CHAPTER ON =e Introduction : — se = a Sear Became Possible in the Nineteenth eaterHEN Jose Riza was born in 1861, there was no Filipino nation to W speak of. There was no bayan, only mga bayan. Bayan originally meant “community”; over time, as missionaries founded pueblos or towns, bayan came to mean the pueblo. When we say that there was no Philippine nation in 1861, what we mean is that the existing communities (towns and villages), whether Christian, Muslim, or animist, did not think of themselves as forming one community. When Jose Rizal died in 1896, there was still no nation to speak of, but there was a nation to dream of. This ‘was the nation Rizal chose to die for, the subject matter of his two novels and of his last poem, the object of his political campaigns in Spain, and the reason for his exile. After Rizal's execu- tion, the still nonexistent nation felt more real, because it had just claimed the life of one of its fairest sons, and no phantom or illusion could do this. This book is not meant to be a reverential study of Rizal: he was no divine Messiah, and his novels are not Sacred Scripture, although that is what some groups wish to make of him and his writings. At the time of Rizal’s death, Rizal’s self-sacrifice above all astonished people. With time, the depth of his writings, of his analysis of the problem with Filipino society, and the way he lived his years of exile in Dapitan have won the deep admiration and gratitude of his countrymen. To study Rizal is to interrogate him, to see what options there were peep ‘According to philosopher and historian Emest Renan, nations, as they are encountered today, "are a fairly recent phenomenon in istory. Such nations were Unknown in ancient times. Egypt, China, and old Chaldaea were by no manner of means nations, They were flocks led by an offspring ofthe Sun or arr offspring of Heaven." Opposite poge. The Jose Rizal Shrine in Calamba, Loguna iso repica of tet tas gal Mercado oncesa hese that he did not take, to see why he took the options he dic; itis to interrogate [sel Mecods oneal mize his works, to attempt to see exactly what he was saying and why he said it. To wos ints house where Rais fre examine Rizal’s life and works is to discover who we are and where we might go concept of love fr bayan began. (Phot couresy of Teombapredictere/ as a nation—that is the purpose of this course mandated by the lawmakers of Witmedo Comers) our country. e o—__—_—_—-e e- ‘The guar cilis The Suez Canal opens. ‘The Cavite Mutiny and the Rizalisbom on june 19 in Caarb, Se eeaie erection of es. Gomez, {ep Philippines. Members of a Comité de Burgos, and Zamora happen. Reformadores (Comite? PreminentFipno liberals are oF Reforms) together with — ayia ‘members ofthe principal from Mania-area pueblos serenade liberal Governor- ‘general Carlos Maria de la Torre, Rizal's mother is jae, Rizal attends the Ateneo Municipal de Marla as a day scholar.Pei ‘The preference for friars was ota general policy of the Spanish government, but applied ‘only to the appointment of friars to certain parishes in Cavite in the middle of the nineteenth Century in spite ofthe poor Performance of the friars and the excellent performance Of Filipino secular press in Qualifving exarnations for the Parish, These panshes have been assigned to secular priests, {a number of them Filipino, in the past, but had fallen vacant The preference for friars, who. mostly came from Spain, was. probably dicated by an unofficial bias against Filipino priests, ‘whether Spanish, mestz0, or ‘ate, The reason for ths was thatthe revolutions in Latin ‘Amenica by which Spain lost ther colonies had often been supported, ifnot led, by Latin ‘Acnerican priests. The proximity of the Cavite parishes to Manila may have suggested assigning them to friars as a precautionary measure. eee Conversely, the nation we know today asthe Philippines would ever have arisen from the peoples thatthe Spaniards were not able to bring under their dominion Rizal, like everyone else, was a product of history, just aa much a ia creator of history. Our interrogation therefore also alms to understand ak he Iife story and the country’s history, and indeed “the relations between the two within society.” What does it mean to be a product of history? It is not easy to give a brief answor to this question; on the other hand, you will be in @ better position to answer it at the end of this course. For the moment, we can compere history to the environment in which persons flourish in all their particularity as human beings, living ina particular time and a particular place (or places), interacting with particular people, ‘That is the meaning of the Tagalog expression tumubo, as in tinubuang bayan. A plant takes root and grows in a particular soil with its nutrients; it takes in sunlight and rain; it is nourished by the farmer and damaged by beasts. So, too, with people. Tumutubo ang tao. In the case of Rizal, the rich soil was the town of Calamba and his family and the evolving colonial society. The sun of liberalism was shining, both because of and in spite of the exuberance of industrial powers, and rain from education watered the soil. Fresh winds were blowing: the port of Manila, among others, was opened to international trade, and wealth flowed into native Filipino hands. A storm across the seas had brought down the Spanish empire in the Americas, leaving only Cuba and Puerto Rico intact; a smaller storm in the Philippines seemed to be threatening Spanish authority: Filipino secular priests, both Spanish and native, questioned the preferential treatment the Spanish government was giving friars from Spain. The Spanish governor-general decided to put an end to this threat by executing three Filipino priests, two of whom were prominent in petitioning for fairness. We know the three priests by the acronym “Gomburza.” In the Noli me tdngere, Rizal compares their execution to a lightning bolt that created life. This life was the anti-friar movement in Manila and the movement demanding civil liberties. The year the three priests were executed in Manila was also the year Rizal began his high school education at the Ateneo de Manila. Let us now consider the circumstances referred to above one by one. The Pueblo and the Reordering of Native Life The story of Rizal begins not only in the Laguna town of Calamba but, generally, with the towns that were the crowning achievements of the Spanish missionary enterprise in the Philippines. These towns grew out of the barangays organized around a mission church under the bell (bajo de la campana), that is, within hearing distance of the church bell. The first towns were communities of Chris- tian converts, although residents who were pagans were allowed to live in their homes. The town, says Arcilla, is “{a] Spanish contribution to Philippine life,”? it was a territory comprising several barangays and therefore more accurately called « “township.” ‘The physical layout of the barangay in which the church was located, followed a gridiron pattern with a central plaza in front of the church and rectangular street blocks. Distant barangays bad chapels called visitas whi ch the parish priest would visit from time to time. Calamba was a visita of Bifian until 1742 (according to Rizal) when it became a town, Bi one of the oldest towns in the Philippines. of the town flan itself is THE NATION AS PROJECTIt was within the poblacién (the barangay in which the church was located) and its satellite barangays that what Quijano de Manila describes as “the infra- structure of Philippine civilization”® was first laid. The latter has in mind the Prosaic yet “epochal” elements of daily Philippine living: Can we imagine Philippine society without: the wheel and plow; or without road and bridge; or without masonry and factory; or without paper and book; or without the ABC and ba be bi bo bu; or without calendar and clock and map; or without painting and architecture; or without horse and cow and yoked carabao; or without corn and tobacco and camote and repollo and the guisado?* Zialcita argues that the collection of barangays into larger units “encouraged a broader sense of community,”* beyond one’s kin. He explains the role of the town—as both a physical and a social space—in laying the basis for an elemen- tary form of public life: The huge church dominated the town. Here were celebrated the major events in the life cycle of the residents, regardless of their kin affiliations; christenings, weddings, fiestas, and funerals. In front of the church opened a central plaza for all to enjoy regardless of family and status. After death, Christians were buried, not in or by their houses as in indigenous practice, but rather in a cemetery for all Christians. The basis for a notion of the “public,” of a community beyond the kin, was in place.* According to Zialcita, the advent of Christian symbols and identity and the administrative pyramid of the Spanish colonial political system “brought together tiny far-flung villages and hamlets into a larger whole” and thus enabled people to imagine an abstract community.’ In the nineteenth century, as an unintended consequence of Spanish efforts at centralizing and modernizing the colonial polity and economy, the community of the baptized came to be “reinter- preted in secular, nationalistic terms.” Through the mediation of the Spanish language, a development made possible by educational reforms, “(a] conscious- ness of being not creole, not mestizo, not indio, but of being Filipino” eventually emerged. Discriminatory colonial policies born of Spanish experience with creole- led revolutions in the Americas intensified this new consciousness. How the towns paved the way for the much more abstract—or to use Ander- son’s term, “imagined”*—community of the nation is what this book seeks to explore. The aim is to unravel this complex process via Rizal's life and works. Certainly, this was a transition that could only have occurred within colonial society and which began with the kinds of fundamental changes brought about by the spatial reordering of native life. What were the changes that made the nation possible? How might we describe the historical process where the pueblos became part of a much larger community, whether that community was imagined as “Katagalugan” or as “Filipinas”? Corpuz notes critically that even as the Pueblos were organized into provinces and that these in turn made up Filipinas, none of these really meant anything as “[the] natives of a pueblo were isolated from those of other pueblos.”"”—~e Sinibaldo de Mas was a Spanish diplomat who wrote the Informe Sobre el estado de las Filipinas en 1842 (A Report on the Status of the Philippines in 1842). reir Arcila writes that "he growth ofthe sugar industry in Negros was one ofthe most spectacular developments in the Philippines in the nineteenth century Before Loney’ arrival in 1856) ‘Negros produced only 3,000 piculs of sugar. But in 1880, the Island exported 618,120 picus, and in 1893." Commercial Agriculture and the New Principalia The period from the late eighteenth century to the first half of the nineteenth would bear witness to more fundamental changes. The rise of the industrial Powers with their demand for products like sugar and abaca, and the opening of 'y Philippine ports to world trade (e.g., Manila, 1834; Iloilo, Zamboanga, 1855. Cebu, 1865), brought about the rise of commercial agriculture in many areas and a shift in the pattern of land ownership. With capital earned from activities like moneylending and retail trade. clements of the old pueblo elite (the principalia), together with the enterprising Chinese mestizos, would consolidate ownership and control of vast tracts of land for growing export crops."' From the 1820s onward, became an important part of the economy. The old syst Plantations increasingly em of equal-size parcels gave way to large landholdings as leading pueblo families accumulated land ener as payment for debts or by leasing large tracts of feiar haciendas, or by purchase of vast tracts of the public domain (realengas) that were opened up to commercial cultivation, Chinese mestizos were the leading buyers of these lancts Internal trade grew under the combined impact of these 1815, many of the pueblos were no longer purely agriou Pueblos with trade linkages to Manila became provincial those in the general area of the capital, especially Binondo ang Tondo, became “post-agricultural towns.” The old single occupational class of small cultivate broke down as many families left farming and turned to various crafts avetors and other nonfarming livelihoods. A report by Sinibaldo de Mas paints vies esting picture of the thriving economy and the traffic between Vatious vegies and islands during the first half of the nineteenth century, i developments. After Itural_ communities. Centers of trade and regions THE NATION AS PROJECTLeft, the fry wee ofthe Mercado acl fry ran by Jou Rae ue sexe in Daptan 1896, Job Raz m Austin Cro, Lineage. Le and labors ef fost Riz, Pipe Porn. Facing pope. «photograph of 2 pancpaia fol fro Argo, Cebu fren the ca, 1890s. (Photo courtesy of Tod Cabrera LuceraPhiippne Geneology Project) ere Dorringo Lam-co, Jose Rizal's ancestor from the paternal sie, was a Chinese corvert who ‘married a Chinese mestiza, Ines de la Rosa, The family chose the name Mercado, which means “market.” In 1849, Don Narciso ‘Claveria, then Spanish governor- general of the Philippines, issued a decree requiring the assignment ofa surname for each family from an oficial catalog throughout the islands. This has come to be known as the Claveria Decree of 1849 Francisco Mercado, Jose Riza’s father started using the sumame Ricial (later Rizal), which means “green fields." On the other hand, Teodora Alonso, Rizal's mother, and her family got the ‘new surname Realonda, From this, Jose Rizal's full name is jose Protacio Mercado Rizal y Alonso Realonda. CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 7——S Inquiino — one who leases or rents portions of land from a land owner and uses these for either agrcuture or the raising oflivestock. Pangasinan to the inhabitants of Tlocos, the < issions, Nueva Beija, and upper Pampanga. The latter exports ese austin cle a 0 ‘inces. The of dried deer , called tapa. Ilocos cotton goes to liao all eis ‘ha ae Laguna come for the most part from Nueva Ecija. The indigo of hea a nd Lagi fa ‘a vent in Hoilo, Camarines, and other places. The pifia and sinenay 3 pel ar provinces are luxury articles everywhere. The sailcloth woven in be eee cardage of Albay are Ukowioein'general demand for abipe rigzing. Ox others with timber and bamboo." Salt, sugar, oil and dried fish are supplied by The growth of an export economy driven by the industrial oe Me West and the expansion of internal trade transformed the structure of cue society. They laid the socioeconomic conditions that eventually ot ¢ ne Seographic and ethnic isolation of the pueblos. A multiethnic and m herr middle class quite distinct from the old principalta emerged. According to Arcilla, “[these] newly rich were the new elite which put on a sophistication expressed in Hispanic ways and attitudes.” Indeed, they were the most Hispanized members Of colonial society. While many of their sons initially pursued careers in the priesthood, the subsequent generation took advantage of increasing opportuni- ties for education available in the colonial capital. “They chose careers in law, medicine, pharmacy, read and wrote correct Spanish, wore clothes in the Hispanic style, etc.”"* They would of course come from the large and prosperous pueblos in the Manila area and from those pueblos that had become centers of trade in the different provinces. The family of Rizal (originally surnamed “Mercado”) belonged to this shifting social landscape. His paternal great-grandfather was a merchant from China who migrated to the Philippines and married a well-to-do Chinese mestizo Christian Sirl in Manila. Subsequent generations of Rizal’s Chinese mestizo forebears were residents of Bifian where his father, Francisco Mercado, was born."® The latter hhad come to Calamba where he leased lands from the Dominican hacienda. As was the obligation and privilege of the propertied, Rizal's grandfather, Juan Mercado, served three terms as gobernadorcilo of Bifian."” His mother, ‘Toodora ‘Alonso, ‘was also from a Bifian family, although of even greater prominence. Rizal claimed that his maternal grandfather, Lorenzo Alberto Alonso, was once » deputy for the Philippines in the Spanish Cortes when the islands enjoyed representation As a sugar planter on land rented from the Dominicans (inquitino) cncin Mereada worked his way up to become the most prominent resident op Calamba.! He became, according to Guerrero, “one of the town’s wealthiest men, the first to build a stone house and buy another—in a town with only four or five 7 3 of any size—keep a carriage, own a library, and send his children to sch Nin Manila.” His wife, with whom he had eleven children, “helped enol his land-holdings and was in business in her own right, runni, om, sae with curing hams, dyeing cloth, and managing a medicine and gener, edie te Tt is said that Spanish officials passing through the town woul omnia the night at Francisco's house, The family Was ON 00d terms with real spend err and Ty tttenant of the guardia civil who were also frequent wing -y were litt the arrogance rs. exposed therefore to ance and abuses of ae) swum statin AS PROJECTmany have come to associate with colonial authorities.” All the same, the family weg did have its unfortunate experiences. In June 1871, the unfaithful wife of an uncle, together with the head of the guardia civil detachment and with the help The defini trauma ofthe of the town mayor, had caused ‘Teodora Alonso to be arrested and imprisoned — Sparth goverment n Madd for the crime of helping her husband, Teodora’s cousin, to poison her. She was ithe nineteenth century was eventually acquitted but only after spending two and a half years in jail.® Ceniaeed lene Socioeconomic change would beget political change, ‘The increasing wealth from treron,knewed te of these new principales and their deepening participation in the economic and _ presenation ofits rule inthe cultural life of the colony was out of step with the limited opportunities for Paliprines asin ts other advancement within the clerical hierarchy and civil bureaucracy, as well as with fen efeween eres the their limited civil and political rights. This ultimately led to the campaign for _ point of paranoia. The Spanish liberal reforms, the leading edge of which was the Propaganda Movement in Sve™mentin the Philppines, Spain during the period 1880-1894. This campaign was prefigured by the agita- Smsemaa sane tion for equality within the Church by non-peninsular clergy in the middle of ‘was a liberal), was suspicious of the nineteenth century (i.e., the secularization movement), Schumacher notes Fire pris andre ad that the material connections mestizo Heras, since the Latin and the clerical reformists of Pee cee era fede ree pale etal Jed forthe most pat by ibera. between the priests and the younger generation of nationalists.” Tn the years leading to the Cavite Mutiny of 1872, the secularization movement was supported by liberals, such as those of the Comité de Refor- madores. The Comité sought political and civil rights due to Filipinas as a province of Spain. Rizal’s brother Paciano, ten years his senior and then a law student at the University of Santo Tomas, was an active member of the youth arm of the Comité, the Juventud Escolar Liberal. He lived in the same house as Fr. Jose Burgos and, when the latter was implicated in the mutiny, had to leave the university because of his own liberal politics. The aspira- tions of the new middle class for parity and for greater civil and political rights were shaped by the flow of liberal and democratic ideas from the West. The introduction of steam ships and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 drasti- cally reduced the travel time to Europe, which in turn increased contacts with foreigners and peninsular Spaniards, many of whom were liberals and Freema- sons. A relatively small but significant number of wealthy families were also able to send their sons to Europe for advanced education. “[They] absorbed the intellectual currents of Europe, saw a completely different: type of society, and became disillusioned with Spain itself on seeing the more progressive state of e=—_— other countries.”?” The Spanish government’ attempts to reform the colonial economy, the —eeeten spot rise of export agriculture and foreign trade, the expansion of domestic trade, ghicsoply bend ontbeletin ~ advances in transportation and technology, and the inflow of liberal ideas from progress, the essential goodness Europe—all these were clearly driving the winds of change. Spain herself was “the human race, and the ts " i - " autonomy of the individual hobbled by internal conflict, made more intense by her precipitous decline as an “Monony often imperial power. Throughout the nineteenth century, Spain was in a persistent politcal and civ liberties, state of political instability, split by the ideological battle between traditional absolutism and liberalism.” These developments, in the words of de la Costa, were “cracking the fabric of the old colonial system and introducing through the cracks perilous possibilities of reform, of equality, and even of emancipation.” ) CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 9The Trouble with Education | wealth could only intensify ‘The claims and aspirations that came with increase consequence of wealth» with education, the desire for which was ital ey Git! condideraty Through formal education, principalfa hae cultural capital.” This includes economic resources into what Bowrdiey Oo go credentials attesting to oney jot only valuable skills and refined tastes, ative, imbuj cated competence.! Education is also profoundly transform: ibuing sins res. It transfor individuals with new aesthetic sensibilities, aspirations low a aed Eelaa a what has been termed a person’s “habitus,” or those 80 ons, th aa late for generating perceptions, thoughts, dispositions that serve as a a temp! bust sense of personhood, the resulting and actions in everyday life.” The more rob ite more deeply in aspiration for equality, and indeed the desire to participate ever more deeply the life of society, so widely shared among members of the ee middle class, can be explained in part by these shifts in the habitus of indivi ad fo Among the principalfa, perhaps few showed as much appreciation for the value of education as the Rizal family. The spouses Francisco and Teodor themselves rather well-educated by contemporaneous standards, invested heavily in the formal education of their children, “desiring to give each the means to acquire a solid preparation.”® The family home also featured an extensive library of more than a thousand volumes, with “many of them brought in clandestinely from Europe.”™ As a well-read woman who spoke excellent Spanish, Teodora was Jose’s first teacher. He would later be given a tutor and, when the latter died, would be taken by his brother to Bifian to continue his studies in a private school. When Jose was 11 years of age, he was enrolled at the Ateneo where he would graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1877. That same year, he entered the University of Santo Tomas. Education provided beneficiaries with modern ideas—the ideological means— with which to press their case for equality and greater participation. The secondary and tertiary education available in institutions run by the religious orders played a key role in this. De la Costa states that, for the most part, this education consisted in a liberal arts program of study, followed by profes- sional studies in such fields as law and medicine, or theology for thoes who wanted to join the priesthood.* Guerrero outlines the courses taken by Rizal that led to a Bachelor of Arts degree: “Besides Christian doctrine, it included Spanish, Latin, Greek, and French; world geography and history, the history of Spain and the Philippines, mathematics and the scienves . +) and the classic