, 38, August 31, 1890 regions cultivated entirely by the natives t-monkish interference whatsoever. this lack of material inducement the apstnoe of moral simulus and you will ee how sho is not indolent in that country must as be a madman or at least a moron. What geeks awaits him who distinguishes himself ee who studies, him who rises above the hifla? A young man, atthe cost of study and Serifices, becomes a great chemist and after a Be eouse of training wherein neither the gov- tong ent nor anybody had given him the least help, he concludes his long stay in the Univer- AI he works; a competitive examination is Feld to fill a certa in; the young man Mrins through knowledge of science and perse- Worance, and after he has won it, itis abolished because... we do not care to give the reason, but when a municipal laboratory is closed in trder to abolish the position of director, who got fis position by competitive examination, while other positions like that of the press censor are ved, it is because the belief exists that the ight of progress may harm the people more than all the adulterated foods. In the same way, another young man wins a prize in a literary ‘competition and as long as his origin unknown, his work is discussed, the newspapers praise it and regard it as a masterpiece; but the sealed envelopes are opened, the winner is a native while among the losers there are Peninsulars, then all the newspapers hasten to extol the los- ers! Not one word from the Government, nor from anybody to encourage the native who with 30 much affection has cultivated the language and literature of the Mother Country! Finally, passing over many other causcs, more or less insignificant, the enumeration of which would be interminable, let us close this dreary list with the principal and most terrible of all: the education of the native. ‘The training of the native from his birth until he sinks to his grave is brutalizing, depressive, and anti-human (the word “inhuman” is not suf- seats explanatory: whether the Academy allows [the use] of it or not, let it stand). ‘There {sno doubt that the Government, some religious lke the Jesuits and some Dominicans like Fa- thet Benavides have done a great deal by found- ingcolleges, schools of primary instruction, etc. ‘But this is not enough: their effect is neutral- ized. They amount to five or ten years (years ofa hundred and fifty days at most) during ica the youth comes in contact with books Selected by those very priests who boldly pro- lim that it is an evil for the natives to know Seanish, thatthe native should not be separated fom his carabao, that he should not have further nbitions, ete; five or ten years during which majority of the students learned nothing ts “ Add (0, 399 ‘except that nobody understands what Say, 01 even the professors themselves per haps; and these five or ten years have to offset ae preaching, a a lifetime, that preaching io ignity of man, which de- Prives him gradually or brutally of the sentiment of appreciation of himself, that etern I, stub- born, constant labor to bend the native’s neck, to make him accept the yoke, to place him on a level with the beast-a labor aided by some Persons, writers or not writers, which if in some individuals produce the desired effect, in others has the opposite effect, like the breaking of a cord that is stretched too tightly. Thus while try to make of the native a kind of animal, in ex- change they demand of him divine actions. And we say divine action because he must be a god who does not become indolent in that climate and surrounded by the circumstances men- tioned. Deprive a man then of his dignity and you not only deprive him of his moral strength but also you make him uscless even for those who wish to make use of him. Every creature in the universe has a weakness, a flaw: that of ‘man is resentment; deprive him of it and he is corpse. He who asks activity in a corpse will find only worms. Thus is explained how the natives of today are no longer the same as those of the time of the discovery, neither morally nor physically. ‘The carly writers like Chirino, Morga, and Colin take pleasure in describing them as well- proportioned, with good aptitudes for anything they undertake and are dedicated to, keen and passionate, strong-willed, very clean and neat in their persons, dressed and of, good men, and bearing etc. (Morga). Others delight in minute accounts of their intelligence and pleasant man- ners, of their aptitude for music, the drama, dancing and singing, of the facility they had in learning not only Spanish, but also Latin, which they had acquired almost by themselves ; others, of their exquisite politeness in their dealings and in their social life; others like the first Augustinian whose accounts Gaspar de San Agustin copies, found them more gallant and more graceful than the inhabitants of the Moluccas, etc, “All live off their lands,” adds Morga, “their farms, fisheries, and trade, for they travel from island to island by sea and from ince to province by land.” . ‘On the other hand, our present-day writers, without being better than the early ones either ‘as man of as historians without being braver than Hernan Cortes or Sloat nor more rl dent than Legaspi, nor more just than Morga, dent than fadious than Colin and Gaspar de San ‘Agustin, our contemporary writers, we Says find that the native is a creature something more ‘much less than a man, an than a monkey butIl, 38, August 31, 1890 id, dull-witted, stupid, timid, dirt inning, il-ciothed, indolent, vf ringint, brainless, immoral, etc, cows what is this retrogression due? Is it the slessed civilization, the religion of salvation of blestars, named after Jesus Christ by euphe- tim that has produced this miracle, that has ‘ophied the brain, paralyzed the heart, and fade of the man this sort of vicious animal that the writers depict? “alas! The whole misfortune of the present Filipinos consists in that they have become only talf-way brutes. The Filipino is convinced that to be bappy it is necessary for him to lay aside tis dignlty as. rational creature, to attend mass, to confess, to obey what the curate orders him 10 do, 10 believe what is told him, to pay what ie demanded of him, to pay and forever to pay; te work, suffer, and be silent without asp ‘anything, without aspiring to know or even Ibundesatd Spanish, withou separating from his carabao, 28 the priests shamelessly’ say, without protesting against any injustice, against ubitrary action against an assault, against that is, not to have a heart, brain, or si reature with arms and with a purse filled with gold-there is the ideal native! Un- fortunately, or because the brutalization is not t complete, or because the nature of man is inherent in his being in spite of his condition, the native protests, aspires still, thinks, and strives, and there lies the evil! JOSE RIZAL (To be continued) JOSE PANGANIBAN He died. _ Those of us who had the good fortune to listen to the sharpness of his wit; those of us who were able fo appreciate his exceptional talent, the generous nature of his sincere char- Scter; those of us who have held the hand of a loyal friend and good compatriot, will no longer 8e¢ that special look of a pensive young man 2 that alert look, the reflection of a passionate Soul that thought like us and with us, that shared the difficult labors of collaborat His ideas were ours; his pen and his talent Pie dedicated to the defense of liberty in the Philippines; he lived together with us in the iitimate ways of a single aspiration: the well- ing of Spanish Philippines. aq /\tuel disease undermined his constitution jj4 of care; the cold climate and his studies Tove t,%° him good and, at last, without a father around him, without the console ‘on ofa family, without being in his own coun- 401 try and his fellow countrymen who never left him even for a moment in the sister-land, amidst the mystery and the caresses that a mid night seemed to enwrap Barcelona. ‘Panganiban was given a prize by the College of Medicine of Manila in all the third-year sub- Jects of the course; his works eamed the unanimous acclaim of his professors and the honor of having them published and later send- ing them as a worthy contribution to the expo- sition of the Philippines in 1887. His perseverance was so great that, sick and prostrate in bed, he acquired knowledge in forty days of one of the most difficult languages— German-and among his papers is an unedited manuscript of Weber's work, Faith and Reli gions, translated from German into Spanish. Alone and without teachers, solely of his own will and determination, for Panganiban was not rich, he learned English and French, translated Italian. So passionately attracted to some of these languages was he that during his sickness, ‘we saw him translating lovely passages of for- n literature. His medical articles were pub- El Boletin de Medicina (Bulletin of of Manila. In the LA is Medicine) SOLIDARIDAD we have always caught the glimmer of the young man who loved philoso- phy, who knew how to express himself by means of the complicated mechanism of lan- guage in a pithy and simple syle, a faithful Picture of his character of which nothing re- mains now but the memory, like smoke to some, yet imperishable to us. Today, we shall weep for the brother and friend; tomorrow, we shall feel a vacuum that is difficult to fill} later, a memory wrapped in tears, a shadow that fades and disappears-noth- ing, ‘But for us, his fellow countrymen, during the dark night’ of trials, when firmness and convictions should be needed, we shall think of Panganiban, of the young and assiduous writer Jomapa who filled together with us the columns. ‘of LA SOLIDARI We will no longer see the columns waitten by him; we no longer read ‘hing of his work... May he rest in peace! POOR PHILIPPINES If the advent of the Conservative Party in the last crisis is unfortunate for the Capital, the change of policy is even more so and immensel fatal to the interests of the Philippine Archi+ Pee eat evils which will be brought about are not lost to us and the Conservative Party, irreconcilable enemy of liberty and of democ- racy, is already affecting the nation; but we mustIl, 39, September 15, 1890 rizeds0 that our labors can be started ind ough the Philippines thank rs, we shall try to achieve this [ul- {orca tony the indispensable bass of hei titre epgrandizement. we frends of the group, best regards MIGUEL MORAYTA. uethary, September 6, 1890 ON THE INDOLENCE OF THE FILIPINOS (Conclusion) V | jon! In the preceding chapter we set forth the causes that proceed from the Government in fostering and maintaining the evil we are dis- cussing, Now we should analyze those that ‘emanate from the people. Peoples and govern- tenis are correlated and complementary: a callous goverament is an anomaly among righ- {eous people, just as a corrupt people cannot ‘exist under just rulers and wise laws. Like people, like government, we will say parodying a popular adage. /e can reduce all these causes to two classes: 10 defects of training and lack of na- tional sentiment. Ofthe influence of climate we spoke of at the sinning; therefore, we will not. treat of the fects arising from it. ‘The very limited training in the home, the tyrannical and sterile education of the rare cen- ters of learning, that blind subordination of the youth 10 one older, influence the mind so that & man may not aspire to excel those who pre- ‘ceded him, thus only to be content in following them orto march behind them. From this comes perforce stagnation and as he who devotes him- Self to imitating divests himself of other ulities suited to his own nature, he naturally hence, decadence. Indolence 's a corollary which arises from the lack of ‘stimulus and of vitality. ‘That modesty infused into the convictions of ‘veryone, or to be more explicit, that insinuated ioriy, a sort of daily and constant depre- Gition of the spirit so that it may not be frlightened, destroys energies, paralyzes all satncy toward advancement, and at the least ouBsle a man gives up without fighting. If by te Of those rare incidents, some wild spirit, 's, some active one excels, instead of his eae Stimulating, it only causes others ‘0 st in their inaction. “There is he who will iat 417 work for w i . wr ce aegis and ede fivalry is sometimes awakened, only that then itawakens with bad humor, in the gute of env and instead of being a lever for helping, itis 24 obstacle that produces discouragement, Nurtured by the example of anchorites of a contemplative and lazy life, the natives spend theirs in giving their gold to the church in the expectation of miracles and other wanderfl things. Their will is hypnotized; from child- hood they learn to act mechanically, without knowledge ofthe objective, thanks to the exer ses imposed on them from the tenderest years of praying for whole hours in an Tako tongue, of venerating things that they do not understand, of accepting beliefs that are not explained to them, of fore ig absurdities on them, while the protests of reason are repressed. Is it any wonder that with this vicious dressage of intelligence and will, the native of old-logi- cal and consistent, as the analysis of his past and of his language demonstrates-should now be a mass of dismal contradictions? That continued struggle between reason and duty, between his native and his new ideals, that civil war wh disturbs during his lifetime the peace of his conscience, has the result of paralyzing all his energies and aided by the severity of the cli- mate, makes of that eternal vacillation, of the doubts of his mind, the origin of his indolent slate. “You cannot know more than this Old So- and-So! Do not aspire to be greater than the curate! You belong to an inferior race! You ‘have no ability!” this is what they tell the child ‘and since they repeat this often, it has to become perforce engraved in his mind and thence mould and pervade all his actions. The child, the youth who tries to be anything else is considered pre~ Sumptuois ‘and vain; the curate dees hin ‘with cruel sarcasm, his relatives look upon him ‘ith fear, strangers regard him with great com~ passion. No forward movement! Get back in the ranks, keep the line! ‘With his spirit thus moulded the native falls into the most pernicious of all routine which is not planned but imposed and forced, Note that the native himself is not naturally inclined wine; his mind is disposed to accept all truth, Jost as his house is ‘open to all strangers, The ood and the beautiful attract him, delight and Captivate him although, like the Japanese, he often exchanges the good fr jhe cil i it to him garnished and shining. pe in the first place is liberty to allow tepansion for his adventurous spirit and good aries, beautiful prospects forthe future. Tt Sriessary that his spi although it may be Sismayed and cowed by the elements and theIL, 39, September 15, 1890 1 manifestations of their mighty forces, ee ‘energy, seek lofty purposes, in order to fe against the obstacles in the midst of vunfa’ nt 285; it is necessary that a revolutios a 0 io speak, should stir in hs veins, ye progress necessarily requires change, implies, the overthrow of the past and there deified by the present, the victory of new ideas Gver old and accepted ones. It will not be sufficient to speak to his fancy, to praise him, Sor that the light deceive him like those deceiv- Jog lights which mislead travellers at night; all the flattering promises of the fairest hopes wi tot suffice while his spirit is not free, his intel- Tigence not respected. ‘The reasons originate in the lack of national sentiment are still more lamentable and more transcendental. ed by suggestions of his inferiority, by the education, if that brutal- ization of which We speak above can be called education, in that exckange of usages and sen- timents among different nations, the Filipino to ‘only his susceptibility of race and his poetic imagination, allows himself to be guided by his fancy and his self-love. It is fenough that the foreigners praise to him the imported merchandise and run down the native product for him to hasten to make the change, Without reflecting that everybody has his weak- ness and that the most sensible usage is ridiculous in the eyes of those who do not fol- low it. They have dazzled him with tinsel, with strings of colored glass-beads, with noisy rattles, shining mirrors, and other trinkets and he has given in return, his gold, his conscience, and even his liberty; his religion was exchanged for the external practices of another cult; the convictions and the usages born of his climate and needs for other usages and convictions that grew under another sky and another inspiration. His sprit, well-disposed toward everything that looks good to him, was transformed therefore al the pleasure of the nation that forced upon him its God and its laws, and as the trader with whom he dealt did not bring a cargo of useful a of iron, hoes to till the Belts but famped paper, crucifixes, bulls, and prayer books; as he didnot have for ideal and proto- ‘ype the tanned and vigorous laborer, but the ‘tora lor, carried ina luxurious iter, the result was that the initiative people became bookish, devout, prayerfuls it acquired ideas of ‘luxury and ostentation, without thereby improv- Gee means of its subsistence to 8 paralle! 2. _The lack of national sentiment brings another evil which is the absence of all oppositions to Measures prejudicial to the people and the ab- orale neural conditions, In order that he , 419 ——— sence of any initiative in whatever may redound to its good. A man in the Philippines is nothing more but an ual; he is not a member of a nation. He is forbidden and he is denied the right of association; therefore, he is weak and slow. The Philippines is an organism whose cells do not seem to have either an arterial sys- tem to irrigate it or a nervous system to communicate its impressions. These cells must, nevertheless, yield their product, gettin where they can; if they perish, let them perish. This, in the feeling of some, is convenient so that a colony may be @ colony; perhaps they are right but not so that a colony may flourish. ‘The result of this is that if a prejudicial mea- sure is ordered, no one protests; all goes well apparently until later the evils are fell. Another blood-letting and as the organism has neither nerves nor voice, the physician proceeds, think- ing that the treatment is not injuring it. It needs reform, but as it must not speak, it keeps silent and remains without the need. ‘The patient wants to eat, it wants to breathe the fresh air, but as such desires may offend the susceptibility of the physician, who thinks that he has already vided everything necessary, it suffers and pines away from fear of receiving a scolding, of getting another plaster and a new blood-letting, and so on indefinitely. In addition to this, love of peace and the honor many have of accepting the few admin- istrative positions which fall to the Filipinos on account of inconveniences and annoyances these cause them, place af the head of the towns the most stupid and incapable men, those who submit to everything, those who can endure all the caprices and exactions of the curate and of the officials. With stupidity in the lower spheres of power and ignorance and indiffer- ence in the upper echelons, with the frequent changes and the eternal apprenticeships, with reat fear and many administrative obstacles, with a people without a voice, initiative, or cohesion, with employees who nearly all strive to amass a fortune and return home, with inhab- itants who live in great hardship from the moment they begin to breathe [is it possible to] create prosperity, agriculture and industry, found enterprises and companies, things that still hardly prosper in free and well-organized countries? "Yes! All attempt is useless that does not spring from a profound study of the evil that afflicts us, ‘To combat indolence some proposed increasing the nalive's needs, raising The taxes, etc. What has happened? Criminals have multiplied, poverty has been aggravated. Why? Because the native already has enough needs with his church functions, with his fiestas, ‘vith the positions of cabezas’forced on him,IL, 39, September 15, 1890 vin the donations and bribes that he has to wih 0 ats wretched existence may g0 on mie cord is very taut. “ye have heard many complaints and every- day we read inthe papers about the efforts the ‘ment is making to rescue the country omits condition of indolence. Weighing its Finns, its deceptions and its difficulties, we are Piminded of that gardener who Wished a tree planed by him in @ small pot to grow tall and Pinus. The gardener spent his days tending and ‘ovrering the handful of earth; he trimmed the plant frequently; he pulled at it to lengthen it Big hasten its growth; he grafted on it cedars and oaks until one day the little tree died, leav- jng the man convinced that it belonged to a degenerate species, atributing the failure of all ‘experiments 10 everything but the lack of soil and his own unqualifiable folly. Without education and liberty, the soil and the light of man, no reform is possible, no measure can give the desired result. This does fot mean that we should ask first for the native the instruction of a sage and all imaginable li erties in order to put a hoe later in his hand or place him in a workshop; such a pretension aiid be an absurdity anda vain folly. What we wish is that obstacles be not put in his way, that the many difficulties already offered by his climate and the condition of the islands be not augmented, that instruction be not begrudged him for fear that when he becomes intelligent, he may separate from the colonizing nation or ask for the rights for which he makes himself worthy. Since someday or other he will become enlightened, whether the Government wishes it ornot, let his enlightenment be as a gift received and not as a conquered booty. We wish that the policy be at once frank and consistent, or highly civilizing, without petty reservations, Without distrust, without fear or jealousy, wish- ing the good’ for the sake ‘of the good, lization for the sake of civilization, without Ulerior thoughts of gratitude or ingratitude, or else boldly exploiting, tyrannical and selfish, without hypocrisy or deception, with a whole system, well-planned and studied out for domi- ‘hating by compelling obedience, for leading so that it may grow rich and enrich itself so that it may be happy. If the former {should be taken}, then the Government may act with the ‘security that someday or other, it will reap the harvest and will find a people its own in heart and interest; there is nothing like a boon for Secuting the friendship or enmity of man, ac- {frding to whether itis conferred graciously or turled at his face and bestowed upon him in Spite of himself. If the logical and regulated yslem of exploitation be chosen, stifling with ‘ingle of gold and with the sheen of opulence 421 the sentiments of independence of the colonials, paying with its wealth for its lack of liberty, as the English do in India, who moreover leave the government under native rulers, then build Toads, lay our highways, construct railroads, foster freedom of trade; let the Government pay more attention to material interests than to the interests of the four convents (religious orders— G)); let the Government send out intelligent employees to foster industry; just judges, all well paid, so that they be neither yes-men nor mercenary; and lay aside all religious pretext. This policy has the advantage that while it may not lull the instict of liberty wholly to sleep, at Jeast the day when the Mother Country loses her colonies, she will have the gold amassed and not the regret of having raised ungrateful children. JOSE RIZAL DESENGANOS, THE [HIRED] CLAPPER OF THE FRIARS | Ihave before me the opus, Frailes y Clerigos ats and Priests), written by a Peninsular journalist Wenceslao E. Retana (Desengaiios), ‘who professes much love for the friars of the Philippines and very envious admiration for the stick with which the policemen of Singapore treat the natives. If | now bother at all with that pamphlet, itis because its author has been very racious in dedicating his work to me, thereby showing the much talked-about national noble- ness, innate and intangible by the facetious idea (which he likes very much) of putting the dedi- ation at the end of the work. Thus, a courtesy deserves another in return and I shall try these- fore to comment on some of his statements with much regret that I cannot devote more time to answer him with a pamphlet of equal size and of the same number of pages. ‘About the generalizations, I can say very Tittle; it is a biased book which renders justice to no one who is not in agreement with the very partial opinions of the author. It isa book which Shows that the author is very new in Philippine historiography because [otherwise] he could have cited more relevant statements in favor of the friars. It is a book which reveals a total ignorance of foreign bibliography existing on the Philippines, except the few which have' translated in Spanish. It is a book which tells ts what we already know- that the Spaniard in the Philippines in general is a victim of a ativism which is confused with patriotism and that the Spaniards have not learned any lessonFILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR. Romancing Tropicality llustrado Portraits of the Climate in the Late Nineteenth Century In contrast to the literature’s dominant focus on Western constructions of tropicality, this article explores representations of the tropics by the colonized, specifically the climatological conditions of the Philippines as portrayed in the late nineteenth century by the Europe-based native intellectuals known as ilustrados. Their anticotonial sentiment was intertwined with visceral estrangement from Spain and idealized views of the tropics, which reversed the colonizers’ racial-geographic prejudice ‘and asserted an identity as a civilizable tropical people capable of genius. Rizal's return visit to the homeland in 1887, however, made him agree with the Spanish premise about the climate in order to argue that colonial rule was the greater disaster. KEYWORDS: TR’ (CS - CLIMATE - DISASTERS RACISM - INDOLENCE - NATIONALISM Philippine Studies Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 64, NOS, 3-4 (2016) 417-54 © Ateneo de Manta University,riting on 1 June 1889 as a Manils-based correspondent of La Solidaridad, Pedro Serrano Laktaw under the alias 1D. A. Murgas! described the Philippines as over by a distressing mix of disasters He states, "write you tunder the weight of an overwhelming temperature of 39 degrees in the shade, under the influence of an infected atmosphere, and under the effects of terible geological phenomena. Iti extremely hard to find in any single locality such confluence of disasters like those that afflict us at present” (Murgas 1996, 260). He then lists the disasters: “The cholera epidemic... is wreaking grave havoc on the lives of these peaceful inhabitants... horife fires devouring and reducing whole towns to ashes earthquakes sowing panic in the whole archipelago; suffocating heat; commercial paalyss—all join in the chronic misfortunes that extinguish the happiness ofthis illfated country” (bid). ‘The mix of calamities devastating the lives of people painted a dite scenario, The reported disasters were ofall kinds: meteorological conditions marked by an “infected atmosphere"? and rampaging fires, probably from a heat wave; geophysical conditions, specially, trtifying seismic disturbances, and anthropogenic conditions as evinced by the devastating cholera epidemic and rippling economic woes. Nosingle cause is identified, and there is no suggestion that one calamity is related to another —only that the compounded disaster is part ofa series of chronic misfortunes that beset the homeland. ‘Theletter was meant ta inform compatriotsin Europe ofconsitionsin the Philippines whence i originated, The situation was not alwaysas desperate as this portrait of mid-1889, but report of natural disasters, along with unsavory political events in the homeland reached Spain on aperiodic basis In Europe, however, the ilustrados particularly José Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar, Graciano Lépez Jaena, and Antonio Luna wrote about the tropical climate and the hazards of nature from a different vantage point. They were among the most prominent youth fiom the Spanish Philippines in Europe at that time, Embedded in some of their writings were views on climatological conditions in the Philippines, which have hardly been analyzed in Philippine historiography. Inthe wider literature much attention hat been given to European and “American constructions of what David Amold (1966) has called tropcality, ofthe tropics as both a physical and mental space, @ geographical imaginary, but there is hardly any scholarship on native views, particularly in the as PoHey 64083-41208) nineteenth century. Topical inhabitants would not have had a comparative frame to articulate views on the climate unless they traveled to other climatie zones ofthe world, Without such dislocation, which Westerners experienced in their owm transcontinental expeditions and geographic mobilities since the ssteenth century, peoples of the topics could only make comparisons in terms of annual variations within their own zone, Thus the lutrados were ino privileged position to conceptualize the tropics from their location in Europe, Waiting from afar they looked atthe climate of the homeland from ‘ comparative perspective. What did they see? El Demonio de las Comparaciones Benedict Anderson (1998, 2) characterized the comparative approach as involving a phantom: the specter of comparisons, his rendition of Rizal's ef ddemonio de lat comparaciones. In an eatly chapter of Rizal's Noli me tangere, Crisostome Ibarra, who hhas just returned to Manila from overseas, rides a cartiage through the capita’ “busiest suburb” and “all the noise, movement, even the sun itself, 1 particular odor, the motley colors, awakened in his memory 2 world of sleeping remembrances” (Rizal 1996¢, 49). Ibarra notices that the streets “are lll unpaved. When the sun shone fortwo consecutive days they turned into dust which covered everthing, made passersby cough, and blinded them"; when it rained, the streets become muddy (ibid. Among other things, Iacra observes thatthe Escola “seemed les lovely” ibid, 50), while the Fabrica de Tobacas de Arrocetos reminded him of the strong scent of tobacco that “made him dizzy asa boy" and “automatically maguinalmente) drew his imagination towards the bastio of Lavapies in Madrid, with its rots of cigarette girk 20 fatal tothe ilfated policemen" (ibid, 51). But while all these sights and remembrances had puta smile on his face, “the sight ofthe botanical garden drove away his gay reminiscences” for at that moment the devil of comparisons (el demonio de las comparaciones) transported Ibarra ‘out of Manila and “placed him before the botanical gardens of Europe rich and welktended, and all open tothe public” (ibid). ‘Manila’ botanical garden, as Anderson (1998, 2) put i, is “shadowed inescapably by images oftheir sister gardens in Europe. (Ibara] ean no longer matteroffactly experience them, but sees them simultaneously close ‘upand from afar” Ibarea finds himself, “so to speak, at the end of an inverted telescope” (bid.). In such a situation, the world is upside down, triggering in Anderson's words "a kind of vertigo” (ibid) ‘AGUILAR /ROMANCINGTROPICALTTY aeTbauta could no longer lok tthe sights of Manila without comparing them to Europe Thus, the sets were sil unpaved, unlike the paved roads of Europe; Escoltascemed let lovely, compared withthe high sets of Europe; the botanical garden looked pathetic unlike the opulent gardens of Euope. (Significantly Iharea didnot compare the botanical garden to the exuberance of rapical vegetation, undomesicated, not manicured, and anathema to modernity) Ibares succumbed tothe demonio that incites envy and despair atthe homelands lack of progress. Whereas one was content with the garden of one’ innocence, after having seen another world one could no longer see the old in the same way prior to one's sojoum. The sight of Manis garden transposed him to Europe, rendering the familia distant ‘while the distant near—the inverted telescope ‘Athough sill ving in Europe when he published the novel in 1887, was Rizal already imagining what it would be like for him to rem to Manila? Was he anticipating that he would no longer see the ol frie surroundings inthe way he did prior to his ave overseas? Probably, teat as far as the botanical garden was concerned. In late 1883 among the sights he visited in Pais was the Jadin. des Plantes, which, ashe narrated to his family in Calamnba, left him awestruck (Rizal 1962, 59-60) —the likely ass of Tbara’s homecoming eatin, Buton the broader question ofthe climate, Rizal, in my view, was not quite ready to concede Iban vision as his ovm. In this article examine the question of how Rizal as well as Del Pia, Lopez Jaena, and Antonio Lanaalthough perhaps not representative of all ilustados but cetsinly among the most infuential—viewed the climatological condition of Las Islas Filipinas fom thit location in Europe inthe late nineteenth century. Did they look atthe climate inthe homeland fom an inverted telescope? What sort of vista did they see, and why did they see it that way? As angued in this article, the iusrados’anticelonial sentiment colored their perception of Spin’ climate and landscape, leading toa sense of estrangement with the metropole, which also shaped their comparative perspective on the physical attributes ofthe homeland that ‘was expressed in a matked tendency to romanticie its tropical atbute. ‘This romancing of the climate became central to the imagining of the nation because engagement with ideas about the topics was also fom of wrestling with th colonial power’ views of tropical inhabitants, which ‘wee intestwined with racist notions. Engaging in a marcent Frm of eimate polities, these sustrador shared the European mindset that nature exerted a0 PSHEY 64105, 3-4 2016 4 determinative influence on people; however, instead of a baneful nature ‘x adduced by Spaniards, they reversed the sign and asserted creativity and fuorescence a the tropical cimate's imprint on the natives—an ontological asveition that remained within a climate reductionist perspective In the late 1880s Rial would change his vision: hewing closer to the colonizer’s ‘mindset, he acknowledged the tropical climate’ ill effects on humans—the ‘moment ofthe invested telescope, Nevertheless, both Rizal in Europe and his confreres in the Philippines shared the conviction that, although the tropical climate could be calamitous, there was afar wore dsster: Spanish colonial governance. Let us retrace the narrative to the early 1880. Romancing Nature in Rizal's Brindis On the evening of 25 June 1884 a banquet was held atthe Restaurante Inglés in Madridin honor oftwo painters who gained unprecedented recognition at the Exposicién Nacional de Bellas Artes de Madrid. Juan Luna received one of the ffcen gold mnedals awarded in that competition for his painting, Ed Expoliacium (The Spoliarium), while Pélix Resureccién Hidalgo received one ofthe forty-five silver medals for his painting, Las Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho (Ihe Christian Virgins Exposed to the Fopulace) Spmupathelie Spaniards attended the banquet along with the youthful ‘tustrados. Rizal, who had been in Europe for a couple of years and just six days eater tamed 23 years ol, delivered a much-applauded speech, later known simply as Brindis. The speech ereated a stir in Manila (Schamacher 1997, 51-52) forts bold assertion of equality between Filipinos and Spaniards and its reference to a day when the Spanish flag would cease to wave over the Philippines, a passing mnention that eclipsed the many avowals of the union of Spain and the Philippines. Consequently the colonial establishment in Manila began t label Rizal aflibustero* ‘Understandably the politcal content of his toast to Lana and Hidalgo has stiracted mach attention sine the time Rizal fist made these remark, For this article, hewever, we focus on Rizal’ references to nature, the principal tope he ‘sed in resigifjing the works ofthe two painters. Rizal ako used science and technology as a secondary trope, which he blended with references to nature. Riza’ (2011; ef. Rizal 2009) provides a broad contest for interpreting the triumphs of Lana and Hidalgo, while displaying natve optimism and a historici bent, He considers theit achievements as part ofthe inevitability AGUILAR /OMANCING TROPICALITY aof progres, resulting from contact with “Occidental peoples,” an encounter that “awakens” the natives like an “electric shock” after centuries of slumber. Seen linearly, this historic moment shows that “the patriarchal rain the Philippines is pasting” This awakening, in Rizal's view, confirms the “eternal laws of constant evolution, of transformations, of periodicity, of progress” Why, one might ask, has this awakening happened only now? Rizal (ibid) suggests that History has its ovn “sun” and in the past it “shone on other continente"—probably refering to Europe and North America— leaving the Orient and “that race” (aeuella raza) “in lethargy (aletargada). “The mention of lethargy isa mild reference to charges of native indolence that Rizal would take up in a much later essay, but against which he is arguing in the Brindis. This polemic is now possible because the “sun” of History has reached the homeland. What is more, with Luna and Hidalgo, the ilhustrious deeds of her sons are no longer wasted within the home” but rather shared with the world given that “the oriental chrysalis is leaving the cocoon; the dav ofa long day fr those regions is heralded in biliant shades and rose-colored dawns” (bid), ‘Amid this portrait of inexorable movement now thatthe Sum of Progress hhas beamed on the Orient, Luna and Hidalgo become embodiments of "the glory of genius and the splendor of the homeland” (la gloria del genio, el explendor de la patria) because, as Rizal (ibid) expostlates, they have imbibed “the poety of nature, nature magnificent and terrible init cataclysm, in its evolutions in its dmamism, Nature sweet, tranquil, and solemn (melancéliea) in its constant, quiescent display. Natu that imprints its stamp on whatever i eretes and produces. Its sons cary it wherever they 0" (ibid) In the Brindis Rizal extols nature in the tropics as concomitantly cataclysmic and tranquil, magnificent and terrible. His contemplation of nature indicates a view akin to that of many Europeans who regard nature as disenchanted and objectifable but with a causative power over hhumans. This complex nature in Rizal’s view, provides “the spring in the mechanism” that positively animate: and propels its people in whatever they do wherever they ind themselves, producing inthe ease of Luna and Hidalgo creative genius In saying that both Spain and the Philippines glory in these achievements, Rizal (ibid.) declares, “genius has no country; genius oy Pay 04 N0s.2-4(206) sprouts everywhere; genius is like light and air, the heritage of everyone— ‘cosmopolitan like space, like life, and like Goi” But even as Rizal claims that genius is “cosmopolitan” and seemingly unmooted from nature, genius is also the very specif effusion of tropfeal nature, a nature that to begin with is already embedded in a “race” with a capacity for genius, measured using a Western standard. In expounding on "the poetry of nature” that bursts forth in the canvases of Lana and Hidalgo, Rizal's hermeneutics transforms these painting, with thet historical and mythological themes fromancient Europe, into a sort of eanvas for “painting” in the minds of his audience the magnificence and awesomeness of tropical nature in his disant homeland. In using the colonize’ language in liew ofthe paintbrush, he turns Luna and Hidalgo's Western themes into not just dieet expressions of tropical genius but also symbols of the homeland’s “splendor” that his audience can visualize and ‘even hea in their imagination, Thus Western repreventational art becomes inthe Brindis ar that figures and prefigures the Philippines * In meditating on Lane's Spoliarium, Rizal ibid.) speaks not of muted voices but of noise and violence that one can sense arising from the canvas “with as much vigor and realism as one hears the deafening nose of thunder amid the crashing sound of waterfills or the awesome, terrifying shaking cof an earthquake.” As Rizal puts it, “The same nature that engenders such phenomena also intervenes (intervene) in those brushstrokes." The shadows And terror in Lunas painting esonate with “the dark tempest ofthe tropics, the lightnings and the obsteeperous explosions ofits voleanoes.” The violence of topical nature is fearsome, but i tthe generative fount of creativity in Luna's Spoliarium. In contrast, Rial ibid.) speaks of Hidalg’s Las Vigenes Cristianas as evoking “the puncst sentiment, ieal expresion of contemplation, beauty and {raly, the victims of brite force.” Rizal depicts Hidalgo’ painting as “all ight, color, harmony, sentiment, transparency ike Filipinas isin her mooslit nights, in her quiet day, sith her horizans that invite meditation.” Rizal explains Hidalgo’ rouse asthe brillant bhuenes ofthat sky, the hilaby ofits sea breezes, ami the serenity ots lakes, the poety oft valley, and the majestic harmony ofits hills and mountains” The quiet beauty but also vulnerability of natue, Rizal adduces, isthe inspiration of Hidalgo's Lax Virgenes Critianas Despite apparent differences, Rizal (bid) suggests thatthe palettes of Luna and Hidalgo both reflect “the magnificent rays ofthe tropical son” (los AGUILAR /ROMANCING TROPICAL oacexplendorososrayos de so del trépico).The reference is nottoa metaphorical Sun of Progress and not tothe mythical sun revered by precolonialnatives* butt the sun of astronomy and of our galaxy. Bracketing aside the political import of this speech, we may observe how Rizal idealizes nature, though rot nature in genera, but nature in the tropies. He refers not to any sun, bout specifically to the tropical sun. This tropical nature is equally great and fearsome, radiant as well as datkly tempestuous. Its power is manifested in the indelible “imprint it inscribes on people ofthe tropics, an imprint to which Rizal links the reative genius of Luna and Hidalgo. ‘Although Rizal’s formation is nt stctly deterministic—nature merely “intervenes” inthe brushstrokes—natute’s imprint i of such poteney that it accompanies the people ofthe tropics even when they ate outside of it.The transportability of this imprint explains the achievements of ma and Hidalgo in Spain, where the climate apparently exerts no influence on their artistry. Rizal, too, delivers his glowing toast and discusively repaints those paintings as representations of the homeland not in the Philippines but in Europe. In the Brindis we observe the idealization of tropical nature: Rizal, looking as it ‘were Unrough a normal telescope, brings near the violence of nature but does not deem it calamitous, merely an element of nature's poetry” Rizal’s deployment of naturalistic and disenchanted imagery may be understood as his direct riposte to what is only gently alluded to a “Tethargy’ the pervasive assumption about the topical climate as breeder of primitivity, bbut now proven ta be maker of genius. Rizal’ expostulations were an extended response tothe Spaniard’ racist taunt about native inferiority. this supposed inferiority had been due to the tropical climate, 2s many in Europe had presupposed, then Lana and Hidalgo served as resounding evidence against the denigration ofthe native. Rizal inverted the dominant paradigm to argue that the topics were a cradle of artistic genius and creativity ‘The Visceral Strangeness of Spain If Rizal and other ilustrados comanticized the tropies—its climate and the disasters it spawned—one apparent reason was that in Spain they missed the climate and tropical environment they had known since their tender years. The experience of the nontropical served as occasion for “retuming the guze” of empize. If “the visceral experience of strange weather was often the first shock—and the most persistent memory—of a topical stay” (Livingstone 2002, 73), then the ilustrados also registered an analogous visceral experience of Spain and its landscape as strange, disappointing, and oy POY 64.N0S.3-4 (208) alienating If taveling by Europeans was a form of “scripting” the tropics, so was the ihstrados’ travel to Europe, particularly to Spain, “an intrinsically hermeneutic project” (bid. of reading and interpreting the Mother County. “The encounter of body and spirit with geographic otherness resulted in an articulaticn of diference, ofan identity based on being ofthe tropics, which became inseparable from the ilutrados’ political estrangement even with the physicality of the metropole. ‘Antonio Lune, who arrived in Spain in 1886, felt appalled at the landscape of the Ibetian Peninsula, Writing in the 31 October 1889 issue of La Solidaridad under the pername Tagalog (1996a, 444), Luna recalled his growing apprehension at he looked out ofthe tain that he was riding, presumably forthe fist time, from Barcelona to Madrid, beholding a sight hhe deemed shocking; “we had been traversing Castilian territory and every ‘moment my rsing anxiety was mounting, The mountainous county rid and deserted;nature, miserableand impoverished: the fields, without vegetation and ‘everywhere rocks and crags Itreminded him of what an Igorot—one who was beneath hisown sense of being, but who had been broughtto the Peninsula for the 1887 Barcelone exporition (Aguilar 2005, 617)—exclaimed: “Here there is much hunger because there are nothing but rocks" (Tagaltog 19960, 444), ‘Lina explained that what the Igorot beheld "was a desere compared with the cheesful nature of their forest ibid). Lana did not comment on the Igorots presumption of widespread hunger, but he understood the sensibility behind the statement, for compared with the lushness and gaity of the Cordillera ‘Mountains in the Philippines he sw Spain's terrain asa veritable desert With his political agenda, Luna closed his eyes tothe vegetation and the many rivers found between Barcelona and Madrid. (On seeing the much-hyped Puerta del Sol, Luna felt nothing but disappointment. To expres this feeling he conjured the igh expectations of someone from the homeland, who would be “accustomed to breathing the pute air of our forests and our jungles, where neither the rays ofthe sun nor the rain penetrate orto looking atthe tranquil sea that fades in the blue ofthe horizon” (ibid. Luna might not have lived in the forests and jungles of the Philippines, but he would have been familiar wth the wooded countyside* sand the fresh airon the coast such that he envisaged the homeland’ “pure ait” against which the implied “inferior at” in Spain suffered by comparison, He imagined the homeland, not in terms of roaring seas but of a “tranquil sca” that stretched into the horizon. Such a person from the Philippines steeped ina natural environment would have entertained illusions about the AGUILAR ROMANCING TROPICALITN ao“modem” built environment ofthe Mother Country, only for these illusions, Luna wrote, to come erashing down to earth atthe sight of Puerta del Sol. As he struggled with Madrid's failure to dazzle him, Luna fantasized about the homeland’ idyllic nature Winter posed a particularly severe challenge to the ilustrado’s spirit Antonio Luna (Tagalleg 1996, 22) could only exclaim of his experience in Madd, “What miserable season! What dreariness on Christmas Bye; such Figidity J" (ngrataestacién! ;Cuanta tristeza en Noche Buena; cuanto fio... ), He declared unequivocally, "Tam tired already of white snow” (ibid). He stepped out into the street while it wa snowing heavily, and in the frcening darkness was confronted by a “beggar, almost naked and barefoot, swith a child in her arms inadequately clothed in filthy rags (ibid, 24). He reached for the pocket of his ves, but his “fingers were paralyzed by the cold’; he did manage to get money and give tto the wornan, buthe thought, “And they will say this ie Christmas Eve, when the cold paralyzes even the ‘hard that likes to practice charity” ibid.) Rizal (1938, 67) did not write much about how he felt about winter, but after a couple of months in Berlin he told Blumentit, ina letter dated 26 January 1887, “ths climate isnot healthy for me.” Since the eatly part of the previous December he had complained that he could ne longer work as in the past, for he experienced chest pains and feared he had contracted tuberculosis (bid,, 40-41), By late January he “could no longer work as ‘much at night as before, because fhe did his temperature would soar and he ‘would sweat horibly throughout the night” (ibid, 67) He selémedicated. As he stained to get his first novel printed, serimp on his finances, lft weights to improve his physique, his health deteriorated; yet, febrile or not, he confined to work in an ophthalmic clinic, attend lectures in anatomy, learn English and Italian, master French, atend conferences, and translate works on the Philippines (Guertero 2010, 151-52). His winter in Berlin was one of misery that he endured for his patra’ sake. Rizal, however, doesnot telus how he coped mentally with this privation, but Luna does Lunas recourse was to indulge in fantasies about the homeland, with its Christmas ve parties and the young ladies with whom he danced until dawn: “in pursuit of another memory that enlivens the soul, we flew across thousands of leagues, over there where the cheerful reason sings of the Birth of Christ, under the thick canopy of tees that intertwine and embrace each other, and among the plants and lowers that by their pesfume intoxicate." (ibid, 2). . PSHE 64.N0S. 2.8208) Del Pilar (1955, 32), who left Manila on 28 October 1888, wrote to his brother-in-law and confidant Deodato Arellano on 19 February 1869, saying that in Barcelona his “soul” was languishing away in winter: “Physically T ‘am in good health ... but I eannot say the same for the health of my soul, while Tam far from you and the light of the homeland does net shine on ‘me.” He then expressed his estrangement from Spain in woefulness: "They say that ths isthe land of delights, but I believe it sso ony ina superficial sense. Everything here i ickety and miserable. The sun has no warmth, the sy is without stare, the moon is devoid of splendor, the field are barren, the Aowers lack fageance, and even the rain when it falls, it falls in atomistic droplets” (ibid). ‘Unlike Antonio Luna, Del Pilar did not refer to people or anything in the built environment. Rather he pointed to nature and expressed his lament about the sun, the moon, the shy, the fel, the lowers, and even the rain— realities perceived fiom the positionality of 2 colonized subject inthe heart ofthe metropole, They all fll short of what he conceived as the homelands glorious nature, which he craved for internal wellness, the “health of his soul” After listing the failings of nature eame Del Pia’ (ibid) declaration [Ajnd everything forms in remarkable contrast and makes us contemplate the magnificent expressions ofthe prodigious nature that rocked our cradle." “Tropical nature init serenity and fifulness was the munturance of the soul the ilustrado coveted in the dead of winter. Inliew ofnture’s manifestation on the Iberian Peninsula, Del Fila ibid.) pind for nature in the homeland, describing it thus: “There, that blue sky suclded ith stars, the sparkle ofthe moon inthis season, the scorching rays of the tropical sun, the lushness of its felds, the overflowing fagrance of the Aowets” No iustado, Del Pilar included, waxed nostalgic about the typhoons and other natural ealamities back home. Neither were they concerned about calamities in Spain, such as those caused by catastrophic floods (Llast etal, 2005; Barrera etal. 2005), Rather, Del Pilar (1955, 32) quickly shifted is focus and began to characterize “oriental” society whose blisful state the Spanish friars had ruined: “And above all, the tendemess, the sincerity and ‘warmth of our oriental customs evoke lovely and heartelt memories in my soul, provoking tears at the thought that such happiness granted by God is darkened by the impiety of those who purpott to be ministers of God.” “The abatthe Spenish friars war notunexpected, for afterall hisdeparture from the Philippines in October 1888 was an acto preempt incarceration forleading the antivir movement in the Philippines (Schumacher 1997, 120 26). Amid his exli experience, Del Pilar depicted his homelands tropical ‘nature in grandiose, nostalgic terms, ‘The warmth ofthe elimate was matched by the “sincerity and warmth of our oriental customs.” In Del Pla’ sublle formulation one could detect hints of Rizal's idea of nature as making an impeint on tropical people, which disinguished them from the metropole’s inhabitants ‘The visceral strangeness of the Iberian Peninsula, its climate that they experienved as alienating, and the ilustades’ disappointment with ‘many aspects of Spanish life enabled them to see the colonial master es no Tonger unveachably superior; a growing conviction of equality was welling ‘up within them. Ocetuding Catamities One of the contradictions of the ilustrados’ romanticization of the tropical climate was the tendency to pass over the human suffering brought about by calamities that resulted from natural hazards back home, As a result, they did not consider the mitigation of death, disease, and desuction inBicted by such events asa target for commentary and intervention. Despite their grand project of modemity, they did not participate in “the modemist aspiration of mitigation” (Head and Gibson 2012, 704). Apparently they did not see “disasters” the way we do now, But they probably had an appreciation of native tesilience, which could have been subsumed in the poety and equilibraing dynamic of nature, The Spanish eolonial state, however, did introduce measures to anticipate as well as respond to calamities, including changes in the architecture of churches and other structures to withstand ceaithquakes, the establishment of the Manila Observatory in 1865, and an “impetus for publie works" (Robles 1969, 256) in the 1860s in response to ‘earthquakes and typhoons. These interventions would have been apparent to anyone, but they passed the iustrados without mention. Although Rizal ‘and Antonio Luna had a medical scienceelated education, the iusto intrest in technical matters would appear to be at a level that did not take in what is now referred to as disaster risk reduction There was afar greater risk—of apolitical natuce—that preoccupied their ninds, ‘Undoubtedly the islands had experienced destrucive fyphoons in the course ofthe centuries, with a particularly severe one occurring in 1867 that resulted in inundation, shipwreck, andthe death of close toa couple of thousand poople (Ribera etal 7008). Moreover, the fequeney of typhoons a vey 64 nos 3-4(2006) sppears to have accelerated, at least in terms of recording efficiency after the establishment ofthe Manila Observatory: "Between 1877 and 1887, the annual frequency of identified typhoons shows a dramatic increase, reaching “is many as 20 typhoons and more than 30 typhoons pls storms per year “after 1880" (iid, 7). The colonial government began to send out typhoon svamaings with the initiation of a telegraph service in 1872, enabling some local governments as well 35 communities to take precautionary measures and thereby mitigate disaster risks (Bankoff 2012, 338-42), Still the typhoon that snack in October 1882 left more than 15,000 people in Bulacan “without shelter” (ibid, 335) ‘The lustrados would have lived through numeroustyphoons before their sojourn to Europe. But because they came from the wealthy clas of natives and lived in large, sturdy Houses unlike the poor who called ffiable huts their homes, these youth might not have experienced directly the severest horrors of typhoons. Any knawdedge of the destructiveness of typhoons could have been occhuded by theie intense longing forthe tropical climate and ‘estrangement from Spain's climate ‘Also minimized in the ilusrado romance ofthe tropics te the periods of 454 PSHEV 64,NOS. 3-4 (2016)