r l

26 Noli me tangere

d of Sisa's kundtman .. . (which ' however, is in Spanish in the

sounI) "M no cantes.1,, exclam. 6 la a!fiereza en peifecto ,, tagalo, levantdndose
text o, · cantes.
'tada • "no i,,. /zacen dafio esos versos I , La .loca se call6; el
. 1 1.vJ.e
asistente' solto un.. Aba., , sabe paid tagalog!"
,, y quedose
• d mzranda
h ·r la senora,
. ',,( ["No , don't sing! excla1me. t .e w11e
lleno de a.dmiraciun . "of the
Alferez m. perfiec t .1 agalog ' rising to her feet 1n agitation.
. Don't
.
smgl Th ose verses hurt me I" The mad woman fell silent. The
• ·bl urte d ou t·. "Abdi· So she knows Tagalog pala!" and stared at
aide
the lady, full of wonder. ]33
La Consolacion's "perfect Tagalog" is given in perfect Span-
1s
. h , but we can hear it like the gaping aide, who responds appro-
priately with the beautiful 'Tagnish' of sabe pala tagalog. The curi-
ous thing is that earlier in the chapter Rizal has the Alfereza bark
at Sisa, "vamos, magcantar ikaw!" [Come, sing now!] without any-
one noticing her own lapse into 'Tagnish'! 34 But La Consolaci6n
is the great exception. Generally, Tagalog exclamations are in-
cluded only for comic or satirical effect, as well as 'local color.'
We are thus left to reflect on the strange fact that it is the Nar-
rator who is overwhelmingly the biggest user of Tagalog words.
In his English version of the novel, Leon Ma. Guerrero had al-
ready noticed this oddity with discomfort and incomprehension.
Since he wanted to get rid of Tagalog altogether, one of his solu-
tions was to translate the Narrator's Tagalog into a weird kind of
English, for example rendering salakot as "a native hat," as if
Rizal had written, in Spanish, un sombrero indio.35 (It is only in foot-
note 6, P· 27 of the notas appended to the centennial edition of the
novel that salakot is explained-for whom?) Yet the fact is that for
st
mo of the Tagalog words (usually nouns) he employs, the Nar-
rator adds a Spanish h
.
the meaning plain. parap rase, except where the context makes

33. Ibid., 219 (chap 3 9 "D _

34. Ibid., 21 6 . · ona Consolaci6n").
35. Such is his version of what Ri al
"Recuerdos"). z wrote m ibid., 41 (chap. 8
 27
Noli me tangere

The obvious question that arises is this: if the primary in-

tended readers of the Noli were Rizal's fellow Filipinos, why did
he feel he had to paraphrase terms like bdtis into Spanish? Most of
the Filipinos who could read Spanish at all were either Tagalogs
or people like the Luna brothers, who, even if they were ethni-
cally Ilocano, had been raised in Manila where Tagalog was a
major lingua franca among the 'natives.' The perhaps surprising
answer is that there is plenty of evidence that Rizal's fellow Filipi-
nos, while obviously important, were not the only targeted read-
ers. This evidence comes not only from the text of the novel it-
self, but also from Rizal's correspondence with friends in the pe-
riod immediately following the Noli' s publication in the bitter Ber-
lin winter of 1887.
In the brilliant opening chapter, Rizal wrote: oh! tu que me lees,
amigo 6 enemigo! Si es que te atraen a ti Los acordes de la orquesta, la ·luz 6
el sig;n:jficativo din-clan de la vajilla y de los cubiertos, y quer:es ver c6mo son
las reuniones alld en la Perla de[ Oriente [You who read me, be you
friend or foe, if you are attracted by the sounds of the orchestra,
the lights, or by the unmistakable tinkle of glass and silverware,
and wish to see what parties are like over there in the Pearl of the
Orient ... ]. 36 In this first passage (in the novel) where the Narra-
tor addresses his reading audience directly, we notice that (1) they
are divided between friends and foes, not between Filipinos and
Spaniards, nor fellow nationalists and the colonialists; (2) they
may well be curious to learn how parties are organized in Manila
(something which Spanish-reading Filipinos and many. Spaniards
would know well without opening the novel at all); and (3) most
important, Manila, Pearl of the Orient, is situated alla (yonder, far
away on the other side of the world), not aqui (here, in Filipinas).
The readers imagined here are, like Rizal himself, in Europe, not
(at least in this passage) in Filipinas. We can thus conclude that,
certainly as far as the 'friends' are concerned, they are sympa-

36. Ibid., 2 (chap. 1 "Una reunion") .

 Noli me tan:gere
28
. . 1,
Riza s cause ' they have never been to th e
thetic in principle to 1· I about it, but they are eager to learn:
. d know itt e 1· . h
Philippines an h oloCT1sts and 1ngu1sts to w om Rizal
German et n o-
people like th e · ·d· d Blumentritt, educated people of the
. d by Fer 1nan . . .
was introduce d . g his stays and studies 1n Pans, London
thor met urin '
kind. the aud Hei.delb erg. Seen from this angle, the Narrator's
Berlin, an Ta alo (with Spanish paraphrases) shows him in
heavy use of g g "d ' ' I ' d ' . m- .
the roles of accomp lished 'tour gu1 e, trans . ator,. an native .
formant. , H e real'lty is a Native Tagalog, despite
.
his . Spanish
.
name
and his writing in Spanish, and he can reliably guide his. readers
through the exotica of a remote 'Oriental' culture and society. Ta-
galog thus serves as a warranty for the Narrator's (and the
author's) authenticity.
These inductive conjectures can be confirmed from surviving
documents. We know, from Maximo Viola, his constant compan-
ion from mid-December 1886 to mid:June 1887, that Rizal thought
seriously about writing his next novel in French, in the event that
the Noli turned out to be a flop among the Filipinos. 37 For this
plan-which in the end he never carried out-he found an eager
supporter in Blumentritt, who rightly believed that if the second
novel were indeed written in French, then the primary language
of world literary culture, it would reach a much wider interna-
tional audience than was possible with Spanish (then a second- or
third-~lass literary language). In a letter of July 2, 1890, the eth-
nologist wrote enthusiastically: /ch sehe mit Sehnsucht dem Buche
entgegen, dass Du franzosisch schreiben wirst ich sehe v d ·
, oraus, ass es ezn

37. Maximo Viola, Mis viajes con el Dr. Rizal (1913) in n· . .

i
v~l. 1 of Escritos de Jose Rizal (Manila: Comisi6n d C zarzos ! memonas,
Rizal, 1961), 316. The Spanish t t d . r ,J e. entenano de Jose
. . ex rea s. cuanuo quzse sab l ,
de aquel luJo znnecesario delfiance~, •-nl' , d" . J J er a razon de ser
J, me e"r zco zczenuo ue que su 0 b ·
adelante en ./ranees, caso de qu Ai'./ ' ?}eto era escrz"bir en
d . , e su JVO z me tangere fracasara .
respon ieran a los propositos de dicha obr. . . , y sus pazsanos no
marks, but it is likely that th a. No date 18 given for Rizal's re-
began seriously to circulat ey were uttered early in 1887, before the Ar
e.
z·
JVO l
Noli me tangere 29

ungeheures Aefsehen en..ogen wird [I eagerly await the book you are to
write in French. I foresee that it will provoke a colossal sensation]. 38
Blumentritt was probably thinking of the huge international
success of such French novels as Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de
Paris, Alexandre Dumas (pere) 's Le Comte de Monte Cristo, and
Eugene Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris and Le Juif E"ant, as well as En-
glish-language works such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's
Cabin, which were quickly translated into most European lan-
guages. (To these huge global successes there had been no Span-
ish equivalent since the distant days of Don ()yixote.) But, as men-
tioned above, Rizal did not carry out the plan. Already in a letter
from London dated August 26 1888 he had written to
' '
Blumentritt that: Ich gedachte vorher auch in franzosisch zu schreiben,
aber ich glaubte, es is besser for meine Landsleute zu schreiben; ich muss den
.Geist meines Vaterlands aus seinem Schlummer aufwecken [I used to think
of writing also in French, but I came to believe that it is better to
write for my fellow-countrymen; I have to arouse the spirit of my
fatherland from its slumber]. 39
- Still, it is well worth thinking about the implications of an El
Filibusterismo composed in French. In 1891, probably only few hun-
dred of Rizal's compatriots would have been able to read it. On
the other hand, we should also recognize that no nationalism ex-
ists by itself; each always desires recognition by the collectivity of
other nations. Since all nationalists want to tell the rest of the
world about themselves, the idea of a French Fili simply shows
the permanent cosmopolitan side of any nationalism.

38. The text of this letter can be found on p. 627 of Cartas entre Rizal y
el Profesor Fernando Blumentritt, 1890-1896, part 3; in book 2 of volu~e 3
of the series Correspondencia epistolar (Manila: Comisi6n del Centenano de
Jose Rizal, 1961).
39. This letter can be found on p. 339 of the Cartas entre Rizal y el
Profesor Fernando Blumentritt, 1888--1890, part 2; in book 2 of volume 3 o~
the series Correspondencia epistolar (Manila: Comisi6n del Centenario de Jose
Rizal, 1961).
 .Noli me ta
ngere
30
turn back to, and perhaps resolv
. t we can . e, two
At this poin d s earlier. The first 1s the simpler lA't
ncerne u · vv hy
uzzles that co . resentative hero of the most opp
P . dio Ehas, rep . ressed
does the in f colonial society, never offer the read
ted strata o . er a
and persecu r-r. g indeed speaks a Spanish as good-or b
. d of i.aga1o ' ' . . ' et-
single wor -as the Narrator s? He 1s certainly neve
haps as pure r a1.
ter per ' h r to speak the "perfect Tagalog" of which L
lowed by the aut o . a
. reveals herself capable. Most hkely, there are sev-
Conso1aci 6n . .
swers I noted earlier that when Rizal puts Tagala
eral re1ate d an · , . . g
in the mouths of his characters-P. Dam_aso using ~ata instead of
muchacho, Sinang exclaiming Aray!, the V1sayan soldier whispering
Susmariosep, or La Consolaci6n insulting La Victorina with Puput!-
the intended effect is typically humorous or satirical. But Elias is
a profoundly serious, noble, and long-suffering hero, and there-
fore to be protected from any whiff of comedy or sarcasm. 'Mixed
speech' in the Noli is usually a sign of coloniality-from Damaso's
ludicrous creolized Tagalog phrases to La Victorina's absurd af-
fectation of Andalusian Spanish. Elias, however, is a man outside
coloniality, and points beyond it. So he must speak purely; and
since the novel is written in Spanish, not Tagalog, his words must
be in 'perfect Castilian.' Furthermore, the question of 'who' he is
is answered with complete clarity by his actions in the narrative.
In this way, he needs no linguistic guarantees of his authenticity.
Eve his singe · 1 name, that of an Old Testament prophet, stand5
outside Spanish colonialism, in a way that :Jose Rizal' does not.
The
. Narrator' on the oth er h and, 1s . 1n . exactly the opposite· posi-
t10n. He knows everyth'1ng, and can comment on anything, • but he
can not . 'act'
. within th e narrative, . hence can not guarantee h'is own
authenticity in the ust
. same style as his indio hero. Tagalog Ill
come to his rescue.
The second of th . - it ref·
. e puzzles 1s the total absence of any exp1ic
erence to C h1nese m . . esen·
tatives 11 eStizos, a large social stratum with repr
a over the Cath 0 1· . d . the sec·
ond half f h . icized parts of Filipinas, an in
o t e n1netee th . power,
n century increasing its econonnc
Noli me tangere 31

level of education, and political aspirations all the time. 40 It is not

that the reader cannot infer from various passing indications that
characters like Tiago and Tasia belong to this stratum, but rather
that the narrative itself always avoids naming them as such. There
are also plenty of characters whose 'racial' classification is delib-
erately left obscure. This obscurity in turn is shared by both the
Narrator, and, for the purposes of the Nolz"s general readership,
:Jose Rizal' himself.
There is no doubt that Spanish dislike of, anxiety about, and
racist contempt for 'the Chinese' and 'Chinese culture,' had a pro-
found effect on colonial society. In the name of traditional aristo-
cratic (feudal and neo-feudal) Castilian culture and values, the
Chinese were to be despised, not merely as non-white, but also
as irreligious, ignorant, money grubbing, dishonest, cunning, and
vulgar. Traces of this contemptuous anti-Sinicism are visible in
the Noli-and, we shall see, far more so in the Fili-as well as in the
private correspondence of the ilustrados. 41 Small wonder then that
the ambitious and upwardly mobile Chinese mestizos de-empha-
sized, and even worked to conceal, whatever was residually 'Chi-
nese' about themselves. Like ducks to water, they took to calling
themselves Don and Dona, and enjoyed such titles as Capitan
when they could obtain them. Qµite often the most visible (non-
physical) traces of their ancestries were their surnames, which
combined a clan name with the Hokkien honorific -ko (or co in
Castilian orthography), to create eventually such well-known su-
per-rich families as the Tiangcos, Cojuangcos, Sycos and
Tanhuatcos. At the same time, the first elements in their names

40. In his classic article "The Chinese Mestizo in Philippine History,"

Journal ef Southeast Asian History, 5, no. 1 (March 1964): 62-100, Edgar
Wickberg estimated that demographically-in the later nineteenth century-
these mestizos, about 240,000 strong, came in second after the 4 million
plus indios, and before the 20,000 Spanish mestizos, the 10,000 chinos, and
the 5,000 peninsulares.
41. Q,uibuyen, A Nation Aborted, 89, 156-57, 160.
 Noli rne ta
ngere
32
, Hispano-Catholic, like Apolin .
b 'classy aria a
ere likely to e .k. g in the Noli is the total absence of 'Cnd
W . t~S~ro .
Cecilla. Wha . any named characters are given
s whi1e J.J... no su
1"Y"I

nese' surname ' do not learn the last names of prem . r-

11 Thus, we arriag
names at a · D Basilio, Tia Isabel, Hermana Rufa and e
• or of on . lllany
Victorina, . d attern is reason for a certain suspicion. If
This od P . k' . h . one
others. . . ed to start thin 1ng 1n t e c1ass1cal anticol .
. 1887 inc1in on1a1
was, m ' . s vs them-colonialists, the 'Chinese' pur
b' ry of us-nauve . ' e or
ma . ld be an uncomfortable third party, neither exactl
mesuzo, wou f h y
. lonial• and almost all o t em, too, dated their O •
nauve nor co , . n-
. • th country to a time after the Spanish Conquest.
gins m e . .
But the true resolution of this problem requires a wider angle
of vision. Floro Qyibuyen cites, as evidence that a non-creole
meaning for the noun filipino was in extensive use by 1887, a pas-
sage from an English translation of a letter Rizal wrote in Ger-
man to Blumentritt on April 13, 1887: "All of us have to sacrifice
something on the altar of politics, though we might not wish to do
so. That is understood by our friends who publish our newspa-
. per in Madrid. They are creole young men of Spanish descent,
Chinese mestizos, and Malayans; but we call ourselves 'Filipi-
nos."'42 The German original, however, reads: wir miissen alle der
Politik etwas opfem, wenn auch wir keine Lust daran haben. Dies verstehen
meine Freunde welche in Madrid u~ere Z,eitung herausgeben; diese Freunde
sind alle Junglingen, creolen, mesti1.en und malaien, wir nennen uns nur
Philippiner [We must all make sacrifices for political reasons, even
if. we have no inclination to do so. This is understood by rny
fnends who publ'ish our newspaper in . Madnd; . these fnen · ds are
all youngsters
. ' creo1es, mestizos,
. and Malays, (but) we ca11 our·
selves simply fi[i1-, · ]43
Zrznos. .
Note that Q,uibuyen inserts the word

42. Ibid., 76.

43. See The Rizal-Blum . . . al J-listorical
Institute, 1992), vol 1 entntt Correspondence (Manila: Nauon Philippinef
has none of the b' _(~ 886 -1~89), 72. Note that the German
am iguities surrounding 'filipinos.'
Noli me tangere 33

'Chinese' before mestizos, which is not there in the original Ger-

man. His historical instinct is quite right, but he does not seem to
have noticed Rizal's sleight-of-hand. 'Mestizos' by itself implies
the normal Spanish mestizos of the colonial racial hierarchy, and
conceals the Chinese mestizos with ancestries outside the Spanish
Empire and the Philippines.
But the most significant aspects of Rizal's sentences lie else-
where, and can only be appreciated by thinking comparatively.
One can begin by considering the experiences of the Spanish
Americas in late-colonial times. In Imagi,ned Communities I discussed
the widespread belief in the imperial centers (England, Spain, and
Portugal, above all) that the natural environment in distant,
strange, and tropical colonies had a degenerative effect, visible
even among the children of settlers coming directly from the
metropole-if they were born 'overseas.'44 There was also the
popular idea that open or hidden miscegenation with indigenes or
African slaves and freedmen meant that the 'blood' of these
colonials was likely to be racially contaminated. Such people
could not be trusted. (Hostile reaction to this prejudice was one
reason why so many creoles and mestizos became leaders of inde-
pendence movements in the Americas). Under these conditions,
people in the imperial centers had very little interest in the nice-
ties and distinctions of the social orders in the colonies. Already
towards the end of the eighteenth century, wealthy young men
sent to Spain for higher education found themselves referred to
with contempt as americanos. No one in Madrid cared whether they
were creoles or mestizos, whether they came from Valparaiso or
Guadalajara, or whether their parents made a living within the
Viceroyalty of Peru or that of Mexico. They were all 'simply
Americans.' It did not take very long for some of these resentful
youngsters to turn a term of ~ontempt into one of pride. (Besides,

44. Benedict Anderson, lmagi,ned Communities: Reflections on the Origi,n and

Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 57-60.
 Noli me ta
ngere
34 f
coming rom any one p ace in the
1 .
1 numbers . 'h b '
very sIIla1
Vast
h . made exclusive ome oy social cir I
t e one ume . 1 1 . c es
Empire at any the anti-colonia revo ution eventu
. bl ) When . . .. l a1ly
uite unv1a e. . it happened), it was 1nit1a ly regarded b
q (' Mexico, as y
broke out 10 n American, rather than a Me"'.
II1en as a ""1can
such young '
insurrection. l'kely
1 that this history was replicated when .
·
1t is more than . , 1n
. 'fi t numbers of young men from nch families .
the 1870s, s1gn1 ican . . in
. . .
the Phihpp1nes s tarted going to Spain for higher education .45
People m . Madrid and Barcelona could not care less whether the
lads came from Iloilo or Batangas, whether they were speakers of
Ilocano or Tagalog, or whether they were creoles, mestizos, or
'Malays.'46 Tuey all came from Las Filipinas, a good many had
brownish skins, they spoke a slightly odd form of Spanish, some-
times incorrectly, they liked 'weird' food, and this was sufficient.
They were, in the manner of the late eighteenth century
americanos, 'simply filipinos' -guys from the Philippines. One would
therefore expect that sooner or later they would assume this
name with a hostile pride-and a new solidarity. We should not be

. . . from the Philippines were first permitted to enrol in Span-

. 45.. Students
1Sh
uruver~ities m 1863. The early arrivals were typically creole lads who
were phys all · d' · ·
. ic Y m 1stmgmshable from their metropolitan classmates. Mes-
nzlos of various kinds began to arrive only in the later 1870s. See the first-
c ass Avant-Priopos w ·u b J . 1
L1on of the Noli-N' n en Y ov1ta Ventura
h
. Castro for her French trans a-
46. In a
1
Y touchez Pas! (Pans: Gallimard, 1980). .
Barcelona Rietalter of June 23, 1882, to his family on his initial arrival m
' Z Wrote· :Ytj0 /' ,1,iaJ
adoquinadas com M : me Paseaba por aquellas cal/es anchas y imr '
quenes me llamaoben
ancznha~zla, ·llenas de gente, llamando la atenci6n de todo el mund,,
o,
Nadie tiene noticia de o, ,1apones, americano, etc., ninguno filipino. Pobre pais.
macademized as in M [I walked along those wide, clean streetsf
everyone; they 11 adm a, crowded with people attracting the attention_ o
Am . ca e me Chin ' . S an1sh
encan), etc.: bu ese, Japanese, American (1.e., P
knows a thing about t ~ot one, Filipino I Unfortunate country-nobodJ
H~storical Society, l;So9u).) One Hundred Letters of Jose Rizal (Manila: Nation ,
Rz1.al (Manil , 26 I h' ..,.., . h r Jose
a: National ff · . n is 1 he First Filipino: A Bwgrap 9' 0Y
characteristically . istoncal Institute 1961) 95 L on Ma. Guerrero
nustranslated 'P ' ' ' e I"
obre pais!' as "Our poor country.
Noli me tangere 35

surprised that the famous journal eventually produced by some of

these youngsters was given the name La Solidaridad-a name of
obvious relevance in Spain, but unlikely to have been a first
choice for a comparable publication in Manila. (Were they aware
that La Solidaridad was the name given 19 years earlier to the
briefly legal organ of the First International's Bakuninist Spanish
chapter?) 47
Rizal' s words underline this point, since he told Blumentritt
that although his friends actually are creoles, mestizos, and
Malay(an)s, they "call themselves" (in Spain) "simply filipinos." A
strategic political decision, in fact, and not altogether a pleasant
one, since it involved unspecified "sacrifices." We know from the
existing correspondence that people in the circle of La Solidaridad
did not hesitate to speak and write among themselves of the creoles
and mestizos in their midst; 48 which means-no great surprise-
that "Filipinos" was what they called themselves in public.
On the other hand, if in Spain no one gave a fig if a 'filipino'
was a creole, a mestizo, or a Malay(an)-note the significant ab-
sence of indio in the metropole-this was by no means the case in
the colony. There, these distinctions were of real everyday im-
portance. Hence in the colony, the word filipino for a considerable
time meant something quite different from what it denoted in
Spain. If we understand this essential difference/contrast, we will
be able to see that, if it was eventually natural for overseas

47. William Henry Scott, The Union Obrera Democratica: First Filipino Labor
Union (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1992), 6. Scott observed that
the first issue, appearing on January 15, 1870, made special mention of
"virgin Oceania, and you who inhabit the rich, wide regions of Asia." This
Spanish chapter was banned in November 1871, but when the first major
strike in the Philippines occurred ten months afterward (at the Cavite arse-
nal), Capitan-General Izquierdo was convinced that the "black hand" of
the International was behind it.
48. See the evidence offered in chapter 4 of John J. Schumacher, SJ.'s
classic The Propaganda Movement: 1880-1895, rev. ed. (Quezon City:
Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1997) .
 .Noli me ta
36 ngere
, 11 themselves "simply Filipinos," there .
s alla to ca . . . h Ph'l' . is no
youngster . _ h t people hving in t e i ippines Would
t believe t a . do
reason °
'th as natura11y
or as promptly.
.
It wou 1d take
..
time
'
and
a 1ot
so e1 er .fi to effect this cultural-political change
f ffort and sacn ice, . . . . .
o eAnother k'md Of comparison, JUSt as • illuminating, • •
can be of.
fered more bne . fl y. In 1908 ' students originating . from the Dutch
East In dies (Nederlandsch Indie). formed . Th'in Holland .. an associa-
. ailed the lndische Vereeniging. is association took its
uon c d' A . . f
name, w hich we can translate as In ies . ssociation, rom the geo- .
a hical term for the vast colony; and it was the first association
gr P · . ·1 . h l ·
to do so, well before anything simi ar in t e co ony Itself. Its
members were a mixed lot: Javanese, Minangkabau, Menado-
nese, Sundanese, etc. in ethnic terms, 'natives' and 'mestizos' by
racial category, and Muslim and Christian (of different persua-
sions) by religion. What they had in common was privilege. They
had had the best education available in the colony, and their par-
ents were well-off and/or well-connected to people inside the colo-
nial regime itself. Seen from this angle, they look very much like
the students from the Philippines arriving in Spain a generation
earlier. Although, on the whole, they were well treated in Hol-
land, and enjoyed touring around, drinking in bars, and pursuing
working-class Dutch girls, they felt their separateness-their skins'
different shades of brown, their Dutch with funny accents and of-
ten shaky grammar, their 'weird' taste in food-collectively. They all
th
~d e _experience of ordinary Dutch people's complete lack of
st
mt~re m (and knowledge about) what island they came from,
which town they gr · h or
ew up In, what language they used at ome,
what ancestry they could claim. They were all 'simply Indies'
youngsters. This aw . in
Holland of d' t' · areness of the near-absolute irrelevance, .
1. ' is inctions of huge importance in the colony, ex
p ams the earliness Of h • I ny-
.d
w1 e geographical basis. t eir self-organized solidarity on a co 0

The parallel with R · 1 . lose

d . Iza and his friends in Spain is very c
an apt, especially if . . · h and
we realize that the adjectives zndzsc
.Noli me tangere 37

filipino were structural analogues, based above all on political geog-

raphy. Over the course of the decade after 1908 the lndische
Vereeniging shifted from being mainly a social club to something
self-consciously political. By 1922 it had become sufficiently
radicalized and nationalist to change its name from the Dutch-lan-
guage lndische Vereeniging to the Malay-Indonesian Perhimpu-
nan Indonesia, which we may translate as Indonesian Associa-
tion. The language shift was important in itself, but so also was
the pioneering break with the word 'Indies' in favor of the hith-
erto hardly used 'Indonesia' -a strange amalgam of Latin (India)
and Greek (nesos, meaning island) coined by a sort of German
Blumentritt half a century earlier. No matter, it was not a colonial
word, and the Dutch colonial regime hated it. In this way, the
mixed bag of ilustrado youngsters in Holland became the first sub-
stantial group to call themselves 'simply Indonesians.'
In all these cases, the Philippines, Spanish America, and Indo-
nesia, we can thus see the structural reasons for the historical pro-
gression from an early cultural and emotional identification with
place (Rizal's patria adorada )-initially a familiar hometown or re-
gion, later, in Europe, with the extension of the metropole's geog-
raphy of contempt, a 'home-country' -towards a solidarity be-
tween persons from within the abstract, mapped space of the
colony. This is the progression from local patriotism to modern
nationalism, from geographical sentiment to political program. I
believe we can take the Noli me tangere of 1887 as a milestone on
this highway for the Philippines. It is an enormously powerful
evocation of an abused patria and pueblo (words in which geogra-
phy still reverberates more insistently than anthropology). The
anthropological-political naci6n is there only in sparse and scat-
tered places, while the fully political nacionalismo is still absent. But
one feels, as one reads, that it is waiting, just over the novel's
horizon.