José Rizal: reformist or revolutionary?
Part one: Rural Philippines prior to the voyage to Spain
 

By By Carlos A. Arnaldo, KGOR, Supreme Archivist


Fri 17th June 2011









On a subject like the national hero, Dr Jos Rizal, there is so much to say. . . and so little that is new. So let me introduce you to two new things.

First is a new author, Dr Hlne Goujat, Universit dAngers, French, who spent 12 years studying all the writings of Rizal in their original Spanish and wrote her doctoral thesis on the evolution of Rizals thoughts from non-violent reformism to outright revolution. In titling her book Reform or Revolution, she deliberately refuses to accept this either or dilemma. She holds that Rizal was both a reformist and a revolutionary. More than that, he evolved over the years from reformism to revolution, otherwise his execution by the Spanish firing squad has no meaning, it is a brutal punishment for a non-crime.

And second, in a sequel to this article, let us see again that fabulous musical drama, Isang Panaginip na Fili, a drama produced by Dulaang UP, and so popular, even with standing room at the matinee performance last November 2010, 200 spectators could not enter for lack of space and to respect the fire regulations.




The full title of the new book is Rforme ou Rvolution: le projet national de Jos Rizal (1861 to 1896) pour les Philippines, published in Paris and available so far only in French. Basing her premises on solid documentation in the original Spanish, author Goujat is saying that Rizal was guilty of a crime, he was an insurrecto, he was a rebel, he was the filibusterero he writes about in the Fili. She even says a better translation of the title El Filibusterismo, would be The Revolutionary. For it is the culmination of his beliefs. His travels to Europe, in particular to Spain and France, were instrumental in honing those beliefs towards revolution.






If you lived in the equivalent of a manor house in rural, rice growing Calamba at the turn of the century, as Rizal did, you would probably not be too enthused to take the long and tiresome boat trip to Europe, to visit Spain or France or Germany. On the other hand, if that rural tranquil life were upset and challenged by the masters of the land, the Spanish Friars, one might be tempted to seek the reasons why, even if search this led to distant lands to find the answers to the questions of domination by the church, excessive tithes on land and produce, and despite the deep and fervent love of the peasants for the catholic religiona growing tension and animosity towards the robed clerics who ruled rural Philippines.

Almost like a sociologist and historian, recording and documenting the social facts of life in rural Philippines, Rizal recounts in both his Noli Me Tangere and his El Filibusterismo, this very region, the Calamba of the last years before his studies abroad.

In the first pages of the Filibusterismo, we encounter Cabesang Tales, a talented rural worker who squatted on some vacant land and built a small farm. Challenged by the friar administrators as to the ownership of the land, and unable to produce any legal documents, he paid the rental of the property to the friars, 20 pesos at that time. With his first earnings, he had hoped to send his daughter, Juli, to school in Manila and was anxious to see her wearing pretty dresses like the other collegialas Manileas. But every year, the rents increased. Rizal, in his exquisite literary style enhanced by Leon Guerreros translation, recounts:






When the annual rent reached two hundred pesos, Cabesang Tales was not satisfied with sighing and scratching his head, he grumbled and protested, to which the friar administrator replied that if Tales could not pay, then another could have the use of the lands, there were many eager applications. Cabesang Tales thought the friar was joking, but the friar was in earnest, he even singled out one of his servants to take over. The unfortunate Tales blanched, there was a buzzing in his ears, and he saw red. The images of his wife and daughter rose before him, pale, gaunt, the death rattle of the fever in their throat. He saw the thick forest turned to open field, the furrows watered with the sweat of his body, he saw himself, poor Tales, ploughing in the noonday sun, tearing his feet on rocks and roots, while this friar rode his coach, followed like a slave by his chosen successor. . . . Cabesang Tales rebelled, refused to pay a single penny, and still seeing red, declared that he would only yield his fields to the first man that watered them with his own blood.1

Water the fields with his blood? Was not that a revolutionary statement?

This was exactly the situation before Rizal departed for Europe, it was already a revolutionary situation! Several of his own tenants had their lands seized by the friars, Rizal sought to protect them through the courts but to no avail. The courts were afraid to adjudicate in favor of a peasant against a friar. And how could it be that the friars own land and charge rents, when they all take a vow of poverty? How can courts be blinded and bought with money or exchange of favors? How can our country be so dominated by the friars, while the native indio priests are always assigned to the poorest and most remote parishes?





The garrotting of the Filipino priests, Gomez, Burgos and Zamora, in 1872, just 11 years previously, still rang in his ears like a gnawing echo from the past. The injustice of this execution and the total inability of the colonial government to find valid cause for their indictment, urged Rizal to dedicate his, El Filibusterismo to the three martyr priests, as he himself writes, the victims of the evil I undertake to combat.2

Hence, Goujat concludes, Rizals visits to Europe, were not only so he could pursue the studies refused him at The Universidad de Santo Tomas, not only to seek safety from the guardia civil who eyed him suspiciously as an effective writer and fomenter of trouble. He made these voyages to Europe because he had a mission, to learn more about law, politics, the origins of the social conditions in the Philippines, and how through peaceful means he could bring about change.

A simple note in the Escritos de Rizal3 tells us: Rizal, though young, was already determined to study and to work for the liberation of his country; which explains the suddenness of his departure for Europe, apparently to continue his studies, though it was more in order to work for his country, which one can deduct from the insinuations and allusions in his own letters, those of his brother and of his very close friends. The alternative was to stay in the Philippines where his future, recounts Rafael Palma, would more likely to simply vegetate, to befriend the friar and the guardia civil, learn to get along with them, obey them, but what about the people? He had to leave, he had to travel.4



The major accomplishments of his voyage were the writing and publication of his two social novels, of which the first, Noli Me Tangere was started in 1884 and published in 1887 in Berlin, Germany. The Noli recounts on a national level the events of the microcosm of Calamba: false accusations by the friars of heresy and non-belief, the power of the church to excommunicate and disallow burial in Christian cemeteries, the meddling of the church protected by the guardia civil, in family concerns, land rentals, court trials, and all social life in general. The Noli was thus a social comment on the hypocrisies of the church and the relentless, ruthless dominance of Spain over every aspect of life. But as such the Noli did not espouse violence. It was sufficient to ignite the fire of rebellion, to motivate the first rebel soldiers, but in itself, the book did not urge or justify revolutionary action.




Whereas Rizal had thought to gain spiritual and intellectual momentum in Spain, he found that this land of the peninsulares, was falling into decline, it had lost almost all its colonies in Latin America, its naval fleet was defeated. He did find solace and comfort in his contacts with students, philosophers and the freemasons. But this further embittered him against the friar domination back home, giving him reason for his beliefs.




In contrast to Spain, he felt close vibrations with France, a country that had come out of its own revolution in 1789 and had solidified its thinking in the freedom of the human person, civil and political rights, he read French authors voraciously. At the same time, he began the writing of the Fili, still stung deep inside by the oppression and events in Calamba close to his last departure. He needed to say more, all that the Noli did not say, but he was restrained by his prior inclination to peaceful means and reformism.




How then did Rizal evolve from reform to revolution, asks Hlne Goujat. An insight to the response can be gained from the musical drama, Ang Panaginip na Fili.

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1 Jos Rizal, El Filibusterismo, translated by Leon Ma. Guerrero (Manila: Guerrero Publishing Inc., 2009), p 26-29.
2 Ibidem, Dedication , p v.
3 Escritos de Rizal (III, L. 224, note 6, page 18), cited in Hlne Goujat, Reforme ou Revolution: le projet national de Jos Rizal (1861-1896) pour les Philippines (Paris, Editions Connaissances et Savoirs, 2010).
4 Rafael Palma, Biografia de Rizal, Documentos de las Bibliotecas Publicas, 15, Manila, 1949, p 33 as cited in H. Goujat, ibidem, p 238.