‘y

Jauuessgueg Aq peuueos
CREATION OF A CULTURAL MINORITY /29

148
very question by reinforcing a natural tendency te consider present
conditions normative and static rather than. as the end product
of an ongoing process of human history. Worse yet, they have
fasteried these differences on the: civic consciousness of the Fili-

The Creation of a Cultural Minority

pino people by projecting 20th-century: observations into a pre-
historic past complete with dates and details for which there is no
archaeological evidence whatever. :
To the historian, however, limited as he is to records com-
Dadng an open forum of the Baguio Religious Acculturation Con- - piled by foreign chroniclers, no such Filipino minority-majority
ference in December of 1973, an Igorot student in the audience ad- » division appears. The earliest accounts are more. interested in
dressed a question to the chair which began with the words, “Sir, the difference between Spaniards and Filipinos than between one
before we were cultural. minorities...” The expression surprised Filipino and another, and beyond the facts that some Filipinos
many people present, and, indeed, seemed meaningless to some. were Muslims and others were not, and that those in the hinter-
lands lacked the cultural advantages of, those in the trading ports
Anthropologists and tourists have made us so aware of the dif-
they have little to say about the characteristics or variations of
ference hetween the so-called minorities and the rest of the Fili- Filipino: life styles, Later accounts, on the other hand, distin-
pino people that we regard them almost as a separate species— guish Filipinos from one another mainly ‘by whether they had
and it never occurs to us there may have been a day when they submitted to Spanish rule or not, and so limit their cultural ob-
were not cultural’ minorities. servations to such comments as references to the one as déciles

ee
The New Society, of course, calls these people cultural com- and the other as feroces. Nonetheless, it is possible by a. care-

ee
munities, and they have come into new prominence since the ful survey of the accounts to recognize the rise of a cultural con-
pro-
“taulgation of the goals of nation-building and national conscio cept in the mind of the Spanish observers
us- which did not exist
ness which are expressed in such slogans as “Isang

ee ee
lahi, isang at the beginning of their regime, a concept akin to that which
bansa, isang tadhana—Oné race, one nation, oné destin we today would call a cultural minority. It is a concept which
y.” These

coe
Filipinos used to. be called ethnic minorities arose in response to an historic process which was nothing
because their an- less
cestors resisted assimilation into the Spanish than the creation of cultural minorities, What I propose to do
and American’ em-
a and therefore retained more of the here is to illustrate this process by telling the story of one of
culture and customs of
: oe or “tribe,” than ‘their colonized these cultural communities as an historian, not as an anthropolo-
ventially came brothers who gist or a tourist—that is, by restricting myself to the written
to outnumber them. They scarcely appear

ae
in
pageant of history presented in’ the Philippine school syste the accounts of what earlier observers found worthy of record.
m be- The cultural community I have chosen is the Isneg people of
a the Brin cutee ppanish control and therefore show up the Sub-Province of Apayao of the-Province of Kalinga-Apayao
ao
eee

- rds which fo : bao a =o in the mountains of far northern Luzon. The sub-province takes
tory simply as outcasts, brigands Senn ee from
or savages, And Pe this
ine same’
Ee its name from the Apayao River which rises on the eastern slope
circumstances stems
the fact that
i our of the largest mountain range in the Philippines, the Gran. Cor-
is derived from 20th-c main knowledge of them
ry tourist descriptions or anthropolo- dillera Central, which forms the watershed between the Ilocos
ce

gical studies, reentu

coastal plain on the west and the Cagayan Valley on the east, and
flows into the Pacifie Ocean at Abulug about 25 kilometers west of
net

the mouth of the Cagayan River at Aparri. Both, Spanish and

ea amen ee

They do not, of courses, either contemporary sources consider mountains impenetrable barriers to
communication, and modern Filipino laymen have accepted
ween ©

w these diferences arose, and this

coe
some Fili or intend to contrib
tribute,
impenetrability as the explanation for the cultural community's
ute, to un der- existence in this area, This geographic situation is one of two
danced but others do st oa the dances their ancestors
get

reasons I chose the Isnegs as my subject—to see whether Spanish

anette

records do in fact indicate that these Filipinos lived in geographic

Jauueosues Aq peuuex
30/ CRACKS IN THE PARCHMENT CURTAIN... CREATION OF A CULTURAL MINORITY /3)
‘ ilipinos.
a emake at thé time of the American occupa. One such faction was headed by
a pocket-s
ized Napoleon called
Guiab, who apparently stood a good
tion,on te ias inight well have served as the stereotype
consider an ethnic minority—they were illi-
for
whole lower Cagayan Valley. He oper
chance of conquering the
ated with a task force of
sical apie G-strings, cut off human heads, and sacrificed 300 men, attacked anybody who resisted
pigs him, punished any dis-
ape an deities, Blas Villamor, respect or disobedience, and. rewarded
first Filipino lieutenant. his followers from the
spoils of victory. As soon as he heard abou
rahe of the sub-province and brother of the first Filipina t the presence of the
faint of the University of the Philippines, was quoted as Spaniard s, he started sending them rice and chickens and even
saying that the natives of Apayao were so savage they could never: * hogs—presumably because he recognized them
as men after his
be pacified but would have to-be exterminat own heart and thus as potentially valuable
ed. The question we allies, But the locak
will ask is, Do the.Spanish records portray these people begged the Spaniards not to
Filipinos as join forces with this local
being so different from their Filipino neighbors, conquistador, so, misreading the Message and
and hostile to overplaying their
them? hand, the Spaniards captured Guiab and hange
d ‘him. But this
Of course, there was.no such province or sub- only set. off a real resistance movement,
province in the complete with personal
Spanish period, nor does the word “Isneg” challenges to lay down their firearms and
itself appear in print come out and fight
‘until the 20th century, The area appears fairly, man to man—the same challenge, as a matter
in historic records for rots were to shout down from the mountainto of fact, Igo-
the first time soon after the Spaniards settl ps when their turn
Valley in 1518 to preve ed in the Cagayan came in the next century.
nt the Japanese from doing the same
When the Spaniards learned that a Japa thing. Another faction, however, the Spaniards
nese settlement had actual-. more successfully. Along the seacoast were able to exploit
ly been established there.by a cert just west of the Cagayan
lacked only a monarch’s backing ain Tayfusa, a freebooter who - River mouth, a Filipino by the name
of Tuliao had been feuding
to qualify as a second Legazp with his own brother for many
they dispatched a fleet from Mani
la, After defeating the
i, years. Seeking to take advantage
they remained there'to discourage any J. apanese, of the new political situation, Tuliao
such competition in the fu- tion on his behalf.
asked for: Spanish interven-
ture. Dominican Bishop Diego So the Spaniards, as Bishop Aduar
pines only 14 years aft Aduarte, who arrived in “ended their quarrel for them by takin te put it,
the Philip- | g away the lands over which
er the event, descri they had been quarreling.” Such
tion in the following bed the Spanish heavy-handed tactics, however,
candid terms: posi- soon
es °
led to the outright killing of Filipi
nos and made missionary
ia work impossible for the friars who had
wilthe
l of Span iard
.its : inhasbitarem ained in this province, but aga tion, so they withdraw. in- disgust and accom panied the expedi-
rhe on Si ae See the Japane
i ed to see them thereinsast
nts, i who wiwsh For 14 years this military occupation
frustration..
was unable to extend
se, and ag they prompt its control much farther along the
ly coast than tha mouth of the ~
them all alone with ig: farther into the interior, leavin Apayao River. Then new missionary
Provisions, friars arrived to make use
ood, so that they quickly
i consum edg : of the personal relations, both positive
and negative, that had de-
veloped between Filipinos and Spaniards
they found Chief Yringan who had
in the interim. In Pata
Aduarte may not have been won over by the example
f realized it but he ha of a Spaniard who had been cured
of
d put his a large cross, and in Masi they were an illness by praying before
‘
ipinog calj hniques by which those moun tain eer able to reconcile Chief Siri-
Ties, ee 2 to resist Spanish occupation for ban who had taken to the hills
after his two wives had been flogg
food ang the Iyonsh eo mish conguis on the charge of bigamy. ed
es never grew their own Both were among the first
n e fields. rather se baptized on Easter Day 1596, converts
Another sors of Filipino them. willi ng to aban don or burn their houses and Siriban volunteered allegi
But he did correctly diagn for himself and his subjec ance
ts
in the Plebis
Pino behavior which worked in Spanish favor:
ose biscite was a kind of referendum in whichcite of 1597. (This Ple-
der Spanish control were asked Filipino chieftains un-
Many auch Figg if they wanted the Spaniards to
remain or withdraw.) One town that voted “yes” explained the
feetiong and mM their plan to remain there by the ‘choice by saying’ that the greatest
but Were cee the Filipinos, who could not advantage of obedience to His
Majesty was in having Spaniards to liberate: them from the ty-
onstantly slaying one another.
Jeuueoguey Ag peuueos
TAIN, ..
99 /TRACKS IN: THE PARCHMENT CUR CREATION OF A CULTURAL MINORITY/33
ns | and friars to liberate them from some
ranny oftheir chieftai Then, for what a Spanish chronicler considered no reason at all—
of i Sa years a priest was: stationed in Abulug and he. a traicion y sin motivo alguno—the troops killed some 80 Isnegs,
and the next year their avengers proceeded to burn the fort, kill
gan the construction of achurch. But the forced labor conscripteq
ey build the church’ gave the people of Abulug second thoughts 25 soldiers, and put their priest in a boat with the church orna-
ments and. send him.safely downstream. Just six years later, two
about the advantages of a resident priest, so they sent a dele. new missionaries were assigned to Fotol, and by 1657 the misison
gation of chiefs to Manila to request the withdrawal of the friars. was so flourishing it was given charge of work in the Babuyanes.
‘Ag the delegation: was sailing down the Ilocos coast, however
heavy. weather drove them to put in at Vigan. Vigan was a com. The records which provide these details give us little in-
munity which had accepted foreign occupation back in the days of sight into the culture of the Isnegs, minority or otherwise, ex-
Conquistador Juan de Salcedo himself 25 years before, and their cept that they were masters enough of their own destiny to be
leaders now persuaded the Cagayan delegation that the Spaniards able to accept or reject foreign missionaries as they chose. True,
were here to stay and that the best-thing for them to de would be Bishop Aduarte does say that Father Garcia's flesh was thrown
to return to Cagayan and make friends with the missionaries there to the pigs after he was murdered—but this is no more noteworthy
so they would have some allies against the abuses of the military. a fate than that of a Spanish tribute-collector in Isabela a genera-
So that is what they did. And so, too, the people of Fotol, a tion earlier whose shin-bones wound up as rungs in, some inde-
day's journey up the Apayao River, asked for a missionary priest pendent Filipino’s house-ladder. Aduarte calls the Isnegs living
when tribute-collectors appeared among. them for the first time farther upstream or higher in the mountains Mandayas, aterm
ten years later. Thus the Mission of Santa Cecilia de Babulayan which literally means “those up above.” (Daya/raya/laya—“up-
was founded in Fotol in 1610, ‘stream” or “up above’—is a root’ common to many Philippine
languages, and inland Filipino groups. have been called Mandayas,
Now Fotol is the modern Pudtol, Apayao, and it was until Irrayas or Jlayas all over the achipelago.) Moreover, he says that
recently inhabited by people who speak the Isneg Father Garcfa’s murderers were Mandayas “whose natiye abode
language—that
is, ;by Filipinos who have\ come e to be ¢ alled a cultural minority—
inori was in mountainous places about the Bay of Bigan in Ilocos.”
Fan nna apaaking natives of Cagayan who are descended This reference to Vigan is a curious one, for Vigan and-its bay
This ie a oe eee and Tuliao are simply called Filipinos. -Jie on the west coast of Luzon, while Fotol is in the eastern foot-
Hee nation which does not appear in the Spanish hills on the opposite side of the Gran Cordillera, It probably
refers to Isnegs living so high on the crest of the watershed that
F suk : they were identified with the Idcos rather than the Cagayan side,
inet ee mission work proceeded: smoothly at Fotol, al-
80 independent-minded that the annual and thus reflects the fact that the great- watershed of northern
tribute-collecter hennnned
to come in well-armed Luzon did not prove a barrier to sych Filipinos as wanted to cross
and quickly depart.
Then, on the fi it, And the events following thé Andres Malong uprising a few
mountaineer “hin Sone after. Trinity in 1625, two of those years later make the implication clearer still. .
Onofre P: Pproached Father Alonso Garcia and Brother
third os soe Were eating lunch after mass, and for the When Andres Malong raised the standard of revolt in Panga-
this was refused th permission to return to the hills. When sinan in 1660, he shrewdly circulated rumors that Manila had
to death, and led al te”, eit bolos, hacked the two clersy fallen into the hands of the Pampanguefio rebels and that the
mountains. The follo © converts and eatechumens back to the Spaniards had been driven out of the archipelago. The parish
tote"becee spring a Spanish punitive expedition priest of Bacarra, Ilocos Norte, -foolishly accepted this propagan-
the Isnegs the
destroyed moved entation in the deserted village, and then da at face value, and sent off a report to the Governor of Cagayan
leew reeuened, feature He n. Six years later, friar missioD- by means of a parishioner named Magsanop. This Magsanop is
referred to in Spanish accounts as an [gorot, meaning 8 moun-
cal a of FatherGarciCana’s deatha
Uunti , and the ens
han a year baptized © Work, opened two new missions, and in
missions”
taineer, and was probably an Isneg from Calanasan, judging
from the’following events. He was also an encomendero, and
under th a8 Barrison of Filipino traops was st@ Maestro de Campo of Bangui, an outstation of Bacarra, northern-
© command of-one Don Francisco Tuliao-
 T CU:CURTAIN... 7
34/CRACKS IN THE PARCHMENT
f d
CREATION OF A CULTURAL MINORITY
/35
i seston on the. Ilocds.coast at. the time. It is rare
roost ee "Filipinos, Igorot or non-Igorot, appointed to such dependent neighbors. Thus in-1684, a daring chieftain
was from up-
nt, but this area stream entered the fort in broad daylight and killed one Spania
; tive. sitions in the colonial governme rd
the coastal frontier pétween Iocos and Cagayan, and since neither and one Filipino, and two years later the missions were suf-
ventured
their. vassainlsCagayan
nor outposts
eurache their to cross the Cordillera itself fering hunger because their inhabitants didn’t dare go out to
, it made good sense to appoint _ work their fields in the face of the feud which developed. Father
c area. These Jimenez, by the shrewd use of local peacepacts
a mountaineer commander of this strategisanop's loyalty, former converts, was able to patch up the quarrels, But still the
and appeals to
“Mag
titles, however, proved insufficient to retain
it—and then roused
and instead of delivering the letter, he read were
upstream Mandayas would not come down: a generation before,
s in revol t. They promptly joined some of their leaders had been treacherously killed in Capinatan
up 300 of his own follower and their heads taken. Therefore, after considerable soul-search- -
by allies from the Cagayan coast and Isne Apayao. River,
gs from Calanasan, the ing and argument-with the military commander, Father Jimenez
uppermost settlement in-the headwaters of the decided to go up the river himself, unescorted and unarmed and
Part of Magsanop’s strategy was a‘ direct attack upon the new
religion, and before he was captured by a combined force of undeterred by a well circulated threat against his life.’
The threat, as it turned out, came not from the people of the
Spaniards and Filipino mercenaries, he had ransacked churches,
destroyed religious ornaments, persecuted faithful converts, and -Apayao Valley, but from the Kalafugs just across the hills to
the south in the Ripang-Conner area of the present Apayao-Ka-
killed three friars. The Fotol mission disappeared in the pro-
cess, linga border. A glance at the map will make their interest in
Father Jimenez’s movements understandable, Kalafug was on a
Whatever’ Magsanop’s personal faith may have been, he had headwater tributary of the Matalag River which flows directly
correctly analyzed the missionary’s role in the foreign control into the Chico below Piat, but this route to Cagayan had been
that had been established along the coastal fringe’ of northern interrupted 70 years before by a Spanish mission only ten kilo-
Luzon and waa now pressing up the waterways into the interior. meters downstream at Malaueg—now Rizal, Cagayari. There the
As soon as the revolt was put down, a military outpost was estab- Spaniards began collecting tribute only five years after they began
lished at Bangui, and from there the-friars began working
collecting it: in Fotol, a fact which evidently did not escape Ka-
their
proselytizing way up the Bulu River to reach some Isnegs called lafug notice—at least, they participated in the revolt which cost
Payaos who had not joined the rebellion. Some of these were Father Garcia’s life in 1625, Now Father Jimenez was planning
resettled on the coast just east of Cape Bojeador (where their to open a new mission in what is today the Apayao sub-provin-
cial capital of Kabugao.
descendants today have forgotten their ancestors were moun- This would not only place the Kalafugs
in between two outposts of colonial advance but threaten a trade-
taineers), but the headquarters of the mission remained in a
- mountain barrio on the Cordillera itself, Forty years later, an route to Dingras, Ilocos Norte, which supplied them with the
Agustinian chronicler said that these converts means of maintaining their independence. Moreover, two years
were “very use- later another friar moved still farther up the Chico and started
ful ag allies against, the Calanasanas, a cruel and
for this Teason the Governors pagan tribe, and to write a grammar of the Itawis language on their southern

Scanned by CamScanner
in Manila have exempted them
from paying tribute,” . flank. Thus the Kalafug threat to kill anybody who participated
in the founding of Father Jimenez’s new mission is not all that
Back-in Fotol and Capinatan, mis : surprising. ; :
- ls sion work began again as When Father Jimenez finally met the Kalafugs in face-to-
paual atter Magsanop’s death, and ten years later one of Spain's face parley under the protection of his Mandaya hosts, he told
toGalbuild two ‘0 earl cs, Dominican Fray Pedro Jimenez, arrived
stone churches them it made no sense for them to be at war here in Cagayan and
in the Apayao jungle with such speed
at peace over there in Iocos just for. the little trade they got out
Whatever thene heat? walls stew up miraculously every night. of it. It made no sense, that is, to anybody planning to divide
bol of the ‘changes fey their, sresence was another sym- all sf northern Luzon into two Spanish provinces and reduce all the
Isnegs in taking place in the Apayao. Valley. independent Filipinos in between to mere appendages of one or
Pressures, _ began n town were now subjected to different the other. But it. probably made perféctly .zood sense to those
to have different interests, from their in-_
JDUUBIDSWeED Kq PsUUBIS
RTAIN... CREATION OF “A CULTURAL MINORITY /37
46/CRACKS IN ve
g PARCHMENT CU
scerog themselves to come and go, buy and sel} June 24,
A letter from the priest-in-charge of Malaueg dated anying
independent Hulpinn' lances as they pleased. Those in Kalafug l change s accomp
1741, also gives insight into the cultura requests
and make as out Father
ged the mounta ing in 1690 and wiped these politico-religious conflicts. The letter ineludes two
: the gilding of
Peiia Francia in of his superiors—one for tools to proceed with those
anime ing Missi
"4 on of Nuestra Sefiora de the church altar, and the other for clothin g for who had
1
to attend mass. That is, at a time
Tae Jimener’s personal account of his mission to’ the Man- been unable to save enough
might think the raggedy fire victims
it contains an- a modern theologian
dayas has survived in Dominican archives, andthe lower Apayao
when
chy of value judg-
developing in had special need of the Sacraments, the hierar to sartorial pro-
ence
other clue to the contradictions
indios—or, as we say, Filipinos— ments in the colonial society gave preced in Ilo-
decree
Valley. He calls everybody . So, too, a contemporary
he does priety over spiritual need.
but among them he distinguishes some a8 Enemigos. That cos made it a crime punishable by 50 lashes
to appear in a Chris-
spelling and in Cagayan for-
‘not mean this word literally is indicated not only by his that tian town dressed in native Filipino attire,
it with a capital letter like a proper noun, but by the asfact bade naked bathing. And when an expedi
tion of Malaueg converts
he applies it to’ his hosts, companions and protectors well as
was sent out 20 years later, armed with headaxes; muskets and
But he only applies it to those who have not gs, to punish the people of Fotol for failure
to the Kalafugs. their priest’s blessin
surrendered to Christ and King. The term itself is evidently the to pay tribute, they reverted to G-stri ngs to do so.
ce from Apayao
literal translation of an Ibanag word which vassal Filipinos in Yet contemporary missionary corresponden
Cagayan were now applying to all their neighbors who did not that Spanis h friars there had not yet developed
- makes it clear
they were unwittingly creat-
join the new society. . And since the terminology of the new any scorn for the cultural minority
José Tomdés Marin
ty. When Fray
majority ultimately became normative in the colony, by the end of . ing by acculturatin g the majori
Valley and
the Spanish regime unsubjugated mountaineer neighbors farther spent three years hiking up and down the Apayao
chieftains as “Don So-
ee began to use it themselves. Thus American colonialists in across the Cordillera, he addressed Isneg
ph” not “Father.” .He
? - = wer able to apply this inappropriate Ibanag word to and-so” and they addressed him as “Jose
describes them as gracious hosts —they ’ went out to catch fish
e sub-province and teach three generations -of Filipinos or any meat
he would n’t eat dogme at,
ee .
The word is when they learned
Rage” to accept it with pride and confidence.
bo
they might
at all on Friday—and independent. Some said produced
the missio ns if Cagay an
consider moving. down to of doing
: , : s as Ilocos did (anot her examp le
This ‘ote as good textile ‘one
oF independent-vassal, dichotomy ¢on- business on the “wrong” side of the Cordil lera), and
tinued ete heer
1690, and
imenez’s departure and death into their promised to be baptized if Father would send for his relati
ves in
the Fotol-Capinata sprin g back old called
vigorous life again. “Misch did not Isabela. They spoke of an evil spirit around the missions
to come up from to settle among
the coast for oe Namen: friars continuedome the effects of Tribut e which ate people up, but invite d the friars
tion—that
such incidents ae ons, but could not overc them or to come and go as they pleased on one condi pany
accom
of 30 upstream Mandayas in Capi- it be put in writing that no tribute collectors would
hatan in 1739, Conditines them. They called Father Marin “the bravest father in the whole
the southeastern Isneg os in the fronti er mission of Malauegs 0
to further illustrate world” for his courage in coming into their territory, yet his own
the tensions. In 1749 ank can also beerecitedkilled by neighboring letters give no hint that his life was in any danger among them.
and their ree conve rts-w
oes and
ermal went out, Killed thetenwhole
captured five,and in rey oe In fact, like his great predecessor, Pedro: Jimenez, he does not even
mention the fact that they were headhunters.
bee ae burned to be three more forays, Then
church, and es But the fact was mentioned by confreres living in those
to depend on the ny Matar y colonized parts of the Philippines from which the custom had
for emergency ravions:
ime, others m? Priest Augustinian Fray Antonio Mozo, who never set
the tri
bute after they had tafeee back to the hills to escape disappeared.
Apayao, reflected the attitude of both Spaniards. and
ret” Hopeless debt to the mayor foot in
Filipinos in the more acculturated society by describing the Isnegs
by an epidemiPrevented
mae working their fields for tW° as bloodthirsty savages who lay in wait along the highways to
pily 7
tribate and 4p, Pox—ag scourge unhapplace.
© Gospel in the first
Jauueoswey Aq peuueos
49/CRAOKS IN THE PARCHMENT CURTAIN...
CREATION OF A CULTURAL MINORITY/39
tf unwary travelers. So, too, a century later
cut ok aise Sinibaldo de Mas enveighed against the custom kilometers from the coast and never extended its authority ag
security of
“ofoecalling su ch Filipinos
“Don” as dangerous to the far upstream as Fotol, and the former had its héadquarters in
the Filipinos properly in their Piddig, Ilocos Norte, and neyer entered the mountains at all.
the colony because it failed to keep Clues to this failure to carry out the occupation are probably
place. And when, An 1919 after another three generations of
Dominican historian to be found in two incidents which happened at the time.
white man’s burdens and manifest destinies,
Julian Malumbres told the story of one of Father Marin’s con.-
name of his Spanish spon In 1888, some mountaineers attacked Dingras and the Governor
yerts who was baptized with the full of Ilocos Norte sent a punitive expedition into the mountains to
sor, he found it necessary to add a footnote explaining Buch lack
retaliate. On the Cordillera, the soldiers and their commander were
of racial discrimination as being due to the missionary zeal of
colonial officers in a happier day of Spanish. empire. ‘ hospitably received by. a local chief named Onsi, This Onsi had
been cooperative with the colonial government in the past and,
The transcordilleran trade routes that Father Marin followed _as a matter of fact, had been decorated with the Cross of Givil
continued fo be used up into the 20th century. During the Diego Merit for his services, All day, therefore, he fasted and enter-
Silang uprising in 1763, an Augustinian friar in Banna, -Ilocos tained his visitors in good Filipino fashion. Then, suddenly, the
Norte, tried to get Filipino troop commander had about 40 of his host’s people surrounded,
allies to deny the rebels the use of
these communications, and after he was released from a short cap- and accused them of having made the attack on Dingras. When
tivity, he proceeded up to the Cordillera foothill mission of Sol- Chief Onsi protested their innocence, the commander drew his
sona to send messages.to Spanish forces in Cagayan revolver, emptied all six chambers into the Isneg leader, and
by this means gave his men the order to open fire. Sixteen Isnegs were shot
himself. A southern branch of this same route reached the water-
shed at Anayan on the Abra.border, and from there it was down in cold blood. The Spanish government brought the officer
pos- to trial for this unmilitary behavior, but the next trading party
sible to reach Vigan in three days on horsebatk, After Father
Marin’s day, Spaniards did not make use of these Isneég of Ilocanos who went into the area on business never came out
trails again. as
themselves, but other Filipinos did: an 1805 report from the ' An almost identical case happened in the Apayaos commandan-
Cagayan Valley states that Ilocano traders reacted Malaueg— .
cy in Malunog just four years later. The Commandant there gave
att crossing Apayao over.such a route. It ia signi- a party in the garrison headquarters on the occasion of his birth-
4 or
» “ue report refers to these Ilocanos as “embezzlers” day and invited all the prominent Isnegs from Pamplona to Tawit
met
illegal this
pat wrewiniores —tor, in the eyes of the colonial govern-
ependence and untaxed commerce to attend. In the midst of the feasting and drinking, he sudden-
was strictly ly had his guests surrounded and ordered some of them seized.
goverriment’ . be beginning of the 19th century, the colonial and bound as suspects of the murder of seven Negritos, Some
the Spanish § wiews on legality weren’t very important in Apayao: of the Apayaos managed to snatch up their weapons, however, so
and the ker * Fotol and Capinatan were never reopened, the soldiers opened fire, killing one outright and wounding many
cestora had pursued. ce free to pursue happiness as thejr an- others. The suspects were then seized and imprisoned, but the gov-
as they chose, : rading or fighting with their neighbors ernment took no action against the commandant. Father Julian ©
Such fighti ‘ . . . Malumbres happened to be in Capinatan at the time, cleaning two
of Spanish” subj
ting and trading of2 course, threatened the security centuries of jungle growth off Father -Jiménez’s old church, and
maintenance iu collection of internal revenue, and the when he“heard of the treacherous deed, he asked for custody of
in the side of Sp ule ent monopolies, and was:therefore a thorn the prigoners and took them back up to Capinatan with him. But
With the passage in tim Sovereignty which grew more irritating | there they made an attack upon his life, and he always afterwards
repeating rif] e. After the invention of the Remington believed that the local military authorities had deliberately mis-
end all this ie Governor Valeriano Weyler ‘ecided to informed them that he had been responsible for the treachery.
imgly announced the ence, once and for all. In 1891 he accord- Needless to say, the. mission_of Capinatan. was not reopened.
. neias Politico. Maite of Apayao by the creation of the.
atter of these w ; ttares of Cabugaoan and Apayaos. The ' Before Governor General Weyler attempted to establish the
88 garrison ed at Malunog on the River
only 20
Jeuueosuey Aq peuueos
RCHMENT CORTAIN. ”
40/CRACKS IN THE PA
, CREATION OF A CULTURAL MINORITY /41

for in-
ndancies, he asked the Augustinians re-
more and more like each other and less and less like their an-
Fray Ricardo Deza of Ding ras cestors. The Isnegs, on the other hand, preserved more of the
Be eT a youk tee area. t that the Isne gs
stat emen
sponded with a sketch map and the g by the law of an eye
culture of their ancestors and so came to look less and less like
were unapproachable because of their livin in wait fora
their acculturating neighbors. By the end of the Spanish regime,
for an eye and a-tooth for a tooth, and alwaya lying this divergence had created a real Filipino majority for the. first
chance to take some Christian traveller, In draw ing this conclusion, time in history—those Filipincs who had the same king—the
Father Deza. evidently did not find the rece nt example of Spanish Spanish King. And those did not were just cultural communi-
st by
behavior noteworthy, or the fact that a German pharmagi ties. Thus by the magic of colonial alchemy, those who changed
the -name of Schadenberg had just visited the remote barr ios of most became today’s Filipinos while those who changed least were
Calanasan the year before. He also seem s to have forg otte n that actually denied this designation by a former president of the state
In this way a cultural minority was created where
all his data had been supplied by a half-dozen Ilocano business-. university.
men and petty officials who had been hiking safely in and out of none had existed.
Apayao for decades; In other words, if Apayao was unsafe for
Spanish commanders and their friar compatriots, it wasn’t unsafe
for other people. The reason Father Deza missed this message
is probably because, like those treacherous commanders themselves
and Blas Villamor 20 years later, he lived at the end of a colonial
process which had steadily divided the Filipino people into two
categories—the sybmissive and the unsubmissive, the faithful and
the faithless, the good and the bad. The Isnegs of Apayao clear-
ly belonged to the latter group. No longer simple indios: like
everybody else as they had been in the days of Bishop Aduarte
and Fathers Jiménez and Marin, they were now outcasts, brigands
and savages. They were different from other Filipinos, and.
there-
modeser
fore neved different, treatment.
men They were, in
i short, a eultu- if

; ae then, is a. brief summa: ry of the recorded contacts be-

io iitmeen ee and the people of Apayao, but it is enough
iether: le i experience of the Filipino people in. far
I i far as we can tell, this people was divided

stat e tee u mstances,

totwo ofcircthes Then, , under
ar inos in
forej
@ groups submitted to
while those j n the third did not. So, as the
More of d more of thay Gow’ 7 Jipcasion and Ibanags gave up
their conquerors’ calf. ture to assimilate more and
Tn the process, they became
7
 UNDER THREE FLAGS TRIALS OF A NOVELIST
146
thinking long term, recognizeg that the
The scasoned Captain-General.. ned
Rar and haste to get out). Reforms would be
imperial cause Was a ilitary victory would mea useless
against the nationalist tide; military se | ® colossal suffering
and would not prevent’a further war within twelve Years. It is probable that
Canovas understood the message, but he was also convinced that the fall of
Cuba would not merely drive him from power and almost certainly destroy
the cacique democracy that he and Sagasta had constructed in Spain over the
past generation; it would also, by reducing Spain toa minor European Slate,
be a devastating blow to Spanish national pride and self-confidence, Ac.
powers.3* The
cordingly, he dispatched Weyler to Havana with plenary
general arrived in Cuba on February 10, 1896, and remained there for the
next eighteen months. Canovas was as good as his word. In support of
Weyler, he ensured that in short order approximately 200,000 Spanish troops
were shipped to the Caribbean island, at that time the largest military force
ever conveyed across the Atlantic.”
TREES Ge
TE GREAT WIEYLES APE rvs
a ATF BY ser tatesee
Weyler fully lived up to Canovas’s expectations. With his steely Prussian
efficiency he turned the military tide in the course of 1896. In December,
Maceo and Maxime Gémez's son “Pancho” were killed in battle, and the
The Spanish military governor of Cuba, Valeriano “the Butcher” Weyler.
bereaved father was largely on the run. But the costs were enormous, Hugh
Thomas, on the whole sympathetic to Canovas and Weyler (mainly out of
contempt for what the hypocritical Americans were up to before, during, and Gomez's ruthless scorched-earth campaign against the haciendas of the
after the war), comments that “the whole island had been turned into an plantocracy played its own role.*' But the deeper problem was thal neither
immense concentration camp.” Between 1895 and 1899, Cuba’s population _ Canovas nor Weyler had any plausible political, as opposed to military,
declined from about 1,800,000 to 1,500,000. Most of the casualties of the solution to hand. As we shall see, this impasse was to be resolved by a
islandwide concentration camp were children who died of malnutrition and wandering Italian lad, only a few years out of his teens.
diseases parasitic thereupon. In 1899, Cuba had, so Thomas claims, the
smallest proportion of children under five years of age in the censused parts
of the world; no other country in the nineteenth century suffered the loss of RIZAL TO CUBA?
one sixth of its population.” The economy was lefi ruined, a process in which Recognizing that he was likely to be exiled in tiny Dapitan for a long time,
Rizal had settled in soon after his arrival. He built himselfa simple thatched
38, Weyler had been Captain-General of Catalonia since November 29, 1893,

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Just tWo months too late for the execution of Paulino Pallas, but
that of Santiago Salvador. in time to oversee 41. Ojeda, EY desterrado, p. 340, quotes the justification provided my ‘
9. Thomas, . Cuba, , p. p. 349. 349. B By the time
: Madrid‘ surrendered (to the Americans) in Dominican chief of the Cuban military forces as follows: “When I putcela
a
hena
Am On the suffering heart of the working people, and I felt it wounded with
ae the war had cost Spain over one and a half billion pesctas, plus over “0 touched, next to all that opulence, around all that astounding wealth, suc ceed na
mostly the victims of yellow fever and other disea
ses (P- at in one such Moral Poverty; when | saw all this in the house of the tenant, and 3 s,
40. bid.. ce pp. 328e and 423, . T Thomas's ive claimclaim isis unwarran
comparative unw: living
Paar On the eve of the war it declared against Brazil, Argentina, and ee brutalized by the cheating he endures, with his wife and children a aes told
etched hut rected on another's land, when | asked about aes sed against
war wrod ee had a population of 1,337,439, mostly Guarani, souls. Whe “aie that there had never been any... then I felt enraged and pra i
Over theape af ns ater this had been reduced to 28,746 adult males, 106,254 wit area
E Upper classes of the country. and in a moment of fury al the SE" The quotation
utterly
Ll 15.320 or gy cen-and 86,079 children, a total of 221,079. The losses amour tion
jaclarcholy and painful inequality, I cried out: "Blessed be the torch.
lives. SeeByron Farwe of the population, Paraguay’s three enemics also lost AM tken from Juan Bosch, £! Napoléon de las guerrillas (Santo Dom ingo: Editorial
York: Norton, 2001) ed.. Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Land Warfare Alfa y Omega. 1982), p. 13.

UNDER THREE FLAGS
148
stilts by the shore of the today still beautiful, serene bay: then he
house on
: j ittle school for local boys, interested 1;
opened a mica pani . whatever his relatives and fj ‘aaa
in agriculture a se His correspondence was, of course, censored, and te
permitted to sen a wed are calm but guarded. He had freedom to move
letters that mi na within the settlement and was mostly
treated cour-
ont a Saal In the summer of 1893 a new Captain-General,
ok ‘and, arrived in Manila to teplace early a Despujol €ver-more
disliked by the Peninsular community tn Manilajand the Orders. Though a
veteran of the Carlist wars and of the Ten Years War in Cuba, Blanco had
the reputation of being a flexible man. Meantime various of Rizal's friends
cooked up abortive schemes to come to his rescue: plans to hire a ship to free
him and take him to Hong Kong, and others to have him pardoned by prime
minister Sagasta, and then run for a Spanish seat in the Cortes. In November
1894, Blanco himself dropped by Dapitan on the way back from a successful
little war against the Muslim Maranao in the central-northern part of
Mindanao. He is said first to have proposed that Rizal return to Spain
(Rizal rejected this idea) and then to have offered to have him moved back to
Luzon, to one of the Ilocano provinces in the far north. But in the end
nothing came of this.”
By 1895, however, the insurrection in Cuba was changing the whole
context of politics in the Philippines. Blumentritt’s “preconditions” were
starting 0 be realized. Rizal's older friend Regidor, who had grown rich in
London as legal adviser to English businessmen trading and investing in
Spain, and who had many friends in high places in Madrid, learned that there
was a severe shortage of doctors attached to the military in yellow-fever-
ravaged Cuba, He therefore lobbied Blumentritt and Basa to persuade Rizal
to volunteer. Finally, after much hesitation, Rizal yielded, and in November,
while Martinez Campos still ruled in Havana, sent a letter to Blanco asking
Permission to offer his medical services to casualties in Cuba. Basa’s belief
was that this offer would be taken as evidence of Rizal's basic loyalty to the
TRIALS
OF A NOVELIST
149
But for what reasons? Here one can only speculate,
; : He knew ;
Campos as the unsanguinary architect of the Pact of Zanjon fis
ended the Ten Years’ War. A doctor himself, he took Seriously the Hi :
cratic duty to icnd to the wounded,
: no 'matier what side they might be we
had known admirable Cubans in Spain, first and foremost the Ree.
creole Rafael Labra, and was generally familiar with “advance
d” Cuba's
political history up Lo the end of the 1880s. Perhaps he was Curious as to what
could be learned from the experience of the Philippines' Sister colony.
: : ' . What is
likely, in any case, Is that his years of isolation in Mindanao left him poorly
informed on what was now happening in the Caribbean island under “Su
Excelencia” Weyler.
In the event, Blanco promptly sent Rizal's letter on-to Madrid with his
personal stamp of approval. But for months there was no reaction from the
imperial capital. Meanwhile, in Cuba itself. Weyler and weplerisme had
replaced Martinez Canipos.
NEW CONJUNCTURES
Rizal's deportation to Dapitan in July 1892 had led to the immediate collapse
of the infant Liga Filippina, But soon afterwards, a very small group of
activists in the Liga’s orbit decided al a secret meeting in Manila to replace it
by a clandestine revolutionary organization which they called the Kataas-
taasan, Kagalanggalang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan (perhaps Most
Illustrious, Respectable League of the Sons-and-Daughters of the People).
Its leader Andrés Bonifacio, two years Rizal’s junior, was.then twenty-nine
years of age. The Katipunan does not seem to have achieved very much
beyond survival until the end of 1895, when ils membership was still less than
300 persons.** But new international conjunctures in that year encouraged an
43. Infact, the Liga had been reconstituted on its original
basesin April, 1893. In
Isabelo’s words, Bonifacio, who headed the branch in the neighborhood of Trozo.

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Smpire. Ip any case, the main thing was to get the exile out of the Philippines. viendo que los trabajos de la Liga se esterilizabun con las continuas discusiones de
wa, llustrados compaiieros que parecian tener mas egoismo pueril que verdadero
ne te Havana lay through Spain; once there, Rizal could cept Patriotisma, los mandd 4 paseo y elevd a Consejo Supremo del Katipinanel iene
Roni a. e Protection of influential friends and political allies. hg st Presidia™ [observing that the wark of the league was losing its vigor tants .
of honor. and wane aremuch less clear. He was a man with a prickly sent
than he true
Ceeswhich
ng, over patriotism, he set
whichs
pu endless discussions of its iustrada comrades,them and more
asidecemed ae
clevated the pop ge
who,after alt had . have recoiled from the idea of flatly lying ‘0 ae had forte presided to become the Supreme Council of i eae
long beer, ae it earlier offered to let him go honorably Lo Spain. pa es
ilustrados dove the Liga)}. De los Reyes, Seusucional memoria. p.°! h, but
are good that j ‘at nothing could be achieved in the metropole. The chan onif: declared Bonifacio in rebellion and tried to dissolve the Octo f. althisnotis
i November 1995 he was fairly serious about Cuba. Panoe etused to obey. This led the Liga to dissalve itself in +
that. zi eg the Captain-General some internal Liga files. wepes ei
42,2. Guerrero, The Consojj dante 4s it Was possible, Bonifacio tried to use the Liga
First Filipino, p, 342,
ing the clandestine work of the Katipunan.
 UNDER THREE FLAGS TRIALS OF A NOVELIST
150 151
of its cadres, said by some enthusiasts to have reached « ever more sharply in Japan's favor.** Japanese Slarted to emigrate int
energetic expansion o the
Philippines. and Tokyo pressed hard for relaxation of { he colony's
10,000 by August. immigra-
The key conjuncture for the Katipunan underground ts best symbolized by
tion laws. Japanese elites awere increasingly well infor, med abou
t the Philip
eee Lust days pines, while the Spanish diplomatic corps, without a single person capable of-
the fact that Marti’s landing in Cuba ” apt c -
before the signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki between Tokyoof and Peking reading OT speaking Japanese, was forced to rely on the British and Amer
1894-95 in icans for whal they understood about Japanese policies
after the former's crushing victory In the Sino-Japanese War and intentions By
Korea. In the case of Cuba, it was not just a matter of Marti’s electrifying the beginning of the 1890s an increasingly vocal lobby—of enpuellicn
example, and the spectacular early military successes of Maceo and Gomez, parliamentarians, newspapers, militarists, business interests, and idealo-
difficulties Spain would gues— Was pushing for Japanese
Bonifacio and his comrades were keenly aware of the expansion in the Pacific and Southeast
face if it had to confront two anticolonial insurrections on opposite sides of Asia (partly to forestall German and American advances). The weakness and
the world. They also knew that in such an eventuality Madrid would attach decrepitude of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines were becoming widely
overwhelming military priority to money-making Cuba over the generally known."” And obscurely connected adventurers, civilian and military, w cre
money-losing Philippines. On the other hand, Taiwan, whose southern tip travelling in and out of the colony.
lay only 250 miles from the northern shores of Luzon, was now the property In Spain itself, Tokyo's military triumph over China brought the espantajo
of the Japanese state. If the Cubans could get support in the neighboring Japonés to the centre of public attention.” In February 1895, Moret,
United States, might it not be possible that the Filipinos could do the same in Sagasta’s [former minister for overseas territories, wrote thal the rise of
the empire of the Rising Sun? Japan to the status ofa first-class power “implies a radical transformation in
In fact, the geopolitical positions of the two “neighbors” were very the relations of Europe with the Orient, and especially with the possessions of
different. The United States was by then the almost uncontested hegemon Spain in those seas. To refuse to recognize this fact, waiting for events which
in the western hemisphere, while eastern Asia was an arena packed with will not delay in coming, would be equivalent to a man sleeping on the rails of
competing, ambitious “white” imperialisms—-British, French, German, Rus- a railroad track, confident that the vibrations on those tracks by the
sian, and American. Almost immediately aficr the conclusion of the Treaty oncoming train will warn him of the danger.” The radical republican
of Shimonoseki, intervention by Germany, France, and Russia forced the newspaper La Justicia commented sarcastically not much fater: “A beautiful
Japanese government to return the just-acquired Liaotung Peninsula to the future of simultaneous war in Cuba, the Philippines . . . il is sufficient that
Ch’ing regime. Furthermore, Japan was still burdened with the uncqual the government of the Restoration [i.c. of Canovas] may write on the ruins of
treaties imposed on it over the previous three decades, giving ils competitors the Spanish nation the historic epitaph Finis Hispanae.””
substantial extraterritorial rights. An Anglo-Japanese agreement signed Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Filipino nationalists
shortly before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War did look forward
to the climination of such treaties, but not before 1899. Yet where London _, 46. Between 1890 and 1898 Manil
trade decifit
a’s with Japan increased sixtyfold.
led the way, the other imperial capitals would inevitably follow. The late ibid.. Appendix IX, p. 101, ?
47. The prominent Meiji writer and publicist Fukumoto Makoto a c
1890s were thus not—yet—a time for reckless Japanese adventures. Wo extended trips to the Philippines, in 1889 and 1891. In a series of arlice:
iene

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between Tokyo and Manila were generally correct, Wnitlen after the second trip, he described the feebleness of the Spanish saan
jeoaau Orities became more and more worried about the future. military, manned by a few Spanish officers uncasily commanding native ae ke
pewoular, he pointed out that when in 1890 Weyler sent a second mapeinen TT in
Ps swarmed into Philippine waters, and the trade balance was 4rolines to repress renewed rebellion there, for a while not a soldier was
44. See. for a succinel ccount, Teodoro A. Agoncillo, A Short History af the
nila. Thid., 4 p. 68
“El espantajo
Philippines (New Yor a
Ja i "hy &panese spectre’ Ma appears ini the section entitled
k:
Mentor, 48. yThis ’ in Repertorio
not too1969), pp. 77-81. The 10,000 figure may well be an
i Japonés
Cxaggeration, b ul probably
de 1896," in L. i ete’s, comp!
Goné zalez Liqu ilatio
much so, given the astounding early successes at hist ise > 2 Fevo luciidon Filipino. 19 30), cit
ed in
45.1 ary Movement
; biogréfi ca y bibl dfico p,(Man
iogrnes, ila: Impr. Del Dia
Primarily
primariarmed with machetes. Bang gq) when and the Philippi 186. «roe fstas Filipinas.”
Saniel's Ho aed on Japan that follows, I have relied heavily on Josefa e t’s “El Japon y ae x
Japan and Philippines, citing More
La Salle University P Prog, (aig Philippines, 1868-1898 (third edition) (Manila: Origin : Saniel,
at Published in La Expafia Moderna, LXXIV (February 1a ween Japan
Spanish, andEnglish-la nguage sn ae a based on thorough research in; the Japanes? . is mew!
thatinoby “war in. . . the Philippines”
l hotNota eFilip
and Spaain, insurrection.
 UNDER TIIREE FLAGS
152 TRIALS OF A NOVELIST
began trying to establish useful contact with the Japanese. The first 19 do «,
pe José Ramos, from a family rich enough to have had him educated jn
(without the noveli
st's knowledge, he had
Is

honorary president; and ils bee n made th

London, In the summer of 1895, tipped off that he was about to be arrested speeches are said to have end € Katipunan’;
with a rousing “Long live ed customarily
the Philippines! Long live
for spreading nationalist propaganda, he escaped the Philippines, Posing as Rizal!) At the end Libert y! Long live Dr
of the month, the onl
an Englishman, on a British ship headed for Yokohama. There be Married g saginvonteli sailed y ilustracdo among them
to Mindanao on the , Dr Pj
Japanese woman, took her name (Ishikawa), and eventually became his to be treated. pre
text of bringing a blind
Itis Important to servant ot
note that Rizal did
naturalized subject of the Emperor Meiji. Much of his time was Spent in either in person or
by name, and it must
not know Valenzuels
fruitless attempts to purchase surplus rifles left over from the war in Korea doctor might be an ag have crossed his mind
ent-provocatcur. The that the
re is no certainty about
and to send them to the Philippines.*' Other rich Filipinos followed on the in which the the terms
short conversation between the two men
pretext of tourism or furthering their education. interrogators later asked him was framed. When his
Then on May4, 1896, the Japanese naval training ship Kongo, with thirty- for details, Rizal's recorded reply
was as
three cadets .and-twenty students of a Japanese naval school aboard, sailed follows:
into Manila’s harbor, where it was promptly sequestered by the Spanish El médico D. Pio le hablo al declarante de que iba a levarse 4 cabo un levamiento y
authorities on the pretext of possible infringement of the rules of quiaran- que les tenia con cuidado lo que pudicra ocurrirle al declarante en Dapitan. El
line.” Though the existing Japanese, Spanish, and Filipino accounts vary in dicente Ic manifesto que la ocasién no era oportuna para intentar aventuras, porque
their details, all agree that Katipunan leaders Bonifacio, Dr Pio Valenzuela, no existia uni6n entre los diversos elementos de Filipinas, ni tenian armas, ni barcos,
the young firebrand Emilio Jacinto, and Daniel Tirona made personal ni ilustracion, ni los demas elementos de resistencia, y que lomaron ejemplo de lo que
contact with the captain of the Kengo, and presented him with a written ocurria en Cuba, donde 4 pesar de contar con grandes medios, con el apoyo de una
pelilion asking for Japanese aid and guidance in their “desire to rise up gran Potencia y de estar avezados a Ia lucha, no podian alcanzar sus deseos, y que
against the government.” They were accompanied by “José" Tagawa Mor- cualquiera que fuera el resultado de la lucha, 4 Espaiia le convendria hacer
itaro, a long-time resident in the colony, married to 2 Filipina, who had concesiones a Filipinas, por lo que opinaba el declarante debia de esperarse. [Doctor
alerted Bonifacio to the Kongo’s arrival, and acted as interpreter, Nothing Don Pio told (him) that an uprising was going to take place, and that they were
significant came of this encounter, except that the colonial police got wind of worried about what might then happen to (him) in Dapitan. (He) declared that the
it, and redoubled their watchfulness.* Captain Serada did not mention the occasion was not opportune for attempting adventures, because no unity existed
between the various elements of (society in) the Philippines, nor did they have arms,
meeting when he reported to his superiors.
ships, education, or any of the other requirements for a resistance movement. They
should heed the example of what was happening in Cuba, where the people, despite
abundant resources and the backing of a great Power, and being experienced in
LEAVING DAPITAN
battic, were unable to achieve their desires. Whatever the outcome of the _
Such was the immediate background for a mecting of the Katipunan’s there, it would be to Spain's advantage to make concessions to the Philippines. Fo
top
leadership later in May, where it this reason (he) believed: that they ought to wait.)™
feasible, that a mission would be sentwasto decided that an armed uprising was
Japan to ask for substantial suppor.

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This is the stilted language of a military stenographer, but to the trial court
and that an emissary would leave for Dapitan to get Rizal's endorsement. ons to My Defence, ” whic is were written in his
Rizal provided a brief “Additi
wrote:
5h. bid, pp. 180-82. characteristically elegant manner. There he
‘dies
52. The followin; ay carclu!ful and
Judicious Feconstructioign.account of th ‘air i niel's aconsejé lo
hid. PP. i ard SLES Sean FET Avizado por Don Pio Valenzucla de que se intentaba valenzuela
un levamientose, separé demi
. Tagawa, aca
the Philippi -atpenter from Nagasaki,a was one of the first Japanese to settle in centrario tratando de convencerle con razones. D. Pio j
sues en la rebelion, s¢
successful busig ns there in the early 1870s, Eventually he became
trading company @ moderately
een tt @PPears thal in July 1895 Bonifacio asked him to cre Convencido al parecer, tanto que cn vez de tomar jeri = Valenzucla that an
wlich would trite hemp. sugar, iabacco, and other preduets, the incom cof
Presenté 4 indulto 4 las Autoridades. [Advised by rying to convince
all him by
expenses if Tagawa to buy Murata rifles in Japan, The Katipunan offered to Peng “Prising was being prepared, I counseled against I. :
Scems lo have Feme were willing to go to Japan to arrange the purchase. But no
of this scheme. fbid.,
pp. 249-50. 34. De la Costa, ed.. The Trial. p. 9.
 UNDER THREE FLAGS
154
Don Pio Valenzuela took his leave persuaded, it appears, si
rational arguments.
t in the rebellion he presented himself to the authorities
instead of later taking par
asking for pardon.)
A later sentence adds some complicating ambig
uity:
seguro, pues segtin é
D. Pio Valenzuela venia a avizarme para que me pusiese en
on
era posible que me complicaran. [Don Pio Valenzuela came to warn me to be
my guard, since, according to him, it was poi that they (presumably the
Spanish, not the Katip unan) would impli cate me].*°
This testimony is pretty plausible. In Rizal's negative advice to the doctor
one can hear echoes of Blumentritt's reasoned comparative warnings against
revolutionary adventures. It is not clear how much he knew of what was
really happening in Cuba, but the difficulties of the island’s struggle are
thetorically deployed to reinforce that advice. It is plain, however, that
Valenzuela cautiously presented himself as seeking not an endorsement for
the insurrection, but merely counsel as to its opportuneness. Whether or not
he was really convinced by the novelist's arguments, he appeared to accept
them if for no other reason than that he could not be sure Rizal would not say
something to other visitors, his family, or even the authorities in Dapitan.**
What exactly Valenzuela told the comrades on his return to Manila is by no
Means clear: did he accurately report that Rizal's advice was to wail, since
conditions for a successful uprising were not yet present, or did he simply say
that Rizal flatly refused to endorse Bonifacio’s project? The latter is perhaps
more likely, since it is said that Bonifacio was at first incredulous, and then
livid, calling Rizal a coward. But such was Rizal's prestige that the two men
agreed to conceal his “rejection” from their Katipunan comrades.*”
‘ara. oe of the blue, on July I, Blanco received a letter from minister ‘|
Siting Riera es that since Weyler had raised no objection to ame
Caribbean, The eee asa doctor, he should be permitted to depart a
TRIALS OF A NOVELIST
155
explained simply by his cagerness to escape the boredom and isolation
of
Jesuit settleme—ornt by any urgency in Blanco’s message. At his ons val
explained that his firm decision to go to Cuba came out of PHYtral pis
reasons which led to.difficulties with a missionary priest." This must
the priest’s refusal to marry and Josep RizalBracken unless therefer
ne
hine
ig
reason was surely fear an
recanted all his heretical opinions. Bul the real
implicated in an impending Katipunan uprising which he Was sure onan
a bloody failure. At this point, however, his luck ran out?
On June 7, just seven weeks earlier, a huge bomb was thrown during the
annual Corpus Christi ceremonial procession in Barcelona. Six people were
killed instantly, and a number of the forty-two wounded subsequently died in
hospital. The following day martial law was declared in the city, then under
the control of none other than General Despujol. It would remain in force for
a year. The bomb was particularly frightening since it seemed aimed at no
prominent political or religious personality, and its victims were ordinary
citizens.” The police, egged on, hysterically or rusefully, by the Church and
various rightwing groups and their press, ran riot, arresting about three
hundred people—anarchists of all types, anticlericals, radical republicans,
progressive intellectuals and journalists, and so on. Most of them were
imprisoned in the gloomy fortress of Montjuich, which would soon become
notorious all over Europe for the tortures practiced in its dungeons."' The
principal (eventual) suspect turned out to be a 26-year-old Frenchman.
Thomas Ascheri, born in Marseilles, ex-seminarist, ex-sailor, deserter from
the French army, and informer for the French police, was also a man who
38. De Ja Costa, ed., The Trial, p. 68. . ;
59. So, alas, did that of Marcelo Del Pilar, who died of poverty and eae
Barcelona on June 4. He was just forty-six years old. Despite his differences es
Rizal, Filipinos have always included him among the chief herocs of the Revolu-
tionary generation. o
und is it ary
_ 60. Police sources claimed that the affentat was aimed at the clerical
dignitaries at the head of the procession. but was bungled. killing instead see Cal

Scanned by CamScanner
onite aot a. Pie baht 3 official letter to Rizal arrived in mee fear. Ramon Sempau, in his Los victimarios. p. 282, gives reasons a falat
had ene eure Rizal left for Manila on the same boat e Goubling this theory. As we shall see, Scmpau himself later tried his Tae
*ssassination, which targeted the right man, the chief Montjuich police torturer.
$ missive. The abrupt speed of this decision cannol failed to kill him, explanation is
ore likely h
eee vowsr Hill), ThethesteRoep.mahig
thata .51.'8 The origin of ofthisthe curious
a corruption
name is contested
55. Sbid,, Latin Mons Jovis (Jove's sane ns
56. Val Pp. 67 and 68. : rifices to
- Va Papo liMent
tutti overlooki
capi, Se i appropriale site
re, Hy
it refers to an old Jewish ery
cemetery on
Rizal at his tal, Won of the katipuneros whose confessions were used agains! the e i I i" n December [5 (as we
the first to pe hin - Revolution broke out, he went into hiding, an d was among shall ek Eighty-seven prisoners were eventually tried—the ee Most of the rest were
surrendered, He told. up when Blanco offered amnesty bels who
to those re Ortly see, Rizal's o 1 martial opened on the 26 Esenwein, as
former coma des: His is iMerrogators all he knew and more, implicating many
their wenatily deportee to Spanish A frica. The generally cautio® oe .
unreliability and selfcrvingnen Published many years later, are notorious !F i #8 other scholars, believe that the real mastermind * Ideology. P- 19
“MUerrero, The Fir inult. who escaped to Argentina, See Esenwein, Anarchist
s, Filipino, pp, 38 Uiez , Ey ferrorismo, pp. 96-7, 161-
1-3. 4.
 UNDER THREE FLAGS TRIALS OF A NOVELIST
156
157
an anarchist spy whose job it. was to give the Police false The Captain-General’s plan to break up the
claimed really to be : :
however. failed to take women into Katipunan on the
arn the comrades of imminenti razzias,® After under.
2
information and forew account. § Ome of the wives quiet ha
a 4,
res, and trial before a military court, he ang four of the arrestees turned (o their parish
going excruciating tortu priests in the hope of gettin nd Mothers
t Spaniards were executed on May 5 released. On August 19, El
almost certainly innocen the following Esparioi published a sensa B their men

d priest. who said he had discovered in the conlessitiona l Slory by

onal—so thick a ~~ pari
Mai was effectively under martial law, now Barcelona—an the Philip inviolability of confession
in the Catholic colony!—that
pines would shortly follow. Domestic repression, the most severe in Eur ope, uprising was about to take place. 4 Tevolutiona j
ic ar en es s of the gr im ne ss of W e i panic. Blanco was now
The Spanish community went intoan wig
as well as the widening domest aw forced to order massive
while to his fury the Orders Open raids and eae
zed maSpnyanisenh empol
polgarihis s cs.
ieiti norvasMontwas
fury Caove juicadm ied
h ire began claiming that only their
hodeds for
methat
or in Hav h, ,andnowamon
botana had prevented a massacre, while the feckless
patrioticVigilance
Captain-General had done
quickly into firmer sympathy for Cuba. nothing.” Bonifacio, on the run,
had now to advance his timetable, and
issued orders for a general meeting of the kati he
puneros on the 24th, in
LAST JOURNEYS Balintawak, a village just north of Manila, to decid
e what to do next,
But the pressure was such that the meeting had to be moved up to the
Rizal sailed for Manila on July 31, 1896 expecting to catch the official 23rd, and over to the village of Pugadlawin. The gathering agreed to begin
monthly mailboat to Spain. But his ship ran into difficulties, and by the time the insurrection on the 29th, with those present tearing up their cédulas (tax
it reached the Philippine capital on August 6, the mailboal was gone. Pending ‘payment receipts required to be carried by all natives as a form of idenlifica-
the departure of the next, scheduled for September 3, he was kept conifor- tion) and shouting “Long live the Philippines! Long live the Katipunan!”
tably aboard off the Cavite shipyard, barred, at his own Tequest, from
Neighboring provinces were called on to rise and converge on the colonial
contact with anyone but his immediate family. 1f the Katipunan rose while
he capital at the same time.™
was still in Manila, he wanted to be certain that he could not be
implicated. On the given day Bonifacio led an assault on the arsenal in (he Manilan
There is no way to be sure what he knew of the events transpiring
in Manila, suburb of Marikina. Two days later the province of Cavite passed into the
let alone Cuba, Madrid, and Barcelona. But it is unlikely that he
understood hands of the poorly armed rebels, and the other provinces surrounding
what was clear to Bonifacio—that with 200,000 Spanish
troops tied down in Manila were soon—for a while—in rebel hands,
Cuba, Madrid did not have the capacity to send
an overwhelming military Blanco found himself in a difficult position. The panicked Spaniards

—xs——oasa—ae—eee
force to the Philippines. Blumentritt’s hour for inthe
a successful liberation colony (about 15,000 all told, including women and children, in a population
Struggle now appeared on the rebel horizon. of about 7,000,000), and even more the powerful Orders, demanded i
_From late 1895 Captain-General Blanco had been
receiving reports from mediate and violent repression.©° To a large extent, and perhaps against his
his Secret agents that an underground, revolutionary Katipuna

rk
n was becom-
ing seriously active. Given the small number of troops at hand, and anxious

er
Sea Spanish community in Manila, he gave orders that ae
63. See the lucid account in Onofre Corpuz, The Reats of the Filipino Nation
(Quezon City: Aklahi Foundation, 1989), vol. 2, pp. 217-1.

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witeliui
1896 members a and Suspect premises quietly searched. In the spring i 64. See the vivid, detailed account given in Teodoro Agoncillo’s Poe Philippines

oC
deported to aes Katipunan had started disappearing, unobtrusively Pound-breaking The Revolt of the Masses (Quezon City: University0 i. coves
a yn
of allthis wag tslands. The Katipunan leadership's growing mone cate 1956), chapter 9. This shouting has gone down in gation
occurred in Pugadlawin. The ae Fc ciioe
Blanco's agen reason for Valenzucla's mission to Dapitan. In mid- refers
“rence Yara itthe popular Cuban phrase for Céspedes soya invented
to the Grito dethough
of Balintawak,
branch, ec and Trested
arcaneor B7OSS
hunted
@ Secret list of the full membership of one mugs utrection
Much later than onAugust
October1896.10, 1868. But itis probable that the Moe
In any event, at this moment pam
ppines was stil
them all. Some of the arrestees started to talk. contempor-
as webehind”
ice eS.tS Cuba. But two years later they would become
Shall obserye,
62. Ascherj’ ianalt oe otoriously uncertain and
Spanish me healed was a real asset to the authorities. Itreminded 1 and its
Outrage across the Pp, ak Vaillant, and Emile Henry, and pushed the source © contre ds Demographic data on the Spanish Philippines are ™ orger const
i Peas : , he could count 8 price 4s the regime never got round to doing2 ee Church. eae
“ery little potitical helpin Spee more. as an indigent foreigner
Most detailed study coincided
dears {ately of the various countings compiled
with statistics by the ©
can be foun
con'd 0
 S
UNDER THREE FLAG
158
(the colonial military was very small, and he had to
own better judgment . 66 iy,
cable Madrid for reinforcements), he phe Hundreds of Filipinos were
arrested and some were executed, while “rebel” property was confiscated,
Death by firing squad was ordained for all those found by military courts to
have helped Bonifacio’s men. But to the rage of the colonial
elite, Blanco
followed Martinez Campos’s earlier Cuban policy by immediately offering
full amnesty to any rebel who surrendered promptly, and he repeated this
offer in a second decree the following month. At the end of October,
Madrid (for further
Archbishop Nozaleda cabled the Dominican HQ in
dissemination within Spain’s political class): “Situation worsens. Rebellion
spreading. Blanco’s apathy inexplicable. To avert danger, appointment new
leader urgently necessary.” Less than six weeks later Blanco was recalled.°7
And Rizal? The striking thing is that on August 30, the day after Bonifacio
opened the insurrection with his attack on the Marikina arsenal, the novelist
was handed two personal letters of introduction from the Captain-General,
one addressed to the Minister of War, the other to the Minister of Overseas
Territories. The language is remarkable, In the first, Blanco wrote:
[Rizal's] behavior during the four years he stayed in Dapitan was exemplary, and,
to my mind, he is all the more worthy of forgiveness and bencvolence in that he
appears in no way implicated in the chimerical attempts which we all deplore these
days, neither in any of the conspiracies nor in any of the secret societies which have
been plotting.*
43 cont ‘d 56-page appendix to the first volume of Onofre Corpuz's The Roots of the
Filipina Nation, pp. 515~70, The roughly seven-million figure he comes to for the
country on the eve of the Revolution includes the Muslim south and the pagan
populations of Luzon’s High Cordillera, over both of which Spanish control was
exiguous. As for the Spanish, he suggests (p. 257) for 1876 a figure of 15.327
(including Peninsulars, creoles, and Spanish mestizos), of whom 1,962 were In the
clergy (approximately 15 percent). Most of these people lived in or near Manila.
oe citing any sources, Sichrovsky (Ferdinand Biumentritt, p. 25) gives the
"owing not implausible figures for the various Orders at the end of the ninetecwth
aa. Augustinians 346, Recollects 327, Dominicans 233, Franciscans 107, Jesuils
. ores 16, and Benedictines 6. Total: 1,077.
nase Slee he Revolution broke out, Blanco had only about 3,000 pee
Spanish c Ted by Spaniards, with a mercenary native footsoldiery. Four shiploa
oa eae would arrive in the course of October, giving him a troopatt
Philippines.we oo CorPUZ The Roois, vol. 2, p. 233. Comparing Cuba ant,
popinee - conclude that the former, with about a quarter of the are
adveceiion as faced with almost twenty-five times the number of imperial mi!
67. Guerrero, The First Filipino,
p. 409.
6B. thi: ion to corres rt
‘bid. p. 391. T have tampered mildly with Guerrero's trans lation
the grammar.
TRIALS OF A NOVE
VisT
159
The wording indicates that Blanco intended to sho Ww the
Canovas
the military high command in Madrid that Rizal had Nothing cabinet ang
to do with the
uprising, and did so by praising his conduct jn
Dapitan and ;
yarious conspiratorial groups about whose activities he had eee to
1 Teporting
home for some months.
The mailboat left on the scheduled day. When it anch Ored in Singapore,
expatriate supporters visited Rizal on board and urged him to jump
shi
they were ready Lo suc for a Brilish-colonial writ of habeas Sree
that he would go to ea is
behalf. But he had given Blanco his word of honor
on September 25th, a ie
and so refused their help. Off Aden he crossed,
Spanish troopship crammed with conscripts—something new for the “4
lippines but made necessary by the war in Cuba. By the time his ship reached
Malta, three days later, he was ordered confined to his cabin, though he
smuggled out one distressed letter to Blumentritt. On October 3, he reached
martial law Barcelona. After three days’ confinement in his cabin, he was
taken under guard to the Montjuich fortress and putin a cell. The next day he
was taken to see Captain-General Despujol, who spoke to him civilly and
sadly, but told him he would have to return to Manila that day aboard yet
another troopship full of reinforcements. On arrival in Manila he was
imprisoned in Fort Santiago.
What had happened? So long as the Philippines was at peace, Canovas did
not have to worry about the contrast belween Weyler's harsh policies in
Havana, and Blanco’s moderation in Manila. Bul with the outbreak of the
the less
Katipunan's armed uprising, the contrast was no longer tolerable. All
so, when he received cables from Blanco asking for substantial military
reinforcements, which threatened the human and financial resources thal
Weyler urgently needed. Furthermore, the Captain-General was pleading for
Peninsular troops, not local native mercenaries, and these could only be
supplied by conscription, which was already very unpopular and miespag '
constant public justification. Finally, perceived weakness towards
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lippines would undermine the rationale for the extreme eo ‘
Sanguinario in Cuba. In effect, it was becoming politically impossible 10
Pursue different policies in Spain's last two big colonics. have been out
e
ih
i ont question, even in martial law Barcelona, to Oa in Spain but also
¥ because his “offences” had not been committ King, a capital trial
. auSe Witnesses were not available there. Politically mee figure there.
in : . -k
Spain would have been a disaster. Rizal was 2 wel the same to8 man
Mucifying obscure anarchists was one thing, but Be Margall was quite
Oo 5
of Moret, Morayta. 29 nder martial law, and a
.
a vas a personal friend itself, Spainé was not ¥
Nother, Outside Barcelona

UNDER THREE FLAGS
160
nwa
3 would have genera ted huge unwanted
is kind publicit y,
certainly
beginning an onslaught ee
ete
a s international media already
bet srmol would soon term the new Inquisition in Spain, Ey
no naiawa was not necessarily reliable. The cabinet was aware 7
Despujol’s earlier relationship with Rizal, and could not be sure that he could
be entrusted with a kangaroo court martial of the young Filipino. ye the
regime was determined to strike hard at the symbolic leader of the Philippine
movement for independence, and to effect this he had to be returned to his
place of origin. The instruments were fortunately at hand.
Shortly after the outbreak of Bonifacio’s insurrection, Blanco had ap-
pointed as head of a powerful commission of inquiry into its origins, plans,
and resources acertain Colonel Francisco Olive, unaware that this man, halfa
decade earlier, had been sent by Weyler to Calamba with orders to use all farce
necessary to evict the Dominicans’ recalcitrant tenants, including Rizal’s
family and kinfolk. The colonel, Madrid behind him, insisted that Rizal be
immediately interrogated and put on trial, and Blanco, paralyzed by the new
Madrid policy, the hatred of the Spaniards in Manila, and his own imminent
recall, felt helpless: On December 2, the severely Catholic Gencral Camilo
Polavieja arrived in the colonial capital with a flock of trusted subordinates,
and ten days later look over power and charge of policy from Blanco.
WEYLERISMO IN MANILA
The new Captain-General had never previously served in the Philippines, but
was a capable veteran of the Ten Years’ War in Cuba against Céspedes.
During the Guerra Chiquita he had served as Captain-General in Havana
but had resigned before his term was up, out of frustration with the massive,
deeply entrenched corruption of the colonial civil bureaucracy.” Nor did he
lack political foresight, While in Cuba he had openly stated that “tinstead of
trying to prevent at all costs and for always the independence of Cuba, which
it would be useless to attempt, we should prepare ourselves for it, remain on
the island only so long as it is reasonable to do so, and take the necessary
measures to avoid being thrown out by force, to the prejudice of our interests
and our honor, before the time when we must leave in all friendliness.””” He
he ‘o Manila from the Position of head of the Queen Regent's military
ouschold, and seems to have been picked for his probity, loyalty, and
mili itary toughness. He was believed ready to carry out Canova
i s's orders $1”
contemplaciones.
: de que la idea era altamente absurda, y, lo queers Poor.
69. Thomas, Cub
a, p. 299,
| Guerrero, The Fir
s: Filipino, p. 411.
TRIALS
OF A NOVELIst
11 cannot be clearly determined whether, in his cell,
Rizal Was '6l
implications of these events. But it is striking tha ton December 10,
aware of the
before Blanco fell from power, he wrote a petit ion i two days
the Captain-
gent through the investigating judge who was Epa General
the dossier fo
trial. The core of this petition, as recorded by hi Interrog r hig
ator, Fan as fo
llows:
Suplica & Vuestra Sefioria se sirva manifestarle, si en el
fstado en que Pa
encuentra Ie seria permitido manifestar de una manera 6 de otra que condena
semejantes medios criminales y que nunca ha permitido q ME SC usase de sy
nombre. Esto paso sdlo tiene por objeto el desengafar algunosquedesgraciad,
ili =
acaso salvarlos, y el que suscribe no desea en ninguna manera
causa que se le sigue. (He entreats Your Honor to be willing to let him side
statement of one kind or another, if'a statement were to be permitted to ‘datas
in his situation, condemning such criminal methods and (stating) that he had
never given permission for the use of his name. (He took) this step solely to
undeceive some unfortunate men and perhaps to save them. The undersigned in
no way desires that this influence his case].”!
Blanco approved this petition the next day, his last in office. On the same
day, the investigating officer made the formal decision “to omit the con-
frontation of the accused and the witnesses, considering such confrontation
unnecessary for the proof of the crime, since he regards this to be sufficiently
proven,”””?
We cannot be sure when Rizal leamed that Blanco was gone, and il may be
that when he wrote his “manifesto,” on December !5, he was still in
ignorance. Or he may have been told that Polavieja had endorsed Blanco’s
letter of permission. The Manifiesto & Algunos Filipinos was the last political
text that he wrote, and for this reason, as well as its content, it is worth
quoting in full:
Paisanos: A mi vuelta de Espafia he sabido que mi nombre se habia usado entre
algunos que estaban en armas como grito de guerra. La noticia me sorprendio
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dolorosamente: pero, creyendo ya todo terminado, me callé ante un hecho que
Consideraba irremediable. Ahora percibo rumares de que continuan las a
bios; y por si algunos siguen atin valigndose de mi nombre de mala 6 de ee
Para remediar este abuso y desengafiar 4 Jos incautos, me apresuro & et
estas lineas, Para que sepa la verdad. Desde un principio, cuando tuve eae
'Mposibilidad. Esto es la verdad, y viven los testigos de ms pa “Tunesta, Hice
Convencido
ae _—_
Fi . >
es 32.
72. Tid. . pate Sines ieaait
7. De ta
 ra

UNDER THREE FLAGS TRIALS OF A NOVELIST

162 .
16°
oi npc movimiento, ofrect above. since those that come from below will be itregelncais
FI 63
mis, Cuando mas tarde,a pesat de mis
Nurtured on these ideas, I-can
do no less than condemn » un Certain shocks
espontancamente, no solo mis servicios, everen 0 . asl mI nombre, parg absurd, savage insurrection, plot and | do fond
ted behind my bac k, emn, this
que usasen de ellos de la manera como crey : P ane a fin de sofocar la Filipinos and discredits thase who which dishon
could be our ad vorates, ors the
rebelion; pues convencido de los males ave bai aeracent [} bana arreciar?], me criminal procedures, and reject cver | abominate
its
consideraba feliz si con cualquier sacrificio podia impedir tantas inutiles des. y type of Particip ation,
deploring. with
; . the pain in my heart, those unwary al l
gracias, Esto consta jgualmente. people who have allowed
themselves to be
Paisanos: He dado pruebas como el que mas de querer libertades para nuestro deceived. So. return to you homes, and may God pardo Nn th
ase who have acte
pais, y sigo quieriéndolas. Pero yo ponia como premisa la educacién de} pueblo d in
bad faith.)
para que por medio dela instruccion y del trabajo tuviese personalidad Propria y
s¢ hiciese digno de las mismas. He recomendado en mis escritos el estudio, jas If Rizal believed that this manifesto would be broadcas| 10 the people of the
virtudes civicas, sin las cuales no existe redencién. He escrito también (y se han Philippines, he was fooling himself. The military Judge-Advocate General
repetido mis palabras) que las reformas, para ser fructiferas. tenian que venir de Nicolas de la Pena, writing to Polavieja, dryly observed: “His manifesto ai
arriba, que las que venian de uhajo eran sacudides irregulares & inseguras,
be reduced to the following words. Faced with failure, countrymen, lay down
Nutrido en estas ideas, no puedo menos de condenar y condeno esa sublevacién
your arms; later on, I will lead you to the Promised Land. Without being at
absurda, salvaje, tramada a espaldas mias, que nos deshonra 4 los filipinos y
desacredita 4 los que pueden abogar por nosotros, abomino de sus procedi- all beneficial for the peace, it could in the future inspire the spirit of
mientos criminalesy rechazo toda clase de participaciones, deplorando con todo rebellion.” He therefore proposed its suppression, and the Captain-General
el dolor de mi corazon 4 los incaulos que se han dejado engafar. Vuélvanse, agreed.”*
pues, 4 sus casas, y que Dios perdone 4 los que han obrado de mala fé,”" On December 19, Polavieja ordered that Rizal be promptly put on trial
[Countrymen: On my return from Spain J learned that my name had been used for sedition and treason before a military court. The trial itself opened on
as a War cry among certain people who were up in arms. The news was for mea the 26th, and after summary proceedings lasting one day, the military
painful surprise, but believing that all was over, ] kept my silence in the face of judges recommended that the accused be executed. Polavieja approved the
what | considered an irremediable fact. Now 1 observe rumors that the dis- recommendation on the 28th. When handed the death warrant for his
turbances continue; since some people still continue 1o make use of my name—in
signature, Lhe prisoner looked it over, and noticed that he was described in
bad or good faith—in order to remedy this abuse and to undeceive the unwary | itas Chinese. He crossed out the word and replaced it, not by filipino, but by
am hastening to direct these lines to you, so that the truth may be known. From
indio.”* In his last hours, when his sister Trinidad came to sce him, he gave
the beginning, when ] got word of what was being planned, | opposed it, I fought
her a small lamp, whispering that there was something in it for her. When
against it, and ] demonstrated its absolute impossibility. This is the truth, and
she got home, she found hidden inside it a small piece of paper on which a
there are living witnesses to my words. I was convinced that the idea was highly
absurd. and, still worse, calamitous. And 1 did more. Later, when despite my 70-line poem of farewell to his country was inscribed in tiny letters. Known
advice the movement erupted, I spontaneously offered not only my services. but 48 “Mi Ultimo adids,” this beautiful, melancholy pocm was 5000 translated
my life, and even my name, to be used in whatever manner they deemed into Tagalog, ironically enough by Bonifacio. (Over
the nex! itp
opportune, in order to suffocate the rebellion. For, convinced of the evils that 'ranslations appeared in some sixty-five foreign, and forty-nine Ph et

Scanned by CamScanner
would only grow worse, I considered myself fortunate if some sacrifice on my languages.)”* At dawn on December 30, Rizal was led from his oe se-
part could prevent such useless misfortunes. I am still of this opinion. Pen space called Bagumbayan—now Luneta Park —where a uns
eo Ihave given proofs, as much as anyone, of my desire for ae cular priests had been garroted a quarter ofa century earlier. Ther reyes
squad before ¢
Premise the ee an I continue to desire them. But I held a Ae ork shot to death by a Spanish-officered, native-manned faced his

ee
;
they ion histi-aee of the people, so that by means of instruction an hy of of thousands of spectators. Just thirty-six years od, he
those liberties in ta . in A Senne GIRL IGEKS plane P e's Jampoan of
iba a st erent On eI s an saeae tas ibid. p. 173. In these sentences there
is a curious echo of Le
ginal:
words have been repeat ption can exist. Furthermore have written th Ocampo whe has seen theon
n kindly provided by Ambe
€d) that for reforms to bear fruit, they must come d 73. In fo rm at io
Faretee
in is
Adios Le
Ri za l' s Mi - Ulribtia mo
73, thi : i : sige 76. Sce National Historical Institute, Dr José ute, 1989-90)
.
id. pp. 172-3, Words in italics were underlined in the original text. “ocd! Translations (Manila: National Histor ‘cal Instit
wi s
 UNDER THREE FLAGS
fragments of Makamisa nach only a reversion to Noli me tangere rather than
‘ different from the productions of other gifted iustrados. lt came from his
At dawn on December 30, Rizal was tuken to Bagumbayan (aow Luneta Park) and
shot hy firing-squad.
death with dignity and equanimity. His body was not returned to his family,
but buried secretly, for fear thal a visible tomb would become a mecca for
nationalist pilgrims.
But the mean calculation was in fact irrelevant. Rizal's public execution
created exactly the opposite effect to what Canovas had hoped to achieve by
it. Far from extinguishing the insurrection, let alone Filipino aspirations for
independence, Rizal's exemplary death created instantly
a national martyr,
deepened and widened the revolutionary movement, indirectly led to Ca-
novas's own assassination the following year,
and paved the way for the end
of the Spanish
TRIALS OF A NOVELIST
165
smugg led them out with the sisters who ¢ AM
jocally OF nove . C to visit hi
projected third “beautiful” and “artistic” m. The
me to Nothin
g, and the
a step peyond £/ filibusterismo. Possibly, another great novel was beyond
nim. Meantime, the Sandakan and Liga Filipina projects had been Quickly
aborted by the oelerin ree ee Offered by Regidor the chance of being
rescued by ship, he turned it down, as he also did Blanco’s offer to send him
possible there, He had ne
back to Spain. He was sure that nothing useful was
he
enthusiasm about going to Cuba until after Valenzucla’s visit. And when
hurriedly decided to take up Blanco’s offer, it was less to do something than
to flee from something.
One could say that in the summer of 1896 he was experiencing whai
happens toa good number of original writers: that once their works leave the
printery for the public sphere they no longer own them or control them. Rizal
mistakenly regarded himself as a political teacher of his people. but his power
did not come from his sermons and critical articles, which were not too
novels—no one else attempted them. What he had done in Noli me tungere
was lo create in the imagination a whole (and contemporary) Philippine
“socicty,” with its intermeshed high colonial officials, village gamblers,
dissident intellectuals, gravediggers, friars, police informers, social climbers,
child acolytes, actresses, small-town caciques, bandits, reformers, carpenters,
leenage girls, and revolutionaries. And its true hero, Elias the revolutionary.
in the end sacrifices his life for the reformer Ibarra. What Rizal had done in
El filibusterismo was to imagine the political collapse of this socicly and the
near-elimination of its ruling powers. Perhaps no Filipino had even ai
of such a possibility till then, let alone entered the dream into the pub Mi
domain, 1 was as if the genius’s genie was oul of the bottle, m hei
a life 0 i
contrasting figures of Elias and Simoun had begun to assume
Bonifacio personally, and Bonifacio ia
own. Rizal did not know

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empire,
listened to Rizal speak on one single night. But when the aan
with the cl ner Ste
Rizal its honorary president, and ended its discussions
THREE REFLECTIONS live Dr Rizal,” it was surely because Elias and Simoun, and many ° aaa
By way of reflection novels’ figures of action now belonged to them.”? Novelist and ornare
could make three On this chapter in order to bring it to a conclusion, on¢ Patted company. José Rizal was one thing, Dr Rizal was another.
9 bservations.
First, what was : : ‘sal less than five
with almost the ‘ae for when he returned home in 1892 one 77. As we shall see in the next chapter, Bonifacto sori attributed to
Abou the fe ot Scition of £1 filibusterismo? The most striking L = Months. There are extremely few documents which can be oe countlesscone
7 2nd his life in the shadows of clandestinity offers roc ad
Wrote practically nothi Spent in Dapitan is that this enormously gifted wt! ne
Ul at least Some copics of E/ filibusterismo quietly ce in Manila even opthe
ecel igg2zand 189
beyond
can be no doubt th al heingcould a few censor-shadowed letters. Yet the alcame
have written manuscripts and concealed them ‘ipunan home.
alipung leader Itfound
is a moral certainty that
a way to read :it.
at some point
 TRIALS OF A NO
UNDER THREE FLAGS VELIST
166 167
©
f this distance that so enraged Bonifacio on receiving insist that he tour the Tagalog area proclaimin 8 his Prison manife
was the discovery sto
? Would
anxiety this not have ruined Rizal's reputation? The answer is probably yes
. It was surely the deep reason for Rizal's angry
Yalenzuela’s report , but it
his life, about his nombre. So to speak, Simoun, ce ‘es1 would have come oe eo a the popular insurrection had been in full
jn the last months of
swing for three months and had its own momentum. Many people in an
ce au ahead a little, one notes a peculiar irony. Rizal had repeatedly would have belicved that the manifesto was coerced, Beyond thet oe

told the Pilaristas that nothing could be achieved in Spain, and that questions do not take Cuba into account. Madrid’s decision to kil ee
was also intended to have an audience in the Caribbean island and in the
assimilation was a fantasy. But in the colony, he found he too could achieve
next to nothing. He told Valenzuela that the Cuban war would force Madrid world beyond it. Polavicja was not sent to replace Blanco because he was a
to make concessions to the Philippines, said no more about the dangers of the better general, but because the Spanish state, struggling to maintain a dying
Spanish language, and disassociated himself from the Katipunan uprising: transcontinental empire, saw in him a second Weylerian man of steel.
effectively, a Pilarist position. At the same time, the Cuban war destroyed the Last, in spite of its crucial importance for Rizal's fate, the Cuban war for
future of Del Pilar’s campaign, already reeling from the financial collapse of independence was only one part of a rising world turbulence which would
La Solidaridad. \n the last months of his life, Del Pilar had planned to move reach its climax in 1914. East Asia, dominated for halfa century by the
back to Hong Kong, a site where assimilation was irrelevant. It is not at all British, was becoming highly unstable as new competition emerged from
beyond the realm of possibility that if he had lived, this seasoned practical Japan, the United States, and Germany. In southern Africa, the Boer War
politician would eventually have supported the Katipunan. What else was was about to begin. Nationalist struggles in central and eastern Europe were
there left? undermining the dominant multiethnic land empires controlled by Istanbul,
A second reflection arises in relation to Cuba. Not only was Marti’s 1895 Vienna, St Petersburg, and even Berlin. Socialism in the broadest sense was
insurrection an exhilarating example for nationalist Filipinos, it was also a also on the national and international move, as we shall soon see. Martial law
deadly blow to the Restoration political system and to the empire as a whole. Barcelona, where Rizal spent his last night in Europe, was one key site on
The huge number of troops Canovas had to send to the island, the which this spreading movement pivoted.
accompanying vast losses of human life, financial resources, and interna-
tional respectability made it extremely difficult for Madrid to act effectively
in the Philippines, as we shall discover in the following chapter. The rapid
growth in the Katipunan from the end of 1895 indicates how awareness of
Madrid’s weakness was spreading through the print media—to which
Bonifacio and his friends, but not Rizal in Dapitan, had ready access. That
Rizal should have termed the Katipunan’s uprising as “absurd” and an
“absolute impossibility” shows clearly how little he understood the real
conjunctures of 1895-96. It is extremely unlikely that the Katipunan would
have rebelled in August 1896 if the bloody struggle between Weyler and

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ane not at its height. If they nonetheless did rebel, they would have
Cae the aon by the kind of military power made available to wer
meni Se did revolt, however, it was virtually inevitable es
niuriered at fo Weyler would arrive in Manila. Rizal was judicia y
tise or this raison d'état—as a minatory example, no! 4§
ty. Blanco’s letters on Rizal's behalf were designed to demon-
Strate to the highest authoritj esai * finvolve-
tment jin the : uMionities the novelist's complete innocence of !
insurrection, But betw he li 3 fear that in the end
Madrid could Not care less, On mae lg ve al d stupidly, of
obeyed stupid orders Wego could argue that Polavieja acted stupiey.
- Would it not have been slyer to save Rizal's life
 /48
Montjuich

TARRIDA’S CRUSADE
Among the more than 300 people imprisoned:at Montjuich:in the aftermath
ofthe Corpus Christi bombing of June 7, 1896, most were still there when

ine
Rizal joined them for that-one night in early October. The key exception was

ni
the remarkable Cuban creole Fernando Tarrida del Matmol, Rizal's exact
age-mate, whom we.last encountered accompanying Errico Malatesta on his“
of 3892.
abortive political tour of Spain at the time of the Jérez émeute
Arrested late—July 21—on the steps of Barcelo na’s Polytech nic Academy ,
disting uished professo r of mathe-
where he served as Engineer-Director and
Matics, Tarrida was released on August 27. He was lucky that a young
tosneak
lieutenant warden, recognizing his former teacher, had the courage
on pretext of illness and wire ihe news of Tarrida’s
Gown into Barcelona
any influential figure hecould
iearceration to the national press and teto that
think of. The Cuban was“no less fortuna his cousin, the Marqu's of

Scanned by CamScanner
his influence and contacts to
Mont-Roig, a conservative senator, then vsed i :
nbarrasse! by - kind hell
aoe on Prisoner. (Tarrida was utterly batee
m t i , but one can be sure that itti impell ied -)him Onto his
© Right release, he
be max
active onT behalf of hi is less well-connected prison-males.
ison-males)™ ith him
cl quietly made his way across the Pyrenees to Panis pariesel ees
ers and other documents from his fellow prisoners that hehe
“muggle or have smuggled out. . ed in La Revue
ae trida’s “Un mois dans les prisons d’Espagne * fy at the time Rizal
—
Wag che, France’s leading intellectual fortnightly. under vy guard. It was
being taken back from Barcelona to Manila ea ser
nly ¢ for this journa
he first of fourteen articles Tarrida wrote
 MONTIJUICH
UNDER THREE FLAGS 1
4 : .
170
in Ceuta, America’s noisy imperialist

perhaps surprisingly. a pre-Wright Brothers equationdevotefed toProfessional

m the Caribbean
scheming, and,
tex,
on “gerial navigation. The second in the series, published on
“Le ber 15,
two weeks pefore Rizal's execution, was in fact
bed as apolitical pore
philippin” (the novelist himself was briefly descri
period Tarrida was the we
One could venture to say that in this him ‘iiieeeen
ordinary space given to
frequent contributor. The extra
testimony on Montjuich, This a x
the start the result of his personal
onset of what would become an Atlantic-wide movement of protest oe
flair, “the
the Canovas regime, dubbed by the writer, with his usual media
Inquisitors of Spain.” Tarrida was a teal find for La Revue Blanche, since he
ing
was that rare bird who was not only an open-minded, French-speak
from Catal onia, but also, as a Cuban patriot, perfectl y
anarchist intellectual
independence struggles in
positioned to link Montjuich systematically to the
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
career was of
How did this conjuncture come about? Tarrida’s own past
noted, in Havana in 1861, and
decisive importance.” He was born, as we have
in 1868. Itisnot clear why his
lived there till the spectacular fall of Queen Isabel
acturer of boots and shoes, should
father, eventually a wealthy Catalan manuf
date of the family’s return suggests thatit
have gonctolivein Cubaatall. But the
regime in its final repressive
Execution of anarchists in Barcelona. may have been one of the many likely targets of the
to the Ipeée in Pau—where
years The young Fernando was then packed offschool
Atthis aclassmate, the future
many decades later Bourdieu was to suffer.
Barthou, converted Tarrida Lo republican-
French prime minister Jean-Louis to the Leff, frequenting
moved further
fifteen months.' They covered in detail not only the grueso
me atrocities being ism. On his return to Spain, Fermando
practiced in Montjuich, but also the Cuban War
of Independence, the working-class meetings and clubs. By 1886 (a year before Nali m en
, on ad
nationalist movements in the Philippines and Puerto Rico,
rs
abuse of prisone appeared) he had become a confirmed anarchist, @ magnetic lecturer
publications a cee‘
to the leading anarchistlona
regular contributor of articlhees was chose n by the Barce ee on
This review was
15, 1896), pp. 337-41. other
81 (Octoberers, El Productor. In July 1889
so sn
__L. See RevuechildBlancofhe,two 1:pairs
La brain of broth one Belgi an, the French {the them at the new International Socialist Congr
ess in Paris. Ina pe
originally the wu
table slogan “anard
a
er of 1889. The
cadet was only sixteen) who met in—where else?—Spa in the summ
November of that year, he coined the inimi
+a

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backi ng of the Nata nson broth ers, wealthy, cultivated,
ed the financial
securish
four h-Jew
Polis art dealers, who had moved to Paris in 1880. The boys published the Paris, : jendidly detailed
first number in December 1889 iner,Liége . In 1891, however, the review movedin toOctober and the following paragraph 1 am relying aaa Ideolony’
Natansonbroth Thadée, assuming direc t charg e. and 2.
chapter VIII this,
For (“Anarquismo sin adjetivos") in Esenvcit ne “ls
with
ne fortn middlye starte
the ightl d appearing in a much more lavish and elegant format. In t ibil ily- Ta from Orien te Pro”!
hint
dez cousi s at a diff eren poss
in the
acquitted of terrorism and sedition see. Creole,3. Fernan
had a first armol, who came yar » War he (0%
anuary 1895, Félix Fénéon, recently rial work. As we shall usin called Donato, Marmo’. ©
immediatelyaft
took over the main edito
notorious Trial of the Thirty, a ths one of the first to rally to Céspedes’s side. Dunne
and made the jp)
anarchist and anti-imperialisthe’s eonsequenees
hen committed cosmopolitan it had been befor e. La Revue Blanc last issue (09. 3! to general.
of ed
the rankn start If Tarrida’s family left for
ct
anil
nad yierall teftwing than Msurrectio E 5.
his fa’
now Thadée had ee , this would mean that
adea Gea April 15, 1903. It had always run a deficit, and Polish eer - ’ngerous kin connection. La sangrofe thede Great of that years wawe but
Santa AR” tergprea
Misi investments in eastern Europe, while his beautiful Elder eee pos dt
left him for a millionaire newspaper magnate. occurich
This r—wh in the midst
red Joris-Karl Huysmans called 4 patie random, P- 2 \.
Wea _ had
bear Eim, ©! z Towe
first-class financier and stockbroker, felt he could not afford to Halper
Orges Seurat rather liked—was unveiled.
entire fin
ncial burden alone, See Halperin, Félix Fénéon, pp. 300-14.
 MONTJUICH
UNDER THREE @LAGS the barricades of hk 85
184 ribbean—and may even have fought on
ant, Le Jour, L'Echo de Capital,
France: Clémenceau's La Justice, Rochefort's L'lutransige Petite République
maining fifty years of his life he devoted b:
Paris. Jean Grave's Les Temps Nouveaux, Le Libertaire, La roe as specialized in ophthalmology) mae himself {0 doctoring
and Le Pere Peinard.
le, Freedom.
(ike
nticolonial
abolitionist f from
polit cs. . An n abohtionist
Rr al politics. the start, he was sles 10 radical republican
nd
Britain: The Times, The Daiiy Chronic al movemen, of oe
Spain: El Pais, La Justicia, La Autonomia, El Imparcial
and Pi y Margall’s £7 - the Bolivarian vision of a vast transcontinent
.
simed both against the decrepit and brutal colonialism ofSpain oe
Nuevo Régimen.
Germany: Frankfurter Zeitung, Vorwdrtz, and
Der Sozialist. angry imperialism of what he called the American Minotaur Thou
Italy: La Tribuna in Rome and L'Avvenire in Messina. triot for Puerto Rico, he was convinced that the Caribbean islands
Portugal: A Libertade, 0 Caminho and O Trabathador. and militarily iesigiticans,
geographically scattered, multiply colonized,
Rumania: Miscarea Sociala. could only survive and progress if bound together in a “Bolivarian”
LA vvenire.
‘Argentina: E/ Oprimido, La Revolucién and the Ialian-language
USA: Boston's Liberty, New York's Cuban E/ Despertar, and Tampa's Cuban Ef Federation of the Antilles, which would include Haiti, the Danish colony
Esclava. of St Thomas, and other non-Anglo-Saxon controlled territories25 One
condition for the realization of this dream, he believed, was what he
C&novas found himself without much effective external support, even in termed the total de-hispanization of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo
Catholic Europe. Austro-Hungary was preoccupied with its own militant Domingo; hence his complete hostility to “assimilationist” ideology
nationalisms and with the Balkans, France with the Dreyfus affair, and among the colonials, and complete lack of belief in either Spanish or
Ialy with the éffects of the disastrous March 1896 defeat at Adawa al the American good intentions.”
hands of the Abyssinian ruler Menelik. But Canovas’s nerve did not fail Back in the Caribbean in the 1860s, he actively supported ‘the armed
him. As we. have seen, a few relatively prominent Mantjuich prisoners struggle for the restoration of Dominican independence in 1863-45 {sec
were allowed to go into exile, but most of those not tried before military Chapter 3), and circulated radical propaganda in Puerto. Rico:itself, until be
courts were deported, along with some Cuban “troublemakers” sent in was forced to flee. Prior to his return to Paris in 1872, be was constantly'on
from Havana, to harsh camps in Spanish Africa. On May 5, 1897 Ascheri the move—St Thomas, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and even
,
and the four Spaniards, sentenced to death for the Corpus Christi New York—pursued by Spain's spies, threatened by yenal post-indepen-
“outrage’, were executed, but not before letters describing the tortures dence dictatorships, and evicted by non-Spanish colonial authorities bending
they had undergone, and proclaiming their innocence, had been smuggled
out by a few of those released. Three months later, Cénovas’ own turn de 1848... . revolu-
_, 33. “Participa activamente en la Revolucion Fra ncesca
” (He participa
icipatedhim actively
came to meet-a bloody political death at the Basqueland ‘spa of Santa ike @
cién que se le presenta cual una revelacion misteriosa” {
Agueda. in the French Revolution of 1848 . . . a revolution which ae Pair:
“Ramon Emleri
Mysterious revelation). Félix Ojeda Reyes. and iain an i
arca de la Antillania,” in Félix Ojeda Reyes Paul Estrade, tie De
PATRIOT OF THE ANTILLES: DOCTOR BETANCES tibertad (San Juan, P.R.: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico:
; snp Basora, from Por-at-

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Ramon Emeterio Betances was born in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, on April pant [na letter written to fellow Puerta Rican
apaceluta’.
: April 8, 1870, yao de Ja *
8, 1827-—a year and a half before Talstoi. How he came by his part- " in Ojeda and cited
Estrainde. Paul
ods, Estrad
Pasione. por
ls Ube
“e e PS ak aq of 17,
African descent is not clear, not least because he seems to have been born
oe side of the blanket. In any case, his father was rich enough help
ye eng, toBetan livedra inepide
fightcesa chole Haiti,micfromand compo
February 1870 to hy
sing SF Ei
fe Leone
to send this precociously intelligent son to study
iad to fee¥
medicine ee oe a onevide Sata i patrio1t who sheltered an laterete ; —
Publi in New Ey emgoanye t ae e
Thetihn \ e Collége de Toulouse, where he became Muent in French. is ina
ingin 1643 © continued his medical education at the Sorbonne, graduat- ‘ his major writings, edited by Carlos A. Rama =" 1975). Laudin
a name for himself in g Peto"
the cholera. sis relurning to Puerto Rico, he made him anos (Sanoverly
to some Juan: severe
Instituto deismCultu
critic Puert
of raTouss orriquels
aint same as another): gsrade,“El.
up by the al of 1855. Child of Diderot and Byron, he was swept (One yoke is t
Revolution of 1848~which also abolished slavery in the French hetaidg, rips yugo por yugo™
« phe
 MONTIUICH
187
UNDER THREE FLAGS
186 :
re differen eclass
t from the largely poor, workingct Cuban .
bis nits in
to pressure from Madrid.’ He spent his time treating patients among
Tampa, Cayo Hueso, and New York where Marti found
by force pleas But
more or less together
the poor, writing powerful polemical articles, and trying to buy, and Safely petances held the community
what arms he could manage, (tertulias) at his inane ality,
cache till the time for insurrection was Tipe, medical services, and weekly social gatherings a door or tw US office
in Puerto Rico itself, which at 6bis Rue Chateaudun, curiously enough only
He also largely inspired the first armed uprising : Ser ddcen . : O away from th
mber 9, 1868—just . dence (at 4 bis) 0 f Rizal's rich friend Valentin in V. Ventura, the financier 40
occurred in the mountain township of Lares on Septe d
four weeks before Cespedes’s proclamation of Cuban independence—an rest
filibusterismo
5 publication.” sae k
least
which lasted barely twenty-four hours.°® Nothing really worked, not In his own way, the elderly Betances was.a practical man and welcomed
because of his single-minded commitment to armed insurrection, and his whatever allies might be available. It turned out, perhaps to the surprise ofa
methods of clandestine organizing about which the scent of
Masonry, that the most energetic of these
the proces s he became man very far from being an anarchist himself,
ued to hang.” But in
blanquismo, and 1848 contin Marti had frequently and acer.
allies were anarchists or anarchist-inclined.
a legend, contempt for politics
bically attacked anarchism for what he regarded as its
Belances returned to Paris at the end of 1871, eight months after the fall of concept of patria, On
in the normal sense of the word, and its negation of the
the Commune, and remained there for most of the rest of his life.*° His the other hand, there were plenty of anarchists
who saw in the nationalist
Légion d’Hon-
medical research eventually earned him membership in the of elections a sign that
e have seen already leaders’ hunger for state power and the fetishism
neur, but he never ceased writing polemical articles—w the real lives of presently existing
a—and cultivating independence would do little to ameliorate
one fine example in the case of the prinsesas of Manil were former commu-
working people.“ In Paris, Betances’s political friends 1830) and Louise
political allies in Paris and other parts of Western Europe. Between 1879 and Reclus (born in
French nards and anarchist intellectuals. Elie
1887, he even held a high post in the Dominican legation in the as was Henri Baver, illegitimate
Bern.‘ ! Inevit ably, as time Michel (born in 1833) were of his generation,
capital, with responsibility also for London and alumnus of New Caledonia’s penal settle-
commu nity” in Paris (and to a son of Dumas, conmnmard, and
passed, he became the doyen of the “Latin French anarchist Charles Malato, whom
g countr ies.) This was not an easy role to ment. Rochefort was there, and the
lesser degree in other neighborin to try and start an uprising of workers
t. In the mid-1 890s, there Betances persuaded to go to Barcelona
play for a man of Betances’s views and tempe ramen
Cuba. (Malato got nowhere, of course.)
were about three hundred Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the City of Light, to weaken Weyler’s campaign in and they had no
aside from hundreds of other Latin Americans. Almost all were very rich,
None of these people had been to Cuba or theButPhilippines,
they had had many biter
nationalisms.
hacienda rentiers, bankers, doctors, industrialists and playboys. whose emotional investment in their
French state, both domestically, na
politics were either completely conservative or, at best, liberal! assimi
lationist. experiences at the hands of the Weyler could "
Devil’s Island). Canovas and
Ojeda notes sarcastically: ‘No hay un solo negro en su seno. Los arlesanes Perially (New Caledonia, who
brillan por su ausencia” (There was not a single negro in [the “Latin” as Thiers and Galliéni (respectively the Frenchmostpresident
of what .
community's} midst. Artisans sparkled by their absence).*? Nothing could be Commune and the general who conquered
Africa) ) Iberianly transplanted. Less than
: the Devt,
se orbit was loathing

Scanned by CamScanner
and Filipinas Libre, what drew them into Betances § ort
in. New York that Betances helped found the Comité Revolucionario
37, It was
de Puerto Rico on July 16, 1867. The CRPR’s manifesto denounced slavery: i Et
19, 1890.
Peninsular commercial monopolies, hunger, absence of schools, and total lack of
Progress in the colony. A month later he coolly swore before a court of law that he 43. See Ventura’s letters to Rizal of February 5 and ann re is sho
not(0
intended to become and American citizen—cal oulating that this would keep him out of feporting that he has signed a two-year lease, 4
a clutches—an left for Danish St Thomas the next day! Ojeda, B/ desrerrado. Move in. Rizal stayed with him there in October 1891, Prox and SH
and Hong Kong. Cartas entre Rizal y sus colegos PP ance
ichele
Tambune [Ales
_ 38. theBetances i up guns ini the Dutch colony© fCuragao, ga $°
event. w as off hunting
historic himself point is well brought out na -
missed A 44. This important tt might be tere spi
deolo ¢ Vassassinio di Canovas del Castillo
39. See Ojeda, El desterrado, pp. 349-51, for an interestin
g look at the affinities “ia, Piedmont] 1V:9 (1996). pp. 101-30. at P- IE, arts cuban OO
Betances and Blanqui. ‘Uban * Fa
nation nationalism archists
brought many local an *
40. Ibid. p. 223, ism’s 4
. Estrade, “El heral Bois) ism subterrancanly reinforced Spanish 0" pd.
P-
do,” p. 10. trade, ogy neraldos
42. Ojeda, El desterrado, p 338, ationalism’s separatist utopianis™.
348: Es
5. Ojeda, E/ desterrado, pp- 339 and
 MONTIUICH
88 UNDER THREF FLAGS
age . . 189
j Philippine revolution, partly because ;
of the barbarities committed in Montjuich, Cuba, and the Philippines, - qterest in the » Partly Because it Ea
, oops away from Cuba, but also for its own sweet-natonsine Spanish
Ouiside France, Betances's closest links were to Italian anarchists Sake, As early
With as September 29, 1896, a month after Bonifacio started h
Garibaldian traditions, enraged by prime minister Francesco Crispi's 0. . is u p r i s i 2
doctor wrote to Estrada in New York that the insurrection wag
novism, and the repulsive fiasco in Ethiopia. The spirit of 1848, the “spring. oe
time of nations,” also had its role to play. A man of 1848 himself, Betances serious than the Spanish public realized, and that 15,009 sins
supparted the efforts of a number of these comrades to go to Cuba and fight
on the way to suppress it? In the same month, Betances’s journal y

Garibaldi-style for the revolution, but he was usually thwarted by. the Policy Republica Cubana published two articles on the Philippines—titted ma
(Long Live the Free Re
of the New York headquarters of Marti’s revolutionary organization, run by Filipinas Libre!’ and “Qué quiere Filipinas?”
Tomas Estrada Palma, which was to prevent any “foreigners” meddling in pines! What does the Philippines Desire?)—expressing strong support for iL
uprising. °° Learning from Herrera how desperately the Filipinos needed
the island's struggle,** Curiously enough, one of Betances’s most energetic
sub-groups was in Belgium, run by the young Cuban engineer Pedro Herrera arms, he passed the news on to Estrada in New York, urging him to do what
he could to help.?! He also mailed to Florida Rizal's last poem, which
Sotolongo, who was a classmate and friend of Rizal’s protégés Alejandrino
and Evangelista.“’ Needless to say, the task of yoking a rich Cuban com- appeared in the Revista de Cayo Hueso on October 7, 1897, under the titk
munity ‘which not only had no negroes or artisans, but lacked a single “Mi dltimo pensamiento.”°?
anarchist, with his noo-Cuban anarchist friends was rather Sisyphean, but
the Puerto Rican somehow, minimally, managed it.
ANGIOLILLO: FROM FOGGIA TO SANTA AGUEDA
Betances’s moment finally came with the onset of Marti’s war of inde-
pendence'in F895. The two men seem never to have met, and little survives of Michele (“Miguel”) Angiolillo was born on June 5, 1871, just alter the
their correspondence. Bul despite the fact that Betances was more than twice bloody end of the Paris Commune, in the mezzogiorna township of Foggia,
Marti’s age, and endured a life experience utterly different irom that of the 112 kilometres northeast.of Malatesta's Naples.°* Angiolillo was thus forty-
younger man, they respected each other.** Marti's revolutionary headquar- four years younger than Betances. While attending a technical institute he
ters in New York had always included Puerto Ricans at the highest levels, became politically conscious as a radical republican militant deeply hostile to
and Puerto Ricans had played their own role during-the Ten Years’ War. the monarchy. Conscripted in 1892, he was observed attending a commer:
Accordingly, on April 2, 1896, Betances was appointed officially as the top oration of the Parthenopean Republic of 1799, and was brutally punished i
life a commilt
diplomatic agent of the Cuban Revolution in Paris, not merely in recognition this by his military superiors. He returned to civilian
o agains
of his age and his reputation, but also because of his unrivalled knowledge of, anarchist. During the elections of 1895, he published a manifest
and political alliances in, Western Europe. /ois scélérat ‘
ioningof thes hatr
eS, for which he was

Prim e min ist er Cris pi’s vers clas ed. Brief ly at n e an i

It remains only to add, parenthetically, that Betances maintained a lively arrested on charges of foment i i

his trial, he sent the Minister of Justice a blistering letter cay on rie
teen months InP
46. See Francesco Tamburini, ‘Betances, losos bises italianos. y¥ Michele the prosecutor. For this he was sentenced to eigh

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Anpiolillo."; ri . an + mambises itallanos. "

deta ps6 Estrade, eds, Pasién por la libertad, pp. 75-82; and Ojeda, Fl eade, Soli, pM. ae
Betances told
Acce
ibid.,, asp. So372. p
Gig 0. BEL ing wtoeEstr
orde
ne his committee
1: Tale was composed of two ‘Cubans, two Belgians, and a young
Ferdinand Brook, whose brother had gone to fight in Cuba info rmat
i em bassy ¥!
ion,e ¢ had a spy ini the Spanish
agains! i Si
eraneras, Paul Estrade, Solidaridad con Cuba Libre, 1895-1898. La impresio
de la Universidad de Puerto 31 Open®,» El Soli daridad, p. p. 141.
ico, 2001) 4 Betunces en Paris (San Juan: Editorial Alejandrino when the ae dest errada, 373. d
sg ies 1 have relied beaus
moved to H, P. 143. Herrera kept in close touch with 92. Ibid, p, 374. ae on 8 tor
Progress of the Kon g. He passed on to Betances information he
received elt .
acco unt of Angiolillo’s ee . ve
Cubsna, publi Philippine revolution. In 1897, Betances's journal, La Reptib im Pra cons atTam foll
e bur ini
owin
’s
g “Mi che le Angiolillo.” This a ae
ingen? tiateds
one in a letters from Alejandrino, postmarked Hong Kong. onein J ae xamined state arch"
. ely une sniater
Cubansin New Yorey, Rizal's protégé also used his link with Herrera to UrBe&¢ fe
—
hitherto larg
es n ly'sof th
abiatio
bety ot The Par the nsp ee Rel iev e the last ofth e four a as based
on his own, or bee ‘o help with arms. It is not clear whether Alejandrino was
48. On the Felstlons ons from his titular boss Mariano Ponce. Naples 1796 and 1799 under the prot
ection of N&
Monship, see Ojeda, E/ desterrado, pp. 329-33.
 UNDER THREE FLAGS MONTIUICH
190 19)
the Young printer to flee Spain for France, He was a
i in Marseilles for
having forged ua peat 4 month in prison, a
ium, where he found temporary work with ne wk Was then expelled 1g
ee member of Vandervelde’s Parti Ouvries ro oo bya
1897: three months after Rizal's ata to
London in March
Tarrida’s crusade against the Canovas regime at its height, and with
As mentioned earlier, London was the safest haven for Conti
i : . 2 inental
anarchists on the lam. The
a.
Spanish 5 anarchist contingent was by now bei ing
Ae
augmented by people like “Federico Urales,” as well as Oller, who after
being terribly tortured, was released for lack of evidence, then expelled from
his country. Angiolillo resumed his work asa printer, helped by his member-
ship in a little-known institution, Typographia, which was 4 Special section of
the British printers’ union reserved for foreigners. He certainly attended the
huge demonstration of ten thousand people in Trafalgar Square on May 30,
organized by a Spanish Atrocities Committee led by the English anarchist
Joseph Perry. The crowd was addressed by a wide range of political notables,
including Europe-famous Tarrida, who spoke not in the name of anarchism,
but as the representative of La Revue Blanche and in the name of Betances's
Cuban Revolutionary Delegation in Paris.* Malato made a passionate
speech in which he asked who would avenge José Rizal anid so many others
Michele Angiolillo (left); the influential Fernando Térrida del Marmol (right). murdered by the Canovas regime. But the most emotional moments came
when the maimed victims of Montjuich rose to tell their stories and bare their
bodies. Not long afterward, Angiolillo personally met Oller and Francisco
further three years of internal exile, At this point he went to see a friend and
Gana, another horribly maimed victim, at the house of a friendly Spanish
former classmate, Roberto d’Angié, who was already a correspondent of anarchist exile. The German anarchist Rudolf Rocker, who was present,
ten Grave's Les Temps Nouveaux (La Révolte’s new name after the Trial of described the scene as follows:
the Thirty). D'Angid took him to see Oreste Ferrara, then an obscure law
student, buta soon
Revolution,
after to become famous as a recruit to the Cuban That night when Gana showed us his crippled limbs, and the scars over his entire
trusted aide to General Maximo Gémez, and eventually
body efi by the tortures, we understood that it is one thing to read about such
Cuba's foreign minister during the brutal presidency (1925-33) of General
Matters, but quite another to hear about them from the very lips of the vielims. . .
by Ferrara to flee Italy, in early 1896 he We all sat there.as if turned to stone, and it was some minutes ae ca
~_ Macha, , Advised
concievatte : false name, in Barcelona via Marseilles. The city had a a few words of indignation. Only Angiolillo said nol @ — es

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repotation he ony of lian workers and artisans, as well as a deserved suddenly rose to his fect, uttered a laconic goodbye. and abandoned the house «--
trade as a ooo activism. Angiolillo had barely settled down to his This was the last time J saw him.”
Christi bombi ance printer (and to acquiring Spanish) when the Corpus
of his friends weet eie and the city was put under martial law. A number nts out that in
Les Inquisiteurs
whom he had mote ] Montjuich, including Cayetano Oller. with 56. Estrade, Solidaridad, p. 146; Tamburini po no ta filibustero, @
Tirrida described himself rather disingenuously as“ n,
Cuba ; but
son.” “Michele
The grim romeo bes Tarrida’s and Sempau’s journal La Seiencia Social.
TS about the tortures inflicted on prisoners there persuaded Sderalist but not an anarchist, a freethinker but no book. :
Angiolillo,” p, 114, referring to p. 36 of Tarrida’s fampots ating from the Spanish
57. Fernandez, La sangre de Santa Agueda, p. 40, : “de destierra), (Puebla,
58. On Fer“rrararra’sa’ Xesion of Rudolf Rocker's memoirs, Bn fa borrasce (nal cont'd overt
career, see Tamburini. “Betan exico: Edit. Cajica, 1967), pp. 118-20. He also quotes ®
ces,” pp. 76-7.
 UNDER THREE FLAGS
MONTIUICN
193
; this event, Angiolillo
Angioll somehenow made hi
MS Way to Par reveer Ia muerte de Luis. XVI: 4 “el suplicio de un R . _
ne (a mind and a London-acquired pisto] tain his Pocket. py rcaan por siempre.” [I don’t think it is impossible to pa ack tt un
pats «he had read Tarrida’s any a tases,
Les Inquisiteurs a’ Dominican Republic needs a radical reform, | say with Didero and since the
who seemed to
which more than any other text of I ree
Gime linked in detail Manila, Mon
ed lectures by Rochefort ‘nd
have foreseen the death of Louis: XVI: ~The pullihment sf« + Ing
spirit of a nation forever."}*! changes the
tjuich, and Havana. Heis said to have
Betances on the transcontinental crimes oO! the Spanish government. [1 Was at
nany event, Angiolillo then made his way to Madrid via RB
young rine e
this point that he went to see the Puerte Rican at one of the regutar tertulias a was briefly taken carg.of by Antoine Antignac, a
on the Rue Chateaudun. Initially suspicious of a police plant, Betances ie proudhonian tradition. In the Spanish capital he learned that psa e
reassured by Tarrida and Malato, both of whom had talked with Angiolillo
was at the spa of Santa Agueda with his new, much younger mee
in London. What actually transpired when Betances and Angiolillo finally wife. Checking in at the same hotel, he watched his target's Movements for
met séfe-d-féte remains shrouded in uncertainty. Betances later said that
a day or two, and then, on August 8, shot him dead with the pistol he had
Angiolillo told him that he planned to go to Spain to assassinate the Queen
Regent and the. infant Alfonso XIII. The good doctor replied that this would brought from London. Angiolillo made no attempt to escape. His three-
day trial, by a military court, in camera, was held the following week. In
be a mistake: killing a woman and a child would be “terrible publicity”. his defence speech, he spoke mainly of Moritjuich, with vague allusions
besides, neither was responsible for the cruelty of the Spanish regime. The also to the wars in Cuba and the Philippines: He also said that Canovas
true villain was CAnovas.°? On the face of it, this account is a litle “personified, in their most repugnant forms, religious ferocity, military
implausible. Angiolillo was not an ignoramus. He had lived in martial
cruelty, the implacability of the judiciary, the tyranny of power, and the
law Barcelona, had talked with tortured former comrades, and had attended
greed of the possessing classes, I have rid Spain, Europe, and the entire
the demonstration in Trafalgar Square. He knew perfectly well that Canovas
world of him. That is why I am no assassin but rather an executioner.”"*
was the master of the Spanish empire. Perhaps the old Puerto Rican wished
The court then sentenced him to death, and he was garroted on August 20,
to leave posterity with the idea that he had saved: the lives of a woman and her
child, while taking credit for aiming Angiolillo at the Spanish prime min-
61. Ojeda, El desrerrado, p. 121, citing the second volume of Manuel Rodriguez
ister.” Almost thirty years earlier, he had written to his great frichd the Objio's Gregorio Luperén e Historia de la Restauracién (Santiago, Dominican
Re-
Dominican pateiot Gregorio Luperén about the need to arrest and tty for public: Editorial El Diario, 1939), pp. 167-8. n
Ireason the corrupt dictator Buenaventura Baez: 62. Tamburini quotes from Antignac's memoirs these mournful sentences: Le
livre qu'il lisait et relisait était intitulé Mongiuich", par Tarrida del Marmol,sa valise
ne contenait que celui-ld ... Quelques heures avant son départ nous dimes @
ca Dominicana Adieu! Ace ai 7m
so parece me imposible coger 4 Baez, y puesto que la Republi Angiolillo “Au revoir, camarade.’ “Non, pas au revoir,
Desesila Incontestablemente
una réforma radical,-yo digo con.Diderot. que parccla ceil flamba sous les lunettes. Nous fimes stupéfaits.” [The book that he a
contained nothing aoe
reread was Tarrida del Marmol's Montjuich. his suitcase

ef
Some hours before his departure, we said-to him “Till we mect a ekin 4 ke
Gana personally, to the cffect that we shall not meet again. Farewell.” At this on 7 bh
J? coat'd from Cleyre to her mother after seeing rnail s torn out, his head put! spectacles. We were stupefied]. “Michele Angiolillo.” p. 1 2. i
had been burned with red-ho t irons, his!finge

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i ae 63. It is a curious fact tik in London, both The Times 1 OT
abovecaited™ An no and his testicles ripped off. This account comes from Avric Published on August 10 a Reuters report that the maa it ca
American Anarchist, p. 114. - grat che Philip
u, citing Jean Ore Golli “has admitted that he shot Sefior Canovas in order to nee, tn
Les Teg fae Out inearl y
Ths Nouveau of June 19, 1997.mid-J une, accor ding to Max Nettla er Anarchists, and Dr. Rizal, the insurgent leader whi another Reuter’s report
Pines,” The following day the Telegraph gave its readers that
volume ofhis gene Isto p. 116 of the manuscript of the ichas yet unpublishes “ied 10 exprso) TANS. 1 19 be shat.” No
Micke f i n en und d S
Syndikaly n d i k a l isten, a copy of which w
was a s kindly prprove®
kindly in according to. which ““Golli is said to have
me by Sociale Geschiede n'* General Polavieja, for having caused the filibustering mate Hawkes-Lewis for this
Amsterdam” ljzermans of the Internat ional Instituut voor
of Weyler or Cuba af all. My thanks to Benjamin i

-
en
seen
59. See Fernand 2, om ermation. notation is my
La sangre de Santa Agueda, p. 45, for lengthy excerpts fr
64. Tamburini, “Michele Angiolillo,” pp. 123 ané 125 Toile "Ladies
takes ST cogent in Ancona’s
‘Translation of the Italian original that Tamburini
demolition of et be added that a key element in Tumburini’s study is @ aos
Angiolillo,” published (afier undergoing Crispi reeme
Substantial icon 2 nfepeated story that Betances (or Rochefort) gave AN? Agituzione on September 2. 1897.
of money (variously 1,000 and 500 francs).
 MONTJUICH
UNDER THREE FLAGS 195
194 nce six d
organized mob violence that Guy Mollet woutd experie Six decades later
his life, he is said have cried out: “Germinal!"® pj,
At the last m oment of thu in Algiers; the: revolutionaries had no taste for 4
imag ine! d him s: ‘American imperialism was on the move, Eight ieee Le Zanjon; and
aroja
states was master of Cuba. It is probably true that a a the United
Era un tipo delgado, muy largo, muy seco, y muy fino cn sus adelantes, que capacily and determination to give McKinley, Reseed ae the
learst a
hablaba con acento extranjero. Cuando supe lo que habia hecho, me quedé serious run for their money.
asombrado. Quién podia esperar aquello de un hombre tan suave y tan timidg?
{He was a slender fellow, very tall, very dry, very courteous in his gestures, who
spoke with a foreign accent, When | learned what he had done. | was
stunned, INTO THE MAELSTROM
Who would have believed it of so gentle and timid a man?)
In the seven months between the execution ofRizal and the assassination of
ation “cacique
Canovas’s death did not only sound the knell for Restor in Havana, as his political executioner what had been happening in the Philippines?
it the fall of Weyler Camilo Polavicja stayed in the Philippines only four months, but this sh
democracy” in Spain. It also brought with
nment under war reign was to have long-lasting consequences. Twelve daysafter Rizal's ian,
the general immediately understood.®” An interim gover
minister Azcdrraga lasted only until October 4, when
it was replaced by that rwelve prominent Filipinos, “led by” the millionaire Francisco Roxas, went
of the eternal Sagasta, who made Segismundo Moret once again
his minister before a firing squad at the place where the novelist had died. Watering
strong public oppone nts of Cino- had arrived in Manila.”
for Overseas Territories. Both had been
vas’s policies in Cuba and Barcelona (thoug h Sagast a, in power when Marti’s But Polavieja’s main task was to crush the rebellion militarily, and in this
). On October
uprising began, had at least talked in just as hardline a manner he was successful except in the hilly province of Cavite. There his troops were
31, Weyler handed over command in Cuba to none other than Ramon held up by acomplex system of trenches and fortifications, planned and built
Blanco—the man who had tried to save Rizal and who had been forced out on the orders of Rizal's former protégé Edilberto Evangelista, back from
of Manila by the clerical lobby's working on the Canovas cabinct and the Ghent with a civil engineering degree in his pocket.” The political conse-
Queen Regent. Blanco came with a mandate [or leniency, compromise, and quence of Polavieja’s offensive was to force Bonifacio out of the Manila area
to
reform, but it was now tdo late. The diehard colons grected him with the where his authority was undisputed and into Cavite, a province unfamiliar
of its people.” There he ran foul of an
him and famous for the clannishness
27-year-old mayor of
asa ambitious cavitefio clique led by Emilio Aguinaldo, the
65. “Germinal” was a war cry popular in the anarchist movement, probably to the highly
result of the huge success of Zola's novel. Tamburini. “Michele Angiolillo,” p. 124. the small township of Kawit. Aguinaldo belonged neither
But the symbolism goes back to the calendar of the French Revolution. in which the educated ilustrado elite exemplified by Rizal, nor to the often autodidact
he was 4
Manilan artisanate, like Bonifacio, His Spanish was mediocre, but

to mma
first month of spring went by that name. So to speak. “if Winter comes, can Spring be
member of the commercial-farming, medium landowning provincial gentry.
far behind?"
66. Pio Baroja, Aurora raja (p. 160). cited in Nuiiez, Ef terrorismo. P. 131.
67. The general—whom Betances liked to call a mini-Attila {pequeiio Atila)}-- and his family was widely connected in the Cavite region. He had joined the
may even have been partly relieved. Fernindez. reports that he had been lucky nol to : ; of thesemenhad

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have been blown to pieces in April the previous year. With the help of two it 69. Thereis no reason to believe that the charges were Lue. ae with Del Pilar
Para a young Cuban nationalis t called Armando André hid a bomb in the roo deen involved with Rizal’s abortive Liga Filipina in 1892, co! : ‘i
; the ground-floor toilet of the Captain-General’s palace. The device was sup. some and the circle of Lar Solidaridad. and wero cautious nationalist er outs
ie a when Weyler sat down on the pot, bringing the whole second floor the te odaciniot0
id. The plotters were unaware, however, that Weyler
suffered so severe ly Ocampo reports that Bonifacio asked Roxas for funds to help
fin ry told his trusted ice Om
millionaire refused. Theangry revolutionathen lists. @
felt erent that he almost never used the facility. preferring an carthenwa forge the signatures of people like Roxas on the Katipunan eT ae that they
relieve Madrid
when he hadto toinform
andopewe lysie The bomb
himself. that cil rk yy
bul nobeenee
went off. had leave them where the Spanish polieccould find them. Hescemstohave Ocampo. Rizal
the explosion would be arrested and tortured, and thus beconverted istary.
p. 246; see also Teodoro Agoncillo’s A Shor ae p- 86. based
tothe
ee the ened the latrine’s gases from escaping normally. ber without the Overcoat,
19 panicked ie usiastic popular reception of Weyler's return to Spain on Nov ttl on his pioneering two-volume study of the Philippine are :
hi the ¢ new Liberal government, which feared he would leada coup to 70. Evangelista was killed in action on February 17-0 7, aatog, The lost
the constitution and did Rasa
encourage his a {. who was no fool, stood toby look 71. The language of the province is a Jistinet dialect rermarriages
asa poiiny Ceo who then began to the strongly Catholic Polav’ Notables, then and now, are well-known for their complex
y. See Martin, Valeriano Weyler, chapter xiii.
 MONTIUICH

196 UNDER THREE FLAGS ne in Cuba) in disgust al Madrid's unwillingness or is 197

that he believed necessary
military reinforcemhisents 19 finch ae sedthe
forces had risen to 16,000, and the sees Tebellion,
By the end of 1896, Feceived72 13,300
in January 1897, fora total of 29,300, - af After that, nothing
more In - the
insurrection spread to further partsof the archipelago, he would BIE

Te
manpower to fulfill his mission, Canovas seems to have Wiser the
had passed, Knowing ic = the

REC
time for weplerismo in the Philippines

YENI O
to resign, no senior general = rh
that had caused the capable Polavicja policy. In April me
NT
the job of Captain-General without a change ofplace. He had been a nish
primo de Rivera arrived to take Polavieja’s
when Nisibsasamn
popular Captain-General during the calm early:1880s
AT

off for Europe. With his knowledge of the colony, his military setae
of
and his political flexibility, he could be expected to pursue both-a policy
attraction towards local clites, and of continuing the war, even if now with
the new
contemplaciones. A sort of revived blanquismo, one might say, In fact,
Captain-Gene ral did manage to retake Cavite, but Aguinaldo and his
generals eluded capture, and, making a wide detour around Manila, en-
sconced themselves in a rocky fastness well north of the capital, from which
no succeeding military efforts managed to dislodge them,”
SOAS

On May 17, a week after Bonifacio’s execution, Primo made what he

thought was a major conciliatory gesture, pardoning 636 people who had
The founder of the Katipunan revolutionary society, Andrés Boutfacio. been incarcerated either by Blanco or Polavieja. He further invited a
delegation from this group to his palace, expecting expressions of gratitude
Prominent in the
and renewed loyalty. He was in for a disagreeable surprise.
bad beenarrested
Katipunan in March 1895 in a junior capacity, but once the fighting started, delegation was none other than Isabelo de los Reyes, who
The busy folklorist and
he demonstrated that he was a capable soldier. in the immediate aftermath of Bonifacio’s uprising. was.
In March anelection wasteld in the town of Teceras to decide who wauld be journalist had been takencompletely aback by the insurrection, Prison
a few months later:
the Revolution’s president and who the members‘of his government. Boni- terrible shock. Mariano Ponce wrote to Blumenttitt
facio could rightly claim that he had formed the Katipunan—which Agui-
nalda had joined—-and had initiated the insurtection. But Agvinaldo’s cl pobre Isabelo. tan pacificoy de.carictr tan calmoso. polar aie

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Supporters felt that Bonifacio's uprising in Manila had proved a [asco que pasado, siendo la principal la muerte de su mujer Y te ca irmtabititad
and was a thing of the past; the task aliead was to run an effective war. morales y materiales que venia padeciendo, ha ba aes ue creia injusto
Cavite had shown what needed to be done. In the end, Aguinaldo wan the nerviosa hasta el punto de maldecir en voz alta y ch aah sncuites {poor
election and picked a cabinet almost entirely composed of fellow cavitertos. In y biirbaro y de las ordenes religiosas como origttLa ae seriesof calamities
addition, the former Supremo was openly sneered at for his irregular educa- Isabelo, so peaceable and of so calm a character, 384 result saci and matérial
lion and low-class origins. Bonifacio did not take this denigration lying the gravest of which was the death of his wife, and the eromns invtability
down sufferings he had just undergone, was affected by atiacks
and star ted to rally what supporters he could. The Aguinaldo group then
arrested him, tried him in April, and sentenced him to death for treason to the
Revol ution he had initiated, Heand a brother of his were +a) herila
executed on May 10. 72. Corpuz. The Roots, yol. 2. p- 239. en
iedial Hirnestone
Whether Polavieja was aware of these developments, and, if he knew. “ 73. Today Biak-na-Baté (Split Rock) isan intake
frequently
one visi
whether he-cared, is unclear, In April he resigned his post (as he had ile. Some wading up a small winding river Wt to have hidden out.
carlier to
“aves where Aguinaldo and his men are thought

UNDER THREE FLAGS
198
int of damning out loud and in public what he believes to be unjust und
iniquities).74
rehrow a3 well as the religious Orders as the root of such enormous
ine
indeed his ailing wife had died while he was behind bars, and he was not
permitted by Polavieja to attend her funeral or to do anything for his many
ony event, Isabelo brought with
him to the meeting a blistering
memorandum, which he had already sent to friends in Spain, outlining what
he believed were the ilustrados‘ conditions for a peaceful settlement, Above
all, he demanded the immediate expulsion of the Orders, whose abuses of
power he listed in great detail. He then insisted that Primo explain how the
government planned to respond to the colony's aspirations, or at the very
least those of the assimilationist “party” (in the nineteenth-century sense) to
which he belonged. The Captain-General reacted *‘as if he had been bitten by
a snake.””* Furious at Isabelo’s insolence—“the audacily of his tempera-
ment and his love of notoriety"—he ordered the folklorist re-arrested three
days later and clapped into irons in Manila’s Bilibid prison.” Soon after-
ward, Isabelo was secretly deported to martial law Barcelona. The ship's
captain was told to keep the young villain isolated from any contact with
Filipinos “over whom he exercises considerable influence.””” On arrival in
Barcelona a month later—C4novas was still alive and well—{sabelo was put
in the municipal jail, where, after some money had changed hands, he was
contacted by another prisoner, the veteran Catalan anarchist-republican
journalist Ignacio Bo y Singla. This admirable figure, who was serving a six-
year sentence because he had called for Cuban independence and
protested
against the sending of Spanish troops to Weyler’s Havana, told the
bewil-
dered young Filipino that “the advanced Republican
independence of the Philippines.”* But this was only the beginning.
party” supported the
_, 14. Letter from Ponce in Hong Kong to Blumentritt,
in Ponce’s Cartas sabre le Revolucion, 1897-1900 dated September 22, 1897
MONTUICH
199
fter a week, Isabelo was transferred to Mo, ntjuich,
whose comman
dant
calmly (and falsely) assured him that only those facing the deat h penal ly Were
- carcerated in its cells. He was
| to be sequestered there. not—by a long chalk—the fj rst Filipino since
The anarchist “Federico U
ae arrested after the Corpus Christi bombing rales”—who had
because he had courageously
adopted Pallas’s orphaned daughter,
school for children, and had published had opened a hight Y popular secular
an attack on trialsby military courts
«a Barcelona—gave, in his memoirs,
this touching accoun t. He said that
the
“yltras””
logrd de Igubierno que [uese destituido el general Blanco por demasiado (ransigente
y que en su lugar se nombrase al general cristiano Polavieja, asesina de Ipocta y
doctor filipino Rizal. Tan pronto Polavieja llega 4 Filipinas, empezdd fusilar y
embarcar gente para Espafia y un barco cargado de insurrectos Ileg6 4 Barcelona,
siendo encerrados cn la carcel donde nosotros to estabamos. Ello occuria en
invierno, y aquellos pobres filipinos fueron deportades llevando el mismo traje
del pais, que consistia en unos pantalones que parecian calzonillos y en una camisa
de telaraiia. Y era vergonzoso y triste a la vez vera los pobres filipinos en el patio de
Ja carcel de Barcelona, paseandose, formando circulo y dando patadas en el suelo
para calentarse los pies y tiritando de frio . . . Lo noble,lo hermoso fut ver 4 toda la
poblacién penal de la carcel tirando al patio zapatos, alpargatas, pantalones,
chalecos, chaquetas, gorras, calecetines para que se abrigraran los pobres deporta-
dos filpinos. en cuyo pais no se conoce el frio. [succeeded in getting the government
to dump Gencral Blanco for being toolenient, and to replace him with ike
gencral Polavieja, the murderer of Rizal, the Filipino poet and doctor. On al .
in the Philippines Polavieja immediately began executions and — - is
Spain. One ship laden with insurrectionaries having arrived at | en ae
prisoners were incarcerated in the same prison as ourselves. . a ra
winter, and those poor Filipino deportees were (still) — oa iv aoa bah
which consisted simply of drawer-like pants and a cobweb-t me : * seo
shaming and melancholy to see the poor Filipinos in the ee warhead

Scanned by CamScanner
(Mani
la: Bureau of Printing, 1932). Prison, pacing about in a circle, kicking at the ground to

alll
pp. 42-5. Ponce noted that he heard about the
from one of the People who
delega tion’s encounter with Primo
was a membe r.
ig 75. Ponce, Cartas. p..24, Letter to Blumen guido a federal,
periodistlogré intro-
tritt,
written in Hong Kong on 78 contd distinBO
que, cuando, por arte de birlibirlog ue, un vicio y Singla.
» 1897. The phrasing is: ef General salté August
76. Scott, The Union Obrera Democrdtjcoma picado por une culebra. que estaba también preso por revolucionario, D. Ignacio B07 "Ot
a rcons of
tica, p. 14, i 's corre- duirse en mi prision” [I melee rigorously incommunicado ae "ocked doors; but
ee with his superiors in
Madrid, See imo"
» | Abid. Wis inter TES USSR fron Fao
ested that, : in his Au gust letter to Blumentr Barcelona, in a cell entry to which required passing pore federalist journalist. D.
icceloeg art ne seen Isabelo's name on any 18pass ittit cited
enger list, meaning ci above . obtaining the key by abracadabra means, the distinguls revolutionary. man
that he had Ignacio Bé y Singla, also a prisoner because taken 2 ‘nas ante Europe, Mate stk
folklorist had been ~disar eared eine shipping, He introduce himself into my place of incarceration). ey. 1930), Tomo |, p- iis
. 78.Q Scott. Unién Obrera
Ppeared,"
D- as‘ we say nowada ys. expresse5d his fear that
. the . Federico Urales, Mi vida (Barcelona: La Revist 7 ridliculo), he had re 3
rigurosamente incommuniende ce rittets . 14. Isabelo recalled in 1900 that “estaba Wrote that though Bé was physically insignificaat (eos y Margall, but mo
4 dond *. para llegar, habia que pasar
las carceles
POF tres nacionales de Barcelona,
puertas cerradan con Haveen | con‘d
un cabocillo
over! surge. He began his political life as a federalist wih | ts tacerating book on

sratchism and committed atheism. He also later pu

Montjuich.
 UNDER THREE PLAGS MONTJUICH
200 ; * 201
—_ <a noble, beautiful sight to see the prison i Sempau's’s help,PJ Isabelo furth
haps with
:
urther got a frie
«ae with cold. Inwasa. nob! oe en les throwing
=~ lo'pass him
Lrousers, vests, jackets,is cxu PS,and Socks okt and newspapers, which, as he later recalled, o an
rae ihecourtyard shoes, rope-sandals,
s, in whas e country the cold Nknown],” that anarchism "espoused the abolition fo
He learned
pened my eyes”
i arm the poor Filipino deportee
toow geograph ic or of class disti ngton thats, love
without any boundaries, whether
sabelo received a new cellmate, Ram6n Sempau, who and of us associaling together without any need of fraud
ulent sexes eae
In September | ta the real criminals untouchedrdinances
nate Lieutenant Narciso Portas,tite
4th of that month had tried to assassithe which trap the unfortunate but leave
f of Montjuich, aka Spanis h Trepov ,” whose
with Canovas dead, and Sagasta's opposition coalition in power, whi
torturer-in-chie
made synonymous with the New
Tarrida, via the European press, had appoin Tarrida’s campaign was going full blast,” the situation of the Mowe :
Inquisition. (The lieutenant had been ted head of a special political prisoners started to change. The demands of the army and the pais thar
intelligence unit by Weyler during his tenure as Captain-General of Cata. Sempau be tried by a military court, which would certainly have sentenced him
to death, were rejected by the new government. Such was the odium in which
lonia, prior to reassignment to Havana.) Sempau was basically a bohemian e wish ed or dared to:de clare the would-be
literary figure, a journalist and poct with anarchist leanings.*° If
Urales's Portas was held that no civilian judg
freed. Thank s to letters of
memoirs are to be trusted, the plan to kill Portas was hatche d original ly in assassin guilty, On January 8, 1898, Isabelo was
Paris, and after Sempau’s arrest the French anarch ist Charle s Malato came reference from Pi y Margall, Alejandro Lerroux (the head of the populist
be an aborti ve attemp t to arrange Radical Republican Party in Barcelona), and Federico Urales, he quickly gota
to Barcelona to carry out what proved to
his escape.*! In any case, Isabelo was enchanted by the failed assassin. In old minor sinecure in the propaganda section of Moret’s Minis
try for Overseas
age, he wrote that the Catalan was Territories. Isabelo’s articles on the Philippines, especially his tirades against
Mason
the Orders, were published in Lerroux’s party organ, with Grand
very well educated; he knew by heart the scientific names of plants in the el Mora yta poli shin g their langu age. Best of all, armed with a
Professor Migu
strations of the times,
Philippines, and later translated Rizal's Noli me tangere into French. In his fight revolver, Isabelo plunged happily into the radical demon *
with some hundred police agents, he showed an absolute lack of fear. His very ng an occasional bloody nose.*
without shooting anyone, but not without getli
nume caused terror in Europe. Yet in reality he was like an honest and good-
natured child—ycs, even a true Christ by nature ... I repeat, on my word of
honor, that the so-called anarchists, Nihilists, or, as they say nowadays, Bolshe- GO EAST, YOUNG MAN
viks, are the true saviors and disinterested defenders of justice and universal Rizal, and one yeat older than
Mariano Ponce, two years younger than
brotherhood. When the prejudices of these days of moribund imperialism have ce of Bulacan, adjoming
Manila
disappeared, they will rightfully occupy our altars."* Isabelo de los Reyes, came from the province of Bulls 5 is eck
located;
on its northeast side (Aguinaldo’s guerrilla hideout scree
Urales's real Catalan name in this province). While still a student at Santo Toms,
79. Urales, Mi Vida, Tomo I, pp. 79, 196-7, and 200. ia!) for his first son! de
but he took on the Ural Mount ains (Siber
was Jodin Montseny, de Oro; butat the last
Ruerreand nom de plume. He was origin ally to be depor ted to Rio 83. Tbid., p. 14. ras ‘1g doors in 1898 with
where he immed iatel y helped to organize the

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minuthee was sent into exile in Londo n, 84. The committedly anarchist Theatre Liberte ore ea thereafter.
Commi tteeon Spanish Atrocit ies. He return ed to Spai n
in 1898 and founde d La Revista
to abrero s canscientes a. drama entitled “Montjuich,” which remained PoP ie 1890s Paris was very short of
e (but itwas more orient ed tow"
rod in homag
a to leading e to
intelleLu Revue
ctuals) , Blartch
He recalle d, rather touchi ngly, that when he start ‘bat Herbert, The Artist, p. 39. Herbert comments that in 10sterpeted anarchistically
seeineei
Crealt Blanca he wrote very popula r articles on diseases and the soci conditions sths el eeoam French playwrights, and Jbsen—oflen

tnased them , under the pseud onym Dr Boudin . He did so becau se the *nvellectual red over everything.
ined ee
lively dem
Federico Urales. whom ihey knew Scott “Gescribesin the
85. “Montjuich” delicious welter tht
stanOrk ing
class did not believein the talent of
Fas stig: " but they thoroughly trusted “Dr Boudin.” 5g (Sem against February 1898—inwhich,°F newspePe onof
so Portas ), and 60-61 and | cual Btoup close to Lerroux (including a woman jour sd of the FE desian*
pau), Nettlay uiez. £/ terrorisma, pp. 55 (Narci who would become the Filipino’s second wife). it di Hl pituvio, the

nismus kt rather cattily described him as “ein zwisc hen Anarc hismu s ie a +
F; feethinkers,
the Baralones Centre for
ical Studies
{the Facully a
Law, the Mi
- ofthe ‘Masénica, the
Catala ni Neten e Einzel ganger ” [a go-it- aloner fluctu ating betwee n anare © 7 youth, Revit!
Mesian?) Spiritists’ Union, Liberal Students
turn of the of tthe Catalan Revivalor
nttaums.p. 116), Sempau later became par Soci, RePUTT. 1shourers
ler, the, Progressive Feminist Society,ber-loading. i1ica,I P- 16.
81. Ibid. p. Ne collaborating on the Catalan-la nguage review Occitdnia.PP- go-8l- Ociely of Stevedores, the Sociely of LumP™” 8 pemacralits
Isabelo, 38, quotin g from the second volum e of Urales’s di vida. &t8' Societies, and La Voz del Pueblo. Union
82.
, quoted in Scott, Unidu Obrera Democratica. p» '5-
 UNDER THREE FLAGS MONTIUICH
202
ccordingly, in the spring of 1896, Pong.
eae Kong. where they could be safe a Del Pilar dec

homeland. But Del Pilar’s health was by then brolen. Dut

Meeting of Mariano Ponce (right) Dr Sun Yat-Sen
(left) in Ponce’s Yokohanta home.
nationalist activist under the tutelage of Del Pilar, and continued with his
activism after arriving in Madrid to study medicine at Rizal’s and Unamuno's
Central University. Ponce and his mentor were the driving forces in founding
La Solidaridad in Barcetona in February 1889, and in moving it to the Spanish
capital nine months later. Though he wrote articles under various pseudo-
nyms, he discovered that his real talents were working as managing editor,
treasurer, and archivist. More and more Del Pilar turned managing the journal
ne died a miserable death in martial law Barcelona on j and, as cose t their
noted Carlier
faithfully nursed him, stayed on tg Settle their
ee Once, who had
ponifacio’s uprising erupted at the end of the followi
ng allairs. When
raided the house where he was living ang the bu, Month, the
potice
philippine Association, removing man ¥ documents, "SS of the - Hispano.
imprisoned, but only for one night, as the police fond a enact was
compromising. When things quictened down, hesipped othing scriously
porder to Marseilles and sct sail for the Far East on Cae the French
In the spring of 1897, at the age of thirty-four, he began there ‘ :
eccupied him for the next four years: raising money for what ene that
Aguinaldo’s revolutionary government, attempting to buy guns al then
nition to be smuggled into the Philippines, and engaging in a mes
propaganda campaign on behalf of his country’s independence. (In June
1898, Ponce was sent by Aguinaldo to represent
the Philippines in Japan.) tn
accomplishing the first two tasks Ponce had little success. His Cartas sobre ta
Revolucién contain a number of letters to wealthy Filipinos Tesiding outside
the country, begging them to show their patriotism by substantial financial
contributions, and other letters, to close friends, complaining how odiously
selfish and unpatriotic these people mostly turned out to be. The search for
arms was even less successful. But the correspandence shows in fascinating
detail how Ponce conducted his propaganda campaign, and tried to adapt to
the hectic events of 1897-1900. Before undertaking an analysis of the texts, 2
brief recapitulation of these events is necessary.
WHO IS THE ENEMY?
While Isabelo was still languishing in Montjuich, the military impasse in the
Philippines continued. Primo Rivera was unable to destroy Aguinaldo, and

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over lo him. It says a great deal for his calm, honest, and modest character that the man from Cavite was unable to make any serious break-out age =
even when relations between Rizal and Del Pilar were at their most fraught, Biak-na-Baté redoubt. It was time for political initiatives. Apnea s
Ponce remained the close and trusted friend of civilian associates advised him that his position would be greatly strength:
both.
After Rizal's arrest and deportation to Dapitan, La Solidaridad began @ tned ifa democratic constitution were enacted to create
slow decline, and its last issue appeared in October 1895. One difficulty 2 a legalsae i
8overnment competing with the colonial regime. The task a patil the
that it depended financially on contributions from well-off sympathizers
in Félix Ferrer and Isabelo Artacho. Teodoro Agoncillo dryly aes
Manila, and these were increasingly difficult to extract. But the main Process this way:
Problem was that after six years of intensive labor, Del Pane icy of
ay, Cuba.
papa . A eee Pilar's policy ° {,
assimilatio nism ‘
still had little impact on the Spanish se Ferrer and Artacho lifted the contents of the Constitution oem
ne there was a growing feeling in the Filipino colony that it was @ dead-e drawn up in 1895, and passed it off as their brain. work . « «
 UNDER THREE FLAGS
MONTIUICH
204
ssed: Fear th
205
nly’ told a ‘ friend who. expre
ca imly
pressed
mente Joseé Zulueta, once
0 itutionm1 might be lost: “Don’t w, arty =
;
einecop y of the Biak-na-Balo Const ayu. 6
stitution of Jimagu
ey ret of the Con
“The only local addition was a then-divisive lena iad Tagalog the national
Janguage. The caudillo, whose Spanish was weak, and who knew little about the
world beyond the Philippines, proudly proclaimed the enactment of this “Fiji.
he was swom in as president.
pino” constitution on November |. The next day
But even before this grand gesture was being made, negotiations had begun
after Canovas’s death,
with Primo de Rivera, who seems to have hoped,
Weyler’s fall, and the return of Sagasta to power, Lo secure at best a sort of
been
oriental version of the Pact of Zanjon. By the end of the year, it had
full amnesty; and
agreed that the rebels would lay down their arms and receive
400,000
that Aguinaldo and his officers would leave for Hong Kong with
s their pockets, and another 400,000 due when the surrender of arms
pesetain
was complete. A further 900,000 pesetas was to be allocated for the benefit of
innocent Filipino victims of the fighting over the past fifteen months. Primo de
Rivera, aware of intense Filipine suspicion of Spanish treachery, sent two of
his generals to Biak-na-Baté as hostages, while his 27-year-old nephew,
Colonel Miguel Primo de Rivera (the future.dictator of Spain in the 1920s,
much less intelligent than his uncle), would accompany Aguinaldo across the
China Séa. Unsurprisingly, neither side lived fully up o:the agreement—many The assassination of President William McKinley brought Theodore Roosevelt to
rebels buried their weapons rather than surrender them, and the second power. Hiy maxim on US foreign policy, “Speak softly and carry a big sttck,” was
tranche for the ¢audillo never materialized,*’ widely kunpootied in contemporary cartoons.
Meanwhile Washington was on the move, above all in the person of
Theodore Roosevelt, As early as November 1897 he had written that, in the Spaniards, and relations with the Filipinos steadily deteriorated. Aguinaldo
event of war with Spain over Cuba, it would be advisable to send the was forced to read the declaration of Philippine independeonnce
June 12, not
American Asiatic Squadron, based in Japan, to Manila Bay; simultaneously, in the capital but from the balcony of his substantial home in Kawit,Shortly
he arranged for the like-minded Commodore George Dewey to take over the thereafter, he appointed Apolinario Mabini as his chief pollieal sive.
squadron's command. At the end of February 1898, Roosevelt ordered Mabini was an extraordinary figure."* Born three years after sao
Dewey to move his base of operations to Hong Kong. When war was finally the child of poor peasants in the province of Batangas, nt iene

declared on April 25, after the curious explosion of the warship USS Maine in
Havana's harbor—it had been sent there to intimidate the Spanish-—Dewey
on for the Philippines within an hour of getting the official cable. On May
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btief life he never had a real penny to his name. He was a britiant ay _
al Santo Tomas, as well as'a member of Rizal's abortive Liga Filipina. Fluent
.

in Spanish, he had neither the means nor, probably, the << a A

i i i ud

(At ma obsolete Spanish fleet within sight of Manila's shoreline. Overseas. :

as. The only time he would leave his country “i
in Guam. In 1896 disaster
hesteaits n ae was still no attack on Cuba itselfl) At Dewey's invitation deported by the Americans to a political prison own, perhaps from
struck wh ; ed from the waist d ;
Washington's . jee Follived (rom.clear.ong,Aguina * : en he became paralyz the condition 4 him from
enteringMani Feal aims soon became ldo aitwas thebarred
Kong Ti from
heumatic fever, perhaps from polio, bul
the defeated
Manila, while Dewey's people started to fraternize with t Adib Majul’s we

86. Agonci : ; 88. The wonderful is silCtof the opines

and indispensableCity:sourceUniversity
87, had. a Short History, p, 102. For more on Ferrar see n. 130. te the, Philippine Revchition (Quezon
6)}—originally published in 1960.
 206 UNDER THREE FLAGS MONTIUICH
Polavieja's fury. In the first half of 1898, while earliest monument, two small Masonic Pillars inser:
Aguinaldo was ensconced in 207
Hong Kong, Mabini became celebrated for the
passionate revolutionary Rizal's novels, still survives in the sma hurricane hae With
Unted town the titles of
manifestos he wrote in defence of the Revolution. the Bicol peninsula of southeastern Luzon, -
When the caudillo
summoned him to Cavite, hundreds of people ferociously denounced Weyler's “concentration “ veri i
took turns to bear his litter
from the spa of Los Bafios to the revolutionary leader ended up by adopting
's headquarters.
Mabini designed and wrote virtually all the Aguinaldo Perhaps half a million Chis, Same policy—in des
government's decrees, Filipinos died of Malnutrition
and effectively managed their execution for the concentration zones, as ie ise ji
crucial year when he well: as in q Merciless. go, ease in these ‘
remained in power as Aguinaldo’s prime minist
er. A man of iron will, during which torture of prison ers was commonplaceUnter}
“9 nSUrgency warfare
Mabini was also a dedicated patriot, and one of the
very few top leaders
of the immediate post-Rizal era who recognized that
the popular movement A GENTLEMAN
was essential to the Revolution's survival, and
GLOBALIZED
predicted early on that it
would be betrayed by most of the i/ustrados and the wealth With this background in mind, it is possible to re
y.
But Mabini’s rise to power came just at the point lum productively 10 Ponce’s
correspondence in his role as one of the most im portan
when large numbers of t overseas emissaries of
American troops landed in Cuba. Six weeks later the hostilities there the Philippine regime. Before doing SO, one has to emphasize that his Corts,
between
Spain and the United States came to an end, published long after his death, contains only letters that
and Washington became effective Ponce himself wrote,
master of the island. The turn of the Philippines was bound Both the original letters from which they were
to come next. At the Culled, and all the letters of his
end of the year the Treaty of Paris was Signed correspondents, have long disappeared. There is no way to determine
betwee
n the US and Spain by for certain
which Madrid “sold” the colony to Washi
ngton for $20 million. (Germany whether they have been bowdlerized, and how many letters were omitted, (The
bought up most of the Carolines and
Marianas for a much lower price.) In the editor, Teodoro Kalaw, a conventional mainstream post-revolulionary nation-
meantime, a Philippine national assembly
had assembled in Aguinaldo’s tem- alist and politician, was probably not eager to have the revolutionary move-
porary capital of Malolos (in Bulacan),
created a new constitution, inaugurated ment’s dirty laundry hung out for public consumption. The collection asprinted
the Republic of the Philippines, and elevat
ed Mabini to the prime ministership. is notable for the absence of personal letters to Ponce’s kin, of letters in any way
Every effort was made to mobilize politic
al support in the islands outside Luzon, critical of Aguinaldo, and of correspondence about the intriguescet
to reasonably good effect except
in the Muslim far south. manipulations—well known from aa unprincipled “leaders,
The Filipino-American War broke
out in February 1899. The Filipi rimarily in Hong
Kong, but also elsewhere.
soldiers fought bravely but, poorly no .
armed, in conventional warfare F There are 243 ieee all, beginning in May 1897 andending in Mert
match for their new were no
enemies. Worse was to follow. Mabini
Power in May by a cabal of wily was driven from 1900. Two tables (see over) will give the reader a general statistical picture a
ifustrados who were eager to collab the character of Ponce’s correspondents. It should be noted aie
with the Americans, Antonio Luna, orate
chief of staff and the only Filipino these correspondents used one or more pseudonyms (asdid ieee ei
general with a clear Strategic vision of
how to conduct guerrilla warfare elude the monitoring of Spanish, British, and American Ties
against the new colonizers, was assassinated
clique, who were afraid that the Hocan in June by Aguinaldo and his real people behind these pseudonyms have been firmly ide i oe
war officially ended in March
o would eventually take power. The

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1901, when Aguinaldo was betray Almost 50 percent of the letters were we re ong afer the
captured in the high Luzon Cordillera ed and
—and promptly swore allegiance palicano Apacible (who took over from Poncs in HongPovt.t T
Washington. But other generals fought on for to latter left for J apan) 43; Blumentritt 39; Vergel de Dios( ares Rafael de PAD
Popula r resistance was not finally another year, and armed with the Cubans in Paris) 15; ‘Ifortel” (who may have
Stamped out till the end of the
decade. The
illo (Aguinaldo’s
and whose address is unclear) 12; and Francisco Agon
frustrated representative in the US)
; First, on the eve I. lly speaking, Ponce at
of the second anni
versary of Rizal’s execution, Aguinaldo The languages used are also revealing. Genera
issued a proclamation
that the entire Popula 1961), Most
cach subsequent ann tion should thereafter mourn, on 89. See Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brather (New York: Doubleday, sayor, 14
ive rsa Ty of his death,
the country’s National Hero. The fecently, there is also Celerina Atrocities, Kase,
G. Balucan's “Wat
(Decembe r 2001), pp. 34-54.
 a 6
, pial, Dapitan, 15 February 1893
'

In his ostracism he has little correspondence — “

- more than ao — Roads to clvilized fouge Tek
rothing except My freedom, my family, and my books” — About
the Tagalog language — Photo of a Subano— Blumentritt and
the Ilongot language — Philological disquisitions — How is Lo-
leng?
* # &

Dapitan, 15 February 1893

Mr. Fernando Blumentritt
leitmeritz, Bohemia, Austria
My very dear Friend,*
By the mail of the 8th February I received your letter from
the hands of the Politico-Military Commander of the District.
I did not answer you by the same mail for lack of time. I
thank all? of you for having remembered me from that peaceful
city whose remembrance is not erased from my memory. Do
not be surprised at my silence, for since the loss of my liberty,
r reasons of delicacy that you can easily understand, I have
‘upended my correspondence with persons who do not that wnte
me. I should have liked to write you in German 5°
may not forget altogether that language, but as you have wilt
ne in Spanish,® I believe I ought to answer you ™ ihe same
route.
Nguage so that the letter may follow the same
a
” but as the Jetter
Jet
him “friend and brother
had ie always addressed
he dro ppe d
a
ra ge
" as it mig
act :
interne; eough the censor
. s,
g. Blumentt!
(Retana) Mm its Masonic meanin
ts family.
eo Pa
alludes to the members of Blumentrit
2 ‘

‘mentritt used to write him in German.

— 459 —

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 You are anxious to know how I am and frankly | &
know what to tell you. If I should tell you that] am tt
ne little more than ]
well and they treat me a Id human
imacy? Perhapsa ny
would not believe it, because f ou would imagine that pot
being prior sonsete my manifestation ol goad be forced, ai .
my hand fe Hos
cut
ever, that is the truth. I would
than write an untrue thing. This is one of the minor a
veniences of prior censorship: Even the truth appears SUSPicions.
I am well indeed, anima corporeque (body and soul). p, ,
tan’s climate suits me better than that o my home town ang
very much better than that of Manila. This climate jg Most
temperate. I live with the Governor. However, I Spend the
greater part of the day on my lands where I have ordered built
a little house amidst fruit trees Cartocarpeas, theobromas, say,
sonias, etc.). 1 am engaged in clearing my lands in. order to
plant coffee and cacao which thrive well, espite the fact thai
the lands are hilly and stony. I probably have some 16 hectares
bought from different owners who had abandoned them. They
are situated along the seashore, inside the bay of Dapitan, 3
that you can a) on the map the part between the town and
a little more toward the south of the cove of Taguilong or Tal
guilong. C'est la ott sont mes possessions! (It’s there where
my properties are!) [ am becoming a farmer, because here
hardly, very hardly, do I practice medicine. I have already
cleared a part of the forest. Although it is stony, it has how.
ever good views, beautiful steep rocks. I am opening roads to
inake a civilized forest with well traced paths, with steps, benches,
etc,

When I receive a camera J shall take different views and

send them to you. In short, in order to be happy, I lack nothing
except my freedom, my family, and my books.® Of these three
_ ‘More properly, politico-military commander of the district. Dur
ing the Spanish régime, the chiefs executive of districts, which were 10
regular provinces, were called politico-military commanders. 4
* Rizal’s library at one time was composed of about a thousan
items but now it is reduced to some five hundred without a single al
dealing with the Philippines. The preater number of the books dea
with general ethnology and anibrorol os, and medicine, and works t
Goethe, Schiller, Balzac, Zola, Jovellanos, Prevost, etc. It seems eS
the family has been exploited and the most choice books either a
peared
of some or 500
were volumes
destroyedthatin Mr.
Hong JoséKong. In ca1906 the libraryresident
consi
, a Filipino
Hong Kong and a great friend e Ried . heb ‘for a exiod of ace
rare. These 500 volumes arrived at Manila in June 1906 and fa
a aes CNo. 19, June) in giving the news proposed that te}
ught and preserved as a sacred thing.
(Retana)
— 460—

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 asiest to obtain is the last—the books: but inte
and J have read all that I have been able to
yepen,F have(somthe Vora
e pam Fels also
phlets ho),), Cha
Meembe (someEdinbu
r r's loosrgh
e sheJour
et,
ers") and other works, -
For the scientific life ‘here
id ek professor, the cultured Jesuit, Father Francisco P,
of ene you already know.‘ Nevertheless, I am. yer
sche "cessant and indefatigable scientific life
of civilized
fr HO” rere everything is discussed, where everything is placed
| Burs and nothing is accepted without previous examination
in fen voor
pei " nalyaphy the life of the societies of linguistics, ethnog-
sis — medi
cine, and archaeology. But on the other
att nearer nature, I hear constantly the song of the sea
hand, # ¢ of the leaves, and J see the continuous fluttering of
the murmu
the palms § tirred by the breeze.
Jam working for some days now on a grammar of the Taga-
language, but an original grammar, sui generis.’ However,
x [have no books here on linguistics, many times | find myself
| had up. My grammar of comparative languages by Bournouf
| i¢in Hong Kong —I do not know anymore in what shelf — so
"that my work goes on slowly. Moreover, the clearing of my
lands distracts me at present. Make yourself easy for when my
camera arrives, | am going to take photos of Subano types.’ I
lave known them here and really they are a peaceful people,
very honest, industrious, and faithful in their transactions, accord-
| ing to what they say. Here there is a young man by the name
_ of Apyag who returns to his settlement tomorrow. He is of
gentle character, humble, and reserved,
_ Tl commend your work on the Hongot language and I am
| Wishing to read it. I too am learning Bisayo and I am begin-
——
nedlsge
é x hisMic scientific . ‘
-— works. Blumentritt has translated or published
| ma ing ement of some of the ethnographic studies of Father Sanchez,
| s em known through the principal technical reviews of Europe.
| tana
he ie alludes to a work entitled Estudios sobre la lengua tagala ihat
7 7

liga ae "© tobeganFr. to Sénchez.

plan Shortly thereafter he conceived the
carry it out, of writing in Englisha Gramdtica
Roy apembarada (Coniacaive Tagalog Carine). ‘He informed Dr.
by his ime Ina letter that I have, Dr. Rost said to me that, judging
the ¢ . Pressions and considering Rizal’s knowledge, the new work 0
1896, ed Tagalog promised to be notable. Dr. Rost, who died in
by and thy me the Dutch Kern the enviable fame of possessing Ma-
aT Nguages derived from it. (Retana) NA
fr, ; Subanos constitute one of the ae interesting tribes in vie
that ttibe a ethnographer Blumentritt has published some
stu
ich, like his works, are excellent. (Retana)

— 461—
Scanned by CamScanner
 . + a little with the inhabitants here. Q,
ning a 4 a or ethnological reason for the chang!

oe Th alog i into o in Bisayo? The passing of the pal

i d e the labial or viceversa, to what is it due? I, it f
meal € 4 mistake in the reading of the punctuation of the
ors os of writing? In the Bisayan language I see traces o
chars
ae of dards
more primiti
Tagalog forms tion
ve conjuga than contain
in the s Tagalog, Rotwith.
in itself not onl
all the feiis of the Bisayan but also others. Which of the two
ate older? Are both branches of a trunk cae disappeared)
That is what I am going to inquire into, because I distrust greg
ly the Malay.
Loleng’ Madchen
asa anges must be a(young
little young lady now. I try to visualize
lady) the little girl that 1 saw rup.
ning behind the coach to bid us goodbye; however, it is hard
for me to do so. It is natural that she will find Spanish more
beautiful and more useful than Tagalog. The continuous te
duplications in certain tenses render our language ugly; but
the Tagalog, when well spoken, can be as valuable as any other
language. It has a great wealth of words to express affection
and the activities of everyday life.
With greetings to Frau Rosa Blumentritt, Loleng, Frit,
and Kurt.
Your friend who embraces you,
José Rizal

* Blumentritt’s daughter named déertaes the

pie for Dolores is . Dolores. In the Philippi»
Loleng (Tagalog version of Lola, Spanis ‘igh,
has fen "s name by her father who, though a Bohemian by »
10 Rizal ay years; a Spanish-Filipino at ‘heart (Retana)
uring: his stay at Leitmeritz, we Loleng some ee of
lessons.
and ne She sendy Uroknew Spanish, taught by her father who
pean languages, CRetana)

— 462—

Scanned by CamScanner
 Tracing Origins: [/ustrado
Nationalism and the Racial
Science of Migration Waves
FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

If only our ancestors could be resurrected!

(Rizal 1890, 90)

Racial Science and the Quest for Origins

History was the key to identity for the pioneers of Filipino nationhood in the late
nineteenth century. John Schumacher has recounted the struggle by which the youth-
ful Europeanized originators of Filipino nationhood—the é/ustrados, literally “enlight-
ened”—reacted to the “chauvinism common to members of governing races” (1973,
191-220). Amid the onslaught of Spanish colonial racism, these educated youths

Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. (fvaguilar@ateneo.edu) is Professor in the Department of History

and Director of the Institute of Philippine Culture at Ateneo de Manila University.
This article is a revised version of a paper first presented at the Fourth European Philippine
Studies Conference, Alcalé de Henares, Spain, September 9-12, 2001. I am grateful for a
Visiting Research Fellowship at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, in
the second half of 2001, which provided the opportunity to pursue the research project of
which this article is a part. I am also indebted to a research leave awarded by James Cook
University that enabled research in the Philippines and the United States. In Kyoto I received
valuable comments, questions, and encouragement from Caroline Sy Hau, Patricio Abinales,
Arthur Terry Rambo, Koji Tanaka, and Yoko Hayami. Carol was extremely kind in giving
me liberal access to her copies of La Solidaridad and in being a critical sounding board for this
article, while Jojo and Terry very generously shared with me useful materials. Acquiring a
copy of the rare 1885 report ofJ. Montano was incredibly easy because of the generosity of
Xavier Huetz de Lemps. I am grateful to Benedict Anderson, Russell McGregor, Lily Mendoza,
and Fr. John N. Schumacher, S.J., for reading earlier versions and giving me valuable sug ges-
tions, corrections, and advice. I am also grateful to my many colleagues in Philippine history
who participated in “The Mactan Conversation: A Conference on the ‘Genealogies of Philippine
History” held in Mactan, Cebu, April 4-6, 2003, where a version of this article was presented
and critiqued. Thanks are also due to the reviewers commissioned by the Journal of Asian Studies
for their constructive comments and suggestions. Most of all, thanks go to my boundlessly
patient and understanding wife, Juliet, for prodding me on to work on this article and for
sharing with me the thrills and perils of visiting Spain, to-sha.
The Journal of Asian Studies 64, no. 3 (August 2005):605—37.
© 2005 by the Association for Asian Studies, Inc.

605
606 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

defended their collective pride by searching the past for dignified roots. They proposed
and debated various approaches, which included Pedro Paterno’s extravagant claim
that “ancient Tagalog civilization” had long been Christian (Schumacher 1979, 268—
69). But whatever the view, ilustrados desired to illumine their origins in order to
know themselves. Such “knowledge” was seen as vital to further political action.
Understandably, a manifest tendency to glorify the ancients emerged. The foremost
patriot, José Rizal, articulated “the ilustrado nostalgia for lost origins” by constructing
“a flourishing, precolonial civilization, the lost eden,” argues Reynaldo Ileto (1998,
31), “to reconstitute the unity of Philippine history” (35). Guided by European
notions of order, linearity, and rationality, yet himself implicated in the “underside
of history,” Rizal, in Ileto’s view, consciously imagined a past that effaced the
differences in colonial society.
Diversity and divisions did mark the Spanish Philippines. But while studies of
this group of pioneering youth have considered a range of factors and moments in the
formation of national consciousness—such as class, religion, politics, economics,
discourses of kinship ties, gender, and literary strategies'—none has analyzed it in
the context of nineteenth-century popular and scientific theories of race and attendant
discourses of migration-diffusion. The period’s dominant paradigm of “positive
science” gave rise to the belief that peoples of distinct “races” moved into territories
in discrete waves of migration. Each successive and progressively more advanced wave
pushed the earlier arrivals into the interior. The extant cultural groups encountered
by European ethnologists in their “primitive” state were assumed to be “survivals,”
residues that closely approximated the races of antiquity. Spanish friars in the
Philippines had long speculated on the origins of its inhabitants (Scott 1994, 9), but
the first systematic formulation of the migration-waves theory purporting to explain
the peopling of the Philippine islands with two races and diverse cultural groups was
advanced in 1882 by Ferdinand Blumentritt in Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen
(An Attempt at Writing a Philippine Ethnography). Blumentritt was a Prague-born
professor of ethnology at the University of Leitmeritz in the Austro-Hungarian empire
(Sichrovsky 1987). In 1885 the Frenchman J. Montano published the results of his
“scientific mission,” which classified and elaborated upon three races in a discussion
of Philippine anthropology.’ By the early 1900s, theories of migration waves pervaded
the Southeast Asian region.’
The timely application of the migration-waves framework to the Philippines
colored the intellectual climate in which the early nationalists imagined the past. To
be sure, in this, as in other political questions, no monolithic uniformity of ideas
existed among the ilustrados. Isabelo de los Reyes (1889) expressed grave doubts

'A vast literature exists on this subject. Apart from those works cited elsewhere in this
article, see Agoncillo 1956; Rafael 1990; Schumacher 1991; Quibuyen 1999; Ordofiez 1998.
The question of the male elite-dominated imagining of Filipino nationhood, however, has not
been adequately addressed. Also intriguing is the transmutation of the ilustrados’ patria, or
“fatherland,” to the mang bayan, or “motherland,” of popular nationalism.
?Blumentritt’s (1980) schema of two races, Negrito and Malay, contrasted with Montano’s
(1885) framework of three racial types, Negrito, Malay, and Indonesian. Montano located the
last category mainly in Mindanao. Isabelo de los Reyes disputed Montano’s introduction of
“Indonesian” as a third racial category and supported the two-race schema of Blumentritt
(1889, 7-9). Rizal similarly subscribed to Blumentritt’s formulation.
*For instance, Walter Skeat and Charles Blagden published their grand Pagan Races of the
Malay Peninsula (1906/1966, 2 vols.), which explored the racial-linguistic affinities of aborig-
inal groups. R. J. Wilkinson (1975) also started to publish his historical sketches that located
aborigines, proto-Malays, Malays, and Europeans in a temporal-cultural sequence of migration.
 TRACING ORIGINS 607

whether the origins of population groups in the Philippines were ascertainable, but
nonetheless attempted to reconstruct the pre-Spanish past through the “new science”
of folklore (Anderson 2000). For his part, Graciano Lopez Jaena (1951) voiced a
profound ambivalence toward autochthony, as will become patent later in this article.
An ardent supporter of the ilustrado campaign for equality, known as the Propaganda
Movement, and a respected and indefatigable contributor to the ilustrado periodical,
La Solidaridad Solidarity), Blumentritt propounded key ideas that attracted a wide
consensus among the educated youth. In a propitious and decisive confluence, Rizal
was in Europe at just the historic juncture in which he could be influenced by and in
turn influence Blumentritt’s ethnology. Rizal’s perception of the past, therefore, would
be incomprehensible apart from Blumentritt, with whom he formed an indissoluble
friendship.
Because the ilustrados believed that there were no court chronicles, manuscripts,
temples, of monuments that could illumine the past, Rizal relied on the world of
science to construct history and define an identity. During his stay in Europe in the
1880s, he read countless “scientific” books on the Philippines.‘ In their corre-
spondence, Blumentritt told Rizal about the existence in the British Museum of a
rate copy of Antonio de Morga’s Swcesos de las Islas Filipinas (Events in the Philippine
Islands), originally published in 1609 (Kramer 1998, 30; Coates 1968, 155-57). Rizal
undertook the monumental project of copying and annotating Morga, his edition
finally seeing print in Paris in late 1889.° Most of the copies were sent to Manila via
Hong Kong. The book was in demand, but it was soon banned in Manila and copies
were confiscated and destroyed. As Ambeth Ocampo puts it, the book “attained ‘rare’
and ‘out of print’ status within a year of its publication” (1998, 185).
Rizal’s annotations of Morga were admittedly influenced by Blumentritt’s
Versuch.© The edifice of pre-Hispanic migration waves and the associated racial-cultural
classification scheme adumbrated by Blumentritt provided the broad template within
which race, nation, and civilization were exercised in the ilustrado mind. Dealing
with sociocultural heterogeneity was far from straightforward, however, for Rizal and
other ilustrados wrestled with the state of scientific knowledge along with the
facticities of colonial life. With some of its propositions accepted and others rejected,
racial science helped confront the fundamental existential questions of collective
being: “Who are we? Where did we come from?” Like an adopted child who grew

“Disputing de los Reyes’s criticism that he romanticized the past, Rizal stressed that he
read Antonio de Morga’s work seven times and trumpeted the historical sources to back his
claims. “On the subject of the history of the civilization of the ancient Filipinos, I think I have
read from cover to cover all the works of contemporary writers, except that of Father Plasencia and
that of another author which had been lost” (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 2:507, 508; emphasis in
original).
Although dated 1890, Rizal’s edition of Morga must have appeared in print in late 1889.
On December 28, 1889, Rizal wrote from Paris to Baldomero Roxas saying that he had sent
four copies of the book to Lipa in Batangas, Philippines (NHC 1963, 1:413). On December
31, 1889, Mariano Ponce, writing to Rizal from Barcelona, acknowledged receiving a copy
and requested ten more to be sent to the Philippines (NHC 1963, 1:439). For a critical
discussion of Rizal’s view of Philippine history in Morga, see Ocampo 1998.
Rizal credited Blumentritt’s work in a note on Sumatra as “the place of origin of Indios
Filipinos.” He advised: “With respect to the ethnology of the Philippines, as the space at our
command does not allow us to discuss the matter extensively, we recommend to the reader
the most interesting work of Professor Blumentritt, Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen
(Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1882)” (1962, 243; 1961c, 259). Because of my inability to read
German, my understanding of Blumentritt has been mediated by my reliance on Marcelino
Maceda’s English translation (Blumentritt 1980).
608 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

up in another culture but is now in quest of roots (Yngvesson and Mahoney 2000)—
reared by Mother Spain but now in search of inang bayan, or “the motherland” (Ieto
1979)—Rizal was in search of a narrative of self. He found the answer in scientific
treatises.’ But given his political project, Rizal posed a question different from that
of Blumentritt, who was concerned with classifying and ordering “the races” found
in the Philippine islands. From the ethnologist’s tacit question of “What races are
found in the Philippines?” Rizal drew and transposed the information to answer the
question with which he grappled: “Who are we?”
Mediated therefore by the modernist discourse of European science, Rizal laid the
epistemological foundations of Philippine history and identity. The influence of his
person and his germinal theory made Blumentritt a cornerstone in this foundation.
Although Blumentritt did not propound a notion of an idyllic past, his studies were
mined by Rizal to erect the idea of a “golden age” prior to Spanish conquest in the
sixteenth century. In Morga and in his essays, particularly “Sobre la Indolencia de los
Filipinos” (On the Indolence of Filipinos) (see Fores-Ganzon 1996, 2:341—45), Rizal
expressed his longing for the “ancient civilization” that he believed had been lost.
The construct of an ancient bliss and prosperity was eventually refracted, using
indigenous imageries, in Andres Bonifacio’s Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog (What
the Tagalog Should Know) (see Ileto 1979, chap. 3). Indirectly, racial science left its
traces in the revolutionary worldview of the Katipunan, the movement that waged
the revolution against Spain in 1896.
As can be gleaned from the ilustrado texts that problematize origins and identity,
this article seeks to show that the hypothesized third migration wave provided
ilustrados with the basis for claiming Malay—and Filipino—identity.* That identity,
however, was beset with contradictions born of racial science, the ilustrados’ campaign
for “assimilation,” and their intragroup differences. As a result, their imagined na-
tional community rendered highly uncertain the inclusion of what would later become
known as the nation’s “minority” cultural and ethnic communities. Indeterminate in
relation to the racial science of migration waves, the ilustrados’ mixed heritage would
also cloud the borders of Filipinoness. Today the ramifications of the ilustrado quest
for origins continue to be palpable.? As a Filipino academic, I deem it imperative to
shed light on the history of the boundaries of national belonging. Thus, this article
revisits Blumentritt’s migration-waves framework, its place in the crafting of history
and identity by Rizal and his cohort, and the consequences for nationhood of what
heuristically may be called ilustrado nationalism.

Racism, Nationalism, and Philippine

Historiography
By examining the theory of racial waves jointly with the nationalist creation of
the past and the delineation of community, this article explores the ineluctable inter-

7Unlike de los Reyes, however, whose Historia de Filipinas (History of the Philippines,
1889) debated issues of prehistory, Rizal did not write as a scientist.
‘Among the ilustrados, there was no sustained engagement with the question of origins
and Filipinoness, despite its overarching salience. Various ilustrado texts—essays in periodicals,
private correspondence, and Rizal’s exemplary works—do provide relevant but scattered state-
ments. The statements that I have encountered are analyzed in this article. Because of their
different contexts and direct concern with revolution and state building, the writings of the
revolutionaries Apolinario Mabini and Emilio Jacinto and the edicts of Emilio Aguinaldo are
excluded from the present discussion (but see Agoncillo 1960, 1973; Majul 1960, 1967).
°In addition to the present discussion, the discourse of ancient migration waves also inflects
the debate on present-day migrations (see Aguilar 2000).
 TRACING ORIGINS 609

twining of racism and nationalism in the very narrative that is supposed to provide
the nation with the moorings of its ontological being. In advancing this analysis, I
recognize that the relationship between nationalism and racism is an unsettled
theoretical question, as a sampling of positions will indicate. For instance, reacting
to Tom Nairn’s (1977) view that racism derives from nationalism, Benedict Anderson
contends that these ideologies are distinct and separate in their origins, aspirations,
and expressions (1991, 141-54). Nationalism thrives on political love and dreams of
historical destinies, in contrast to racism’s rage and obsession with contamination and
class superiority. Etienne Balibar (1991) proffers a causal schema in which racism and
nationalism are reciprocally determinative of each other. In Balibar’s view, the “broad
structure” of racism forms a supplement constitutive of the nation, providing the basis
for its fictive ethnicity and unity. George Mosse (1995) asserts that racism is distinct
from nationalism in that the former thrives on a sharp and totalistic certainty and the
latter is a loosely constructed and flexible belief that can tolerate ethnic differences.
In practice, however, the two have become difficult to distinguish, especially because
the late nineteenth century saw nationalism and racism form an alliance that allowed
racism to become operative and eventually ride upon nationalism.
Many striking parallels characterize nationalism and racism. Both ideologies
construct ideal types and countertypes and are concerned with the principle of sepa-
rateness from other political, social, or cultural entities. More important, Mosse
emphasizes that “the search for roots is basic to racism” because “the roots of the race
were thought to determine its future as well” (1995, 166-67). Racism’s use of history
and anthropology overlaps uncannily with nationalism’s longing for a biography, a
narrative of identity that prompts nationalism, according to Anderson, to conjure a
genealogy “‘up time’—towards Peking Man, Java Man, King Arthur, wherever the
lamp of archeology casts its fitful gleam” (1991, 205). To quench the thirst for
identity, modern nations conjure their existence in antiquity, pillaging available
scientific data, even as they look simultaneously to an eternal future. For both racism
and nationalism, the past holds an important key to conceptions of identity.
To expound upon the theoretical relationship of nationalism to racism is not the
object of this article. Rather, it aims to identify the contradictions from the interaction
of race and nation at the inception of Philippine nationalism in an empirically
contingent interplay that is more complex than any theoretical position would sug-
gest. Moreover, this article probes not only the colonial subject’s denouncement of
racial practices but also the appropriation and marshalling of racial science and racial
identities as a form of resistance. The ilustrados were not unique, for comparable
strategies were resorted to by other dominated, marginalized, or minoritized groups
from the 1870s to the 1920s when “science became both more specialized and
authoritative as a cultural resource and language of interpretation” (Stepan and Gilman
1993, 175).'° The ilustrados specifically drew on racial science to form a counter-

‘Siam presents an analogous appropriation of racial science as a form of resistance against

European colonialism but with the contrasting effect that, despite social hierarchies, the king-
dom’s subjects were homogenized and then nationalized; ideas of a “Tai race” also fed ultra-
nationalism and expansionism in the 1930s (see Terwiel 1978, 1991, 1996; Streckfuss 1993;
Thongchai 2000). The rise of nationalism in China and Japan in the late nineteenth century
drew on racial science to rework indigenous notions of identity into racialized constructs of
purity and descent that included some and excluded others from the nation (see Dikétter
1997). On recent paleoanthropology inflected by Chinese nationalism, see Sautman 2001; on
archaeology and ethnic/national origins and identities, see Kohl 1998. Within the scientific
community, resistance based on the idioms of science by African and Jewish Americans in the
1870-1920 period is discussed in Stepan and Gilman 1993.
610 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

discourse to the “unscientific” claims of Spanish friars and colonials. But although
they debunked charges of innate inferiority, their enmeshment in racial thought
impinged on the struggle for nationhood. The ironies and compromises of this process
strike deeply at the sense of nation, which may explain the nationalist historiography’s
avoiding frontal encounter with this past.
In the 1960s, Renato Constantino pointed out that the designation “Filipino”
originally referred to Spaniards born in the colonial Philippines, but it was trans-
formed by ilustrados into “a class concept” until it “finally embraced the entire nation
and became a means of national identification” (1969, 4-11). Because Constantino
saw the problematics of class and imperialism as preponderant, he did not pursue the
traces of race. In his last major work, William Henry Scott countered that since the
seventeenth century “Filipino” had sometimes been used to mean the people of the
Philippine islands, thus anteceding its creole referent (1994, 6-7). Scott, however,
saw no need to narrate the term’s change from a geographic to a national badge.
Citing Scott, Vicente Rafael (2000) has signaled at the ironies and everyday slippages
of the national label but, while dissecting the racism of the United States as colonizer,
has stopped at excavating the internal nexus of racism embedded in Filipino
nationalism.
Also in the 1960s, Edgar Wickberg (1964, 1965) established that the hegemonic
Filipino elite descended from Chinese mestizos who first gained economic ascendancy
in the mid-eighteenth century. The passage from Chinese mestizo to Filipino,
however, has been sidelined by the spotlight on the more edifying progress “from
Indio to Filipino,” as Domingo Abella [1978] titled his work. In the 1970s Scott
stressed that “cultural minorities” were a colonial artifact and that prior to the colonial
period they were indistinguishable from those that subsequently became the
Hispanized “majority” (1982, 28-41). Scott implied their equal claim to Filipinoness
but did not recount why many did not consider them to be Filipinos. John Schumacher
has admitted that “[i}n the Philippines the pagan Igorots and Muslim Moros were
considered and treated by Christian Filipinos as outside the civilized Filipino
community,” but claimed that their “humiliating treatment” in the 1887 Madrid
Exposition “stung many of the educated Filipinos into identifying themselves with
these their ‘brothers’ and ‘countrymen’” (1973, 67). This assertion could not explain
why, for example, Muslim leaders who decided to accept the central state had to assert
a “Muslim-Filipino” identity beginning in the 1930s, as Patricio Abinales (2000) has
elucidated. The “majority Filipinos” have considered Muslims inherently different,
while some Muslims “do not appear too happy in being called ‘Filipinos’” (Majul
1973, 346). Schumacher’s solution to the question of national inclusiveness in the
1887 exposition would appear to have closed the issue, but his has been an incomplete
account.
Paralleling the elisions that pervade the genealogy of “Filipino” are the partial
confrontations with the theory of migration waves. Under the aegis of American
colonialism, racial science continued to exert its sway upon the Filipino intelligentsia.
Using archaeological finds, H. Otley Beyer (1948) starting in the 1920s developed
his own version of the migration-waves theory, which from the late 1950s Robert Fox
and others would critique and modify.'! Since the 1970s, the theory has received
sustained criticism from anthropologists and historians. F. Landa Jocano (1975, 1991,
1998) has relentlessly argued that the theory distorts, rather than illuminates, the

"See Zamora 1967 for important contributions to this debate. Beyer’s migration-waves
theory is graphically presented in Reyes et al. 1953.
 TRACING ORIGINS 611

racial origins and affinities of Filipinos while denigrating the vitality and autoch-
thonous development of Filipino culture, which would seem to have been borrowed
wholesale from outside. Arnold Azurin has scored the theory for its colonial, racist,
and anti-Filipino framework, which fuels notions such as the Igorot “belong to another
race” (1993, 15-28). Scott has called it a “speculative rather than factual” theory that
erroneously tagged Negritos as the archipelago’s aboriginal occupants (1992, 8-12).
Rafael has criticized its racialization of Philippine society and its function in
legitimating conquest by the United States (2000, 35-37). The theory is now widely
discredited among Filipino academics and intellectuals, who routinely lament its
perpetuation in history textbooks.'? But, late twentieth-century critiques of the
theory, many of which spring from a nationalist impulse, need to be reconciled with
the theory’s salience in the formation of national consciousness. Because of its
centrality to ilustrado nationalism and because of the context that it provided for the
intertwining of race and nation in “Filipino,” the racial science of migration waves
cannot simply be wished away.

Tracing Ancestors, Differentiating the Indio

Selectively using science as memory, José Rizal portrayed “the ancient Filipinos”
(os antiguos Filipinos) as possessing a civilization of which one could be proud, in some
aspects even superior to that of Europe. This exalted past was his riposte to Spanish
taunts and insults about the crudity and racial inferiority of ‘dios, Spain’s colonial
subjects. Thus, gender equality and cognatic kinship among the preconquest elites
elicited the remark that “the Filipinos acted very much in conformity with natural
laws, being ahead of the Europeans” (Rizal 1962, 276; 1961c, 294). In regard to
thievery, Rizal opined that “the ancient Filipinos” resorted to a “practice that leaves
a door to repentance and saves the honor of the repentant [which] ought to have been
imitated by the Europeans” (1962, 287; see also 1961c, 306). In case this first method
failed, “the ancient Filipinos used another method already more perfect and civilized
inasmuch as it resembled the judgment of God and the practices of the Middle Ages”
(1962, 287; see also 1961c, 306; emphasis in original). The precolonial mode of
justice—which prompted Rizal to sigh: “;Si nuestros antepasados resucitasen!” (If only
our ancestors could be resurrected!)—was far better than Spanish practices, which
failed to investigate the complaints aired in 1887 by tenants, including Rizal’s family,
against the Dominican friars who owned the Calamba estate (1890, 90; Fores-Ganzon
1996, 2:88-93).
The glories of the preconquest golden age of ovr ancestors underscored the failure
and injustices of Spanish colonialism. The friars were faulted for the colony’s back-
wardness. Excluding the Jesuits, Rizal asserted that “after the religious saw their
position consolidated, they began to spread calumnies and to debase the races of the
Philippines, with a view to giving themselves more importance, always making
themselves indispensable, and using the alleged crudity of the Indio to excuse their

Similarly, A. Terry Rambo, Karl Hutterer, and Kathleen Gillogly have lamented the
durability of the migration-waves model in Southeast Asia: “The persistence of such a theo-
retically dubious model for such an extended period, despite its general rejection elsewhere in
the world, raises troubling questions about the state of ethnological research in Southeast Asia”
(1988, 3).
612 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

stupidity and ignorance” (1961c, 329; trans. author). Debased and brutalized, the
ancestors’ “intellectual level” plummeted: “In the past they knew how to reason; at
present they are satisfied with merely asking and believing” (Rizal 1961c, 307; trans.
author). With the loss of reason, the “ancient Filipinos” were kept in the dark. The
ancestors regressed.
Who were these ancestors? In posing this question, I call attention to the fact
that the ilustrados did not reckon the forebears of all the peoples in the archipelago
as ancestors, nor did they consider all natives to be indios. In Rizal’s construct, not
all the “races” at the time of the Spanish conquest were at par in their state of culture
and capacity for civilization. The multiple and autonomous preconquest social groups
that Rizal represented as /as sociedades malayo-fulipinas (the Philippine-Malayan
societies) were separable into two distinct categories by his time (1961c, 298). On
one hand were “the civilized Filipinos” (os Filipinos civilizados), who did not resist
convetsion to Catholicism; on the other were “the mountain tribes” (as tribus
montaiesas), who resisted and therefore were not civilized (see, for example, Rizal
1961c, 332; 1962, 311). The ancestors were to be identified partially on the basis of
“race”—“Malayness’—and partially on “civilization,” principally acceptance of
Spanish culture.
In tracing lineage, Ferdinand Blumentritt’s Versuch appeared to have served Rizal’s
purposes well. The ancestors were not found in the first migration wave comprising
Negritos and were also not found in the second wave, which, although composed of
“Malays,” had taken to the mountains. The “ancient Filipinos” with whom Rizal and
other ilustrados deciphered a racial and cultural affinity were found in the third
migratory wave of “Malays,” who settled in the lowlands. In conformity with the
prevailing ideas of the time, the plot underpinning the migration-waves theory was
one of progress, with the last wave as the bearer of civilization.!> Rizal viewed Spanish
colonialism’s intervention in this linear plot with ambiguity. When he was not
thinking about how the friar establishment obstructed progress, Rizal appreciated the
access to European civilization and modernity that the colonial relationship with Spain
made possible. But when friars occupied his gaze, Rizal saw the Spanish conquest as
nothing but a scourge that alienated him from his descent and deprived him of history
and identity. Such overpowering moments drove him to recuperate the past. His
“nostalgia for lost origins,” however, did not encompass all of the three hypothesized
migration waves but was partial to the third.

The First Wave

Akin to previous and later suppositions, Blumentritt painted Negritos as
constituting the first wave of migrants.'4 Of a distinct “race,” Negritos were “the
original owners of the land,” who had been pushed into the forested interiors, except
in the remote northeastern coast of Luzon, where they were “still in possession of their

“The paradigmatic narrative of immigration as progress is not restricted to European

thought. In Flores Island in eastern Indonesia, the descendants of Sumatran migrants assert
their dominance vis-a-vis aborigines by claiming to be the bearers of civilization (Erb 1997).
‘De los Reyes doubted the view that Negritos were the aboriginal inhabitants of the
Philippines (1889, 16), a point repeated a century later by Scott (1992, 8-12). Against those
who saw Negritos as descended from Papuans of Melanesia, de los Reyes preferred the view of
their descent from “the black race,” which included the Sakai of the Malay peninsula (1889,
3-4). For a succinct statement on current views of Southeast Asian prehistory, see Bellwood
1992.
 TRACING ORIGINS 613

old native land” (Blumentritt 1980, 18).!° In Antonio de Morga’s account, Negritos
figured as “natives who are of black complexion,” whom he described as “barbarians
of trifling mental capacity, who have no fixed homes or settlements” (Rizal 1962,
243; 1961c, 259). These nomadic “barbarians,” according to Morga, were dangerous
because they pillaged the settlement of “the other natives.” On these characterizations
Rizal made no comment in any of his annotations, as he was wont to do when he felt
that the Spaniards demeaned his people. His silence implied that Negritos were not
his people and did not deserve his defense. His reticence was even more notable in
that Blumentritt defended Negritos as “a lively and talented people contrary to the
report of the Spaniards who have described them as being without any form of
intelligence” (1980, 24). Combating the Negritos’ fearsome image, Blumentritt
stressed that their isolation made them “almost powerless to resist their enemies”
(1980, 30-31).
Overlooking Blumentritt’s point of view, Rizal conformed with the standard
colonial practice, which, Scott notes, routinely excluded Negritos from the rubric of
indio (1994, 8). Denigrated by Spaniards and their lowland subjects, Negritos were
strangers, an alien race that the Europeans and “Malay Christians” placed beyond the
reach of civilization. Even the most “enlightened” considered Negritos inherently
primitive.
In reviewing a pamphlet authored by conservative Spanish mestizo Eduardo P.
Casal y Ochoa, an ilustrado using the pen name Bagong-Tauo (New Man) criticized
the author for exculpating Spain from responsibility for conditions in the Philippines
(Schumacher 1973, 53-55, 70-70). Bagong-Tauo, however, conceded Casal’s point
about the Negritos’ racial inferiority in this passage from the March 15, 1889, issue
of La Solidaridad: “But, we shall render enthusiastic praise to Sefior Casal for these
declarations: ‘From the Tagalog to the primitive Negrito, there is a descending scale
of culture, which induces some learned ethnographers to believe in the inferiority of
races. In Oceania as well as in civilized Europe, there exist social hierarchies of
knowledge and culture.’ This is also our belief, and therefore, with due impartiality,
we shall not begrudge him our praise” (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:60, trans. author).
Despite differences in political sentiments, critic and author shared the universalist
view concerning civilizational hierarchies. In the Philippines, that hierarchy was
unabashedly race based: Tagalog held the highest rank, “primitive Negritos” the
lowest. Although not all ilustrados agreed on the status of the Tagalog, agreement
converged on Negritos as lying at the bottom. This notion of primitivity defined the
outer limits shared by ilustrado thought.
The anatomy of Negritos, as members of a “wild race,” was taken as evidence in
itself of their incapacity for civilization. They were outside the ilustrados’ sphere of
legitimate knowledge and pursuit of justice. None felt any pang of conscience that
“ancient Filipinos” might have unfairly dislodged Negritos from their “original
possession” of the land. After all, they were not ancestors. Moreover, their dispossession
was attributed by Blumentritt to the second wave, who also were not “ancient
Filipinos.”

The Second Wave

In Blumentritt’s schema, “invading Malayans” composed the second migration
wave.'° They came from the south and gradually moved north, settling initially along

Although Negritos have dwelled in various lowland areas around the country, the wide-
spread impression, then and now, is that they are a mountainous people.
‘Beyer popularized this wave’s composition as “Indonesians,” with A and B subcategories.
614. FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

the coasts and displacing Negritos. In turn, they would be driven to the interiors by
the next wave of migrants but not before their biological constitution was altered.
The second-wave Malayans “arrived in the Philippines during the time when there
were still many Negritos” with whom they intermarried, resulting in “the strong
Negrito racial elements found among them” (Blumentritt 1980, 13). Blumentritt
adduced this racial mixing with Negritos rather than with Chinese and Japanese, as
other scholars at that time had claimed. Evidently, the second wave’s retreat to the
mountainous interior and subsequent resistance to Spanish rule and culture were
consistent with racial concepts of méissage, which would envisage intermarriage with
“inferior” Negritos as diluting the intrinsic attributes of these “Malayans,” rendering
them susceptible to displacement by the next wave. Their descendants, according to
Blumentritt, were the “Igorots, Ifugaos, Guinanons, Apayaos, Zambals, Abacas,
Isinays, Italonons, Ibilaos, Ilongots, and Kalingas” (1980, 13).
“Contamination” by the Negrito removed second-wave “Malayans” from consid-
etation as ancestors. However, they still fitted Rizal’s broad category of sociedades
malayo-filipinas and the specific subcategory of “mountain tribes.” As Scott would stress
a century later (1982, 28-41; 1992), Blumentritt’s description of the Igorot high-
lighted many practices similar to those of the Tagalog at the time of the Spanish
conquest (1980, 66-85). Not impressed that the Igorot and the Tagalog shared
something fundamental, Rizal suggested in his annotations that resistance to Spain
set back “mountain tribes” as primitives, unlike the Tagalog, who became “civilized
Filipinos.” Their backwardness was virtually inherent in their alleged nature as second
wavers. In colonial society, the Spanish-era word “Igorrotes” was applied to all sorts
of mountain dwellers and became synonymous with primitivity and savagery. As
Blumentritt noted even from a distance (he never set foot on the Philippines),
“Together with the name Igorots much nonsense is attached” (1980, 66). The early
nationalists generally shared in such “nonsense.”
Only during the 1887 Exposicién de las Islas Filipinas (Exposition of the
Philippine Islands) did the youthful patriots have a chance to see themselves as linked
to “tribes” whose members were brought to Madrid for display. This delegation
consisted of eight Igorots, eight Moros, two people from the Marianas, two from the
Carolines, and about twenty-four others (including Negritos) from the Philippines
(L6pez Jaena 1951, 152-53; Schumacher 1973, 53-73; Scott 1974, 275-79; 1975,
12-13).
That “mountain tribes” were made to represent the Philippines was distasteful
and offensive to ilustrados, who were stirred by the appalling accommodation and
treatment of the human exhibits—mirroring the way that Spain dealt with the whole
colony. In addition to the affront to basic human dignity, the exposition was
unacceptable precisely because “savages” embodied the Philippines. Encapsulating
ilustrado feeling, Graciano Lépez Jaena wrote, “[t}he Exposition does not represent
those Islands with dignity or, at least, with decency; it shows nothing but the
backwardness of the Philippines. Everything modern, related to its progress, has not
been brought to the Exposition” (1951, 151-52). Long before the actual exhibit, word
circulated about the impending fiasco. In November 1886, Rizal reported to
Blumentritt: “According to the newspapers and the information I have, it will not be
an exposition of the Philippines but, rather, an exposition of Igorrotes, who will play
music, cook, sing, and dance” (1961b, 22; 1961a, 30; trans. author). As would be
replicated in St. Louis in 1904 (see Rydell 1984; Vergara 1995; see also Afable 2004;
Buangan 2004), in Madrid Igorots became emblematic of Philippine backwardness.
 TRACING ORIGINS 615

The Madrid Exposition was wide ranging and did not feature only Igorots. Paul
Kramer has observed that it was meant “to reinforce colonial ties to the Pacific,
through promotion of investments, and in addition, greater study and symbolic
affirmation of Spanish dominion,” in light of which “several Filipino #/ustrados received
awatds for their art and scholarship” (1998, 21-22). Among the awards was a silver
medallion for Isabelo de los Reyes’s E/ Folk-Lore Filipino (Philippine Folklore, 1994).
But confirming the apprehension of ilustrados such as Evaristo Aguirre, who wrote
Rizal about official preparations in Madrid for the exposition (NHC 1963, 2:66-70,
76-78), the exposition failed to capture the attention of authorities in Spain. It did
succeed in giving prominence to the Igorot as the prototype of the “backward”
Philippines. The word “Igorrote” even acquired currency in Madrid (Scott 1974, 277-
78). Overwhelmed by the Madrilefios’ taunts, Rizal and other ilustrados were caught
in the frenzy of counterreaction.
At one level, because the Igorot did not exhaust what the Philippines stood for,
the young nationalists saw them as unrepresentative of their homeland, but the Igorot
wete also seen as atypical in that they were not “the best” that the Philippines could
parade before civilized Europe. The Igorot were “rare individuals” (Rizal 1961b, 106;
1961a, 190; emphasis in original). In stressing the word “individuals,” Rizal might
well have been suggesting that the Igorot were a numerical minority, a rarity whose
condition should be concealed rather than exposed to stain impressions of the Phil-
ippines. They were an oddity undeserving of public attention. These “tare individ-
uals,” said Rizal, served no purpose other than to entertain the busybodies of Madrid.
In fact, Rizal and his friends would have favored an exposition on the Philippines that
displayed its manufacturing, hence “progressive,” aspects—as if these would exhaust
what the country stood for and as if Europeans would be impressed. Plans were afoot
ptecisely for such an exhibit. Rizal intimated to Blumentritt in June 1887: “Five years
ago we wanted to hold an exhibition of Filipino workers, weavers, etc., and we still
want to hold one.... We want an industrial exposition, but not an exposition of
human beings...” (Rizal 1961b, 106; see also 1961a, 190-91). Because Rizal was
unaware of the artisanal and hydraulic-engineering skills of the Igorot, he thought
that a display of craft and proletarian workers would showcase to the modern capitalist
world system the Philippines’ best. At the same time, he implied that displaying
industrial workers would no longer be “an exposition of human beings,” suggesting
that, under the sway of mechanical philosophy, such workers cease to be human
beings. With industrialization as the ideal, ilustrado thinking was plainly in line with
social evolutionism, which held science, technology, and modern industry as the
pinnacle of civilization (Adas 1989).
In the bosom of Mother Spain, however, the chasm that separated the “civilized”
from the “uncivilized” in the Philippines was bridged, as Schumacher (1973) has
noted. The sympathy for and glimmers of identification with the Igorot were quite
genuine for some ilustrados. In August 1885, de los Reyes published in Madrid
“Terminologia del Folk-Lore” (Terminology of Folklore), which began by declaring
himself, an Ilocano, as “brother of the jungle dwellers, the Aeta, the Igorot and the
Tinguian and born in this remote Spanish colony, where civilization shines but with
a very faint light” (1994, 20; trans. author). This stunning opening line would cause
the Manila press “to lampoon him for years afterwards” (Scott 1982, 251). Directed
at Spanish folklorists, this opening sentence, which continued with the author’s
“confession” of his lack of knowledge of the new field of folklore, was written tongue
616 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

in cheek, as de los Reyes went on to debate with European folklorists.'? Other

ilustrados could not comprehend de los Reyes’s mischievous style and claim to
brotherhood with the “forest dwellers.” About two years later, the outrage sparked by
the exposition prompted Evaristo Aguirre, Rizal’s creole friend who considered
himself “purely Filipino,” to write a newspaper article referring to the dehumanized
persons on display at the Retiro zoological garden as “our brothers” (Schumacher 1973,
53, 67). Rizal also referred to the persons on exhibit as “my compatriots” and “my
countrymen” (mis paisanos). In a moment of inclusiveness, Lépez Jaena referred to the
“simple folks” Gencilla gente) collectively as “Filipinos” (1951, 155-59). In their
humanism, the ilustrados felt a fraternal bond with the individuals whom they
believed were demeaned and exploited by the exposition.
What did this inclusiveness imply? In his compassion for “compatriots” on
display, Rizal embraced the Carolines and Marianas, along with the areas whence
“tribal” persons came. The territorial expanse of Rizal’s pais (country) matched the
inclusion of these Pacific islands in the Philippine Exposition. Although the Carolines
were a budgetary drain (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 2:360-G61), many ilustrados considered
the islands an integral part of the Philippines. Attachment to the Carolines was
probably created by the banishment of indios to these far-flung islands (Fores-Ganzon
1996, 2:538-41, 575-76). In 1891 Nicolas San Pascual asserted in La Solidavidad
that Mindanao “is less important compared with the Carolines” (Fores-Ganzon 1996,
3:490-91). Similarly, the Marianas were deemed part of the Philippines and, like the
Carolines, loomed larger than Mindanao. In the 1890 proposal to create electoral
districts for the hoped-for representation in the Cortes, Marcelo H. del Pilar defined
the district of Cebu as including the “Marianas and the districts of Mindanao”; the
other electoral districts were those of Manila, Ilocos, Camarines, and Iloilo (Fores-
Ganzon 1996, 2:242—-43)the proposed five electoral districts apparently based on
the extant ecclesiastical divisions.'* Sympathies at the Madrid Exposition revealed the
territorial boundary of the ilustrados’ Philippines, which was broader or more
malleable than the geographic limits later drawn by American colonialism (see figure).
Unlike their inclusion of the Marianas in the political community and notwith-
standing the avowals by a few, however, rare was the ilustrado who prized “mountain
tribes” in deep comradeship—except possibly de los Reyes, if his avowal of
brotherhood with “jungle dwellers” is taken at face value. Although some ilustrados

To Scott, the opening statement was “a confession—or boast” (1982, 251). Reprinted
in E/ Folk-Lore Filipino, the claim to brotherhood with Aetas, Igorots, and Tinguianes was not
supported by a reasonable discussion of their folklore. Igorots figured in the “administrative
folklore” centered on the fictional character Isio, who was driven by the corrupt system to flee
to the mountains, where he deluded Igorots with magic even as he uplifted them with his
civilizing mission. The tale was “a naughty exposé but one rendered so subtle by its comic
dialogue” (Scott 1982, 258). Integral to its comic success were cheap shots at Igorots, which
did not aid in rectifying prevailing stereotypes. For a different view, see Anderson 2000.
'sThis was pointed out to me by Father John Schumacher. The dioceses that were in place
in the Spanish Philippines based on a ruling of 1595 were Manila, Cebu, Nueva Caceres
(centered in Naga in the Camarines), and Nueva Segovia (with its capital in Vigan in the
Ilocos officially since 1758). The diocese of Jaro was created in 1865 to include the provinces
of Iloilo, Capiz, Antique, the Calamianes, Negros, Zamboanga, and the present Davao prov-
inces. Until Jaro’s establishment, the diocese of Cebu had been the most extensive, covering
the Visayan Islands, Mindanao, and the Mariana Islands. No Spanish bishop of Cebu ever
visited the Marianas, however, until the bishopric of Romualdo Jimeno (1847-72) (see Fer-
nandez 1979, 28-35). In effect, after 1865 northern Mindanao and the Marianas were part of
Cebu; southern Mindanao belonged to Jaro (Iloilo).
 TRACING ORIGINS 617

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Figure. Rizal’s sketch of the spheres of influence of imperial powers,

1889 (Craig 1914, 52).

did identify with the Igorot in 1887, being actually jeered and called “Igorot” was
deeply humiliating. In a controversial article in the October 31, 1889, issue of La
Solidaridad, Antonio Luna, using the pen name Taga-llog, complained that in Madrid
young ladies stared at him and muttered, “;Jesds que horroroso! ... Es un igorvote!”
(Jesus! What a hideous sight! . . . It’s an Igorot!”) (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:444). The
ilustrados could not deny the Igorots’ backwardness, and when that backwardness was
ascribed to them they personally felt disgraced. The embarrassment persisted among
future generations of Filipino elites. A century had to pass before identification with
Igorots became cool, as when the alternative Filipino filmmaker Kidlat Tahimik wore
an Igorot G-string in wintry New York in the late 1980s.

The Third Wave

Blumentritt contended that the third migratory wave was composed of a “second
group of Malay invaders” who possessed “a higher civilization and milder morals as
compared to the first Malay wave. These new invaders, composed of the Tagalogs,
Pampanguinios, Visayans, Bicolanos, Ilocanos, Pangasinanons and Cagayanons,
conquered the older population groups and drove them from their homes along the
coasts into the hinterlands” (1980, 14). Blumentritt specifically named Hispanized
populations in the lowlands of Luzon and the Visayas (but ot Mindanao) as composing
the third wave.
618 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

That this wave supposedly drove away the settled population of “Malays” from
the lowlands did not disturb the ilustrados. The “higher civilization and milder
morals” that they brought to the Philippines justified their invasion. Conquest of the
third wave was successful. By the time Spaniards set foot in the Philippines, people
of the third wave were said to have “occupied all the coastal plains of the archipelago”
(Blumentritt 1980, 14). This physical domination of the lowlands and coastal plains
also marked the social separation and distinctiveness of the third wave, which
Blumentritt and the ilustrados could not imagine as intermarrying with the first and
second waves. Because they grew up with “ethnic” identities such as Bicolano,
Capampangan, Ilocano, Tagalog, Visayan, and so on—isomorphic with old colonial
administrative divisions—ilustrados could see themselves grouped into a single entity,
“the third wave,” and recognize their putative ancestors: the last-wave “Malays” were
the “ancient Filipinos.”
Morga had written that the people of “Manila and its surroundings were not
natives of the island [of Luzon}, but immigrants, who populated it in past times, they
being Malayan natives or natives of their islands and remote lands” (Rizal 1961c,
258-59; 1962, 243; trans. author). To that statement, Rizal appended a note which
claimed that “[a]ncient traditions had made Sumatra the place of origin of Indios
Filipinos” (1961c, 259; 1962, 243; trans. author). Rizal was probably influenced by
Francisco Colin’s assertion in the seventeenth century that the people of Sumatra had
a “tradition” of migration and of peopling other islands and that the Pampangos of
central Luzon spoke the same language as Sumatrans (1663/1900, 1:16).\° Evidently,
the “Indios Filipinos” whom Rizal had in mind belonged to the third wave, and he
wanted to rekindle their “higher civilization and milder morals”; however, “{t]hese
traditions were completely lost as well as the mythology and genealogies that old
historians tell us about, thanks to the zeal of the religious in extirpating every national,
gentile, or idolatrous memento” (1962, 243; 1961c, 259). Rizal’s lament was
immediately followed by the advice to the reader to consult Blumentritt’s “most
interesting work,” Versuch einer Ethnographie der Philippinen. Ethnological science, Rizal
was confident, affirmed the ancient civilization of Tagalog and other “Indios
Filipinos.”
Ethnological knowledge also served to accentuate seemingly inherent differences
between “Indios Filipinos” and the earlier arrival of “savage Malays.” In contrast to
the latter, third-wave “Malays” possessed a civilization comparable, if not superior, to
that of Europe. In his later work Las Razas Indigenas de Filipinas Indigenous Races of
the Philippines, 1890), Blumentritt dignified ilustrado sentiment by cataloging the
Bicol, Bisaya, Ilocano, Pampango, Pangasin, and Tagalog as raza malaya de antigua
civilizacién (Malay race with an ancient civilization). In contrast, the Negrito and
groups of second-wave provenance were not honored with such a description.
That lowland indios of the “Malayan race” possessed an “ancient civilization”
seemed completely self-evident because the ilustrados could see in themselves their
incontrovertible capacity for Hispanic civilization. Yes, there were many of their kind
who had not been “enlightened,” but this was not of their own making but that of
Spanish friars. All they needed was the light of modern education, which was what
ilustrados sought to impart. As Rizal intoned, the imperative was “enlightenment,
enlightenment, the education of our people, education and enlightenment” (1961a,
580; 1961b, 306; trans. author).

Father Schumacher informed me that Rizal’s source was “undoubtedly” Colin.

 TRACING ORIGINS 619

“Indios Filipinos” were not to be placed at par with “mountain tribes,” who were
believed to be devoid of ancient civilization. To equate them was an insult to
ilustrados. Blumentritt’s observation that many Igorot practices were similar to those
of the ancient Tagalog was conveniently ignored (1980, 66-85). To counter the views
of La Oceania Espafiola (Spanish Oceania), La Solidaridad featured an article titled “The
Philippines before the Blood Compact” (“Filipinas antes del pacto de sangre”) in its
issue of December 31, 1891. It asserted: “Our colleague is gravely mistaken if he
believes that the Spaniards found the Filipinos of the coast in the same state as the
Igorot of today, because they, according to Chirino, Morga, Colin, San Antonio, San
Agustin, and others, were already organized into large towns and not small settlements
(vanchertasy’ (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 3:632, 634; trans. author). The article proceeded to
list the hallmarks of the “ancient civilization” of “Indios Filipinos”: their own alphabet
and widespread literacy; silk clothing, Indian cotton, costly jewelry, and a fine taste
for clothing; cannons and fortifications; porcelain plates; a legal system based on gentle
(suave) Customs; a primitive religion “highly respected by modern Orientalists and
philosophers”; and a form of slavery that was better than what the early Spanish settlers
were said to have established (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 3:633—34). The article’s final
rebuttal extolled the thirst for knowledge and learning of “the indigenous (¢/ indigena)
or Tagalog.” Unwittingly signaling differences among ilustrados, the article made
“indigenous” and “Tagalog” commensurate and interchangeable. Symptomatically,
other ethnolinguistic groups were excluded from indigeny and nativeness.
Despite his open disagreement with Rizal on the portrayal of preconquest times,
de los Reyes held the view that “[w}hen the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines in
1521, it was no longer a savage pueblo. Its inhabitants were already grouped into
pueblos” (1994, 288, 290; trans. author). In his E/ Folk-Love Filipino, de los Reyes
listed several indicators of civilization, such as mercantile relations with neighboring
polities in Asia, the use of firearms, a not-so-backward religion, a system of writing,
and customary law. But while his portrayal of the pre-Hispanic past suggested that
Luzon and the Visayas shared the same cultural heritage, de los Reyes boldly declared
the Iocos as his patria adorada (beloved country [fatherland}) (1994, 18). Although
he claimed to have changed his earlier view that “Ilocanos were a distinct race from
Tagalog,” his catalog of IHocano customs asserted that “Ilocanos are the equal of the
rest of civilized Filipinos” (194). In terms of physique, industriousness, frugality, and
self-confidence, the Ilocano was even better than the Tagalog (de los Reyes 1994,
194-97). In the “faraway” Ilocos existed cultural authenticity, for there Ilocano
practices and beliefs had been “preserved with great purity, and closely approximated
those at the time of Conquest” (de los Reyes 1994, 192, 194). The defense of Iocanos
in the Ilocos was perhaps called forth by the low status of Ilocanos in Manila, many
of whom worked as domestic servants and drivers of horse-drawn carriages (de los
Reyes 1994, 202; Rizal 1961a, 106; 1961b, 61-62). De los Reyes’s unremitting “‘my-
beloved-Ilocos’ stance” (Scott 1982, 270) gained Rizal’s ire as an attempt to
“Tlokanoize the Philippines” (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 2:506; see also Rizal 1961a, 288;
1961b, 167). Thus, the third wave was not a cohesive group; competition between
the Ilocano and the Tagalog prefigured what would later be decried as “regionalism”
that, dragging in “the rest of civilized Filipinos,” coexisted in a fraught relationship
with nation building throughout the twentieth century (see Aguilar 1998b).
The contest over Tagalog or Ilocano supremacy, however, did not enfeeble the
concept of “native”’—indio—whose meaning was bounded and restricted. When
ilustrados appropriated the term mdio in nationalist fashion, they had in mind
specifically the Catholicized “Malays.” That the natives were not included in the
620 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

Inquisition led Rizal to remark in his edition of Morga: “A wise foresight, for
otherwise the Indios might have fled away from Christianization” (1962, 313; 1961c,
334). Thus, indios designated those who underwent religious conversion, with the
Tagalog as the exemplary indio. By implication, those who “fled”—mountain tribes
and Muslims, for example—were not indios. In an article in the September 15, 1889,
issue of La Solidaridad (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:352), Rizal used the phrase igorrotes é
indios Igorot and indio) which confirmed the link at the same time that it demarcated
the discursive boundary between these two categories. In critiquing the 1887
exposition, Lépez Jaena was adamant that “genuine Filipinos, those of the autoch-
thonous race” (os genuinamente filipinos, los de la raza autéctona), were not given a “place
of honor” (1951, 155, 164); indeed, “genuine Filipinos” were excluded from its
organizing committee. But in the same breath he used the phrase igorrotes y filipinos
(gorot and Filipino) (Lépez Jaena 1951, 166). One could not help but suspect that
Lopez Jaena considered ilustrados such as himself as the “genuine Filipinos” who
should have been involved in planning the exposition. Apparently, for Rizal and Lopez
Jaena, “Igorot” and indio represented dichotomous entities. In the aftermath of the
exposition, Antonio Luna was even more forthright in chiding Madrilefios for
ignorantly failing to make the all-important distinctions: “To these people Chinese,
Igorots and Filipinos are one and the same” (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:444—45). Luna’s
point was unmistakable: Filipinos should not be confused with Chinese—neither
should Filipinos be confused with Igorots, for the Igorot was not an indio and not a
Filipino. Lopez Jaena cited Luna’s statement, making the further claim that Filipinos
all over Spain were being “shamelessly mortified” by even educated persons with
epithets such as “chinos, chinitos, negros, igorrotes’ (1951, 171). The ilustrados were
enraged: Why do these Spaniards not comprehend that “Chinese, Chinks, blacks, and
Igorots” are not Filipinos?

The Campaign for Assimilation and Its

Exclusionary Politics of Numbers

Despite the furor surrounding the 1887 exposition, the ilustrados essentially
excluded Negritos, highland peoples, and Muslims from the national community that
they had begun to imagine. This exclusion can be seen in José Rizal’s blueprint for a
Philippine studies conference to be hosted in Paris by the fledgling Asociacién
Internacional de Filipinistas (International Association of Philippinists). Drafted in
early 1889, the program (which did not materialize) included panels on the “origin,”
“classification,” and “civilization” of the islands’ inhabitants “before the Spanish
arrival” and panels on “the influence of Spanish civilization on the social life of the
Philippines” (Rizal 1961la, 429-39; 1961b, 229-32; trans. author). On Ferdinand
Blumentritt’s suggestion, a new section was added to discuss “[rlazas y regiones
independientes in which we shall include the sultanates and independent tribes (Moros,
Negritos, and so on)” (Rizal 1961a, 454; 1961b, 237; trans. author). If not for
Blumentritt’s intervention, Rizal’s cognitive map would not have included the
“independent races and regions” within the same territorial area supposedly designated
by las Islas Filipinas, or “the Philippines.”?° Moreover, the added section’s title

*°This omission is interesting because in chapter 45 of Nol# Me Tangere, as Ben Anderson

has pointed out to me, the aggrieved Elias speaks of his desire to flee to the north and “live
 TRACING ORIGINS 621

contained the insidious suggestion that Moros, Negritos, and others represented
“races” distinct from and inferior to indios. While the indio lived under Spanish
hegemony, non-indio tribes existed in regions unsubjugated by Spain. Implied were
two divergent historical experiences and two unrelated political projects that fell along
a well-demarcated racial divide and civilizational ranking. Evidently, Rizal’s ilustrado
thought had been influenced by European racial evolutionism, backed by “purportedly
scientific evidence that innate intellectual and moral differences made cultural
exchanges between ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ races impossible” (Adas 1989, 319).
Blumentritt’s intervention might not have alerted in Rizal the necessity to overcome
such a dichotomy actively, merely the need to “fill in the gaps” that would be created
by excluding non-indios who lived in spaces encompassed by the name “the
Philippines.”
Sensitive that other Europeans were scoffing at them as “owners only of the
littoral,” Spanish authorities in Manila from the 1880s onward sought to conquer the
atchipelago’s mountainous interior and subjugate the peoples there in a second
veduccién, the forcible creation of settlements that was attempted at the start of
conquest (Aguilar 1998a, 157-58). The ilustrados did not value this late imperial
goal, however, and readily detached themselves from the social and physical spaces
occupied by “independent tribes” and “wild races.” The ilustrados’ imagined com-
munity was testricted to the already-colonized lowland inhabitants of third-wave
ancestry, those whom Spain had designated as indios. It excluded, as Scott notes, the
“mountain peoples of northern Luzon,... whether called Igorots, Tinguians, or
Zambals,” whom Spaniards “collectively referred to as tvibus independientes [inde-
pendent tribes} rather than indios” (1974, 3). Molded by the nomenclature and reach
of the Spanish colonial state, the ilustrados found it difficult to think otherwise. Thus,
the early nationalists laid claim to the same sphere over which the colonial state
exercised its authority, and excluded the zones that had eluded the state’s incorporative
advances. The embryonic nation was conceived, perhaps unavoidably, in the hearth of
colonial society. Within the cradle of the state’s delimited space was reared the
consciousness of being native or indigenous—the indio identity—despite a supposedly
ancestral immigrant past. Corollarily, descendants of “older” immigrant groups
beyond the state’s reach were denied the status of rootedness and ultimately of being
“genuine Filipinos.”
In addition to the mold of the colonial state, the genesis of Filipino nationalism
was also entangled with the appropriation and internalization of a high-minded
imperialist agenda. The ilustrados’ campaign for “assimilation” was influenced by the
French colonial dictum of assimilation, a logical outcome of France’s mission
civilisatvice. France’s seeming imperial liberality impressed the ilustrados. Rizal
appreciated that “the French spirit does not shine in zeal for colonization” (Fores-
Ganzon 1996, 2:37), while Antonio Luna honored French colonies with the superlative
description as places where “the road to a genuine policy of assimilation of the most
beautiful of civilizations” had been paved (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:358; trans. author).
Ilustrados became enthusiastic admirers of the French idea of a “civilizing mission”—
unaware of the injuries that were being inflicted upon the Khmer and Vietnamese
(Barnett 1990; Marr 1971). Imperial France marked a standard which, in their view,
Spain failed miserably. In France itself, questions were raised in Parliament concerning
among the infidel and independent tribes (as tribus infieles e independientesy’ (Rizal 1887/1995,
250), giving the autonomous status of those groups (but not the Muslim and other groups in
the south) some positive connotation. The novel was completed in Europe in 1886. A few
years later, the campaign for assimilation would appear to have required a different kind of
political imagination.
622 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

the cultural assimilation of “natives,” but assimilation in French imperial thought

indisputably meant representation of the colony in the legislature of the imperial
country (Lewis 1961). Legitimated by the French model and inspired by the
recollection that Spain’s Cadiz Constitution of 1812 (revoked in 1815) once made for
such provision, Philippine representation in the Cortes became a central plank of the
Propaganda Movement’s campaign for assimilation.
This campaign was meant to convince Spain that it ought to be a “proper”
imperial power—lest “Spain perjure herself by reneging on pledges made in the
“blood compact” (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:380-81).7! In their view, Filipinos deserved
fair treatment because they were Spaniards. On legal grounds and by patent cultural
affinities but not on biological terms, ilustrados deemed themselves Spaniards.** When
the Pangasinan provincial governor ordered that indios take off their hats to show
respect when meeting peninsular Spaniards, Graciano Lépez Jaena countered that it
was preposterous because “the indio is as much a Spaniard as a peninsular” and stressed
that indios need not concern themselves with “greetings nor kissing hands (besamanos),
but in fulfilling their duties as good Spanish citizens (cindadano espaitoly’ (Fores-Ganzon
1996, 3:502—3). Having internalized the ideology of empire, the Propagandists found
nothing odd in claiming equal entitlement to citizenship rights like “other” Spaniards.
They were also at ease in talking about “our African possessions” (Fores-Ganzon 1996,
1:322-23), as if Filipinos were co-rulers in “savage” Africa.
In the campaign for assimilation, however, the “primitive races” were reckoned
as a hindrance because they seemingly overshadowed the indios and conveyed the
message that the Philippines had not reached “the stage of enlightenment that would
merit the concession of political rights” (Lopez Jaena 1951, 151). This perception,
the ilustrados believed, had to be rectified by placing primitivity in quantitative
perspective. Blumentritt’s prologue to Rizal’s edition of Morga contains a most telling
statement of the boundaries of the ilustrados’ imagined community. In response to
Spanish objections, Blumentritt wrote:
La inmensidad de las razas salvajes no importa, porque cuenta con un pequefio ntiimero
de almas, y los Filipinos no pretenden la extensién de las libertades de la vida
constitucional sobre las tribus salvajes.
{The magnitude of the savage races does not matter because they constitute only a
small number of souls, and the Filipinos do not demand the extension of the liberties
of constitutional life over the savage tribes.}
(Rizal 1961c, xvii; trans. author)

?1As in other histories, a critical juncture in the nationalist narrative emplotment of the
past was the conquest. The question of why the islands fell to Spanish hands called for a
satisfactory answer. The ilustrado solution to this issue reached Katipunan members through
Andres Bonifacio’s 1896 manifesto, “Ang Dapat Mabatid ng mga Tagalog” (What the Tagalog
Should Know), in which he declared that the Spaniards deceived “our leaders” with “enticing
words,” making them believe that the Spaniards would “[{g}uide us toward increased better-
ment and awakening of our minds” (Ileto 1979, 832). Spain must be held accountable, how-
ever, because its leader, Legaspi, made an oath with Sikatuna, a native chief, by “taking blood
from each other’s veins, mixing and drinking it as a sign of genuine and wholehearted sincer-
eity’—the “blood compact” (Ileto 1979, 83). Spain’s failure to comply with the terms of this
agreement eventually justified separation from Spain, a view shared by the ilustrados and the
peasant-based Katipunan movement.
22In Europe, however, they realized that being a Spaniard meant to be backward, even in
fashion. For instance, Maximo Viola inquired from Rizal, “if the suits I use in Spain can be
worn there in winter, or if, by wearing them, I would be looked upon in Germany as a Spaniard,
that is, backward...” (NHC 1963, 2:65). In a letter by Aguirre to Rizal, the creole ridiculed
peninsular male Spaniards as suputs (uncircumcised) (NHC 1963, 2:68).
 TRACING ORIGINS 623

Too few in number, the “savage races” were so insignificant as to form a stumbling
block to assimilation. Implied was the opinion of racial science that “savage races”
had no future: with their supposed incapacity for “moral progress,” they would remain
forever primitive—except for Negritos, who were destined for extinction, as
Blumentritt believed (1900, 15). With such tacit admission, “primitive tribes” should
not mark out the Philippines as unworthy of Europe's civilizing mission, for they
were, for all intents and purposes, not “Filipinos.”
Blumentritt’s statement was not merely his own invention. Rizal had requested
his friend to write an honest and candid prologue to show his compatriots the fruits
of intellectual debate. Rizal perused Blumentritt’s draft and with the latter’s
permission expunged portions that he found objectionable (Rizal 1961a, 579; 1961b,
305). Obviously, the decisive statement gained Rizal’s approval as neither it nor the
whole segment of which it was a part was deleted. Blumentritt’s introduction received
high praise from ilustrados such as Mariano Ponce, who described it as “truly
excellent” (NHC 1963, 2:415). Appearing in 1889, the new Morga edition showed
few hints of the fraternal connection with the “rare individuals” whose display a couple
of years earlier had rankled ilustrado nerves. The budding of a possible comradeship
in 1887 was smothered by the politics of assimilation.
This was not the first time that Blumentritt made the assertion. On the editorial
page of La Solidaridad of October 15, 1889, he wrote:

Yes, the Philippine archipelago is a land with an “immensity of savage races,” but I
do not believe that the Filipinos wish to extend suffrage to the infidels but advocate
representation only of Christian Filipinos. Moreover, I have to add that the “great
number of wild races” in reality consists of only a few individuals and forms but a
tiny fraction of the population, accounting for at most 15 percent of the total, if the
official and friars’ statistics we are referred to are accurate.
(Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:400—403; trans. author)

This statement passed the editorial scrutiny of Lépez Jaena, despite his exceptional
assertions made in 1887 that “savage races” were civilizable. During the exposition,
L6pez Jaena expressed pleasant surprise that the Igorots, Muslims, and those from the
Carolines and Marianas who went to Madrid spoke perfect Spanish. He declared that
“Igorots ate neither savage nor irrational” and that “they are susceptible to modern
civilization” (1951, 156). He admired “Tek, the Negrito, whose race has long been
considered incapable of receiving the gifts of civilization, [but who} is the living
protest against such erroneous asseveration” (1951, 153).% By late 1889, however,
other graver concerns had superceded the exposition. With the campaign for
assimilation in high gear, Lopez Jaena gave editorial nod to Blumentritt’s statement,
paving the way for its repetition in the Morga prologue. Blumentritt’s recurring
assertion on the exclusion of “wild tribes” from political representation and from the
imagined community of “Filipinos” thus articulated not only his personal view but
also the sentiment of Rizal, Lopez Jaena, and other ilustrados.

According to Scott, de los Reyes stated that “{t}here are Aetas who surpass the Tagalogs
in intelligence, and it is recognized that the Tagalogs are at the same intellectual level as the
Europeans” (1982, 283). De los Reyes’s upholding of the Aeta or Negrito, however, was
compromised by his ill feelings toward the Tagalog. Among the ilustrados, Lépez Jaena made
the clearest and most favorable statement about the Negrito.
624 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

The “savage races” were clearly outside the framework of justice and liberty sought
by the early nationalists because their concept of nation was one that was modern,
cultured, civilized, Catholic, industrial, and progressive—all conformable with Euro-
pean notions. In addition, none of the ilustrados (except possibly Isabelo de los Reyes)
had lived outside the pueblos in a way that would have allowed direct and sustained
relations with those whom they had excluded from the nation. Although members of
“wild tribes” would occasionally visit Manila and some provincial centers, most
ilustrados had no personal contact with them, save for the 1887 exhibition. Only
during his exile in Dapitan, Zamboanga, did Rizal finally come into close and repeated
exchange with one such group, the Subanon. Only then did he appreciate their
humanity and character: “I have known them here, and rea//y they ate a peaceful
people, very honest, industrious, and faithful in their transactions, not reneging on
their word” (1961a, 817; 1961b, 461; emphasis added; trans. author). But, martyrdom
prevented him from expounding what might possibly have been an alternative vision
of nationhood based on firsthand understanding, a patria adorada that went beyond a
mere inversion of colonial racism.
The ilustrados’ majoritarian view made population numbers—all rough estimates
in any case—a crucial ingredient in the politics of assimilation. To conjure the
insignificance of “primitive races,” they tended to underestimate the population count
of these groups. Responding to the charges made by a Franciscan friar, an ilustrado
countered in the October 15, 1889, issue of La Solidaridad that there were not “seven
or eight million inhabitants who still, he says, live in the impenetrable forests” (Fores-
Ganzon 1996, 1:415). The ilustrado proceeded to list “the entire population of the
Philippine archipelago” which he placed at 5,065,952 Christians and 1,144,117 non-
Christians, for a total figure of 6,210,069. These figures indicated “non-Christians”
as accounting for 18.4 percent of the total. Interestingly, these numbers appeared in
the same issue of La Solidaridad in which Blumentritt calculated the “few individuals”
as constituting “at most” 15 percent of the population.
In the segment of his famous essay “Filipinas Dentro de Cien Afios” (The
Philippines a Century Hence) that appeared in the December 15, 1889, issue of La
Solidavidad, however, Rizal wrote, “Spain cannot claim even in the name of God
himself that six million men should be brutalized, exploited, and oppressed. . .”
(Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:510-11; trans. author). Rizal’s demographics disingenuously
included over one million non-indios—the “independent races” that he had elsewhere
marginalized. Spain’s inhumanity seemed all the graver if six, rather than five, million
wete involved. A year later, Marcelo H. del Pilar quoted the figure of seven million
in relation to failed attempts to obtain Philippine representation in the Cortes (Fores-
Ganzon 1996, 2:112-13). The serialicy that made the nation imaginable as a
delimited community was also the same seriality that counted those excluded from
within. Thus, when it served ilustrado purposes, the excluded were added to pad the
statistics.
Since its original enunciation by Blumentritt, the assertion that “primitive races”
constituted a numerical minority would remain a sticky issue when the United States
began to impose its own imperialist designs. The proannexation side in the U.S. debate
used the diversity of Philippine cultures and ethnolinguistic groups to make the case
that the Philippines was not “a nation” and therefore needed American tutelage. Anti-
imperialists, in tandem with Filipino nationalists, stressed the numerical smallness of

*4Since the advent of the modern census, the manipulation of demographic statistics for
explicitly political purposes has been a pervasive phenomenon (see Alonso and Starr 1987).
 TRACING ORIGINS 625

tribal peoples. Always the Filipinos’ loyal supporter, Blumentritt endorsed the
translation to English of his monograph to aid the anti-imperialist drive. Not
surprisingly, it contained the statement that “the Negritos, the mountain pagans and
the Moros have no part in the Philippine question” (Blumentritt 1900, 21). Sixto
Lopez, secretary of the Philippine mission to the United States, wrote a political tract
reiterating that “so-called tribes” were a small minority and were analogous to the
“Indian tribes still inhabiting certain parts of the United States” (Kramer 1998, 119-
21). The figure advanced by Lopez was a mere 5 percent. From the time of Blumentritt
and Rizal into the American colonial period (Salman 2001), variants of the same
nationalist discourse that embedded racial science wished away “tribes” and the
“uncivilized” by reducing them to numerical insignificance.

Prevarications on Race and Nation

After publishing his edition of Morga and reading further scholarly works, José
Rizal began to doubt the idea that indio forebears had emigrated from Sumatra. In
his letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt dated April 17, 1890, he argued that the cultural
similarities of Sumatra and the Philippines did not warrant the conclusion that one
derived from the other, and he doubted whether it would ever be possible to know
the origin of the Malay race. His reexamination of this issue echoed the thoughts of
Isabelo de los Reyes, who had raised similar questions regarding the origin of Malays
in the Philippines, be it Borneo, Sumatra, or some other land (de los Reyes 1889, 9—
12). De los Reyes also asserted that “the Malay race in the Philippines is not pure,”
there being “three subraces” based on admixture with Negritos, Chinese, and
“Indonesians and Arabs” (1889, 4). Although de los Reyes resorted to the concept of
a “subrace,” Rizal pushed the issue further. Hinting at the inherent instability of
racial categories, Rizal questioned the very notion of a “Malay race”: “It appears to
me that Malayans should not be considered the original race or the type of race (die
Typen von der Rassey; the Malayans have been exposed to many foreign and powerful
factors that have influenced their customs as well as their nature” (1961a, 652; 1961b,
350; trans. author).?° Overtly, Rizal was questioning the validity of Malay as a racial
type, perhaps following the theory that “types” were permanent and that deviations
from which were believed to be kept by nature within bounds (Banton 1983, 43-44).
Deviations among Malays, however, seemed out of control, making the category
meaningless. Based on his own “customs” and “nature,” Rizal might well have been
expressing a deep-seated anxiety about his own hybrid ancestry, which did not fit
neatly into the migration-waves framework. Was Rizal in search of purity?
Blumentritt admitted in Versuch einer Ethnologie der Philippinen that the Malay
Tagalog “have plenty of foreign blood flowing in their veins, not only Chinese and
Spanish but also Japanese (16th and 17th centuries) which mixtures have bettered the
race as a whole” (1980, 57). Presumably the “foreign bloods” were of superior quality
such that métissage led to racial improvement, but Blumentritt’s classification implied
that Malays with “foreign blood” remained Malay. At what point would intergroup
unions produce offspring beyond the boundary of Malayness? This was Rizal’s
question. The potential answer in Versuch was no more than a residual category of
“Chinese, Chinese Mestizos, Japanese” and a last category of “Whites and Other

*T am grateful to Mrs. Lisl Mathew of Townsville, Queensland, for helping clarify the
relevant passages in the original German letter of Rizal to Blumentritt.
626 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

Population Groups” (Blumentritt 1980, 141-50). Although Blumentritt mentioned

that the “next group after the Malays that are worth our attention are the Chinese”
and the Chinese mestizos, dubbed “new arrivals” on the Philippine scene (1980, 17),
these were not viewed as representing a distinct migration wave. In Blumentritt’s Las
Razas Indigenas de Filipinas (1890), Chinese mestizos did not merit any mention at
all. In effect, Chinese and Chinese mestizos designated alien entities. The temporal
cutoff point for determining indigeny was drawn teleologically at the “arrival” of the
third wave. Blumentritt had been influenced inexorably by his close association with
ilustrados, such that by 1890 his framework did not account for the realities of colonial
society. Suffering erasure from his work were Chinese mestizos, who by the 1740s,
had formed a classifiable and legally distinct group from whom most ilustrados could
trace their ancestry (Wickberg 1964).
Rizal might well have classified himself as a “Malay Tagalog,” but he could also
have placed himself with Chinese mestizos. To which category did he belong? As
Edgar Wickberg has shown, a mechanism existed for changing one’s legal status
(1965, 33-35). Depending on circumstances, one might prefer to be listed in the
roster of mestizos or in that of naturales (natural, original, or homegrown), although
both categories were considered by the state as indigenous. Rizal was a fifth-generation
Chinese mestizo, but his paternal grandfather had been able to use wealth to transfer
from the mestizo tax register to that of the naturales (Wickberg 1965, 33-34). From
his maternal side, Rizal allegedly inherited Japanese and Spanish “blood” (Craig 1933,
22-23). His family’s connections with Chinese and Chinese mestizos appeared strong,
as both of Rizal’s parents spent their last years and died in Binondo, where these two
ethnic groups predominated (Go and See 1987, 94). In the 1880s, however, the
abolition of the tribute also erased the legal distinction between mestizos and naturales
(Wickberg 1964, 95). By then, wealthier Chinese mestizos had been Hispanized and
“ostentatiously rejected Chinese culture” (Wickberg 1965, 32). In their anti-Sinicism,
Rizal (1961a, 781; 1961b, 423), who placed “Chinese and savages” on the same level,
was the exact match of de los Reyes (1889, 6), who denigrated Chinese for their
“consummate avarice” and condemned their presence as “anticivilization” (U.S.
National Archives, record group 350, entry 5, file 370.86). Tutored by Spanish
ptejudices, the ilustrados’ denial of their Chinese heritage was a racial strategy that
ensured the exclusion of Chinese as aliens and the hegemony of a Malay template.
Although Rizal designated himself as an indio, his mixed background might not
have escaped him. Antagonisms extant between mestizos and nonmestizos did not
easily conceal the formet’s liminality (Aguilar 1998a, 80). But regardless of what
Rizal knew and felt about his Chinese mestizo heritage, he was emphatically keen to
efface differences in the spirit of forging national solidarity. When the Spanish
governor-general passed a decree in 1888 giving preferences to mestizos over naturales,
he fumed, “it is sheer folly to make this distinction between mestizos and naturales;
it is offensive to the majority and fosters stupid antagonisms” (Rizal 19G1a, 407;
1961b, 218; trans. author). Rizal raised the concept of a “majority,” which in this
context referred to naturales who were the “pure” indio. Indeed, indio was often used
in lieu of natural. Who, then, were in the minority? Not Negritos, Muslims, and
mountain peoples, for Rizal’s implied “minority” referred to the “impure” indio, that
is, the mestizo. Rizal and his fellow ilustrados might well have confronted their
minority status.
Rizal was unquestionably conscious of the multiracial composition of his
imagined community, particularly the activists of the Propaganda Movement. As he
 TRACING ORIGINS 627

told Blumentritt in April 1887: “They are creole youth of Spanish descent, Chinese
mestizos, and Malayans; but we call ourselves solely Filipinos” (Rizal 1961a, 131;
1961b, 72; trans. author). Race was not to take precedence over an emerging collective
identity—especially in an overseas context where social marginality accentuates such
identities. Rizal was emphatic especially because, about a month or two before he
wrote Blumentritt, acrimonious debates concerning strategies of political journalism
divided the youthful “colony” in Madrid along racial lines.?° Skin color threatened to
become the basis for identifying “genuine Filipinos’—“the genuine or pure Indios”
in contrast to mestizos and Kastila (Spanish, mainly creoles) who acted like
“aristocrats” and were not “pure and genuine Filipinos” (NHC 1963, 2:99, 102, 624).
Rizal was said to have deplored “not having in {his} veins all the blood that could
serve as a common bond” (NHC 1963, 2:99). A common race was seen as a basis of
unity. Rizal had even dreamed of mingling “all the blood” of his compatriots in his
body, perhaps to incarnate the national corpus founded upon total hybridity. The
fantasy of racial fusion, however, faced the reality of a grand political project shared
among a gtoup divisible into indios, mestizos, and Kastila. All were to be deemed
“genuine Filipinos,” as Rizal enjoined fellow ilustrados, thus the import, in the wake
of the goings-on in Madrid, of Rizal’s reassurance to Blumentritt, an outsider who
was almost an insider: “[WJe call ourselves solely Filipinos.”
The precise relationship between Rizal’s multiracial “Filipinos” and the third-
wave “Malays,” whom he regarded as “ancient Filipinos” or “Malayan Filipinos” (/os
malayos flipinosy (Fores-Ganzon 1996, 2:341—42), however, was not confronted. What
did Filipinoness consist of for the ancient “Malays” and for the modern, multiracial
Filipinos? Or, did the concept of Filipino float freely through history? Blumentritt’s
racial schema, while useful in the search for origins to enable the imagining of a
national biography and a putative line of descent, appeared concomitantly to under-
mine the nation by systematizing, if unevenly, the vocabulary of its internal
differences. But, forming a national consciousness required going beyond racial science
through the negation of racial differences. There would be no majority or minority.
In this case, there would be no myth of descent, for the binding element would be
territory: las islas Filipinas.?’ Race, in this instance, would not be constitutive of the
nation.
Territory had its internal borders, for the “interiors” and “fringes” occupied by
the “primitives” were excluded from the nation-space. The physical inside, the
hinterland, was outside the nation’s moral community. The spatial frontiers occupied
by “pure types” stood out in their unambiguous identity as the land of “wild men”
who wete beyond recuperation and national honor. In contrast, the settled lowlands
wete a frontier area of sorts; when their children congregated overseas, their hazy

*L6pez Jaena used the phrase manga insic (the intsik or “Chinese”) in deriding his cohort,
who organized the periodical Espafia en Filipinas (Spain in the Philippines) along lines that he
disparaged as political timidity (NHC 1963, 2:85). Although asic was used as an ironic device
by young Filipinos in Madrid to refer to themselves in a couple of letters to Rizal in 1886
(NHC 1963, 2:44, 46)—probably in reaction to taunts by Madrilefios—the term subsequently
went into disuse. Under a cloud of divisions, it reappeared in Lépez Jaena’s letter to Rizal in
March 1887. Although of apparent Chinese mestizo background, Lépez Jaena asserted, “we
the genuine or pure Indios are not the ones who foment disunity but the mestizos” (NHC 1963,
2:102). But by June 1887, Lépez Jaena was cooperating with the periodical, although the
Filipinos in Madrid remained deeply fractured.
7A native language could not be a unifying force because of the profusion of native
tongues, while the ilustrados’ lingua franca, Spanish, was spoken by only a tiny elite.
628 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

identities could be submerged into one nation: “[ We call ourselves solely Filipinos.”
The oppositional relations between indio lowlands and “savage” interiors denoted an
uncertain cartography, but it was left unresolved. Despite the imagining of a world
of plurals and the abstraction of society in Rizal’s No/i Me Tangere—emblematic of
the nation’s spatial coordinates, as Benedict Anderson has argued (1991, 22—-30)—in
the end the territory of Filipinas was indeterminate and beyond mapping. With the
disjuncture between the expanse of an imagined homeland and the excluded zones
occupied by internal Others, the nation’s geo-body had no solidity.
The internal exclusion was related to the ilustrados’ idea of the nation as a
temporal project. They envisaged an educated future in which liberty and justice could
be enjoyed, but only those of the third migratory wave were included in this vision.
And even they, with their “lost civilization,” needed to be (re)civilized. To reconnect
with “civilization” (a seemingly eternal concept with no historical moorings, as “ancient
Filipinos” possessed a “civilization” but their descendents needed to be “civilized”**),
indios had to get out of the friar-constrained present. They had to go to “free Europe”
and remigrate to the motherland as agents of change and modern education. As Rizal
observed on his first trip to Europe in 1882, “{wlhat a revolution takes place in the
ideas of the man who for the first time leaves his native land and travels around
through different countries!” (Craig 1933, 253-54). Armed with knowledge gained
from the outside, “a wise traveler carries to his own country the good usages he has
seen and tries to apply them there with the necessary modifications.” Rizal’s laudatory
view of travel was strikingly similar to the established practice of rantau among the
Minangkabau of Sumatra, which entailed leaving one’s home area and returning
someday to enrich it. However, Rizal’s cosmopolitanism, as he referred to it, was
applied only to himself and to others who could lay claim to being indio and therefore
of the third wave. Evidently he did not see the “rare individuals” who traveled to
Spain for the 1887 exposition as learning something that they could use on their
eventual return. Unlike Lopez Jaena, who deplored that the persons in the exposition
could not tour Madrid (including a seamstress who eagerly wanted to witness Singer
sewing machines in actual use) (1951, 157-58), Rizal was silent about the possibility
that travel to Europe for the “uncivilized” sojourners might have brought them some
benefit.
Travel, education, and civilization would appear to be the exclusive domain of
indios. In this respect, national solidarity was strengthened overseas and even cut
across class lines, but only for an exclusive circle of compatriots. In “Filipinas Dentro
de Cien Afios,” Rizal noted: “The journeys to Europe also contribute much to
strengthen the bonds, for abroad the inhabitants of the most widely separated
provinces ate drawn together in patriotism, from sailors even to the wealthiest
merchants. ... [T}hey embrace and call each other brothers” (Fores-Ganzon 1996,
1:436-37). Victims of colonial misrule, migrant seafarers had left the homeland
unlettered, but overseas they embraced “the wonders of civilization,” as Lopez Jaena
noted with pride of those beneath their social class but safely within their racial ambit
(Fores-Ganzon 1996, 1:30-31). Thus, nationhood as exemplified in the overseas
community excluded “mountain tribes” but included lower-class third-wave indios,
who were civilized and civilizable. Because civilization encompassed a racial boundary,
the ilustrado concept of the nation depended on a mythology of descent.

78On the history of the word “civilization,” see Braudel 1993, 3-8; Williams 1983, 57—
60.
 TRACING ORIGINS 629

Filipino As Race/Nation

At one level, race would appear to be not fundamental to the nation because of
the ilustrados’ self-awareness of their own racial diversity. In this respect, the broad
structure of racism would not provide the basis for the fictive unity of the nation. But
at another level, race was an elemental dimension of nationhood. For ostensibly
cultural and civilizational reasons, the Malayness of the third migration wave was
imputed upon the emerging nation, in which case a racist structure formed the basis
of a fictive commonality. Thus, nation flirted dangerously with race. Rizal had
glimpsed the inherent contradictions of a racialist template in questioning “Malay
race” as a category. Adding to the muddle was Marcelo H. del Pilar’s insistence that
“{t}he Japanese are Malay and the inhabitants of the Philippines are Malay” (Mufiero
1996, 6). Products of European thought, Rizal and other ilustrados were too deeply
immersed in racial thinking—colonial oppression was voiced and experienced as the
indios’ racial degradation—for them to transcend a race-based discourse. Notwith-
standing some questions, they had no alternative to the racial paradigm. Perhaps
nationalism was the answer. But from the vantage point of their class, their concept
of the emerging nation was inseparable from race. In addition to repressing the issue
of (internal) ilustrado creole-mestizo racial ancestry, national consciousness was
marshaled to resolve the problems of (internalized external) Spanish racism, the
(externalized but internal) Chinese, and the (internal but exteriorized) “primitive
races.” To gain respectability from the civilized world, the nation had to be delineated
from a multitude of besieging and contaminating internal and external Others.
Paradoxically, all these “excesses,” as Caroline Hau (2000) calls them, and their
seemingly distant geographies have been internal to and constitutive of the nation.
In a semantic slippage that dreamed away these excesses, ilustrados also began to
talk of “the Filipino race” (a raza filipina). José Rizal did so in his 1889-90 essay
“Filipinas Dentro de Cien Afios,” arguing that without assimilation “the Philippines
would have to declare itself, some fatal and inevitable day, independent” and any
retaliation by Spain would not “exterminate the Filipino race” (Fores-Ganzon 1996,
2:32—33). Attacking the opponents of assimilation, del Pilar declared erroneous the
view that “the Filipino race is anthropologically in a state of inferiority” (Fores-Ganzon
1996, 1:379-380; see also Fores-Ganzon 1996, 2:538-39). Rizal, del Pilar, and other
ilustrados might well have been using “race” as a substitute for “nationality.” Race,
in this instance, might have anticipated full nationhood. In 1886 Rizal explained to
Ferdinand Blumentritt that, apart from the five main racial types, he used race to
refer “to pueblos of more than half a million souls, those whom you call mations, but
we do not call mations pueblos that are not independent, for example, the Tagalog
race, the Visayan race, and so on” (Rizal 1961a, 57; 1961b, 33; emphasis in original;
trans. author). The term “Filipino race” was a collective designation for Filipinos who
otherwise would have been referred to separately as the Tagalog race, the Visayan
race, and so on. The term also circumvented the nascent regionalism that distanced
the Ilocano from the Tagalog. The prefiguring of nationhood would have been
consistent with the practice in the English-speaking world, where, before the mid-
nineteenth century, “race” and “nationality” were interchangeable. In that period, both
“race” and “nationality” referred to a group of people sharing a common ancestry,
despite perhaps some differences in physical appearance and culture (Banton 1983,
32-59; Hirschman 1987, 567-68).
630 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

By the 1880s, however, “scientific” theory had pegged the idea of race to inherent
differences in appearance, culture, and mental capacities. In this sense, many Spaniards
vituperated the indios. Although he used race as an ordering principle in ethnology
and despite a hint of eugenics, Blumeniritt resolutely objected to racism. In the
context of the assimilation campaign, however, the use of phrases such as “savage
races” and “primitive races” implied a hierarchy of intrinsic biological-cultural
differences, for which reason non-indios were excluded from the ilustrados’ demand
for political and civil liberties. In the context of assimilation discourse, the term
“Filipino race” was racist: it applied only to indios who were deemed assimilable and
civilizable. The third wave—comprising the “races” Tagalog, Visayan, Ilocano, and
so on—was transmogtified into “the Filipino race.” Disregarded were the “uncivilized
races” of Mindanao, Luzon, and the Visayas as well as the “civilized” multiracial
community of those who claimed to “call ourselves solely Filipinos.”
The ilustrados’ self-definition of “Filipino” was ontologically compromised from
the start. A slippery concept, Filipinoness often demanded the certification of
“genuineness.” The fear of counterfeits was emblematic of the racist fear of contami-
nation that could blur cultural-cum-class boundaries. At the same time, as exemplified
by Rizal’s martyrdom, many ilustrados overflowed with political love for the nation,
their self-sacrifice inseparable from their heroism. Facing death, Rizal made one last
assertion of his “pure” identity: “When the document [of his impending execution}
was shown him, he drew attention to the fact that he was incorrectly described as a
Chinese mestizo,... saying that he was an indio puro [pure indio}” (Coates 1968,
312). In their search for a narrative of identity, their politics of imperial assimilation,
and their ultimate dream of national dignity, the ilustrados left a legacy of nationhood
full of ambiguities, gaps, silences, and excesses. The “Malayness” of Filipinos has been
reified—Rizal is “the pride of the Malay race,” as Roman Ozaeta made popular in
titling Rafael Palma’s (1949) biography of the man—and a myth of origins based on
race has endured. Today every child in the Philippine school system recites, after
singing the national anthem, the “Panatang Makabayan” (Oath to the Nation) in
which the promise is made to “love the Philippines,” the homeland of “my race” (aking
lahi). The existence of a “Filipino race” (ang lahing Pilipino) is taken as a certainty.
Still, somatic and ethnic differences cannot be denied. The hope is in the continuous
intermingling of racial waves—akin to Rizal’s fantasized body—to create a “Filipino
Blend” that “will ultimately come to include the majority of the population,” as
popularizers of the migration-waves theory have expressed (Reyes et al. 1953, 12—
13). But despite frequent references to moreno or kayumanggi (brown) as its own color,
the “Filipino race” is an ambiguous, unstable, and even empty signifier. The
nationalist rhetoric simply asserts that Filipinos are a “nation” (Jaya) and a “race”
(lai), conflating race and nation in Filipino/Pilipino. The mestizoness—Asian and
European—of the very same intellectuals who articulated the national idea has been
suppressed in the interest of national homogeneity. As Palma’s biography declares in
its opening paragraph, Rizal’s father was a “pure Filipino” (1949, 1). The claim to
purity flags an invented history of Malayness that shrouds the dominant elite’s
ethnicities. At the same time, ethnic groups such as Negritos, Chinese, and Indian,
although accorded formal citizenship (Aguilar 1999), are pressurized by notions of a
Filipino nation-race. The citizenship rights and national ties of Filipinos born to
Filipina mothers and American fathers, especially those of African heritage—a legacy
of the U.S. military bases—are diminished because they do not “look Filipino” (Eric
Jimenez, “Amerasians Hit DFA for Discrimination,” PAilippine Daily Inguiver, May
17, 1999; Tonette Orejas, ““Gapo’s Amerasians Bear Discrimination,” Philippine Daily
 TRACING ORIGINS 631

Inguiver, April 11, 2000). Challenged by class and ethnicity, the fictive unity of the
nation has remained problematic. The nation’s ontological narrative has not come to
terms with the givenness of a hybrid, plural, and stratified Philippines. With the
burdens laid on the national idea at its inception, it is understandable why no closure
has yet been found to the perennial question “Who is the Filipino?”
Paramount in the nation’s founding myth were civilizational hierarchies,
invidious comparisons, and confounded assertions of status. In effect, “Filipino” stood
for the internally superior and dominant “race” led by an “enlightened class,” whose
members, although charged as inferior by racist outsiders, were equal to Europeans
in their being civilized and civilizable, deserving liberty and indeed their own
independent nation. They were not pagans who lived close to nature and by brute
force, without law and legal institutions, and were superior to the spatially distant
“savages of Africa” and the temporally and socially distant “savage races” epitomized
by Igorots. Rather, they were educated and educable; they believed in religion or
reason; they were peace loving, with “mild morals” and the art of law and governance;
and they could debate in the Cortes or better yet in their own legislature. They were
industrializing and growing in mastery over nature, although they were acutely aware
of the need to “catch up,” lest they be left behind by progress. A child of modernity
and the capitalist world system, ilustrado national consciousness impelled them to
demand equality with the colonizer but concomitantly eschew “savages” from their
imagined community. Seeing themselves at the helm of “native” society, the ilustrados
were sworn to uplift the lower classes with their political and educational leadership.
Ultimately, as Norbert Elias (2000) has shown, the preoccupation with civilization
expressed the aspirations of a social class.
The ilustrados’ proimperial-cum-anticolonial politics would be transposed into
the politics of the Philippine ruling class. The “benevolent assimilation” of the United
States built upon the pragmatics of ilustrado nationalism. As Michael Salman (2001)
has elucidated, the American colonial state deployed racial science and deepened the
divide between “civilized” Filipinos and “non-Christian” “wild tribes,” the former as
collaborators, the latter as ideal wards. American authorities overstudied Negritos
until the state rendered them nonexistent and inconsequential (Rosaldo 1982).
Initially, “non-Christians” were administered separately, but ilustrados and successor
leaders sought to integrate them under “Filipino rule.” Elites, especially among
Muslim Filipinos, entered into mutual accommodation with central state actors
(Abinales 2000). The class-based hierarchy of civilization and race/ethnicity persisted,
and feelings of superiority hardened. When, in the 1940s, Carlos P. Romulo declared
in Mother America that “Igorots are not Filipinos (1943, 59),” he was speaking as the
legitimate heir of ilustrado nationalism.
Nationhood does not stand still, however, and is ever being reconstituted. In the
1960s, amid the resurgence of Filipino nationalism, the cry was raised in relation to
“cultural minorities”: They Are Also Filipinos (Clavel 1969). The Marcos regime added
its share of primordialist rhetoric. In the 1980s, national and international movements
for the rights of indigenous peoples gained momentum, eventuating in the embrace
of “cultural communities” in the national fold or at least by intellectuals and official-
dom. Despite implementation problems, a law recognizing the rights of “indigenous
peoples” was enacted in 1997 (Castro 2000). Although the place of Muslims is still
being contested on the battlefield and Negritos are no better than second-class citizens,
the Philippines today has moved beyond the ilustrado concept of the nation. The role
of the Igorot has been reversed, with many freezing them in their “unmodernity” as
the static bearers of cultural authenticity. Since the 1980s, even the formerly
632 FILOMENO V. AGUILAR JR.

disparaging term “Igorot” has gained popularity on the Cordillera highlands as a

badge of resistance against dominant groups in the Philippines (Labrador 1998, 243),
yet everyday social practices on the basis of civilizational hierarchies persist. The town-
based Mindoro man who calls out to a Mangyan as sandugo (of one blood) is convinced
of his superiority over the mountain dweller, who may have set aside his G-string for
a pair of trousers. On the Cordillera, as the Ibaloi to the Bontok, one ethnic group
feels “more civilized” than the other (Labrador 1998, 207-9). We all are heits to the
dreams, achievements, and prejudices of the Enlightenment.

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 100

101
the mutual hostility between Doroteo
Cortés and the
prisoner which effectively prevents them
from working Ambrosio Salvador, Timoteo Pdez, Pedro Serrano y
together on any project. Lactaw. Retana transcribes the two depositions which
Q. What object did the prisoner have in follow:
desiring to
found a Filipino settlement in Sandakan and
what steps
did he take toward that end. [Folios 723 and 723 verso. Deposition of the indio Martin
A. The prisoner did not propose to Constantino Lozano.|
establish a
Filipino settlement in Sandakan but simpl
y to take his
family to settle in that British colony, The deponent is a native of Bulacan, a patrolman
as he explained
to His Excellency, General Despujol, both (2nd class) of the Municipal Police. After declaring that
in a letter
written from Hong Kong and by word of certain native individuals and groups in the Carabineers
mouth when
the prisoner came to Manila. belonged to the Katipunan, and after describing his own
Q. [The prisoner was shown a note found entrance into the society and the aims and objectives
among his
confiscated papers having reference to the thereof, which were to massacre all the Spaniards and
deflection of
the magnetic needle at Dapitan.] What proclaim the independence of the country, he says “that
was or is the
purpose of this note. as soon as the Spaniards have all been massacred the
A. The note now shown to the prisoner was Supreme Head would be Rizal, who would come to
given to
him by Father Sanchez [S.J.] when he establish his headquarters in the city.” — Manila, 9
made him a
present of a compass during his sojourn
in Dapitan.!!
September 1896.— MARTIN CONSTANTINO
The said note was an observation made by Father
Cirera, or so the prisoner thinks. [Folios 915-921. Deposition of Aguedo del Rosario Llamas.|
,
His Honor adjourned the interrogation Deposes that he is a native of Boa of the Province of
at this point... Mindoro and a bookbinder by trade. He testifies, among
The prisoner agreed to, affirmed, and
ratified what is other things, to the following: “Rizal is the honorary
stated therein...
president of the Katipunan. His portrait hangs in the
- JOSE RIZAL Y ALONSO. — FRANCISCO
session hall of the Supreme Council. Pio Valenzuela
OLIVE. — MIGUEL
PEREZ [Clerk of Court]. informed Rizal that the people kept demanding an
armed uprising. The Grand Council was composed of
There follow extracts from the statements members of the moneyed aristocracy, who gave their
made by
Pio Valenzuela Alejandrino, Martin Const wholehearted moral and material support to the ideas
antino Lozano,
Aguedo del Rosario Llamas, and activities of the Katipunan. The results of their
José Reyes Tolentino,
Antonio Salazar y San Agustin, José Dizon deliberations were transmitted to the rank and file
y Matanza,
Moisés Salvador y Francisco, Domingo Franc either by Ambrosio Salvador or Andrés Bonifacio. (The
o y Tuason,
Irineo Francisco Quizon, Deodato Arell deponent had been appointed Minister of Home Affairs
ano y Cruz,
of the future Republic.) I agree that this is the statement
which I made of my own free will and J ratify what is
contained therein.” — AGUEDO DEL ROSARIO.
i.11. See Leo ) A. Cullum, » S.J., SJ, “Francisco de Paula Sanchez,
Philippine Studies VIII/2 (April 1960), 334-61. 2 Z, 1849-1
1849-1928, pe
On 3 December 1896 the Court directed that an
official communication be sent to the Governor of Laguna
102
requiring him to send the certificate of baptism of the
accused and information regarding his moral conduct,
etc. On the same date, the Court directed that a similar
communication be sent to the office of the Governor
General requesting any information on file concerning
the conduct of the accused.
The Court makes of record the receipt of two original
documents and copies of others with a covering letter
from Col. Olive, investigating officer of General
Headquarters, dated Manila, 4 December 1896.
The first of the original documents is an autograph
of Father Cirera, which reads as follows:
dhs
The small compass of Father Sanchez has an
instrumental error of about 3 degrees. This deflection
is toward the West.
Taking into consideration the declination of Dapitan,
we conclude that for the North-South line of the compass
to point exactly North, the needle should be at one
degree, 40 minutes West. — R.C. S. J. [Flourish]
Manila, 18 August 1892.
The second original document reads as follows:
TO THE GLORY OF THE GREAT ARCHITECT
OF THE UNIVERSE
World Masonry Philippine Family
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
The Central Grand Lodge Nilad of Ancient and
Approved Free Masons federated with the Grand Orient
of Spain (with headquarters at Madrid) sends Health,
103
Strength, and Union to our dear brother Dimasalang
and begs to inform him that in ordinary session of 31
January last, this cwadro agreed to designate the above
mentioned brother as Honorary Venerable of this
Worshipful Grand Lodge in recognition of his dis-
tinguished services in behalf of his native land, and
directed that the undersigned Honorable Secretary
inform him of this fact.
Likewise, please be informed that a copy shall be
furnished you of the reorganization plan of Masonry which
the undersigned submitted to the Grand Orient of Spain,
as a result of which we have been granted full powers to
constitute ourselves as an independent family, as we have
done, raising the pillars thereof on 6 January last.
I transmit the above for your information.
Receive, beloved Brother, the kiss of peace which
the Workmen of this Lodge send you.
Farewell. From Manila 9 February 1892 of the
Current Era — PANDAY PIRA,! Third Degree.
The copies of documents sent by Col. Olive are
introduced by the following note:
Documents in Tagalog and in code belonging to
Andrés Bonifacio, discovered by operatives of the
Veteran Civil Guard in the warehouse of Mr. Fresell.
Translated into Spanish and numbered. Among other
matters Dr. Rizal is referred to as follows.
In the following documents passages which the
investigating officer considers significant are quoted
verbatim, the rest being given in summary.
12. Pedro Serrano Laktaw.

104
Letter of Antonio Luna: Madrid, 16 October 1888. —
Dear Mariano [Ponce]: Rizal says very well that Lete [a
Filipino law student in Madrid, editor of the periodical
Espafia en Filipinas] is not a man for great under-
takings. Talk over the editorship of the periodical with
him and with Llorente. Rizal knows them both; he also
has the measure of Llorente and is an intimate friend
of his. They are both men of worth, and Rizal has a
very high opinion of Llorente. Seek his advice and weigh
well what he tells you. Tell him that I have managed
to persuade Llorente to accept editorship. Regards, and
talk the whole thing over with Rizal. Yours, ANTONIO.
— P.S. Destroy this letter after you have read it. Let me
have the address of Rizal in London as soon as possible.
Letter of Carlos Oliver: Barcelona, 18 September
1891. — Pelayo, 11, Fourth Floor, Apartment 2. — Dear
Six: I hope you will pardon my presumption in writing
you this letter although unknown to you. Please consider
not so much the humble person who signs this letter as
the patriot who in spite of his little worth desires to do
his bit for the regeneration of his oppressed country. It
is with general regret that we have learned that among
the worthy members of your Committee there prevails
at present a certain coldness toward our friend Rizal.
In one of his letters to me Rizal writes as follows, and I
quote: “I am deeply hurt that they make war upon me,
blackening my reputation in the Philippines. But I don’t
mind as long as whoever takes my place gets on with
the work begun. Let me just ask those who claim that I
cause dissension among the Filipinos: Was there in fact
any firm union among us before my entrance into
politics? Was there any acknowledged leader whose
ascendancy I might have wished to pull down? What a
sad thing it is that slaves like ourselves should hurl
our burdens at each other’s heads! | am happy to learn
of your enthusiastic efforts to start a periodical. I hope
that it will have the same objectives as Solidaridad —
one tribune of the people more.” Let him who regards
105
the distant future of the Philippines and who realizes
that the least mischance imperils that future, subjected
as it is to the most tyrannical oppression, let him read
these words and then let me ask him: Is this the way
we treat a man whose dedicated patriotism has made
him forget his own interests in order to sacrifice himself
{for the Fatherland] toiling for her sake side by side
with his brothers, encouraging them and preparing them
for the hour of battle? Whoever retains any belief in
Providence cannot but see in that man a vessel of
election placed in our midst to lead us to the promised
land of Liberty. I need hardly remind you of the secrecy
that must be kept regarding this whole matter. — I
am, yours faithfully, CARLOS OLIVER.
Letter of Rizal Segundo. {Dated Manila, 17 September
1893. — He says that on 16 September Doroteo Cortés
and Ambrosio Salvador were arrested in their houses]
and brought before the civil governor who caused them
to be banished immediately to the districts of Principe
and Bontoc. [The writer mourns the state in which the
Filipinos find themselves, the victims of ever increasing
tyranny. The letter is addressed to the editor of the Hong-
kong Telegraph. — He attributes the deportations to
the friars who looked upon the above-mentioned persons
as “friends” of Rizal.|
Letter of Ildefonso Laurel. Manila, 3 September 1892.
Don José Rizal. — Dapitan. — Dear Friend and
Countryman: Upon my arrival here from the Bay I
learned of the sad fate that has overtaken you. Your
father told me, however, one evening when | dropped
in at the house, that you might be pardoned shortly.
How happy we would be if this were true! There is a
strong undercurrent of feeling among the people; they
await you as their redeemer and savior. Have no doubt
of the loyalty of your fellow countrymen. They al} lament
the way you have been betrayed, and all stand ready to
shed their blood for your salvation and that of our
1384
as lease-holders of lands possessed by the said Order in
the territory of said municipality, was what motivated his
banishment from these Islands, in order to stop him from
further disturbing the minds of those simple people who
saw in him little less than a messenger from God Himself.
It is from this period that the career of Dr. Rizal as
a disaffected Spanish subject must be traced.
Having returned to the Peninsula, and taking up
his residence now in Barcelona, now in Madrid, he starts
the separatist periodica] La Solidaridad, and together
with the two brothers Luna Novicio, Marcelo Hilario
del Pilar, and Graciano Lopez Jaena (the last two now
deceased), he makes use of its columns to spread the
anti-Spanish and anti-religious views with which he has
infected his country. He joins the Masonic society at
the same time and enters into a close collaboration with
Morayta!® in order to effect, as he did effect, the
organization of native lodges in the Archipelago. This
step resulted in a division among the peninsular
Spaniards resident in these islands who were members
of this secret society; a ‘division which caused the
withdrawal of the majority of the Spaniards from the
society and the tremendous increase in membership of
the indigenous Masonic lodges.
It was also during this period that Rizal published
in Berlin a new edition with notes of the History of the
Philippines of Antonio de Morga. In his annotations, the
misguided Filipino doctor tries his best to prove that
there existed in this country before the coming of the
Spaniards a spiritual and material culture so advanced
that the Spaniards did little more than build upon it
the civilization that exists today; and that this high
18. Miguel Morayta Sagrario (1834-1917), Professor of History at the
Universidad Central de Madrid, took an active part in politics as a Liberal
Republican and was Grand Master of the Grand Spanish Orient.
culture was lost little by little in the course of time, so
much so that the natives today have forgotten the art
of casting artillery, as well as many other skills which
their forbears possessed to a high degree.
From this false and pernicious doctrine preached in
season and out of season by Rizal in all his works and
writings (an opinion echoed in his Civilizacién Tagalog
by Pedro Molo Paterno, who today walks the streets of
Manila as free as the air in virtue of being Director of
the Museo-Biblioteca), have been deduced consequences
both erroneous and injurious to Spanish sovereignty.
Among them are, that that sovereignty rests not on the
right of conquest but on certain so-called pacts or
treaties contracted between our predecessors and the
kinglets of these Islands, and that the municipal reforms
of Sefior Maura were nothing but the restoration of the
ancient Tagalog barangay. Cf. the address of His
Excellency, Don Pedro Alejandro Molo Paterno at the
inauguration in Pagsanjan, Laguna, of a monument to
Don Antonio Maura.
Finally, Dr. Rizal develops his separatist ideas in
his latest work, El Filibusterismo, which he dedicates
to the martyrs of Cavite, Fathers Gémez, Burgos and
Zamora, who were executed as traitors to the Fatherland
in 1872 because they were the moving spirits of the
uprising of that year.
By means of the organization of Masonic lodges as
centers of the separatist movement, on the one hand,
and on the other, by means of the propaganda embodied
in his writings which had an extremely wide circulation
throughout the Archipelago, Dr. Rizal proceeded to
undermine the foundations of this colony and daily to
gain new adherents. These followers joined him from
widely different motives which it would be useless to go
into now, since the principal motive behind all of them
is the natural tendency of colonies toward emancipation.
136

These are the details, Your Excellency, regarding the From the civil governor of Bulacan Rizal rn the
antecedents of Dr. Rizal which the undersigned is able company of Pedro Serrano, the schoolmaster of Prstytnc
to remember. Some of them can doubtless be easily School No. 2 of Binondo, stopped at Malolos (Bulican)
corroborated, as I have indicated above, from the records Sulipan and San Fernando (Pampanga), and ‘Parle,
on file at the headquarters of the Twentieth Regiment returning to Sulipan to spend the night in the house of
and the Veteran Regiment of the guardia civil. Capitan Joaquin.

The file on Dr. Rizal kept in the Office of the From the civil governor of Pampanga: Confirms the
Secretary of the Governor General dates from June 1892, above information, adding that he suspected that Rizal's
when the then incumbent Governor Generai of these trip to that province was for the purpose of erecting
Islands ordered the preparation of an administrative case Masonic lodges similar to those which already existed
based on the anti-religious and anti-Spanish preachments in Bulacan. These lodges not only carried on ostensibly
and propaganda for which Dr. Rizal was responsible when Masonic work but also collected funds to maintain a
he returned to these Islands in that year. propaganda center in Hong Kong which communicated
with Manila by means of the S.S. Don Juan, a vessel
From the papers of this case it appears that Dr. Rizal belonging to Don Francisco Roxas.
was permitted by the supreme authority of these Islands
to return to them. This permission was granted in Acting on this information, His Excellency, the
answer to a formal request submitted from Hong Kong, Governor General, Count of Caspe, ordered a search of
in which Rizal calls himself the director of a Progressive the house of the most prominent persons in the provinces
Filipino Movement or Party, and in which he even had of Bulacan, Pampanga, Laguna, Batangas and Manila,
the effrontery to offer his loyal services to improve the who were suspected of being sympathetic to Rizal’s
administration of these Islands. But when he landed at views. As a result of these inquiries, it was decreed on
this capital city on 26 June 1892, there was found among 7 July to deport Rizal to the district of Dapitan, and
the luggage of his sister who accompanied him a great subsequently other prominent persons of those provinces
number of copies of a proclamation which bore no to different points of the Archipelago.
indication as to where it was printed, and which was
entitled Pobres Frailes (three copies are included among Thus, this dossier taken as a whole renders the
the papers of the case). following more or less certain:

Rizal was immediately subjected to a close but secret
surveillance, which enabled the authorities to learn that
on the day following his arrival, the 27th, he took the
train from Manila to Dagupan, stopping briefly in the
provinces of Bulacan and Pampanga. The civil governors
of these provinces were instructed in time to put the
suspect under close observation. They reported as
follows:
First: Dr. Rizal, through the publication of his works
Noli me tangere, Annotations to the History of the
Philippines by Morga, and El Filibusterismo, and
through an endless series of pamphlets, manifestos and
printed materials of all sorts attacking religion, the
friars, and the Spanish government, is gradually
impressing upon the people of the Philippines the idea
of expelling the religious orders from the Islands as a
138
means to the further though unexpressed purpose of
securing the independence of this country.
Second: It also becomes morally certain that the
purpose of Rizal’s unexpected return to Manila after
several years of voluntary exile was none other than to
revive the drooping spirits of his followers. He wanted
to make sure that in accordance with his original plan
they kept up with unflagging energy the work of
subversion and the multiplication of Masonic lodges as
centers of propaganda and fund-raising. The ostensible
purpose of these centers was to gather money and
recruits for the establishment in Borneo of a curious
model settlement of Tagalogs. Had this plan been put
into effect, it would have started a flow of emigration
from the Philippines to that island which would have
been altogether harmful to the interests of this country.
Third: Three principal centers for the dissemination
of Rizal’s theories and the direction of the activities
based on them had been founded and organized at
Madrid, Hong Kong and Manila.
In another confidential file of this Office regarding
Masonic anti-Spanish activities carried out in 1895 in
the province of Batangas, it further appears that Rizal
was looked upon as the leader of a movement which at
that time and in that province was already frankly
separatist in nature; that his portrait was being
distributed and exhibited as the liberator of the Filipino
race and as a victim of Spanish tyranny; and that funds
were being sent to enable him to escape from Dapitan
in order that he might direct more easily from abroad
the armed uprising which was already being plotted. It
should be noted that the evidence for these facts is not
based on confidential reports by officials or agents of
the government, as in the case of the dossier mentioned
earlier, but on information volunteered by honest and
loyal Filipinos.
ency, of
This is pretty much the extent, Your Excell
ation that can be derived from the confide ntial
the inform
files of this Office. More cannot. be expected in view of
the purely preventive nature of the governmental
measures of which they are the record. They are thus
quite different from the proceedings of the ordinary and
but not on that account less worthy of
special courts,
attention. Be that as it may, they raise the grave
culpability of Dr. Rizal to the level of moral certainty.
From the picture of him that emerges from these
records, this Office has no hesitation in qualifying him
as the great agitator of the Philippines, who is not only
personally convinced that he is called to be the chosen
vessel of a kind of redemption of his race, but who is
considered by the masses of the native population to be
a superhuman being, a being incapable of being
subjected to any restraint that might prevent him from
fulfilling his providential mission.
In view of the above, this Secretariat has the honor
to suggest to Your Excellency that a true copy of this
report be furnished the Court Martial, especially since
they not only assemble and summarize the information
in our files but include other facts which are of certain
knowledge and which can if necessary be verified from
documents which should be on file at the Headquarters
of the Twentieth Regiment of the guardia civil.
Your Excellency will, nevertheless, take the steps
most appropriate. — Manila, 22 December 1896. — Your
Excellency — ENRIQUE ABELLA.
Polavieja approved this report and referred it to the
Court. On 24 December, the Military Governor of Manila,
General Zappino, appointed a panel of judges for the
trial. The list of judges was shown to the accused on
Christmas Day, 25 December. The accused declared that
“he had no objections to anyone of those appointed.” This
declaration was signed by both Rizal and Taviel de