Bad History: Jose the Reformer
Jose (Rizal) was the revelator; he wrote the book on Philippine nationalism. He offered a roadmap to achieving something even greater than freedom and even independence for his people. And there are differences between the two concepts. You can be free without being independent, just as you can be independent without being free. In both cases, you can still be shackled by others, whether though political coercion or the constraints of a past and the heritage of colonialism. Freedom or independence can be granted, can be achieved, and a people can still be enslaved.
What Rizal dreamed of was liberty for Filipinos. He saw their future as masters of their destiny, free and at peace with their identity and place in the world. At liberty, with all of those positive connotations of will and dreams and hopes. Possessing a national spirit tempered by the understanding that exercising that liberty, those freedoms and enjoying independence cannot come at the expense of others. Yet, we call him a reformer; a term almost derisive in connotation, that reduces his nuanced political and moral dreams for the Philippines to utterly simplistic terms. It’s a coordinated negation of Jose Rizal’s actual legacy.
What we remember are his polemics and propaganda, what we are forced to memorize are his books, out of context. A context that can be seen only by reading his letters, his essays and understanding what was truly on-going around the world and in our archipelago. For all the honor accorded Rizal, the truth is we disrespect him. We don’t read or truly understanding his philosophies. We attribute rudimentary notions to him. We little understand the truth and intent behind the polemics and propaganda. The last thing Rizal would have ever wanted was a country of automatons, following the status quo and agreeing with the party line with nary a word spoken in critical disagreement. He wanted a country of spirit and informed passion; which is precisely why he annotated Morga’s works and wrote the Noli and Fili.
The perception of Rizal as a reformer is a colonial trope, handed down by American and Spanish biographies. It is a colonial legacy. Arguably two of the most influential biographies of Rizal are by W.E. Retana (a noted anti-Filipino) and Austin Craig (an American historian). Their careful construction of Rizal has dogged and colored our understanding of him for so many years. It was a reaction then to the politics of the era. Why would the Spanish apologist and the American propagandists (who were trying to legitimize American rule) want the Philippines most revered hero (and he was, by a long-shot) honored as the separatist and the revolutionary thinker he always was?
The truth is Jose Rizal was the first of the Propagandists to decide that reformist agitations were useless. He was the first to understand that Spain would never provide the much needed reforms in the colony. As a result, he knew that the fight was no longer in Europe, but on the ground in the Philippines. The change was not going to come from without, it was going to come from within. You can’t beg for change, you have to demand it. That specific idea is what he articulated in his oft-quoted but rarely understood “…the tyrants fall like a house of cards, and freedom shines in the first dawn.” He was seeking liberty for his people, not just freedom and independence from colonial rule.
The full extent of the previous quote refers to his perception as the Philippines as being unprepared for liberty: “But it is true that we must win it by deserving it, exalting reason and the dignity of the individual, loving what is just, what is good, what is great, event to the point of dying for it.” Rizal did not see a people at that point in their evolution that honored those ideals. He foresaw “…the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow…”
Part of the blame lies with our understanding of Rizal and thus falls on some of our historians and cultural commenters. They take Rizal’s repudiation of Bonifacio’s revolution out of context; they utilize it as a way to delegitimize Rizal’s standing as our National Hero. When taken in context of his beliefs and advocacies, his repudiation is wholly understandable. Rizal did not see the Filipino people as ready for liberty; they were not in accord with each other when it came to even what ‘liberty’ meant. Acquiring freedom or independence from colonial rule would not fix the issues extant in the country. In fact, he saw a revolution at that point as nothing more than a rigadon; the exchange of one tyrannical rule for another. In his mind the potential outcome being Filipinos enslaving Filipinos. Basically, the preconditions which he peppered throughout his works remained unmet. So, yes, Rizal in some sense was non-violent. But he also understood that eventually a revolution was necessary. As with his life and works, his death pointed the way.
I think we are one of the only people who deride a hero for being philosophically non-violent. Yet he was even able to foresee a time when violence and uprising would be necessary. Gandhi and Martin Luther King are respected for it, Rizal is criticized. In this regard, in his agitation for deeper social change, Rizal remains utterly relevant and useful. Not so much in how his writings and his image are taken out of context. There is nothing more disrespectful than to see his nuanced arguments ignored and completely simplistic ideas and words substituted in their place.
Jose Rizal did not stand apart from the revolutionaries and separatists, though he did disagree with the 1896 timing. He always remained consistent with what he wrote and what he espoused. The problem is not with him, it’s with our understanding of him. We remain ignorant of what he was trying to achieve. We tag him with the title of 'reformer’, when the 'reforms’ he demanded of his people were more revolutionary than simply shedding blood to change rulers and government leaders. From the vantage point of time, we may disagree with his decision at that point. But we cannot, we should not, then ignore the breadth and depth of social change for which he was truly advocating.
Doing so means his worst fears have truly come true. And we remain a people lacking liberty and blindly following, uninformed and disconnected from their past, ultimately failing to create their future and incapable of independent thinking. His message continues to pass us by.
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