Rizal - Module 4

MODULE 4: Rizal and the Popular Nationalism
Summary
We shall look into a Tagalog awit, the Historia Famosa ni Bernardo Carpio, based on legends of the
Spanish hero Bernardo Carpio, that reveals a popular perception of the past upon which Filipino nationalists
hinged their separatist aspirations. The Historia Famosa has not been regarded as a literary milestone of the
Tagalogs. Its authorship remains unknown, and it has been overshadowed by the more polished and ‘urbane’
awit, Florante and Laura. Like most awit in its time, the Historia Famosa’s narrative line is derived from
legends surrounding the Spanish royalty and their Moorish adversaries.
It has always been a debate as to how Jose Rizal became the Philippine National Hero. Many argue
that the appointment of Rizal being the national hero is debatable. This topic, therefore, will try to provide
arguments and facts about Rizal and the underside of Philippine history in an attempt to find out our hero’s
popular nationalism.
Motivation Question
What does it mean for Rizal to be textualized? How does your view of Rizal compare with the “underside”?
Discussion
Lesson 4.1: Bernardo Carpio: Awit ant the Revolution
One problem in the historiography of the Philippine revolutions of 1896 and 1898 is showing the
relationship between the educated articulate elite “ilustrados” who have left behind most of the
documents, and the inarticulate “masses” who fought and died in the various wars.
Patron-client ties certainly help explain how the local peninsula or gentry was able to mobilize large
numbers of people.
Yet, the events of the revolution indicate that the common folk were fighting under the “blinding”
influence not individual personalities but of their conceptions of the meaning of the “times,” and powerful
leaders were those who successfully articulated such conceptions.
John Schumacher, S.J., has shown how the

ilustrados created the basis for a Filipino history
that would undermine and supplant a Spanish
historiography which mandated Filipino loyalty
to Spain under moral sanctions.
Such a history certainly provided a rational and moral legitimation for the new nation, but it is not
clear how it provided the impulse for the breaking of ties of utang na loob (debt of gratitude) to Spain that
centuries of colonial rule had impressed upon the indios.
For the people to have arrived at a state of mind in which such a break or separation was possible if
not inevitable, their conceptions of the past, that is, after all utang na loob is based on remembrance of the
past— must have changed.
And how this could have occurred will be the subject in this report.
GE 109: Readings in Rizal’s Life and Works
Because of the constraints imposed by censorship and other forms of intellectual repression during
Spanish rule popular reading fare, up to 1880s, took the form of religious tracts and metrical romances
called awit.
Of the former, the various pasyon poetic

versions of the life, death, and resurrection of
Jesus Christ became virtual social epics.
With this, people’s familiarity with the narrative of Christ gave meaning to a life-and-death struggle
for independence, that is, a struggle imaged as a single redemptive event that unfolded itself with man’s
participation.
However, while it has become obvious that the language of folk Christianity flowed into the language of
nationalism and revolution at the turn of the century, there is a danger of overstressing the impact of
Christianity in all this.
The story of Christ was meaningful insofar as it was appropriated by the society itself and mirrored its
ideals. Other aspects of Spanish colonial influence can be examined in this light.
In particular, we shall look into a Tagalog awit, the Historia

Famosa ni Bernardo Carpio, based on legends of the Spanish hero
Bernardo
Carpio, that reveals a popular perception of the past upon which Filipino nationalists hinged
their separatist aspirations.
The Historia Famosa has not been regarded as a literary milestone of the Tagalogs. Its authorship
remains unknown, and it has been overshadowed by the more polished and ‘urbane’ awit, Florante and
Laura.
Like most awit in its time, the Historia Famosa’s narrative line is derived from legends surrounding the
Spanish royalty and their Moorish adversaries.
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Dean Fansler comments

, that romantic stories
of this type had b een ‘ridicul ed to death’ by
Cervantes long before they appeared in
Tagalog awit versions.
Having filtered into the Philippines via Mexico, such stories drew no objections from friars as subject
matter for indigenous literature after all, loyalty to a European king and Christendom’s triumph over the
Moors were constant themes in these stories; they were useful in strengthening the indios’ loyalty and
utang na loob to Spain and Catholicism.
To a great extent, the awit was an effective colonial weapon. Awit and related forms replaced the
indigenous literature that the Spanish priests destroyed soon after the conquest. Native priests and laymen
were quick to adjust to the limits within which they could compose Tagalog poetry.
By the 18th century, cheap editions of awit were ‘printed in the cities and towns and then hawked, sold in
sidewalk stalls, and brought to the most remote barrios by itinerant peddlers.’
Awit stories were often dramatized, or at least sung in public. So powerful was the impact of awit on the
popular imagination that the average indio in the 19 th century can be said to have dreamt of emulating
chivalrous knights riding off to the crusades or saving beautiful damsel from distress.
He knew more about Emperor Charlemagne, the Seven Peers of France, and the destruction of Troy than of
pre-Spanish Philippine rajahs and the destruction of Manila by the conquistadors.
And yet, given the fact that popular consciousness of the past was mediated by awit poetry, the revolution
happened.
Contrary to the insistence of some ilustrados that the masses’ utter ignorance, exemplified by their belief in
fairy tales, was a stumbling block to the revolution, it was so called Pobres y Ignorantes who formed the
bulk to the revolutionary armies that fought against Spain and United States.
In order to arrive at some understanding of this turn of events, let us examine, first, some features of the
Historia Famosa ni Bernardo Carpio and, second, the Awit’s connection with nationalist writings on the
eve of the revolution.
The author of the Historia Famosa states at the beginning that he has selected details from the Spanish story
of Bernardo Carpio.
This is how the narrative proceeds.
The king and queen of Spain have died, leaving behind two little children named Alfonso and
Jimena. Don Sancho, count of
Cerdeña, rules over Spain until Alfonso comes of age and assumes the throne. The poet remarks that
King Alfonso remains unmarried and has no fondness for women.
Meanwhile, Don Sancho has been appointed royal
counsellor and commanding General of the Army. Another major character, Don Rubio, is
introduced as Don Sancho’s friend and captain of the army.
After 14 stanzas of the awit, a major transition takes place.
The event is triggered by the radiant beauty of the king’s sister, Jimena. Her radiance, described in so many
imagery-filled stanzas, causes confusion in the Ioob (inner being) of notables, the king included, in Spain
and abroad. Of graver import is the conflict that it causes between the comrades, Don Sancho and Don
Rubio.
While both are attracted to Jimena’s beauty, their responses a vastly different. Rubio, having been
rebuked by
Jimena, reacts with anger and shame (hiya). His loob, initially displaced by Jimena’s radiance, shows
signs of hardening into selfishness and treachery.
On the other hand, Sancho’s loob is described by the poet as capable of love. Jimena’s beauty has the
effect of making
Sancho’s confused loob attain a fullness signified by his willingness to suffer and die for his beloved.
Sancho’s lengthy exposition of his love resembles a typical Tagalog kundiman (love song), which
is heard at several key points of the awit.
In a scene typical of most 19th century awit, a Moro envoy appears with an insolent challenge to the Spanish
king, who thereupon orders his trusted General Sancho to lead his army against the villains. As the army
assembles in the field, Don
Sancho, in defiance of the king’s orders, sneaks into Jimena’s room in the tower.
His farewell speech again gives the poet an opportunity to
drench the reader in the imagery of love and separation characteristic of folk poetry. Overpowered
by such language, Jimena becomes confused, then bursts into tears, and surrenders herself to her lover.
Don Sancho’s victory over the Moros is likened to the ravaging of a garden by a cyclone. The
general, however, is not fated to profit by it. His rival Don Rubio, aware of the lovers’ meeting, vents his ill
feeling upon Sancho by recommending to the king that the latter accept the count of Barcelona’s proposal to
cement a political alliance by marrying Jimena.
Hearing this draws an outburst of anger from Sancho. Rubio, whose loob is filled with shame and
conflicting elements, backs down in fear. Another opportunity for revenge presents itself, however, when
Rubio hears the birth screams of Jimena’s child, who is named Bernardo. Pretending to see justice done,
Rubio rushes to inform the kings who is completely torn apart by the news of Sancho and Jimena’s crime.
The king is thrown from his seat; suddenly he forgets his past relationship with Don Sancho and can think of
nothing but schemes to destroy him. As Sancho is about to take the infant Bernardo to Cerdeña, the poet is
given another opportunity to evoke in the reader the experience of anguish and loss, for the separation of
the infant from his parents is perhaps the most significant event in the awit. As the poet himself remarks,
after a description of Jimena’s sadness:
What loob however hard what heart would not be

overcome by this and be saddened and struck with pain for the
two lovers with a pure loob?
Alin cayang loob na sacda nang tigas! alin namang puso ong
hindi mabagbag, na di malunusan at magdalang sindac,
sa dalauang sintang ang loob ay tapat?
As Sancho leaves the tower with the child, he is ambushed by the king’s soldiers. Fighting with only one
hand he can slaughter all of them, but the child screams and is heard by the king who leaps from the side-
lines, accusing Sancho of treachery. Sancho kneels and begs for mercy. All he asks is to be wed to Jimena
before he is executed.
The king hastily agrees to the marriage but treacherously sends Sancho to the castle of Luna with a sealed
letter out lining certain punishments to be meted out to the bearer. Sancho, to his chagrin, is bound in
chains; his eyes are gouged out and he is thrown inside a dark cell. Has the king forgotten the past? laments
Sancho. Is the pain of blindness his reward for the hardships he has born in defending the kingdom?
Again the poet gives free rein to
images of pain and separation: Sancho
from Jimena, the parents from their
child Bernardo. Sancho’s lament ends
with an appeal to God to have pity for
his son:
And may he eventually recognize
his true mother and true father
and when, Lord, he comes of age
may he, Lord God, recognize me.
At maquilala rin ang tunay na ina at aco,i,

gayon din na caniyang ama,!‚
na cun siya Poon naman, i, Iumaqui na,
aco po, Dios co, nama, i, maquilala.
Meanwhile, Don Rubio becomes the closest confidante of the king. He is entrusted with bringing up
the child Bernardo, who true parents are ordered never to be revealed to him. Jimena, whose treachery
brought great shame to her brother King Alfonso, is sent to a cloister.
Alfonso scolds her for forgetting all the love and caring he had showered upon her and for
failing to show utang na loob for things past. For her, as for Sancho, there is resignation to fate, to God’s
will.
As the child Bernardo grows up, it becomes obvious to all that he has extraordinary strength and
energy. He is in constant movement, running back and forth, up and down stairs:
He walks and walks, but goes nowhere his loob and heart always
perturbed...
Na lalacad-lacad walang pinupunta,

ang Ioob at puso, i, parating balisa. . .
His energy is released in a wasteful and antisocial manner: hitting, maiming, and killing horses,
carabaos, and other animals he meets on the road. Irate townsfolk complain to Don Rubio. Bernardo
explains that he cannot control his own body and strength. One day Bernardo asks his father Don Rubio
to persuade the king to knight him so that he may travel around the world battling idolatry and subduing
wild beasts. Rubio, however, rebukes him: how can he be knighted if his own origins are unknown?
Bernardo then realizes that Rubio is not his true father. He breaks into tears: this was the start of his
disorientation! In behavior, thought and even his heart. Fortunately, the king happens to come along.
Showing pity he makes Bernardo a knight and adopted son, much to the dismay of Don Rubio. Later,
having slain the arrogant Rubio in a fencing match, Bernardo is made General of the Army. The son
avenges the father. As the adopted son of King Alfonso, Bernardo’s energies come a bit more formed and
directed toward fighting the Moors.
The most formidable enemy is the Emperor Carpio, whose vast territories cannot be
penetrated even by armies of the Twelve Peers of France.
One day, Carpio’s envoy, Veromilla, arrives at the Spanish court demanding vassalage from the
king or else face invasion. Bernardo, in his usual energetic, rather uncontrolled manner reacts violently
toward the envoy:
He struck the chair upon which the envoy sat

causing him to fall over everything was crushed,
broken to pieces the king tried to calm Bernardo:
My son, he said, just take it easy to attack

an envoy as you did is against all the rules
so straighten out your loob.
At tuloy tinampal ang upuang silla, ay agad

natapon sampong embajada, nagcadurog-durog
nabaling lahat na nangusap ang hari Bernardo,
i, sucat na.
Anac co aniya icao ay maglibang,

at iya, i, di utos sa leing alin man, na ang embajada ay malalabanan
caya ang loob mo ay magpacahusay.
As Veromilla returns to his camp, Bernardo tells the king that, with his fatherly blessing, he will
fight the enemy single-handed.
Indeed, he approaches the Moro lines alone and is ridiculed by Veromilla. But this youth who
“has just been weaned by his mother” completely devastates the enemy. Veromilla flees in great panic.
When Bernardo returns to the court he humbly dedicates his victor to the king. He attributes his victory to
God’s mercy (awa) and too late. And he asks to be granted only one request: that he be told the identities of
his true parents. He is growing up yet has no roots, no relatives to pay respects to. The king then tries to
deceive Bernardo by agreeing to his request provided that, once and for all, he defeats Emperor Carpio. Knowing
Carpio’s reputation, the king expects his youthful general to be slain in battle. Bernardo’s power, however, has no
equal in the world. Fighting like a “lion, tiger, and viper”, he systematically conquers Carpio’s 19 castles until the
emperor gives up hands over all his territory to Bernardo and agrees to pay tribute to Spain. Upon his return once
more to Spain, Bernardo Carpio, as he is now called, is shocked to find a French prince, also named Bernardo, ruling
the kingdom. King Alfonso, who had temporarily relinquished the throne while on a hunting trip, justifies his decision
in terms of traditional ties between the Spanish and French ruling families. Bernardo scornfully rejects this argument.
Moreover, he is disgusted by the king’s refusal to reveal the identities of his parents. In an angry confrontation
Bernardo declares that he will find his parents by force.
At this point Bernardo Carpio’s energies seem to become more focused than ever. Having rejected
another stepfather, his first act is to destroy all the king’s horses to prevent pursuit. This explicitly contrasts
with his earlier meaningless destruction of neighbors’ livestock and work animals. While he stops by the
wayside to pray to God and the Virgin Mother, a letter floats down from heaven with the truth about his parents.
Before he can go in search of them, however, he is instructed to first terminate Spain’s ties of vassalage to France. So
he proceeds to the French court, where Emperor Ludovico explains to him that his relations with Spain are all based
on age-old covenants handed down from generation to generation. Bernardo, however, has nothing but contempt for
traditional ties. Neither has he respect for Ludovico, whom he seizes by the collar and physically intimidates. The
French court, in fear of Bernardo’s power, capitulates. The ties are broken. Bernardo then proceeds to the castle of
Luna to seek out his father. The scene shifts to Sancho lamenting in prison: the king has shown no pity keeping him
for years in the darkness of a cell:
And you my beloved son

who, I hear, is now called Don Bernardo Carpio
have passed through a multitude of towns and kingdoms and yet have not found your
father, Sancho.
Why, my beloved child

have you not searched for your lord, your father?
Haven’t your heart and loob been moved
by my sufferings and laments?
Icao ,naman caya na sintang anac co,
na nabahalitang D. Bernardo Carpio,

tanang villa, t, reino ay nasasapit mo, di mo na
narating ama mong si Sancho?
Ano baga hunso na guiIio co, t, sinta

Di na siniyasat and poon mo, t, ama,
ang puso, t loob mo, i, di na nabalisa, sa

nagdaralitat, dito, i, nagdurusa.
“As if he heard this lament,” Bernardo arrives, kills the guards and become frees his father. Unfortunately,
Sancho dies soon after the reunion. This, however, does not prevent Bernardo from legitimizing his tie to his
parents. He brings his father, covered with a cloth on the pretext that he must not be exposed to cold air, to
the king’s palace, where the wedding with Jimena takes place. Only after father, mother, and son are
formally reunited does Bernardo pretend to discover that his father is dead. The awit does not end here
it does in the Spanish originals. Bernardo, having declined the Spanish throne, continues his travels in
search of idolaters to destroy. He arrives before a church like structure with two lion statues by the
entrance. Because the doors are shut, he kneels outside and prays. A bolt of lightning strikes and destroys
one of the lions. Angered by the lightning’s challenge, Bernardo hurls the other lion away and vows to search for
the lightning and destroy it. Not far away, he sees two mountains hitting each other at regular intervals. Then a
handsome youth—an angel—appears in dazzling brightness and tells Bernardo that the lightning has entered the
mountain. God commands that Bernardo shall not see, much less capture it. When the angel himself takes the path of
the lightning, Bernardo stubbornly follows, the twin peaks closing in on him.
The awit ends with the remark that since Bernardo was such a great and powerful hero, God cast a spell on
him and thus kept him alive though hidden.
The awit just summarized is important for the study of the revolution in 2 respects.
First, the appropriation by the Tagalogs of a Spanish hero enabled a people without a history of
themselves as a people to imagine a lost past as well as their hopes of liberation from Spanish rule.
Second, the awit reveals a form of meaningfully structuring events, which would later be used by
nationalists to communicate their political ideas to the people. The first point is born out by evidence from
local histories of central and southern Tagalog towns. The Historia Famosa’s account of Bernardo’s last
journey is derived from pre-Spanish beliefs in pilgrimages to the underworld to wrestle with spirits as a test
of one’s inner strength. The poet merely affirms that the world of Bernardo Carpio is the Philippines.
By the second half of the 19 th century, Tagalog peasants, at least those within the vicinity of the mountains
that dominate the landscape of the Tagalog region, believed that Bernardo Carpio was their indigenous king trapped
inside a mountain, struggling to free himself. Catastrophic events were interpreted as signs of his activity.
That their uneducated countrymen’s conceptions of liberation were dominated by this myth did not escape
the notice of some ilustrados. In his novel El Filibusterismo, in which Jose Rizal entertains the possibility of armed
revolt against Spain, there is this reflection upon a cart driver’s firm belief in Bernardo Carpio.
The peasants of that day kept alive a legend that their king, imprisoned in chains in the cave of San
Mateo, would one day return to free them from oppression. Every hundred years he had broken one of his
chains, and now he already had freed his arms and his left leg. Only his right leg was still held fast. It was he
who caused earthquakes as he flailed about and struggled against his chains: he was so strong that one could
shake hands with him only by stretching out a bone, which crumbled in his grasp. For no apparent reason
the natives called him King Bernardo, confusing him perhaps with Bernardo del Carpio, the semi mythical
Spanish hero of the 9th century who said to have defeated the French Roland at Roncesvalles.
Then Rizal has the cart driver mutter: ”When he gets his right foot free, I shall give him my horse,
put myself under his order, and die for him. He will free us from the constabulary.”
Yet unlike other patriots, as we shall see, Rizal was careful to separate the ‘mythical’ and what he
considered the ‘national’ in his writings. He probably would not have appreciated the widespread rumor, at
the outbreak of the revolution in 1896, that Rizal had gone to the depths of Mount Makiling, proven his
intelligence and sincerity to Bernardo Carpio, and been told that it was time for the people to rose against
Spain.
Miranda even states that the masses were awaiting the liberation of Bernardo Carpio, a character in
a Tagalog legend, from the two enormous cliffs of Biak-na-Bato so that he might exterminate the Spanish
soldiers who defended their outposts.
The second point, which concerns the shape of the Historia Famosa ni Bernardo Carpio and its
connection with nationalist ideas of the past, is best dealt with by juxtaposing various aspects of awit and
nationalist writings.
In 1888, while Rizal was in London doing research for his annotations to Morga’s history of the
Philippines, a somewhat different historical piece— a poem of 66 stanzas titled Hibik ng Filipinas sa
Ynang España or Filipina’s Lament to Mother Spain, was being secretly distributed in the country.
Its author, Hermenegildo Flores, was a teacher, poet and propagandist who joined forces with well-known
nationalist writer Marcelo Del Pilar to bring the antifriar issue to the Tagalog reading public.
The key to Hibik’s meaning lies in the frame established by the opening stanza:
Oh, beautiful and generous Mother Spain where is

your loving concern for your child?
It is I, your youngest born, unfortunate Filipinas.
Glance at me, you cannot ignore my suffering.
Ynang mapag ampon Españang marilag, nasaan ang iyong

pagtingin sa anac?
Acong iyong bunsong abang Filipinas.
Tingni,t sa dalita,i, di na maca-iuas!
What follows is a history of the Philippines under the domination of the friars. the methods by which
the friars’ wealth was accumulated, the various types of taxes and voluntary contributions forced on the
people, and the disposition of debtors and other oppressed to flee to the hills.
The friars promised swift entrance to heaven to all who acceded to their demands, but this was a form of
daya (trickery), for the friars were the first to contradict their own teachings. In the middle of the poem there
is a fairly detailed narrative of the friar-instigated murder of the liberal Governor-General Bustamante in
1719.
Throughout the poem, interspersed among the details of the oppressive behavior of the friars, runs the
parent-child motif introduced by the first stanza. This would later become a permanent feature of nationalist
poetry directed to a mass audience.
It has been argued that this frame was invented by Flores and Del Pilar to enable them to give ‘free
play to [their] ironic pen[s].’ However, mere ingenuity gave rise to this form of nationalist writing, that
Flores and Del Pilar wrote Tagalog poetry means that the facts they wanted to make known to the popular
audience were carried by a familiar style of discourse. Flores and Del Pilar were tapping popular
perceptions of a meaningful past.
In the Historia Famosa the past, as narrated by the awit’s characters, is always shaped by the idiom
of personal relationship. Don Sancho’s laments to Jimena, King Alfonso, and his son Bernardo project vivid
images of the past, which appear periodically in the text, serving as markers to which the complicated
elements of the story adhere.
Sancho’s expressions of love to Jimena art a constant reminder to his beloved as well as to the
audience of the hardships which he has experienced in order to prove that his love is genuine, or in the loob.
In Jimena, this lament has the effect of transforming an initial confusion into a commitment to her suitor in
the face of retribution by the king.
To the audience or reader, the laments serve as a reminder that Bernardo has not experienced a
parent’s love.
We recall that as Sancho lay on the verge of death in his prison cell, he enumerates his past services
to the throne. The king forgotten all this. As long as both Sancho and the king remember the cumulative
events that cemented their relationship, all goes well; they act honorably and correctly.
But forgetfulness, usually occasioned by the influence of deceitful language from envious persons
like Don Rubio, results in misguided, dishonorable acts. King Alfonso, it will be remembered, is knocked
off his seat by Rublo’s news of the illicit love affair.
From this point on, he behaves like a victim of amnesia; his plotting against Sancho and, later,
Bernardo are the effect of his loss of memory a condition that Sancho deplores in hi laments.
Conversely, in the awit a hero’s valiant deeds against the enemy are often the effect of being
conscious of the king’s past favors to him, or of a loved one’s pledge.
To a person reading or listening to the awit, Sancho’s laments, set in measured verse form, would
have evoked a response conditioned by his or her own experience of personal relationships. He would have
experienced, not only Sancho and Jimena’s suffering, but also the loss of parental love that haunts Bernardo
and frames his activities.
This audience response, the stimulation of which rather than the mere telling of events is the awit’s
function, is called damay (empathy. participation), Flores and Del Pilar used the hibik (lament) form in order to evoke
from their audience a similar state of receptivity for the nationalist message.
The novelty of Flores’s Hibik, diminishes when the poem Is seen in the context of its time Scholars seem to
have ignored Apolinarlo Mabini’s observation that the first sign of a genuine nationalist stirring among the
inhabitants of Manila and Cavite was a pervasive feeling of damay in a patriotic context.
According to Mabini, the friar-instigated public execution in 1872 of three priests under the false
charge al plotting a mutiny ¡n the Cavite arsenal had a deep impact on the masses. As rumors of the event
spread through the provinces, ordinary Filipinos developed a hatred of the friars and deep pity and pain for
the victims. This pain wrought up a miracle, feeling pain, [Filipinos] felt themselves living; so they asked
themselves how they lived. These enigmatic statements simply mean that there was damay with the victims;
not just a private feeling of pity but a consciousness of some common fate. The first recorded patriotic
song, Sa Iyo ang Dahil (Because of You), makes sense in this connection. Allegedly sung after 1872, it is
simply a suitor’s lament to his loved one, describing the pain in his heart caused by his love. It ends:
You should remember that my sufferings

are caused by you; always remember until
death that you are my only love no one but
you and only you.
Sukat mong pakaalalahanin na ang hirap kong

ito’y sa iyo and dahil;
pakatantuin mo magpahanngang libinh wala
akong ibang sinisinta kundi ikaw at ikaw rin.
The informant states that the song’s meaning, to put it simply, is the desire for liberty; but since the
lives of Fathers, Burgos, Gomez, and Zamora were in a quite precarious state, the people expressed their
aspirations in this way.
We can interpret this statement to mean that the love song, which is just a run-of-the-mill kundiman,
was only a guise, a metaphor for the real thing, and that without Spanish repression a direct statement of the
events would have been made.
The development of Tagalog ‘patriotic’ music, however, shows that the damay evoked by kundiman
is intrinsic to remembering the past. The event of 1872 was translated into imagery thus becoming part of
the singer’s or listener’s awareness of the past.
Flores surely knew the effectiveness of the lament form, which is why he used it as a frame in the
first place. But the Hibik is not pure imagery. Tagalog poetry also has a didactic function. The lament would
have had the effect of putting Flores’s audience in a state of being in which the political situation and the
possibility of breaking ties with Spain could be apprehended.
The last ten stanzas of the Hibik, summarize the Philippine past in terms of a relationship whose
authenticity is in doubt: Spain had sent the friars here, and because we had utang na loob to Spain for her
care, we gave the friars everything they wanted. The friars reciprocated with acts of cruelty, even executing
those who had damay for Filipinas’s tears.
How is it possible, Filipinas asks, for a mother to oppress her own child? Has Spain, herself seduced
by the friars (as King Alfonso had been by Don Rubio), forgotten the past?
In 1889, a year after the appearance of Flores’s Hibik, Marcelo del Pilar’s sequel Sagot ng España
sa Hibik nang Pilipinas (Spain’s Reply to Filipinas’s Lament was published in Barcelona and illegally
circulated in the Philippines. Again, it is in the form of lament: an old and helpless mother asks for her
daughter’s sympathy and offers advice. The frame is establishes in the first few stanzas:
My heart was appalled when I heard your cry and

dolorous plaint, my child:
you have no sorrow, child, that’s yours alone,
for your mother always shares [damay] it with you.
You have no suffering, no affliction that I

don’t undergo with you:
since you’re the creation of my love, your

humiliation is also mine.
When you were born, dear child, into this world.

then when I had not yet become in1povertshed as your mother
I had no other wish
than to give you every comfort and pleasure.
Puso ko’y nahambal nang aking marinig bunso,

ang taghoy mo’t mapighating hibik: wala ka, ana
kong, sariling hinagpis na hindi karamay ang ina
mong ibig.
Wala kang dalita, walang kahirapan, na tinitiis kang

di ko dinaramdam: ang buhay mo’y bunga niring
pagmamahal, ang kadustaan mo’y aking kadustaan.
Pagsilang mo, bunso, sa sangmaliwang nang

panahong ako’y di pa nagsasalat walang
inadhika an ina mong liyag kundi puspusin ka ng
ginhawa’t galak
Tagalog films and popular magazine stories are shot through with scenes like this. Much to the
dismay of modern writers and film critics, stories made for mass consumption invariably contain one or
several scenes in which an old mother, perceiving her daughter’s (or son’s) desire to cut parental ties,
embarks upon a long, tearful lament which attempts to make the daughter remember her childhood and the
hardships experienced by her parents (particularly the mother) to ensure that the child grows up in a
condition of layaw. Layaw, which is not easy to translate, means a comfortable, carefree upbringing,
informed by love between parent and child.
Lesson 4.2: Rizal The Underside of Philippine History
It has always been a debate as to how Jose Rizal became the Philippine National Hero. Many argue that the
appointment of Rizal being the national hero is debatable. This topic, therefore, will try to provide
arguments and facts about Rizal and the underside of Philippine history in an attempt to find out our hero’s
popular nationalism.
Upon reflection, it seems to me that much of scholarly writing on the Philippines bears the stamp of a certain
familiarity with which the country’s traditions and patterns of development have been treated.
In contrast to those parts of South East Asia that have been transformed by the great traditions of Hinduism,
Buddhism, and Confucianism and which, as a result, have had that aura of the exotic and impenetrable about
them, the Philippines has appeared transparent and knowable, a ‘natural’ consequence of the experience of
some four hundred years of Spanish and American colonialism. It is difficult, for example, not to be taken in
by the Hispanic features of Philippine pueblo society: Christianity the diatonic scale, amor propio, caciques,
and so on.
When John Phelan’s book, The Hispanization of the Philippines, appeared in 1959 it made us review
drastically the supposed effects of the Spanish conquest. Filipinos were no longer deemed passive recipients
of Spanish cultural stimuli; their responses varied from acceptance to indifference and rejection.
Because Phelan had never set foot on the Philippines nor learned a local language, however, his reading of
Spanish source materials was framed by his familiarity with the history of Latin America. Phelan attempted
to close the gap between Spanish observers and the strange, exotic natives they wrote about, not by letting
the natives speak but by assimilating them to the body of knowledge concerning Hispanization in the
Americas.
The problem is not just that Phelan and most non-Filipino scholars before the late 1960s failed to use
indigenous source materials, but that such records bear the unmistakable stamp of Spanish colonial
influence.
Furthermore, except for the rare diary or cache of personal correspondence such materials are often
classified as devotional or literary and fail to provide accurate documentation of the past.
This has led to some anxiety among Filipinos about whether it is possible to have a truly Filipino history
prior to the mid-19th century. It is true that evidence exists about the islands prior to the conquest that
certain regions such as the hill country of northern Luzon and the Muslim south escaped Hispanization and
that violent reactions to colonial rule were fairly regular.
Such themes, however, have not been able to offset the familiar view, in educated circles at least, that a
golden age of lost in the wake of the conquest. A long dark past of Spanish rule sets in until there occurs, in
1872, a turning point, the initial sign of a shift in consciousness from blind acceptance of Spain’s presence to
an awareness of the causes behind the people’s suffering.
In that year, public execution of three reformist priests stirred up so much public sympathy and outrage that
the bonds of subservience and gratitude toward Spain and friars were seriously weakened.
As the familiar textbook narratives go, from 1872 until the revolutions of 1896 and 1898 a nationalist spirit
is born and reaches maturity in the struggle for independence. Such in the frankly evolutionist view of the
Philippine past that serves to instil Filipino pride in their nationalist struggle, the first of its kind to occur in
the Southeast Asia.
The problem with this view is that it rest on assumption that before the impact of liberal ideas in the second
half of the 19th century, Filipinos lived in a kind of static dream world somewhat like children initially
fascinated and eventually enslaved by the cosmology introduced by the colonizers.
In 1890, Jose Rizal, the foremost Filipino intellectual and patriot which the 19th century produced, provided
in his annotations to a 17th century Spanish text scholarly legitimization for the view that, with Spanish rule
the people ‘forgot their native alphabet, their songs, their poetry, their laws, in order to parrot other doctrines
that they did not understand.’
The result of their blind imitation of thin foreign and incomprehensible was that they lost all confidence in
their past, all faith in their present, and all hope for the future Rizal had labored for a year in the British
Museum to document the image of a flourishing precolonial civilization, the lost Eden, which he, the
offspring of an era of enlightenment, awakened consciousness and self-assertion, felt burdened to put in
writing.
The Filipino people had to move forward, and in order to do so had to be aware of their origin, their history
as a colonized people, and the general progress of mankind to which their future should be geared.
Rizal’s construction of a ‘usable past,’ to use a currently popular term, in effect privileged the status of the
ilustrados, the liberal-educated elite which viewed itself as, among other things, released from the thought-
world of the history-less, superstitious, manipulated masses, the POBRES Y IGNORANTES.
In the very act of interpretation, then, Rizal had to ignore or suppress, unconsciously, perhapsphenomena
which resisted his ordering mind. These existed on the fringes of his life and work, and can be retrieved if
we set our minds to it.
In the 1960s and 1970s we wasted much effort by endlessly debating whether Rizal was a realist or an
idealist, whether or not he is de serving of the veneration he receives. We continue to probe the intentions
behind his actions, speeches and writings, and attempt to clarify his contribution to the process of nation-
building.
Yet, there is no questioning of his evolutionist premises, particularly the notion of emergence itself, which
belongs to the realm of the familiar, and the ‘common sense.’ As we shall see, this notion is problematized
in the meanings that Rizal’s gestures elicited among the pobres y ignorantes. Rizal became implicated in the
very world which the ilustrados sought to efface.
What we shall seek to uncover in particular is the play of meanings which his dramatic execution in 1896 set
into motion.
If this event were simply a condemned man’s attempt to
perpetuate his own memory, or in his martyrdom against oppression and obscurantism, then why, among
many other acts of martyrdom and execution, was it singled out, remembered, commemorated for decades
after?
What modes of thought apart from that of the ilustrados informed the event?
The “Fall” in Illustrados Consciousness
How we understand change in the 19th century is connected to the problem that Phelan raised about the
nature of Hispanization. Given the incontrovertible fact that the indios were convert to Christianity, we need
to move beyond established arid familial views of how their world was affected by the new religion.
On one hand, professedly Catholic writers and Hispanophiles claim that Christianity brought civilized ways,
salvation, and unity to the island. On the other hand, nationalists argue passionately that Christianity was a
weapon for facilitating the political and economic subjugation of the native.
In either view, the indio is the passive recipient. The Spanish friar, as representative of God on earth, is seen
as exerting a powerful moral hold over his native wards. For better or for worse, he interprets the proper
rules of Christian behavior, rewarding the obedient and submissive, and punishing evildoers.
Furthermore, there is an implicit assumption that Christianity’s impact can be understood by reference to
certain core characteristics, foremost among them being its otherworldly orientation that encouraged
resignation to the reality lived by the indios: resignation to forced labor and the head tax, submission to the
whims of the maguínoó, or native chiefs, and later the principales, who were mostly agents of colonial rule.
Those who are unwilling to criticize the religion itself view its particular expression in the Philippine context
as one of excessive pomp and pageantry of countless festivals, processions and rituals that kept the indios in
such a state of fascination that they failed to grasp the reality of colonial exploitation.
To whatever pole the argument tends—Christianity as the indios’ salvation or Christianity as the root of
their alienation there is always morn for allowing for or celebrating the triumph of liberal ideas in the late
19th century.
In the first place, the notion that Christianity belongs to the realm of the otherworldly as distinct from the
secular and political allows the data on popular disturbance and uprisings, and the rise of the nationalist and
separatist movement to be constructed on a ‘secular’ scale that rarely touch.
Upon the ideas of the ‘unenlightened’ because these appear to belong to the sphere of religion, narrowly
defined. Following upon this, Christianity is simply equated with something primitive and repressive that
has to give way to more progressive forms of consciousness.
The consequence of these modes of interpretation is obvious for the history of popular disturbances and
revolts. If they occur during the ‘pre enlightenment’ centuries, they are regarded as instinctive, largely
localized reactions to oppressive measures, ‘nativitistic’ attempts to return to a precolonial past, at best
primitive precursors to the revolution.
Her horizons narrowed by religion and the divide-and-rule tactic of the Spaniards, the indio is deemed
unable to comprehend her situation ‘rationally’: thus she reacts blindly, in the gut, to mounting irritants
impinging upon her. Only with the advent of Rizal and the ilustrados is there supposed to be a clear
understanding of the causes of dissatisfaction. Only with the founding of Andres Bonifacio’s Katipunan
secret society is there an organization with clear strategies and goals.
When the Katipunan is supersede by Emilio Aguinaldo’s republican government, the Filipino people seen to
be finally released not only from the colonial mother country but also from a dark past. The history of
‘failure’ ends with the birth of the secular, progressive, enlightened republic in 1898.
With the dominant construct securely established, it is impossible to regard as anything but a curious
sidelight the fact that President Aguinaldo was also seen as the liberator sent by God. Or that Rizal, like
Apolinario dela Cruz in 1841, was hailed as a Tagalog Christ and King.
In 1898 to 1899 the republic was beset with unrest led mostly by popes, christs, pastors, and supremos.
Such ‘sidelights’ suggests that personalities and events towards the end of the 19th century were repetitions,
with variations, of the past. They draw our attention to the fact that limiting frameworks have been applied
to 19th-century Philippine history, and that excluded or ‘excess’ data abound with which we can attempt to
confront the dominant paradigms, and elicit a play of meanings in place closed structures.
If Rizal belonged to a series of Christs and Tagalog kings, we might well ask what the conditions are for
inclusion in the series and the mode of historical awareness this suggests.
Rizal then becomes less the intellectual achievement of the century than a complex figure who offered
different, sometimes conflicting readings of his life and work. And since the peasant challenges to the
Malolos Republic suggest that the latter’s triumph was in a sense also a failure, we might well examine the
line that demarcates judgments of success or failure.
When Apolinario de la Cruz, whose Cofradía de San Jose was brutally suppressed in 1841, met his death at
the hands of the executioner it was with such serenity and inner peace that we cannot but regard it as a
moment of triumph.
What sort of ‘death’ was it in the first place when, some thirty years later, he returned to instruct a similar
figure in the reorganization of the cofradía? Some of the movements that challenged the republic—notably
the Katipunan ni San Cristobal and the Santa Iglesia—were just like the ‘failed’ cofradía of 1841. Was it
among the other reasons, an impatience with this persistent return of ‘primitive,’ ‘irrational’ forms that led
the republic to suppress these movements?
The reappearance the persistence over time, of figures bearing the mark of Christianity could be interpreted
as a sign of the total Filipino subjugation by Spain.
It could signify the break, the loss, and the enslavement resulting from the conquest. Rizal lamented the fact
that Philippine traditions were no longer authentic because their origins were either forgotten or patently
foreign. To him, the forgetting of origins marked the onset of darkness.
These traditions [of links with Sumatra], he laments, were completely lost just like the mythology and
genealogies of which the old historians speak, thanks to the seal of the religious in extirpating every
remembrance of our nationality, of paganism, or of idolatry.
In the 18th century, metrical romances from Spain and Mexico were allowed to be translated or to serve as
models for a popular form of indigenous literature called mvii. This transplanted to Philippine soil the
traditions of European medieval romance. Tagalog poetry became dominated by themes ranging from the
passion of Christ to the crusades against the Moors.
Ilustrados from Rizal to this day have lamented this apparent distortion of the Filipino mind. ‘Born and
brought up… in ignorance of our yesterday…lacking an authoritative voice to speak of what we neither saw
nor studied’—Rizal could not have better ex pressed the anxiety of being left to one’s own wits, unanchored
in a stable past.
The lack of a continuous, uninterrupted history of Filipino consciousness lay behind the ilustrado nostalgia
for lost origins. Rizal’s efforts to reconstruct the history of a flourishing, pre-Spanish civilization that
entered upon a decline can be viewed as an attempt to reconstitute the unity of Philippine history, to bring
under the sway of the ilustrado mind the discontinuities and differences that characterized colonial society.
The ilustrados were very much in tune with 19th century conceptions of history. Predictably, though, they
were not attracted to the Marxian analysis of the relations of production, economic determinations, and the
class struggle that would have raised questions about their own status as the voice of the Filipino race.
Rather, their activity was geared to the late 19th century European search for a total history, in which all the
differences of a society might be reduced to a single form, to the organization of a world view, to the
establishment of a system of values, to a coherent type of civilization. Ironically, the demand for order and
coherence led to a critique not only of the Spaniards but also of the ilustrados’ ancestors who, admitted
Rizal, had lost their heritage because they had ‘hastened to abandon what was theirs to take up what was
new.’
Ignorance and naiveté are the familiar explanations for what appears to have been the absence of fixed
boundaries in the conceptual world of the early Filipinos.
One fact that renders the notion of a “fall” problematic, however, was the survival of the indigenous
languages. For example the whole crop of foreign story lines in Tagalog literature, which the one hand
suggest a certain loss of authenticity, upon closer examination turn out to be masks that conceal age-old
preoccupations.
We shall see later on that the failure of such terms as “soul” and “self” to encompass the meanings of loob
(inside) releases the Tagalog passion of Christ (pasyon) from the control of the church. The translation of
alien storylines and concepts into Tagalog not only resulted in their domestication, their assimilation into
things already known, but gave rise to various plays of meaning.
The Power of King Bernardo
One of the infamous myth the Philippines has is that about the Spanish legendary hero, Bernardo Carpio. In
the Tagalog awit version that appeared in the mid-19th century, the scandals and tragedies of Spanish
royalty, the Crusades against the Moors, and the personal narrative of Bernardo are obviously of foreign
origin.
But after the successive reprinting and oral recitations of the awitit ranks with the Pasyon as the best
known story in the late 19th century—the hero Bernardo Carpio became the King of the Tagalogs hidden or
imprisoned within a sacred mountain from which he would someday emerge to liberate his people.
It is therefore, not difficult to imagine what historical consciousness was like in the 19th century before mass
education was implemented. Rizal had been linked to Bernardo Carpio in so many ways.
It may seem farfetched as to how a youth who subdued the Moors through brute strength is linked to an
intellectual who shunned violent. As we shall see, the tale becomes the locus of thinking about the nature in
the context of which Rizal then appears.
‘Close to the center, the preoccupation with kapangyarihan is disguised or hidden. But farther and farther
away from the pueblo center, ‘tradition’ becomes the dominant element in the interplay.’
The virtual identification of Rizal with the hidden king raises many questions about the shape of non-
ilustrado thought during the colonial period. Only after interrogating such familiar notions can we catch the
manifold implications of the Rizal-Bernardo meeting.
The Underside of Hispanization

Rizal is often called ‘the first Filipino’ because he figures the rise to dominance of the principalia class,
whose Europeanized scions became the nucleus around which a modern nation could crystallize. The roots
of this progressive, largely nationalist inextricably bound up with the initial ordering of Philippine society in
the aftermath of the conquest.
The main task of Spanish missionaries and soldiers in the 17th century was to concentrate or resettle people
within hearing distance of the church bells.
At the very center of a major settlement (pueblo) were a Catholic church, a convent, occasionally a
presidencia, or town hall, surrounded by the houses of the local elite.
Comprising the bulk of this elite up to the 19th century were the datu, or maguinoo whom the Spaniards had
transformed into a petty ruling class that learned to profit from an alliancesometimes uneasywith the
colonial masters.
From the late 18th century through the 19th century, increased economic opportunities, such as commerce in
export crops, land speculation, and tax farming, brought to prominence a new class of Chinese mestizos
often enmeshed through kinship with the local maguinoo families.
Rizal was of such Tagalog-Chinese stock. Hailing from one of the vast friar estates, his family, like many
others of the principalia, was in a position to lease large tracts of farmland from the Spanish friars to be
cultivated by sharecroppers.
The wealth and prestige of the principals made them second only to the friars in terms of respect and
obeisance from the common tao.
By the second half of the 19th century, the period coinciding with the rise of liberalism in Spain, the
principals viewed the friars as the remaining obstacles to their rise in power. Thus began the first stirrings of
the propaganda movement against Spain.
The pattern of Filipino settlements—local churches as focal points of population concentrations, looking to
Vigan, Cebu, Manila, and other religiopolitical centers for guidance and sustenance—bears comparison with
centers of population in the Indic states of Southeast Asia.
Reinforced by Hindu-Buddhist ideas of kinship, a ruler in the Indic states was a stable focal point for
unification. His palace was a miniature Mount Meru; he himself was the source of the kingdom’s wellbeing
—the abundance of its harvests, the extent of its trade relations, the glory of its name.
What made this all possible in the first place was the notion that the ruler participated in divinity itself,
represented by the supreme ancestor apotheosized as a Hindu god.
With the aid of a brahmin, the ruler was familiar with the formulas and rituals needed to concentrate the
power (sakti, kesaktian) of the ancestorgod in himself, to make him a living amulet whose efficacy was felt
in decreasing levels of intensity as one moved from the center to the peripheries of the realm.
The nobles below him have some white blood (which marks them as nobles) in varying concentrations but
less of it than the ruler has.
With regard the Philippines, it has always been taken as a matter of fact that a Hispanic model came to
prevail; therefore, any attempt to situate the pueblo in the context of its counterparts in the Indianized states
tends to be regarded as sheer speculation.
This outlook, however, rests upon centuries of Spanish writings that stress the triumph of Hispanization
turning into minor or hidden themes the actual interplay between different levels of thinking about power
and the social hierarchy.
When the Spaniards arrived, native chiefs, like their Khmer and Malay counterparts a few centuries earlier,
were attempting to make their access
to defied ancestors a basis for legitimizing their claims of superiority over others. Colin remarks that
‘whoever can get away with it attributed divinity to his father when he dìed.’ The suppression of such beliefs
and their accompanying techniques of dealing with spiritual substance was one of the objectives of the
conquest.
The substitution of Catholic saints for village spirits or anitos, scapulars for anting-anting, liturgical songs
for chants invoking the spirits, and so forth, reflects, however, a more realistic project of assimilating
‘Malay’ conceptions and practices.
There is doubt that as far as the elimination of superstition and animism among the folk was concerned the
Spanish efforts largely failed.
On the other hand, the elite that was nurtured in the pueblo complex could not rise to their position of
prominence without their thinking and behaviour being thoroughly codified by the church/center.
As we shall see, in the process of suppressing or assimilating traditional thinking and practices concerning
power, the Spaniards inadvertently created an ambiguous relationship (from the perspective of the Indic
states) between the church/center, the principalia, and the ordinary tao.
Catholic churches were no doubt imposing structures dotting the Philippine landscape. When topography
permitted, they were located upon hills, to achieve a greater sense of monumentality, says Reed, but also
perhaps out of the friars’ observation that hilltops were nodes of potency.
Churches were also concentrated sources of God’s kapangyarihan, tapped during church rituals and through
its traces in holy water, statues of saints, other ritual objects, and even candle-drippings. These potential
sources of power were controlled by the parish priests.
Stories abound of Spanish missionaries and curates who worked miracles, whose blessings were avidly
sought for their potency, who were regarded as second christs and revered even after death.
The parish priests, it was widely thought, knew the meanings of the Latin inscriptions on amulets and there
had access to kapangyarihan.
Catholic churches can certainly be regarded as concentrations of power just like religious centers elsewhere
in Southeast Asia. But unlike, say, the Cambodian nobility, which participated in the ruler’s power, the
principalía, despite the location of their fine dwellings around the church-
convento-presidio core, cannot be regarded as mediators of kapangyarihan.
While they had the greatest physical access to the church—they sat at the center, closest to the altar, at mass
—and the parish priest who consulted them regularly, this very fact exposed them more critically to a
religion which sought to destroy idolatry and superstition.
The persistence of ‘unchristian’ practice among the principalia was at least concealed from the priest or
sufficiently cloaked in approved practices. In fact, sorme principales were known by the townsfolk for their
powerful anting-anting.
But one notices a predominance of anting-anting tales in relation to principals who had repudiated their ties
with the center to become hermits or rebels.
Phelan notes that sons of chieftains were given a more intensive training in the Catholic doctrine. From the
17th through much of the 19th centuries, only children close to the church—convento received regular
instruction, mainly in religion.
The best among them, all sons of the better class, looked up to by the indios themselves, could train for the
priesthood in Manila. When the principales in the 19th century went to schools of higher learning—the
colegios, seminaries, the University of Santo Tomas—they further distanced themselves from the world of
what they termed the pobres y ignorantes.
The knowledge they gained was of a different order from the lihim na karunungan (secret knowledge)
thought by village curers, pilgrims to holy mountains, aficionados of anting-anting, and even the peasant
farmer during propitious times of the year.
The traces of world sustained and order by spiritual energy which, despite their position, the ilustrados could
have failed to notice around them no longer had a place in their conceptual universe perhaps it was the
specific condition of being ilustrado that led to this group’s anxiety over a lost tradition and the attempt to
recover it through historical writing.
This writing, as pointed out earlier, privileged the status of its practitioners through its underlying
presupposition of emergence and enlightenment and Rizal is seen at the forefront of this movement.
Rizal, however, is also implicated in that ‘underside’ of ilustrado history which is generally hidden but is
always in play with the dominant threads of Philippine history.
An analogy can be made between pueblo society and the Bernardo Carpio story. Both are Spanish-delivered
products of the conquest; in both, the question of power is inscribed.
The church, like the mountain, the awit, is a node of potency which the friar, like God who imprisoned
Bernardo, holds in check. Kapangyarihan, or potencia, is released in the context of approved church rituals,
particularly during holy week, or as a promise in the afterlife.
The Pasyon Interface
device for drawing the native population towards the pueblo-center

tool in the center’s continual attempt to dominate and codify its surroundings
To a great extent, the transplantation of the biblical world to the Philippines was facilitated by the social
appropriation of the epic story of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection.
In 1704, the first Tagalog rendition of the story in verse form saw print. By 1760, the pasyon, as it was
called, was already in its fifth edition. Critics have pointed out that the popular appeal of the pasyon was due
to the creativity of its author, Gaspar Aquino de Helen, a bilingual native who worked in the Jesuit press in
Manila.
Using a 17th century, Spanish passion as his model, de Helen was able to transform biblical characters into
truly native ones. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph talked and behaved so much like indios that their foreign origins
were ignored or forgotten.
Any discussion of the pasyon and society, however, has to move beyond the craft and intentions of its
author. In the first place, the authorship of the many versions that came after de Belen is problematic.
About a century later, anonymous versions in fact began to appear, such as the extremely popular Pasyon
Henesis or Pasyon Pilapil, named after the priest (Mariano Pilapil) who edited the anonymous text.
In the second place, the appearance of a few heresies as well as the ‘profane’ use of the pasyon in native
festivals and gatherings suggest that the meanings of the text derived not so much from some authoritative
voice within it but from the social field in which it moved.
What made the pasyon fulfill the role of a social epic in many lowland Philippine religion was precisely its
immediate relation with the world, which explains the futility of ascribing a core of meaning to it.
 The Textualization of Rizal
Having looked into the thinking inscribed in the stories of awit hero Bernardo Carpio and the pasyon hero
Jesus Christ, let us now turn to the national hero, Rizal.
As a young boy, he was undoubtedly precocious and from this fact biographers have traced a continuous line
to his ilustrado future. But in the world of Calamba where he grew up, his boyhood activities were later
interpreted as signs of power.
Because he was a frail child, Rizal supplemented his intellectual feats with a program of physical exercise
and bodybuilding that included swimming, horseback riding, and long hikes up Mount Makiling.
In Rizal, however, it was a remarkable combination of intelligence and physical endurance that spawned
rumors that he could perform unusual physical and mental tricks because of his exceptional control of loob.
Rizal’s Healing Power
When a sickly farmer, seeing Rizal eyeing his ripe cashew fruits, gladly offered them to the boy, later turned
into surprise when the sick farmer saw his face and kindly features, he felt restored to health. Some people
in Calamba claim that their elders had seen Rizal restore vigor and ‘radiate comfort’ to others.
Rizal’s Magical Power
There is also a story when Rizal dared at a party by a bully to demonstrate his magical powers.
Just then a flock of herons was flying over the town to the rice fields.
As they were nearing the house where the party was going on, Rizal went to the window and kept looking at
them.
His attitude attracted the attention of the whole crowd. . . . As the birds were almost over the house, he
pointed his finger at them and they all dropped one by one to the ground. There was complete silence, then
the bully fainted. He dropped to the floor like the birds on the ground . . .
Then Rizal relaxed himself, and the herons flew back to the air onwards to the Riceland. The bully opened
his eyes also and found himself perspiring with fear.
There are many other stories of Rizal’s boyhood powers, his meetings with witches and mermaids, his
invulnerability’ and so forth. A lot of these accounts, of course, were told after his death.
When he had already been enshrined as a martyr and national hero. These readings of his early life, more
often than not lacking in hard evidence, nevertheless point to the ability of that life (whose presence can
never be recovered by thought) to generate interpretations from below.
This textualization of Rizal problematizes his neat, but lust as ‘constructed,’ biographies. In a society where
King Bernardo Carpio was no less real than the Spanish governor-generals stories of Rizal’s prodigious
boyhood activities, as retold again and again, could not but have resonated with popular knowledge of the
young Jesus or the young Bernardo, who both possessed unusual concentrations of power.
The ‘myth’ of the young Rizal merely repeats the pasyon episode of the boy Jesus among the scribes and
early sections of the Bernardo Carpio awit (a bestseller then) which describe the boy Bernardo’s strength.
Rizal, Christ, and Bernardo are, in a sense, merely proper names that mask thinking about power and
identity.
In biographies of Rizal, careful attention is paid to the national hero’s activities in foreign countries from
1882 to 1887 and 1888 to 1892. During these years he earned a degree in ophthalmology. Became
recognized as well in the fields of ethnography and linguistics, wrote two influential novels and numerous
scholarly works, distinguished himself in the Propaganda movement, and so forth.
All of these took place in his absence from his homeland, in the same manner that the pasyón and awit
stories happened not just in another time but in another place as well.
Rizal’s absence, it seems to me, was the condition that made possible the final loosening of his proper name
from its anchorage in actual experience. Once we cease to preoccupy ourselves with a certain “real” Rizal
(or a “real” Christ, a “real” King Bernardo) then we can interrogate the past about the other meanings of
Rizal’s travels abroad.
The problem of Rizal’s status as national hero follow from the context in which the nineteenth-century
Philippine history has been constructed. Ironically, notions of evolution and rationality from the nineteenth
century itself are responsible for excluding from this history the ‘repetitious’ and ‘false’ or ‘mythical’
aspects of reality.
The pervading discourse of subjectivity has led to a preoccupation with Rizal’s intentions, the authentic
voice behind his texts.
 The Meanings of Death

Coates has noted that the prescience of Rizal, in which dreams contributed only a small part, was
extraordinary, verging on the psychic.
In the context of Philippine rural life, of course, this quality is almost expected of individuals such as faith
healers, seers, and possessors of powerful anting-anting. It was not the more common intellectual’s
romanticizing of death, but a true pre sentiment, I think, that made him dwell on the subject. In a rare
revelation of his inner self, Rizal wrote to fellow propagandist Marcelo Del Pilar in 1890:
In my boyhood it was my strong belief that I would not reach the age of thirty) and I do not know why I
used to think in that way. For two months now almost every night I dream of nothing but of friends and
relatives who are dead. I even dreamed once that I was descending a path leading into the depths of the
earth; and there I met a multitude of persons seated and dressed in white, with white faces, quiet and
encircled in white light.
There I saw two members of my family, one now already dead and the other still living. Even though I do
not believe in such things, though my body is very strong and I have no sickness of any kind, nonetheless I
prepare myself for death arranging what I
have to leave and disposing for any eventuality’ Laong Laan [Ever Prepared] is my real name.
Learning Tasks/Activities
Sketch to Stretch
Allows the students to draw/sketch the symbol of learnings they gained from the topic (Rizal and the
underside of the Philippine History.
Desired Learning Outcome
 Choose the best features, areas for improvement and interesting parts of the topic
 Develop higher thinking skills
 Improves organization skills
Template of Sketch (draw) to Stretch
Make an illustration or drawing about learning content/topic. Rizal and the underside of
the Philippine History
Assessment
1. What does it mean for Rizal to be textualized?

2. How does your view of Rizal compare with the “underside”?
3. Enumerate actors/ characters and roles of Bernardo Carpio: Awit and the Revolution.
References
Ileto, Reynaldo. 1998. Bernardo Carpio: Awit and revolution. In Filipinos and their revolution: Event,
discourse, and historiography, 2–9 only. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. DS 678
I43
Ileto, Reynaldo. 1998. Rizal and the underside of Philippine history. In Filipinos and their revolution: Event,
discourse, and historiography, 29–78. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. DS 678 I43

Rizal - Module 4

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Rizal - Module 4

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MODULE 4: Rizal and the Popular Nationalism

Lesson 4.1: Bernardo Carpio: Awit ant the Revolution

John Schumacher, S.J., has shown how the

Of the former, the various pasyon poetic

In particular, we shall look into a Tagalog awit, the Historia

Dean Fansler comments

Meanwhile, Don Sancho has been appointed royal

After 14 stanzas of the awit, a major transition takes place.

is heard at several key points of the awit.

His farewell speech again gives the poet an opportunity to

What loob however hard what heart would not be

At maquilala rin ang tunay na ina at aco,i,

Na lalacad-lacad walang pinupunta,

He struck the chair upon which the envoy sat

My son, he said, just take it easy to attack

At tuloy tinampal ang upuang silla, ay agad

Anac co aniya icao ay maglibang,

And you my beloved son

Why, my beloved child

Icao ,naman caya na sintang anac co,

na nabahalitang D. Bernardo Carpio,

Ano baga hunso na guiIio co, t, sinta

ang puso, t loob mo, i, di na nabalisa, sa

Oh, beautiful and generous Mother Spain where is

Ynang mapag ampon Españang marilag, nasaan ang iyong

You should remember that my sufferings

Sukat mong pakaalalahanin na ang hirap kong

My heart was appalled when I heard your cry and

You have no suffering, no affliction that I

since you’re the creation of my love, your

When you were born, dear child, into this world.

Puso ko’y nahambal nang aking marinig bunso,

Wala kang dalita, walang kahirapan, na tinitiis kang

Pagsilang mo, bunso, sa sangmaliwang nang

Lesson 4.2: Rizal The Underside of Philippine History

The Power of King Bernardo

The Underside of Hispanization

device for drawing the native population towards the pueblo-center

 The Meanings of Death

Desired Learning Outcome

Template of Sketch (draw) to Stretch

1. What does it mean for Rizal to be textualized?

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