LESSON 1-PREFINAL

THE GOMBURZA EXECUTION AND RIZAL’S AWAKENING

Most Essential Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this module, the learners are expected to:
 Discuss the women of Rizal and their personal influences
 Appreciate the act of personal sacrifices for a greater cause
 Exhibit selflessness and self-love properly in diverse situations

Introduction
On January 20, 1872, two hundred Filipinos employed at the Cavite arsenal staged a revolt
against the Spanish government’s voiding of their exemption from the payment of tributes. The
Cavite Mutiny led to the persecution of prominent Filipinos; secular priests Mariano Gómez,
José Burgos, and Jacinto Zamora—who would then be collectively named GomBurZa—were
tagged as the masterminds of the uprising. The priests were charged with treason and sedition
by the Spanish military tribunal—a ruling believed to be part of a conspiracy to stifle the growing
popularity of Filipino secular priests and the threat they posed to the Spanish clergy. The
GomBurZa were publicly executed, by garrote, on the early morning of February 17, 1872 at
Bagumbayan.
The Archbishop of Manila refused to defrock them, and ordered the bells of every church to
toll in honor of their deaths; the Sword, in this instance, denied the moral justification of the
Cross. The martyrdom of the three secular priests would resonate among Filipinos; grief and
outrage over their execution would make way for the first stirrings of the Filipino revolution, thus
making the first secular martyrs of a nascent national identity. Jose Rizal would dedicate his
second novel, El Filibusterismo, to the memory of GomBurZa, to what they stood for, and to the
symbolic weight their deaths would henceforth hold:
The Government, by enshrouding your trial in mystery and pardoning your co-
accused, has suggested that some mistake was committed when your fate was
decided; and the whole of the Philippines, in paying homage to your memory and
calling you martyrs, totally rejects your guilt. The Church, by refusing to degrade you,
has put in doubt the crime charged against you.

The Execution of GomBurZa

by Edmond Plauchut, as Quoted by Jaime Veneracion

Late in the night of the 15th of February 1872, a Spanish court martial found three secular
priests, Jose Burgos, Mariano Gomez and Jacinto Zamora, guilty of treason as the instigators of
a mutiny in the Kabite navy-yard a month before, and sentenced them to death. The judgement
of the court martial was read to the priests in Fort Santiago early in the next morning and they
were told it would be executed the following day… Upon hearing the sentence, Burgos broke
into sobs, Zamora lost his mind and never recovered it, and only Gomez listened impassively,
an old man accustomed to the thought of death.
When dawn broke on the 17th of February there were almost forty thousand of Filipinos
(who came from as far as Bulakan, Pampanga, Kabite and Laguna) surrounding the four
platforms where the three priests and the man whose testimony had convicted them, a former
artilleryman called Saldua, would die.
The three priests followed Saldua: Burgos ‘weeping like a child’, Zamora with vacant eyes,
and Gomez head held high, blessing the Filipinos who knelt at his feet, heads bared and
praying. He was next to die. When his confessor, a Recollect friar , exhorted him loudly to
accept his fate, he replied: “Father, I know that not a leaf falls to the ground but by the will of
God. Since He wills that I should die here, His holy will be done.”
Zamora went up the scaffold without a word and delivered his body to the executioner; his mind
had already left it.
Burgos was the last, a refinement of cruelty that compelled him to watch the death of his
companions. He seated himself on the iron rest and then sprang up crying: “But what crime
have I committed? Is it possible that I should die like this. My God, is there no justice on earth?”
A dozen friars surrounded him and pressed him down again upon the seat of the garrote,
pleading with him to die a Christian death. He obeyed but, feeling his arms tied round the fatal
post, protested once again: “But I am innocent!”
“So was Jesus Christ,’ said one of the friars.” At this Burgos resigned himself. The
executioner knelt at his feet and asked his forgiveness. “I forgive you, my son. Do your duty.”
And it was done.

How Rizal was Enlightened by the three priests?

Below is a translated copy of Rizal's dedication to the secular priests. He made some errors
in listing the ages and date of death. Padre Gomes was 72 years old, Padre Burgos was 35,
and Padre Zamora was 37.

"To the memory of the priests, Don Mariano Gomes, eighty-five, Don Jose Burgos,
thirty, and Don Jacinto Zamora, thirty-five, who were executed on the scaffold at
Bagumbayan on 28 February 1872.
The Church, by refusing to unfrock you, has put in doubt the crime charged against
you; the Government by enshrouding your trial in mystery and pardoning your co-accused
has implied that some mistakes was committed when your fate was decided; and the whole
of the Philippines in paying homage to your memory and calling you martyrs totally rejects
your guilt.
As long, therefore, as it is not clearly shown that you took part in the uprising in Cavite.
I have the right, whether or not you were patriots and whether or not you were seeking
justice and liberty, to dedicate my work to you as victims of the evil I am trying to fight. And
while we wait for Spain to clear your names some day, refusing to be a party to your death,
let these pages serve as belated wreath withered leaves on your forgotten graves.
Whoever attacks your memory without sufficient proof has your blood upon his hands."

- J. Rizal
Europe, 1886

GOMBURZA fought on the issues of secularization in the Philippines that led to the conflict
of religious and church seculars. Their execution had a profound effect onmany late 19th-
century Filipinos just like Jose Rizal who dedicate his novel El filibusterismo to their memory, to
what they stood for, and to the symbolic weight their deaths would henceforth hold.