RIZAL AND THE UNDERSIDE

OF PHILIPPINE HISTORY
Rizal and the Underside of Philippine History

• Scholarly writing in the Philippines has its influences

not only by its tradition and culture but also by
Hispanic features that developed during the
American and Spanish colonization.
• John Phelan’s book The Hispanization of the
Philippines talks about how the effects of Spanish
rule affect the Filipinos.
• 1890 – Jose Rizal the foremost Filipino intellectual
and patriot, hailed as a Tagalog Christ and king
• Ilustrados- The liberal-educated elite
The Fall in Ilustrado Consciousness

• The Katipunan was formed, led by Andres Bonifacio

who made clear plans and strategies for a revolution
• 1898 – Emilio Aguinaldo superseded the Katipunan
by his republican government, making the Filipino
people free from colonization.
• Metrical romances from Spain and Mexico were
allowed to be translated as a form of indigenous
literature called awit.
The Power of King Bernardo

• Bernardo del Carpio- a legendary hero of foreign

origin, who was narrated in a Tagalog awit version
in the mid-nineteenth century.
• He was named the king of the Tagalogs hidden or
imprisoned within a sacred mountain from which
he would someday liberate his people.
• He was even called the king of amulets or the
anting anting.
The Underside of Hispanization

• Jose Rizal was called “the first Filipino”

• The goal of Spanish missionaries and soldiers is to make people live
within the walls of the Catholic Church, a convent or a presidencia
surrounded by the house of the local elite.
• Philippine history when made contact with Indianized rulers gives of
parallel similarities with each other: they distributed amulets, had the
status of god-kings, their temples or palaces were places of power
influencing the world around them.
 The Pasyon Interface
• The published pasyon might be seen as a device for drawing the native
population towards the pueblo-center.
• The “imitation of Christ” and participation in his passion, the “aral” and
the “sinakulo” would suggest that the pasyon was a powerful tool in the
center’s continual attempt to dominate and codify it surroundings.
• Pasyon Pilapil – contributes to the forgetting of their true origin by the
masses. It also signifies a movement away from the center, away from its
ideological control and hierarchical system.
• Pasyon Henesis – provided a comprehensive story of mankind from the
adventures of Adam and Eve to the glimpses of the apocalypse.
The Textualization of Rizal
• Certainly, the American colonial administration sponsored Rizal as
the national hero because his philosophy of education before
independence was a fitting rationalization of the U.S. policy of
"benevolent assimilation." To be sure, Rizal represented the
aspirations of the emergent middle class which had limited
revolutionary goals, feared violence. Rizal was already a national
hero before the U.S. intervened, and that his name was on the lips
of many a peasant rebel who rose against the colonial regime far
into the twentieth century.
The MEANINGS OF DEATH
• In a rare revelation of his inner self, Rizal wrote to fellow
propagandist Marcelo del Pilar in 1890
• When Rizal was thrown into Fort Santiago prison in November 1896,
one of the first things he did was to design and send to his family a
little sketch of "The Agony in the Garden," beneath which he wrote,
"This is but the first station.“
• Whether Rizal intended it or not, everything about his final hour was
public, subject to rumor and interpretation. He refused to be brought
to the execution site in a military wagon, as was customary,
preferring instead to walk, to undertake a lakaran.
The MEANINGS OF DEATH
• The sketch, the notes, the trial, his lakaran, his serenity and self-
control, his final words, the dawn breaking in the East—these and
many other details confirm that the execution of Rizal was an
extraordinary event, not only because an exemplary Filipino was shot
for upholding his ideals, but more significantly because the event was
"true to form."