Alyssa San Felipe

HI 165 Paper

“To remain silent would be consent to the abuse.” This quote, which is said to be from Jose
Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere, encapsulates the social cancer the Philippines was experiencing, that
the author wished to lay bare to its very victims. Appropriately titled Noli Me Tangere or Touch
Me Not, the novel bring light to a sickness – a cancer – so terrible that should not bear to be
touched.
Jose Rizal wrote Noli Me Tangere for a reason. He expresses his intent in a letter written
for his friend:
“I have had to reply to the calumnies which for centuries have been heaped upon us and our
country.”
It was written in the pursuit of the truth. A truth that Rizal wishes to enlighten his
motherland with. The underlying idea is never explicitly shown, but it lays bare the defects of
the Spanish colonization and how it impacts the Filipinos. In his literary works, Rizal exposes
the truth – the corruption and abuse the Philippines has faced at the hands of the Spanish
colonial regime.
The motherland was plagued by sociopolitical problems – problems that were brought
into the Filipino country by colonization. Under the Spaniard’s imperialist rule, the Philippines
was subjected into subordination, while its colonizers were cast into a light of supremacy. The
country’s culture was exploited by the colonizers, with the intention to assert authority and
influence over the very natives of the country they are conquering.
In his novel, Jose Rizal orchestrated a cast that was representative of the different
characteristics of both Filipinos and Spaniards during his time. An exemplar of this is Padre
Damaso, a Spanish friar who used religion to justify the crimes and corruption he commited
and command his power over the religious Filipinos. He represented the friars who used
religion as a tapestry to establish their dominion to the members of the Church.
However, it was not just the Spaniards that contributed to the social cancer that plagued
the Philippine nation. The Filipinos were also adamant enough to not do anything about it. The
social cancer the Philippine suffered from was this: the fact that most Filipinos had no
knowledge of its existence. The social cancer was ignorance.
Instead of criticizing the system that Spain had forced upon them, they remain passive.
Because of this, we slowly lost the very identity of a Filipino, and what nationalism meant.
Because of this, we were easily manipulated and deceived by our conquerors. Because of this,
we cultivated a mentality that viewed our captors as superior and our nation as inferior. The
early Filipinos were passive – even more so, they put their captors up a pedestal, viewing them
as the superior nation.
Those who were aware of the cancer remained silent. They chose to adjust and get used
to it. They chose not to challenge the problems or do anything about it. The quote at the
beginning of this paper fully encapsulates what it meant to stay silent when you knew that there
was something wrong. To stay silent is to allow abuse and corruption to continue. To stay silent
is to allow the cancer to spread and to grow.
Rizal wanted to challenge the oppressive norm his nation grew accustomed to, so he
wrote and published Noli Me Tangere. The novel holds a certain power to it. It is, in and of
itself, a work of political propaganda; a propaganda whose message has been echoing through
its readers for centuries, and will continue to do so for centuries to come. It sparked the
Filipinos’ desire for freedom and change. And this is what our motherland’s captors wanted to
avoid: enlightenment. Although they tried to keep this spark from flaring up, as Rizal said in
his novel:
“Our people slept for centuries, but one day the lightning struck and, in its very act of
destroying, it called forth life.”
There are still traces of the social cancer Rizal addressed in his literary novel that exists
until today. It is especially relevant during the past few years, and even recently, with the 2019
senatorial elections. Ignorance can still be seen in Filipinos today. They will let any propaganda
sway them, especially if it aligned with their views. For instance, the current senatorial
election’s unofficial results can show that Filipinos choose to vote for people who had a well-
known family name or a strong media presence over goood qualifications and achievements.
Filipinos would rather choose a handsome actor over just lawyers, ignoring the millions-worth
of plunder cases some of these senators had in the past. They would rather put someone who
was clueless with the law in power, instead of someone who has been practicing the laws for
years. But we continue to fight, even if the odds are against us. We refuse to stay silent and let
this social cancer eat the Philippine nation up.